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Sophocles: A Guide to Selected Sources

2015-11-15T17:57:17Z

NickFreer: /* Bibliography */

{{GuideHighlightBox}}
'''''Sarah Burges Watson'''''
{{#howtoquote:}}
<div id="guide">{{GuideTextsBy|Sarah Burges Watson}}
Best-loved of the tragedians, Sophocles won at least twenty times in the Athenian dramatic festivals. He died in 406/5 BCE, aged around ninety. He wrote over a hundred and twenty plays ({{#lemma: ''Suda'' | [[Suda, ς 815 Adler = Life of Sophocles | ''Suda'', s.v. Sophocles]]}}); seven survive complete: ''Ajax'', ''Electra'', ''Women of Trachis'', ''Antigone'', ''Oedipus Tyrannus'', ''Philoctetes'' (409 BCE), ''Oedipus at Colonus'' (401 BCE). The {{#lemma: ''Life'' | [[Anonymous, Life of Sophocles | Anon. ''Vit. Soph.'']]}} transmitted with his plays is probably Hellenistic (see Bing 1993), but biographical stories circulated during Sophocles’ lifetime. Sources on Sophocles are collected by Radt (1977).

== A ‘Blessed’ Life? ==

If classicism is the product of nostalgia for an idealized past (see Porter 2006), Sophocles represents its acme. His ‘Life’ is perfectly harmonized with his poetry (cf. Graziosi 2006: 160-5). Considered through the lens of Sophocles’ mighty champion Aristotle, it might actually qualify as ‘blessed’ (''Nicomachean Ethics'' 1.10). It apparently combines flourishing in accordance with the excellences of character and intellect (both contemplative and politically oriented) with good fortune—and no reversals. It certainly exemplifies {{#lemma: the good timing said to be characteristic of his dramas | [[Anonymous, Life of Sophocles | Anon. ''Vit. Soph.'' 20-1]]}}. Raised in prosperity, {{#lemma: Sophocles receives an aristocratic education in gymnastics and ''mousikê'' and sings the paean after the victory at Salamis | [[Anonymous, Life of Sophocles | Anon. ''Vit. Soph.'' 3]]}}. His career coincides with Athens’ heyday, ending before her catastrophic defeat by Sparta. He influences and is influenced by luminaries like Herodotus (see Dewald/Marincola 2006), whom he celebrates in an {{#lemma: epigram | [[Plutarch, Whether an old man should engage in public affairs 3.785a | Plut. ''An Seni'' 3.785a]]}}. Taking what is best from Aeschylus, he brings tragedy to what Aristotle considers its natural fulfillment. Thereafter, Sophocles represents the golden mean between his principal rivals, Aeschylus and Euripides (see Hunter 2009).

== Sophocles and Religion ==

Whilst Euripides subverts traditional religion and Aeschylus is accused of profaning the mysteries (see [[Aeschylus: A Guide to Selected Sources]]), Sophocles is {{#lemma: ‘more pious than anyone else’ | [[Anonymous, Life of Sophocles | Anon. ''Vit. Soph.'' 12; cf. also 16]]}} (see Jouanna 2007: 73-90). {{#lemma: He enjoys reciprocal divine favour and possesses vatic authority | [[Anonymous, Life of Sophocles|Anon. ''Vit. Soph.'' 12, 15, 17]]}}. When Heracles’ shrine is robbed, the hero reveals the thief’s identity to Sophocles in a dream ({{#lemma: ''Life'' 12 | [[Anonymous, Life of Sophocles|Anon. ''Vit. Soph.'' 12]]}}, cf. {{#lemma: Cicero | [[Cicero, On Divination 1.25.54 | Cic. ''Div.'' 1.25.54]]}}), as he reveals Philoctetes’ destiny in Sophocles’ tragedy. The {{#lemma: ''Life'' | [[Anonymous, Life of Sophoces|Anon. ''Vit. Soph.'' 11]]}} says that Sophocles was priest of a healer-hero, Halon. Some suspect confusion with Amynus, attested in {{#lemma: inscriptions | [[Inscriptiones Graecae II/III 1252, 1253 | ''IG'' II/III 1252, 1253]]}} with Asclepius and ‘Dexion’—Sophocles’ cult-name in a {{#lemma: Byzantine lexicon | [[Etymologicum Magnum 256.6 ‘Dexion’ | ''Etym. Magn.'' s.v. ‘Dexion’]]}}. Supposedly derived from his ‘reception’ (''dexis'') of Asclepius (cf. {{#lemma: Plutarch | [[Plutarch, Life of Numa 4.8.62c| Plut. ''Num.'' 4.8.62c]][[Plutarch, That Epicurus actually makes a pleasant life impossible 22.1103a| Plut. ''Non Posse'' 22.1103a]]}}; Lefkowitz 2012; Connolly 1998), {{#lemma: the name may pun on his poetic dexterity | [[Phrynichus Muses, fr. 32 Kassel-Austin| Phryn. Com. ''Muses'', fr. 32 K.-A.]] [[Athenaeus, Sophists at Dinner 13.603e | Ath. ''Deipn.'' 13.603e]]}}. A Sophoclean paean to Asclepius (Page, ''PMG'' 737) was still performed in Athens in {{#lemma: Philostratus’ | [[Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana 3.17 | Philostr. ''Vit. Ap. Ty.'' 3.17]]}} day.

== Death and Hero Cult ==

The tragic poet dies {{#lemma: a Dionysian death | [[Anonymous, Life of Sophocles | Anon. ''Vit. Soph.'' 14]]}} by choking on an unripe grape during the Dionysian festival Anthesteria; or from joy at the ''Antigone’''s victory (cf. {{#lemma: Diodorus | [[Diodorus of Sicily, The Library of History 13.103.4 | Diod. Sic. ''Bib. Hist.'' 13.103.4]]}}); or because he ran out of breath whilst reciting a long passage (an anecdote which may have arisen in a didactic context). {{#lemma: Dionysus prescribes burial honours for ‘the new Siren’ | [[Anonymous, Life of Sophocles | Anon. ''Vit. Soph.'' 15]][[Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.21.1 | Paus. 1.21.1]]}}. Pausanias understands the title as a reference to the seductiveness of (his) poetry. {{#lemma: Sophocles is made a hero | [[Anonymous, Life of Sophocles | Anon. ''Vit. Soph.'' 17]]}}, perhaps in imitation of his (posthumous) ''Oedipus at Colonus''—Sophocles’ own deme (see Lefkowitz 2012: 84 and Currie 2012, with further bibliography). His canon-/hero-ization is already underway in 405 BCE in Phrynichus Comicus’ {{#lemma: ''Muses'' | [[Phrynichus Muses, fr. 32 Kassel-Austin | Phryn. Com. ''Muses'', fr. 32 K.-A.]]}} (Harvey 2000) and Aristophanes’ {{#lemma: ''Frogs'' | [[Aristophanes, Frogs 76-82, 786-794, 1515-1519| Ar. ''Ran.'' 76-82, 786-794, 1515-1519]]}}. In the latter, Sophocles floats peacefully above his quarrelsome rivals, surrendering life and the infernal Chair of Tragedy as graciously as he surrenders the sexual pleasures of his youth in {{#lemma: Plato | [[Plato, Republic 329b | Pl. ''Resp.'' 329b]]}}.

== Sophoclean Charm ==

The {{#lemma: charm (''charis'') of Sophocles’ personality | [[Life of Sophocles | Anon. ''Vit. Soph.'' 7]]}} matches the ''charis'' of his poetry. His Life exemplifies his declaration (in Aristotle’s {{#lemma: ''Poetics'' 25.1460b32 | [[Aristotle, Poetics 25.1460b32|Arist. ''Poet.'' 25.1460b32]]}}) that he (like Homer) depicted men as they should be (the proper mode for tragedy), Euripides as they are (cf. also {{#lemma: ''Poetics'' 3.1448a25 | [[Aristotle, Poetics 3.1448a25|Arist. ''Poet.'' 3.1448a25]]}}). Aristophanes’ flattering portrait may reflect {{#lemma: Sophocles’ tribute to Euripides | [[Life of Euripides 2 (1, 13, 11 Schwartz) | ''Vit. Eur.'' 2]]}}, who died in the same year. The tragedian seems never to have missed an opportunity to display his excellence. He is the antitype of the antisocial Euripides (see [[Euripides: A Guide to Selected Sources]]; Davidson 2012). {{#lemma: Athenaeus | [[Athenaeus, Sophists at Dinner 13.603e | Ath. ''Deipn.'' 13.603e]]}} constructs their sexualities as opposite: Euripides is a woman-lover; Sophocles likes boys. {{#lemma: Elsewhere | [[Plato, Republic 329 b | Pl. ''Resp.'' 329b]] [[Plutarch, Life of Pericles 8.8 | Plut. ''Per.'' 8.8]] [[Athenaeus, Sophists at Dinner 13.592a | Ath. ''Deipn.'' 13.592a]]}}, however, Sophocles pursues women even in old age (''pace'' Plato). {{#lemma: He falls for a courtesan and leaves her his property | [[Anonymous, Life of Sophocles | Anon. ''Vit. Soph.'']] [[Athenaeus, Sophists at Dinner 13.592a | Ath. ''Deipn.'' 13.592a]] [[Scholion to Aristophanes’ Frogs 78 | Schol. Ar. ''Ran.'' 78]]}}. The {{#lemma: ''Life'' | [[Anonymous, Life of Sophocles | Anon. ''Vit. Soph.'' 13]]}} says that his son/s charged him with dementia and that Sophocles was acquitted after reading from the ''OC'', a story found in {{#lemma: other sources | [[Cicero, Cato Maior 22 | Cic. ''Sen.'' 22]]}}.

Anecdotes involving (the conspicuously un-erotic) Aeschylus are restricted to poetics. {{#lemma: Sophocles | [[Athenaeus, Sophists at Dinner 10.428f | Ath. ''Deipn.'' 10.428f]] [[Plutarch, fragment 130 Sandbach | Plut. fr. 130 Sandbach]]}} comments in Socratic fashion on the older poet’s instinctive creativity (see [[Aeschylus: A Guide to Selected Sources]]) and, in {{#lemma: Plutarch | [[Plutarch, How a young man may become aware of his progress in virtue 7.79b | Plut. ''Quomodo adul.'' 7.79b]]}}, charts his relationship to Aeschylus in teleological terms (see Pelling 2007). {{#lemma: Aeschylus is said to have left Athens in indignation | [[Anonymous, Life of Aeschylus | Anon. ''Vit. Aesch.'' 8]] [[Plutarch, Life of Cimon 8.483e | Plut. ''Cim.'' 8.483e]]}} when defeated by Sophocles’ first production.

== Sophocles and Politics ==

While his rivals’ biographies end in exile, {{#lemma: Sophocles is ‘most Athens-loving’ | [[Anonymous, Life of Sophocles | Anon. ''Vit. Soph.'' 10]]}} (see Hanink 2010). Indeed, after serving as treasurer in 443/2, {{#lemma: he held the highest political office (general) | [[Scholion to Aristides p. 485, 28 Dindorf | Schol. ''Aristid.'' p. 485, 28 Dindorf]] [[Hypothesis (1) to Sophocles Antigone (1.69.17 Dain) | ''Hyp.'' 1 Soph. ''Ant.'']] [[Plutarch, Life of Nicias 15.2.533b | Plut. ''Nic.'' 15.2.533b]]}} at least once—with Pericles—during the Samian revolt of 441/0 BCE. According to the ''Antigone''’s {{#lemma: hypothesis | [[Hypothesis (1) to Sophocles' Antigone (1.69.17 Dain) | ''Hyp.'' 1 Soph. ''Ant.'']]}}, Sophocles was elected because of the play’s popularity (the dating conflicts with ''Life'' 14). In an anecdote ascribed to {{#lemma: Ion of Chios | [[Athenaeus, Sophists at Dinner 13.603e | Ath. ''Deipn.'' 13.603e]]}}, Sophocles playfully challenges Pericles’ observation that he is a better poet than general by ensnaring a slave-boy at a symposium (see Ford 2002: 191-3). This follows a virtuosic erotic/poetic display which, when challenged by a pedantic symposiast, becomes another demonstration of ‘how men should be’. Dexterity in ''mousikê'' is crucial for elite social competition, but Ion judges Sophocles politically unremarkable. In the ''Frogs'', where questions about poetry’s educational status are central, Sophocles’ absence from the fray exonerates Aristophanes from exploring how good the poet’s advice to the people actually was, at least when he left the theatre. This subject was perhaps best avoided, not least since a committee on which Sophocles served had established a (despotic) oligarchic regime in 411 BCE. As {{#lemma: Aristotle | [[Aristotle, The Art of Rhetoric 3.18.1419a25 | Arist. ''Rh.'' 3.18.1419a25]] [[Aristotle, The Art of Rhetoric 1.14.1374b34 | Arist. ''Rh.'' 1.14.1374b34]] [[Aristotle, The Art of Rhetoric 3.15.1416a13 | Arist. ''Rh.'' 3.15.1416a13]]}} attests, Sophocles was questioned about his role by his fellow-counsellor Peisander, probably during the latter’s prosecution for a suicide, for which Sophocles proposed the death penalty (see Jameson 1971).

== Sophocles the ‘Homer-Lover’ ==

{{#lemma: Aristophanes said |[[Anonymous, Life of Sophocles | Anon. ''Vit. Soph.'' 22]]}} that Sophocles’ mouth, like Pindar’s elsewhere ([[Pindar: A Guide to Selected Sources]]), was smeared with honey. In the {{#lemma: ''Life'' | [[Anonymous, Life of Sophocles | Anon. ''Vit. Soph.'' 20]]}}, his honey/''charis'' is gathered from what is sweetest in his forebears, above all Homer—the ultimate classic. He is dubbed ''philhomeros'' by the Homerist Eustathius and ‘the tragic Homer’ by the Academician {{#lemma: Polemon | [[Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers 4.20 | Diog. Laert. 4.20]]}} (see Schein 2012). These judgments echo Aristotle. {{#lemma: Aeschylus | [[Athenaeus, Sophists at Dinner 8.347e | Ath. ''Deipn.'' 8.347e]]}} allegedly described his own tragedies as slices from Homer’s banquet; the {{#lemma: ''Life'' | [[Anonymous, Life of Sophocles | Anon. ''Vit. Soph.'' 22]]}} apparently endorses the judgment that ‘only Sophocles was a student of Homer’.

== Sophocles as Thamyras ==

Sophocles is said to have performed onstage twice in Homeric roles. According to {{#lemma: Athenaeus | [[Athenaeus, Sophists at Dinner 1.20e | Ath. ''Deipn.'' 1.20e]]}}, he played a memorable ball-game as Nausicaa. His other character, Thamyras, was said in Asclepiades Tragilus’ summary of tragic plots (fourth-century BCE) to have competed with the Muses, demanding to sleep with all of them, if victorious. His defeat was punished with blindness (see Wilson 2009: 59-79). We do not know how much of this is Sophoclean. In one fragment (245 Radt with Wilson 2009: 67-70), Thamyras may have described himself as entering the Assembly under the compulsion of ''mousikê''—an intriguing parallel with Sophocles’ political activities. The statement {{#lemma: that Sophocles abandoned acting because his voice was weak | [[Anonymous, Life of Sophocles | Anon. ''Vit. Soph.'' 4]]}} may echo Thamyras’ loss of song. It may also reflect the play’s interests in the professionalization of ''mousikê''—formerly the aristocrat’s preserve (see Wilson 2004, 2009: 70-9). From the perspective of poetics, Sophocles’ alignment with Thamyras is remarkable. In the ''Iliad'' (2.594-600), the positioning of his confrontation with the Muses within Homer’s Muse-inspired Catalogue of Ships suggests that Thamyras is a negative antitype of Homer, who loses ''both'' his eyesight ''and'' the gift of song (on Homer’s blindness see [[Homer: A Guide to Selected Sources]]). Whatever the resonances of this Homeric story in Sophocles’ biography, it has a comparable erotic/musical counterpart in the {{#lemma: Siren placed on his tomb | [[Anonymous, Life of Sophocles | Anon. ''Vit. Soph.'' 15]] [[Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.21.1 | Paus. 1.21.1]]}}.

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== Bibliography ==
<div id="bibliography">
* Bing, P. 1993. ‘The Bios-Tradition and Poets’ Lives in Hellenistic Poetry.’ In R. Rosen and J. Farrell (eds.) 1993, ''Nomodeiktes. Greek Studies in Honor of Martin Ostwald.'' Ann Arbor: 619-31.
* Connolly, A. 1998. ‘Was Sophocles Heroised as Dexion?’ ''JHS'' 118: 1-21.
* Currie, B. 2012. ‘Sophocles and Hero Cult.’ In K. Ormand (ed.): 331-48.
* Davidson, J. 2012. ‘Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides.’ In K. Ormand (ed.): 38-52.
* Dewald, C. and Marincola, J. (eds.) 2006. ''The Cambridge Companion to Herodotus.'' Cambridge.
* Ford, A. 2002. ''The Origins of Criticism: Literary Culture and Poetic Theory in Classical Greece.'' Princeton.
* Graziosi, B. 2006. ‘Il rapporto tra autore ed opera nella tradizione biografica greca.’ In F. Roscalla (ed.) 2006, ''L’autore e l’opera. Attribuzioni, appropriazioni, apocrifi nella Grecia antica.'' Pisa: 155-75.
* Halliwell, S. 1986. ''Aristotle’s Poetics.'' Chapel Hill.
* Hanink, J. 2010. ‘The Classical Tragedians, from Athenian Idols to Wandering Poets.’ In I. Gildenhard and M. Revermann (eds.) 2010, ''Beyond the Fifth Century. Interactions with Greek Tragedy from the Fourth Century BCE to the Middle Ages.'' Berlin: 39-68.
* Harvey, D. 2000. ‘Phrynichos and his Muses.’ In D. Harvey and J. Wilkins (eds.) 2000, ''The Rivals of Aristophanes.'' London: 91-134.
* Hunter, R. L. 2009. ''Critical Moments in Classical Literature: Studies in the Ancient View of Literature and its Uses.'' Cambridge.
* Jameson, M. 1971. ‘Sophocles and the Four Hundred.’ ''Hist.'' 20.5/6: 541-68.
* Jouanna, J. 2007. ''Sophocle.'' Paris.
* Lefkowitz, M. 2012. ''The Lives of the Greek Poets'' (1st edn 1981). Baltimore.
* Ormand, K. (ed.) 2012. ''A Companion to Sophocles.'' Chichester/Malden, MA.
* Palomar Pérez, N. 1998. ‘La figure du poète tragique dans la Grèce ancienne.’ In N. Loraux and C. Miralles (eds.) 1998, ''Figures de l’Intellectuel en Grèce ancienne.'' Berlin: 65-106.
* Pelling, C. 2007. ‘Sophocles’ Learning Curve.’ In P. J. Finglass, C. Collard, and N. J. Richardson (eds.) 2007, ''Hesperos: Studies in Ancient Greek Poetry Present to M. L. West on his Seventieth Birthday.'' Oxford: 204-27.
* Porter, J. I. (ed.) 2006. ''Classical Pasts: the Classical Traditions of Greece and Rome.'' Princeton.
* Radt, S. 1999. ''Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta. Vol. 4. Sophocles'' (1st edn 1977). Göttingen.
* Schein, S. 2012. ‘Sophocles and Homer.’ In K. Ormand (ed.): 424-39.
* Scodel, R. 2012. ‘Sophocles’ Biography.’ In K. Ormand (ed.): 25-37.
* Wilson, P. 2009. ‘Thamyris the Thracian: the Archetypal Wandering Poet?’ In R. Hunter and I. Rutherford (eds.) 2009, ''Wandering Poets in Ancient Greek Culture: Travel, Locality, and Panhellenism.'' Cambridge: 46-79.
** 2004. ‘Athenian Strings’. In P. Wilson and P. Murray (eds.) 2004, ''Music and the Muses: the Culture of Mousike in the Classical Athenian City.'' Oxford: 269-306.
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[[Category:Guides by Sarah Burges Watson]]

Sophocles: A Guide to Selected Sources

2015-11-15T17:56:43Z

NickFreer: /* Bibliography */

{{GuideHighlightBox}}
'''''Sarah Burges Watson'''''
{{#howtoquote:}}
<div id="guide">{{GuideTextsBy|Sarah Burges Watson}}
Best-loved of the tragedians, Sophocles won at least twenty times in the Athenian dramatic festivals. He died in 406/5 BCE, aged around ninety. He wrote over a hundred and twenty plays ({{#lemma: ''Suda'' | [[Suda, ς 815 Adler = Life of Sophocles | ''Suda'', s.v. Sophocles]]}}); seven survive complete: ''Ajax'', ''Electra'', ''Women of Trachis'', ''Antigone'', ''Oedipus Tyrannus'', ''Philoctetes'' (409 BCE), ''Oedipus at Colonus'' (401 BCE). The {{#lemma: ''Life'' | [[Anonymous, Life of Sophocles | Anon. ''Vit. Soph.'']]}} transmitted with his plays is probably Hellenistic (see Bing 1993), but biographical stories circulated during Sophocles’ lifetime. Sources on Sophocles are collected by Radt (1977).

== A ‘Blessed’ Life? ==

If classicism is the product of nostalgia for an idealized past (see Porter 2006), Sophocles represents its acme. His ‘Life’ is perfectly harmonized with his poetry (cf. Graziosi 2006: 160-5). Considered through the lens of Sophocles’ mighty champion Aristotle, it might actually qualify as ‘blessed’ (''Nicomachean Ethics'' 1.10). It apparently combines flourishing in accordance with the excellences of character and intellect (both contemplative and politically oriented) with good fortune—and no reversals. It certainly exemplifies {{#lemma: the good timing said to be characteristic of his dramas | [[Anonymous, Life of Sophocles | Anon. ''Vit. Soph.'' 20-1]]}}. Raised in prosperity, {{#lemma: Sophocles receives an aristocratic education in gymnastics and ''mousikê'' and sings the paean after the victory at Salamis | [[Anonymous, Life of Sophocles | Anon. ''Vit. Soph.'' 3]]}}. His career coincides with Athens’ heyday, ending before her catastrophic defeat by Sparta. He influences and is influenced by luminaries like Herodotus (see Dewald/Marincola 2006), whom he celebrates in an {{#lemma: epigram | [[Plutarch, Whether an old man should engage in public affairs 3.785a | Plut. ''An Seni'' 3.785a]]}}. Taking what is best from Aeschylus, he brings tragedy to what Aristotle considers its natural fulfillment. Thereafter, Sophocles represents the golden mean between his principal rivals, Aeschylus and Euripides (see Hunter 2009).

== Sophocles and Religion ==

Whilst Euripides subverts traditional religion and Aeschylus is accused of profaning the mysteries (see [[Aeschylus: A Guide to Selected Sources]]), Sophocles is {{#lemma: ‘more pious than anyone else’ | [[Anonymous, Life of Sophocles | Anon. ''Vit. Soph.'' 12; cf. also 16]]}} (see Jouanna 2007: 73-90). {{#lemma: He enjoys reciprocal divine favour and possesses vatic authority | [[Anonymous, Life of Sophocles|Anon. ''Vit. Soph.'' 12, 15, 17]]}}. When Heracles’ shrine is robbed, the hero reveals the thief’s identity to Sophocles in a dream ({{#lemma: ''Life'' 12 | [[Anonymous, Life of Sophocles|Anon. ''Vit. Soph.'' 12]]}}, cf. {{#lemma: Cicero | [[Cicero, On Divination 1.25.54 | Cic. ''Div.'' 1.25.54]]}}), as he reveals Philoctetes’ destiny in Sophocles’ tragedy. The {{#lemma: ''Life'' | [[Anonymous, Life of Sophoces|Anon. ''Vit. Soph.'' 11]]}} says that Sophocles was priest of a healer-hero, Halon. Some suspect confusion with Amynus, attested in {{#lemma: inscriptions | [[Inscriptiones Graecae II/III 1252, 1253 | ''IG'' II/III 1252, 1253]]}} with Asclepius and ‘Dexion’—Sophocles’ cult-name in a {{#lemma: Byzantine lexicon | [[Etymologicum Magnum 256.6 ‘Dexion’ | ''Etym. Magn.'' s.v. ‘Dexion’]]}}. Supposedly derived from his ‘reception’ (''dexis'') of Asclepius (cf. {{#lemma: Plutarch | [[Plutarch, Life of Numa 4.8.62c| Plut. ''Num.'' 4.8.62c]][[Plutarch, That Epicurus actually makes a pleasant life impossible 22.1103a| Plut. ''Non Posse'' 22.1103a]]}}; Lefkowitz 2012; Connolly 1998), {{#lemma: the name may pun on his poetic dexterity | [[Phrynichus Muses, fr. 32 Kassel-Austin| Phryn. Com. ''Muses'', fr. 32 K.-A.]] [[Athenaeus, Sophists at Dinner 13.603e | Ath. ''Deipn.'' 13.603e]]}}. A Sophoclean paean to Asclepius (Page, ''PMG'' 737) was still performed in Athens in {{#lemma: Philostratus’ | [[Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana 3.17 | Philostr. ''Vit. Ap. Ty.'' 3.17]]}} day.

== Death and Hero Cult ==

The tragic poet dies {{#lemma: a Dionysian death | [[Anonymous, Life of Sophocles | Anon. ''Vit. Soph.'' 14]]}} by choking on an unripe grape during the Dionysian festival Anthesteria; or from joy at the ''Antigone’''s victory (cf. {{#lemma: Diodorus | [[Diodorus of Sicily, The Library of History 13.103.4 | Diod. Sic. ''Bib. Hist.'' 13.103.4]]}}); or because he ran out of breath whilst reciting a long passage (an anecdote which may have arisen in a didactic context). {{#lemma: Dionysus prescribes burial honours for ‘the new Siren’ | [[Anonymous, Life of Sophocles | Anon. ''Vit. Soph.'' 15]][[Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.21.1 | Paus. 1.21.1]]}}. Pausanias understands the title as a reference to the seductiveness of (his) poetry. {{#lemma: Sophocles is made a hero | [[Anonymous, Life of Sophocles | Anon. ''Vit. Soph.'' 17]]}}, perhaps in imitation of his (posthumous) ''Oedipus at Colonus''—Sophocles’ own deme (see Lefkowitz 2012: 84 and Currie 2012, with further bibliography). His canon-/hero-ization is already underway in 405 BCE in Phrynichus Comicus’ {{#lemma: ''Muses'' | [[Phrynichus Muses, fr. 32 Kassel-Austin | Phryn. Com. ''Muses'', fr. 32 K.-A.]]}} (Harvey 2000) and Aristophanes’ {{#lemma: ''Frogs'' | [[Aristophanes, Frogs 76-82, 786-794, 1515-1519| Ar. ''Ran.'' 76-82, 786-794, 1515-1519]]}}. In the latter, Sophocles floats peacefully above his quarrelsome rivals, surrendering life and the infernal Chair of Tragedy as graciously as he surrenders the sexual pleasures of his youth in {{#lemma: Plato | [[Plato, Republic 329b | Pl. ''Resp.'' 329b]]}}.

== Sophoclean Charm ==

The {{#lemma: charm (''charis'') of Sophocles’ personality | [[Life of Sophocles | Anon. ''Vit. Soph.'' 7]]}} matches the ''charis'' of his poetry. His Life exemplifies his declaration (in Aristotle’s {{#lemma: ''Poetics'' 25.1460b32 | [[Aristotle, Poetics 25.1460b32|Arist. ''Poet.'' 25.1460b32]]}}) that he (like Homer) depicted men as they should be (the proper mode for tragedy), Euripides as they are (cf. also {{#lemma: ''Poetics'' 3.1448a25 | [[Aristotle, Poetics 3.1448a25|Arist. ''Poet.'' 3.1448a25]]}}). Aristophanes’ flattering portrait may reflect {{#lemma: Sophocles’ tribute to Euripides | [[Life of Euripides 2 (1, 13, 11 Schwartz) | ''Vit. Eur.'' 2]]}}, who died in the same year. The tragedian seems never to have missed an opportunity to display his excellence. He is the antitype of the antisocial Euripides (see [[Euripides: A Guide to Selected Sources]]; Davidson 2012). {{#lemma: Athenaeus | [[Athenaeus, Sophists at Dinner 13.603e | Ath. ''Deipn.'' 13.603e]]}} constructs their sexualities as opposite: Euripides is a woman-lover; Sophocles likes boys. {{#lemma: Elsewhere | [[Plato, Republic 329 b | Pl. ''Resp.'' 329b]] [[Plutarch, Life of Pericles 8.8 | Plut. ''Per.'' 8.8]] [[Athenaeus, Sophists at Dinner 13.592a | Ath. ''Deipn.'' 13.592a]]}}, however, Sophocles pursues women even in old age (''pace'' Plato). {{#lemma: He falls for a courtesan and leaves her his property | [[Anonymous, Life of Sophocles | Anon. ''Vit. Soph.'']] [[Athenaeus, Sophists at Dinner 13.592a | Ath. ''Deipn.'' 13.592a]] [[Scholion to Aristophanes’ Frogs 78 | Schol. Ar. ''Ran.'' 78]]}}. The {{#lemma: ''Life'' | [[Anonymous, Life of Sophocles | Anon. ''Vit. Soph.'' 13]]}} says that his son/s charged him with dementia and that Sophocles was acquitted after reading from the ''OC'', a story found in {{#lemma: other sources | [[Cicero, Cato Maior 22 | Cic. ''Sen.'' 22]]}}.

Anecdotes involving (the conspicuously un-erotic) Aeschylus are restricted to poetics. {{#lemma: Sophocles | [[Athenaeus, Sophists at Dinner 10.428f | Ath. ''Deipn.'' 10.428f]] [[Plutarch, fragment 130 Sandbach | Plut. fr. 130 Sandbach]]}} comments in Socratic fashion on the older poet’s instinctive creativity (see [[Aeschylus: A Guide to Selected Sources]]) and, in {{#lemma: Plutarch | [[Plutarch, How a young man may become aware of his progress in virtue 7.79b | Plut. ''Quomodo adul.'' 7.79b]]}}, charts his relationship to Aeschylus in teleological terms (see Pelling 2007). {{#lemma: Aeschylus is said to have left Athens in indignation | [[Anonymous, Life of Aeschylus | Anon. ''Vit. Aesch.'' 8]] [[Plutarch, Life of Cimon 8.483e | Plut. ''Cim.'' 8.483e]]}} when defeated by Sophocles’ first production.

== Sophocles and Politics ==

While his rivals’ biographies end in exile, {{#lemma: Sophocles is ‘most Athens-loving’ | [[Anonymous, Life of Sophocles | Anon. ''Vit. Soph.'' 10]]}} (see Hanink 2010). Indeed, after serving as treasurer in 443/2, {{#lemma: he held the highest political office (general) | [[Scholion to Aristides p. 485, 28 Dindorf | Schol. ''Aristid.'' p. 485, 28 Dindorf]] [[Hypothesis (1) to Sophocles Antigone (1.69.17 Dain) | ''Hyp.'' 1 Soph. ''Ant.'']] [[Plutarch, Life of Nicias 15.2.533b | Plut. ''Nic.'' 15.2.533b]]}} at least once—with Pericles—during the Samian revolt of 441/0 BCE. According to the ''Antigone''’s {{#lemma: hypothesis | [[Hypothesis (1) to Sophocles' Antigone (1.69.17 Dain) | ''Hyp.'' 1 Soph. ''Ant.'']]}}, Sophocles was elected because of the play’s popularity (the dating conflicts with ''Life'' 14). In an anecdote ascribed to {{#lemma: Ion of Chios | [[Athenaeus, Sophists at Dinner 13.603e | Ath. ''Deipn.'' 13.603e]]}}, Sophocles playfully challenges Pericles’ observation that he is a better poet than general by ensnaring a slave-boy at a symposium (see Ford 2002: 191-3). This follows a virtuosic erotic/poetic display which, when challenged by a pedantic symposiast, becomes another demonstration of ‘how men should be’. Dexterity in ''mousikê'' is crucial for elite social competition, but Ion judges Sophocles politically unremarkable. In the ''Frogs'', where questions about poetry’s educational status are central, Sophocles’ absence from the fray exonerates Aristophanes from exploring how good the poet’s advice to the people actually was, at least when he left the theatre. This subject was perhaps best avoided, not least since a committee on which Sophocles served had established a (despotic) oligarchic regime in 411 BCE. As {{#lemma: Aristotle | [[Aristotle, The Art of Rhetoric 3.18.1419a25 | Arist. ''Rh.'' 3.18.1419a25]] [[Aristotle, The Art of Rhetoric 1.14.1374b34 | Arist. ''Rh.'' 1.14.1374b34]] [[Aristotle, The Art of Rhetoric 3.15.1416a13 | Arist. ''Rh.'' 3.15.1416a13]]}} attests, Sophocles was questioned about his role by his fellow-counsellor Peisander, probably during the latter’s prosecution for a suicide, for which Sophocles proposed the death penalty (see Jameson 1971).

== Sophocles the ‘Homer-Lover’ ==

{{#lemma: Aristophanes said |[[Anonymous, Life of Sophocles | Anon. ''Vit. Soph.'' 22]]}} that Sophocles’ mouth, like Pindar’s elsewhere ([[Pindar: A Guide to Selected Sources]]), was smeared with honey. In the {{#lemma: ''Life'' | [[Anonymous, Life of Sophocles | Anon. ''Vit. Soph.'' 20]]}}, his honey/''charis'' is gathered from what is sweetest in his forebears, above all Homer—the ultimate classic. He is dubbed ''philhomeros'' by the Homerist Eustathius and ‘the tragic Homer’ by the Academician {{#lemma: Polemon | [[Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers 4.20 | Diog. Laert. 4.20]]}} (see Schein 2012). These judgments echo Aristotle. {{#lemma: Aeschylus | [[Athenaeus, Sophists at Dinner 8.347e | Ath. ''Deipn.'' 8.347e]]}} allegedly described his own tragedies as slices from Homer’s banquet; the {{#lemma: ''Life'' | [[Anonymous, Life of Sophocles | Anon. ''Vit. Soph.'' 22]]}} apparently endorses the judgment that ‘only Sophocles was a student of Homer’.

== Sophocles as Thamyras ==

Sophocles is said to have performed onstage twice in Homeric roles. According to {{#lemma: Athenaeus | [[Athenaeus, Sophists at Dinner 1.20e | Ath. ''Deipn.'' 1.20e]]}}, he played a memorable ball-game as Nausicaa. His other character, Thamyras, was said in Asclepiades Tragilus’ summary of tragic plots (fourth-century BCE) to have competed with the Muses, demanding to sleep with all of them, if victorious. His defeat was punished with blindness (see Wilson 2009: 59-79). We do not know how much of this is Sophoclean. In one fragment (245 Radt with Wilson 2009: 67-70), Thamyras may have described himself as entering the Assembly under the compulsion of ''mousikê''—an intriguing parallel with Sophocles’ political activities. The statement {{#lemma: that Sophocles abandoned acting because his voice was weak | [[Anonymous, Life of Sophocles | Anon. ''Vit. Soph.'' 4]]}} may echo Thamyras’ loss of song. It may also reflect the play’s interests in the professionalization of ''mousikê''—formerly the aristocrat’s preserve (see Wilson 2004, 2009: 70-9). From the perspective of poetics, Sophocles’ alignment with Thamyras is remarkable. In the ''Iliad'' (2.594-600), the positioning of his confrontation with the Muses within Homer’s Muse-inspired Catalogue of Ships suggests that Thamyras is a negative antitype of Homer, who loses ''both'' his eyesight ''and'' the gift of song (on Homer’s blindness see [[Homer: A Guide to Selected Sources]]). Whatever the resonances of this Homeric story in Sophocles’ biography, it has a comparable erotic/musical counterpart in the {{#lemma: Siren placed on his tomb | [[Anonymous, Life of Sophocles | Anon. ''Vit. Soph.'' 15]] [[Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.21.1 | Paus. 1.21.1]]}}.

----

== Bibliography ==
<div id="bibliography">
* Bing, P. 1993. ‘The Bios-Tradition and Poets’ Lives in Hellenistic Poetry.’ In R. Rosen and J. Farrell (eds.) 1993, ''Nomodeiktes. Greek Studies in Honor of Martin Ostwald.'' Ann Arbor: 619-31.
* Connolly, A. 1998. ‘Was Sophocles Heroised as Dexion?’ ''JHS'' 118: 1-21.
* Currie, B. 2012. ‘Sophocles and Hero Cult.’ In K. Ormand (ed.): 331-48.
* Davidson, J. 2012. ‘Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides.’ In K. Ormand (ed.): 38-52.
* Dewald, C. and Marincola, J. (eds.) 2006. ''The Cambridge Companion to Herodotus.'' Cambridge.
* Ford, A. 2002. ''The Origins of Criticism: Literary Culture and Poetic Theory in Classical Greece.'' Princeton.
* Graziosi, B. 2006. ‘Il rapporto tra autore ed opera nella tradizione biografica greca.’ In F. Roscalla (ed.) 2006, ''L’autore e l’opera. Attribuzioni, appropriazioni, apocrifi nella Grecia antica.'' Pisa: 155-75.
* Halliwell, S. 1986. ''Aristotle’s Poetics.'' Chapel Hill.
* Hanink, J. 2010. ‘The Classical Tragedians, from Athenian Idols to Wandering Poets.’ In I. Gildenhard and M. Revermann (eds.) 2010, ''Beyond the Fifth Century. Interactions with Greek Tragedy from the Fourth Century BCE to the Middle Ages.'' Berlin: 39-68.
* Harvey, D. 2000. ‘Phrynichos and his Muses.’ In D. Harvey and J. Wilkins (eds.) 2000, ''The Rivals of Aristophanes.'' London: 91-134.
* Hunter, R. L. 2009. ''Critical Moments in Classical Literature: Studies in the Ancient View of Literature and its Uses.'' Cambridge.
* Jameson, M. 1971. ‘Sophocles and the Four Hundred.’ ''Hist.'' 20.5/6: 541-68.
* Jouanna, J. 2007. ''Sophocle.'' Paris.
* Lefkowitz, M. 2012. ''The Lives of the Greek Poets'' (1st edn 1981). Baltimore.
* Ormand, K. (ed.) 2012. ''A Companion to Sophocles.'' Chichester/Malden, MA.
* Palomar Pérez, N. 1998. ‘La figure du poète tragique dans la Grèce ancienne.’ In N. Loraux and C. Miralles (eds.) 1998, ''Figures de l’Intellectuel en Grèce ancienne.'' Berlin: 65-106.
* Pelling, C. 2007. ‘Sophocles’ Learning Curve.’ In P. J. Finglass, C. Collard, and N. J. Richardson (eds.) 2007, ''Hesperos: Studies in Ancient Greek Poetry Present to M. L. West on his Seventieth Birthday.'' Oxford: 204-27.
* Porter, J. I. (ed.) 2006. ''Classical Pasts: the Classical Traditions of Greece and Rome.'' Princeton.
* Radt, S. 1999. ''Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta. Vol. 4. Sophocles'' (1st edn 1977). Göttingen.
* Schein, S. 2012. ‘Sophocles and Homer.’ In K. Ormand (ed.) 2012: 424-39.
* Scodel, R. 2012. ‘Sophocles’ Biography.’ In K. Ormand (ed.) 2012: 25-37.
* Wilson, P. 2009. ‘Thamyris the Thracian: the Archetypal Wandering Poet?’ In R. Hunter and I. Rutherford (eds.) 2009, ''Wandering Poets in Ancient Greek Culture: Travel, Locality, and Panhellenism.'' Cambridge: 46-79.
** 2004. ‘Athenian Strings’. In P. Wilson and P. Murray (eds.) 2004, ''Music and the Muses: the Culture of Mousike in the Classical Athenian City.'' Oxford: 269-306.
</div>

</div>
<div id="notes"></div>

[[Category:Guides by Sarah Burges Watson]]

Sophocles: A Guide to Selected Sources

2015-11-15T17:55:33Z

NickFreer: /* Bibliography */

{{GuideHighlightBox}}
'''''Sarah Burges Watson'''''
{{#howtoquote:}}
<div id="guide">{{GuideTextsBy|Sarah Burges Watson}}
Best-loved of the tragedians, Sophocles won at least twenty times in the Athenian dramatic festivals. He died in 406/5 BCE, aged around ninety. He wrote over a hundred and twenty plays ({{#lemma: ''Suda'' | [[Suda, ς 815 Adler = Life of Sophocles | ''Suda'', s.v. Sophocles]]}}); seven survive complete: ''Ajax'', ''Electra'', ''Women of Trachis'', ''Antigone'', ''Oedipus Tyrannus'', ''Philoctetes'' (409 BCE), ''Oedipus at Colonus'' (401 BCE). The {{#lemma: ''Life'' | [[Anonymous, Life of Sophocles | Anon. ''Vit. Soph.'']]}} transmitted with his plays is probably Hellenistic (see Bing 1993), but biographical stories circulated during Sophocles’ lifetime. Sources on Sophocles are collected by Radt (1977).

== A ‘Blessed’ Life? ==

If classicism is the product of nostalgia for an idealized past (see Porter 2006), Sophocles represents its acme. His ‘Life’ is perfectly harmonized with his poetry (cf. Graziosi 2006: 160-5). Considered through the lens of Sophocles’ mighty champion Aristotle, it might actually qualify as ‘blessed’ (''Nicomachean Ethics'' 1.10). It apparently combines flourishing in accordance with the excellences of character and intellect (both contemplative and politically oriented) with good fortune—and no reversals. It certainly exemplifies {{#lemma: the good timing said to be characteristic of his dramas | [[Anonymous, Life of Sophocles | Anon. ''Vit. Soph.'' 20-1]]}}. Raised in prosperity, {{#lemma: Sophocles receives an aristocratic education in gymnastics and ''mousikê'' and sings the paean after the victory at Salamis | [[Anonymous, Life of Sophocles | Anon. ''Vit. Soph.'' 3]]}}. His career coincides with Athens’ heyday, ending before her catastrophic defeat by Sparta. He influences and is influenced by luminaries like Herodotus (see Dewald/Marincola 2006), whom he celebrates in an {{#lemma: epigram | [[Plutarch, Whether an old man should engage in public affairs 3.785a | Plut. ''An Seni'' 3.785a]]}}. Taking what is best from Aeschylus, he brings tragedy to what Aristotle considers its natural fulfillment. Thereafter, Sophocles represents the golden mean between his principal rivals, Aeschylus and Euripides (see Hunter 2009).

== Sophocles and Religion ==

Whilst Euripides subverts traditional religion and Aeschylus is accused of profaning the mysteries (see [[Aeschylus: A Guide to Selected Sources]]), Sophocles is {{#lemma: ‘more pious than anyone else’ | [[Anonymous, Life of Sophocles | Anon. ''Vit. Soph.'' 12; cf. also 16]]}} (see Jouanna 2007: 73-90). {{#lemma: He enjoys reciprocal divine favour and possesses vatic authority | [[Anonymous, Life of Sophocles|Anon. ''Vit. Soph.'' 12, 15, 17]]}}. When Heracles’ shrine is robbed, the hero reveals the thief’s identity to Sophocles in a dream ({{#lemma: ''Life'' 12 | [[Anonymous, Life of Sophocles|Anon. ''Vit. Soph.'' 12]]}}, cf. {{#lemma: Cicero | [[Cicero, On Divination 1.25.54 | Cic. ''Div.'' 1.25.54]]}}), as he reveals Philoctetes’ destiny in Sophocles’ tragedy. The {{#lemma: ''Life'' | [[Anonymous, Life of Sophoces|Anon. ''Vit. Soph.'' 11]]}} says that Sophocles was priest of a healer-hero, Halon. Some suspect confusion with Amynus, attested in {{#lemma: inscriptions | [[Inscriptiones Graecae II/III 1252, 1253 | ''IG'' II/III 1252, 1253]]}} with Asclepius and ‘Dexion’—Sophocles’ cult-name in a {{#lemma: Byzantine lexicon | [[Etymologicum Magnum 256.6 ‘Dexion’ | ''Etym. Magn.'' s.v. ‘Dexion’]]}}. Supposedly derived from his ‘reception’ (''dexis'') of Asclepius (cf. {{#lemma: Plutarch | [[Plutarch, Life of Numa 4.8.62c| Plut. ''Num.'' 4.8.62c]][[Plutarch, That Epicurus actually makes a pleasant life impossible 22.1103a| Plut. ''Non Posse'' 22.1103a]]}}; Lefkowitz 2012; Connolly 1998), {{#lemma: the name may pun on his poetic dexterity | [[Phrynichus Muses, fr. 32 Kassel-Austin| Phryn. Com. ''Muses'', fr. 32 K.-A.]] [[Athenaeus, Sophists at Dinner 13.603e | Ath. ''Deipn.'' 13.603e]]}}. A Sophoclean paean to Asclepius (Page, ''PMG'' 737) was still performed in Athens in {{#lemma: Philostratus’ | [[Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana 3.17 | Philostr. ''Vit. Ap. Ty.'' 3.17]]}} day.

== Death and Hero Cult ==

The tragic poet dies {{#lemma: a Dionysian death | [[Anonymous, Life of Sophocles | Anon. ''Vit. Soph.'' 14]]}} by choking on an unripe grape during the Dionysian festival Anthesteria; or from joy at the ''Antigone’''s victory (cf. {{#lemma: Diodorus | [[Diodorus of Sicily, The Library of History 13.103.4 | Diod. Sic. ''Bib. Hist.'' 13.103.4]]}}); or because he ran out of breath whilst reciting a long passage (an anecdote which may have arisen in a didactic context). {{#lemma: Dionysus prescribes burial honours for ‘the new Siren’ | [[Anonymous, Life of Sophocles | Anon. ''Vit. Soph.'' 15]][[Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.21.1 | Paus. 1.21.1]]}}. Pausanias understands the title as a reference to the seductiveness of (his) poetry. {{#lemma: Sophocles is made a hero | [[Anonymous, Life of Sophocles | Anon. ''Vit. Soph.'' 17]]}}, perhaps in imitation of his (posthumous) ''Oedipus at Colonus''—Sophocles’ own deme (see Lefkowitz 2012: 84 and Currie 2012, with further bibliography). His canon-/hero-ization is already underway in 405 BCE in Phrynichus Comicus’ {{#lemma: ''Muses'' | [[Phrynichus Muses, fr. 32 Kassel-Austin | Phryn. Com. ''Muses'', fr. 32 K.-A.]]}} (Harvey 2000) and Aristophanes’ {{#lemma: ''Frogs'' | [[Aristophanes, Frogs 76-82, 786-794, 1515-1519| Ar. ''Ran.'' 76-82, 786-794, 1515-1519]]}}. In the latter, Sophocles floats peacefully above his quarrelsome rivals, surrendering life and the infernal Chair of Tragedy as graciously as he surrenders the sexual pleasures of his youth in {{#lemma: Plato | [[Plato, Republic 329b | Pl. ''Resp.'' 329b]]}}.

== Sophoclean Charm ==

The {{#lemma: charm (''charis'') of Sophocles’ personality | [[Life of Sophocles | Anon. ''Vit. Soph.'' 7]]}} matches the ''charis'' of his poetry. His Life exemplifies his declaration (in Aristotle’s {{#lemma: ''Poetics'' 25.1460b32 | [[Aristotle, Poetics 25.1460b32|Arist. ''Poet.'' 25.1460b32]]}}) that he (like Homer) depicted men as they should be (the proper mode for tragedy), Euripides as they are (cf. also {{#lemma: ''Poetics'' 3.1448a25 | [[Aristotle, Poetics 3.1448a25|Arist. ''Poet.'' 3.1448a25]]}}). Aristophanes’ flattering portrait may reflect {{#lemma: Sophocles’ tribute to Euripides | [[Life of Euripides 2 (1, 13, 11 Schwartz) | ''Vit. Eur.'' 2]]}}, who died in the same year. The tragedian seems never to have missed an opportunity to display his excellence. He is the antitype of the antisocial Euripides (see [[Euripides: A Guide to Selected Sources]]; Davidson 2012). {{#lemma: Athenaeus | [[Athenaeus, Sophists at Dinner 13.603e | Ath. ''Deipn.'' 13.603e]]}} constructs their sexualities as opposite: Euripides is a woman-lover; Sophocles likes boys. {{#lemma: Elsewhere | [[Plato, Republic 329 b | Pl. ''Resp.'' 329b]] [[Plutarch, Life of Pericles 8.8 | Plut. ''Per.'' 8.8]] [[Athenaeus, Sophists at Dinner 13.592a | Ath. ''Deipn.'' 13.592a]]}}, however, Sophocles pursues women even in old age (''pace'' Plato). {{#lemma: He falls for a courtesan and leaves her his property | [[Anonymous, Life of Sophocles | Anon. ''Vit. Soph.'']] [[Athenaeus, Sophists at Dinner 13.592a | Ath. ''Deipn.'' 13.592a]] [[Scholion to Aristophanes’ Frogs 78 | Schol. Ar. ''Ran.'' 78]]}}. The {{#lemma: ''Life'' | [[Anonymous, Life of Sophocles | Anon. ''Vit. Soph.'' 13]]}} says that his son/s charged him with dementia and that Sophocles was acquitted after reading from the ''OC'', a story found in {{#lemma: other sources | [[Cicero, Cato Maior 22 | Cic. ''Sen.'' 22]]}}.

Anecdotes involving (the conspicuously un-erotic) Aeschylus are restricted to poetics. {{#lemma: Sophocles | [[Athenaeus, Sophists at Dinner 10.428f | Ath. ''Deipn.'' 10.428f]] [[Plutarch, fragment 130 Sandbach | Plut. fr. 130 Sandbach]]}} comments in Socratic fashion on the older poet’s instinctive creativity (see [[Aeschylus: A Guide to Selected Sources]]) and, in {{#lemma: Plutarch | [[Plutarch, How a young man may become aware of his progress in virtue 7.79b | Plut. ''Quomodo adul.'' 7.79b]]}}, charts his relationship to Aeschylus in teleological terms (see Pelling 2007). {{#lemma: Aeschylus is said to have left Athens in indignation | [[Anonymous, Life of Aeschylus | Anon. ''Vit. Aesch.'' 8]] [[Plutarch, Life of Cimon 8.483e | Plut. ''Cim.'' 8.483e]]}} when defeated by Sophocles’ first production.

== Sophocles and Politics ==

While his rivals’ biographies end in exile, {{#lemma: Sophocles is ‘most Athens-loving’ | [[Anonymous, Life of Sophocles | Anon. ''Vit. Soph.'' 10]]}} (see Hanink 2010). Indeed, after serving as treasurer in 443/2, {{#lemma: he held the highest political office (general) | [[Scholion to Aristides p. 485, 28 Dindorf | Schol. ''Aristid.'' p. 485, 28 Dindorf]] [[Hypothesis (1) to Sophocles Antigone (1.69.17 Dain) | ''Hyp.'' 1 Soph. ''Ant.'']] [[Plutarch, Life of Nicias 15.2.533b | Plut. ''Nic.'' 15.2.533b]]}} at least once—with Pericles—during the Samian revolt of 441/0 BCE. According to the ''Antigone''’s {{#lemma: hypothesis | [[Hypothesis (1) to Sophocles' Antigone (1.69.17 Dain) | ''Hyp.'' 1 Soph. ''Ant.'']]}}, Sophocles was elected because of the play’s popularity (the dating conflicts with ''Life'' 14). In an anecdote ascribed to {{#lemma: Ion of Chios | [[Athenaeus, Sophists at Dinner 13.603e | Ath. ''Deipn.'' 13.603e]]}}, Sophocles playfully challenges Pericles’ observation that he is a better poet than general by ensnaring a slave-boy at a symposium (see Ford 2002: 191-3). This follows a virtuosic erotic/poetic display which, when challenged by a pedantic symposiast, becomes another demonstration of ‘how men should be’. Dexterity in ''mousikê'' is crucial for elite social competition, but Ion judges Sophocles politically unremarkable. In the ''Frogs'', where questions about poetry’s educational status are central, Sophocles’ absence from the fray exonerates Aristophanes from exploring how good the poet’s advice to the people actually was, at least when he left the theatre. This subject was perhaps best avoided, not least since a committee on which Sophocles served had established a (despotic) oligarchic regime in 411 BCE. As {{#lemma: Aristotle | [[Aristotle, The Art of Rhetoric 3.18.1419a25 | Arist. ''Rh.'' 3.18.1419a25]] [[Aristotle, The Art of Rhetoric 1.14.1374b34 | Arist. ''Rh.'' 1.14.1374b34]] [[Aristotle, The Art of Rhetoric 3.15.1416a13 | Arist. ''Rh.'' 3.15.1416a13]]}} attests, Sophocles was questioned about his role by his fellow-counsellor Peisander, probably during the latter’s prosecution for a suicide, for which Sophocles proposed the death penalty (see Jameson 1971).

== Sophocles the ‘Homer-Lover’ ==

{{#lemma: Aristophanes said |[[Anonymous, Life of Sophocles | Anon. ''Vit. Soph.'' 22]]}} that Sophocles’ mouth, like Pindar’s elsewhere ([[Pindar: A Guide to Selected Sources]]), was smeared with honey. In the {{#lemma: ''Life'' | [[Anonymous, Life of Sophocles | Anon. ''Vit. Soph.'' 20]]}}, his honey/''charis'' is gathered from what is sweetest in his forebears, above all Homer—the ultimate classic. He is dubbed ''philhomeros'' by the Homerist Eustathius and ‘the tragic Homer’ by the Academician {{#lemma: Polemon | [[Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers 4.20 | Diog. Laert. 4.20]]}} (see Schein 2012). These judgments echo Aristotle. {{#lemma: Aeschylus | [[Athenaeus, Sophists at Dinner 8.347e | Ath. ''Deipn.'' 8.347e]]}} allegedly described his own tragedies as slices from Homer’s banquet; the {{#lemma: ''Life'' | [[Anonymous, Life of Sophocles | Anon. ''Vit. Soph.'' 22]]}} apparently endorses the judgment that ‘only Sophocles was a student of Homer’.

== Sophocles as Thamyras ==

Sophocles is said to have performed onstage twice in Homeric roles. According to {{#lemma: Athenaeus | [[Athenaeus, Sophists at Dinner 1.20e | Ath. ''Deipn.'' 1.20e]]}}, he played a memorable ball-game as Nausicaa. His other character, Thamyras, was said in Asclepiades Tragilus’ summary of tragic plots (fourth-century BCE) to have competed with the Muses, demanding to sleep with all of them, if victorious. His defeat was punished with blindness (see Wilson 2009: 59-79). We do not know how much of this is Sophoclean. In one fragment (245 Radt with Wilson 2009: 67-70), Thamyras may have described himself as entering the Assembly under the compulsion of ''mousikê''—an intriguing parallel with Sophocles’ political activities. The statement {{#lemma: that Sophocles abandoned acting because his voice was weak | [[Anonymous, Life of Sophocles | Anon. ''Vit. Soph.'' 4]]}} may echo Thamyras’ loss of song. It may also reflect the play’s interests in the professionalization of ''mousikê''—formerly the aristocrat’s preserve (see Wilson 2004, 2009: 70-9). From the perspective of poetics, Sophocles’ alignment with Thamyras is remarkable. In the ''Iliad'' (2.594-600), the positioning of his confrontation with the Muses within Homer’s Muse-inspired Catalogue of Ships suggests that Thamyras is a negative antitype of Homer, who loses ''both'' his eyesight ''and'' the gift of song (on Homer’s blindness see [[Homer: A Guide to Selected Sources]]). Whatever the resonances of this Homeric story in Sophocles’ biography, it has a comparable erotic/musical counterpart in the {{#lemma: Siren placed on his tomb | [[Anonymous, Life of Sophocles | Anon. ''Vit. Soph.'' 15]] [[Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.21.1 | Paus. 1.21.1]]}}.

----

== Bibliography ==
<div id="bibliography">
* Bing, P. 1993. ‘The Bios-Tradition and Poets’ Lives in Hellenistic Poetry.’ In R. Rosen and J. Farrell (eds.) 1993, ''Nomodeiktes. Greek Studies in Honor of Martin Ostwald.'' Ann Arbor: 619-31.
* Connolly, A. 1998. ‘Was Sophocles Heroised as Dexion?’ ''JHS'' 118: 1-21.
* Currie, B. 2012. ‘Sophocles and Hero Cult.’ In K. Ormand (ed.): 331-48.
* Davidson, J. 2012. ‘Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides.’ In K. Ormand (ed.): 38-52.
* Dewald, C. and Marincola, J. (eds.) 2006. ''The Cambridge Companion to Herodotus.'' Cambridge.
* Ford, A. 2002. ''The Origins of Criticism: Literary Culture and Poetic Theory in Classical Greece.'' Princeton.
* Graziosi, B. 2006. ‘Il rapporto tra autore ed opera nella tradizione biografica greca.’ In F. Roscalla (ed.) 2006, ''L’autore e l’opera. Attribuzioni, appropriazioni, apocrifi nella Grecia antica.'' Pisa: 155-75.
* Halliwell, S. 1986. ''Aristotle’s Poetics.'' Chapel Hill.
* Hanink, J. 2010. ‘The Classical Tragedians, from Athenian Idols to Wandering Poets.’ In I. Gildenhard and M. Revermann (eds.) 2010, ''Beyond the Fifth Century. Interactions with Greek Tragedy from the Fourth Century BCE to the Middle Ages.'' Berlin: 39-68.
* Harvey, D. 2000. ‘Phrynichos and his Muses.’ In D. Harvey and J. Wilkins (eds.) 2000, ''The Rivals of Aristophanes.'' London: 91-134.
* Hunter, R. L. 2009. ''Critical Moments in Classical Literature: Studies in the Ancient View of Literature and its Uses.'' Cambridge.
* Jameson, M. 1971. ‘Sophocles and the Four Hundred.’ ''Hist.'' 20.5/6: 541-68.
* Jouanna, J. 2007. ''Sophocle.'' Paris.
* Lefkowitz, M. 2012. ''The Lives of the Greek Poets'' (1st edn 1981). Baltimore.
* Ormand, K. (ed.) 2012. ''A Companion to Sophocles.'' Chichester/Malden, MA.
* Palomar Pérez, N. 1998. ‘La figure du poète tragique dans la Grèce ancienne.’ In N. Loraux and C. Miralles (eds.) 1998, ''Figures de l’Intellectuel en Grèce ancienne.'' Berlin: 65-106.
* Pelling, C. 2007. ‘Sophocles’ Learning Curve.’ In P. J. Finglass, C. Collard, and N. J. Richardson (eds.) 2007, ''Hesperos: Studies in Ancient Greek Poetry Present to M. L. West on his Seventieth Birthday.'' Oxford: 204-27.
* Porter, J. I. (ed.) 2006. ''Classical Pasts: the Classical Traditions of Greece and Rome.'' Princeton.
* Radt, S. 1999. ''Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta. Vol. 4. Sophocles'' (1st edn. 1977). Göttingen.
* Schein, S. 2012. ‘Sophocles and Homer.’ In K. Ormand (ed.) 2012: 424-39.
* Scodel, R. 2012. ‘Sophocles’ Biography.’ In K. Ormand (ed.) 2012: 25-37.
* Wilson, P. 2009. ‘Thamyris the Thracian: the Archetypal Wandering Poet?’ In R. Hunter and I. Rutherford (eds.) 2009, ''Wandering Poets in Ancient Greek Culture: Travel, Locality, and Panhellenism.'' Cambridge: 46-79.
** 2004. ‘Athenian Strings’. In P. Wilson and P. Murray (eds.) 2004, ''Music and the Muses: the Culture of Mousike in the Classical Athenian City.'' Oxford: 269-306.
</div>

</div>
<div id="notes"></div>

[[Category:Guides by Sarah Burges Watson]]

Pindar: A Guide to Selected Sources

2015-11-15T17:51:29Z

NickFreer: /* Bibliography */

{{GuideHighlightBox}}
{{Author|Nicholas Boterf and Erika Taretto}}
{{#howtoquote:}}
<div id="guide">
== The ‘I’ in Pindar’s Poetry ==

Like other lyric poets, Pindar (518-438 BC) frequently speaks in the first-person, but the persona he constructs does not necessarily reflect Pindar the historical individual (see e.g. Lefkowitz 1991, 2012; D'Alessio 1991). Ancient commentators, however, often did not separate the historical poet from his constructed persona, and assumed that a historical biography could be extracted from his poems. Often their interpretations sought to explain the circumstances of performance, sometimes even tracing intertextual links between poems. For instance, Pindar’s claim in ''Nemean'' 7.102-4 that ‘my heart will not ever say that it has savaged [the hero] Neoptolemus with inflexible words’ was interpreted as {{#lemma: an ‘apology’ to the Aeginetans | [[Scholium to Pindar, Nemean Ode 7.102 |Schol. Pind. ''Nem.'' 7.102]]}} because of the poet’s damning treatment of Neoptolemus in ''Paean'' 6.

Ancient commentators were also eager to connect Pindar to his professional rivals, Bacchylides and Simonides. Passages that describe ‘a pair of crows who sing in vain against the divine bird of Zeus’ (''Olympian'' 2.87-8) or an eagle catching its prey ‘while the chattering jackdaws keep below’ (''Nemean'' 3.82) were interpreted as {{#lemma: barbs against Pindar’s contemporaries | [[Scholium to Pindar, Nemean Ode 3.82|Pind. ''Nem.'' 3.82]] [[Scholium to Pindar, Olympian Ode 2.87|Schol. Pind. ''Ol.'' 2.87]]}}.

== Origin ==

The sources unanimously say that Pindar was a Boeotian born in Thebes or in the nearby Cynocephalae. Pindar himself said so in his poetry: in this regard, for example, {{#lemma: ancient commentators | [[Scholium to Pindar, Isthmian Ode 1.1|Schol. Pind. ''Ist.'' 1.1]]}} mentioned the opening lines of ''Isthmian'' 1, where the poet calls Thebes his ‘mother’.

Ancient readers perceived a strong association between Pindar and his native city and often imagined the city as the setting for Pindar’s life. The poet, in fact, often praises Thebes in his work (e.g. ''Isthmian'' 1; fragment 194.4-6, 195, 198ab). However, the tradition also mentions tensions existing between the poet and Thebes: the {{#lemma: ''Ambrosian Life'' | [[Ambrosian Life|''Vit. Ambr.'']]}}, for example, says that the poet received his lyrical instruction in Athens and that he praised the city in his poetry. Because of this praise, the ''Life'' continues, the Thebans imposed a fee on the poet, which the Athenians paid.

== Genealogy and Poetic Inspiration ==

Pindar’s father is named differently according to different traditions: the ancient ''Lives'' variously list Daiphantus, Pagondas, and Scopelinus. Scopelinus was the most debated character: the {{#lemma: ''Ambrosian Life'' | [[Ambrosian Life|''Vit. Ambr.'']]}} claims that it was uncertain whether he was the father or uncle of the poet, and the {{#lemma: ''Suda'' | [[Suda s.v. 'Pindar'|''Suda'' s.v. 'Pindar']]}} states that he was father to a Pindar different from the famous poet. The mother of Pindar was said to be either {{#lemma: Cleodice | [[Ambrosian Life|''Vit. Ambr.'']]}} (probably a speaking name, suggesting the idea of fame in relation to justice) or {{#lemma: Myrtis | [[Thoman Life|''Vit. Thom.'']]}} (the Greek word for ‘myrtle’, also used for making wreaths; cf. ''Isthmian'' 8.68). The poet was also said to have a brother, {{#lemma: Eritimos | [[Vit. Metr.|''Vit. Metr.'']]}}, a skilful hunter and boxer.

Pindar’s genealogy is sometimes related to the poet’s first steps in poetry. According to one tradition, Scopelinus was said to have taught Pindar {{#lemma: the basics of flute-playing | [[Ambrosian Life|''Vit. Ambr.'']] [[Thoman Life|''Vit. Thom.'']]}}; according to the ''Suda'', {{#lemma: Myrtis was Pindar’s teacher | [[Suda s.v. 'Pindar'|''Suda'' s.v. 'Pindar']]}}.

Alongside the secular explanations of Pindar’s poetic talent, Pindar was also thought to be divinely inspired. According to the ''Ambrosian Life'', which follows here Chamaeleon and Ister, two biographers of the early Hellenistic age, Pindar, as a young boy, once fell asleep in the middle of the day. Bees flew to his lips and built a honeycomb there; according to some, the ''Life'' also adds, the episode was a {{#lemma: dream | [[Ambrosian Life|''Vit. Ambr.'']]}}. Pindar used the imagery of bees in his poetry (e.g. ''Olympian'' 6.46-7; ''Pythian'' 4.60, 10.54; fragment 158), sometimes as a metaphor for poetic activity. This biographical episode may have originated from the poet’s own verses.

The ancients gave differing answers as to where this episode, the initiation, occurred. According to Chamaeleon and Ister, the bees settled in Pindar’s mouth while he slept on Mount Helicon, where Hesiod had allegedly met the Muses (see [[Hesiod: A Guide to Selected Sources]]). {{#lemma: Pausanias | [[Pausanias 9.23.2|Paus. 9.23.2]]}} extends the Hellenistic tradition and imagines the scene in detail, but this time the poet is described as falling asleep by the roadside on his way from Thebes to Thespiae. {{#lemma: Philostratus | [[Philostratus, Images 2.12.1|Phil. ''Im.'' 2.12.1]]}} says that Pindar was still a baby when the bees arrived at his cradle made of myrtle (cf. the name of Pindar’s mother, Myrtis) and laurel. In an unexpected final twist, he states that the divine bees came from the Hymettus, an Athenian mountain, thus suggesting an Athenocentric claim on Pindar’s poetry.

== Pindar and the Gods ==

Ancient sources emphasized that Pindar enjoyed an unusually close relationship with the gods. Specific songs were imagined as motivated by encounters with deities, whether it was {{#lemma: Demeter in a dream or a sighting of Pan | [[Ambrosian Life|''Vit. Ambr.'']] [[Thoman Life|''Vit. Thom.'']]}} between Cithaeron and Helicon. In these stories Pan is also heard singing the songs of Pindar, an exceptional honour for a mortal. In the version found in the ''Thoman Life'' he was even {{#lemma: singing very specifically ''Olympian'' 1 | [[Thoman Life|''Vit. Thom.'']]}}, the first poem of both ancient and modern editions (cf. Irigoin 1952: 43-4). Pindar was also imagined as a founder of a cult in his own right. The Hellenistic Alexandrian scholar Aristodemus describes how Pindar saw {{#lemma: a vision of a statue of Cybele | [[Scholium to Pindar, Pythian Ode 3.77-8 |Schol. Pind. ''Pyth.'' 3.77-8]]}} while instructing another musician in the mountains. As a result, he established a shrine to the Great Mother near his house. The Thebans consulted the oracle about this mysterious turn of events, and they too were instructed to establish a shrine. When specifying ‘near his house’, Aristodemus was probably elaborating on the Pindaric passage where the poet describes girls singing praises to Cybele and Pan ‘outside his doorway’ (''Pythian'' 3.77-8).

== House ==

Aristodemus was not the only ancient reader to refer to Pindar’s house. We are told that, when destroying Thebes, {{#lemma: the Spartan general Pausanias saved the house of the poet | [[Ambrosian Life|''Vit. Ambr.'']]}}. A {{#lemma: sign | [[Ambrosian Life|''Vit. Ambr.'']] [[Dio Chrysostom, Oration on Kingship 2.33|Dio Chrys. ''De regn.'' 2.33]]}} was allegedly put up on the house to prevent anybody from burning the poet’s house. In 335 BC, when {{#lemma: Alexander the Great | [[Pliny, Natural History 7.29.109|Plin. ''NH'' 7.29.109]] [[Arrian, Anabasis 1.9.9-10|Arr. 1.9.9-10]] [[Aelian, Historical Miscellanies 13.7|Ael. ''VH'' 13.7]] [[Dio Chrysostom, Oration on Kingship 2.33|Dio Chrys. ''De regn.'' 2.33]]}} razed Thebes after its revolt, the house was supposedly saved again, along with the descendants of the poet and the local priests. This account may well derive from the first Alexandrian historians used by Arrian and others in their own presentations of Alexander. The house at some point became a site of Pindaric memory, regardless of the historicity of the story (on which cf. Slater 1971, ''contra'' Bosworth 1980: 91).

Part of the impetus to save the house likely came from the fact that the site was more generally associated with religious activities. The sophist Philostratus says that even before Pindar was born ‘cymbals resounded’ in his house and the ‘drums of Rhea were heard.’ Both Philostratus and Aelian add that {{#lemma: Pindar was inspired as a poet in front of his house | [[Phil. Im. 2.12|Phil. ''Im.'' 2.12]] [[Aelian, Historical Miscellanies 12.45|Ael. ''VH'' 12.45]]}}. Pausanias describes his own visit to {{#lemma: the sanctuary | [[Pausanias 9.25.3|Paus. 9.25.3]]}} by the house of the poet. The author of the ''Ambrosian Life'' adds that the house had become Thebes’ Prytaneion.

== Corinna and Pindar ==

Modern scholars are divided about the dating of Corinna of Tanagra: some place her in the late third-century, while others accept the fifth-century date the ancients themselves report (e.g. Allen and Frel 1972; West 1970, 1990). In any case, ancient commentators believed Corinna to be a contemporary of Pindar and to have defeated him in a poetic contest. Corinna’s victory in this competition became a point of local pride. Pausanias describes a painting he saw in Tanagra of {{#lemma: Corinna binding her head | [[Pausanias 9.22.3|Paus. 9.22.3]]}} after her victory over Pindar. Ancient sources (e.g. {{#lemma: Pausanias 9.22.3 | [[Pausanias 9.22.3|Paus. 9.22.3]]}}; {{#lemma: Aelian, ''Historical Miscellanies'' 13.25 | [[Aelian, Historical Miscellanies 13.25|Ael. ''VH'' 13.25]]}}) attribute her victory not to the quality of her poetry, but to her beauty, her parochial dialect (local Boeotian, rather than the panhellenic Doric of Pindar’s poetry), and even the boorishness of the audiences (cf. Larmour 2008). As a woman and a relatively parochial poet, Corinna is depicted as the underdog both socially and poetically against the internationally renowned Pindar. This tale is structurally similar to the ''Contest'' between Homer and Hesiod insofar as the underdog achieves a surprising victory against a more celebrated poet.

Corinna is also reported by Plutarch as {{#lemma: reprimanding Pindar | [[Plutarch, On the Fame of the Athenians 347f-348a|Plut. ''De glor. Ath.'' 347f-348a]]}} for his too liberal use of grandiloquent mythological references: ‘One should sow with the hand, not the entire sack.’ Once again we can see a contrast between the rustic, simple Corinna and the bombastic Pindar.

== Death and Honours ==

One version of his {{#lemma: death | [[Ambrosian Life|''Vit. Ambr.'']]}} claims that a set of ambassadors asked the oracle of Ammon on behalf of Pindar ‘What is the best thing amongst men?’ and that he died soon after. Pindar mentions Ammon several times in his poetry, which probably motivated this story (e.g. ''Pythian'' 4.16; fragment 36). A more romantic answer to the same question is given by another version of Pindar’s death: after praying that the finest thing be given to him, Pindar died publicly at the feet of his lover {{#lemma: Theoxenus | [[Suda s.v. 'Pindar'|''Suda'' s.v. 'Pindar']] [[Valerius Maximus 9.12.(ext.)7|Val. Max. 9.12.(ext.)7]]}}, for whom he wrote erotic poems (see fragment 123).

Pindar was the recipient of extensive cultic honours. At Delphi shares of the sacrifice were put aside for him, and the priest invited Pindar to feast with Apollo himself (see e.g. {{#lemma: the ''Ambrosian Life'' | [[Ambrosian Life|''Vit. Ambr.'']]}}). Multiple sources even indicate that he received {{#lemma: these honours while he was still alive | [[Vit. Metr.|''Vit. Metr.'']] [[Pausanias 9.23.3|Paus. 9.23.3]]}}.

----

== Bibliography ==

<div id="bibliography">
*Allen, A. and Frel, J. 1972. ‘A Date for Corinna.’ ''CJ'' 68: 26-30.
*Bosworth, A. B. 1980. ''A Historical Commentary on Arrian's History of Alexander''. Oxford.
*Bowra, C. M. 1964. ''Pindar''. Oxford.
*Bundy, E. 2006. ''Studia Pindarica'' (Digital Version: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/2g79p68q). Berkeley.
*Currie, B. 2005. ''Pindar and the Cult of Heroes''. Oxford.
*D’Alessio, G. B. 1994. ‘First Person Problems in Pindar.’ ''BICS'' 39: 117-39.
*Irigoin, J. 1952. ''Histoire du Texte de Pindare''. Paris.
*Larmour, D. 2008. ‘An Agon on the Slopes of Helicon: Corinna's Dialogues with Pindar and Hesiod.’ In J. Blevins (ed.) 2008, ''Dialogism and Lyrical Self-Fashioning: Bakhtin and the Voices of Genre''. Cranbury, NJ: 46-65.
*Lefkowitz, M. R. 1991. ''First-person Fictions: Pindar’s Poetic “I”''. Oxford.
** 2012. ''The Lives of the Greek Poets'' (1st edn 1981). Baltimore.
*Slater, W. J. 1971. ‘Pindar’s House.’ ''GRBS'' 12: 141-52.
*West, M. L. 1970. ‘Corinna.’ ''CQ'' 20: 277-87.
** 1990. ‘Dating Corinna.’ ''CQ'' 40: 553-7.
*Young, D. 1970. ‘Pindaric Criticism.’ In W. Musgrave Calder III and J. Stern (eds.), ''Pindaros und Bakchylides''. Darmstadt: 1-95.
</div>
</div>
<div id="notes"></div>

[[Category:Guides by Nicholas Boterf and Erika Taretto]]

Pindar: A Guide to Selected Sources

2015-11-15T17:50:26Z

NickFreer: /* Bibliography */

{{GuideHighlightBox}}
{{Author|Nicholas Boterf and Erika Taretto}}
{{#howtoquote:}}
<div id="guide">
== The ‘I’ in Pindar’s Poetry ==

Like other lyric poets, Pindar (518-438 BC) frequently speaks in the first-person, but the persona he constructs does not necessarily reflect Pindar the historical individual (see e.g. Lefkowitz 1991, 2012; D'Alessio 1991). Ancient commentators, however, often did not separate the historical poet from his constructed persona, and assumed that a historical biography could be extracted from his poems. Often their interpretations sought to explain the circumstances of performance, sometimes even tracing intertextual links between poems. For instance, Pindar’s claim in ''Nemean'' 7.102-4 that ‘my heart will not ever say that it has savaged [the hero] Neoptolemus with inflexible words’ was interpreted as {{#lemma: an ‘apology’ to the Aeginetans | [[Scholium to Pindar, Nemean Ode 7.102 |Schol. Pind. ''Nem.'' 7.102]]}} because of the poet’s damning treatment of Neoptolemus in ''Paean'' 6.

Ancient commentators were also eager to connect Pindar to his professional rivals, Bacchylides and Simonides. Passages that describe ‘a pair of crows who sing in vain against the divine bird of Zeus’ (''Olympian'' 2.87-8) or an eagle catching its prey ‘while the chattering jackdaws keep below’ (''Nemean'' 3.82) were interpreted as {{#lemma: barbs against Pindar’s contemporaries | [[Scholium to Pindar, Nemean Ode 3.82|Pind. ''Nem.'' 3.82]] [[Scholium to Pindar, Olympian Ode 2.87|Schol. Pind. ''Ol.'' 2.87]]}}.

== Origin ==

The sources unanimously say that Pindar was a Boeotian born in Thebes or in the nearby Cynocephalae. Pindar himself said so in his poetry: in this regard, for example, {{#lemma: ancient commentators | [[Scholium to Pindar, Isthmian Ode 1.1|Schol. Pind. ''Ist.'' 1.1]]}} mentioned the opening lines of ''Isthmian'' 1, where the poet calls Thebes his ‘mother’.

Ancient readers perceived a strong association between Pindar and his native city and often imagined the city as the setting for Pindar’s life. The poet, in fact, often praises Thebes in his work (e.g. ''Isthmian'' 1; fragment 194.4-6, 195, 198ab). However, the tradition also mentions tensions existing between the poet and Thebes: the {{#lemma: ''Ambrosian Life'' | [[Ambrosian Life|''Vit. Ambr.'']]}}, for example, says that the poet received his lyrical instruction in Athens and that he praised the city in his poetry. Because of this praise, the ''Life'' continues, the Thebans imposed a fee on the poet, which the Athenians paid.

== Genealogy and Poetic Inspiration ==

Pindar’s father is named differently according to different traditions: the ancient ''Lives'' variously list Daiphantus, Pagondas, and Scopelinus. Scopelinus was the most debated character: the {{#lemma: ''Ambrosian Life'' | [[Ambrosian Life|''Vit. Ambr.'']]}} claims that it was uncertain whether he was the father or uncle of the poet, and the {{#lemma: ''Suda'' | [[Suda s.v. 'Pindar'|''Suda'' s.v. 'Pindar']]}} states that he was father to a Pindar different from the famous poet. The mother of Pindar was said to be either {{#lemma: Cleodice | [[Ambrosian Life|''Vit. Ambr.'']]}} (probably a speaking name, suggesting the idea of fame in relation to justice) or {{#lemma: Myrtis | [[Thoman Life|''Vit. Thom.'']]}} (the Greek word for ‘myrtle’, also used for making wreaths; cf. ''Isthmian'' 8.68). The poet was also said to have a brother, {{#lemma: Eritimos | [[Vit. Metr.|''Vit. Metr.'']]}}, a skilful hunter and boxer.

Pindar’s genealogy is sometimes related to the poet’s first steps in poetry. According to one tradition, Scopelinus was said to have taught Pindar {{#lemma: the basics of flute-playing | [[Ambrosian Life|''Vit. Ambr.'']] [[Thoman Life|''Vit. Thom.'']]}}; according to the ''Suda'', {{#lemma: Myrtis was Pindar’s teacher | [[Suda s.v. 'Pindar'|''Suda'' s.v. 'Pindar']]}}.

Alongside the secular explanations of Pindar’s poetic talent, Pindar was also thought to be divinely inspired. According to the ''Ambrosian Life'', which follows here Chamaeleon and Ister, two biographers of the early Hellenistic age, Pindar, as a young boy, once fell asleep in the middle of the day. Bees flew to his lips and built a honeycomb there; according to some, the ''Life'' also adds, the episode was a {{#lemma: dream | [[Ambrosian Life|''Vit. Ambr.'']]}}. Pindar used the imagery of bees in his poetry (e.g. ''Olympian'' 6.46-7; ''Pythian'' 4.60, 10.54; fragment 158), sometimes as a metaphor for poetic activity. This biographical episode may have originated from the poet’s own verses.

The ancients gave differing answers as to where this episode, the initiation, occurred. According to Chamaeleon and Ister, the bees settled in Pindar’s mouth while he slept on Mount Helicon, where Hesiod had allegedly met the Muses (see [[Hesiod: A Guide to Selected Sources]]). {{#lemma: Pausanias | [[Pausanias 9.23.2|Paus. 9.23.2]]}} extends the Hellenistic tradition and imagines the scene in detail, but this time the poet is described as falling asleep by the roadside on his way from Thebes to Thespiae. {{#lemma: Philostratus | [[Philostratus, Images 2.12.1|Phil. ''Im.'' 2.12.1]]}} says that Pindar was still a baby when the bees arrived at his cradle made of myrtle (cf. the name of Pindar’s mother, Myrtis) and laurel. In an unexpected final twist, he states that the divine bees came from the Hymettus, an Athenian mountain, thus suggesting an Athenocentric claim on Pindar’s poetry.

== Pindar and the Gods ==

Ancient sources emphasized that Pindar enjoyed an unusually close relationship with the gods. Specific songs were imagined as motivated by encounters with deities, whether it was {{#lemma: Demeter in a dream or a sighting of Pan | [[Ambrosian Life|''Vit. Ambr.'']] [[Thoman Life|''Vit. Thom.'']]}} between Cithaeron and Helicon. In these stories Pan is also heard singing the songs of Pindar, an exceptional honour for a mortal. In the version found in the ''Thoman Life'' he was even {{#lemma: singing very specifically ''Olympian'' 1 | [[Thoman Life|''Vit. Thom.'']]}}, the first poem of both ancient and modern editions (cf. Irigoin 1952: 43-4). Pindar was also imagined as a founder of a cult in his own right. The Hellenistic Alexandrian scholar Aristodemus describes how Pindar saw {{#lemma: a vision of a statue of Cybele | [[Scholium to Pindar, Pythian Ode 3.77-8 |Schol. Pind. ''Pyth.'' 3.77-8]]}} while instructing another musician in the mountains. As a result, he established a shrine to the Great Mother near his house. The Thebans consulted the oracle about this mysterious turn of events, and they too were instructed to establish a shrine. When specifying ‘near his house’, Aristodemus was probably elaborating on the Pindaric passage where the poet describes girls singing praises to Cybele and Pan ‘outside his doorway’ (''Pythian'' 3.77-8).

== House ==

Aristodemus was not the only ancient reader to refer to Pindar’s house. We are told that, when destroying Thebes, {{#lemma: the Spartan general Pausanias saved the house of the poet | [[Ambrosian Life|''Vit. Ambr.'']]}}. A {{#lemma: sign | [[Ambrosian Life|''Vit. Ambr.'']] [[Dio Chrysostom, Oration on Kingship 2.33|Dio Chrys. ''De regn.'' 2.33]]}} was allegedly put up on the house to prevent anybody from burning the poet’s house. In 335 BC, when {{#lemma: Alexander the Great | [[Pliny, Natural History 7.29.109|Plin. ''NH'' 7.29.109]] [[Arrian, Anabasis 1.9.9-10|Arr. 1.9.9-10]] [[Aelian, Historical Miscellanies 13.7|Ael. ''VH'' 13.7]] [[Dio Chrysostom, Oration on Kingship 2.33|Dio Chrys. ''De regn.'' 2.33]]}} razed Thebes after its revolt, the house was supposedly saved again, along with the descendants of the poet and the local priests. This account may well derive from the first Alexandrian historians used by Arrian and others in their own presentations of Alexander. The house at some point became a site of Pindaric memory, regardless of the historicity of the story (on which cf. Slater 1971, ''contra'' Bosworth 1980: 91).

Part of the impetus to save the house likely came from the fact that the site was more generally associated with religious activities. The sophist Philostratus says that even before Pindar was born ‘cymbals resounded’ in his house and the ‘drums of Rhea were heard.’ Both Philostratus and Aelian add that {{#lemma: Pindar was inspired as a poet in front of his house | [[Phil. Im. 2.12|Phil. ''Im.'' 2.12]] [[Aelian, Historical Miscellanies 12.45|Ael. ''VH'' 12.45]]}}. Pausanias describes his own visit to {{#lemma: the sanctuary | [[Pausanias 9.25.3|Paus. 9.25.3]]}} by the house of the poet. The author of the ''Ambrosian Life'' adds that the house had become Thebes’ Prytaneion.

== Corinna and Pindar ==

Modern scholars are divided about the dating of Corinna of Tanagra: some place her in the late third-century, while others accept the fifth-century date the ancients themselves report (e.g. Allen and Frel 1972; West 1970, 1990). In any case, ancient commentators believed Corinna to be a contemporary of Pindar and to have defeated him in a poetic contest. Corinna’s victory in this competition became a point of local pride. Pausanias describes a painting he saw in Tanagra of {{#lemma: Corinna binding her head | [[Pausanias 9.22.3|Paus. 9.22.3]]}} after her victory over Pindar. Ancient sources (e.g. {{#lemma: Pausanias 9.22.3 | [[Pausanias 9.22.3|Paus. 9.22.3]]}}; {{#lemma: Aelian, ''Historical Miscellanies'' 13.25 | [[Aelian, Historical Miscellanies 13.25|Ael. ''VH'' 13.25]]}}) attribute her victory not to the quality of her poetry, but to her beauty, her parochial dialect (local Boeotian, rather than the panhellenic Doric of Pindar’s poetry), and even the boorishness of the audiences (cf. Larmour 2008). As a woman and a relatively parochial poet, Corinna is depicted as the underdog both socially and poetically against the internationally renowned Pindar. This tale is structurally similar to the ''Contest'' between Homer and Hesiod insofar as the underdog achieves a surprising victory against a more celebrated poet.

Corinna is also reported by Plutarch as {{#lemma: reprimanding Pindar | [[Plutarch, On the Fame of the Athenians 347f-348a|Plut. ''De glor. Ath.'' 347f-348a]]}} for his too liberal use of grandiloquent mythological references: ‘One should sow with the hand, not the entire sack.’ Once again we can see a contrast between the rustic, simple Corinna and the bombastic Pindar.

== Death and Honours ==

One version of his {{#lemma: death | [[Ambrosian Life|''Vit. Ambr.'']]}} claims that a set of ambassadors asked the oracle of Ammon on behalf of Pindar ‘What is the best thing amongst men?’ and that he died soon after. Pindar mentions Ammon several times in his poetry, which probably motivated this story (e.g. ''Pythian'' 4.16; fragment 36). A more romantic answer to the same question is given by another version of Pindar’s death: after praying that the finest thing be given to him, Pindar died publicly at the feet of his lover {{#lemma: Theoxenus | [[Suda s.v. 'Pindar'|''Suda'' s.v. 'Pindar']] [[Valerius Maximus 9.12.(ext.)7|Val. Max. 9.12.(ext.)7]]}}, for whom he wrote erotic poems (see fragment 123).

Pindar was the recipient of extensive cultic honours. At Delphi shares of the sacrifice were put aside for him, and the priest invited Pindar to feast with Apollo himself (see e.g. {{#lemma: the ''Ambrosian Life'' | [[Ambrosian Life|''Vit. Ambr.'']]}}). Multiple sources even indicate that he received {{#lemma: these honours while he was still alive | [[Vit. Metr.|''Vit. Metr.'']] [[Pausanias 9.23.3|Paus. 9.23.3]]}}.

----

== Bibliography ==

<div id="bibliography">
*Allen, A. and Frel, J. 1972. ‘A Date for Corinna.’ ''CJ'' 68: 26-30.
*Bosworth, A.B. 1980. ''A Historical Commentary on Arrian's History of Alexander''. Oxford.
*Bowra, C.M. 1964. ''Pindar''. Oxford.
*Bundy, E. 2006. ''Studia Pindarica'' (Digital Version: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/2g79p68q). Berkeley.
*Currie, B. 2005. ''Pindar and the Cult of Heroes''. Oxford.
*D’Alessio, G.B. 1994. ‘First Person Problems in Pindar.’ ''BICS'' 39: 117-39.
*Irigoin, J. 1952. ''Histoire du Texte de Pindare''. Paris.
*Larmour, D. 2008. ‘An Agon on the Slopes of Helicon: Corinna's Dialogues with Pindar and Hesiod.’ In J. Blevins (ed.) 2008, ''Dialogism and Lyrical Self-Fashioning: Bakhtin and the Voices of Genre''. Cranbury, NJ: 46-65.
*Lefkowitz, M.R. 1991. ''First-person Fictions: Pindar’s Poetic “I”''. Oxford.
** 2012 (1981). ''The Lives of the Greek Poets''. Baltimore.
*Slater, W.J. 1971. ‘Pindar’s House.’ ''GRBS'' 12: 141-52.
*West, M.L. 1970. ‘Corinna.’ ''CQ'' 20: 277-87.
** 1990. ‘Dating Corinna.’ ''CQ'' 40: 553-7.

*Young, D. 1970. ‘Pindaric Criticism.’ In W. Musgrave Calder III and J. Stern, eds. ''Pindaros und Bakchylides''. Darmstadt. 1-95.
</div>
</div>
<div id="notes"></div>

[[Category:Guides by Nicholas Boterf and Erika Taretto]]

Orpheus: A Guide to Selected Sources

2015-11-15T17:49:02Z

NickFreer: /* Bibliography */

{{GuideHighlightBox}}
'''''Sarah Burges Watson'''''
{{#howtoquote:}}
<div id="guide">{{GuideTextsBy|Sarah Burges Watson}}
Orpheus is the archetypal musician of Greek myth, whose singing enchants all of nature and even the realm of the dead. His mother is Calliope, Muse of epic. His {{#lemma: father | [[Pindar, fragment 128c 11-12 Snell-Maehler | Pind. fr. 128c 11-12]] [[Pindar, Pythian 4.176-7 | Pind. ''Pyth.'' 4.176-7]] [[Scholion to Pindar Pythian 4, 313a | Schol. Pind. ''Pyth.'' 4, 313a]]}} is sometimes Apollo, but usually the Thracian Oeagrus—a river god, according to {{#lemma: Servius | [[Servius, Commentary to the Aeneid 6.645 | Serv. ''in Aen.'' 6.645]]}}. By the Classical period, Orpheus is known as the author of mystical hexameter poetry and {{#lemma: founder of mysteries | [[Apollodorus Library 1.3.2 | [Apollod.] ''Bibl.'' 1.3.2]] [[Damagetus Palatine Anthology 7.9 | Damag. ''Anth.Pal.'' 7.9]] [[Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca Historica 5.64.4 | Diod. Sic. 5.64.4]] [[Aristophanes, Frogs 1030-6 | Ar. ''Ran.'' 1030-6]] [[Euripides Rhesus 941-7 | [Eur.] ''Rhes.'' 941-7]] [[Demosthenes 25.11 Against Aristogeiton 1 | [Dem.] 25.11]] [[Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca Historica 4.25.1 | Diod. Sic. 4.25.1]]}}, most importantly at Eleusis (Graf 1974). Accounting for the relationship between his mythical, mystical and authorial identities proves a challenge for the many interested parties.

== The Antiquity of Orpheus ==

Our earliest evidence for the ‘kitharode’ (lyre-singer) is a fragmentary relief from Delphi, dated to ca. 575 BCE, on which he appears beside the Argo. A {{#lemma: scholion to Apollonius | [[Scholion to Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica 1.23 | Schol. Ap. Rhod. ''Arg.'' 1.23]]}} says that it was a matter of scholarly dispute why Orpheus, who lacked strength, had sailed with the heroes. {{#lemma: Apollonius | [[Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica 1.23-34 | Ap. Rhod. ''Arg.'' 1.23-34]]}} gives him first position in the catalogue of Argonauts, accepting the tradition, probably recounted in early epic (West 2005), that Orpheus accompanied the Argonauts to ensure them safe passage past the Sirens. Orpheus’ Argonautic status gives him indisputable priority over Homer, since the Argonauts belonged to the generation before the Trojan War. {{#lemma: An apparently canonical sequence — Orpheus, Musaeus, Hesiod, Homer | [[Hippias of Elis, 86 B6 Diels-Kranz | Hippias of Elis 86 B6 D-K]] [[Aristophanes, Frogs 1030-6 | Ar. ''Ran.'' 1030-6]] [[Plato, Apology 41a | Pl. ''Ap.'' 41a]]}} — is attested in several authors from the classical period onwards, but already in the classical period doubts were expressed about authorship of Orphic poems, {{#lemma: some of which were thought to have been written by Pythagoreans | [[Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis (Miscellanies) 1.21.131 | Clem. Al. ''Strom.'' 1.21.131]] [[Suda s.v. Orpheus | ''Suda'' s.v. Orpheus]]}}. {{#lemma: Aristotle | [[Aristotle, On the Generation of Animals 2.1, 734a 16 | Arist. ''Gen. an.'' 2.1, 734a16]] [[Aristotle, On the Soul 1.5, 410b27 | Arist. ''De an.'' 1.5, 410b27]] [[Iohannes Philoponus, Commentary on De Anima 1.5, 410b27 | Phlp. ''in De an.'' 1.5, 410b27]]}}, who speaks of the ‘so-called’ Orphic poems, probably believed (as {{#lemma: Cicero | [[Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 1. 107 | Cic. ''Nat. D.'' 1.107]]}} attests) that Orpheus had never existed. {{#lemma: Sextus Empiricus | [[Sextus Empiricus, Against the Professors of Liberal Arts 1.203 | Sext. Emp. ''Math.'' 1.203]]}} and {{#lemma: Josephus | [[Josephus, Αgainst Apion 1.12 | Joseph. ''Ap.'' 1.12]]}} asserted that there were no written works before Homer. {{#lemma: Some | [[Scholion to Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica 1.23 | Schol. Ap. Rhod. ''Arg.'' 1.23]]}} thought that there were two or more Orpheuses. The {{#lemma: ''Suda'' | [[Suda s.v. Orpheus | ''Suda'' s.v. Orpheus]]}} lists seven. {{#lemma: Popular opinion | [[Pausanias, Description of Greece 9.30.4-12 | Paus. 9.30.4-12]]}}, fortified and/or created by the political clout of Eleusis, apparently judged him a historical figure.

== Orpheus and the Underworld ==

By the early classical period, Orpheus’ power to lead rocks, trees and animals with his music is a {{#lemma: well-established tradition | [[Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica 1.23-34 | Ap. Rhod. ''Arg.'' 1.23-34]] [[Simonides, fragment 62 (PMG 567 Page) | Simon. fr. 62]][[Aeschylus, Agamemnon 1629-1632 | Aesch. ''Ag.'' 1629-32]] [[Euripides, Iphigenia at Aulis 1211-1215 | Eur. ''IA'' 1211-15]] [[Euripides, Bacchae 560-64 | Eur. ''Bacch.'' 560-4]] [[Euripides, Alcestis 357-62 | Eur. ''Alc.'' 357-62]]}}. This is no ordinary music-making, but ''psychagogia'', which extends to the souls of the dead. A remarkable papyrus found in the 1960s at Derveni in Thessaloniki offers an allegorical interpretation of an Orphic poem in conjunction with a ritual to appease the dead (see Most and Obbink 1999, Betegh 2004, Kouremenos, Parássoglou, and Tsantsanoglou 2006). Orpheus’ conquest of the Sirens already points in this direction; ''katabasis'' poetry in his name was probably circulating by the early classical period (see West 1983: 12-13, Herrero 2011). Virgil (''G.'' 453-558) and Ovid (''Met.'' 10.1-85) immortalized {{#lemma: the story, first attested in Euripides, that Orpheus descended to Hades to fetch his wife | [[Apollodorus Library 1.3.2 | [Apollod.] ''Bibl.'' 1.3.2]] [[Damagetus Palatine Anthology 7.9 | Damag. ''Anth.Pal.'' 7.9]] [[Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca Historica 4.25.1 | Diod. Sic. 4.25.1]] [[Pausanias, Description of Greece 9.30.4-12 | Paus. 9.30.4-12]] [[Euripides, Alcestis 357-62 | Eur. ''Alc.'' 357-62]] [[Isocrates, Busiris 10.8 Mathieu-Bremond | Isoc. ''Bus.'' 10.8]] [[Plato, Symposium 179d | Pl. ''Symp.'' 179d]] [[Conon Die Fragmente der Griechischen Historiker 26 F1, 45 | Conon, ''Narr.'' 45]]}}. But no extant version is unequivocal about the success of Orpheus’ mission (see Heath 1994, Sansone 1985). On {{#lemma: Polygnotus’ painting | [[Pausanias, Description of Greece 10.30.6 | Paus. 10.30.6]]}} of the underworld (ca. 460 BCE), Orpheus was shown without his wife; his earliest associations are with male groups (Graf 1987, Bremmer 1991). A fragment of the Hellenistic poet {{#lemma: Phanocles | [[Phanocles, fragment 1 Powell | Phanocl. fr. 1]]}} describes how Orpheus was decapitated by Thracian women because he introduced homosexuality to Thrace. Orpheus’ death at their hands is the most popular story about him in fifth-century iconography (see Lissarrague 1994); of the available explanations, sexual jealousy fits best with the images.

== Orpheus’ Talking Head ==

The famous story that Orpheus’ head travelled to Lesbos, still singing, after his death is first attested in {{#lemma: Phanocles | [[Phanocles, fragment 1 Powell | Phanocl. fr. 1]]}}, where it serves as an ''aition'' for the musicality of Lesbos. {{#lemma: Lucian | [[Lucian, Against the Unlettered Bibliomaniac 11-12 | Luc. ''Ind.'' 11-12]]}} connects Orpheus with a Lesbian shrine of Bacchos; {{#lemma: Philostratus | [[Philostratus, Heroikos 28.8-11 | Philostr. ''Her.'' 28.8-11]] [[Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana 4.14 | Philostr. ''VA'' 4.14]]}}, with a Lesbian oracle. But {{#lemma: Orpheus’ burial | [[Apollodorus Library 1.3.2 | [Apollod.] ''Bibl.'' 1.3.2]] [[Damagetus Palatine Anthology 7.9 | Damag. ''Anth.Pal.'' 7.9]] [[Pausanias, Description of Greece 9.30.4-12 | Paus. 9.30.4-12]] [[Conon Die Fragmente der Griechischen Historiker 26 F1, 45 | Conon, ''Narr.'' 45]] [[Eratosthenes Catasterisms 24 | [Eratosth.] ''Cat.'' 24]]}} is usually located in Pieria or Thrace and another story existed, in which the head remained on the mainland, dictating oracles and poetry to his pupil (or son), Musaeus. A late-fifth-century cup illustrates the process. {{#lemma: Euripides’ ''Alcestis'' | [[Euripides, Alcestis 962-72 | Eur. ''Alc.'' 962-72]]}} (438 BCE) contains a remarkable reference to charms on Thracian writing tablets which ‘the voice of Orpheus wrote down’. Almost exactly contemporary is a beautiful hydria, now in Basel, showing a naked man consulting the head in the presence of six Muses. The scene may be inspired by Aeschylus’ ''Bassarides'', in which, as we know from a summary in {{#lemma: Ps.-Eratosthenes | [[Eratosthenes Catasterisms 24 | [Eratosth.] ''Cat.'' 24]]}}, Orpheus was dismembered by Thracian followers of Dionysus because of his exclusive allegiance to Apollo. Following his death, his limbs were gathered up by the Muses. It is likely that they (and perhaps also Apollo) predicted the head’s future as an oracle. (See Burges Watson 2013. On the ''Bassarides'', see West 1990, Di Marco 1993, Seaford 2005, Burges Watson 2015).

== Mysteries ==

Di Marco has argued plausibly that the tragedy served as an aetiology for Orpheus’ connection with Bacchic mysteries. This probably begins with his supposed authorship of poetry used in Orphic/Bacchic rites, which {{#lemma: Herodotus | [[Herodotus, Histories 2.81 | Hdt. 2.81]]}} considers Egyptian and Pythagorean (on Orpheus’ connection with Bacchic rites and Pythagoreans see especially Burkert 1977, 1982, 2006). The name Dionysus appears on bone tablets from Olbia in the Black Sea in conjunction with a reference to ‘Orphics’ and juxtapositions equating the soul with truth and the body with falsehood (see Orph. 463-5 Bernabé, West 1982, Zhmud’ 1992). The only story about the god with which Orpheus was connected in the classical period is the myth of Dionysus Zagreus, son of Zeus and Persephone, who was dismembered and eaten by the Titans, man’s ancestors (see Bernabé 2002, Henrichs 2011). Man is imprisoned in the body in punishment for this crime. {{#lemma: Pausanias | [[Pausanias, Description of Greece 8.37.5 | Paus. 8.37.5]]}} ascribed the myth to Onomacritus, who edited the Homeric poems in the Peisistratid era and was accused of forging oracles of Musaeus. Gold leaves with instructions for the afterlife, some of which seem to refer to the myth, have been found in tombs across the Mediterranean. (See Graf and Johnston 2007, Bernabé and San Cristóbal 2008, Edmonds 2011.) In Plato’s {{#lemma: ''Meno'' | [[Plato, Meno 81a-c | Pl. ''Men.'' 81a-c]]}}, Socrates says that the myth is interpreted by wise priests and priestesses as an allegory about reincarnation. In the ''Cratylus'' (400c), he attributes to ‘followers of Orpheus’ the doctrine that the soul is imprisoned in the body as a punishment for certain crimes. The ''Phaedo''’s dualism draws on the same mystical environment (61e-62c, 69c-d with Xenocrates fr. 21 Isnardi Parente=Orph. 38. On Plato and Orpheus, see Bernabé 1998, 2011).

== Orpheus in Late Antiquity ==

Reincarnation is a doctrine associated principally with Pythagoras; it is unlikely that it was ever taught at Eleusis, where Orpheus seems to have been known as the author of eschatological poems (Graf 1974). As early as Herodotus, the Greeks equated the stories of Demeter and Dionysus with those of Isis and Osiris; hence Herodotus’ assertion that Orphic rites are really Egyptian. {{#lemma: Diodorus | [[Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca Historica 4.25.1 | Diod. Sic. 4.25.1]]}}, following Hecataeus of Abdera, says that Orpheus brought the mysteries from Egypt. Hellenistic Jews such as {{#lemma: Artapanus | [[Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica 9.27.3 | Euseb. ''Praep. evang.'' 9.27.3]]}} said that he had been taught by Moses (= Musaeus—the previous teacher-student roles are reversed) and composed an Orphic poem proclaiming monotheism. Christian apologists embrace both this Egyptian tradition and Orpheus’ Argonautic credentials, making him the fount of all pagan wisdom whose positive elements thereby acquire a Biblical source. More frequently, however, apologists portray Orpheus as the quintessential theologian of polytheistic falsehoods. His music is almost never mentioned: in a rare reference, {{#lemma: Clement of Alexandria | [[Clement of Alexandria, Protrepticus 1.3.1 | Clem. Al. ''Protr.'' 1.31.1]]}} makes him the singer of deceitful mysteries. (On Christian attitudes to Orpheus, see Herrero 2010). Late Neoplatonists, on the other hand, adopt Orpheus as the champion of Greek religion, who provides divine authorization for their own teachings, elicited through allegorical interpretation of his poetry. {{#lemma: Proclus | [[Proclus, In Theologian Platonis I 5 | Procl. ''Theol. Plat.'' I 5]]}} states that all Greek theology is based on Orphic teachings, drawing a direct line from Orpheus, via Pythagoras, to Plato. It is through the Neoplatonist tradition that Orpheus is adopted in Renaissance Florence as the symbol of music’s centrality in the cosmos. He becomes a figurehead for the Florentine Camerata, who assure him a key place in the burgeoning genre of opera.

----

== Bibliography ==

<div id="bibliography">
* Bernabé, A. 1998. ‘Platone e l’Orfismo.’ In G. Sfameni Gasparro (ed.), ''Destino e salvezza: tra culti pagani e gnosi cristiana. Itinerari storico-religiosi sulle orme di Ugo Bianchi.'' Cosenza: 33-93.
** 2002. ‘La toile de Pénélope.’ ''RHR'' 219: 401-33.
** 2004/2005. ''Poetae epici Graeci, testimonia et fragmenta.'' Pars II, fasc. 1-2: ''Orphicorum et Orphicis similium testimonia et fragmenta.'' Munich.
** 2011. ''Platón y el orfismo.'' Madrid.
* Bernabé, A. and Jiménez San Cristóbal, A. 2008. ''Instructions for the Netherworld: the Orphic Gold Tablets.'' Trans. M. Chase. Leiden.
* Bernabé, A. and Casadesús, F. (eds.) 2009. ''Orfeo y la tradición órfica: un reencuentro.'' Madrid.
* Betegh, G. 2004. ''The Derveni Papyrus: Cosmology, Theology and Interpretation.'' Cambridge.
* Bremmer, J. 1991. ‘From Guru to Gay.’ In P. Bourgeaud (ed.) 1991, ''Orphisme et Orphée: en l’honneur de Jean Rudhardt.'' Geneva: 13-30.
* Burges Watson, S. 2013. ‘Muses of Lesbos or (Aeschylean) Muses of Pieria? Orpheus’ Head on a Fifth-century Hydria.’ ''GRBS'' 53.3: 441-60.
** 2015. ‘''Mousikê'' and Mysteries: A Nietzschean Reading of Aeschylus’ ''Bassarides''.’ Forthcoming, ''CQ''.
* Burkert, W. 1977. ‘Orphism and Bacchic Mysteries: New Evidence and Old Problems of Interpretation.’ In W. Wuellner (ed.) 1977, ''Protocol of the 28th Colloquy of the Center for Hermeneutical Studies in Hellenistic and Modern Culture''. Berkeley: 37-46.
** 1982. ‘Craft versus Sect: the Problem of the Orphics and Pythagoreans.’ In B. Meyer and E. P. Sanders (eds.) 1982, ''Jewish and Christian Self-Definition: Volume Three - Self-Definition in the Greco-Roman World''. London: 1-22 and 183-89.
** 2006. ‘Mysterien der Ägypter in griechische Sicht: Projektionen im Kulturkontakt.’ In F. Graf (ed.) ''Kleine Schriften III: Mystica, Orphica, Pythagorica.'' Göttingen: 152-72.
* Di Marco, M. 1993. ‘Dioniso ed Orfeo nelle Bassaridi di Eschilo.’ In A. Masaracchia (ed.) 1993, ''Orfeo e l’orfismo. Atti del seminario nazionale.'' Rome: 101-53.
* Edmonds, R. (ed.) 2011. ''The ‘Orphic’ Gold Tablets and Greek Religion: Further Along the Path.'' Cambridge.
* Graf, F. 1974. ''Eleusis und die orphische Dichtung Athens in vorhellenistischer Zeit.'' Berlin.
** 1987. ‘Orpheus: a Poet among Men.’ In J. Bremmer (ed.) 1987, ''Interpretations of Greek Mythology.'' London: 80-106.
* Graf, F. and Johnston, S. I. 2007. ''Ritual Texts for the Afterlife.'' London.
* Guthrie. W. 1935. ''Orpheus and Greek Religion: a Study of the Orphic Movement.'' London.
* Heath, J. 1994. ‘The Failure of Orpheus.’ ''TAPA'' 124: 163-96.
* Henrichs, A. 2010. ‘Mystika, Orphika, Dionysiaka: Esoterische Gruppenbildungen, Glaubensinhalte und Verhaltensweisen in der griechischen Religion.’ In A. Bierl and W. Braungart (eds.) 2010, ''Gewalt und Opfer. Im Dialog mit Walter Burkert. MythosEikonPoiesis'' 2. Berlin: 87-114.
** 2011. ‘Dionysus Dismembered and Restored to Life: the Earliest Evidence (''OF'' 59 I-II).’ In M. Herrero de Jáuregui, A. Jiménez, E. Luján, R. Martín, M. Santamaría, and S. Torallas (eds.) 2011, ''Tracing Orpheus: Studies on Orphic Fragments in Honour of Alberto Bernabé.'' Berlin: 61-68.
* Herrero de Jáuregui, M. 2010. ''Orphism and Christianity in Late Antiquity.'' Berlin.
** 2011. ‘Priam’s ''Catabasis'': Traces of the Epic Journey to Hades in ''Iliad'' 24.’ ''TAPA'' 141.1: 37-68.
* Kouremenos, T., Parássoglou G. and Tsantsanoglou K. (eds.) 2006. ''The Derveni Papyrus. Edited with Introduction and Commentary.'' Florence.
* Laks, A. and Most G. (eds.) 1997. ''Studies on the Derveni Papyrus.'' Oxford.
* Linforth, I. 1941. ''The Arts of Orpheus.'' London.
* Lissarrague, F. 1994. ‘Orphée mis à mort.’ ''Musica e storia'' 2: 269-307.
* Sansone, D. 1985. ‘Orpheus and Eurydice in the Fifth Century.’ ''CM'' 36: 53-64.
* Seaford, R. 2005. ‘Mystic Light in Aeschylus’ ''Bassarai''.’ ''CQ'' 55: 602-6.
* Segal, C. 1989. ''Orpheus: the Myth of the Poet.'' Baltimore.
* West, M. L. 1982. ‘The Orphics of Olbia.’ ''ZPE'' 45: 17-29.
** 1983. ''The Orphic Poems.'' Oxford.
** 1990. ‘The Lycurgus Trilogy.’ In M. L. West (ed.) 1990, ''Studies in Aeschylus.'' Stuttgart: 26-50.
** 2005. ‘''Odyssey'' and ''Argonautica''.’ ''CQ'' 55: 39-64.
* Zhmud, L. 1992. ‘Orphism and Graffiti from Olbia.’ ''Hermes'' 120: 159-68.
</div>

</div>
<div id="notes"></div>

[[Category:Guides by Sarah Burges Watson]]

Orpheus: A Guide to Selected Sources

2015-11-15T16:55:47Z

NickFreer: /* Bibliography */

{{GuideHighlightBox}}
'''''Sarah Burges Watson'''''
{{#howtoquote:}}
<div id="guide">{{GuideTextsBy|Sarah Burges Watson}}
Orpheus is the archetypal musician of Greek myth, whose singing enchants all of nature and even the realm of the dead. His mother is Calliope, Muse of epic. His {{#lemma: father | [[Pindar, fragment 128c 11-12 Snell-Maehler | Pind. fr. 128c 11-12]] [[Pindar, Pythian 4.176-7 | Pind. ''Pyth.'' 4.176-7]] [[Scholion to Pindar Pythian 4, 313a | Schol. Pind. ''Pyth.'' 4, 313a]]}} is sometimes Apollo, but usually the Thracian Oeagrus—a river god, according to {{#lemma: Servius | [[Servius, Commentary to the Aeneid 6.645 | Serv. ''in Aen.'' 6.645]]}}. By the Classical period, Orpheus is known as the author of mystical hexameter poetry and {{#lemma: founder of mysteries | [[Apollodorus Library 1.3.2 | [Apollod.] ''Bibl.'' 1.3.2]] [[Damagetus Palatine Anthology 7.9 | Damag. ''Anth.Pal.'' 7.9]] [[Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca Historica 5.64.4 | Diod. Sic. 5.64.4]] [[Aristophanes, Frogs 1030-6 | Ar. ''Ran.'' 1030-6]] [[Euripides Rhesus 941-7 | [Eur.] ''Rhes.'' 941-7]] [[Demosthenes 25.11 Against Aristogeiton 1 | [Dem.] 25.11]] [[Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca Historica 4.25.1 | Diod. Sic. 4.25.1]]}}, most importantly at Eleusis (Graf 1974). Accounting for the relationship between his mythical, mystical and authorial identities proves a challenge for the many interested parties.

== The Antiquity of Orpheus ==

Our earliest evidence for the ‘kitharode’ (lyre-singer) is a fragmentary relief from Delphi, dated to ca. 575 BCE, on which he appears beside the Argo. A {{#lemma: scholion to Apollonius | [[Scholion to Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica 1.23 | Schol. Ap. Rhod. ''Arg.'' 1.23]]}} says that it was a matter of scholarly dispute why Orpheus, who lacked strength, had sailed with the heroes. {{#lemma: Apollonius | [[Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica 1.23-34 | Ap. Rhod. ''Arg.'' 1.23-34]]}} gives him first position in the catalogue of Argonauts, accepting the tradition, probably recounted in early epic (West 2005), that Orpheus accompanied the Argonauts to ensure them safe passage past the Sirens. Orpheus’ Argonautic status gives him indisputable priority over Homer, since the Argonauts belonged to the generation before the Trojan War. {{#lemma: An apparently canonical sequence — Orpheus, Musaeus, Hesiod, Homer | [[Hippias of Elis, 86 B6 Diels-Kranz | Hippias of Elis 86 B6 D-K]] [[Aristophanes, Frogs 1030-6 | Ar. ''Ran.'' 1030-6]] [[Plato, Apology 41a | Pl. ''Ap.'' 41a]]}} — is attested in several authors from the classical period onwards, but already in the classical period doubts were expressed about authorship of Orphic poems, {{#lemma: some of which were thought to have been written by Pythagoreans | [[Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis (Miscellanies) 1.21.131 | Clem. Al. ''Strom.'' 1.21.131]] [[Suda s.v. Orpheus | ''Suda'' s.v. Orpheus]]}}. {{#lemma: Aristotle | [[Aristotle, On the Generation of Animals 2.1, 734a 16 | Arist. ''Gen. an.'' 2.1, 734a16]] [[Aristotle, On the Soul 1.5, 410b27 | Arist. ''De an.'' 1.5, 410b27]] [[Iohannes Philoponus, Commentary on De Anima 1.5, 410b27 | Phlp. ''in De an.'' 1.5, 410b27]]}}, who speaks of the ‘so-called’ Orphic poems, probably believed (as {{#lemma: Cicero | [[Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 1. 107 | Cic. ''Nat. D.'' 1.107]]}} attests) that Orpheus had never existed. {{#lemma: Sextus Empiricus | [[Sextus Empiricus, Against the Professors of Liberal Arts 1.203 | Sext. Emp. ''Math.'' 1.203]]}} and {{#lemma: Josephus | [[Josephus, Αgainst Apion 1.12 | Joseph. ''Ap.'' 1.12]]}} asserted that there were no written works before Homer. {{#lemma: Some | [[Scholion to Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica 1.23 | Schol. Ap. Rhod. ''Arg.'' 1.23]]}} thought that there were two or more Orpheuses. The {{#lemma: ''Suda'' | [[Suda s.v. Orpheus | ''Suda'' s.v. Orpheus]]}} lists seven. {{#lemma: Popular opinion | [[Pausanias, Description of Greece 9.30.4-12 | Paus. 9.30.4-12]]}}, fortified and/or created by the political clout of Eleusis, apparently judged him a historical figure.

== Orpheus and the Underworld ==

By the early classical period, Orpheus’ power to lead rocks, trees and animals with his music is a {{#lemma: well-established tradition | [[Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica 1.23-34 | Ap. Rhod. ''Arg.'' 1.23-34]] [[Simonides, fragment 62 (PMG 567 Page) | Simon. fr. 62]][[Aeschylus, Agamemnon 1629-1632 | Aesch. ''Ag.'' 1629-32]] [[Euripides, Iphigenia at Aulis 1211-1215 | Eur. ''IA'' 1211-15]] [[Euripides, Bacchae 560-64 | Eur. ''Bacch.'' 560-4]] [[Euripides, Alcestis 357-62 | Eur. ''Alc.'' 357-62]]}}. This is no ordinary music-making, but ''psychagogia'', which extends to the souls of the dead. A remarkable papyrus found in the 1960s at Derveni in Thessaloniki offers an allegorical interpretation of an Orphic poem in conjunction with a ritual to appease the dead (see Most and Obbink 1999, Betegh 2004, Kouremenos, Parássoglou, and Tsantsanoglou 2006). Orpheus’ conquest of the Sirens already points in this direction; ''katabasis'' poetry in his name was probably circulating by the early classical period (see West 1983: 12-13, Herrero 2011). Virgil (''G.'' 453-558) and Ovid (''Met.'' 10.1-85) immortalized {{#lemma: the story, first attested in Euripides, that Orpheus descended to Hades to fetch his wife | [[Apollodorus Library 1.3.2 | [Apollod.] ''Bibl.'' 1.3.2]] [[Damagetus Palatine Anthology 7.9 | Damag. ''Anth.Pal.'' 7.9]] [[Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca Historica 4.25.1 | Diod. Sic. 4.25.1]] [[Pausanias, Description of Greece 9.30.4-12 | Paus. 9.30.4-12]] [[Euripides, Alcestis 357-62 | Eur. ''Alc.'' 357-62]] [[Isocrates, Busiris 10.8 Mathieu-Bremond | Isoc. ''Bus.'' 10.8]] [[Plato, Symposium 179d | Pl. ''Symp.'' 179d]] [[Conon Die Fragmente der Griechischen Historiker 26 F1, 45 | Conon, ''Narr.'' 45]]}}. But no extant version is unequivocal about the success of Orpheus’ mission (see Heath 1994, Sansone 1985). On {{#lemma: Polygnotus’ painting | [[Pausanias, Description of Greece 10.30.6 | Paus. 10.30.6]]}} of the underworld (ca. 460 BCE), Orpheus was shown without his wife; his earliest associations are with male groups (Graf 1987, Bremmer 1991). A fragment of the Hellenistic poet {{#lemma: Phanocles | [[Phanocles, fragment 1 Powell | Phanocl. fr. 1]]}} describes how Orpheus was decapitated by Thracian women because he introduced homosexuality to Thrace. Orpheus’ death at their hands is the most popular story about him in fifth-century iconography (see Lissarrague 1994); of the available explanations, sexual jealousy fits best with the images.

== Orpheus’ Talking Head ==

The famous story that Orpheus’ head travelled to Lesbos, still singing, after his death is first attested in {{#lemma: Phanocles | [[Phanocles, fragment 1 Powell | Phanocl. fr. 1]]}}, where it serves as an ''aition'' for the musicality of Lesbos. {{#lemma: Lucian | [[Lucian, Against the Unlettered Bibliomaniac 11-12 | Luc. ''Ind.'' 11-12]]}} connects Orpheus with a Lesbian shrine of Bacchos; {{#lemma: Philostratus | [[Philostratus, Heroikos 28.8-11 | Philostr. ''Her.'' 28.8-11]] [[Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana 4.14 | Philostr. ''VA'' 4.14]]}}, with a Lesbian oracle. But {{#lemma: Orpheus’ burial | [[Apollodorus Library 1.3.2 | [Apollod.] ''Bibl.'' 1.3.2]] [[Damagetus Palatine Anthology 7.9 | Damag. ''Anth.Pal.'' 7.9]] [[Pausanias, Description of Greece 9.30.4-12 | Paus. 9.30.4-12]] [[Conon Die Fragmente der Griechischen Historiker 26 F1, 45 | Conon, ''Narr.'' 45]] [[Eratosthenes Catasterisms 24 | [Eratosth.] ''Cat.'' 24]]}} is usually located in Pieria or Thrace and another story existed, in which the head remained on the mainland, dictating oracles and poetry to his pupil (or son), Musaeus. A late-fifth-century cup illustrates the process. {{#lemma: Euripides’ ''Alcestis'' | [[Euripides, Alcestis 962-72 | Eur. ''Alc.'' 962-72]]}} (438 BCE) contains a remarkable reference to charms on Thracian writing tablets which ‘the voice of Orpheus wrote down’. Almost exactly contemporary is a beautiful hydria, now in Basel, showing a naked man consulting the head in the presence of six Muses. The scene may be inspired by Aeschylus’ ''Bassarides'', in which, as we know from a summary in {{#lemma: Ps.-Eratosthenes | [[Eratosthenes Catasterisms 24 | [Eratosth.] ''Cat.'' 24]]}}, Orpheus was dismembered by Thracian followers of Dionysus because of his exclusive allegiance to Apollo. Following his death, his limbs were gathered up by the Muses. It is likely that they (and perhaps also Apollo) predicted the head’s future as an oracle. (See Burges Watson 2013. On the ''Bassarides'', see West 1990, Di Marco 1993, Seaford 2005, Burges Watson 2015).

== Mysteries ==

Di Marco has argued plausibly that the tragedy served as an aetiology for Orpheus’ connection with Bacchic mysteries. This probably begins with his supposed authorship of poetry used in Orphic/Bacchic rites, which {{#lemma: Herodotus | [[Herodotus, Histories 2.81 | Hdt. 2.81]]}} considers Egyptian and Pythagorean (on Orpheus’ connection with Bacchic rites and Pythagoreans see especially Burkert 1977, 1982, 2006). The name Dionysus appears on bone tablets from Olbia in the Black Sea in conjunction with a reference to ‘Orphics’ and juxtapositions equating the soul with truth and the body with falsehood (see Orph. 463-5 Bernabé, West 1982, Zhmud’ 1992). The only story about the god with which Orpheus was connected in the classical period is the myth of Dionysus Zagreus, son of Zeus and Persephone, who was dismembered and eaten by the Titans, man’s ancestors (see Bernabé 2002, Henrichs 2011). Man is imprisoned in the body in punishment for this crime. {{#lemma: Pausanias | [[Pausanias, Description of Greece 8.37.5 | Paus. 8.37.5]]}} ascribed the myth to Onomacritus, who edited the Homeric poems in the Peisistratid era and was accused of forging oracles of Musaeus. Gold leaves with instructions for the afterlife, some of which seem to refer to the myth, have been found in tombs across the Mediterranean. (See Graf and Johnston 2007, Bernabé and San Cristóbal 2008, Edmonds 2011.) In Plato’s {{#lemma: ''Meno'' | [[Plato, Meno 81a-c | Pl. ''Men.'' 81a-c]]}}, Socrates says that the myth is interpreted by wise priests and priestesses as an allegory about reincarnation. In the ''Cratylus'' (400c), he attributes to ‘followers of Orpheus’ the doctrine that the soul is imprisoned in the body as a punishment for certain crimes. The ''Phaedo''’s dualism draws on the same mystical environment (61e-62c, 69c-d with Xenocrates fr. 21 Isnardi Parente=Orph. 38. On Plato and Orpheus, see Bernabé 1998, 2011).

== Orpheus in Late Antiquity ==

Reincarnation is a doctrine associated principally with Pythagoras; it is unlikely that it was ever taught at Eleusis, where Orpheus seems to have been known as the author of eschatological poems (Graf 1974). As early as Herodotus, the Greeks equated the stories of Demeter and Dionysus with those of Isis and Osiris; hence Herodotus’ assertion that Orphic rites are really Egyptian. {{#lemma: Diodorus | [[Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca Historica 4.25.1 | Diod. Sic. 4.25.1]]}}, following Hecataeus of Abdera, says that Orpheus brought the mysteries from Egypt. Hellenistic Jews such as {{#lemma: Artapanus | [[Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica 9.27.3 | Euseb. ''Praep. evang.'' 9.27.3]]}} said that he had been taught by Moses (= Musaeus—the previous teacher-student roles are reversed) and composed an Orphic poem proclaiming monotheism. Christian apologists embrace both this Egyptian tradition and Orpheus’ Argonautic credentials, making him the fount of all pagan wisdom whose positive elements thereby acquire a Biblical source. More frequently, however, apologists portray Orpheus as the quintessential theologian of polytheistic falsehoods. His music is almost never mentioned: in a rare reference, {{#lemma: Clement of Alexandria | [[Clement of Alexandria, Protrepticus 1.3.1 | Clem. Al. ''Protr.'' 1.31.1]]}} makes him the singer of deceitful mysteries. (On Christian attitudes to Orpheus, see Herrero 2010). Late Neoplatonists, on the other hand, adopt Orpheus as the champion of Greek religion, who provides divine authorization for their own teachings, elicited through allegorical interpretation of his poetry. {{#lemma: Proclus | [[Proclus, In Theologian Platonis I 5 | Procl. ''Theol. Plat.'' I 5]]}} states that all Greek theology is based on Orphic teachings, drawing a direct line from Orpheus, via Pythagoras, to Plato. It is through the Neoplatonist tradition that Orpheus is adopted in Renaissance Florence as the symbol of music’s centrality in the cosmos. He becomes a figurehead for the Florentine Camerata, who assure him a key place in the burgeoning genre of opera.

----

== Bibliography ==

<div id="bibliography">
* Bernabé, A. 1998. ‘Platone e l’Orfismo.’ In G. Sfameni Gasparro (ed.), ''Destino e salvezza: tra culti pagani e gnosi cristiana. Itinerari storico-religiosi sulle orme di Ugo Bianchi.'' Cosenza: 33-93.
** 2002. ‘La toile de Pénélope.’ ''RHR'' 219: 401-33.
** 2004/2005. ''Poetae epici Graeci, testimonia et fragmenta.'' Pars II, fasc. 1-2: ''Orphicorum et Orphicis similium testimonia et fragmenta.'' Munich.
** 2011. ''Platón y el orfismo.'' Madrid.
* Bernabé, A. and Jiménez San Cristóbal, A. 2008. ''Instructions for the Netherworld: the Orphic Gold Tablets.'' Transl. M. Chase. Leiden.
* Bernabé, A. and Casadesús, F. (eds.) 2009. ''Orfeo y la tradición órfica: un reencuentro.'' Madrid.
* Betegh, G. 2004. ''The Derveni Papyrus: Cosmology, Theology and Interpretation.'' Cambridge.
* Bremmer, J. 1991. ‘From Guru to Gay.’ In P. Bourgeaud (ed.) 1991, ''Orphisme et Orphée: en l’honneur de Jean Rudhardt.'' Geneva: 13-30.
* Burges Watson, S. 2013. ‘Muses of Lesbos or (Aeschylean) Muses of Pieria? Orpheus’ Head on a Fifth-century Hydria.’ ''GRBS'' 53.3: 441-60.
** 2015. ‘''Mousikê'' and Mysteries: A Nietzschean Reading of Aeschylus’ ''Bassarides''.’ Forthcoming, ''CQ''.
* Burkert, W. 1977. ‘Orphism and Bacchic Mysteries: New Evidence and Old Problems of Interpretation.’ In Burkert 2006. 37-46.
** 1982. ‘Craft versus Sect: the Problem of the Orphics and Pythagoreans.’ In Burkert 2006. 191-216.
** 2006. ''Kleine Schriften III: Mystica, Orphica, Pythagorica.'' ed. F. Graf. Göttingen.
* Di Marco, M. 1993. ‘Dioniso ed Orfeo nelle Bassaridi di Eschilo.’ In A. Masaracchia (ed.) 1993, ''Orfeo e l’orfismo. Atti del seminario nazionale.'' Rome: 101-53.
* Edmonds, R. (ed.) 2011. ''The ‘Orphic’ Gold Tablets and Greek Religion: Further Along the Path.'' Cambridge.
* Graf, F. 1974. ''Eleusis und die orphische Dichtung Athens in vorhellenistischer Zeit.'' Berlin.
** 1987. ‘Orpheus: a Poet among Men.’ In J. Bremmer (ed.) 1987, ''Interpretations of Greek Mythology.'' London: 80-106.
* Graf, F. and Johnston, S. I. 2007. ''Ritual Texts for the Afterlife.'' London.
* Guthrie. W. 1935. ''Orpheus and Greek Religion: a Study of the Orphic Movement.'' London.
* Heath, J. 1994. ‘The Failure of Orpheus.’ ''TAPA'' 124: 163-96.
* Henrichs, A. 2010. ‘Mystika, Orphika, Dionysiaka: Esoterische Gruppenbildungen, Glaubensinhalte und Verhaltensweisen in der griechischen Religion.’ In A. Bierl and W. Braungart (eds.) 2010, ''Gewalt und Opfer. Im Dialog mit Walter Burkert. MythosEikonPoiesis'' 2. Berlin: 87-114.
** 2011. ‘Dionysus Dismembered and Restored to Life: the Earliest Evidence (''OF'' 59 I-II).’ In M. Herrero de Jáuregui, A. Jiménez, E. Luján, R. Martín, M. Santamaría, and S. Torallas (eds.) 2011, ''Tracing Orpheus: Studies on Orphic Fragments in Honour of Alberto Bernabé.'' Berlin: 61-68.
* Herrero de Jáuregui, M. 2010. ''Orphism and Christianity in Late Antiquity.'' Berlin.
** 2011. ‘Priam’s ''Catabasis'': Traces of the Epic Journey to Hades in ''Iliad'' 24.’ ''TAPA'' 141.1: 37-68.
* Kouremenos, T., Parássoglou G. and Tsantsanoglou K. 2006. ''The Derveni Papyrus. Edited with Introduction and Commentary.'' Florence.
* Laks, A. and Most G. (eds.) 1997. ''Studies on the Derveni Papyrus.'' Oxford.
* Linforth, I. 1941. ''The Arts of Orpheus.'' London.
* Lissarrague, F. 1994. ‘Orphée mis à mort.’ ''Musica e storia'' 2: 269-307.
* Sansone, D. 1985. ‘Orpheus and Eurydice in the Fifth Century.’ ''CM'' 36: 53-64.
* Seaford, R. 2005. ‘Mystic Light in Aeschylus’ ''Bassarai''.’ ''CQ'' 55: 602-6.
* Segal, C. 1989. ''Orpheus: the Myth of the Poet.'' Baltimore.
* West, M. L. 1982. ‘The Orphics of Olbia.’ ''ZPE'' 45: 17-29.
** 1983. ''The Orphic Poems.'' Oxford.
** 1990. ‘The Lycurgus Trilogy.’ In M. L. West (ed.) 1990, ''Studies in Aeschylus.'' Stuttgart: 26-50.
** 2005. ‘''Odyssey'' and ''Argonautica''.’ ''CQ'' 55: 39-64.
* Zhmud’, L. 1992. ‘Orphism and Graffiti from Olbia.’ ''Hermes'' 120: 159-68.
</div>

</div>
<div id="notes"></div>

[[Category:Guides by Sarah Burges Watson]]

Orpheus: A Guide to Selected Sources

2015-11-15T16:48:45Z

NickFreer: /* Bibliography */

{{GuideHighlightBox}}
'''''Sarah Burges Watson'''''
{{#howtoquote:}}
<div id="guide">{{GuideTextsBy|Sarah Burges Watson}}
Orpheus is the archetypal musician of Greek myth, whose singing enchants all of nature and even the realm of the dead. His mother is Calliope, Muse of epic. His {{#lemma: father | [[Pindar, fragment 128c 11-12 Snell-Maehler | Pind. fr. 128c 11-12]] [[Pindar, Pythian 4.176-7 | Pind. ''Pyth.'' 4.176-7]] [[Scholion to Pindar Pythian 4, 313a | Schol. Pind. ''Pyth.'' 4, 313a]]}} is sometimes Apollo, but usually the Thracian Oeagrus—a river god, according to {{#lemma: Servius | [[Servius, Commentary to the Aeneid 6.645 | Serv. ''in Aen.'' 6.645]]}}. By the Classical period, Orpheus is known as the author of mystical hexameter poetry and {{#lemma: founder of mysteries | [[Apollodorus Library 1.3.2 | [Apollod.] ''Bibl.'' 1.3.2]] [[Damagetus Palatine Anthology 7.9 | Damag. ''Anth.Pal.'' 7.9]] [[Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca Historica 5.64.4 | Diod. Sic. 5.64.4]] [[Aristophanes, Frogs 1030-6 | Ar. ''Ran.'' 1030-6]] [[Euripides Rhesus 941-7 | [Eur.] ''Rhes.'' 941-7]] [[Demosthenes 25.11 Against Aristogeiton 1 | [Dem.] 25.11]] [[Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca Historica 4.25.1 | Diod. Sic. 4.25.1]]}}, most importantly at Eleusis (Graf 1974). Accounting for the relationship between his mythical, mystical and authorial identities proves a challenge for the many interested parties.

== The Antiquity of Orpheus ==

Our earliest evidence for the ‘kitharode’ (lyre-singer) is a fragmentary relief from Delphi, dated to ca. 575 BCE, on which he appears beside the Argo. A {{#lemma: scholion to Apollonius | [[Scholion to Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica 1.23 | Schol. Ap. Rhod. ''Arg.'' 1.23]]}} says that it was a matter of scholarly dispute why Orpheus, who lacked strength, had sailed with the heroes. {{#lemma: Apollonius | [[Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica 1.23-34 | Ap. Rhod. ''Arg.'' 1.23-34]]}} gives him first position in the catalogue of Argonauts, accepting the tradition, probably recounted in early epic (West 2005), that Orpheus accompanied the Argonauts to ensure them safe passage past the Sirens. Orpheus’ Argonautic status gives him indisputable priority over Homer, since the Argonauts belonged to the generation before the Trojan War. {{#lemma: An apparently canonical sequence — Orpheus, Musaeus, Hesiod, Homer | [[Hippias of Elis, 86 B6 Diels-Kranz | Hippias of Elis 86 B6 D-K]] [[Aristophanes, Frogs 1030-6 | Ar. ''Ran.'' 1030-6]] [[Plato, Apology 41a | Pl. ''Ap.'' 41a]]}} — is attested in several authors from the classical period onwards, but already in the classical period doubts were expressed about authorship of Orphic poems, {{#lemma: some of which were thought to have been written by Pythagoreans | [[Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis (Miscellanies) 1.21.131 | Clem. Al. ''Strom.'' 1.21.131]] [[Suda s.v. Orpheus | ''Suda'' s.v. Orpheus]]}}. {{#lemma: Aristotle | [[Aristotle, On the Generation of Animals 2.1, 734a 16 | Arist. ''Gen. an.'' 2.1, 734a16]] [[Aristotle, On the Soul 1.5, 410b27 | Arist. ''De an.'' 1.5, 410b27]] [[Iohannes Philoponus, Commentary on De Anima 1.5, 410b27 | Phlp. ''in De an.'' 1.5, 410b27]]}}, who speaks of the ‘so-called’ Orphic poems, probably believed (as {{#lemma: Cicero | [[Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 1. 107 | Cic. ''Nat. D.'' 1.107]]}} attests) that Orpheus had never existed. {{#lemma: Sextus Empiricus | [[Sextus Empiricus, Against the Professors of Liberal Arts 1.203 | Sext. Emp. ''Math.'' 1.203]]}} and {{#lemma: Josephus | [[Josephus, Αgainst Apion 1.12 | Joseph. ''Ap.'' 1.12]]}} asserted that there were no written works before Homer. {{#lemma: Some | [[Scholion to Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica 1.23 | Schol. Ap. Rhod. ''Arg.'' 1.23]]}} thought that there were two or more Orpheuses. The {{#lemma: ''Suda'' | [[Suda s.v. Orpheus | ''Suda'' s.v. Orpheus]]}} lists seven. {{#lemma: Popular opinion | [[Pausanias, Description of Greece 9.30.4-12 | Paus. 9.30.4-12]]}}, fortified and/or created by the political clout of Eleusis, apparently judged him a historical figure.

== Orpheus and the Underworld ==

By the early classical period, Orpheus’ power to lead rocks, trees and animals with his music is a {{#lemma: well-established tradition | [[Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica 1.23-34 | Ap. Rhod. ''Arg.'' 1.23-34]] [[Simonides, fragment 62 (PMG 567 Page) | Simon. fr. 62]][[Aeschylus, Agamemnon 1629-1632 | Aesch. ''Ag.'' 1629-32]] [[Euripides, Iphigenia at Aulis 1211-1215 | Eur. ''IA'' 1211-15]] [[Euripides, Bacchae 560-64 | Eur. ''Bacch.'' 560-4]] [[Euripides, Alcestis 357-62 | Eur. ''Alc.'' 357-62]]}}. This is no ordinary music-making, but ''psychagogia'', which extends to the souls of the dead. A remarkable papyrus found in the 1960s at Derveni in Thessaloniki offers an allegorical interpretation of an Orphic poem in conjunction with a ritual to appease the dead (see Most and Obbink 1999, Betegh 2004, Kouremenos, Parássoglou, and Tsantsanoglou 2006). Orpheus’ conquest of the Sirens already points in this direction; ''katabasis'' poetry in his name was probably circulating by the early classical period (see West 1983: 12-13, Herrero 2011). Virgil (''G.'' 453-558) and Ovid (''Met.'' 10.1-85) immortalized {{#lemma: the story, first attested in Euripides, that Orpheus descended to Hades to fetch his wife | [[Apollodorus Library 1.3.2 | [Apollod.] ''Bibl.'' 1.3.2]] [[Damagetus Palatine Anthology 7.9 | Damag. ''Anth.Pal.'' 7.9]] [[Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca Historica 4.25.1 | Diod. Sic. 4.25.1]] [[Pausanias, Description of Greece 9.30.4-12 | Paus. 9.30.4-12]] [[Euripides, Alcestis 357-62 | Eur. ''Alc.'' 357-62]] [[Isocrates, Busiris 10.8 Mathieu-Bremond | Isoc. ''Bus.'' 10.8]] [[Plato, Symposium 179d | Pl. ''Symp.'' 179d]] [[Conon Die Fragmente der Griechischen Historiker 26 F1, 45 | Conon, ''Narr.'' 45]]}}. But no extant version is unequivocal about the success of Orpheus’ mission (see Heath 1994, Sansone 1985). On {{#lemma: Polygnotus’ painting | [[Pausanias, Description of Greece 10.30.6 | Paus. 10.30.6]]}} of the underworld (ca. 460 BCE), Orpheus was shown without his wife; his earliest associations are with male groups (Graf 1987, Bremmer 1991). A fragment of the Hellenistic poet {{#lemma: Phanocles | [[Phanocles, fragment 1 Powell | Phanocl. fr. 1]]}} describes how Orpheus was decapitated by Thracian women because he introduced homosexuality to Thrace. Orpheus’ death at their hands is the most popular story about him in fifth-century iconography (see Lissarrague 1994); of the available explanations, sexual jealousy fits best with the images.

== Orpheus’ Talking Head ==

The famous story that Orpheus’ head travelled to Lesbos, still singing, after his death is first attested in {{#lemma: Phanocles | [[Phanocles, fragment 1 Powell | Phanocl. fr. 1]]}}, where it serves as an ''aition'' for the musicality of Lesbos. {{#lemma: Lucian | [[Lucian, Against the Unlettered Bibliomaniac 11-12 | Luc. ''Ind.'' 11-12]]}} connects Orpheus with a Lesbian shrine of Bacchos; {{#lemma: Philostratus | [[Philostratus, Heroikos 28.8-11 | Philostr. ''Her.'' 28.8-11]] [[Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana 4.14 | Philostr. ''VA'' 4.14]]}}, with a Lesbian oracle. But {{#lemma: Orpheus’ burial | [[Apollodorus Library 1.3.2 | [Apollod.] ''Bibl.'' 1.3.2]] [[Damagetus Palatine Anthology 7.9 | Damag. ''Anth.Pal.'' 7.9]] [[Pausanias, Description of Greece 9.30.4-12 | Paus. 9.30.4-12]] [[Conon Die Fragmente der Griechischen Historiker 26 F1, 45 | Conon, ''Narr.'' 45]] [[Eratosthenes Catasterisms 24 | [Eratosth.] ''Cat.'' 24]]}} is usually located in Pieria or Thrace and another story existed, in which the head remained on the mainland, dictating oracles and poetry to his pupil (or son), Musaeus. A late-fifth-century cup illustrates the process. {{#lemma: Euripides’ ''Alcestis'' | [[Euripides, Alcestis 962-72 | Eur. ''Alc.'' 962-72]]}} (438 BCE) contains a remarkable reference to charms on Thracian writing tablets which ‘the voice of Orpheus wrote down’. Almost exactly contemporary is a beautiful hydria, now in Basel, showing a naked man consulting the head in the presence of six Muses. The scene may be inspired by Aeschylus’ ''Bassarides'', in which, as we know from a summary in {{#lemma: Ps.-Eratosthenes | [[Eratosthenes Catasterisms 24 | [Eratosth.] ''Cat.'' 24]]}}, Orpheus was dismembered by Thracian followers of Dionysus because of his exclusive allegiance to Apollo. Following his death, his limbs were gathered up by the Muses. It is likely that they (and perhaps also Apollo) predicted the head’s future as an oracle. (See Burges Watson 2013. On the ''Bassarides'', see West 1990, Di Marco 1993, Seaford 2005, Burges Watson 2015).

== Mysteries ==

Di Marco has argued plausibly that the tragedy served as an aetiology for Orpheus’ connection with Bacchic mysteries. This probably begins with his supposed authorship of poetry used in Orphic/Bacchic rites, which {{#lemma: Herodotus | [[Herodotus, Histories 2.81 | Hdt. 2.81]]}} considers Egyptian and Pythagorean (on Orpheus’ connection with Bacchic rites and Pythagoreans see especially Burkert 1977, 1982, 2006). The name Dionysus appears on bone tablets from Olbia in the Black Sea in conjunction with a reference to ‘Orphics’ and juxtapositions equating the soul with truth and the body with falsehood (see Orph. 463-5 Bernabé, West 1982, Zhmud’ 1992). The only story about the god with which Orpheus was connected in the classical period is the myth of Dionysus Zagreus, son of Zeus and Persephone, who was dismembered and eaten by the Titans, man’s ancestors (see Bernabé 2002, Henrichs 2011). Man is imprisoned in the body in punishment for this crime. {{#lemma: Pausanias | [[Pausanias, Description of Greece 8.37.5 | Paus. 8.37.5]]}} ascribed the myth to Onomacritus, who edited the Homeric poems in the Peisistratid era and was accused of forging oracles of Musaeus. Gold leaves with instructions for the afterlife, some of which seem to refer to the myth, have been found in tombs across the Mediterranean. (See Graf and Johnston 2007, Bernabé and San Cristóbal 2008, Edmonds 2011.) In Plato’s {{#lemma: ''Meno'' | [[Plato, Meno 81a-c | Pl. ''Men.'' 81a-c]]}}, Socrates says that the myth is interpreted by wise priests and priestesses as an allegory about reincarnation. In the ''Cratylus'' (400c), he attributes to ‘followers of Orpheus’ the doctrine that the soul is imprisoned in the body as a punishment for certain crimes. The ''Phaedo''’s dualism draws on the same mystical environment (61e-62c, 69c-d with Xenocrates fr. 21 Isnardi Parente=Orph. 38. On Plato and Orpheus, see Bernabé 1998, 2011).

== Orpheus in Late Antiquity ==

Reincarnation is a doctrine associated principally with Pythagoras; it is unlikely that it was ever taught at Eleusis, where Orpheus seems to have been known as the author of eschatological poems (Graf 1974). As early as Herodotus, the Greeks equated the stories of Demeter and Dionysus with those of Isis and Osiris; hence Herodotus’ assertion that Orphic rites are really Egyptian. {{#lemma: Diodorus | [[Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca Historica 4.25.1 | Diod. Sic. 4.25.1]]}}, following Hecataeus of Abdera, says that Orpheus brought the mysteries from Egypt. Hellenistic Jews such as {{#lemma: Artapanus | [[Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica 9.27.3 | Euseb. ''Praep. evang.'' 9.27.3]]}} said that he had been taught by Moses (= Musaeus—the previous teacher-student roles are reversed) and composed an Orphic poem proclaiming monotheism. Christian apologists embrace both this Egyptian tradition and Orpheus’ Argonautic credentials, making him the fount of all pagan wisdom whose positive elements thereby acquire a Biblical source. More frequently, however, apologists portray Orpheus as the quintessential theologian of polytheistic falsehoods. His music is almost never mentioned: in a rare reference, {{#lemma: Clement of Alexandria | [[Clement of Alexandria, Protrepticus 1.3.1 | Clem. Al. ''Protr.'' 1.31.1]]}} makes him the singer of deceitful mysteries. (On Christian attitudes to Orpheus, see Herrero 2010). Late Neoplatonists, on the other hand, adopt Orpheus as the champion of Greek religion, who provides divine authorization for their own teachings, elicited through allegorical interpretation of his poetry. {{#lemma: Proclus | [[Proclus, In Theologian Platonis I 5 | Procl. ''Theol. Plat.'' I 5]]}} states that all Greek theology is based on Orphic teachings, drawing a direct line from Orpheus, via Pythagoras, to Plato. It is through the Neoplatonist tradition that Orpheus is adopted in Renaissance Florence as the symbol of music’s centrality in the cosmos. He becomes a figurehead for the Florentine Camerata, who assure him a key place in the burgeoning genre of opera.

----

== Bibliography ==

<div id="bibliography">
* Bernabé, A. 1998. ‘Platone e l’Orfismo.’ In G. Sfameni Gasparro (ed.), ''Destino e salvezza: tra culti pagani e gnosi cristiana. Itinerari storico-religiosi sulle orme di Ugo Bianchi.'' Cosenza: 33-93.
** 2002. ‘La toile de Pénélope.’ ''RHR'' 219: 401-33.
** 2004/2005. ''Poetae epici Graeci, testimonia et fragmenta.'' Pars II, fasc. 1-2: ''Orphicorum et Orphicis similium testimonia et fragmenta.'' Munich.
** 2011. ''Platón y el orfismo.'' Madrid.
* Bernabé, A. and Jiménez San Cristóbal, A. 2008. ''Instructions for the Netherworld: the Orphic Gold Tablets.'' Transl. M. Chase. Leiden.
* Bernabé, A. and Casadesús, F. (eds.) 2009. ''Orfeo y la tradición órfica: un reencuentro.'' Madrid.
* Betegh, G. 2004. ''The Derveni Papyrus: Cosmology, Theology and Interpretation.'' Cambridge.
* Bremmer, J. 1991. ‘From Guru to Gay.’ In P. Bourgeaud (ed.) 1991, ''Orphisme et Orphée: en l’honneur de Jean Rudhardt.'' Geneva: 13-30.
* Burges Watson, S. 2013. ‘Muses of Lesbos or (Aeschylean) Muses of Pieria? Orpheus’ Head on a Fifth-century Hydria.’ ''GRBS'' 53.3: 441-60.
** 2015. ‘''Mousikê'' and Mysteries: A Nietzschean Reading of Aeschylus’ ''Bassarides''.’ Forthcoming, ''CQ''.
* Burkert, W. 1977. ‘Orphism and Bacchic Mysteries: New Evidence and Old Problems of Interpretation.’ In Burkert 2006. 37-46.
** 1982. ‘Craft versus Sect: the Problem of the Orphics and Pythagoreans.’ In Burkert 2006. 191-216.
** 2006. ''Kleine Schriften III: Mystica, Orphica, Pythagorica.'' ed. F. Graf. Göttingen.
* Di Marco, M. 1993. ‘Dioniso ed Orfeo nelle Bassaridi di Eschilo.’ In A. Masaracchia ed. ''Orfeo e l’orfismo. Atti del seminario nazionale.'' Rome. 101-53.
* Edmonds, R. ed. 2011. ''The ‘Orphic’ Gold Tablets and Greek Religion: Further Along the Path.'' Cambridge.
* Graf, F. 1974. ''Eleusis und die orphische Dichtung Athens in vorhellenistischer Zeit.'' Berlin.
** 1987. ‘Orpheus: a Poet among Men.’ In J. Bremmer ed. ''Interpretations of Greek Mythology.'' London. 80-106.
* Graf, F. and Johnston, S. I. 2007. ''Ritual Texts for the Afterlife.'' London.
* Guthrie. W. 1935. ''Orpheus and Greek Religion: a Study of the Orphic Movement.'' London.
* Heath, J. 1994. ‘The Failure of Orpheus.’ ''TAPA'' 124: 163-96.
* Henrichs, A. 2010. ‘Mystika, Orphika, Dionysiaka: Esoterische Gruppenbildungen, Glaubensinhalte und Verhaltensweisen in der griechischen Religion.’ In A. Bierl and W. Braungart eds. ''Gewalt und Opfer. Im Dialog mit Walter Burkert. MythosEikonPoiesis'' 2. Berlin. 87-114.
** 2011. ‘Dionysus Dismembered and Restored to Life: the Earliest Evidence (''OF'' 59 I-II).’ In M. Herrero de Jáuregui, A. Jiménez, E. Luján, R. Martín, M. Santamaría, S. Torallas eds. ''Tracing Orpheus: Studies on Orphic Fragments in Honour of Alberto Bernabé.'' Berlin. 61-68.
* Herrero de Jáuregui, M. 2010. ''Orphism and Christianity in Late Antiquity.'' Berlin.
** 2011. ‘Priam’s ''Catabasis'': Traces of the Epic Journey to Hades in ''Iliad'' 24.’ ''TAPA'' 141.1: 37-68.
* Kouremenos, T., Parássoglou G. and Tsantsanoglou K. 2006. ''The Derveni Papyrus. Edited with Introduction and Commentary.'' Florence.
* Linforth, I. 1941. ''The Arts of Orpheus.'' London.
* Lissarrague, F. 1994. ‘Orphée mis à mort.’ ''Musica e storia'' 2: 269-307.
* Most G. and Obbink D. 1997. ''Studies on the Derveni Papyrus.'' Oxford.
* Sansone, D. 1985. ‘Orpheus and Eurydice in the Fifth Century.’ ''CM'' 36: 53-64.
* Seaford, R. 2005. ‘Mystic Light in Aeschylus’ ''Bassarai''.’ ''CQ'' 55: 602-6.
* Segal, C. 1989. ''Orpheus: the Myth of the Poet.'' Baltimore.
* West, M. 1982. ‘The Orphics of Olbia.’ ''ZPE'' 45: 17-29.
** 1983. ''The Orphic Poems.'' Oxford.
** 1990. ‘The Lycurgus Trilogy.’ In ''Studies in Aeschylus.'' Stuttgart. 26-50.
** 2005. ‘''Odyssey'' and ''Argonautica''.’ ''CQ'' 55: 39-64.
* Zhmud’, L. 1992. ‘Orphism and Graffiti from Olbia.’ ''Hermes'' 120: 159-68.
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[[Category:Guides by Sarah Burges Watson]]

Hesiod: A Guide to Selected Sources

2015-11-15T16:42:34Z

NickFreer: /* Bibliography */

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{{Author|Sarah Burges Watson}}
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Hesiod’s existential status is uncertain. His name is attached to a number of archaic epics, products of a tradition in which concepts of authorship differed both from our own and from those of later ancient readers. Ancient perplexities are reflected in the fluctuation of Hesiod’s corpus: nineteen poems were variously ascribed to him (see Kivilo 2010: 37); in late antiquity, the number had dwindled to three: ''Theogony'', ''Works and Days'' (''Op.'') and the ''Shield of Heracles'' (see West 1966: 48-52). These are the only ‘Hesiodic’ poems to have survived complete. Notably absent is the ''Catalogue of Women'', which followed on from the ''Theogony'' in the version known to Hellenistic scholars. Of Hesiod’s other poems we have titles and, in some cases, fragments.

== Embedded Autobiography ==

Hesiod refers to himself by name at {{#lemma: ''Theogony'' 22 | [[Hesiod, Theogony 22-34|Hes. ''Theog.'' 22-34]]}}, suggesting a connection with the formula ὄσσαν ἱεῖσαι (‘sending forth a voice’), used three times of the Muses in the proem (Nagy 2009: 287-8). While he pastures his flocks on Mount Helicon, the Muses breathe song into him. The poet’s name and his poetic initiation are thus intertwined and a quasi-autobiography is embedded in the ''Theogony''. The {{#lemma: ''Works and Days'' | [[Hesiod, Works and Days 27-41|Hes. ''Op.'' 27-41]] [[Hesiod, Works and Days 270-2|Hes. ''Op.'' 270-2]] [[Hesiod, Works and Days 633-40|Hes. ''Op.'' 633-40]] [[Hesiod, Works and Days 646-62|Hes. ''Op.'' 646-62]]}} gives a more human slant to Hesiod’s autobiographical passages, matching his didactic persona. References to the ''Theogony'' sequence Hesiod’s ''oeuvre'' in a manner imitated by later poets, notably Virgil (Most 1993, Haubold 2010, Hardie 2010). These ‘autobiographies’ engender biographical traditions probably fostered by performers and cults of Hesiod as well as rival groups, such as the Chian Homeridae.

== Sources ==

Our knowledge of traditions about Hesiod derives from (1) the accounts of his life in a tenth-century lexicon, the {{#lemma: ''Suda'' | [[Suda, s.v. Hesiod|''Suda'', s.v. Hesiod]]}}, and in the {{#lemma: ''Vita'' | [[Tzetzes, Life of Hesiod|Tzetz. ''Vit. Hes.'']]}} of Tzetzes (twelfth century), who draws on the Neoplatonist Proclus’ ''Vita'' (not extant). (2) The so-called {{#lemma: ''Certamen Homeri et Hesiodi'' | [[Certamen|''Certamen'']]}} or ''Contest of Hesiod and Homer'', based on Alcidamas’ ''Mouseion'' (fourth century BCE), which, again, draws on earlier traditions. (3) Scattered ancient references (Jacoby 1930, Most 2006), Plutarch being a particularly important source. A Boeotian by origin, he wrote a (lost) biography on Hesiod and a commentary on the ''Works and Days'' which Proclus quotes extensively in his own commentary, of which we have fragments.

== Poetic Genealogy and ‘Family’ ==

{{#lemma: Fifth-century genealogies | [[Proclus, Chrestomathy 1|Procl. ''Chr.'' 1]]}}, doubtless promoted by Orphic/Eleusinian interests, made Hesiod and Homer cousins of one another and descendants of Orpheus, who was represented as the oldest poet. {{#lemma: Several authors | [[Hippias of Elis, 86 B6 Diels-Kranz|Hippias of Elis, 86 B6 D-K]] [[Aristophanes, Frogs 1030-6|Ar. ''Ran'' 1030-6]] [[Plato, Apology 41a|Pl. ''Ap.'' 41a]]}} attest to an apparently canonical sequence: Orpheus, Musaeus, Hesiod, Homer. (See [[Orpheus: A Guide to Selected Sources]]). {{#lemma: Herodotus | [[Herodotus, Histories 2.53|Hdt. 2.53]]}} rejects the tradition that Orpheus and Musaeus preceded Hesiod and Homer, and assumes that Homer and Hesiod were contemporaries. The ''Certamen'' story depends on this view. {{#lemma: Hesiod’s age | [[Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies (Stromateis) 1.21, 117.1|Clem. Al. ''Strom'' 1.21, 117.1]] [[Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers 5.87, 5.92 (Heraclides)|Diog. Laert. 5.87, 5.92]] [[Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights 3.11.1|Gell. ''NA'' 3.11.1]] [[Plutarch, Consolation to Apollonius 105d|[Plut.] ''Consol. ad Apoll.'' 105d]] [[Tzetzes, Life of Hesiod|Tzetz. ''Vit. Hes.'' (ch. 4)]] [[Certamen 4|''Certamen'' 4]] [[Certamen 5|''Certamen'' 5]]}} was hotly debated throughout antiquity (see Graziosi 2002: 100-10, Kivilo 2010: 12-17, Koning 2010: 40-55, Nagy 2010: 336-341), his relation to Homer being a fundamental preoccupation of his reception history (Koning 2010).

Hesiod’s father is named Dios perhaps through a misreading of ''Works and Days'' 299, or to suggest a connection with Zeus (genitive: Dios). In the {{#lemma: ''Works and Days'' (633-640) | [[Hesiod, Works and Days 633-40|Hes. ''Op.'' 633-40]]}}, he flees poverty in Aeolian Cyme for Boeotian Ascra. The {{#lemma: ''Suda'' | [[Suda, s.v. Hesiod|''Suda'', s.v. Hesiod]]}} and Tzetzes’ {{#lemma: ''Vita'' | [[Tzetzes, Life of Hesiod|Tzetz. ''Vit. Hes.'' (ch. 1)]]}} report this as a factual statement about Hesiod’s origins. It may also be an aetiology for the Aeolic strand in Hesiod’s (predominantly Ionic) dialect (Nagy 2009: 290-4). A (didactic-sounding) mother is added: ''Pycimede'' (‘wise-counselling’). His brother Perses, the didactic addressee in ''Works and Days'', who appropriates Hesiod’s inheritance by bribing the kings ({{#lemma: 27-41 | [[Hesiod, Works and Days 27-41|Hes. ''Op.'' 27-41]]}}), is considered historical by most, {{#lemma: but not all | [[Scholion, Hesiod Works and Days Prolegomena B 13-16|Schol. Hes. ''Op. Proleg.'' B 13-16]] [[Scholion to Hesiod Works and Days 27a, p. 17 Pertusi|Schol. Hes. ''Op.'' 27a]]}} ancient readers. A son is provided (see {{#lemma: ''Works and Days'' 270-2 | [[Hesiod, Works and Days 270-2|Hes. ''Op.'' 270-2]]}} with {{#lemma: scholion | [[Scholion to Hesiod’s Works and Days 271a|Schol. Hes. ''Op.'' 271a]]}}); according to the Aristotelian {{#lemma: ''Constitution of Orchomenus'' | [[Tzetzes, Life of Hesiod|Tzetz. ''Vit. Hes.'' (ch. 7)]]}}, he was Stesichorus. (On Hesiod’s family, see further Kivilo 2010: 8-11).

== Hesiod versus Homer ==

According to {{#lemma: Eustathius | [[Eustathius, Commentary on Homer’s Iliad 1.4.28|Eust. ''Il.'' 1.4.28]]}}, the Chian Homeridae considered it heresy even to mention the contest between Homer and Hesiod (see Nagy 2010: 62-3). The tradition was based on {{#lemma: ''Works and Days'' 650-62 | [[Hesiod, Works and Days 646-62|Hes. ''Op.'' 646-62]]}}, where Hesiod refers to his victory in a poetry competition for the funeral games of Amphidamas (see Graziosi 2002: 168-80). In a {{#lemma: textual variant of ''Works and Days'' 657 | [[Scholion to Works and Days 657a, p. 206 Pertusi|Schol. Hes. ''Op.'' 657a]]}}, Homer is named as the antagonist. The contest takes place across the strait from Aulis, where the Greek fleet assembles in the ''Iliad''. Following an invocation to the Muses (''Iliad'' 2.484-7), the ships are enumerated in a lengthy catalogue. Hesiod claims to have dedicated his tripod on Helicon ({{#lemma: ''Works and Days'' 658-9 | [[Hesiod, Works and Days 646-62|Hes. ''Op.'' 646-62]]}}), where it was {{#lemma: displayed in Pausanias’ time | [[Pausanias, Description of Greece 9.31.3|Paus. 9.31.3]]}}. The obvious candidate for Hesiod’s victorious poem is the ''Theogony'', although, in the ''Certamen'', Hesiod’s victory depends on a passage from the ''Works and Days''.

{{#lemma: Plutarch | [[Scholion to Hesiod, Works and Days 650-662|Schol. Hes. ''Op.'' 650-62, pp. 205-6 Pertusi]] [[Plutarch, Consolation to Apollonius 105d|[Plut.] ''Consol. ad Apoll.'' 105d]]}}, who asserted Homer’s priority and doubted Hesiod’s claim to be the Muses’ disciple, judged ''Works and Days'' 650-62 an interpolation. His view reflects the verdict of {{#lemma: Hellenistic scholars | [[Scholion, Hesiod Works and Days Prolegomena Ac, p. 2 Pertusi|Schol. Hes. ''Op. Proleg.'' Ac]] [[Crates, fragment 78 Broggiato|Crates, fr. 78 Brogg.]]}} (West 1978 ''ad loc.''), who also athetized one or both of Hesiod’s proems to the Muses. (See Montanari 2009). {{#lemma: Pausanias | [[Pausanias, Description of Greece 9.31.4|Paus. 9.31.4]]}} says that the Boeotians showed him a proem-less version of the poem and considered only the ''Works and Days'' authentic. But both proems were key to the Boeotian festival of the Muses, whose allegiances were also manifestly non-Homeric. In the {{#lemma: parade of poets’ statues | [[Pausanias, Description of Greece 9.30.2|Paus. 9.30.2]]}} which Pausanias saw in the grove of the Muses on Helicon, Homer’s image was ‘deafeningly absent’, whilst Hesiod took centre-stage. Pausanias highlights the gap with a pointed reference to scholarly wrangles about their chronologies. (See Hunter 2006: 16-28).

== Death, Burial and Cult ==

{{#lemma: Plutarch | [[Plutarch, Life of Numa 4.9|Plut. ''Num.'' 4.8, 62c]]}} compares the hero cults of Hesiod and Archilochus (see [[Archilochus: A Guide to Selected Sources]]), whose poetic inaugurations show obvious similarities. (On Hesiod’s death and hero cult see Nagy 2009: 304-8, Kivilo 2010: 25-35, Koning 2010: 133-8). {{#lemma: Hellenistic inscriptions | [[Inscriptiones Graecae 7, 1785|''IG'' VII, 1785]] [[Inscriptiones Graecae 7, 4240|''IG'' VII, 4240]]}} survive from the cult of the Muses in Boeotia but stories about Hesiod’s death are earlier. {{#lemma: Thucydides | [[Thucydides, Histories 3.96.1|Thuc. 3.96.1]]}} says that Hesiod was killed in the shrine of Nemean Zeus in Locrian Oinoe, following a prophecy that he would die in Nemea. The {{#lemma: ''Certamen'' | [[Certamen 13|''Certamen'' 13]]}} and {{#lemma: Tzetzes | [[Tzetzes, Life of Hesiod|Tzetz. ''Vit. Hes.'' (ch. 9)]]}} specify that the prophecy, which Hesiod misunderstood, was made in Delphi, where he consulted the oracle after his victory. Whilst travelling home, he was accused ({{#lemma: some said falsely | [[Pausanias, Description of Greece 9.31.6|Paus. 9.31.6]] [[Plutarch, Banquet of the Seven Sages 162c|Plut. ''Conv. sept. sap.'' 162c]]}}) of seducing the daughter of his host and was subsequently murdered ({{#lemma: perhaps unintentionally | [[Suda, s.v. Hesiod|''Suda'', s.v. Hesiod]]}}) by her brothers. After his death, Hesiod was vindicated: his murderers were shipwrecked and his body was brought ashore by dolphins during a religious festival, a sure sign of Apollo’s favour. In a story quoted in the Aristotelian {{#lemma: ''Constitution of Orchomenus'' | [[Scholion to Hesiod’s Works and Days 633-640|Schol. Hes. ''Op.'' 633-640]]}}, the Delphic oracle instructed the citizens of Boeotian Orchomenus to move Hesiod’s bones from Oinoe (or Ascra) to their city. According to {{#lemma: Plutarch | [[Plutarch, Banquet of the Seven Sages 162c|Plut. ''Conv. sept. sap.'' 162c]]}}, the site of his grave in the shrine of Nemean Zeus was kept secret to prevent this. {{#lemma: Tzetzes’ ''Vita'' | [[Tzetzes, Life of Hesiod|Tzetz. ''Vit. Hes.'' (chs. 9-10)]]}} transmits two epitaphs, one of which is also quoted by {{#lemma: Pausanias | [[Pausanias, Description of Greece 9.38.3|Paus. 9.38.3]]}}; the second is ascribed to Pindar.

----

== Bibliography ==

<div id="bibliography">
* Bershadsky, N. 2011. ‘A Picnic, a Tomb, and a Crow.’ ''HSCP'' 106: 1-46.
* Graziosi, B. 2002. ''Inventing Homer: The Early Reception of Epic.'' Cambridge.
* Griffith, M. 1983. ‘Personality in Hesiod.’ ''CA'' 2: 37-65.
* Haubold, J. 2010. ‘Shepherd, Farmer, Poet, Sophist: Hesiod on his own Reception.’ In G. Boys-Stones and J. Haubold (eds.), ''Plato and Hesiod.'' Oxford: 11-30.
* Hunter, R. L. (ed.) 2005. ''The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women: Constructions and Reconstructions.'' Cambridge.
** 2006. ''The Shadow of Callimachus.'' Cambridge.
* Hurst, A. and Schacter, A. (eds.) 1996. ''La Montagne des Muses.'' Geneva.
* Jacoby, F. 1930. ''Hesiodi Carmina. Recensuit Felix Jacoby. Pars I Theogonia.'' Berlin.
* Kivilo, M. 2010. ''Early Greek Poets’ Lives.'' Leiden/Boston.
* Koning, H. H. 2010. ''Hesiod: the Other Poet.'' Leiden/Boston.
* Lamberton, R. 1988a. ‘Plutarch, Hesiod, and the Mouseia of Thespiai.’ ''ICS'' 13.2: 491-504.
** 1988b. ''Hesiod''. New Haven.
* Montanari, F., Rengakos, A., and Tsagalis, C. (eds.) 2009. ''Brill’s Companion to Hesiod.'' Leiden/Boston.
* Montanari, F. 2009. ‘Ancient Scholarship on Hesiod.’ In F. Montanari, A. Rengakos, and C. Tsagalis (eds.): 311-42.
* Most, G. W. 2006. ''Hesiod: Theogony, WD, Testimonia. Edited and Translated with Introduction.'' Cambridge, Mass.
** 1993. ‘Hesiod and the textualization of personal temporality.’ In G. Arrighetti and F. Montanari (eds.) 1993, ''La Componente autobiografica nella poesia greca e latina fra realtà e artificio letterario. Atti del Convegno Pisa, 16-17 maggio 1991.'' Pisa: 73-91.
* Nagy, G. 1982. ‘Hesiod.’ In T. J. Luce (ed.), ''Ancient Authors.'' New York: 46-67.
** 2009. ‘Hesiod and the Ancient Biographical Traditions.’ In F. Montanari, A. Rengakos, and C. Tsagalis (eds.): 271-311.
** 2010. ''Homer the Preclassic.'' Berkeley.
* West, M. L. 1966. ''Hesiod, Theogony. Edited with Prolegomena and Commentary.'' Oxford.
** 1978. ''Hesiod, Works and Days. Edited with Prolegomena and Commentary.'' Oxford.
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[[Category:Guides by Sarah Burges Watson]]

Homer: A Guide to Sculptural Types

2015-11-15T16:34:55Z

NickFreer: /* Bibliography */

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'''''William Wallis'''''
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There are five sculptural types that are generally considered to depict Homer. Of these, only two can be identified securely from external evidence.

The {{#lemma: ''Epimenides Type Homer'' | [[File:Epimenides Type Homer.jpg|100px|link=Epimenides Type Homer]]}} occurs in several Roman examples (Boehringer-Boehringer 1939: 19-41; Richter 1965: 47-48). None show more than head, neck and shoulders. Their style suggests a prototype of mid-fifth century (Richter 1965), and the angle at which the head meets the neck suggests a standing figure, whose head tilts slightly to the right. It has been suggested that such a portrait of Homer is seen and {{#lemma: described by Christodorus in his ''Ekphrasis'' | [[Christodorus of Thebes, Ekphrasis 314-350 = A.P. 2.1.311|''A.P.'' 2.1.311]]}} (Zanker 1995: 19; Bassett 2004: 173-175). Noteworthy features of this type are the closed-eyelids, variously interpreted as sleep – hence the identification as Epimenides, a Cretan seer and singer who slept for fifty-seven years (Esdaile 1912: 302-03) – or blindness. The eyes seem closed but not at rest (the two lids meet at the eye’s equator): this feature may have been the only available means of representing blindness in early Classical art (given its reluctance to depict physical disability). The portrait may then reflect {{#lemma: a long tradition in which Homer is depicted as blind | [[Homer: A Guide to Selected Sources]]}} (Graziosi 2002: 138-63). Also of interest is the fillet which binds the poet’s head. Though there is no conclusive evidence, this seems to form part of the costume of a poet (Dillon 2006: 124-25). The poet’s coiffure is full and tidy. Of note is how the receding brow is covered by two locks of hair drawn from the back of the head to where they are tied centrally on the forehead, a style associated with dignified old age. On the basis of its date and style, it has been proposed that the prototype formed part of the Micythos dedication at Olympia. Micythos, an exiled Rhegean then living in Tegea, {{#lemma: dedicated several groups of statues | [[Pausanias, Description of Greece 5.26.2|Paus. 5.26.2]]}} (by Argive sculptors Glaucus and Dionysius) at Olympia, including Gods, personified abstracts, and the poets Homer and Hesiod (Frazer 1898: 646-48; Richter 1965; Zanker 1995: 20-21).

The {{#lemma: ''Modena Type Homer'' | [[File:Modena Type Homer.jpg|150px|link=Modena Type Homer]]}} occurs in two small bronze busts. This type can be stylistically dated to the early fourth century (Boehringer-Boehringer 1939: 131-135; Richter 1965: 141-42). There is considerable difference in the quality of the two examples. The example in Modena is the finer by far, and identifies itself by the inscription ΟΜΗΡΟC, ‘Homer’. In this type the eyes are clearly open and the pupils discernible. The poet wears a ''taenia'' fillet and the arrangement of the hair is similar to the ''Epimenides Type Homer'', though now the portrait has a centrally parted fringe that passes over the fillet before being tucked through it to hang down over the ears. The beard is shorter and thicker than in the earlier type. The miniature scale of these examples might reflect a different display context for these pieces (a table, niche or mantel, rather than a herm, for example) but that two such different examples should be exactly the same size perhaps suggests that their prototype was a miniature also.

The {{#lemma: ''Apollonius of Tyana Type Homer'' | [[File:Apollonius of Tyana Type Homer.jpg|100px|link=Apollonius of Tyana Type Homer]]}} occurs in between sixteen (by Boehringer’s count) or thirteen (by Richter’s count) examples. Unluckily, none carries an inscription (Boehringer-Boehringer 1939: 42-72; Richter 1965: 48-50). The type is life-sized, and no copy shows more than the head, neck and shoulders. There is considerable variation among examples, but the majority have enough in common to discern a common object of emulation. This type can be dated stylistically to the very beginning of the third century (Richter 1965). Its identification as Homer is based on several inconclusive considerations. First, the number of examples testifies to the popularity of the subject, and Homer of course was popular. The figure is once again accoutred with a fillet (though much thicker than in earlier types). Finally this type is thought to resemble both {{#lemma: the head on an inscribed coin from Amastris in Paphlagonia | [[File:Amastris Homer Coin 2.jpg|200px|link=Amastris Homer Coin]]}} (Esdaile 1913: 317-21), and {{#lemma: an inscribed figurine depicted in Fulvio Orsini’s ''Imagines et Elogia'' (1570) | [[File:Orsini Homer.jpg|100px|link=Orsini Homer]] }} (Richter 1965), but now lost. The eyes of this type are open, but pupils are not incised in most examples. There is some variation in the treatment of the brow in examples of this type. However all have in common looser locks of hair, particularly at the back of the neck, where it is very long. Such a coiffure is uncommon at this date, occurring in only two other types, both of which are poets (Dillon 2002: 125). This type has been interpreted as looking benign and eager. Its appearance could be associated with the character of Odyssean Homer, {{#lemma: as described by Longinus | [[Longinus, On the Sublime 9.13 | Longin. 9.13]]}}.

Were one to continue this analogy to Longinus’ descriptions of Homer, one might recognise Longinus’ 'Iliadic' Homer in a later Hellenistic portrait type: The {{#lemma: ''Hellenistic Blind Type Homer'' | [[File:Hellenistic Blind Type Homer.jpg|100px|link=Hellenistic Blind Type Homer]]}} is by far the most famous type. It is reproduced by, among others, Rembrandt van Rijn, Ingres, and Korzhev. It also seems to have been the most popular type in antiquity: Richter (1965: 50-53) was able to track down twenty-two Roman examples; Boehringer and Boehringer (1939: 73-130) identify nineteen. There is considerable variation between examples, and many have a history of extensive and creative repair work. It is identified as Homer through the sheer number of copies, and through its characterisation (this is clearly a very famous blind man). It can be dated stylistically to the second century B.C. (Richter 1965) Again Homer wears a poetic fillet, and though his eyes are open, their expression (in particular the raised eyebrows and raised lower eyelids) implies that they do not see. This type has been considered highly expressive of both character (divine, fierce, venerable), and pathos (pained, searching, in the grip of poetic ''enthousiasmos'') (Dillon 2006: 116,124). Its high ‘baroque’ drama perhaps reflects the epic nature of Homer’s poetry. The vividly depicted old age of the poet has been thought to reflect the antiquity of the poetry.

The {{#lemma: ‘''Apotheosis of Homer''’ or ‘''Archelaus Relief''’ | [[File:Archelaus Relief.jpg|100px|link=Archelaus Relief]]}} is probably a victory monument for a poet (depicted at the right hand side of the relief). It is inscribed with the name of its maker, Archelaos of Priene. The date of this object’s production is debated: opinions range from the late third century (Richter 1965: 54), to the late second century (Pinkwart 1965: 48-63). It depicts mount Helicon, at the top of which an enthroned Zeus and Mnemosyne exchange glances. In the two registers below are shown their daughters, the nine Muses, and possibly Apollo, playing a lyre in a cave (Pinkwart 1965: 78-82). The lowest register shows an architectural space defined by columns that support drapery. Within this space Chronos (Time) and Oikumene (the Inhabited World) crown an enthroned Homer who holds a sceptre and a scroll. Kneeling on either side of the poet are personifications of the ''Iliad'' and ''Odyssey''. At the right of this scene, personifications of various genres of literature guide a bull to sacrifice on an altar before the poet, and lift up hands and torches in worship. Some have made out two mice at the foot of Homer’s throne, which could allude to the ''Batrachomyomachia'', or ''Battle of Frogs and Mice'', of supposed Homeric authorship. Chronos and Oikumene have been identified by some as portraits of Hellenistic rulers. Several suggestions have been made (Pinkwart 1965: 77), but the current orthodoxy is that they represent Ptolemy IV Philopator and Arsinoe III, founders of the Homer cult at Alexandria (Newby 2007). The presence together of poetry, royalty and memory hints at a Hesiodic reading for this relief: the ''Theogony'' makes much of the connection between poetry and royalty, and their shared dependence on the Muses, the children of Zeus and Mnemosyne, who share such a conspicuous moment in the upper register of this relief.

Finally, it is interesting that although Homer’s blindness and age (familiar from biographical sources) are present in some of these sculptures, none depict the poet as remotely beggarly (another ubiquitous theme of the written sources). It might be suggested that these portraits have in common that they primarily reflect the character of the ''poetry'' (far from beggarly), rather than embodying the character depicted in biographical accounts.

----

== Bibliography ==

<div id="bibliography">
* Bassett, S. 2004. ''The Urban Image of Late Antique Constantinople.'' Cambridge.
* Boehringer, R. B. and Boehringer, E. 1939. ''Homer Bildnisse und Nachweise.'' Breslau.
* Clay, D. 2004. ''Archilochos Heros: The Cult of Poets in the Greek Polis''. Cambridge, Mass.
* Dillon, S. 2006. ''Ancient Greek Portrait Sculpture: Contexts, Subjects, and Styles''. Cambridge.
* Esdaile, K. A. 1912. ‘An Essay towards the Classification of Homeric Coin Types.’ ''JHS'' 32: 298-325.
* Frazer, J. G. 1898. ''Pausanias’s Description of Greece'', vol. 3. London.
* Graziosi, B. 2002. ''Inventing Homer: The Early Reception of Epic.'' Cambridge.
* Newby, Z. 2007. ‘Reading the Archelaos Relief.’ In Z. Newby and R. Leader-Newby (eds.) 2007, ''Art and Inscriptions in the Ancient World.'' Cambridge: 156-178.
* Pinkwart, D. 1965. ''Das Relief des Archelaos von Priene und die “Musen des Philiskos”''. Kallmünz.
* Richter, G. M. A. 1965. ''The Portraits of the Greeks'', vol. 1. London.
** and Smith, R.R.R. 1984. ''The Portraits of the Greeks.'' Oxford.
* Schefold, K. and Bayard, A.-C. 1997. ''Die Bildnisse der Antiken Dichter, Redner und Denker.'' Basel.
* Zanker, P. 1995. ''The Mask of Socrates: The Image of the Intellectual in Antiquity''. Trans. A. Shapiro. Berkeley.
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[[Category:Guides by William Wallis]]

Homer: A Guide to Selected Sources

2015-11-15T16:32:52Z

NickFreer: /* Bibliography */

{{GuideHighlightBox}}
{{Author|Paola Bassino}}
{{#howtoquote:}}
<div id="guide">{{GuideTextsBy|Paola Bassino}}
The name Homer does not feature in the Homeric epics. There is also a more general lack of autobiographical information in the epics attributed to Homer (the little that can be gleaned about the poet’s voice in the ''Iliad'' is discussed by Graziosi 2013). The author’s absence enables audiences and readers to invent Homer without much constraint in the form of autobiographical claims made within the epics attributed to him.

Legends about Homer answered the curiosity of early audiences, who listened to travelling performers (rhapsodes) claiming to recite the great works of an absent author ‘Homer’ (Burkert 1987, West 1999, Graziosi 2002, West 2003a, Kivilo 2010, Nagy 2010, Lefkowitz 2012). The process must have started early: {{#lemma: Tatian | [[Tatian, Oration to the Greeks 31 | Tatianus, ''Ad Gr.'' 31]]}} informs us that the life of Homer was the subject of interest and research already in the sixth century BCE and {{#lemma: Heraclitus | [[Heraclitus, fr. 56 D.-K.]]}} knew the legend concerning Homer’s death. According to Pausanias, {{#lemma: Callinus | [[Callinus, fr. 6 West]]}} mentioned Homer as the author of the ''Thebaid'' as early as the seventh century BCE (on this difficult testimony see further Bowie 2010: 152).

Early legends and anecdotes were eventually collected in formal Lives, which prefaced Homer’s works in the manuscript tradition. The most important are a Pseudo-Herodotean {{#lemma: ''Life of Homer'' | [[Pseudo-Herodotus, Life of Homer | Ps.-Hdt. ''Vit. Hom.'']]}}, two short biographical notices at the beginning of a {{#lemma: Pseudo-Plutarchean | [[Pseudo-Plutarch, Life of Homer 1.1-5 | Ps.-Plut. ''Vit. Hom.'' 1]] [[Pseudo-Plutarch, Life of Homer 2.1-4 | Ps.-Plut. ''Vit. Hom.'' 2]]}} treatise on Homer, a Life of Homer in {{#lemma: Proclus’ | [[Proclus, Life of Homer | Procl. ''Vit. Hom.'']]}} ''Chrestomathy'', the {{#lemma: Suda | [[Suda, s.v. Homer | ''Suda'', s.v. Homer]]}} entry on Homer and three {{#lemma: anonymous short biographies | [[Anonymus, Life of Homer 1 | Anon. ''Vit. Hom.'' 1]] [[Anonymus, Life of Homer 2 | Anon. ''Vit. Hom.'' 2]] [[Anonymus, Life of Homer 3 | Anon. ''Vit. Hom.'' 3]]}}. The {{#lemma: ''Certamen Homeri et Hesiodi'' | [[Certamen | ''Certamen'']]}}, an earlier version of which must have featured in Alcidamas’ ''Museum'', also contained extended biographical information.

== Parents and Genealogy ==

Ancient sources list several options for the names of Homer’s alleged parents, often without expressing preference for any. The ''Certamen'' stands out for putting together names of seven fathers and seven mothers (sometimes with a source), that can be arguably paired up so as to form alleged parental couples – some of which are confirmed by external evidence too (West 1967: 445-6). The passage testifies to attempts to make Homer a direct descendant of his characters, especially Odysseus and Telemachus, or of divine figures such as the Muse Calliope. According to one of the best attested traditions, which was circulating widely in the fifth century BCE, Homer’s father was the Smyrnean river {{#lemma: Meles | [[Critias, fr. 50 D-K]]}}, often paired up with an otherwise unknown Cretheis. Detailed genealogies that illustrate Homer’s kinship with, among others, Orpheus and Hesiod, are attested from the fifth century BCE (see [[Hesiod: A Guide to Selected Sources]]). {{#lemma: Legends regarding Homer’s own offspring | [[Scholium to Pindar’s ''Nemean'' 2.1 | Schol. Pind. ''Nem.'' 2.1]] [[Pindar fr. 265 Snell-Maehler | Pind. fr. 265 S.-M.]] [[Proclus, Chrestomathy | Phot. ''Bibl.'' 319]]}}, probably created by rhapsodic groups, such as the Homeridae, to legitimise their own role of performers of Homeric poetry, are also transmitted.

== Birthplace ==

Several cities claimed to be the birthplace of Homer and, as was acknowledged also in antiquity, this variety of birthplaces contributed to creating a truly Panhellenic poet, who could be claimed by every city because he belonged to none. The strongest and most ancient claims about Homer’s origins were those of {{#lemma: Smyrne, Chios and Colophon | [[Lucian, True Story 2.20-22 passim | Lucian, ''Ver. Hist.'' 2.20-22]]}}, often mentioned together.

Smyrne’s tradition might have begun before 600 BC (Jacoby 1933: 31; Graziosi 2002: 75). The Smyrnean river Meles was often said to be either the place where the poet was given birth by Cretheis, the most ancient souce for this being the fifth-century scholar Stesimbrotus, or the very father of Homer (see above). From this river the poet also took his original name, according to the biographical tradition, Melesigenes.

The Chian tradition seems to have been known already in the sixth or fifth century BCE to Anaximenes, Pindar and {{#lemma: Simonides | [[Simonides, Elegy 19.1-2 West | Simon. fr. 17 West]]}}. The Lives relate several biographical episodes that occurred to Homer in Chios but the strongest link between the city and Homer seem to have been the {{#lemma: Homeridae | [[Scholium to Pindar’s ''Nemean'' 2.1 | Schol. Pind. ''Nem.'' 2.1]] [[Harpocration, s.v. 'Homeridae' | Harpocration, s.v. 'Homeridae'.]]}}, a guild of rhapsodes who claimed to be the poet’s descendants (see ''contra'' Fehling 1979). They probably brought the Homeric poems to Athens (see most recently Nagy 2010) and by Thucydides’ times the image of Homer as the {{#lemma: blind poet from Chios | [[Plato, Hipparchus 228b5-c1 | Pl. [''Hipparch.''] 228b5-c1]] [[Thucydides 3.104.5 | Thuc. 3.104.5]]}} was dominant.

Colophon’s claims on Homer are rooted in the mention of the ‘old divine singer’ in {{#lemma: ''Margites'' | [[Margites fr. 1 West | ''Margites'' fr. 1 West]]}}, and were supported by Nicander and Antimachus.

Other well attested traditions were those related to Cyme (Hippias and Ephorus) and Cyprus (Callicles, {{#lemma: Pausanias | [[Pausanias 10.24.2-3 | Paus. 10.24.2-3]]}} and, for the ''Cypria'', see below); Athens was also known as the birthplace of Homer, also on the basis of linguistic arguments ({{#lemma: Aristarchus and Dionysius Thrax | [[Scholia on Iliad 13.197 | Schol. ''Il.'' 13.197]]}}). By the Byzantine period, no less than twenty possible birthplaces of Homer were known.

== Chronology ==

Homer’s chronology was considered as uncertain as his birthplace. The ancient biographies present lists of different views on the matter and, with the exception of the Pseudo-Herodotus, do not make a choice between different possibilities. In most cases Homer’s date is calculated, rather than in absolute terms, in relation to that of specific events or people (whose date may itself be flexible), thus sheding light on ancient perceptions of the relationships between the poet and the chosen term of comparison. The Ionian migration is present in accounts by scholars such as Aristotle, Aristarchus and Eratosthenes. Homer’s chronological distance from the Trojan war, and therefore his reliability as a reporter of it, is at issue in several sources, and in Herodotus, ''Histories'' 2.53. The discussion of Homer’s and Hesiod’s relative chronology, on which the story of their contest depends, was also a means of reflecting on the content, authority, and antiquity of their respective poems. (For more detailed discussions, see Graziosi 2002: 90-124 and Beecroft 2010: 79. For Homer’s and Hesiod’s relative chronology, see also Most 2006 and Koning 2010.)

== The Poet’s Name(s) and His Blindness ==

Accoding to most ancient souces, Homer was called Melesigenes at birth. In antiquity the name was explained as ‘born by/of the river Meles’, although its actual etymology suggests ‘he who takes care of his people’ (Marx 1925: 406-8) – a name that might have suited the rhapsodes claiming to be Homer’s descendants (Graziosi 2002: 75 n. 72). Other names circulated as well; and ‘Homer’ was often said to be a name that the poet acquired late in life.

In some biographies the poet was named Homer after becoming blind, as ὅμηρος allegedly meant ‘blind’. This is again a folk etymology which connects Homer with a quintessential feature of his poetic persona, as blindness was taken to be a sign of the poet’s closeness to the gods (Graziosi 2002: 138-163). According to another etymology proposed in antiquity, based this time on an independently attested meaning of ὅμηρος, Melesigenes was called Homer because he was taken hostage.

== The Homeric Corpus ==

Ancient sources testify to the existence of debates about the Homeric corpus. In antiquity, Homer was considered the author of many hexameter poems, heterogeneous in subject and genre, many of which are known today only from titles or scant fragments (see West 2003a and b). Ancient reflections on their authorship developed also through the creations of biographical anecdotes that explored the interaction between Homer and other minor epic poets: according to these stories, for example, Homer gave away the ''Cypria'' as a dowry for his daughter’s when she married the poet Stasinus; the {{#lemma: ''Little Iliad'' | [[Syncellus, Extract of Chronography 316 | Syncellus, ''Chron.'' 316]]}} was stolen from Homer by Testorides and was sometimes attributed to Lesches; Homer gave the {{#lemma: ''Oechaliae Halosis''|[[Strabo 14.1.18 | Strabo 14.1.18]] [[Callimachus, Epigram 6 | Callim. ''Epigr.'' 6]]}} to the Samian poet Creophilus as a gift. Comic or parodic poem, such as the {{#lemma: ''Margites'' | [[Zeno fr. 274 Von Armin | Zeno fr. 274 Von Arnim]] [[Eustratius, 320.38-321.1 Heylbut | Eustratius, 320.38-321.1 Heylbut]]}} and the ''Batrachomyomachia'', were also – not undisputedly – attributed to Homer, and sometimes considered juvenile works.

Only relatively late was the Homeric corpus reduced to the ''Iliad'' and ''Odyssey'', arguably in connection with their recognised Panhellenic appeal and their exclusive performance at the Panathenaic festivals (Graziosi 2002, Nagy 2010). Some controversy regarding the Homeric ''oeuvre'' continued, particularly in relation to the early epic ''Thebaid'' (which never acquired an alternative author) and the ''Odyssey'' (which was sometimes denied Homeric authorship).

== Death ==

While Homer’s origins were disputed, all ancient accounts claim that he died after failing to solve a riddle, and only one place was consistently associated with his burial: the island of Ios. The anecdote of the riddle was known to Heraclitus, who referred to it in passing, as if were already widely known in his time. It was also the subject of a fresco in a Pompeian ''villa'' (Bergmann 2007: 71-76). The extant versions of the anecdote vary in some details.

Homer approached, or was approached by, some young fisher boys on Ios’ shore. Coming back from fishing they told him, in hexameter, that they left behind all that they caught, and were carrying with themselves all that they did not catch. Homer was unable to sort out the real meaning of the utterance, which was that they had been picking lice. In some versions, the fisher boys were said to come from Arcadia, arguably a clue, given that this area of Greece is land-locked (for interpretations of the riddle see Kahane 2005, for different versions see notes on ''Certamen'' 18). Homer died either ''because'' of this failure, or, in other versions, ''after'' the encounter with the boys, because he was already ill or slipped on some mud. He was then buried on Ios, and an epigram inscribed on his tombstone, transmitted in several literary sources, reminds all readers of the divinity of Homer.

----

== Bibliography ==

<div id="bibliography">
* Beecroft, A. 2010. ''Authorship and Cultural Identity in Early Greece and China: Patterns of Literary Circulation.'' Cambridge.
* Bergmann, B. 2007. ‘A painted garland: weaving words and images in the House of the Epigrams in Pompeii.’ In Z. Newby and R. E. Leader-Newby (eds.) 2007, ''Art and Inscriptions in the Ancient World.'' Cambridge: 60-101.
* Bowie, E. L. 2010. ‘Historical narrative in archaic and classical Greek elegy’. In D. Konstan and K. A. Raaflaub (eds.), ''Epic and History.'' Oxford: 145-64.
* Burkert, W. 1987. ‘The Making of Homer in the Sixth Century BC: Rhapsodes versus Stesichorus.’ In D. von Bothmer (ed.), ''The Amasis Painter and his World: Vase-painting in sixth-century B.C. Athens''. Malibu, CA: 43-62.
* Fehling, D. 1979. ‘Zwei Lehrstucke über Pseudo-Nachrichten (Homeriden, Lelantischer Krieg).’ ''RM'' 122: 193-210.
* Graziosi, B. 2002. ''Inventing Homer: The Early Reception of Epic.'' Cambridge.
** 2013. ‘The poet in the Iliad.’ In A. Marmodoro and J. Hill (eds.) 2013, ''The Author’s Voice in Classical and Late Antiquity.'' Oxford: 9-38.
* Jacoby, F. 1933. ‘Homerisches I: Der Bios und die Person.’ ''Hermes'' 68: 1-50.
* Kahane, A. 2005. ''Diachronic Dialogues. Authority and Continuity in Homer and Homeric Tradition.'' Lanham.
* Kivilo, M. 2010. ‘The early biographical tradition on Homer’. In T. Kämmerer, P. Funke, M. Kõiv, and A. Lille (eds.) 2010, ''Identities and Societies in the Ancient East-Mediterranean Regions: Comparative Approaches.'' Münster: 85–104.
* Koning, H. H. 2010. ''Hesiod, the Other Poet: Ancient Reception of a Cultural Icon.'' Leiden.
* Lefkowitz, M. 2012. ''The Lives of the Greek Poets'' (1st edn 1981). Baltimore.
* Marx, F. 1925. ‘Die Überlieferung über die Persönlichkeit Homers.’ ''RM'' 74: 395-431.
* Most, G. W. 2006. ''Hesiod: Theogony, Works and Days, Testimonia. Edited and Translated with Introduction.'' Cambridge, MA.
* Nagy, G. 2010. ''Homer the Preclassic.'' Berkeley.
* West, M. L. 1967. ‘The Contest of Homer and Hesiod.’ ''CQ'' 17.2: 433-50.
** 1999. ‘The Invention of Homer.’ ''CQ'' 49.2: 364-82.
** (ed.) 2003a. ''Homeric Hymns. Homeric Apocrypha. Lives of Homer.'' Cambridge, MA.
** (ed.) 2003b. ''Greek Epic Fragments from the Seventh to the Fifth Centuries BC.'' Cambridge, MA.
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[[Category:Guides by Paola Bassino]]

Euripides: A Guide to Selected Sources

2015-11-15T16:21:43Z

NickFreer: /* Bibliography */

{{GuideHighlightBox}}
{{Author|Sarah Burges Watson}}
{{#howtoquote:}}
<div id="guide">
Athenian tragedian from the deme Phlya, who, according to the {{#lemma: ''Suda'' | [[Suda s.v. 'Euripides'|''Suda'' s.v. 'Euripides']]}} composed 92 tragedies. The {{#lemma: Parian marble | [[Parian Marble, Fragments of the Greek Historians 239 A50, 239 A63|''FGrHist'' 239 A50, 239 A63]]}} gives his dates as 485-407/6 BCE. The latter accords with Aristophanes’ ''Frogs'', performed in January 405, Euripides having died a little before Sophocles in the previous year (see Kovacs 2001: 4-6; Scullion 2003: 390-1).

==Sources==

Several fourth-century and Hellenistic authors wrote about Euripides’ life, notably Philochorus, Heraclides Ponticus, Hermippus, and Duris of Samos. This material is not extant, but we have extensive papyrus fragments of a life in dialogue form by the late-third-century biographer {{#lemma: Satyrus | [[Satyrus, Life of Euripides|Satyr. ''Vit. Eur.'']]}} (see Schorn 2004). The lives of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides formed the sixth book of Satyrus’ biographical compendium, which also included philosophers, orators, and statesmen. In addition, transmitted with manuscripts of Euripides’ plays, is an {{#lemma: ''Origins and Life of Euripides'' | [[Origins and Life of Euripides Ia|''Genos'' Ia]][[Origins and Life of Euripides Ib|''Genos'' Ib]][[Origins and Life of Euripides II|''Genos'' II]][[Origins and Life of Euripides III|''Genos'' III]][[Origins and Life of Euripides IV|''Genos'' IV]]}} (henceforth ''Genos''). Its narrative is not continuous: sections Ia and III are thought to derive from the same Hellenistic archetype, which Ib may summarize; sections II and IV contain material from Satyrus (see Schorn 2004: 27-31). The lives of Euripides in {{#lemma: Aulus Gellius | [[Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights 15.20|Gell. ''NA'' 15.20]]}} and the ''Suda'' seem to use the same Hellenistic archetype as the ''Genos'' and incorporate additional material. {{#lemma: Thomas Magister’s ''Life of Euripides'' | [[Thomas Magister, Life of Euripides|Thom. Mag. ''Vit. Eur.'']]}} (13th-14th C AD) is derived from the ''Genos'' as we have it. ''Testimonia'' are collected by Kannicht 2004 and Kovacs 1994 (with English translation). On the late-antique letters ascribed to Euripides, see Gößwein 1975, Knöbl 2008, Hanink 2010a.

==Negative versus Positive Receptions==

Euripides’ Hellenistic biographers drew most of their material from his tragedies and from comedy (Kovacs 2001: 2-4; Schorn 2004: 27-31, 37-46; Lefkowitz 2012: 87). In Aristophanes’ {{#lemma: ''Wasps'' | [[Aristophanes, Wasps 61|Ar. ''Vesp.'' 61]]}}, abuse of Euripides appears in a list of hackneyed topics which the poet promises to avoid. In fact, Aristophanes is the source of almost all the surviving Old Comic material about Euripides. He brought the tragedian onstage in ''Acharnians'', ''Thesmophoriazusae'' (‘Women Celebrating the Thesmophoria’) and ''Frogs'' and supplies the biographical tradition with abundant detail, including {{#lemma: failure with women/misogyny | [[Suda s.v. 'Euripides'|''Suda'' s.v. 'Euripides' 3]][[Satyrus, Life of Euripides|Satyr. ''Vit. Eur.'' 39.12-13]][[Origins and Life of Euripides III|''Genos'' III.2]][[Origins and Life of Euripides IV|''Genos'' IV.1]][[Thomas Magister, Life of Euripides|Thom. Mag. ''Vit. Eur.'' 5]]}}), {{#lemma: having sties on his eyes | [[Aristophanes, Frogs 1246-7|Ar. ''Ran.'' 1246-7]]}}, and being {{#lemma: ‘sour to talk to’ | [[Origins and Life of Euripides III|''Genos'' III.1]][[Thomas Magister, Life of Euripides|Thom. Mag. ''Vit. Eur.'' 4]]}}) (in {{#lemma: variants | [[Satyrus, Life of Euripides|Satyr. ''Vit. Eur.'' 39.20]][[Origins and Life of Euripides III|''Genos'' III.5]][[Aristotle, Politics 5.10.1311b.30-4|Ar. ''Pol.'' 5.10.1311b.30-4]]}} on the latter theme, Euripides suffers from bad breath). This manifestly negative strand in Euripides’ biography makes him the misanthropic antitype of the charming, aristocratic Sophocles. The polarity is explored in {{#lemma: several anecdotes | [[Athenaeus, Sophists at Dinner 13.5.557e|Ath. ''Deip.'' 13.5.557e]][[Athenaeus, Sophists at Dinner 13.81-2|Ath. ''Deip.'' 13.81-2]][[Stobaeus, Anthology 2.30.10|Stob. ''Flor.'' 2.30.10]]}} (see [[Guide to Sophocles]]; Davidson 2012: 42-3). Its most influential source is {{#lemma: ''Frogs'' | [[Aristophanes, Frogs 76-82, 768-94, 889-94, 1491-5|Ar. ''Ran.'' 76-82, 768-94, 889-94, 1491-5]]}}, in which Euripides is the favourite of underworld reprobates; a sophistic opportunist who, in contrast to the pious Sophocles, lacks the grace and magnanimity to concede to his elders/betters. Like Socrates in Aristophanes’ ''Clouds'', he prays to newfangled gods; the chorus accuses him of Socratic chatter and casting aside ''mousikê''.

This narrative of Euripides’ atheist intellectualism and consequent unpopularity was accepted in antiquity and promoted by German scholars—above all, Nietzsche (see Henrichs 1986; [[Guide to Aeschylus]])—but should not be regarded as historical (cf. Kovacs 2001: 14-15, with bibliography). Euripides won comparatively few victories (five) in the Athenian dramatic contests and {{#lemma: stories of outrage at his impiety | [[Aristotle, Art of Rhetoric 3.15.1416a.28-35|Arist. ''Rhet.'' 3.15.1416a.28-35]][[Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazusae 446-52|Ar. ''Th.'' 446-52]][[Plutarch, On how the young man should listen to the poets 4.19e|Plut. ''Quomodo adul.'' 4.19e]][[Aëtius 1.7.1 in 'Plutarch', Opinions of the Philosophers 1.880de|Aët. 1.7.1 in 'Plut.' ''Plac.'' 1.880de]][[Plutarch, Dialogue on Love 13.756bc|Plut. ''Amat.'' 13.756bc]][[Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers 9.54 (Protagoras)|Diog. Laert. 9.54 (Protagoras)]][[Aristophanes, Clouds 1364-72|Ar. ''Nub.'' 1364-72]][[Satyrus, Life of Euripides|Satyr. ''Vit. Eur.'' 39.10]]}} were clearly plausible. But even if his relationship with the Athenians was ambivalent, he was sufficiently popular to receive a chorus whenever he wanted one. Indeed, his notoriety may be interpreted as an indication of classic status (see Revermann 1999-2000: 451-2). Aristophanes does not disguise his admiration; {{#lemma: Cratinus | [[Scholion to Plato’s Apology 19c|Schol. Pl. ''Apol.'' 19c]]}} accused him of ‘Euripidaristophanizing’ (cf. {{#lemma: Satyrus 8.2 | [[Satyrus, Life of Euripides|Satyr. ''Vit. Eur.'' 8.2]]}}). In the ''Frogs'', Dionysus’ descent to Hades is originally inspired by a passion for Euripides.

Dionysus’ passion is echoed by the fourth-century comic poet {{#lemma: Philemon | [[Origins and Life of Euripides IV|''Genos'' IV.3]]}}; in the centuries following his death, Euripides was immensely popular (Lucas 1923; Funke 1965-6). We know of two fourth-century comedies entitled ‘The Euripides-Lover’ (T 199a Kannicht). In the {{#lemma: ''Poetics'' | [[Aristotle, Poetics 13.1453a.22-30, 18.1456a.25, 18.1456a.25, 25.1460b.32|Arist. ''Poet.'' 13.1453a.22-30, 18.1456a.25, 25.1460b.32, 25.1460b.32]]}}, Aristotle refers frequently to Euripides, whereas Aeschylus is scarcely mentioned. He ranks Sophocles highest of the Athenian tragedians and criticizes Euripides’ use of the chorus and the realism of his characters, but praises his conversational style and calls him the most tragic of the tragedians.

In {{#lemma: Satyrus | [[Satyrus, Life of Euripides|Satyr. ''Vit. Eur.'' 8.2]]}}, Euripides is said to have brought tragedy to its natural fulfilment. His biography is de-/re-constructed accordingly. Schorn (2004: 56-63) argues that Satyrus portrays Euripides as the magnanimous man of Aristotle’s ''Nicomachean Ethics'', who is similarly disdainful of the masses. {{#lemma: Satyrus | [[Satyrus, Life of Euripides|Satyr. ''Vit. Eur.'' 39.16-17]]}} and {{#lemma: ''Genos'' Ib | [[Origins and Life of Euripides Ib|''Genos'' Ib.3]]}} accuse the comic poets of driving the talented Euripides away from Athens out of jealousy. Hanink (2008, 2010b) and Revermann (1999-2000) argue that the story of Euripides’ emigration was part of an attempt by Hellenistic kings to appropriate the tragedian for Macedonia’s cultural heritage. The story may also reflect Old Comedy’s problematic status within the context of Hellenistic monarchy as the genre which embodies freedom of speech (see [[Aristophanes: A Guide to Selected Sources|Guide to Aristophanes]]; Hunter 2009: 78-106). Aristotle censures Old Comedy for its malicious invective; Hellenistic critics follow suit. In {{#lemma: Satyrus | [[Satyrus, Life of Euripides|Satyr. ''Vit. Eur.'' 39.3-4]]}}, the references to invective form part of a political discussion about the ‘universal thoughtlessness of the Athenians’; Euripides is described as the progenitor of New (invective-free) Comedy (cf. Dio of Prusa, p. 633; Satyrus 39.7).

==Origins==

{{#lemma: ''Genos'' Ia| [[Origins and Life of Euripides Ia|''Genos'' Ia.1]]}}, the {{#lemma: ''Suda''| [[Suda s.v. 'Euripides'|''Suda'' s.v. 'Euripides' 1]]}}, and {{#lemma: Thomas Magister | [[Thomas Magister, Life of Euripides|Thom. Mag. ''Vit. Eur.'' 1]]}} say that Euripides was born in the year of the battle of Salamis (480 BCE). {{#lemma: Plutarch | [[Plutarch, Table Talk 8.717b|Plut. ''Quaest. conv.'' 8.717b]]}} and Timaeus commented on this synchrony, which reflects the tendency of biographers to link their subjects to historical events. {{#lemma: Theophrastus | [[Athenaeus, Sophists at Dinner 10.424e|Ath. ''Deipn.'' 10.424e]]}} said that Euripides poured wine for the dancers of Apollo in Phlya; both this office and that of fire-carrier for Apollo Zosterios ({{#lemma: ''Genos'' Ia | [[Origins and Life of Euripides Ia|''Genos'' Ia.4]]}}) suggest noble lineage. According to the {{#lemma: ''Suda'' | [[Suda s.v. 'Euripides'|''Suda'' s.v. 'Euripides' 1]]}}, Philochorus ‘demonstrated’ that Euripides was well-born. He is probably also the source for the ''Suda''’s story that his parents were resident aliens of Boeotia and then Attica. {{#lemma: Another version of this tale | [[Nicolaus of Damascus, Fragments of the Greek Historians 90 F 103 (v) apud Stobaeum 4.2.25 p. 159, 4 Hense|Nic. Dam., ''FGrHist'' 90 F 103 (v) ap. Stob. 4.2.25 p. 159, 4 Hense]]}} makes them debt-fugitives, like Hesiod’s father (see [[Guide to Hesiod]]). {{#lemma: Aristophanes | [[Aristophanes, Frogs 840; Scholion to Frogs 840; Acharnians 457; Scholion to Acharnians 457; Acharnians 478; Thesmophoriazousae 385-7, 455-6|Ar. ''Ran.'' 840; Schol. ''Ran.'' 840; ''Ach.'' 457; Schol. ''Ach.'' 457; ''Ach.'' 478; ''Th.'' 385-7, 455-6]]}} frequently jokes that Euripides’ mother sold vegetables, perhaps exploiting the incongruity between his perceived fixation with beggarly characters and his highfalutin ideas, both parodied in the ''Acharnians'' (393-489). The biographical tradition does not mention any traditional, aristocratic training in music; Euripides starts his career as an athlete, following a misunderstood {{#lemma: oracle | [[Origins and Life of Euripides Ia|''Genos'' Ia.2]][[Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights 15.20|Gell. ''NA'' 15.20.2]][[The Delphic Oracle 418 Parke/Wormell|''Delphic Oracle'', 418 Parke/Wormell]]}}. His {{#lemma: further education |[[Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers 9.54 (Protagoras)|Diog. Laert. 9.54 (Protagoras)]][[Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers 2.45 (Socrates)|Diog. Laert. 2.45 (Socr.)]][[Strabo 14.1.36.645c|Strab. 14.1.36.645c]][[Vitruvius, On Architecture 8, preface 1|Vitr. ''De arch.'' 8, praef. 1]][[Origen, Against Celsus 4.77|Orig. ''C. Cels.'' 4.77]][[Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers 2.10|Diog. Laert. 2.10]][[Scholion to Euripides, Orestes 982 p. 193, 19 Schwartz|Schol. Eur. ''Or.'' 982 p. 193, 19 Schwartz]][[Scholion to Pindar, Olympians 1.91a p. 38, 10 Drachmann|Schol. Pind. ''Olymp.'' 1.91a p. 38, 10 Drachmann]][[Diodorus of Sicily 1.7.7|Diod. Sic. 1.7.7]][['Dionysius of Halicarnassus', Art of Rhetoric IX β΄ 11 p. 346 Us.-R.|'Dion. Hal.' ''Rhet.'' IX β΄ 11 p. 346 Us.-R.]][[Philochorus, quoted in Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers 9.55 (Protagoras)|Philocor., quoted in Diog. Laert. 9.55 (Protagoras)]][[Suda s.v. 'Euripides'|''Suda'' s.v. 'Euripides' 2]][[Origins and Life of Euripides Ia|''Genos'' Ia.2]][[Origins and Life of Euripides Ib|''Genos'' Ib.2]][[Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights 15.20|Gell. ''NA'' 15.20.4]][[Thomas Magister, Life of Euripides|Thom. Mag. ''Vit. Eur.'' 2]]}} is with philosophers. Hence his appeal to Pheidippides, newly weaned from Socrates’ think-tank in Aristophanes’ {{#lemma: ''Clouds'' | [[Aristophanes, Clouds 1364-72|Ar. ''Nub.'' 1364-72]]}}.

==Misogyny==

{{#lemma:''Genos'' III | [[Origins and Life of Euripides III|''Genos'' III.2]]}} takes Euripides’ ''Hippolytus'' as proof of the poet’s misogyny, caused by his wife’s infidelity. Being cuckolded again by his second wife, Euripides’ slander of women intensifies, at which point the Athenian women attempt to kill him in a cave on Salamis where he was said (by {{#lemma: Philochorus | [[Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights 15.20|Gell. ''NA'' 15.20.5]]}}) to have composed his poetry. The story in {{#lemma:''Genos'' IV | [[Origins and Life of Euripides IV|''Genos'' IV.1]]}} and {{#lemma: Satyrus | [[Satyrus, Life of Euripides|Satyr. ''Vit. Eur.'' 39.12]]}} is closely related to that in ''Genos'' III, but the adulterer is named as Euripides’ slave Cephisophon, who allegedly composed his lyrics and is mentioned {{#lemma: several times | [[Aristophanes, Frogs 944; Scholion to Frogs 944; Frogs 1407-9; Scholion to Frogs 1408; Frogs 1451-3|Ar. ''Ran.'' 944; Schol. ''Ran.'' 944; ''Ran.'' 1407-9; Schol. ''Ran.'' 1408; ''Ran.'' 1451-3]]}} by Aristophanes. The women attack Euripides at the ''Thesmophoria'' (a festival of Demeter), making clear the source of the story—Aristophanes’ ''Thesmophoriazusae'', in which the women of Athens formulate a plan to punish Euripides for vilifying them. The play opens with a ‘Euripidean’ prologue; Euripides contrives a scheme to persuade the effeminate tragedian Agathon ({{#lemma: Euripides’ lover in some sources | [[Plutarch, Sayings of Kings and Commanders (Archelaus 1-3) 177a|Plut. ''Reg. et imp. apophth.'' (Archelaus 1-3) 177a]][[Aelian, Historical Miscellanies 2.21|Ael. ''VH.'' 2.21]]}}) to infiltrate the women’s assembly and defend him—a task which ultimately falls to his kinsman Mnesilochus. Once exposed, Mnesilochus attempts to evade death by using a series of ingenious Euripidean plotlines. Euripides, (surprisingly) true to his word, eventually saves him, appearing as a kind of Euripidean ''deus ex machina''. A truce is finally made; Euripides promises never to criticize women again.

Aristophanes’ comedy playfully explores the cliché—on which all ancient biography depends—that a poet’s output reflects his nature ({{#lemma: ''Thesmophoriazusae'' 167 | [[Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazusae 167|Ar. ''Th.'' 167]]}}). The women’s judgments are formed on the basis of tendentious interpretations of Euripides’ plays (see Austin/Olson li-lxviii). Misreading Euripides is taken to hilarious extremes when Euripides and Mnesilochus re-enact a scene from the ''Helen'', whose plot, in fact, re-habilitates the femme fatale (on the ''Helen'', see Allan 2008). A running commentary is provided by the priestess Critylla, who reveals her inability to distinguish fiction and ‘reality’.

In Satyrus 39.13, Euripides’ misogyny is taken for granted and scrutinized on Socratic lines, being judged irrational and comical. This analysis, however, is followed by the statement ‘But it is worth considering…’, at which point the papyrus breaks off. The next column—perhaps 20 narrow (3 cm) lines later (cf. Hunt 1912: 125)—begins with a story illustrating that the high-minded person sees through slander (39.14). Furthermore, Satyrus seems to have deconstructed the process of ‘creating Euripides’ from his plays. In 39.9, Euripides’ retreat to the Salaminian cave is said to illustrate his disdainful nature, but this assertion is followed with the observation that Euripides’ character mirrors his own poetic creations. Reversing the method of Chamaeleon, who extrapolated biographical facts from poets’ plays, Satyrus begins from the fact, uses it as an illustration of the character-trait and then cites verses which lay bare the process of the story’s formation.

==‘The Philosopher of the Stage’==

In {{#lemma: ''Genos'' Ib.2 | [[Origins and Life of Euripides Ib|''Genos'' Ib.2]]}}, Euripides’ disregard for the many is explained as a consequence of {{#lemma: his training in philosophy | [[Sextus Empiricus, Against the Professors 1.288|Sext. Emp. ''Math.'' 1.288]][[Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis 5.11.70.2|Clem. Al. ''Str.'' 5.11.70.2]]}}, an inference from his tragedies. The principal source of the link with {{#lemma: Socrates | [[Origins and Life of Euripides Ia|Genos Ia.3]][[Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers 2.18, 2.22, 9.11|Diog. Laert. 2.18, 2.22, 9.11]][[Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 4.63|Cic. ''Tusc. disp.'' 4.63]][[Aelian, Historical Miscellanies 2.13|Ael. ''VH'' 2.13]][[The Delphic Oracle 420 P-W (H3 R (3) Fontenrose)|''Delphic Oracle'' 420 P-W (H3 R (3) Fontenrose)]][[Plutarch, Life of Alcibiades 11.196b|Plut. ''Alcib.'' 11.196b]][[Aristophanes, Frogs 1491-5|Ar. ''Ran.'' 1491-5]]}} is Aristophanes. {{#lemma: Philochorus | [[Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers 2.44|Diog. Laert. 2.44]]}} rejected the interpretation of a line from the ''Palamedes'' as a rebuke to the Athenians about Socrates’ death. Satyrus re-interprets the Socrates connection in a positive light. Lines from the ''Danae'' are read {{#lemma: as admiration for Socrates’ immunity to greed | [[Satyrus, Life of Euripides| Satyr. ''Vit. Eur.'' 38.4]]}}. {{#lemma: In another fragmentary passage | [[Satyrus, Life of Euripides|Satyr. ''Vit. Eur.'' 39.2]]}}, Euripidean verses concerning the gods’ ability to see the hidden deeds of men are said to have a Socratic ‘under-meaning’. These interpretations sound like a riposte to charges of impiety. {{#lemma: Aelian | [[Aelian, Historical Miscellanies 2.13|Ael. ''VH.'' 2.13]]}}, who accepts Plato’s view that Aristophanes’ ''Clouds'' contributed to Socrates’ death and is vehemently hostile to the comic poet, says that Euripides was the only tragedian whom Socrates thought worth watching. As Nietzsche saw, there seems to have been dialogue and competition between the reception of Aristophanes on the one hand, and that of Socrates and Euripides on the other; their fortunes being inversely proportional.

==Emigration==

In contrast to Sophocles, who is ‘most Athens-loving’, Euripides is ‘most loved by foreigners’ ({{#lemma: ''Genos'' III | [[Origins and Life of Euripides III|''Genos'' III.5]]}}; see Bing 2011). {{#lemma: Plutarch | [[Plutarch, Life of Nicias 29.542cd|Plut. ''Nic.'' 29.542cd]]}} and {{#lemma: Satyrus | [[Satyrus, Life of Euripides| Satyr. ''Vit. Eur.'' 39.19]]}} say that Athenians captured in the Sicilian expedition were saved from death/enslavement by quoting Euripides. According to {{#lemma: Hermippus | [[Origins and Life of Euripides III|''Genos'' III.5]]}}, the Sicilian tyrant Dionysius I (cf. [[Aristophanes: A Guide to Selected Sources|Guide to Aristophanes]]) requested Euripides’ writing equipment after his death. The story of Euripides’ emigration to Macedonia is a Hellenistic fabrication based on Euripides’ ''Archelaus'' (Lefkowitz 2012: 91; Scullion 2003). Tragedy, which (like comedy) is so closely connected with Athenian democratic ideology, represents a challenge for transposition to a foreign monarchic context. The emigration story contrasts Euripides’ positive experiences under royal patronage with his negative treatment in Athens (see Hanink 2008, 2010b). In {{#lemma: Satyrus | [[Satyrus, Life of Euripides|Satyr. ''Vit. Eur.'' 39.16-18]]}}, it follows a discussion about the poet’s vicious treatment in comedy. Euripidean verses are interpreted as an expression of disdain for the ill-will of the masses, a renunciation of Athens, and an equation of king Archelaus with Zeus. One of the interlocutors expresses skepticism. The slight of the poet’s lowly beginnings is finally redressed; his high-mindedness is rewarded with royal favour. An alternative biography is constructed on the basis of new allegorical readings—and a wink at the entire biographical tradition.

==Death==

The story of {{#lemma: Euripides’ mauling by royal hunting dogs | [[Satyrus, Life of Euripides|Satyr. ''Vit. Eur.'' 39.20-1]][[Origins and Life of Euripides Ib|''Genos'' Ib.3]][[Origins and Life of Euripides II|''Genos'' II]][[Suda s.v. 'Euripides'|''Suda'' s.v. 'Euripides' 4]][[Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights 15.20|Gell. ''NA'' 15.20.9]]}} blends the fates of Actaeon and Pentheus (see Lefkowitz 2012: 93). In the ''Suda'' and Aulus Gellius the king’s dogs are set on him by jealous rivals, re-enacting his fate at the hands of the comic poets. The ''Suda'' also gives a version in which Euripides is dismembered by women whilst ''en route'' to an adulterous assignation. {{#lemma: ''Genos'' Ia | [[Origins and Life of Euripides Ia|''Genos'' Ia.11]]}} says that all the Athenians grieved at his death and Sophocles brought his actors onstage in mourning. A cenotaph in Athens was inscribed with a {{#lemma: Thucydidean epigram | [[Origins and Life of Euripides Ia|''Genos'' Ia.10]][[Thomas Magister, Life of Euripides|Thom. Mag. ''Vit. Eur.'' 6]]}}. According to {{#lemma: Aulus Gellius | [[Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights 15.20|Gell. ''NA'' 15.20.9]]}}, a request for the return of the poet’s bones to Attica was vehemently rejected by the Macedonians. These stories may be interpreted as further indications of late-learning on the part of the Athenians. Both tombs are said to have been {{#lemma: struck by lightning | [[Plutarch, Life of Lycurgus 31.5.59bc| Plut. ''Lyc.'' 31.5.59bc]][[Origins and Life of Euripides Ia|''Genos'' Ia.10]]}}; an indication of extraordinary favour from the gods. Two epigrams ascribed to {{#lemma: Ion of Chios | [[Palatine Anthology 7.43|''A.P.'' 7.43]][[Palatine Anthology 7.44|''A.P.'' 7.44]]}} describe the poet’s relocation to (Macedonian) Pieria by the Muses. They promise him imperishable glory, equal to that of Homer.

----

== Bibliography ==

<div id="bibliography">

*Arrighetti, G. (ed.) 1964. ''Vita di Euripide''. Pisa.

*Austin, C. and Olson, S. D. 2004. ''Thesmophoriazusae. Edited with Introduction and Commentary''. Oxford.

*Bing, P. 2011. ‘Afterlives of a Tragic Poet: Image and Hypothesis in the Hellenistic Reception of Euripides.’ In F. Montanari and A. Rengakos (eds.) 2011, ''Ancient Scholarship and Grammar: Archetypes, Concepts and Contexts''. Berlin: 199-206.

*Davidson, J. 2012. ‘Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides.’ In K. Ormand (ed.) 2012, ''A Companion to Sophocles''. Chichester/Malden, MA: 38-52.

*Funke, H. 1965/66. ‘Euripides.’ ''JbAC'' 8/9: 235-6.

*Gößwein, H. U. 1975. ''Die Briefe des Euripides''. Hain.

*Hanink, J. 2008. ‘Literary Politics and the Euripidean ''Vita''.’ ''CCJ'' 54: 115-35.

**2010a. ‘The ''Life'' of the Author in the Letters of “Euripides”.’ ''GRBS'' 50: 537-64.

**2010b. ‘The Classical Tragedians, from Athenian Idols to Wandering Poets.’ In I. Gildenhard and M. Revermann (eds.) 2010, ''Beyond the Fifth Century. Interactions with Greek Tragedy from the Fourth Century BCE to the Middle Ages''. Berlin: 39-68.

*Henrichs, A. ‘The Last of the Detractors. Friedrich Nietzsche’s Condemnation of Euripides.’ ''GRBS'' 27: 369-97.

*Hunt, A. S. 1912. ‘Satyrus, Life of Euripides.’ In A. S. Hunt (ed.) 1912, ''The Oxyrynchus Papyri IX, edited with translation and notes''. London: 124-82.

*Hunter, R. L. 2009. ''Critical Moments in Classical Literature: Studies in the Ancient View of Literature and its Uses''. Cambridge/New York.

*Knöbl, R. 2008. ''Biographical Representations of Euripides. Some Examples of their Development from Classical Antiquity to Byzantium''. Ph.D. Thesis, Durham University.

*Kovacs, D. 1994. ''Euripidea''. Leiden.

**2001. ''Euripides''. Loeb Classical Library, vol. 1. Cambridge MA.

*Lefkowitz, M. 2012. ''The Lives of the Greek Poets'' (1st edn 1981). Baltimore.

*Lucas, F. L. 1923. ''Euripides and his Influence''. London.

*Revermann, M. 1999-2000. ‘Euripides, Tragedy and Macedon: Some Conditions of Reception.’ ''ICS'' 24/5: 451-67.

*Schorn, S. 2004. ''Satyros aus Kallatis: Sammlung der Fragmente mit Kommentar''. Basel.

*Scullion, S. 2003. ‘Euripides and Macedon, or the Silence of the Frogs.’ ''CQ'' 53: 389-400.
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[[Category:Guides by Sarah Burges Watson]]

Aristophanes: A Guide to Selected Sources

2015-11-15T16:13:47Z

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{{Author|Sarah Burges Watson}}
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Aristophanes, {{#lemma: Athenian | [[Life of Aristophanes|''Vit. Ar.'' 1]][[Anonymous, Introduction to Comedy XXXa Koster|Anon. ''Prol. Com.'' XXXa Koster]][[Greek Inscriptions II (2) 1740|''IG'' II (2) 1740]]}} poet of Old Comedy, was born in the 450s and died ca. 386 BCE. His earliest plays, beginning with ''Banqueters'' (427), were {{#lemma: produced by Callistratus or Philonides | [[Anonymous, Life of Aristophanes|Anon. ''Vit. Ar.'' 2]] [[Scholion to Plato’s Apology 19c|Schol. Pl. ''Ap.'' 19c]]}}, a decision which Aristophanes defends in {{#lemma: ''Knights'' | [[Aristophanes, Knights 507-36|Ar. ''Eq.'' 507-36]]}} (512-19), probably responding to {{#lemma: comic jibes | [[Anonymous, Life of Aristophanes|Anon. ''Vit. Ar.'' 2]][[Scholion to Plato’s Apology 19c|Schol. Pl. ''Ap.'' 19c]]}} that he was ‘toiling for others’. He won at least six times in the Athenian dramatic festivals. Eleven of his comedies survive. We have titles of thirty-two more and almost a thousand fragments. Sources on Aristophanes are collected by Kassel-Austin 1984 (Greek) and Rusten 2011 (English). His plays have been translated into English by Sommerstein and Henderson.

== Comedy and Ancient Biography ==

{{#lemma: Aristophanes’ ''Life'' | [[Anonymous, Life of Aristophanes|Anon. ''Vit. Ar.'']]}} raises pertinent issues for ancient poetic biographies, since much of its material derives from comedy (Lefkowitz 2012). That of Aristophanes is no exception, being ‘largely a mere stringing together of passages from his plays which the ancient scholiasts considered to be reliably autobiographical’ (Cartledge 1999: xiii). For the most part, historical facts about Aristophanes’ life must be sought elsewhere (see Cartledge 1999: xiii-xviii), but the ''Life''’s and the scholiasts’ assumption that a poet’s life can be derived from his work is worth probing for what it can teach us about ancient biography. Three characteristics of Old Comedy seem particularly relevant:

(1) The genre’s ambiguous position on the boundary between fiction and reality. Like some iambic (invective) poetry, comedy refers to people and events in the ‘real’ world (see the [[Archilochus: A Guide to Selected Sources|Guide to Archilochus]]; Rosen 1988, 2007). Ancient commentators and biographers tend to treat its satirical statements as factual (Halliwell 1984).

(2) The prominence of the poet’s voice, especially in the ''parabasis'', a convention whereby the chorus turned to address the audience on behalf of, and sometimes in the voice of, the comic poet (see Hubbard 1991). That voice—fragmented, unstable, and elusive—is not the unmediated voice of a historical figure, but a ‘fictionalized representation of the author’ (Goldhill 1991), in dialogue with similarly fictionalized representations by/of his rivals and enemies (see Dobrov 1995; Storey 2003; Bakola 2008; Rosen 2010; Biles 2011).

The literariness of ‘stage autobiographies’ and their inseparability from the dynamics of comic competition is well illustrated by the confrontation between Aristophanes and Cratinus (see Sidwell 1995; Luppe 2000; Rosen 2000; Biles 2002, 2011; Bakola 2008, 2010). In {{#lemma: ''Knights'' | [[Aristophanes, Knights 507-36|Ar. ''Eq.'' 507-36]]}} (424 BCE), Aristophanes represented his rival as an alcoholic has-been, probably literalizing a wine metaphor in which Cratinus had laid claim to the ‘Dionysian’ heritage of Archilochean iambos (Biles 2002, 2011). The following year, Cratinus responded to Aristophanes’ insult by creating an entire drama (''Pytine'') with himself as (anti-?)hero—the legitimate, alcoholic husband of a despairing Comedy. The play was a resounding success, trouncing Aristophanes’ ''Clouds'', which came third. In the ''Clouds''’ (re-written) {{#lemma: ''parabasis'' | [[Aristophanes, Clouds 518-562|Ar. ''Nub.'' 518-562]]}}, the poet describes the defeat as one of his greatest disappointments.

(3) As this example demonstrates (see also the Guides to [[Euripides: A Guide to Selected Sources|Euripides]] and [[Aeschylus: A Guide to Selected Sources|Aeschylus]]), ancient comedians took great delight in making poets resemble their works. The biographers’ tendency to extrapolate poets’ lives from their literary outputs is a closely related phenomenon (Graziosi 2006: 164-5). Both reflect the ancient view, humorously embodied and stated by Agathon in Aristophanes’ ''Thesmophoriazusae'' (149-52), that composing poetry requires imitative identification with one’s creations. From here to the cliché that life imitates art and vice-versa is a small step. Biographers played the game of generating lives from art with varying degrees of earnestness and sophistication. The fact that they considered it unproblematic reveals the differences between ancient biography and our own (Momigliano 1993; Graziosi 2002; Hägg 2012); historicity was not a priority, nor was historical evidence readily available: other agendas were in play (see Bing 1993; Graziosi 2002).

== The ''Life'' on Aristophanes as a hero of democracy ==

These considerations go some way towards explaining the ''Life''’s literalistic reading of Aristophanes’ persona. The most prominent ‘event’ in Aristophanes’ autobiography is his {{#lemma: feud with the demagogue Cleon | [[Aristophanes, Acharnians 5-8; Scholion to Aristophanes’ Acharnians 8a|Ar. ''Ach.'' 5-8; Schol. Ar. ''Ach.'' 8a]][[Aristophanes, Acharnians 377-82; Scholion to Aristophanes’ Acharnians 378|Ar. ''Ach.'' 377-82; Schol. Ar. ''Ach.'' 378]][[Aristophanes, Wasps 1284-91; Scholion to Wasps 1284; Scholion to Wasps 1285|Ar. ''Vesp.'' 1284-91; Schol. Ar. ''Vesp.'' 1284; Schol. Ar. ''Vesp.'' 1285]]}}, the target of ''Knights''. The hostility supposedly arose when Cleon brought an accusation that Aristophanes was foreign (he had {{#lemma: Aeginetan connections | [[Anonymous, Life of Aristophanes|Anon. ''Vit. Ar.'' 3]][[Aristophanes, Acharnians 626-64|Ar. ''Ach.'' 652-4]][[Anonymous, Introduction to Comedy|Anon. ''Prol. com.'']][[Scholion to Plato’s Apology 19c|Schol. Pl. ''Ap.'' 19c]][[Greek Inscriptions II (2) 1740|''IG'' II (2) 1740]][[Scholion to Aristophanes’ Acharnians 653 and 654b |Schol. Ar. ''Ach.'' 653 and 654 b]]}}) and that, in ''Babylonians'' (426 BCE), he had slandered Athenian officials in the presence of foreigners. Most modern scholars accept that Cleon brought an action; {{#lemma: ''Acharnians'' 381-2 |[[Aristophanes, Acharnians 377-82|Ar. ''Ach.'' 377-82]]}} suggests that it was rejected. In connection with the comic poet’s defeat of the ‘tyrannical’ Cleon, {{#lemma: the ''Life'' also repeats Aristophanes’ hyperbolic claim that he quashed the ‘informers’ | [[Aristophanes, Wasps 1015-59|Ar. ''Vesp.'' 1015-59]][[Anonymous, Life of Aristophanes|Anon. ''Vit. Ar.'' 4]]}}, who were making prosecutions for the sake of personal profit (see MacDowell 1971: 1-4). These achievements are the cornerstones of the ''Life''’s portrayal of Aristophanes as a crusader for democracy.

The vehemently pro-democratic stance of the {{#lemma: ''Life'' (5)| [[Anonymous, Life of Aristophanes|Anon. ''Vit. Ar.'' 5]]}}, which probably took shape in the context of Hellenistic monarchy (Bing 1993), is surprising. In the ''Life'', to eulogize Aristophanes is to be pro-democracy. {{#lemma: Ps.-Xenophon | [[Ps.-Xenophon, Constitution of the Athenians 2.18|Ps.-Xen. ''Ath. Pol.'' 2.18]]}} makes a close connection between Old Comedy and democracy: invective is the people’s weapon against its enemies. {{#lemma: Platonius | [[Platonius, On the Distinctions among Comedies I|Platon. ''Diff. com.'' I]]}} follows suit (see Hunter 2009: 104-6; Olson 2010: 37-45). According to Aristophanes’ rhetoric, frank and free speech—the hallmark of Athenian democracy—is the comic poet’s duty, even when this means putting one’s head on the block, like Dicaeopolis in the {{#lemma: ''Acharnians'' | [[Aristophanes, Acharnians 626-64|Ar.'' Ach.'' 626-64]]}}. It is worth considering how such passages may have resonated when transposed to a Hellenistic context. The ''Life'' twice confronts Aristophanes with monarchy. Dicaeopolis claims that the king of Persia asked whether Athens or Sparta had received more abuse from Aristophanes, since such wise instruction was sure to tip the scales favourably in the Peloponnesian War. Scholars have noted with horror that the {{#lemma: ''Life'' (6)| [[Anonymous, Life of Aristophanes|Anon. ''Vit. Ar.'' 6]]}} reports this joke as biographical ‘fact’. To repeat the story, however, is also (as Borges’ Pierre Menard might suggest) to re-stage the confrontation between Greek democracy and Eastern tyranny in a way that leaves the dignity of both sides intact and underlines the social benefits of comedy’s teaching. The same may be said of the anecdote ({{#lemma: ''Life'' 6 | [[Anonymous, Life of Aristophanes|Anon. ''Vit. Ar.'' 6]]}}) that Plato sent Aristophanes’ plays to Dionysius, the Sicilian tyrant whom, in the ''Seventh Letter'', he cultivates as a potential philosopher-king. The ''Life'' says that the plays were intended to provide instruction about the Athenian constitution—i.e. democracy, which Plato ranks second-worst in the ''Republic'' (see Scott 2000). It does not seem fanciful to suppose that the ''Life'' re-enacts this education of monarchs, with its message reversed.

== Aristophanes’ Socrates and Plato’s Aristophanes ==

The ''Life''’s deafening silence on the subject of Socrates is in keeping with its pro-democratic and pro-Aristophanic positioning. In Plato’s {{#lemma: ''Apology'' | [[Plato, Apology 18b-d, 19b-c|Pl. ''Ap.'' 18b-d, 19b-c]]}}, reputational damage caused by ''Clouds'' is a determining factor in Socrates’ indictment—a view which {{#lemma: some questioned | [[Scholion to Aristophanes’ Clouds 96d|Schol. Ar. ''Nub.'' 96d]]}} and {{#lemma: others embellished |[[Hypothesis (A2) to Aristophanes’ Clouds|Hyp. (A2) Ar. ''Nub.'']]}}. Aristophanes caricatures Socrates as a natural philosopher, sophist, and guru of newfangled mysteries: the relationship between this portrait and the historical Socrates is anything but straightforward (see Bowie 1993: 112-24; Rashed 2009: 107-36; Konstan 2011: 75-90; Laks/Saetta Cottone 2013). {{#lemma: Aelian | [[Aelian, Historical Miscellany 2.13|Ael. ''VH'' 2.13]]}}, who intensifies the ''Apology''’s critical stance, says that when foreigners wondered whom the masked likeness represented, Socrates stood up in the audience and remained standing throughout the play—a paradoxical reminder of Plato’s view that poetry imitates the illusions of the sensible world rather than the absolute truth of the forms. {{#lemma: Olympiodorus | [[Olympiodorus, Life of Plato p. 3, 65 West|Olymp. ''Vit. Pl.'' p. 3, 65 West]]}}, by contrast, makes Plato an admirer of Aristophanes. Certainly his portrait in the {{#lemma: ''Symposium'' | [[Plato, Symposium 176b, 177e, 185c-d, 223c-d|Pl. ''Symp.'' 176b, 177e, 185c-d, 223c-d]]}} could not be more gracious (see Hunter 2004: 60-71). A bout of hiccups prevents Aristophanes, ‘who thinks of nothing but Dionysos and Aphrodite’ (177e), from taking his allotted place in the sequence of ''encomia'' to love. His fable about human origins, which parodies a mystical tale about the soul’s imprisonment in the body (see Burges Watson 2014), makes love a literal quest for one’s ‘other half’—our ancestors were bisected by the gods in punishment for ''hybris'' (189a-193d). Invective is notably absent; the speech displays only the comic poet’s charm and imaginative genius—and Plato’s mastery thereof. Diotima’s metaphysical revelations, however, subsequently demonstrate Aristophanes’ lack of understanding.

== Old Comedy versus New ==

Plato’s critique of Aristophanes is echoed in Plutarch’s elitist and immensely hostile {{#lemma: ''Comparison of Aristophanes and Menander'' | [[Epitome of Plutarch’s Comparison of Aristophanes and Menander 853a-b, 853c-d, 854a, 854c-d|Plut. ''Comp. Ar. et Men. Epit.'' 853a-b, 853c-d, 854a, 854c-d]]}}, which, like much Hellenistic writing, is also influenced by Aristotle’s censorship of Old Comedy’s malicious humour (see Hunter 2009: 78-89). The developmental narrative in {{#lemma: ''Life'' 1 | [[Anonymous, Life of Aristophanes|Anon. ''Vit. Ar.'' 1]]}} carefully exempts Aristophanes from this charge: he softened his predecessors’ invective with charm, giving the genre its solemnity and utility. Invective, however, remains an essential—and positive—generic characteristic. When curbed by legal restrictions (for which evidence is lacking—see Halliwell 1991), Old Comedy becomes New; Aristophanes’ ''Cocalus'' paves the way.

----

== Bibliography ==

<div id="bibliography">
*Bakola, E. 2008. ‘The Drunk, the Reformer and the Teacher: Agonistic Poetics and the Construction of Persona in the Comic Poets of the Fifth Century.’ ''CCJ'' 54: 1-29.

**2010. ''Cratinus and the Art of Comedy''. Oxford.

Biles, Z. 2002. ‘Intertextual Biography in the Rivalry of Cratinus and Aristophanes.’ ''AJP'' 123: 169-204.

**2011. ''Aristophanes and the Poetics of Competition''. Cambridge.

Bing, P. 1993. ‘The Bios-Tradition and Poets’ Lives in Hellenistic Poetry.’ In R. Rosen and J. Farrell (eds.) 1993, ''Nomodeiktes: Greek Studies in Honor of Martin Ostwald''. Ann Arbor: 619-31.

Bowie, A. 1993. ''Aristophanes: Myth, Ritual, and Comedy''. Cambridge.

Burges Watson, S. 2014. “Orpheus’ Erotic Mysteries: Plato, Pederasty and the Zagreus Myth in Phanocles Fragment 1.” ''BICS'' 57.2: 47-71.

Cartledge, P. A. 1999. ''Aristophanes and his Theatre of the Absurd'' (1st edn 1990). Bristol.

Dobrov, G.W. 1995. ‘The Poet’s Voice in the Evolution of Dramatic Dialogism.’ In G.W. Dobrov (ed.) 1995, ''Beyond Aristophanes: Transition and Diversity in Greek Comedy''. Atlanta: 47-97.

** (ed.) 2010. ''Brill’s Companion to the Study of Greek Comedy''. Leiden.

Goldhill, S. 1991. ''The Poet’s Voice: Essays on Poetics and Greek Literature''. Cambridge.

Graziosi, B. 2002. ''Inventing Homer: the Early Reception of Epic''. Cambridge.

**2006. ‘Il rapporto tra autore ed opera nella tradizione biografica greca.’ In F. Roscalla (ed.) 2006, ''L’autore e l’opera. Attribuzioni, appropriazioni, apocrifi nella Grecia antica''. Pisa: 155-75.

Hägg, T. 2012. ''The Art of Biography in Antiquity''. Cambridge.

Halliwell, S. 1984. ‘Ancient Interpretations of ὀνομαστὶ κωμωιδεῖν in Aristophanes.’ ''CQ'' 34: 83-8.

**1991. ‘Comic Satire and Freedom of Speech in Classical Athens.’ ''JHS'' 111: 48-70.

Harvey, D. and Wilkins, J. (eds.) 2000. ''The Rivals of Aristophanes: Studies in Athenian Old Comedy''. London.

Henderson, J. 1998-2007. ''Aristophanes. Edited with Translation''. Cambridge, MA.

Hunter, R. 2004. ''Plato’s Symposium''. Oxford.

**2009. ''Critical Moments in Classical Literature: Studies in the Ancient View of Literature and its Uses''. Cambridge.

Kassel, R. and Austin, C. 1984. ''Poetae Comici Graeci. Vol. 3.2: Aristophanes Testimonia et Fragmenta''. Berlin.

Konstan, D. 2011. ‘Socrates in Aristophanes’ Clouds.’ In D. Morrison (ed.) 2011, ''The Cambridge Companion to Socrates''. Cambridge: 75-90.

Laks, A. and Saetta Cottone, R. 2013. ''Comedie et Philosophie. Socrate et les Presocratiques dans les Nuées d’Aristophane''. Paris.

Lefkowitz, M. 2012. ''The Lives of the Greek Poets'' (1st edn 1981). Baltimore.

Luppe, W. 2000. ‘The Rivalry between Aristophanes and Kratinos.’ In D. Harvey and J. Wilkins (eds.) 2000: 15-23.

MacDowell, D. 1971. ''Aristophanes’ Wasps. Edited with Introduction and Commentary''. Oxford.

Momigliano, A. 1993. ''The Development of Greek Biography'' (1st edn 1971). Cambridge, MA.

Olson, S. D. 2010. ‘Comedy, Politics, and Society.’ In G.W. Dobrov (ed.) 2010: 35-70.

Rashed, M. 2009. ‘Aristophanes and the Socrates of the Phaedo.’ ''OSAP'' 36: 107-36.

Rosen, R.M. 1988. ''Old Comedy and the Iambographic Tradition''. Atlanta, GA.

**2000. ‘Cratinus’ Pytine and the Construction of the Comic Self.’ In D. Harvey and J. Wilkins (eds.) 2000: 23-40.

**2007. ''Making Mockery: the Poetics of Ancient Satire''. Oxford.

**2010. ‘Aristophanes.’ In G.W. Dobrov (ed.) 2010: 227-78.

Rusten, J. (ed.) 2011. ''The Birth of Comedy. Texts, Documents, and Art from Athenian Comic Competitions, 486-280''. Baltimore.

Scott, D. 2000. ‘Plato’s Critique of the Democratic Character.’ ''Phronesis'' 45: 19-37.

Sidwell, K. 1995. ‘Poetic Rivalry and the Caricature of Comic Poets: Cratinus’ Pytine and Aristophanes’ Wasps.’ In A. Griffith (ed.) 1995, ''Stage Directions: Essays in Ancient Drama in Honour of E. W. Handley''. London: 56-80.

Sommerstein, A. H. (ed.) 1990-2012. ''The Comedies of Aristophanes''. Warminster.

Storey, I. 2003. ''Eupolis: Poet of Old Comedy''. Oxford.

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<div id="notes"></div>

[[Category:Guides by Sarah Burges Watson]]

Archilochus: A Guide to Selected Sources

2015-11-15T16:06:25Z

NickFreer: /* Bibliography */

{{GuideHighlightBox}}
{{Author|Donald E. Lavigne}}
{{#howtoquote:}}
<div id="guide">
== Author, authorial persona, and first-person poetry ==

Archilochus, born in the Greek island of Paros in the eighth/seventh century BCE (Jacoby 1941 and Lavelle 2002), is one of the most famous iambic poets of antiquity. However, his biography presents several difficulties. There are two main reasons for the complexities of his Life: 1) the fact that he is a prominent, active character in his poems and 2) the fact that the bulk of his extant poetry is fragmentary. One of the most tantalising pieces of evidence for dating Archilochus, fr. 122 West, which mentions an eclipse, illustrates the problem nicely. Because the poet is a character in his poems and because the description of the eclipse is narrated in the first person, we assume that this eclipse occurred in the lifetime of Archilochus. Therefore, after some calculation, we can show that the Aegean would have witnessed at least three eclipses from the late-eighth to the mid-seventh centuries, one of which must have burned the corneae of Archilochus and his fellow Parians (Blakeway 1936, with updates by Worthen 2010). This argument makes two problematic assumptions. First, and most obviously, the incomplete state of the poems does not allow us definitely to say that Archilochus is the speaker in a given poem (or even that a contemporary of the poet is speaking): in the case of this fragment, {{#lemma: Aristotle | [[Aristotle, Rhetoric 3.17.1418b.23-33|Arist. ''Rh.'' 3.17.1418b.23-33]]}} tells us that this poem was not in fact spoken by Archilochus. Secondly, the fact that an historical poet features himself as a character does not necessarily imply that the life of the persona equates to that of the poet (Dover 1964). In fact, much of the effect of Archilochus’ iambic poetry lies in the tension between the historical poet and his fictional persona (see Lavigne 2008).

== Lycambes and his family ==

The single most important aspect of Archilochus’ autobiography – important because directly connected to the reception of his poetry – is the episode of Lycambes and his daughters (frr. 172-81 and 196a West; for further discussion and bibliography, see Irwin 1998 and Hawkins 2008). According to a famous ancient tradition, Lycambes promised one of his daughters, Neobule, to the poet. After Lycambes changed his mind, Archilochus attacked the man and his daughters in his poetry, causing the suicide of Lycambes and the girls (see Carey 1986: 60 for the relevant sources). Horace’s famous statement in the {{#lemma: ''Epistles'' | [[Horace, Epistle 1.19.23-31 | Hor. ''Epist.'' 1.19.23-31]]}} that he was the first to bring Parian iambics to Rome, imitating the spirit and metre but not the material and words attacking Lycambes, is complicated by the fact that Horace does feature the Lycambids in his {{#lemma: ''Epodes'' | [[Horace, Epode 6.11-16 | Hor. ''Epod.'' 6.11-16]]}} as a model for the power of his invective. In any event, it is clear that the Lycambids become exemplars of the deleterious effect of the poetry of Archilochus (and those who would imitate him). After Horace, {{#lemma: Ovid | [[Ovid, Ibis 43-64 | Ov. ''Ib.'' 43-64]]}} too uses the threat of Archilochean vitriol towards Lycambes and his kin as indicative of the abusive potential of his poetry. As a result of these Roman poets and their commentators, the trope remains powerful over many centuries ({{#lemma: Eustathius | [[Eustathius on Odyssey 11.277 | Eust. ''in Od.'' 11.277]]}} mentions it in his commentary on the ''Odyssey''), although the actual poetry of Archilochus was eventually laid to the side and forgotten.

== Archilochus’ death ==

A story of Apollo’s esteem for Archilochus surrounds the death of the poet, as recounted for example in the Byzantine encyclopaedia known as {{#lemma: ''Suda'' | [[Suda s.v. ‘Archilochus’ | ''Suda'' s.v. ‘Archilochus’]]}}. According to tradition, a shadowy figure called Calondas and nicknamed Korax (‘Crow’) killed the poet in war. After the poet’s death, Apollo required Archilochus’ killer to go to Tainarum, where Tettix (‘Cicada’) was buried, and to propitiate the soul of the poet with libations. As Lefkowitz points out, the connection may be that in a lost poem Archilochus referred to himself as a cicada (fr. 233 West, cf. Lefkowitz 2012: 29).

== The cult of Archilochus ==

The idea that Archilochus is a great poet, but that the content of his poetry is problematic, is prominent in antiquity, and is reflected in the single most interesting piece of evidence we have concerning Archilochus’ life, the inscription of one {{#lemma: Mnesiepes | [[Mnesiepes inscription]]}}, which details the particulars of the poet’s hero cult on Paros and dates from the third century BCE (for a detailed study, see Clay 2004). The inscription of Mnesiepes was set up in the Archilocheion, a shrine dedicated to Archilochus and situated on Paros. Although the state of the inscription does not allow for certainty, it seems that the Parians recoiled from an early Archilochean performance associated with a Dionysiac context (fr. 251 West), and were stricken with impotence as a result. After consulting the oracle at Delphi, Apollo made it clear that Archilochus was to be celebrated, not castigated, for his poetry. In parallel, or perhaps in competition, with Hesiod (see [[Hesiod: A Guide to Selected Sources]]), the inscription records the story of Archilochus’ poetic initiation, showcasing the favour in which both the Muses and Apollo held the poet from his earliest days. The name of Mnesiepes, perhaps a speaking name meaning ‘he who remembers the words’ (Nagy 1979: 304), might suggest the existence of a poetic guild on Paros, not unlike the Homeridae in Chios (see [[Homer: A Guide to Selected Sources]]). Interesting in this regard is another inscription found in the Parian Archilocheion, set up by a certain Sosthenes in the first century BCE. The {{#lemma: Sosthenes | [[Sosthenes inscription]]}} inscription seems to detail the battles in which Archilochus participated, citing several poems of a martial nature; perhaps Sosthenes narrated the death and burial of the poet before offering an iambic poem of his own. This poem reanimates Archilochus and has the poet censure Sosthenes himself for stealthily appropriating his poetry to establish Sosthenes’ own fame.

== Archilochus and Homer ==

In several ancient sources, Archilochus is regularly compared to Homer; this comparison is a central feature of the reputation of Archilochus in antiquity. {{#lemma: Heraclitus | [[Heraclitus, fr. 42 D.-K. | Heraclit. fr. 42 D.-K.]]}} compares Archilochus to Homer as representatives of poetry tout court, and {{#lemma: Dio Chrysostom | [[Dio Chrysostom, Orations 33.11-12 | Dio Chrys. ''Or.'' 33.11-12]]}} claims that his is an even better model to follow than Homer. {{#lemma: Velleius Paterculus | [[Velleius Paterculus, Roman History 1.5 | Vell. Pat. ''Hist.'' 1.5]]}} sums up the tradition of comparing the two poets, stating that Homer and Archilochus were simultaneously the inventors and most perfect practitioners of their particular genres. This tradition of comparison probably stems from the fact that both poets, as Heraclitus’ passage suggests, were part of the rhapsodes’ repertoire (as is implied in {{#lemma: Plato’s ''Ion'' | [[Plato, Ion 530d-531a, 532a | Pl. ''Ion'' 530d-531a, 532a]]}}; for a detailed discussion, see Lavigne forthcoming). Nonetheless, ancient critics often chose to focus on the low register and anti-social message of much of Archilochus’ poetry in their assessment of the poet (cf. the early characterisation by Pindar). As Rotstein 2007 has shown, in the case of {{#lemma: Critias, fr. 44. D.-K. | [[Critias fr. 44 D.-K. |Crit. fr. 44 D.-K.]]}} this particular portrayal is related to the socio-political situation of Critias’ own Athens, and thus serves as an example of the way in which the biographies of poets were used to particular poetic and political ends by those who narrated them (on Homer’s life, see Graziosi 2002).

== Archilochus on stage and in epigram ==

That Archilochus was beloved of the Muses and Apollo is proven by the popularity of his poetry throughout antiquity, but especially by the number of poets who channeled Archilochus in their own poetry. {{#lemma: The poets of ancient comedy | [[Alexis, Archilochus fr. 22 PCG; Cratinus, Archilochoi fr. 1 PCG; Aristophanes, Peace 1298-1301 |Alex. ''Archil.'' fr. 22 ''PCG''; Crat. ''Archil.'' fr. 1 ''PCG''; Ar. ''Pax'' 1298-1301]]}} paid tribute to Archilochus (see Rosen 1988). Several epigrams treat Archilochus; {{#lemma: Theocritus | [[Theocritus, Epigram 21 Gow | Theoc. ''Ep.'' 21 Gow]]}}’ stands out for its focus on the positive qualities of Archilochus’ poetry. {{#lemma: Later epigrams | [[Gaetulicus, Anthologia Palatina 7.71.1-4 | ''AP'' 7.71.1-4]]}}, as well as a good deal of the Roman poetic use of Archilochus, centre around the most famous objects of the poet’s ire, Lycambes and his daughters.

----

== Bibliography ==

<div id="bibliography">
* Blakeway, A. A. 1936. ‘The Date of Archilochus.’ In ''Greek Poetry and Life: Essays Presented to Gilbert Murray''. Oxford: 34-55.
* Carey, C. 1986. ‘Archilochus and Lycambes.’ ''CQ'' 36.1: 60-7.
* Clay, D. 2004. ''Archilochos Heros. The Cult of Poets in the Greek Polis.'' Cambridge, MA.
* Dover, K. J. 1964. ‘The Poetry of Archilochus.’ In J. Poilloux, N. M. Kontoleon ''et al.'' (eds.), ''Archiloque: sept exposés et discussions.'' Geneva: 183-222.
* Graziosi, B. 2002. ''Inventing Homer. The Early Reception of Epic.'' Cambridge.
* Hawkins, T. 2008. ‘Out-Foxing the Wolf-Walker: Lycambes as Performative Rival to Archilochus.’ ''CA'' 27.1: 93-114.
* Irwin, E. 1998. ‘Biography, Fiction, and the Archilochean Ainos.’ ''JHS'' 118: 177-83.
* Jacoby, F. 1941. ‘The Date of Archilochus.’ ''CQ'' 35: 97-109.
* Lavelle, B. 2002. ‘The Apollodoran Date for Archilochus.’ ''CPh'' 97.4: 344-351.
* Lavigne, D. E. 2008. ‘The Persona of Archilochos and Iambic Performance.’ In D. Katsonopoulou, I. Petropoulos, S. Katsarou (eds.), ''Paros II. Archilochos and His Age. Proceedings of the Second International Conference on the Archaeology of Paros and the Cyclades, Paroikia, Paros, 7-9 October 2005.'' Athens: 91-113.
* Lavigne, D. E. (forthcoming). ‘Archilochus and Homer in the Rhapsodic Context.’ In C. Carey and L. Swift (eds.), ''Greek Iambos and Elegy: New Approaches.'' Oxford.
* Lefkowitz, M. 2012 (1981). ''The Lives of the Greek Poets.'' Baltimore.
* Nagy, G. 1979. ''The Best of the Achaeans. Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry.'' Baltimore and London.
* Rosen, R. M. 1988. ''Old Comedy and the Iambographic Tradition.'' Atlanta.
* Rotstein, A. 2007. ‘Critias’ Invective Against Archilochus.’ ''CPh'' 102: 139-54.
* Worthen, T. 2010. ‘Dating the Eclipse of Archilochus.’ URL:

https://www.academia.edu/6086781/Dating_Archilochus_by_his_Darkness_at_Noon_poem.
</div>
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<div id="notes"></div>

[[Category:Guides by Donald E. Lavigne]]

Anacreon: A Guide to Selected Sources

2015-11-15T16:05:00Z

NickFreer: /* Bibliography */

{{GuideHighlightBox}}
{{Author|William Wallis}}
{{#howtoquote:}}
<div id="guide">

Anacreon was a Greek lyric poet famed for his verses on symposiastic themes. No straightforward biography survives, but diverse sources contribute to his biographical tradition.

The {{#lemma: ''Suda'' | [[Suda s.v. Anacreon (A 1916=I p. 171-2 Adler)|''Suda'' s.v. Anacreon]]}} tells us that Anacreon was born on Teos in 570 BC, and evacuated to Abdera in Thrace because of the invasion by Cyrus’ general, Harpagus, in around 540 BC. The next we hear of Anacreon is that {{#lemma: he was a poet at the court of Polycrates in Samos (ruled 533-22 BC), and present when Polycrates was overthrown | [[Herodotus, Histories 3.121.1|Hdt. 3.121.1-5]]}}. {{#lemma: Strabo | [[Strabo, Geographica 14.1.16|Str. 14.1.16]]}} attempts to confirm this with evidence from Anacreon’s own verse.

{{#lemma: The Peisistratid Hipparchus | [[Plato, Hipparchus 228C.1-3|Pl. ''Hipparch.'' 228C.1-3]]}} is said to have summoned Anacreon to Athens (after the overthrow of Polycrates), and to have become the poet’s patron (as he was for Simonides). {{#lemma: Plato | [[Plato, Charmides 157E.4 – 158A.2|Pl. ''Chrm.'' 157E.4 – 158A.2]]}} relates that while in Athens, Anacreon was the lover of Critias, an aristocratic youth (and grandfather of Socrates’ associate of the same name). A confused reference from the much later writer {{#lemma: Himerius |[[Himerius, Orations and Declamations 39.10-11|Him. ''Or.'' 39.10-11]]}} suggests that Anacreon knew Xanthippus, father of the Athenian statesman Pericles.

Like Simonides, Anacreon is thought to have spent time in Larisa, Thessaly, after the overthrow of the Peisistratids in 510 BC. This is inferred from {{#lemma: two epigrams | [[Palatine Anthology 6.136|''P.A.'' 6.136]][[Palatine Anthology 6.142|''P.A.'' 6.142]]}} attributed to Anacreon about Thessalian rulers Echecratidas and Dyseris.

If he did move to Thessaly, at least one later source suggests a return to Athens at some point after 510 BC. {{#lemma: An ancient editorial note on Aeschylus | [[Scholium to Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound 128 (a.3-5)|''Sch.'' ad ''A. Pr.'' 128 (a.3-5)]]}} records that Anacreon appreciated the tragic poet’s verse, which he would have been most likely to do if resident in Athens. It has been argued, however, that this might have occurred before 510 BC or away from Athens (Ridgway 1998: 720-21), and it may also reflect a perception of literary connections expressed biographically. {{#lemma: Lucian | [[Lucian, On Long Life 26|Lucianus, ''Macr.'' 26]]}} records that he lived for eighty-five years, which would date his death to 485 BC. No sources specify his home in old age, but {{#lemma: a Simonidean epigram | [[''Palatine Anthology'' 7.25|''P.A.'' 7.25]]}} locates his tomb on Teos.

This rather diffuse group of sources has allowed some scholars to reconstruct a trajectory of Anacreon’s life and travels (Bowra 1961: 300-1; Campbell 1988: 3-4; Rosenmeyer 1992: 14; Ridgway 1998: 719; Budelmann 2009: 227-28).

==Visual Representations==

Two securely identified depictions of Anacreon survive from within the poet’s life time.

{{#lemma: A ''kylix'' (wine cup) by the painter Oltos | [[File: Oltos Anacreon.png|link=Oltos Anacreon]]}}, dated to around 510 BC, shows Anacreon dancing with two youths and playing the ''chelys'' lyre with a plectrum. He is wreathed and wears a ''himation'' (mantle). His head is thrown back with mouth open, which suggests lively singing. One of the accompanying youths is labelled ΝΥΦΕΣ (‘Ny[m]phes’), and the word ΚΑΛΟΣ (‘beautiful’) is written to the left of Anacreon. Though he is not presented as particularly drunk, nor particularly exotic, this first depiction of Anacreon references what in his reception become the primary themes of his poetry: the ''symposium'' (drinking party), and the love of beautiful youths (Beazley-Caskey 1954: 61; Beazley 1963; 62-3, no. 86; Budelmann 2009: 236).

A roughly contemporary ''lekythos'' (oil jug) by the Gales painter also identifies Anacreon by name, and shows a bearded singer playing a ''barbiton'' lyre. The Gales painter portrays him in a ''chiton'' (tunic), ''himation'' (mantle), and possibly the ''sakkos'' (headdress) of Ionian musicians. He is accompanied by two young men, both wearing a ''chlamys'' (short mantle), and dancing with staffs and a wine-bowl (Beazley-Caskey 1954: 61; Beazley 1963: 36, no. 2).

This costume resembles those depicted in a long series of vases, beginning around 520 and ending around 450 BC, that have been called ‘Anacreontic’. A connection to Anacreon was first suggested by Beazley, on the basis of an inscribed lyre on a fragment of a ''krater'' (wine-mixing bowl) by the Kleophrades painter (Beazley-Caskey 1954: 57; Beazley 1963: 135, no. 32; Richter 1965: 77). They depict heavily bearded men dressed in feminine clothing (often with parasols, boots and earrings, as well as the ''barbiton'' lyre, pipes and drums). There has been intense debate as to whether these portray Anacreon, or simply a cliché of the effeminate and often drunk eastern
musician that was perhaps a well-known target for comedy (Beazley-Caskey 1954:
55-61; Richter 1965: 77; Price 1990; Salskov Roberts 2002: 241-44; Budelmann
2009: 236; Bing 2014).

Either way, Anacreon could clearly be considered a member of this class of Asiatic songmen. Aristophanes’ character {{#lemma: Agathon | [[Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazousae 136-68|Ar. ''Th.'' 136-68]]}} is dressed up as an effeminate Ionian poet, and names Anacreon along with Ibycus and Alcaeus as his models (Price 1990: 169-70). In fact, {{#lemma: in the longest surviving fragment of Anacreon’s verse | [[Athenaeus, Sophists at Dinner 12.46 (533f-534a)|Ath. 12.46 (533f-534a)]]}}, the poet himself seems to take aim at this cliché of exotically dressed men in Athens by criticising one Artemon for his affectations and effeminate attire (Price 1990: 171; Ridgway 1998: 737-38).

Despite the fact that the earliest representations of Anacreon associate him with a class of drunken, Asiatic partiers, most accounts of Anacreon’s reception chart the development of his persona from a sophisticated symposiast writing on a range of subjects, and a friend of the aristocracy, to the ‘Anacreontic’ cliché of a joyously drunk lover of boys (Rosenmeyer 1992; Lambin 2002).

The earliest and best known sculpture of Anacreon seems to fit well into this narrative, as it seems to portray Anacreon as a respectable poet active among the Athenian aristocracy. A portrait type of Anacreon survives in one full-size example (known as the {{#lemma: ''Borghese Anacreon'' | [[File: Borghese_Anacreon.jpg|100px||link=Borghese Anacreon]]}}), and seven heads, identified by an inscription on a head found in Trastevere (IG XIV 1133; Richter 1965: 76). It shows the poet nude but for a fillet and a peculiarly draped ''chlamys'' (short mantle) (Ridgway 1998: 732-734). The poet rests his weight on his left hip and both feet are firmly planted on the ground. He has a moderately athletic body, and displays ''kynodesme'' or ‘infibulation’, the folding and binding of the penis with string. The significance of this shifts over time, but it seems most often to be related to morally upright behaviour (Zanker 1995: 28; Ridgway 1998: 729-30). His hair and beard are thick, but closely cropped, and made up of a large number of small wavy locks. He looks slightly upwards and to his right: a pose that interpreters have variously associated with song or drunkenness. His arms (as restored) appear to have once held a lyre (possibly the ''barbiton'', {{#lemma: for the invention of which Anacreon is sometimes credited | [[Athenaeus, Sophists at Dinner 4.77 (175d-e)|Ath. 4.77 (175d-e)]]}}). This portrait tallies with {{#lemma: the image of Anacreon presented to us by the politician, philosopher and poet Critias | [[Critias 7 Edmonds, Bergk = 8 Diehl = Athenaeus, Sophists at Dinner 13.74 (600d-e)|Ath. 13.74 (600d-e)]]}} (403 BC), a grandson of Anacreon’s lover, and his namesake (Dougherty-Kurke 2003: 190-199).

There is great debate as to the location of the ‘original’ portrait, and specifically whether it is {{#lemma: the portrait seen on the Athenian acropolis and thought to look drunk by Pausanias | [[Pausanias, Periegesis 1.25.1|Paus. 1.25.1]]}}, who may however have been influenced by what he already thought about Anacreon from other portraits and poems (Zanker 1995: 22-31; Ridgway 1998). However this question is answered, most commentators agree that this is a portrait of a relatively well-behaved Anacreon, and many, though not all, scholars consider this portrait type to be an emulation of a fifth-century original that would have been appropriate for display on the acropolis.

In the Hellenistic period the sophisticated symposiast Anacreon seems to be simplified into a lecherous drunk. {{#lemma: An epigram by Leonidas | [[Planudean Anthology 306|''A.Pl.'' 306]]}} vividly describes a statue that shows him as drunk, half-shod, in Ionian garb, praising and gazing at boys with ‘lascivious eyes’ (Wilamowitz 1913: 105; Gow-Page 1965: 340-41; Bing 1988b; Rosenmeyer 1992: 26; Rossi 2001: 25-26). Though no similar statue survives, we can imagine a Hellenistic ‘realist’ statue of such an Anacreon (Hellenistic “realism” is a trend observed by some in, for example, the so-called ''Old Crone'', and ''Ps-Seneca'' types). {{#lemma: An epigram by Theocritus | [[Theocritus, Epigram 17 = xv Gow-Page HE = Palatine Anthology 9.599|Theoc. ''Epigr.'' 17]]}} shows how little depth there is to this caricature: if we note that Anacreon was a great poet, and that he loved boys, then he sarcastically claims that we shall ‘accurately know the whole man’ (Bing 1988a: 56-57; Bing 1988b; Rossi 2001: 81-101, 279-286; Männlein-Robert 2007: 263-264). Despite Theocritus’ scepticism, the representation of Anacreon as a lecherous drunk remains popular for many centuries: among the many Roman sources, {{#lemma: Cicero and Seneca | [[Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 4.71.8-9|Cic. ''Tusc.'' 4.71.8-9]][[Seneca, Letters 88.37.6-9|Sen. ''Ep.'' 88.37.6-9]]}} also discuss Anacreon in these reductive terms. Another Roman source provides an appropriate death for this figure: {{#lemma: Valerius Maximus | [[Valerius Maximus, Memorabilia 9.12.(ext.)8.1-4 |Val. Max. 9.12.(ext.)8.1-4]]}} tells us that Anacreon died by choking on a grape-pip, an anecdote that was also told of Sophocles.

For all that the drunk and lecherous Anacreon was popular, and influenced the Anacreontic tradition, he was not always presented in those terms. A second-century AD mosaic from Autun represents Anacreon as a seated singer, a respectable lyric poet, much like the ''Borghese Singer'' from the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek (Blanchard and Blanchard 1973). Tean coins of Domitianic dates also show Anacreon as a seated lyric poet. The impression we get of Anacreon from second-century writer {{#lemma: Athenaeus| [[Anacreon 43 Diehl = 63 Bergk = 33 Gentili = 356 (Anacreon 11) Page PMG = Athenaeus, Sophists at Dinner 10.29 (427a-b)|Ath. 10.29 (427a-b)]]}}, likewise, is of a sober and self-controlled poet.

==Literary Reception and Emulation==

The first collected editions of Anacreon’s works were made by Alexandrian scholars of the Hellenistic period. They were probably edited by Aristophanes of Byzantium and Aristarchus (Campbell 1988: 35 n.2; Gentili 1958: xxvi-xxviii), and {{#lemma: an epigram by Crinagoras | [[Crinagoras 29 Rubensohn = vii Gow-Page GP = Palatine Anthology 9.239|''P.A.'' 9.239]]}} once graced a presentation copy in five volumes.

At the other end of the spectrum of Anacreon’s textual reception, however, is a large pseudepigraphic tradition. The simplified, boy-loving and drunken Anacreon is the figure that inspires (and is the imagined mouthpiece for) the ''Anacreontea''. This is a collection of poems, written from the first century BC to the fifth century AD, found in an appendix to the ''Palatine Anthology'' (Campbell 1988: 4-18; Rosenmeyer 1992; Budelmann 2009; Baumbach and Dümmler 2014). The ''Anacreontea'' constitute perhaps the clearest testament to the mutual dependency of a poet’s biographical tradition (particularly in terms of poetic style and character) and the nature of his oeuvre (Rosenmeyer 1998: 20). These poems are generally light-hearted songs about drinking and love, particularly for male youths. They focus on two supposed lovers of Anacreon: Bathyllus and Megisteus. Although these names fail to survive in the fragments of Anacreon’s own poetry, we can infer, given the insistence of the ''Anacreontea'' on these names, that they had a prominent role in Anacreon’s verse.

Though disregarded by many literary critics, these poems have been enjoyed and emulated by modern poets and readers including (among very many others) Ronsard, Belleau, Herrick, von Hagedorn and Goethe (Rosenmeyer 1992: 231; Baumbach and Dümmler 2014), whose poem {{#lemma: ''Anakreons Grab'' | [[Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Anakreons Grab|Goethe, ''Anakreons Grab'']]}} is set as a beautifully gentle ''lied'' by Hugo Wolf.

----

== Bibliography ==

<div id="bibliography">
* Baumbach, M., and Dümmler, N. (eds.) 2014. ''Imitate Anacreon! Mimesis, Poiesis and the Poetic Inspiration in the Carmina Anacreontea.'' Berlin.

*Beazley, J. D. and Caskey, L. 1954. ''Attic Vase Paintings in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston'', vol. 2. Boston, Mass.

*Beazley, J. D. 1963. ''Attic Red Figure Vase-Painters'' (2nd edn). Oxford.

*Bing, P. 1988a. ''The Well-Read Muse: Present and Past in Callimachus and the Hellenistic Poets''. Göttingen.

** 1988b. ‘Theocritus’ Epigrams on the Statues of Ancient Poets.’ ''A&A'' 34.2: 117-123.

** 2014. ‘Anacreontea avant la lettre: Euripides' ''Cyclops'' 495-518.’ In M. Baumbach and N. Dümmler (eds.), ''Imitate Anacreon!, Mimesis, Poiesis and the Poetic Inspiration in the Carmina Anacreontea''. Berlin: 25-45.

*Blanchard, M. and Blanchard A. 1973. ‘La Mosaïque d'Anacréon à Autun.’ ''REA'' 75: 268-279.

*Boardman, J. and Kurtz, D. C. 1986. ‘Booners.’ In J. Frel and M. True (eds.), ''Greek Vases in the J. Paul Getty Museum'', vol. 3. Malibu, Cal.: 35-70.

*Bowra, C. M. 1961. ''Greek Lyric Poetry: from Alcman to Simonides''. Oxford.

*Budelmann, F. 2009. ‘Anacreon and the Anacreontea.’ In F. Budelmann (ed.), ''The Cambridge Companion to Greek Lyric''. Cambridge: 227-239.

*Campbell, D. A. (ed.) 1988. ''Greek Lyric Poetry'', vol. 2: ''Anacreon, Anacreontea, Choral Lyric from Olympus to Alcman''. Cambridge, Mass.

*Dougherty, C. and Kurke, L. 2003. ''The Cultures within Ancient Greek Culture: Contact, Conflict, Collaboration''. Cambridge.

*Gentili, B. (ed.) 1958. ''Anacreon''. Rome.

*Gow, A. S. F. and Page, D. L. 1965. ''The Greek Anthology: Hellenistic Epigrams'', vol. 2. Cambridge.

*Lambin, G. 2002. ''Anacréon : Fragments et Imitations''. Rennes.

*Männlain-Robert, I. 2007. ‘Epigrams on Art: Voice and Voicelessness in Ecphrastic Epigram.’ In P. Bing and J.S. Bruss (eds.), ''Brill's Companion to Hellenistic Epigram''. Leiden: 251-274.

*Price, S. D. 1990. ‘Anacreontic Vases Reconsidered.’ ''GRBS'' 31.2: 133-175.

*Richter, G. M. A. 1965. ''The Portraits of the Greeks'', vol. 1. London.

*Ridgway, B. S. 1998. ‘An Issue of Methodology: Anakreon, Perikles, Xanthippos.’ ''AJA'' 102.4: 717-738.

*Rosenmeyer, P. A. 1992. ''The Poetics of Imitation: Anacreon and the Anacreontic Tradition''. Cambridge.

*Rossi, L. 2001. ''The Epigrams Ascribed to Theocritus: A Method of Approach''. Leuven.

*Salskov Roberts, H. 2002. ‘Anakreon in the Pictorial Arts.’ In B. Amden (ed.), ''Noctes Atticae: 34 Articles on Graeco-Roman Antiquity and its Nachlebe : Studies Presented to Jøergen Mejer on his Sixtieth Birthday, March 18, 2002''. Copenhagen: 241-253.

*Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, U. v. 1913. ''Sappho und Simonides: Untersuchungen über greichische Lyriker''. Berlin.

*Zanker, P. 1995. ''The Mask of Socrates: The Image of the Intellectual in Antiquity''. Trans. A. Shapiro. Berkeley.
</div>
</div>
<div id="notes"></div>

[[Category:Guides by William Wallis]]

Anacreon: A Guide to Selected Sources

2015-11-15T16:04:21Z

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{{Author|William Wallis}}
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<div id="guide">

Anacreon was a Greek lyric poet famed for his verses on symposiastic themes. No straightforward biography survives, but diverse sources contribute to his biographical tradition.

The {{#lemma: ''Suda'' | [[Suda s.v. Anacreon (A 1916=I p. 171-2 Adler)|''Suda'' s.v. Anacreon]]}} tells us that Anacreon was born on Teos in 570 BC, and evacuated to Abdera in Thrace because of the invasion by Cyrus’ general, Harpagus, in around 540 BC. The next we hear of Anacreon is that {{#lemma: he was a poet at the court of Polycrates in Samos (ruled 533-22 BC), and present when Polycrates was overthrown | [[Herodotus, Histories 3.121.1|Hdt. 3.121.1-5]]}}. {{#lemma: Strabo | [[Strabo, Geographica 14.1.16|Str. 14.1.16]]}} attempts to confirm this with evidence from Anacreon’s own verse.

{{#lemma: The Peisistratid Hipparchus | [[Plato, Hipparchus 228C.1-3|Pl. ''Hipparch.'' 228C.1-3]]}} is said to have summoned Anacreon to Athens (after the overthrow of Polycrates), and to have become the poet’s patron (as he was for Simonides). {{#lemma: Plato | [[Plato, Charmides 157E.4 – 158A.2|Pl. ''Chrm.'' 157E.4 – 158A.2]]}} relates that while in Athens, Anacreon was the lover of Critias, an aristocratic youth (and grandfather of Socrates’ associate of the same name). A confused reference from the much later writer {{#lemma: Himerius |[[Himerius, Orations and Declamations 39.10-11|Him. ''Or.'' 39.10-11]]}} suggests that Anacreon knew Xanthippus, father of the Athenian statesman Pericles.

Like Simonides, Anacreon is thought to have spent time in Larisa, Thessaly, after the overthrow of the Peisistratids in 510 BC. This is inferred from {{#lemma: two epigrams | [[Palatine Anthology 6.136|''P.A.'' 6.136]][[Palatine Anthology 6.142|''P.A.'' 6.142]]}} attributed to Anacreon about Thessalian rulers Echecratidas and Dyseris.

If he did move to Thessaly, at least one later source suggests a return to Athens at some point after 510 BC. {{#lemma: An ancient editorial note on Aeschylus | [[Scholium to Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound 128 (a.3-5)|''Sch.'' ad ''A. Pr.'' 128 (a.3-5)]]}} records that Anacreon appreciated the tragic poet’s verse, which he would have been most likely to do if resident in Athens. It has been argued, however, that this might have occurred before 510 BC or away from Athens (Ridgway 1998: 720-21), and it may also reflect a perception of literary connections expressed biographically. {{#lemma: Lucian | [[Lucian, On Long Life 26|Lucianus, ''Macr.'' 26]]}} records that he lived for eighty-five years, which would date his death to 485 BC. No sources specify his home in old age, but {{#lemma: a Simonidean epigram | [[''Palatine Anthology'' 7.25|''P.A.'' 7.25]]}} locates his tomb on Teos.

This rather diffuse group of sources has allowed some scholars to reconstruct a trajectory of Anacreon’s life and travels (Bowra 1961: 300-1; Campbell 1988: 3-4; Rosenmeyer 1992: 14; Ridgway 1998: 719; Budelmann 2009: 227-28).

==Visual Representations==

Two securely identified depictions of Anacreon survive from within the poet’s life time.

{{#lemma: A ''kylix'' (wine cup) by the painter Oltos | [[File: Oltos Anacreon.png|link=Oltos Anacreon]]}}, dated to around 510 BC, shows Anacreon dancing with two youths and playing the ''chelys'' lyre with a plectrum. He is wreathed and wears a ''himation'' (mantle). His head is thrown back with mouth open, which suggests lively singing. One of the accompanying youths is labelled ΝΥΦΕΣ (‘Ny[m]phes’), and the word ΚΑΛΟΣ (‘beautiful’) is written to the left of Anacreon. Though he is not presented as particularly drunk, nor particularly exotic, this first depiction of Anacreon references what in his reception become the primary themes of his poetry: the ''symposium'' (drinking party), and the love of beautiful youths (Beazley-Caskey 1954: 61; Beazley 1963; 62-3, no. 86; Budelmann 2009: 236).

A roughly contemporary ''lekythos'' (oil jug) by the Gales painter also identifies Anacreon by name, and shows a bearded singer playing a ''barbiton'' lyre. The Gales painter portrays him in a ''chiton'' (tunic), ''himation'' (mantle), and possibly the ''sakkos'' (headdress) of Ionian musicians. He is accompanied by two young men, both wearing a ''chlamys'' (short mantle), and dancing with staffs and a wine-bowl (Beazley-Caskey 1954: 61; Beazley 1963: 36, no. 2).

This costume resembles those depicted in a long series of vases, beginning around 520 and ending around 450 BC, that have been called ‘Anacreontic’. A connection to Anacreon was first suggested by Beazley, on the basis of an inscribed lyre on a fragment of a ''krater'' (wine-mixing bowl) by the Kleophrades painter (Beazley-Caskey 1954: 57; Beazley 1963: 135, no. 32; Richter 1965: 77). They depict heavily bearded men dressed in feminine clothing (often with parasols, boots and earrings, as well as the ''barbiton'' lyre, pipes and drums). There has been intense debate as to whether these portray Anacreon, or simply a cliché of the effeminate and often drunk eastern
musician that was perhaps a well-known target for comedy (Beazley-Caskey 1954:
55-61; Richter 1965: 77; Price 1990; Salskov Roberts 2002: 241-44; Budelmann
2009: 236; Bing 2014).

Either way, Anacreon could clearly be considered a member of this class of Asiatic songmen. Aristophanes’ character {{#lemma: Agathon | [[Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazousae 136-68|Ar. ''Th.'' 136-68]]}} is dressed up as an effeminate Ionian poet, and names Anacreon along with Ibycus and Alcaeus as his models (Price 1990: 169-70). In fact, {{#lemma: in the longest surviving fragment of Anacreon’s verse | [[Athenaeus, Sophists at Dinner 12.46 (533f-534a)|Ath. 12.46 (533f-534a)]]}}, the poet himself seems to take aim at this cliché of exotically dressed men in Athens by criticising one Artemon for his affectations and effeminate attire (Price 1990: 171; Ridgway 1998: 737-38).

Despite the fact that the earliest representations of Anacreon associate him with a class of drunken, Asiatic partiers, most accounts of Anacreon’s reception chart the development of his persona from a sophisticated symposiast writing on a range of subjects, and a friend of the aristocracy, to the ‘Anacreontic’ cliché of a joyously drunk lover of boys (Rosenmeyer 1992; Lambin 2002).

The earliest and best known sculpture of Anacreon seems to fit well into this narrative, as it seems to portray Anacreon as a respectable poet active among the Athenian aristocracy. A portrait type of Anacreon survives in one full-size example (known as the {{#lemma: ''Borghese Anacreon'' | [[File: Borghese_Anacreon.jpg|100px||link=Borghese Anacreon]]}}), and seven heads, identified by an inscription on a head found in Trastevere (IG XIV 1133; Richter 1965: 76). It shows the poet nude but for a fillet and a peculiarly draped ''chlamys'' (short mantle) (Ridgway 1998: 732-734). The poet rests his weight on his left hip and both feet are firmly planted on the ground. He has a moderately athletic body, and displays ''kynodesme'' or ‘infibulation’, the folding and binding of the penis with string. The significance of this shifts over time, but it seems most often to be related to morally upright behaviour (Zanker 1995: 28; Ridgway 1998: 729-30). His hair and beard are thick, but closely cropped, and made up of a large number of small wavy locks. He looks slightly upwards and to his right: a pose that interpreters have variously associated with song or drunkenness. His arms (as restored) appear to have once held a lyre (possibly the ''barbiton'', {{#lemma: for the invention of which Anacreon is sometimes credited | [[Athenaeus, Sophists at Dinner 4.77 (175d-e)|Ath. 4.77 (175d-e)]]}}). This portrait tallies with {{#lemma: the image of Anacreon presented to us by the politician, philosopher and poet Critias | [[Critias 7 Edmonds, Bergk = 8 Diehl = Athenaeus, Sophists at Dinner 13.74 (600d-e)|Ath. 13.74 (600d-e)]]}} (403 BC), a grandson of Anacreon’s lover, and his namesake (Dougherty-Kurke 2003: 190-199).

There is great debate as to the location of the ‘original’ portrait, and specifically whether it is {{#lemma: the portrait seen on the Athenian acropolis and thought to look drunk by Pausanias | [[Pausanias, Periegesis 1.25.1|Paus. 1.25.1]]}}, who may however have been influenced by what he already thought about Anacreon from other portraits and poems (Zanker 1995: 22-31; Ridgway 1998). However this question is answered, most commentators agree that this is a portrait of a relatively well-behaved Anacreon, and many, though not all, scholars consider this portrait type to be an emulation of a fifth-century original that would have been appropriate for display on the acropolis.

In the Hellenistic period the sophisticated symposiast Anacreon seems to be simplified into a lecherous drunk. {{#lemma: An epigram by Leonidas | [[Planudean Anthology 306|''A.Pl.'' 306]]}} vividly describes a statue that shows him as drunk, half-shod, in Ionian garb, praising and gazing at boys with ‘lascivious eyes’ (Wilamowitz 1913: 105; Gow-Page 1965: 340-41; Bing 1988b; Rosenmeyer 1992: 26; Rossi 2001: 25-26). Though no similar statue survives, we can imagine a Hellenistic ‘realist’ statue of such an Anacreon (Hellenistic “realism” is a trend observed by some in, for example, the so-called ''Old Crone'', and ''Ps-Seneca'' types). {{#lemma: An epigram by Theocritus | [[Theocritus, Epigram 17 = xv Gow-Page HE = Palatine Anthology 9.599|Theoc. ''Epigr.'' 17]]}} shows how little depth there is to this caricature: if we note that Anacreon was a great poet, and that he loved boys, then he sarcastically claims that we shall ‘accurately know the whole man’ (Bing 1988a: 56-57; Bing 1988b; Rossi 2001: 81-101, 279-286; Männlein-Robert 2007: 263-264). Despite Theocritus’ scepticism, the representation of Anacreon as a lecherous drunk remains popular for many centuries: among the many Roman sources, {{#lemma: Cicero and Seneca | [[Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 4.71.8-9|Cic. ''Tusc.'' 4.71.8-9]][[Seneca, Letters 88.37.6-9|Sen. ''Ep.'' 88.37.6-9]]}} also discuss Anacreon in these reductive terms. Another Roman source provides an appropriate death for this figure: {{#lemma: Valerius Maximus | [[Valerius Maximus, Memorabilia 9.12.(ext.)8.1-4 |Val. Max. 9.12.(ext.)8.1-4]]}} tells us that Anacreon died by choking on a grape-pip, an anecdote that was also told of Sophocles.

For all that the drunk and lecherous Anacreon was popular, and influenced the Anacreontic tradition, he was not always presented in those terms. A second-century AD mosaic from Autun represents Anacreon as a seated singer, a respectable lyric poet, much like the ''Borghese Singer'' from the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek (Blanchard and Blanchard 1973). Tean coins of Domitianic dates also show Anacreon as a seated lyric poet. The impression we get of Anacreon from second-century writer {{#lemma: Athenaeus| [[Anacreon 43 Diehl = 63 Bergk = 33 Gentili = 356 (Anacreon 11) Page PMG = Athenaeus, Sophists at Dinner 10.29 (427a-b)|Ath. 10.29 (427a-b)]]}}, likewise, is of a sober and self-controlled poet.

==Literary Reception and Emulation==

The first collected editions of Anacreon’s works were made by Alexandrian scholars of the Hellenistic period. They were probably edited by Aristophanes of Byzantium and Aristarchus (Campbell 1988: 35 n.2; Gentili 1958: xxvi-xxviii), and {{#lemma: an epigram by Crinagoras | [[Crinagoras 29 Rubensohn = vii Gow-Page GP = Palatine Anthology 9.239|''P.A.'' 9.239]]}} once graced a presentation copy in five volumes.

At the other end of the spectrum of Anacreon’s textual reception, however, is a large pseudepigraphic tradition. The simplified, boy-loving and drunken Anacreon is the figure that inspires (and is the imagined mouthpiece for) the ''Anacreontea''. This is a collection of poems, written from the first century BC to the fifth century AD, found in an appendix to the ''Palatine Anthology'' (Campbell 1988: 4-18; Rosenmeyer 1992; Budelmann 2009; Baumbach and Dümmler 2014). The ''Anacreontea'' constitute perhaps the clearest testament to the mutual dependency of a poet’s biographical tradition (particularly in terms of poetic style and character) and the nature of his oeuvre (Rosenmeyer 1998: 20). These poems are generally light-hearted songs about drinking and love, particularly for male youths. They focus on two supposed lovers of Anacreon: Bathyllus and Megisteus. Although these names fail to survive in the fragments of Anacreon’s own poetry, we can infer, given the insistence of the ''Anacreontea'' on these names, that they had a prominent role in Anacreon’s verse.

Though disregarded by many literary critics, these poems have been enjoyed and emulated by modern poets and readers including (among very many others) Ronsard, Belleau, Herrick, von Hagedorn and Goethe (Rosenmeyer 1992: 231; Baumbach and Dümmler 2014), whose poem {{#lemma: ''Anakreons Grab'' | [[Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Anakreons Grab|Goethe, ''Anakreons Grab'']]}} is set as a beautifully gentle ''lied'' by Hugo Wolf.

----

== Bibliography ==

<div id="bibliography">
* Baumbach, M., and Dümmler, N. (eds.) 2014. ''Imitate Anacreon! Mimesis, Poiesis and the Poetic Inspiration in the Carmina Anacreontea.'' Berlin.

*Beazley, J. D. and Caskey, L. 1954. ''Attic Vase Paintings in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston'', vol. 2. Boston, Mass.

*Beazley, J. D. 1963. ''Attic Red Figure Vase-Painters'' (2nd edn). Oxford.

*Bing, P. 1988a. ''The Well-Read Muse: Present and Past in Callimachus and the Hellenistic Poets''. Göttingen.

** 1988b. ‘Theocritus’ Epigrams on the Statues of Ancient Poets.’ ''A&A'' 34.2: 117-123.

** 2014. ‘Anacreontea avant la lettre: Euripides' ''Cyclops'' 495-518.’ In M. Baumbach and N. Dümmler (eds.), ''Imitate Anacreon!, Mimesis, Poiesis and the Poetic Inspiration in the Carmina Anacreontea''. Berlin: 25-45.

*Blanchard, M. and Blanchard A. 1973. ‘La Mosaïque d'Anacréon à Autun.’ ''REA'' 75: 268-279.

*Boardman, J. and Kurtz, D. C. 1986. ‘Booners.’ In J. Frel and M. True (eds.), ''Greek Vases in the J. Paul Getty Museum'', vol. 3. Malibu, Cal.: 35-70.

*Bowra, C. M. 1961. ''Greek Lyric Poetry: from Alcman to Simonides''. Oxford.

*Budelmann, F. 2009. ‘Anacreon and the Anacreontea.’ In F. Budelmann (ed.), ''The Cambridge Companion to Greek Lyric''. Cambridge: 227-239.

*Campbell, D. A. (ed.) 1988. ''Greek Lyric Poetry'', vol. 2: ''Anacreon, Anacreontea, Choral Lyric from Olympus to Alcman''. Cambridge, Mass.

*Dougherty, C. and Kurke, L. 2003. ''The Cultures within Ancient Greek Culture: Contact, Conflict, Collaboration''. Cambridge.

*Gentili, B. (ed.) 1958. ''Anacreon''. Rome.

*Gow, A. S. F. and Page, D. L. 1965. ''The Greek Anthology: Hellenistic Epigrams'', vol. 2. Cambridge.

*Lambin, G. 2002. ''Anacréon : Fragments et Imitations''. Rennes.

*Männlain-Robert, I. 2007. ‘Epigrams on Art : Voice and Voicelessness in Ecphrastic Epigram.’ In P. Bing and J.S. Bruss (eds.), ''Brill's Companion to Hellenistic Epigram''. Leiden: 251-274.

*Price, S. D. 1990. ‘Anacreontic Vases Reconsidered.’ ''GRBS'' 31.2: 133-175.

*Richter, G. M. A. 1965. ''The Portraits of the Greeks'', vol. 1. London.

*Ridgway, B. S. 1998. ‘An Issue of Methodology: Anakreon, Perikles, Xanthippos.’ ''AJA'' 102.4: 717-738.

*Rosenmeyer, P. A. 1992. ''The Poetics of Imitation: Anacreon and the Anacreontic Tradition''. Cambridge.

*Rossi, L. 2001. ''The Epigrams Ascribed to Theocritus: A Method of Approach''. Leuven.

*Salskov Roberts, H. 2002. ‘Anakreon in the Pictorial Arts.’ In B. Amden (ed.), ''Noctes Atticae: 34 Articles on Graeco-Roman Antiquity and its Nachlebe : Studies Presented to Jøergen Mejer on his Sixtieth Birthday, March 18, 2002''. Copenhagen: 241-253.

*Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, U. v. 1913. ''Sappho und Simonides: Untersuchungen über greichische Lyriker''. Berlin.

*Zanker, P. 1995. ''The Mask of Socrates: The Image of the Intellectual in Antiquity''. Trans. A. Shapiro. Berkeley.
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[[Category:Guides by William Wallis]]

Aeschylus: A Guide to Selected Sources

2015-11-15T15:54:59Z

NickFreer: /* Bibliography */

{{GuideHighlightBox}}
'''''Sarah Burges Watson'''''
{{#howtoquote:}}
<div id="guide">{{GuideTextsBy|Sarah Burges Watson}}
{{#lemma: Philostratus | [[Philostratus, The Life of Apollonius of Tyana 6.10-11 | Philostr. ''VA'' 6.10-11]]}} says (in a playful passage) that the Athenians considered Aeschylus (ca. 525-456/5) ‘the father of tragedy’ because of his innovations in the genre. We have titles of over seventy plays; many fragments and seven complete tragedies survive. These include ''Prometheus Bound'', whose attribution to Aeschylus is no longer accepted (see Griffith 1977), and the ''Oresteia'', which, like all Aeschylus’ trilogies, is thematically connected. Sadly, the accompanying satyr play, ''Proteus'', is lost. But we have substantial fragments of other satyr plays, {{#lemma: a genre in which Aeschylus was thought to excel | [[Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers 2.133 | Diog. Laert. 2.133]] [[Pausanias, Description of Greece 2.13.6 | Paus. 2.13.6]]}}. In tragedy, {{#lemma: Aristotle | [[Aristotle, Poetics 4, 1449a15 | Arist. ''Poet.'' 4, 1449a15]]}} says that he introduced a second actor and reduced the role of the chorus. He won thirteen times in the Athenian dramatic festivals and, after his death, was afforded the unique honour of having his plays re-staged.

== Sources ==

The {{#lemma: ''Vita'' | [[Life of Aeschylus | ''Life of Aeschylus'']]}} transmitted with Aeschylus’ plays contains an eclectic mixture of fact, critical assessment, and apocrypha. Aristophanes’ comic portrayal of Aeschylus in the ''Frogs'' is an important (and acknowledged) source that provides invaluable insights into late fifth-century views about Aeschylus and his poetry. The ''Vita'' may also draw on biographical material from the ''Visits'' by Ion of Chios (fifth century), Heraclides of Pontus’ book on tragic poets, and Chamaeleon’s ''Concerning Aeschylus''. Sources on Aeschylus are collected by Wilamowitz (1914) and Radt (1985).

== Origins ==

The {{#lemma: ''Vita'' | [[Life of Aeschylus | ''Life of Aeschylus'']]}} says that Aeschylus was the son of Euphorion and brother of Cynegirus, whose death at Marathon {{#lemma: Herodotus | [[Herodotus, Histories 6.114 | Hdt. 6.114]]}} describes. {{#lemma: Diodorus | [[Diodorus, Historical Library 11.27.2 | Diod. Sic. 11.27.2]]}}, following Ephorus—probably mistakenly—gives Aeschylus another brother, Ameinias. He is followed by the {{#lemma: ''Suda'' | [[Suda s.v. Aeschylus | ''Suda'' s.v. Aeschylus'']]}}. {{#lemma: Ion of Chios | [[Scholion to Aeschylus’ Persians 429 | Schol. Aesch. ''Pers.'' 429]]}} and the {{#lemma: Parian Marble | [[Parian Marble A 48 | ''MarmorPar.'' A 48]]}} are among the sources which mention Aeschylus’ own participation in the Persian Wars. Aeschylus’ deme, Eleusis, also connects him to one of the city’s most important religious institutions—the Eleusinian Mysteries. Mysteries feature in several of Aeschylus’ plays. {{#lemma: Aristotle | [[Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 3.2, 1111a8 | Arist. ''Eth. Nic.'' 3.2, 1111a8]] [[Anonymous Commentator on Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 3.2, 1111a8 | Anon. ''in Eth. Nic.'' 3.2, 1111a8]]}} says that he was tried for revealing them and pleaded innocent on the grounds that he did not know they were secret.

== Sicilian Visits ==

The {{#lemma: ''Vita’s'' | [[Life of Aeschylus | ''Life of Aeschylus'']]}} testimony that Aeschylus spent time in Sicily appears to be sound, but different visits are conflated (see Herington 1967). {{#lemma: Eratosthenes | [[Scholion to Aristophanes’ Frogs 1028a | Schol. Ar. ''Ran.'' 1028a]]}} said that Aeschylus produced the ''Persians'' at the court of Hieron; it may have been on the same visit that he put on the ''Women of Etna'' (see Bosher 2012). The biographies of both Aeschylus and Euripides dwell on their sojourns with foreign monarchs (in contrast to that of Sophocles—see [[Sophocles: A Guide to Selected Sources]]). This de-Athenianization and transposition of the quintessentially democratic art-form to contexts of royal patronage probably reflects Hellenistic attempts to appropriate the literary past (see Hanink 2010).

== Departure from Athens ==

According to the {{#lemma: ''Suda'' | [[Suda s.v. Aeschylus | ''Suda'' s.v. Aeschylus'']]}}, Aeschylus left Athens for Sicily, where he was said to have died after the stage collapsed during one of his productions. The {{#lemma: ''Vita'' | [[Life of Aeschylus | ''Life of Aeschylus'']]}} attributes Aeschylus’ departure to vexation at his defeat by Sophocles (a story found also in {{#lemma: Plutarch | [[Plutarch, Life of Cimon 8, 483e | Plut. ''Cim.'' 8, 483e]]}}) or Simonides. These alleged professional jealousies echo Aristophanes’ ''Frogs''. The {{#lemma: ''Vita'' | [[Life of Aeschylus | ''Life of Aeschylus'']]}} also suggests that the terror his Erinyes inspired in the Athenian theatre was a factor in his departure; a variant of this story is reported by {{#lemma: Pollux | [[Pollux, Vocabulary (Onomasticon) 4.110 | Poll. ''Onom.'' 4.110]]}}. The fact that the Erinyes appear in vase paintings only after the ''Oresteia'' suggests that Aeschylus was the first to bring them onstage, and that they made a memorable impression. (See Frontisi-Ducroux 2007).

== Death ==

According to the {{#lemma: ''Vita'' | [[Life of Aeschylus | ''Life of Aeschylus'']]}}, Aeschylus was killed (following an oracle) when an eagle dropped a tortoise on his head. {{#lemma: Democritus | [[Simplicius on Aristotle Physics 2.4 | Simpl. ''in Phys.'' 2.4]]}} seems to have referred to this mode of death in a discussion about chance (''tychê''), but the connection with Aeschylus is probably later. (As Lefkowitz argues (2012: 175-6), it seems likely that Aristophanes would have mentioned it in the ''Frogs'', had he known about it.) ''Tychê'' is an appropriate cause of death for a tragedian and the role of Zeus’ bird and the tortoise, from whose shell lyres were made, is a comic reversal of Aeschylus’ Zeus-centered teleology. In Aeschylus’ ''Psychagôgoi'' ({{#lemma: fr. 275 Radt | [[Aeschylus, Psychagogoi (Soul Raisers), fragment 275 Radt | Aesch. fr. 275 Radt]]}}), Teiresias prophesies that Odysseus will die when struck by a heron’s dung; this may have inspired the even wilder mode of Aeschylus’ death.

== Aeschylus in Aristophanes’ ''Frogs'' ==

The ''Vita’s'' critical judgments are indebted to Aristophanes’ ''Frogs'', as is the entire critical reception history of Aeschylus (see Hunter 2009). In Aristophanes’ multi-layered portrayal, Aeschylus adopts the role of Achilles from his ''Myrmidons'', supplemented by the thundering rage of the ''Seven against Thebes'' and Aeschylus’ own warrior credentials. If the {{#lemma: ''Contest of Homer and Hesiod'' | [[Certamen]]}} is a model for the ''Frogs'' and not vice-versa (Richardson 1981: 2 with n. 5, Graziosi 2002: 176f., Rosen 2004), Aeschylus is aligned with Homer, whom he approves as a teacher of war (''Frogs'' 1034-6). This matches {{#lemma: Aeschylus’ | [[Athenaeus, Sophists at Dinner 8, 347e | Ath. 8, 347e]]}} alleged statement that his dramas were slices of Homer’s banquet. ‘Euripides’ is no obvious Hesiod, but it has been suggested that his sophistic unscrupulousness mirrors the negative traits of Odysseus in the Philoctetes story, on which all three tragedians composed (Hunter 2009: 44-6; on Hesiod as a proto-sophist see Boys-Stones/Haubold 2010). Antagonism between Achillean and Odyssean modes of heroism is built into the tradition (see Nagy 1999).

== Nietzsche’s (Aristophanic) Aeschylus ==

Aristophanes’ Euripides characterizes Aeschylus as unintelligibly grand. Nietzsche, whose analysis of tragedy draws extensively on the ''Frogs'' and on traditions about poet’s lives, scorns ‘Euripides’’ insistence that everything should be intelligible, comparing Aeschylus’ poetry with a comet’s tail which points into the unknown ({{#lemma: ''Birth of Tragedy'' 11 | [[Nietzsche, Birth of Tragedy 11 | Nietzsche, ''BT'' 11]]}}). This obscurity came from his ‘unshakably firm foundation for metaphysical thought’ derived from the Mysteries ({{#lemma: ''Birth of Tragedy'' 9 | [[Nietzsche, Birth of Tragedy 9 | Nietzsche, ''BT'' 9]]}}) and was evinced by {{#lemma: Sophocles’ | [[Athenaeus, Sophists at Dinner 10, 428f | Ath. 10. 428f]] [[Plutarch, fragment 130 Sandbach | Plut. fr. 130 Sandbach]]}} alleged remark that Aeschylus ‘did the right thing, but did it unconsciously’ (see also [[Sophocles: A Guide to Selected Sources]]). Euripides and Socrates, on the other hand, considered it wrong precisely because it was unconscious ({{#lemma: ''Birth of Tragedy'' 12, 13 | [[Nietzsche, Birth of Tragedy 12 | Nietzsche, ''BT'' 12]] [[Nietzsche, Birth of Tragedy 13 | Nietzsche, ''BT'' 13]]}}).

For Nietzsche, this irrational element, measured by the prominence of music/the chorus, makes Aeschylus a quintessentially Dionysian poet. This idea contradicts {{#lemma: Aristotle | [[Aristotle, Poetics 4, 1449a15 | Arist. ''Poet.'' 4, 1449a15]]}}, but {{#lemma: Pausanias | [[Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.21.1 | Paus. 1.21.1]]}} says that Aeschylus claimed to have been instructed to write tragedy in a Dionysiac epiphany, and several sources make Aeschylus a {{#lemma: drunken poet | [[Athenaeus, Sophists at Dinner 10, 428f | Ath. 10. 428f]] [[Plutarch, fragment 130 Sandbach | Plut. fr. 130 Sandbach]] [[Lucian, Encomium of Demosthenes 15 | [Lucian] ''Dem. Enc.'' 15]] [[Plutarch, Table Talk (Quaestiones Convivales) 1.5.1, 622e | Plut. ''Quaest. Conv.'' 1.5.1, 622e]]}}. Most importantly, Nietzsche is following Aristophanes, whose Dionysus, urged by Pluto to elect a saviour for Athens, chooses Aeschylus over Euripides, in obedience to his ''psyche'' (''Frogs'' 1468).

Dionysus’ descent to Hades is originally sparked by a passion for Euripides and scholars have wondered why he changes his mind. If, in the final years of the Peloponnesian War, Athens’ greatness seemed irretrievable, it is perhaps unsurprising that she should turn for salvation to the warrior-artist of her most glorious days (cf. Dover 1993: 23-4, Porter 2006: 301-6). Aristophanes may also be responding to the comic poet Cratinus' charge (fr. 342) that he was excessively Euripidean (i.e. intellectual) by siding with the more traditional Dionysian/intoxicated poet (see Bakola 2010: 24-9). Mysteries are another important factor in Aeschylus' victory. At the start of the contest (886-7), he prays to Demeter, his Eleusinian “mentor”, that he may be worthy of her mysteries, exemplifying his devotion to Dionysiac concerns (see Lada-Richards 1999; Graf 1974: 40-51). The chorus calls Aeschylus a Bacchic Lord (1259) and later concludes that Euripides’ ‘Socratic chatter’ which casts aside music, tragedy’s true craft, in favour of petty intellectual quibbles, is the mark of one who is genuinely insane (1491-9). As Porter points out (2000: 114), Aristophanes had, in Nietzsche’s eyes (KSA 1, 549), ‘a deep elective affinity with Aeschylus…Equals are only recognized by equals’; presumably, Nietzsche would have counted himself among them.

----

== Bibliography ==

<div id="bibliography">
* Bakola, E. 2010. ''Cratinus and the Art of Comedy.'' Oxford.
* Bosher, K. 2012. ‘Hieron’s Aeschylus.’ In K. Bosher (ed.), ''Theater Outside Athens: Drama in Greek Sicily and South Italy.'' Cambridge: 97-111.
* Boys-Stones, G. R. and Haubold, J. H. (eds.) 2010. ''Plato and Hesiod.'' Oxford.
* Dover, K. J. 1993. ''Aristophanes: Frogs. Edited with Introduction and Commentary.'' Oxford.
* Frontisi-Ducroux, F. ‘The Invention of the Erinyes.’ In C. Kraus, S. Goldhill, H. Foley and J. Elsner (eds.) 2007, ''Visualizing the Tragic: Drama, Myth, and Ritual in Greek Art and Literature.'' Oxford: 165-77.
* Graf, F. 1974. ''Eleusis und die orphische Dichtung Athens in vorhellenistischer Zeit.'' Berlin.
* Graziosi, B. 2002. ''Inventing Homer: The Early Reception of Epic.'' Cambridge.
* Griffith, M. 1977. ''The Authenticity of Prometheus Bound.'' Cambridge.
* Hanink, J. 2010. ‘The Classical Tragedians, from Athenian Idols to Wandering Poets.’ In I. Gildenhard and M. Revermann (eds.) 2010, ''Beyond the Fifth Century. Interactions with Greek Tragedy from the Fourth Century BCE to the Middle Ages.'' Berlin: 39-68.
* Henrichs, A. 1986. ‘The Last of the Detractors. Friedrich Nietzsche’s Condemnation of Euripides.’ ''GRBS'' 27.4: 369-97.
** 2005. ‘Nietzsche on Greek Tragedy and the Tragic.’ In J. Gregory (ed.), ''A Companion to Greek Tragedy.'' Oxford: 444-59.
* Herington, C.J. 1967. ‘Aeschylus in Sicily.’ ''JHS'' 1987: 74-85.
* Hunter, R.L. 2009. ''Critical Moments in Classical Literature: Studies in the Ancient View of Literature and its Uses.'' Cambridge.
* Lada-Richards, I. 1999. ''Initiating Dionysus: Ritual and Theatre in Aristophanes’ Frogs.'' Oxford.
* Lefkowitz, M. 2012. ''The Lives of the Greek Poets'' (1st edn 1981), Baltimore.
* Nagy, G. 1999. ''Best of the Achaeans: Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry'' (1st edn 1979). Baltimore.
* Porter, J. I. 2000. ''The Invention of Dionysus.'' Stanford.
** (ed.) 2006. ''Classical Pasts: the Classical Traditions of Greece and Rome.'' Princeton.
* Radt, S. 1985. ''Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta. Vol. 3. Aeschylus.'' Göttingen.
* Reibnitz, B. von. 1992. ''Ein Kommentar zu Friedrich Nietzsche, “Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik”: Kap. 1-12.'' Stuttgart.
* Richardson, N. J. 1981. ‘The Contest of Homer and Hesiod and Alcidamas’ Mouseion.’ ''CQ'' 31.1: 1-10.
* Rosen, R. 2004. ‘Aristophanes’ ''Frogs'' and the ''Contest of Homer and Hesiod''.’ ''TAPA'' 134: 295-322.
* Wilamowitz, U. Von 1914. ''Aeschyli Tragoediae.'' Berlin.
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[[Category:Guides by Sarah Burges Watson]]

Gallus: A Guide to Selected Sources

2015-11-15T15:49:13Z

NickFreer: /* Bibliography */

{{GuideHighlightBox}}
{{Author|Micah Young Myers}}
{{#howtoquote:}}
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C. Cornelius Gallus (‘Gallus’) was a Roman poet of the first century BCE, known for his elegiac love poetry. {{#lemma: In the view of Ovid and Quintilian | [[Ovid, Sorrows 4.10.53-4|Ov. ''Tr.'' 4.10.53-4]] [[Quintilian, Institutes of Oratory 10.1.93|Quint. ''Inst.'' 10.1.93]]}}, he is the first in a dynasty of four major Latin love elegists (Hollis 2007: 229). There is debate about whether Gallus also wrote hexameter poetry (Ross 1975: 39-46; Zetzel 1977: 250-3). {{#lemma: Servius | [[Servius on Virgil, Eclogue 10.1|Serv. ''ad Ecl.'' 10.1]]}} reports that Gallus wrote four books of elegies, perhaps entitled ''Amores'' (‘Loves’). {{#lemma: One pentameter | [[Gallus fr. 1]]}} of Gallus’ poetry survives via the manuscript tradition; {{#lemma: fragments of twelve elegiac verses | [[Gallus fr. 2]]}} were discovered in 1978 on a papyrus at Qasr Ibrîm in Lower Nubia.

== Origins ==

No ancient biography of Gallus survives. According to {{#lemma: Jerome | [[Jerome, Chronicle, Olympiad 188.17 (27 BC)|Jer. ''Chron. ad'' Ol. 188.17]]}}, Gallus was born in 70 BCE and died in 27 BCE; {{#lemma: Dio | [[Dio, Roman History 53.23|Dio Cass. 53.23]]}} dates his death to 26 BCE. The evidence is insufficient for favouring one date over the other (Daly 1979: 292-4). {{#lemma: Suetonius | [[Suetonius, The Deified Augustus 66|Suet. ''Aug.'' 66]]}} reports that Gallus was from a modest background. {{#lemma: Jerome | [[Jerome, Chronicle, Olympiad 188.17 (27 BC)|Jer. Chron. ''ad Ol.'' 188.17]]}} describes him as ''Foroiuliensis'', i.e., from Forum Iulium, a place name that would have been anachronistic at the time of his birth, but later became the appellation of multiple towns. Gallus’ Forum Iulium is most often identified as Fréjus in Narbonese Gaul (Syme 1938: 39-40).

== Political Career, Disgrace, and Death ==

In addition to writing poetry, {{#lemma: Gallus had a military career that culminated in his appointment as the first equestrian prefect of Egypt in 30 BCE | [[CIL 3.14147|''CIL'' 3.14147]]}}. {{#lemma: By 27/6 BCE, however, he was disgraced and committed suicide | [[Jerome, Chronicle, Olympiad 188.17 (27 BC)|Jer. Chron. ad Ol. 188.17]][[Dio, Roman History 53.23|Dio Cass. 53.23]]}}. {{#lemma: Suetonius | [[Suetonius, The Deified Augustus 66| Suet. ''Aug.'' 66]]}} and {{#lemma: Dio | [[Dio, Roman History 53.23|Dio Cass. 53.23.6]]}} represent Gallus as corrupted by his success and his connections to Octavian/Augustus, who eventually withdrew his friendship, leading to Gallus’ downfall. Dio links Gallus’ disgrace to prideful behavior while Egyptian prefect. Similarly, {{#lemma: Ammianus | [[Ammianus 17.4.5|Amm. Marc. 17.4.5]]}}, as part of a larger illustration of the corrupting power of Egyptian riches, depicts Gallus as a greedy provincial administrator whose plundering of Egyptian Thebes causes his downfall. Ammianus’ and especially Dio’s reports continue to be widely cited, although {{#lemma: more chronologically proximate sources | [[Propertius 2.34.91-2|Prop. 2.34.91-2]][[Ovid, Loves 3.9.59-4|Ov. ''Am.'' 3.9.59-4]] [[Ovid, Sorrows 2.445-6|Ov. ''Tr.'' 2.445-6]][[Suetonius, The Deified Augustus 66|Suet. ''Aug.'' 66]][[Suetonius, On Teachers of Grammar and Rhetoric 16.1-2|Suet. ''De Gramm. et Rhet.'' 16.1-2]]}} are ambiguous about the causes of Gallus’ downfall, nor do they mention any misbehaviour in Egypt (for the stele at Philae bearing {{#lemma: ''CIL'' 3.141475 | [[CIL 3.141475|''CIL'' 3.141475]]}}, which has often been cited as confirmation of Dio’s narrative, see the recent reappraisal by Hoffmann, Minas-Nerpel, and Pfeiffer 2009).

== Gallus in Antiquity ==

The earliest reference to Gallus may come in {{#lemma: 45 BCE, when Cicero mentions ''cantores Euphorionis'' (‘singers of Euphorion’) | [[Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 3.45|Cic. ''Tusc.'' 3.45]]}}. Although Cicero does not specify to whom he refers, Gallus may be one of the ''cantores'' meant, {{#lemma: given his association with Euphorion elsewhere | [[Servius on Virgil, Eclogue 6.72|Serv. ''ad Ecl.'' 6.72]][[Servius on Virgil, Eclogue 10.1|Serv. ''ad Ecl.'' 10.1]] [[Ps.-Probus on Eclogue 10.50|Ps.-Prob. ''ad Ecl.'' 10.50]][[Diomedes GL 1.484.21|Diomedes, ''GL'' 1.484.21]]}} (Lightfoot 1999: 57-64; Hollis 2007: 230-4). {{#lemma: A letter from 43 BCE | [[Cicero, Letters to Friends 10.32.5|Cic. ''Ad Fam.'' 10.32.5]] [[Cicero, Letters to Friends 10.31.6|cf. Cic. ''Ad Fam.'' 10.31.6]]}}, in which Asinius Pollio tells Cicero to ask Gallus for a copy of a ''praetexta'' (‘Roman historical drama’), indicates that Gallus was part of the elite Roman social and literary milieu of the late republic, as does the fact that {{#lemma: Parthenius dedicated his ''Erotika Pathemata'' (‘Sufferings in Love’) to him | [[Parthenius of Nicaea, Sufferings in Love (preface)|Parth. ''Amat. narr.'' praef.]]}}.

The fragments of Gallus’ poetry offer little in the way of autobiographical representation other than suggesting that {{#lemma: he depicts his poetic ''persona'' in the manner of the unhappy lover familiar from subsequent Latin love elegy | [[Gallus fr. 2|Gallus fr. 2]]}}. Gallus also appears in the poetry of his contemporaries. In {{#lemma: ''Ecl.'' 6 | [[Virgil, Eclogue 6.64-73|Verg. ''Ecl.'' 6.64-73]]}} Virgil presents Gallus as a poet initiated by the muses, evoking a tradition that stretches back to Hesiod (see [[Hesiod: A Guide to Selected Sources]]). In ''Ecl.'' 10 Virgil describes Gallus as a close friend who is a victim of unhappy love: his beloved Lycoris has accompanied another man on campaign; Gallus wanders through an Arcadian landscape, pondering pastoral life and pastoral poetry as a remedy for his broken heart. {{#lemma: Servius | [[Servius on Virgil, Eclogue 10.46|Serv. ''ad Ecl.'' 10.46]]}} reports that parts of ''Ecl.'' 10 are based on Gallus’ own poetry. Yet the extent to which Virgil alludes to Gallus’ poetry is much debated (Coleman 1977 ad loc.; Clausen 1995 ad loc.). The intimate friendship between Gallus and Virgil {{#lemma: is also reflected in Servius|[[Servius on Virgil, Eclogue 10.1|Serv. ''ad Ecl.'' 10.1]]}}; {{#lemma: Ps.-Probus| [[Ps.-Probus on Virgil's Eclogues (preface)|Ps.-Prob. ''ad Ecl.'' praef.]]}} even makes them schoolmates. Propertius addresses five poems in the ''Monobiblos'' to a Gallus or multiple Galluses (1.5, 10, 13, 20, 21). Whether any or all of Propertius’ “Gallus” elegies address his poetic predecessor Cornelius Gallus is also debated (e.g., Ross 1975: 82-4). If Propertius’ “Gallus” elegies do evoke Cornelius Gallus, he presents a multifaceted figure: a lover, friend, rival, and, most problematically, given that the ''Monobiblos’'' publication was prior to Gallus’ suicide, a dying soldier.

== Gallus After Antiquity ==

The combination of the loss of Gallus’ poetry along with his presence in the work of other Augustan poets makes him an intriguing figure for post-antique sources as well. In his play ''The Poetaster'' (1601), Ben Jonson depicts a Gallus who finds redemption rather than disgrace. Gallus is one of the ringleaders at a dinner party in which the guests dress as gods, an event that leads Augustus to exile Ovid during the course of the play. Despite Gallus’ role in the same dinner party and references to his time in Egypt (5.1.7-10), Jonson’s Augustus grants him clemency. Gallus then becomes aligned with the virtuous poets in the play, Virgil and Horace. In another reflection of early modern interest in Gallus, in 1590 Aldus Manutius the Younger published supposed newly discovered elegiacs by Gallus, which Manutius apparently composed himself; Scaliger soon detected the fraud (Riese 1869 on ''Anth. Lat.'' 914; Navarro López 2000).

Gallus is also the subject of Wilhelm Becker’s 1838 historical fiction, ''Gallus, oder römische Scenen auf der Zeit Augusts: zur genaueren Kenntnis des römischen Privatlebens''. Becker’s book, which was aimed at a popular audience and translated into English in 1844, presents Roman social life in a series of episodes organized around the fall of Gallus. For Becker, Gallus is a figure whose upward social mobility and talents in both the political and poetic spheres make him the ideal subject through which to depict the Augustan age, even if he feels obliged to admit that he may present Gallus’ character too positively (Becker 1866: xiv-xviii). But Becker’s Gallus is ultimately a tragic figure: the book is set after he returns to Rome from Egypt as disgrace looms. The final chapter depicts his funeral.

As Tom Stoppard’s ''The Invention of Love'' demonstrates, Gallus continues to represent a meaningful mix of poetic oblivion and poetic immortality in contemporary literature. Near the close of the play, Stoppard’s A. E. Housman remarks to his younger self that, although almost all of Gallus’ poetry is lost, thanks to his friend Virgil he is remembered even in twentieth century England (1997: 98):

<blockquote>
Virgil wrote a poem for him: how much immortality does a man need? –his own poetry, all but a line, as if he had never been, but his memory alive in a garden of an empire that disappeared fifteen hundred years ago.
</blockquote>

----

== Bibliography ==

<div id="bibliography">
* Becker, W. A. 1866. ''Gallus or Roman Scenes in the Time of Augustus'' (2nd edn). Trans. F. Metcalfe. New York.
* Boucher, J.-P. 1966. ''Caius Cornélius Gallus.'' Paris.
* Cairns, F. 1983. ‘Propertius 1.4 and 1.5 and the ‘Gallus’ of the Monobiblos.’ ''PLLS'' 4: 61-103.
* Clausen, W. 1994. ''Virgil: Eclogues.'' Oxford.
* Coleman, R. 1977. ''Vergil: Eclogues.'' Cambridge.
* Daly, L. 1979. ‘The Gallus Affair and Augustus’ ''lex Iulia maiestatis'': A Study in Historical Chronology and Causality.’ ''SLLRH'' 1: 289-311.
* Faoro, D. 2007. ‘Sull’origo e sugli esordi politici di Cornelio Gallo.’ ''Forum Iulii'' 31: 27-38.
* Hoffmann, F., Minas-Nerpal, M., and Pfeiffer, S. 2009. ''Die dreisprachige Stele des C. Cornelius Gallus.'' Berlin.
* Hollis, A. 2007. ''Fragments of Roman Poetry c. 60 BC-AD 20.'' Oxford.
* Janan, M. 2001. ''The Politics of Desire: Propertius IV.'' Berkeley.
* Keefe, D. E. 1982. ‘Gallus and Euphorion.’ ''CQ'' 32: 237-8.
* Lightfoot, J. L. 1999. ''Parthenius of Nicaea: Extant Works Edited with Introduction and Commentary.'' Oxford.
* Manzoni, G. E. 1995. ''Foroiuliensis poeta: Vita e poesia de Cornelio Gallo.'' Milan.
* Navarro López, J. 2000. ‘‘Anthologia Latina’ 914 Riese: Galo falsificado.’ ''CR'' 1: 247-58.
* Pincus, M. 2004. ‘Propertius’s Gallus and the Erotics of Influence.’ ''Arethusa'' 37: 165-96.
* Riese, A. 1869. ''Anthologia Latina siue Poesis Latinae Supplementum.'' Vol. 1. Leipzig.
* Ross, D. 1975. ''Backgrounds to Augustan Poetry: Gallus, Elegy and Rome.'' Cambridge.
* Syme, R. 1938. ‘The Origin of Cornelius Gallus.’ ''CQ'' 32: 39-44.
* Zetzel, J. 1977. ‘Gallus, Elegy, and Ross.’ ''CP'' 72: 249-60.
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[[Category:Guides by Micah Young Myers]]

Virgil: A Guide to Selected Sources

2015-11-15T15:47:50Z

NickFreer: /* Bibliography */

{{GuideHighlightBox}}
{{Author|Nora Goldschmidt}}
{{#howtoquote:}}
<div id="guide">
Publius Vergilius Maro (‘Virgil’) was perhaps the most famous poet of the Augustan age, known principally for three major works: the ''Eclogues'' (a collection of pastoral poems), the ''Georgics'' (a didactic poem ostensibly concerned with farming), and the ''Aeneid'' (an epic on the mythical origins of Rome).

In T. S. Eliot’s words, Virgil very quickly became ‘the classic of all Europe’, and the biographical tradition surrounding him ― from the factual to the pseudo-factual to the fabulous ― is both one of the most extensive and one of the most imaginative of any poet in the history of western literature. The story begins in the poet’s own work: {{#lemma: Virgil | [[Virgil, Eclogues 6.1-12|Verg. ''Ecl.'' 6.1-12]] [[Virgil, Georgics 3.3-48|''G.'' 3.3-48]] [[Virgil, Georgics 4.559-66|''G.'' 4.559-66]] [[Virgil, Aeneid 7.37-45|''Aen.'' 7.37-45]]}} was highly aware of his own literary career, and in a series of self-conscious passages written in the first person fashioned his rise through the genres from humble pastoral to martial epic (Farrell 2002; Hardie and Moore 2010). These passages, together with more implicit clues embedded in the text provided a breeding ground for later biographical traditions by writers eager to tell Virgil’s story (Farrell 2002: 24−6; Korenjak 2003; Laird 2009).

At the same time, Virgil’s life was also being partially written by his contemporaries and close successors. The poet Propertius famously declared of the ''Aeneid'' that ‘something bigger than the ''Iliad'' is being born’ (2.34.65-6), and various hints and allusions to Virgil’s life and work, particularly the poet’s Mantuan origins, appear in several authors (Putnam and Ziolkowski 2008). The overall sense of a biographical ''presence'' behind Virgil’s original poems, moreover, was reinforced by a number of fakes believed to be by Virgil himself: the ''Appendix Vergiliana'', a collection of works either ascribed to or claiming to be by the young Virgil, contain fragments of autobiographical fiction (Peirano 2012), while a second proem to the ''Aeneid'' written in the poet’s voice announcing {{#lemma: ‘I am he’ (''ille ego...'') | [[From the Vita Suetonii vulgo Donatiana 42 and the Vita Servii|''VSD'' 42, ''Vita Servii'']]}}, was known in antiquity and believed to be genuine (cf. Laird 2009). Even the poet’s tomb, which became a site of literary tourism initially cultivated by the poet Silius Italicus (Pliny 3.7.8; Martial 11.48; 50), was inscribed with a famous epitaph thought in antiquity to have been composed by Virgil with his dying breath, which sums up the poet’s life as a movement from Mantua to Naples, and from pastoral to epic:

<blockquote>
{{#lemma: Mantua me genuit, Calabri rapuere, tenet nunc<br />
Parthenope; cecini pascua rura duces.<br /><br />

Mantua gave birth to me, the Calabrians snatched me away,<br />
Parthenope now holds me; I sang of pastures, ploughlands, and leaders. | [[Vita Suetonii vulgo Donatiana 36, Vita Servii and Jerome, Chronica ad Ol. 190.3|''VSD'' 36, ''Vita Servii'', Jer. ''Chron.'' ad Ol 190.3]]}}
</blockquote>

Partly influenced by this material is an extensive series of ancient narrative prose Lives (Brugnoli and Stok 1997; Putnam and Ziolkowsi 2008). The oldest was put together around the middle of the fourth century AD by the grammarian Aelius Donatus, who included it as a preface to his commentary on the poet’s works. Donatus, in turn, seems to have based his account on an earlier biography by Suetonius, and the life is therefore commonly known as the ''Vita Suetonii vulgo Donatiana'', abbreviated as {{#lemma: ''VSD'' | [[Vita Suetonii vulgo Donatiana|''VSD'']]}}. An influential 15th-century version of this, often referred to as {{#lemma: ''Donatus auctus'' | [[Donatus auctus|''Donatus auctus'']]}} (‘augmented Donatus’), supplements Donatus’ life with other material, some paralleled in other ancient ''vitae'' and some clearly late antique or medieval, and was the version frequently re-printed up until the mid-19<sup>th</sup>-century (Putnam and Ziolkowski 2008: 345; Wilson-Okamura 2010: 54-5; Ziolkowski 1993: 29). From the Chronicle of {{#lemma: Jerome | [[Jerome, Chronica 177.3-4, 180.2, 186.2, 187.1, 189.2, 190.3, 190.4; Liber quaestionum Hebraicarum in Genesim, praefatio; Commentariorum in epistolam ad Galatas libri tres, praefatio; Commentaria in Zachariam, praefatio; Epistles 85.3|Jer. ''Chron.'' 177.3-4, 180.2, 186.2, 187.1, 189.2, 190.3, 190.4; ''Quaest. hebr. in Gen.'' praef.; ''Ad Galat.'' preaf.; ''In Zach.'' praef.; ''Ep.'' 85.3]]}}, a pupil of Aelius Donatus, too, we have a number of extracts which likewise go back to Suetonius and were again influential for later readers (Putnam and Ziolkowski 2008: 199-202). Important biographies from late antiquity include the work of the late fourth-/early fifth-century AD grammarian {{#lemma: Servius | [[Vita Servii|''Vita Servii'']]}}, author of a popular commentary on Virgil which includes a life of the poet, and an account in verse ascribed to the grammarian {{#lemma: Focas | [[Vita Focae|''Vita Focae'']]}}, which notably adds to the omens at Virgil’s birth and early childhood found in ''VSD'' with the story ― also told of Lucan ― of bees swarming around the poet’s lips as a prophecy of the honeyed eloquence to come (lines 52-6), and the anecdote of a poplar tree that grew in the barren sand (lines 59-62).

Most of these biographies follow Virgil himself in structuring his life-story as essentially a poetic career ascending through the genres from pastoral to epic. Partly taking up the invitation implicit in the poet’s works for readers to interpret them biographically, they often extrapolate their ‘facts’ from the poems themselves. We learn from both Donatus and Servius, for instance, that Virgil’s land was confiscated and returned to him (a story paralleled in the ''Eclogues''), or from Donatus that his father kept bees, a tradition which presumably arose to explain the poet’s later fascination with apiculture in Book 4 of the ''Georgics''. The lives, too, are particularly concerned with the poet’s relationship with Augustus ― a concern echoed in the commentaries on the poems which they often preface ― and with Virgil’s careful and anxious composition methods. We see Virgil licking his poems into shape like a she-bear her cubs (echoing his own imagery in ''Aeneid'' 8.634) and commanding that his epic be burned after his death, a legend partly responsible for engendering the myth of the incomplete and uncompletable ''Aeneid''.

The medieval and Renaissance periods took the writing ― and inventing ― of the story of Virgil’s life to new imaginative levels. The era was gripped by what has been called ‘Vergiliomania’ (Comparetti 1997: vii). From stories of the poet’s prophetic powers echoed in the so-called ''sortes Vergilianae'' (‘Virgilian lots’), the practice of opening a volume of Virgil at random to predict the future (Comparetti 1997: 47-8; Putnam and Ziolkowski 2008: 829-30), to legends of Virgil as a magician, whose deeds include transforming himself into a horse to please a lady and visiting a magnetic mountain on a boat drawn by griffins (Putnam and Ziolkowski 2008: 885; 988-90), Virgil’s biography grows and morphs to wildly imaginative proportions. One of the most curious of the many tales that accrue to the poet is the episode of ‘Virgil in the basket’. The story goes that Virgil fell in love with the emperor’s daughter; pretending to agree to an assignation, she promised to hoist him up, Rapunzel-like, to her bed-chamber in a basket, but instead of letting him in, she left the poet hanging half way up the tower to be ridiculed by passers by. This is often accompanied by a sequel, ‘Virgil’s revenge’, in which the poet uses his magic powers to extinguish all the fires in Rome in such a way that they can only be rekindled by holding a torch or candle to the woman’s private parts (Spargo 1934: 136-97; 198-206; Putnam and Ziolkowski 2008: 874-89). Versions of the story appear in a number of texts, from extracts cautioning against the seductive powers of women to full-blown Romances on the life of Virgil, even making its way into visual culture, including a carved capital in St Pierre, Caen, and a 14<sup>th</sup>-century marriage casket (Spargo 1934; Putnam and Ziolkowski 2008: 456-9).

[[File:Virgil-in-a-basket.png|thumb|center|300px|link=|From the 16th-century Dutch Virgilius Romance (Spargo 1934: 237)]]

The figure of Virgil haunted poets of the late Medieval and Renaissance periods, too. Virgil famously became a character in the landscape of Dante’s imagination, guiding Dante through Hell and Purgatory in the ''Divine Comedy'', while Petrarch wrote a verse letter to Virgil, whom he imagines dwelling in the underworld (Putnam and Ziolkowski 2008: 133-6; cf. Comparetti 1997; Wilson-Okamura 2010). More recently, the twentieth century produced a plethora of ideologically charged lives, from the Italian proto-Fascist biography of Paolo Fabbri, explicitly written ‘to improve and aggrandize our ''patria''’ (''Virgilio. Poeta sociale e politico,'' 1929), to the strong proto-Christian leanings of the Ecuadorian Jesuit Aurelio Espinosa Pólit’s ''Virgilio. El poeta y su misión providencial'' (1932), on which see Ziolkowski 1993: 30–56. The poet’s life and especially his death have been the subject of, among other things, a neo-Latin poem, Anacleto Trazzi’s ''Vergilius Redux'' (1930), the radio play, ''Vergil Dying'' by Gabriel Josipovici (1979), and a major modernist novel, Hermann Broch’s ''Der Tod des Vergil'' (1945). On all these see further Ziolkowski 1993.

----

== Bibliography ==

For an exhaustive compendium of translated sources covering both the ancient biographies and their extensive successors from the first fifteen hundred years of Virgil reception, see further M. C. J. Putnam and T. Ziolkowski 2008: 179-468, section II ‘Biography: Images of Virgil’.

<div id="bibliography">
* Brugnoli, G. and Stok, F. (eds.) 1997. ''Vitae Vergilianae Antiquae.'' Rome.
* Comparetti, D. 1997. ''Virgil in the Middle Ages.'' Trans. E. F. M. Benecke, with a new introduction by J. Ziolkowski. Princeton.
* Farrell, J. 2002. ‘Greek Lives and Roman Careers in the Classical Vita Tradition.’ In P. Cheney and F. A. de Armas (eds.), ''European Literary Careers: The Author from Antiquity to the Renaissance.'' Toronto: 24-45.
* Hardie, P. R. and Moore, H. (eds.) 2010. ''Classical Literary Careers and their Reception.'' Cambridge.
* Horsfall, N. M. 1995. ''A Companion to the Study of Virgil.'' Leiden.
* Korenjak, M. 2003. ‘''Tityri sub persona'': Der antike Biographismus und die bukolische Tradition.’ ''A&A'' 49: 58-79.
* Laird, A. 2009. ‘Virgil: Reception and the Myth of Biography.’ ''CentoPagine III'': 1-9.
* Peirano, I. 2012. ''The Rhetoric of the Roman Fake.'' Cambridge.
* Putnam, M. C. J. and Ziolkowski, J. 2008. ''The Virgilian Tradition: The First Fifteen Hundred Years.'' New Haven.
* Spargo, J. W. 1934. ''Virgil the Necromancer: Studies in the Virgilian Legends.'' Cambridge, Mass.
* Stok, F. 2010. ‘The Life of Virgil Before Donatus.’ In J. Farrell and M. C. J. Putnam (eds.), ''Blackwell’s Companion to Virgil’s Aeneid and its Traditions.'' London: 107-20.
* Wilson-Okamura, D. 2010. ''Virgil in the Renaissance.'' Cambridge.
** http://virgil.org/vitae/
* Ziolkowski, T. 1993. ''Virgil and the Moderns.'' Princeton: 27─56.
</div>
</div>
<div id="notes"></div>

[[Category:Guides by Nora Goldschmidt]]

Virgil: A Guide to Selected Sources

2015-11-15T15:47:33Z

NickFreer: /* Bibliography */

{{GuideHighlightBox}}
{{Author|Nora Goldschmidt}}
{{#howtoquote:}}
<div id="guide">
Publius Vergilius Maro (‘Virgil’) was perhaps the most famous poet of the Augustan age, known principally for three major works: the ''Eclogues'' (a collection of pastoral poems), the ''Georgics'' (a didactic poem ostensibly concerned with farming), and the ''Aeneid'' (an epic on the mythical origins of Rome).

In T. S. Eliot’s words, Virgil very quickly became ‘the classic of all Europe’, and the biographical tradition surrounding him ― from the factual to the pseudo-factual to the fabulous ― is both one of the most extensive and one of the most imaginative of any poet in the history of western literature. The story begins in the poet’s own work: {{#lemma: Virgil | [[Virgil, Eclogues 6.1-12|Verg. ''Ecl.'' 6.1-12]] [[Virgil, Georgics 3.3-48|''G.'' 3.3-48]] [[Virgil, Georgics 4.559-66|''G.'' 4.559-66]] [[Virgil, Aeneid 7.37-45|''Aen.'' 7.37-45]]}} was highly aware of his own literary career, and in a series of self-conscious passages written in the first person fashioned his rise through the genres from humble pastoral to martial epic (Farrell 2002; Hardie and Moore 2010). These passages, together with more implicit clues embedded in the text provided a breeding ground for later biographical traditions by writers eager to tell Virgil’s story (Farrell 2002: 24−6; Korenjak 2003; Laird 2009).

At the same time, Virgil’s life was also being partially written by his contemporaries and close successors. The poet Propertius famously declared of the ''Aeneid'' that ‘something bigger than the ''Iliad'' is being born’ (2.34.65-6), and various hints and allusions to Virgil’s life and work, particularly the poet’s Mantuan origins, appear in several authors (Putnam and Ziolkowski 2008). The overall sense of a biographical ''presence'' behind Virgil’s original poems, moreover, was reinforced by a number of fakes believed to be by Virgil himself: the ''Appendix Vergiliana'', a collection of works either ascribed to or claiming to be by the young Virgil, contain fragments of autobiographical fiction (Peirano 2012), while a second proem to the ''Aeneid'' written in the poet’s voice announcing {{#lemma: ‘I am he’ (''ille ego...'') | [[From the Vita Suetonii vulgo Donatiana 42 and the Vita Servii|''VSD'' 42, ''Vita Servii'']]}}, was known in antiquity and believed to be genuine (cf. Laird 2009). Even the poet’s tomb, which became a site of literary tourism initially cultivated by the poet Silius Italicus (Pliny 3.7.8; Martial 11.48; 50), was inscribed with a famous epitaph thought in antiquity to have been composed by Virgil with his dying breath, which sums up the poet’s life as a movement from Mantua to Naples, and from pastoral to epic:

<blockquote>
{{#lemma: Mantua me genuit, Calabri rapuere, tenet nunc<br />
Parthenope; cecini pascua rura duces.<br /><br />

Mantua gave birth to me, the Calabrians snatched me away,<br />
Parthenope now holds me; I sang of pastures, ploughlands, and leaders. | [[Vita Suetonii vulgo Donatiana 36, Vita Servii and Jerome, Chronica ad Ol. 190.3|''VSD'' 36, ''Vita Servii'', Jer. ''Chron.'' ad Ol 190.3]]}}
</blockquote>

Partly influenced by this material is an extensive series of ancient narrative prose Lives (Brugnoli and Stok 1997; Putnam and Ziolkowsi 2008). The oldest was put together around the middle of the fourth century AD by the grammarian Aelius Donatus, who included it as a preface to his commentary on the poet’s works. Donatus, in turn, seems to have based his account on an earlier biography by Suetonius, and the life is therefore commonly known as the ''Vita Suetonii vulgo Donatiana'', abbreviated as {{#lemma: ''VSD'' | [[Vita Suetonii vulgo Donatiana|''VSD'']]}}. An influential 15th-century version of this, often referred to as {{#lemma: ''Donatus auctus'' | [[Donatus auctus|''Donatus auctus'']]}} (‘augmented Donatus’), supplements Donatus’ life with other material, some paralleled in other ancient ''vitae'' and some clearly late antique or medieval, and was the version frequently re-printed up until the mid-19<sup>th</sup>-century (Putnam and Ziolkowski 2008: 345; Wilson-Okamura 2010: 54-5; Ziolkowski 1993: 29). From the Chronicle of {{#lemma: Jerome | [[Jerome, Chronica 177.3-4, 180.2, 186.2, 187.1, 189.2, 190.3, 190.4; Liber quaestionum Hebraicarum in Genesim, praefatio; Commentariorum in epistolam ad Galatas libri tres, praefatio; Commentaria in Zachariam, praefatio; Epistles 85.3|Jer. ''Chron.'' 177.3-4, 180.2, 186.2, 187.1, 189.2, 190.3, 190.4; ''Quaest. hebr. in Gen.'' praef.; ''Ad Galat.'' preaf.; ''In Zach.'' praef.; ''Ep.'' 85.3]]}}, a pupil of Aelius Donatus, too, we have a number of extracts which likewise go back to Suetonius and were again influential for later readers (Putnam and Ziolkowski 2008: 199-202). Important biographies from late antiquity include the work of the late fourth-/early fifth-century AD grammarian {{#lemma: Servius | [[Vita Servii|''Vita Servii'']]}}, author of a popular commentary on Virgil which includes a life of the poet, and an account in verse ascribed to the grammarian {{#lemma: Focas | [[Vita Focae|''Vita Focae'']]}}, which notably adds to the omens at Virgil’s birth and early childhood found in ''VSD'' with the story ― also told of Lucan ― of bees swarming around the poet’s lips as a prophecy of the honeyed eloquence to come (lines 52-6), and the anecdote of a poplar tree that grew in the barren sand (lines 59-62).

Most of these biographies follow Virgil himself in structuring his life-story as essentially a poetic career ascending through the genres from pastoral to epic. Partly taking up the invitation implicit in the poet’s works for readers to interpret them biographically, they often extrapolate their ‘facts’ from the poems themselves. We learn from both Donatus and Servius, for instance, that Virgil’s land was confiscated and returned to him (a story paralleled in the ''Eclogues''), or from Donatus that his father kept bees, a tradition which presumably arose to explain the poet’s later fascination with apiculture in Book 4 of the ''Georgics''. The lives, too, are particularly concerned with the poet’s relationship with Augustus ― a concern echoed in the commentaries on the poems which they often preface ― and with Virgil’s careful and anxious composition methods. We see Virgil licking his poems into shape like a she-bear her cubs (echoing his own imagery in ''Aeneid'' 8.634) and commanding that his epic be burned after his death, a legend partly responsible for engendering the myth of the incomplete and uncompletable ''Aeneid''.

The medieval and Renaissance periods took the writing ― and inventing ― of the story of Virgil’s life to new imaginative levels. The era was gripped by what has been called ‘Vergiliomania’ (Comparetti 1997: vii). From stories of the poet’s prophetic powers echoed in the so-called ''sortes Vergilianae'' (‘Virgilian lots’), the practice of opening a volume of Virgil at random to predict the future (Comparetti 1997: 47-8; Putnam and Ziolkowski 2008: 829-30), to legends of Virgil as a magician, whose deeds include transforming himself into a horse to please a lady and visiting a magnetic mountain on a boat drawn by griffins (Putnam and Ziolkowski 2008: 885; 988-90), Virgil’s biography grows and morphs to wildly imaginative proportions. One of the most curious of the many tales that accrue to the poet is the episode of ‘Virgil in the basket’. The story goes that Virgil fell in love with the emperor’s daughter; pretending to agree to an assignation, she promised to hoist him up, Rapunzel-like, to her bed-chamber in a basket, but instead of letting him in, she left the poet hanging half way up the tower to be ridiculed by passers by. This is often accompanied by a sequel, ‘Virgil’s revenge’, in which the poet uses his magic powers to extinguish all the fires in Rome in such a way that they can only be rekindled by holding a torch or candle to the woman’s private parts (Spargo 1934: 136-97; 198-206; Putnam and Ziolkowski 2008: 874-89). Versions of the story appear in a number of texts, from extracts cautioning against the seductive powers of women to full-blown Romances on the life of Virgil, even making its way into visual culture, including a carved capital in St Pierre, Caen, and a 14<sup>th</sup>-century marriage casket (Spargo 1934; Putnam and Ziolkowski 2008: 456-9).

[[File:Virgil-in-a-basket.png|thumb|center|300px|link=|From the 16th-century Dutch Virgilius Romance (Spargo 1934: 237)]]

The figure of Virgil haunted poets of the late Medieval and Renaissance periods, too. Virgil famously became a character in the landscape of Dante’s imagination, guiding Dante through Hell and Purgatory in the ''Divine Comedy'', while Petrarch wrote a verse letter to Virgil, whom he imagines dwelling in the underworld (Putnam and Ziolkowski 2008: 133-6; cf. Comparetti 1997; Wilson-Okamura 2010). More recently, the twentieth century produced a plethora of ideologically charged lives, from the Italian proto-Fascist biography of Paolo Fabbri, explicitly written ‘to improve and aggrandize our ''patria''’ (''Virgilio. Poeta sociale e politico,'' 1929), to the strong proto-Christian leanings of the Ecuadorian Jesuit Aurelio Espinosa Pólit’s ''Virgilio. El poeta y su misión providencial'' (1932), on which see Ziolkowski 1993: 30–56. The poet’s life and especially his death have been the subject of, among other things, a neo-Latin poem, Anacleto Trazzi’s ''Vergilius Redux'' (1930), the radio play, ''Vergil Dying'' by Gabriel Josipovici (1979), and a major modernist novel, Hermann Broch’s ''Der Tod des Vergil'' (1945). On all these see further Ziolkowski 1993.

----

== Bibliography ==

For an exhaustive compendium of translated sources covering both the ancient biographies and their extensive successors from the first fifteen hundred years of Virgil reception, see further M. C. J. Putnam and T. Ziolkowski 2008: 179─468, section II ‘Biography: Images of Virgil’.

<div id="bibliography">
* Brugnoli, G. and Stok, F. (eds.) 1997. ''Vitae Vergilianae Antiquae.'' Rome.
* Comparetti, D. 1997. ''Virgil in the Middle Ages.'' Trans. E. F. M. Benecke, with a new introduction by J. Ziolkowski. Princeton.
* Farrell, J. 2002. ‘Greek Lives and Roman Careers in the Classical Vita Tradition.’ In P. Cheney and F. A. de Armas (eds.), ''European Literary Careers: The Author from Antiquity to the Renaissance.'' Toronto: 24-45.
* Hardie, P. R. and Moore, H. (eds.) 2010. ''Classical Literary Careers and their Reception.'' Cambridge.
* Horsfall, N. M. 1995. ''A Companion to the Study of Virgil.'' Leiden.
* Korenjak, M. 2003. ‘''Tityri sub persona'': Der antike Biographismus und die bukolische Tradition.’ ''A&A'' 49: 58-79.
* Laird, A. 2009. ‘Virgil: Reception and the Myth of Biography.’ ''CentoPagine III'': 1-9.
* Peirano, I. 2012. ''The Rhetoric of the Roman Fake.'' Cambridge.
* Putnam, M. C. J. and Ziolkowski, J. 2008. ''The Virgilian Tradition: The First Fifteen Hundred Years.'' New Haven.
* Spargo, J. W. 1934. ''Virgil the Necromancer: Studies in the Virgilian Legends.'' Cambridge, Mass.
* Stok, F. 2010. ‘The Life of Virgil Before Donatus.’ In J. Farrell and M. C. J. Putnam (eds.), ''Blackwell’s Companion to Virgil’s Aeneid and its Traditions.'' London: 107-20.
* Wilson-Okamura, D. 2010. ''Virgil in the Renaissance.'' Cambridge.
** http://virgil.org/vitae/
* Ziolkowski, T. 1993. ''Virgil and the Moderns.'' Princeton: 27─56.
</div>
</div>
<div id="notes"></div>

[[Category:Guides by Nora Goldschmidt]]

Terence: A Guide to Selected Sources

2015-11-15T15:45:03Z

NickFreer: /* Bibliography */

{{GuideHighlightBox}}
{{Author|Nora Goldschmidt}}
{{#howtoquote:}}
<div id="guide">

Publius Terentius Afer (‘Terence’) was a Roman comic playwright of the Republican period. A younger contemporary of Plautus, he is known for six surviving plays: ''Adelphoe'' (‘The Brothers’), ''Andria'' (‘The Girl from Andros’), ''Eunuchus'' (‘The Eunuch’), ''Heautontimorumenos'' (‘The Self-tormentor’), ''Hecyra'' (‘The Mother-in-law’), and ''Phormio'' (named after the play’s protagonist).

Two main ancient narrative sources on Terence’s life survive from antiquity, both of which come from the partially preserved commentary on his plays by the grammarian Aelius Donatus (4<sup>th</sup> century AD). {{#lemma: Donatus quotes the lost earlier Life of Suetonius | [[Suetonius/Donatus, Life of Terence|Suet./Donat. ''Vita Ter.'']]}} (born AD 69), and continues with {{#lemma: a short coda of his own | [[Donatus, Coda to Suetonius’ Life of Terence|Donat. ''Vita Ter.'']]}}. In addition to these, we also have a brief account by {{#lemma: St Jerome | [[Jerome, Chronica ad Ol. 155.3|Jer. ''Chron.'' ad Ol. 155.3]]}}, who was probably drawing on Suetonius, too, and repeats details found in the Suetonian life (158 BC)] (see further Fantham 2004, Augoustakis and Traill 2013: 1-6). Although factually unreliable, these accounts – and Suetonius’ in particular – give us a fascinating glimpse into the vibrant biographical tradition that surrounded Terence in the centuries following his death (cf. Lowe 2008: 115). Suetonius cites, or takes issue with, an array of other scholars and poets, quoting from, among others, Porcius Licinus’ poem on the history of Latin poetry (probably late 2<sup>nd</sup> century BC), a hexameter poem by Cicero (''Limon'', ‘The Meadow’), and even verses by Julius Caesar (Courtney 1993: 83-92, 153-5).

Yet despite the plurality of sources available to Suetonius (or to Varro, whom he may be following: Fantham 2004: 21), his earliest predecessors still seem to have found an enigma in Terence (cf. Lowe 2008: 115, Fantham 2004: 22). Even the most basic ‘fact’ of Terence’s life – that the poet was a freed slave born in Carthage (''Karthagine natus'', Suet./Donat. ''Vita Ter.'' 1) – was probably reached by working backwards from his name: ‘Afer’ means ‘African’. Reports of the poet’s death, too, are arguably concocted biographical fictions: we learn that Terence vanished from Rome, either to Arcadia (a tradition repeated by Jerome) or to Asia, or – a story which Suetonius claims to be paraphrasing from the grammarian Quintus Cosconius – that he drowned at sea while ferrying home ‘one-hundred-and-eight plays adapted from Menander’, or else that he died of grief at the loss of his manuscripts (Suet./Donat. ''Vita Ter.'' 5). While the image of Terence’s death at sea surrounded by dramatic scripts adapted from Menander provides the perfect metaliterary end for a ‘demi-Menander’, as Cicero called him (Suet./Donat. ''Vita Ter.'' 5: Terence based many of his comedies on the Greek comic poet), the story is very likely to have been transposed from the biography of Menander himself, who was also reported to have drowned (Lefkowitz 2012: 111). Similarly, Suetonius’ anecdote that Terence read the ''Andria'' to his dramatic precursor Caecilius, who approved of it (Suet./Donat. ''Vita Ter.'' 2, repeated by Jerome), also seems to be a biographical narrative fashioned out of a literary-historical one: Caecilius, according to traditional chronologies, was dead before the ''Andria'' was in production (Augoustakis and Traill 2013: 50).

In addition to this, some of the facts in the Vita tradition seem, like those of many other poets, to be drawn from the ancient texts themselves. Terence prefaced his comedies with a series of self-reflexive dramatic prologues, which he often deployed as an opportunity for poetic self-positioning ''vis-à-vis'' contemporary critics. In particular, the poet complains of charges against him that certain ‘noble friends’ wrote his comedies, or else collaborated with him in writing them (''Haut.'' 22-4; ''Ad.'' 15-21). This seems eventually to have evolved into a ‘well-known story’ (''non obscura fama'', Suet./Donat. ''Vita Ter.'' 3), recounted by Suetonius, that two of Terence’s elite Roman contemporaries, Scipio and Laelius, wrote, or helped to write, his comedies. Another prologue includes an underhand reference to Terence’s precursor, Caecilius (Ter. ''Hec.'' 1-27), which may have contributed to the Suetonian anecdote about the recitation to Caecilius. In the end, like many Latin poets, Terence himself seems to have kept posterity busy, sowing the seeds of his afterlife as an active partner in the construction of the myth of his own biography.

----

== Bibliography ==

<div id="bibliography">
* Augoustakis, A. and Traill, A. (eds.) 2013. ''A Companion to Terence''. Malden, MA.
* Beare, W. 1942. ‘The Life of Terence.’ ''Hermathena'' 59: 20-29
* Courtney, E. 1993. ''The Fragmentary Latin Poets''. Oxford.
* Duckworth, G. 1990. ''The Nature of Roman Comedy'' (1<sup>st</sup> edn 1952). Princeton, NJ.
* Fantham, E. 2004. ‘Terence and the Familiarisation of Comedy.’ In A. J. Boyle (ed.), ''Rethinking Terence, Ramus'' 33.1-2: 20-34.
* Frank, T. 1933. ‘On Suetonius’ ''Life of Terence''.’ ''AJP'' 54: 269-73.
* Goldberg, S. M. 1986. ''Understanding Terence''. Princeton, NJ.
** 2005. ''Constructing Literature in the Roman Republic''. Cambridge.
* Kivilo, M. 2010. ''Early Greek Poets’ Lives''. Leiden.
* Lefkowitz, M. 2012 (1981). ''The Lives of the Greek Poets''. Baltimore.
* Lowe, N. J. 2008. ''Comedy''. Cambridge.
* Manuwald, G. 2011. ''Roman Republican Theatre''. Cambridge.
* Sharrock, A. 2009. ''Reading Roman Comedy''. Cambridge.
* Suerbaum, W. ( ed.) 2002. ''Handbuch der Lateinischen Literatur der Antike. Erster Band. Die archaische Literatur. Von den Anfängen bis Sullas Tod.'' Munich.
</div>
</div>
<div id="notes"></div>

[[Category:Guides by Nora Goldschmidt]]

Plautus: A Guide to Selected Sources

2015-11-15T15:41:43Z

NickFreer: /* Bibliography */

{{GuideHighlightBox}}
{{Author|Nora Goldschmidt}}
{{#howtoquote:}}
<div id="guide">
Titus Maccius Plautus (‘Plautus’) was a Roman comic playwright of the Republican period known as the author of 21 surviving plays, including ''Amphitruo'' (his only extant play on a mythological subject), ''Aularia'' (‘The Pot of Gold’), ''Menaechmi'' (‘The Brothers Menaechmus’), ''Miles Gloriosus'' (‘The Boastful Soldier’), and ''Rudens'' (‘The Rope’).

Apart from piecemeal remarks by {{#lemma: Cicero | [[Cicero, Brutus 60|Cic. ''Brut.'' 60]] [[Cicero, De senectute 50|Cic. ''Sen.'' 50]]}}, who notes that Plautus died in 184 BC and imagines that the ''Truculentus'' and ''Pseudolus'' were the delight of his old age, the earliest extant story of Plautus’ life—or imaginary life—is found in the {{#lemma: ''Attic Nights'' of Aulus Gellius | [[Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae 3.3.14|Gell. 3.3.14]]}}. Gellius, who had access to ''On Poets'' by Varro (d. 27 BC) and seems to be drawing on it here, tells us that Plautus had been engaged in ‘jobs connected with the stage’ (''in operis artificum scaenicorum''). At some point, the poet lost all his money in trade (''mercatibus''), after which he returned penniless to Rome and ended up as a menial labourer at a mill – an activity associated with slaves – where he also wrote three plays. Gellius’ story is echoed by {{#lemma: Jerome | [[Jerome, Chronica ad Ol. 145.1 = 200 BC|Jer. ''Chron.'' ad Ol. 145.1 = 200 BC]]}} in his version of the ''Chronicle'' of Eusebius under the year 200 BC (thus giving a different date of death from that stated by Cicero). Jerome, whose account may also ultimately go back to Varro (cf. Leigh 2004: 137), follows Gellius in stating that the impoverished poet hired himself out to work a mill in a bakery, where he ‘wrote and sold plays’ (''scribere fabulas … ac uendere''), adding that Plautus was a native of Sarsina from Umbria and that he died in Rome. In addition to these sources, we also have an {{#lemma: epitaph | [[Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae 1.24.3|Gell. 1.24.3]]}}, likewise quoted by Gellius, and believed in antiquity to have been composed by the poet himself, as well as an apparently off-the-cuff statement, probably made-up, in the {{#lemma: ''Historia Augusta'' | [[Historia Augusta, Septimus Seuerus 21.1-2|SHA ''Sev.'' 21.2]]}} (a work of disputed authorship and date, but generally thought to have been written around the turn of the 5<sup>th</sup> century AD) grouping Plautus with ‘Homer, Virgil, Terence … and others’ as famous men who died childless.

Scholars as early as Varro, however, already had trouble with the poet’s identity (Gratwick 1973; Goldberg 2005: 66-8). The problem was that a vast number of plays circulated under the name of Plautus – far more than a single writer could have composed, let alone staged. One way of dealing with the issue of narrowing down the canon, therefore, seems to have been to establish a biographical narrative to account for the selection of the plays themselves (Goldberg 2005: 67; cf. Leo 1912: 70-71; Duckworth 1990: 51). Perhaps more than other ancient authors, then, Plautus’s plays and the story of Plautus’s life are inextricably linked: the biography seems, to a large extent, to be drawn from the agreed corpus of plays, which in turn provide material for the biography itself. A joke in the {{#lemma: ''Mostellaria'' | [[Plautus, Mostellaria 770|Plaut. ''Most.'' 770]]}} (‘The Haunted House’), for instance, is likely to have suggested the ‘fact’ found in Jerome that the author himself was from Sarsina. So, too, one of the plays Gellius thinks Plautus wrote in the bakery is called the ''Addictus'' (‘Enslaved for Debt’), which may itself have inspired the story of Plautus’ disastrous adventures in trade (Leo 1912: 73). Moreover, the narrative of Plautus’ mill-pushing days – and the mill as the site of the composition of many of his works – though in broad outline not alien to the Greek biographical tradition, can likewise be traced to the plays themselves: mills and milling are a virtual motif in the dramas (Gruen 1990: 127), and the clever slave in Plautine comedy – a figure the plays encourage us to see on a metaliterary level as, to some extent, a stand-in for the author in the text (Sharrock 2009: 116-18; Slater 2000) – is often threatened with being ‘sent to the mill’ as a form of punishment (and Tyndarus in the ''Captiui'' actually is: cf. Sharrock 2009: 136). Even Plautus’ name can be seen to be drawn from comedy, or at least its earlier precursors: ''Plautus'' is a version of ''planipes'' (‘flatfoot’), a nickname for performers in the barefoot Latin mime, and ''Maccius'' means ‘son of Maccus’, the hero of Atellan farce (Lowe 2008: 97).

In the end, whatever the origin of the biographical legend, the image of the impoverished Plautus as a miller’s lacky, writing his comedies, as Jerome put it, ‘whenever he had time off work’, could easily be imagined by later readers as the natural figure of the author of the comedies. Camillo Miola’s ''Plauto mugnaio'' (‘Plautus the Miller’, pictured below), painted in Italy during the classical revival, depicts the poet seated by a mill in a bakery full of authentic detail drawn from excavations at Pompeii; yet the poet, tanned at the collar like a southern Italian labourer, performs to an audience who recall Miola’s Neopolitan contemporaries (Figurelli 2011: 145-46). It is, finally, in the guise of the arch slave form Plautine comedy that the poet often spoke, and continues to speak, to the audiences who received his works.

[[File:Plauto Mugnaio.jpg|thumb|center|360px|link=|Camillo Miola’s ''Plauto Mugnaio''.]]

----

== Bibliography ==

<div id="bibliography">
* Duckworth, G. 1990. ''The Nature of Roman Comedy'' (1<sup>st</sup> edn 1952). Princeton, NJ.
* Figurelli, L. 2011. ‘Italian Classical-Revival Painters and the “Southern Question”.’ In S. Hales and J. Paul (eds.), ''Pompeii in the Modern Imagination''. Oxford: 136-52.
* Goldberg, S. M. 2005. ''Constructing Literature in the Roman Republic''. Cambridge.
* Gratwick, A. D. 1973. ‘Titus Maccius Plautus.’ ''CQ'' 23: 78-84
* Gruen, E. S. 1990. ''Studies in Greek Culture and Roman Policy''. Berkeley.
* Leo, F. 1912. ''Plautinische Forschungen'' (2<sup>nd</sup> edn). Berlin: 63-86.
* Lowe, N. J. 2008. ''Comedy''. Cambridge.
* Sharrock, A. 2009. ''Reading Roman Comedy''. Cambridge.
* Slater, N. J. 2000. ''Plautus in Performance: The Theatre of the Mind'' (1<sup>st</sup> edn 1985). Amsterdam.
* Stuart, D. R. 1931. ‘Authors’ Lives as Revealed in their Works: A Critical Résumé.’ In G. D. Hadzsits (ed.), ''Classical Studies in Honour of C. J. Rolfe''. Philadelphia: 285-304.
* Suerbaum, W. (ed.) 2002. ''Handbuch der Lateinischen Literatur der Antike. Erster Band. Die archaische Literatur. Von den Anfängen bis Sullas Tod.'' Munich.
</div>
</div>
<div id="notes"></div>

[[Category:Guides by Nora Goldschmidt]]

Plautus: A Guide to Selected Sources

2015-11-15T15:40:31Z

NickFreer: /* Bibliography */

{{GuideHighlightBox}}
{{Author|Nora Goldschmidt}}
{{#howtoquote:}}
<div id="guide">
Titus Maccius Plautus (‘Plautus’) was a Roman comic playwright of the Republican period known as the author of 21 surviving plays, including ''Amphitruo'' (his only extant play on a mythological subject), ''Aularia'' (‘The Pot of Gold’), ''Menaechmi'' (‘The Brothers Menaechmus’), ''Miles Gloriosus'' (‘The Boastful Soldier’), and ''Rudens'' (‘The Rope’).

Apart from piecemeal remarks by {{#lemma: Cicero | [[Cicero, Brutus 60|Cic. ''Brut.'' 60]] [[Cicero, De senectute 50|Cic. ''Sen.'' 50]]}}, who notes that Plautus died in 184 BC and imagines that the ''Truculentus'' and ''Pseudolus'' were the delight of his old age, the earliest extant story of Plautus’ life—or imaginary life—is found in the {{#lemma: ''Attic Nights'' of Aulus Gellius | [[Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae 3.3.14|Gell. 3.3.14]]}}. Gellius, who had access to ''On Poets'' by Varro (d. 27 BC) and seems to be drawing on it here, tells us that Plautus had been engaged in ‘jobs connected with the stage’ (''in operis artificum scaenicorum''). At some point, the poet lost all his money in trade (''mercatibus''), after which he returned penniless to Rome and ended up as a menial labourer at a mill – an activity associated with slaves – where he also wrote three plays. Gellius’ story is echoed by {{#lemma: Jerome | [[Jerome, Chronica ad Ol. 145.1 = 200 BC|Jer. ''Chron.'' ad Ol. 145.1 = 200 BC]]}} in his version of the ''Chronicle'' of Eusebius under the year 200 BC (thus giving a different date of death from that stated by Cicero). Jerome, whose account may also ultimately go back to Varro (cf. Leigh 2004: 137), follows Gellius in stating that the impoverished poet hired himself out to work a mill in a bakery, where he ‘wrote and sold plays’ (''scribere fabulas … ac uendere''), adding that Plautus was a native of Sarsina from Umbria and that he died in Rome. In addition to these sources, we also have an {{#lemma: epitaph | [[Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae 1.24.3|Gell. 1.24.3]]}}, likewise quoted by Gellius, and believed in antiquity to have been composed by the poet himself, as well as an apparently off-the-cuff statement, probably made-up, in the {{#lemma: ''Historia Augusta'' | [[Historia Augusta, Septimus Seuerus 21.1-2|SHA ''Sev.'' 21.2]]}} (a work of disputed authorship and date, but generally thought to have been written around the turn of the 5<sup>th</sup> century AD) grouping Plautus with ‘Homer, Virgil, Terence … and others’ as famous men who died childless.

Scholars as early as Varro, however, already had trouble with the poet’s identity (Gratwick 1973; Goldberg 2005: 66-8). The problem was that a vast number of plays circulated under the name of Plautus – far more than a single writer could have composed, let alone staged. One way of dealing with the issue of narrowing down the canon, therefore, seems to have been to establish a biographical narrative to account for the selection of the plays themselves (Goldberg 2005: 67; cf. Leo 1912: 70-71; Duckworth 1990: 51). Perhaps more than other ancient authors, then, Plautus’s plays and the story of Plautus’s life are inextricably linked: the biography seems, to a large extent, to be drawn from the agreed corpus of plays, which in turn provide material for the biography itself. A joke in the {{#lemma: ''Mostellaria'' | [[Plautus, Mostellaria 770|Plaut. ''Most.'' 770]]}} (‘The Haunted House’), for instance, is likely to have suggested the ‘fact’ found in Jerome that the author himself was from Sarsina. So, too, one of the plays Gellius thinks Plautus wrote in the bakery is called the ''Addictus'' (‘Enslaved for Debt’), which may itself have inspired the story of Plautus’ disastrous adventures in trade (Leo 1912: 73). Moreover, the narrative of Plautus’ mill-pushing days – and the mill as the site of the composition of many of his works – though in broad outline not alien to the Greek biographical tradition, can likewise be traced to the plays themselves: mills and milling are a virtual motif in the dramas (Gruen 1990: 127), and the clever slave in Plautine comedy – a figure the plays encourage us to see on a metaliterary level as, to some extent, a stand-in for the author in the text (Sharrock 2009: 116-18; Slater 2000) – is often threatened with being ‘sent to the mill’ as a form of punishment (and Tyndarus in the ''Captiui'' actually is: cf. Sharrock 2009: 136). Even Plautus’ name can be seen to be drawn from comedy, or at least its earlier precursors: ''Plautus'' is a version of ''planipes'' (‘flatfoot’), a nickname for performers in the barefoot Latin mime, and ''Maccius'' means ‘son of Maccus’, the hero of Atellan farce (Lowe 2008: 97).

In the end, whatever the origin of the biographical legend, the image of the impoverished Plautus as a miller’s lacky, writing his comedies, as Jerome put it, ‘whenever he had time off work’, could easily be imagined by later readers as the natural figure of the author of the comedies. Camillo Miola’s ''Plauto mugnaio'' (‘Plautus the Miller’, pictured below), painted in Italy during the classical revival, depicts the poet seated by a mill in a bakery full of authentic detail drawn from excavations at Pompeii; yet the poet, tanned at the collar like a southern Italian labourer, performs to an audience who recall Miola’s Neopolitan contemporaries (Figurelli 2011: 145-46). It is, finally, in the guise of the arch slave form Plautine comedy that the poet often spoke, and continues to speak, to the audiences who received his works.

[[File:Plauto Mugnaio.jpg|thumb|center|360px|link=|Camillo Miola’s ''Plauto Mugnaio''.]]

----

== Bibliography ==

<div id="bibliography">
* Duckworth, G. 1990. ''The Nature of Roman Comedy'' (1<sup>st</sup> edn 1952). Princeton, NJ.
* Figurelli, L. 2011. ‘Italian Classical-Revival Painters and the “Southern Question”.’ In S. Hales and J. Paul (eds.), ''Pompeii in the Modern Imagination''. Oxford: 136-52.
* Goldberg, S. M. 2005. ''Constructing Literature in the Roman Republic''. Cambridge.
* Gratwick, A. D. 1973. ‘Titus Maccius Plautus.’ ''CQ'' 23: 78-84
* Gruen, E. S. 1990. ''Studies in Greek Culture and Roman Policy''. Berkeley.
* Leo, F. 1912. ''Plautinische Forschungen'' (2<sup>nd</sup> edn). Berlin: 63-86.
* Lowe, N. J. 2008. ''Comedy''. Cambridge.
* Sharrock, A. 2009. ''Reading Roman Comedy''. Cambridge.
* Slater, N. J. 2000. ''Plautus in Performance: The Theatre of the Mind'', 2<sup>nd</sup> edn Amsterdam. (1<sup>st</sup> edn 1985).
* Stuart, D. R. 1931. ‘Authors’ Lives as Revealed in their Works: A Critical Résumé.’ In G. D. Hadzsits (ed.), ''Classical Studies in Honour of C. J. Rolfe''. Philadelphia: 285-304.
* Suerbaum, W. (ed.) 2002. ''Handbuch der Lateinischen Literatur der Antike. Erster Band. Die archaische Literatur. Von den Anfängen bis Sullas Tod.'' Munich.
</div>
</div>
<div id="notes"></div>

[[Category:Guides by Nora Goldschmidt]]

Plautus: A Guide to Selected Sources

2015-11-15T15:36:58Z

NickFreer: /* Bibliography */

{{GuideHighlightBox}}
{{Author|Nora Goldschmidt}}
{{#howtoquote:}}
<div id="guide">
Titus Maccius Plautus (‘Plautus’) was a Roman comic playwright of the Republican period known as the author of 21 surviving plays, including ''Amphitruo'' (his only extant play on a mythological subject), ''Aularia'' (‘The Pot of Gold’), ''Menaechmi'' (‘The Brothers Menaechmus’), ''Miles Gloriosus'' (‘The Boastful Soldier’), and ''Rudens'' (‘The Rope’).

Apart from piecemeal remarks by {{#lemma: Cicero | [[Cicero, Brutus 60|Cic. ''Brut.'' 60]] [[Cicero, De senectute 50|Cic. ''Sen.'' 50]]}}, who notes that Plautus died in 184 BC and imagines that the ''Truculentus'' and ''Pseudolus'' were the delight of his old age, the earliest extant story of Plautus’ life—or imaginary life—is found in the {{#lemma: ''Attic Nights'' of Aulus Gellius | [[Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae 3.3.14|Gell. 3.3.14]]}}. Gellius, who had access to ''On Poets'' by Varro (d. 27 BC) and seems to be drawing on it here, tells us that Plautus had been engaged in ‘jobs connected with the stage’ (''in operis artificum scaenicorum''). At some point, the poet lost all his money in trade (''mercatibus''), after which he returned penniless to Rome and ended up as a menial labourer at a mill – an activity associated with slaves – where he also wrote three plays. Gellius’ story is echoed by {{#lemma: Jerome | [[Jerome, Chronica ad Ol. 145.1 = 200 BC|Jer. ''Chron.'' ad Ol. 145.1 = 200 BC]]}} in his version of the ''Chronicle'' of Eusebius under the year 200 BC (thus giving a different date of death from that stated by Cicero). Jerome, whose account may also ultimately go back to Varro (cf. Leigh 2004: 137), follows Gellius in stating that the impoverished poet hired himself out to work a mill in a bakery, where he ‘wrote and sold plays’ (''scribere fabulas … ac uendere''), adding that Plautus was a native of Sarsina from Umbria and that he died in Rome. In addition to these sources, we also have an {{#lemma: epitaph | [[Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae 1.24.3|Gell. 1.24.3]]}}, likewise quoted by Gellius, and believed in antiquity to have been composed by the poet himself, as well as an apparently off-the-cuff statement, probably made-up, in the {{#lemma: ''Historia Augusta'' | [[Historia Augusta, Septimus Seuerus 21.1-2|SHA ''Sev.'' 21.2]]}} (a work of disputed authorship and date, but generally thought to have been written around the turn of the 5<sup>th</sup> century AD) grouping Plautus with ‘Homer, Virgil, Terence … and others’ as famous men who died childless.

Scholars as early as Varro, however, already had trouble with the poet’s identity (Gratwick 1973; Goldberg 2005: 66-8). The problem was that a vast number of plays circulated under the name of Plautus – far more than a single writer could have composed, let alone staged. One way of dealing with the issue of narrowing down the canon, therefore, seems to have been to establish a biographical narrative to account for the selection of the plays themselves (Goldberg 2005: 67; cf. Leo 1912: 70-71; Duckworth 1990: 51). Perhaps more than other ancient authors, then, Plautus’s plays and the story of Plautus’s life are inextricably linked: the biography seems, to a large extent, to be drawn from the agreed corpus of plays, which in turn provide material for the biography itself. A joke in the {{#lemma: ''Mostellaria'' | [[Plautus, Mostellaria 770|Plaut. ''Most.'' 770]]}} (‘The Haunted House’), for instance, is likely to have suggested the ‘fact’ found in Jerome that the author himself was from Sarsina. So, too, one of the plays Gellius thinks Plautus wrote in the bakery is called the ''Addictus'' (‘Enslaved for Debt’), which may itself have inspired the story of Plautus’ disastrous adventures in trade (Leo 1912: 73). Moreover, the narrative of Plautus’ mill-pushing days – and the mill as the site of the composition of many of his works – though in broad outline not alien to the Greek biographical tradition, can likewise be traced to the plays themselves: mills and milling are a virtual motif in the dramas (Gruen 1990: 127), and the clever slave in Plautine comedy – a figure the plays encourage us to see on a metaliterary level as, to some extent, a stand-in for the author in the text (Sharrock 2009: 116-18; Slater 2000) – is often threatened with being ‘sent to the mill’ as a form of punishment (and Tyndarus in the ''Captiui'' actually is: cf. Sharrock 2009: 136). Even Plautus’ name can be seen to be drawn from comedy, or at least its earlier precursors: ''Plautus'' is a version of ''planipes'' (‘flatfoot’), a nickname for performers in the barefoot Latin mime, and ''Maccius'' means ‘son of Maccus’, the hero of Atellan farce (Lowe 2008: 97).

In the end, whatever the origin of the biographical legend, the image of the impoverished Plautus as a miller’s lacky, writing his comedies, as Jerome put it, ‘whenever he had time off work’, could easily be imagined by later readers as the natural figure of the author of the comedies. Camillo Miola’s ''Plauto mugnaio'' (‘Plautus the Miller’, pictured below), painted in Italy during the classical revival, depicts the poet seated by a mill in a bakery full of authentic detail drawn from excavations at Pompeii; yet the poet, tanned at the collar like a southern Italian labourer, performs to an audience who recall Miola’s Neopolitan contemporaries (Figurelli 2011: 145-46). It is, finally, in the guise of the arch slave form Plautine comedy that the poet often spoke, and continues to speak, to the audiences who received his works.

[[File:Plauto Mugnaio.jpg|thumb|center|360px|link=|Camillo Miola’s ''Plauto Mugnaio''.]]

----

== Bibliography ==

<div id="bibliography">
* Duckworth, G. 1990. ''The Nature of Roman Comedy''. Princeton, NJ (1<sup>st</sup> edn 1952).
* Figurelli, L. 2011. ‘Italian Classical-Revival Painters and the “Southern Question”.’ In S. Hales and J. Paul (eds.), ''Pompeii in the Modern Imagination''. Oxford: 136-52.
* Goldberg, S. M. 2005. ''Constructing Literature in the Roman Republic''. Cambridge.
* Gratwick, A. D. 1973. ‘Titus Maccius Plautus’. ''CQ'' 23: 78-84
* Gruen, E. S. 1990. ''Studies in Greek Culture and Roman Policy'', Berkeley.
* Leo, F. 1912. ''Plautinische Forschungen''. Berlin. 2<sup>nd</sup> edn: 63-86.
* Lowe, N. J. 2008. ''Comedy''. Cambridge.
* Sharrock, A. 2009. ''Reading Roman Comedy''. Cambridge.
* Slater, N. J. 2000. ''Plautus in Performance: The Theatre of the Mind'', 2<sup>nd</sup> edn Amsterdam. (1<sup>st</sup> edn 1985).
* Stuart, D. R. 1931. ‘Authors’ Lives as Revealed in their Works: A Critical Résumé’. In G. D. Hadzsits (ed.), ''Classical Studies in Honour of C. J. Rolfe''. Philadelphia: 285-304.
* Suerbaum, W. (ed.) 2002. ''Handbuch der Lateinischen Literatur der Antike. Erster Band. Die archaische Literatur. Von den Anfängen bis Sullas Tod.'' Munich.
</div>
</div>
<div id="notes"></div>

[[Category:Guides by Nora Goldschmidt]]

Lucretius: A Guide to Selected Sources

2015-11-15T15:34:12Z

NickFreer: /* Bibliography */

{{GuideHighlightBox}}
'''''Nora Goldschmidt'''''
{{#howtoquote:}}
<div id="guide">{{GuideTextsBy|Nora Goldschmidt}}
Titus Lucretius Carus (‘Lucretius’) was a Roman poet of the first century BCE, best known as the author of the didactic poem ''De rerum natura'' (''On the Nature of the Universe''). The oldest account we have of his life is a short report found in {{#lemma: Jerome’s version of the ''Chronicle of Eusebius'' | [[Jerome, Chronica ad Ol. 171.3 (94 BC) | Jer. ''Chron.'' ad Ol. 171.3 (94 BC)]]}} under the year 94 BC. According to Jerome, the poet went mad after drinking a love potion; in the lucid intervals between periods of insanity, he wrote several books, which were later edited by his famous contemporary, the orator Cicero. Lucretius finally commited suicide at the age of 44.

Embellished versions of Jerome’s story are then found in a number of later sources. One of the most notable is the so-called {{#lemma: ''Vita Borgiana'' | [[Vita Borgiana | ''Vita Borgiana'']]}}, a life of Lucretius compiled in the early modern period by Girolamo Borgia and discovered in the British Library in the late nineteenth century. Once thought to be based on a lost ancient biography of the poet, this is now more commonly recognised as a text invented or collated from later sources (Fabbri 1984; Holford-Strevens 2002: 2). The life adds a number of details to Jerome’s account, including the claim that the poet’s mother was sterile for a long time before she conceived him (''matre natus diutius sterili'', a phenomenon Lucretius himself describes in ''De rerum natura'' 12.4.1251-3) and that the love-philtre was administered by a ‘wicked woman’ (''femina improba''), while Cicero – a paradigm of classical decorum – is not merely said to edit the poem after his death, but becomes the poet’s intimate acquaintance and literary advisor, who takes particular exception to Lucretius’ lack of restraint in the use of metaphor (cf. Solaro 2000 for discussion and a full transcription).

Apart from the Borgia life, the story of the love potion and madness captured the imaginations of later readers and underwent a number of metamorphoses. At some point in the tradition ─ probably originating from a reading of a remark about a woman called ‘Lucilia’ who gave her husband ‘the cup of madness instead of the cup of love’ found in Walter Map’s ''On Courtly Fripperies'' (twelfth century) ─ the woman, identified as Lucretius’ wife or girlfriend, also acquires the name Lucilia (Holford-Strevens 2002: 5; Reeve 2007: 208). In a further variation mentioned briefly by the fifteenth-century humanist Pomponius Laetus, the boy Asterion, named ‘for his fairness and remarkable beauty’ after the word for star (Latin ''astrum''; Greek ἀστήρ), is identified as the cause of the poet’s downfall (Solaro 1993: 60-3). Later, Lucilia, who {{#lemma: ‘found/ Her master cold’ | [[Alfred Lord Tennyson, ‘Lucretius’ |Tennyson, ‘Lucretius’ 1-2]]}} and acquired the potion that caused the poet’s madness, inspired one of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s most fraught and fascinating engagements with the classical tradition in the poem {{#lemma: ‘Lucretius’ | [[Alfred Lord Tennyson, ‘Lucretius’ | Tennyson, ‘Lucretius’]]}} (1868) on the last days of poet’s life (Johnson 2000; Priestman 2007). Lucretius’ imaginary biography has also been the topic of one of the ''Vies imaginaires'' (1896) by the French symbolist author Marcel Schwob and ''Nei pleniluni sereni: Autobiografia immaginaria di Tito Lucrezio Caro'' (1995) by the Italian author and classical scholar Luca Canali.

Despite the staying power of Jerome’s account, modern critics recognise its ostensible ‘facts’ as fiction. In an attempt to debunk the somewhat undignified story of the love potion by finding its true ‘origin’, scholars often explain the fictive content of the life as originating in confusion: e.g., that Jerome or his source confused Lucretius with a certain ‘Lucullus’, who was driven mad by drugs given to him by his love-sick freedman (Wilkinson 1949). In the end, however, the origin of the legend remains lost to us. What matters, and what has mattered to generations of readers, is the fact that the biography functions substantially as a reading of Lucretius’ poem. De rerum natura, a poem on the philosophy of Epicurus contains a long section on love and sex (4.1030-1287) which has been seen both as ‘the finest description of sexual intercourse ever written’ (by W. B. Yeats) and as an expression of the tragedy of ‘the incomplete fruitions of souls pent up within their frames of flesh’ (according to the Victorian essayist J. A. Symonds: Gillespie and Hardie 2007: 12). Reflecting the Epicurean attitude that condemns passionate desire as intrinsically destructive, Lucretius provides a powerful description of the intense frustrations and hallucinatory passion of the lover, as ‘madness grows day by day’ (''in ... dies gliscit furor''), ''DRN'' 4.1069. More broadly, it is possible to read in the poem a pervading set of contradictions that have been seen to reflect the presence of a mind at war with itself, or even, for some, a sense of ‘morbid depression’ (Bailey 1947: 1.12). The result has been a series of mutually reinforcing biographical fictions and critical readings: the legend of mad Lucretius reflects latent elements in his poem; the biography, in turn, has been read back into the work, deliberately emphasising the ‘anti-Lucretius in Lucretius’ (cf. Johnson 2000).

Another reason why Jerome’s story has been particularly hard to shake off is the perceived close link between madness and creativity. Even in antiquity, the poet Statius could write of the combination of lofty inspiration and learned care that underwrites De rerum natura in his picture of ‘the sublime frenzy of learned Lucretius’, ''docti furor arduus Lucreti'' (''Silvae'' 2.7.76), a literal reading of which (''furor'' carries the sense of frenzied madness as well as frenzied inspiration) might have bolstered Jerome’s story (Bailey 1947: 8). It is easy to see in the poem’s tone, style and ambition the kind of ‘flight of the mind’ that Lucretius ascribed to his master Epicurus (1.62-79). As Thomas Creech put it in the early modern period, in an edition illustrated by the image of the poet bathed in the light of celestial inspiration, it was, or so later readers have liked to think, through his madness that Lucretius ‘in a poetical rapture ... could fly with Epicurus beyond the limits of this world’.

[[File:Lucretius.jpg|thumb|center|360px|link=|Detail from the title-page to Thomas Creech, ''Of the Nature of Things'' (2<sup>nd</sup> and 3<sup>rd</sup> editions), 1682-3.]]

----

== Bibliography ==

<div id="bibliography">
* Bailey, C. (ed.) 1947. ''Titi Lucreti Cari de rerum natura libri sex.'' 3 vols. Oxford.
* Canfora, L. 1993. ''Vita di Lucrezio.'' Palermo.
* Fabbri, R. 1984. ‘La “Vita Borgiana” di Lucrezio nel quadro delle biografie unmanistiche.’ ''Lettere Italiane'' 36: 348-66.
* Gillespie, S. and Hardie, P. R. (eds.) 2007. ''The Cambridge Companion to Lucretius.'' Cambridge.
* Holford-Strevens, L. 2002. ‘''Horror vacui'' in Lucretian Biography.’ ''Leeds International Classical Studies'' 1.1: 1-23.
* Johnson, W. R. 2000. ''Lucretius and the Modern World.'' London.
* Priestman, M. 2007. ‘Lucretius in Romantic and Victorian Britain.’ In S. Gillespie and P. R. Hardie (eds.): 289-305.
* Reeve, M. 2007. ‘Lucretius in the Middle Ages and Early Renaissance: Transmission and Scholarship’. In S. Gillespie and P. R. Hardie (eds.): 205-213.
* Solaro, G. 1993. ''Pomponio Leto, ‘Lucrezio’.'' Palermo.
** 2000. ''Lucrezio: Biografie umanistiche.'' Bari.
* Wilkinson, L. P. 1949. ‘Lucretius and the love-philtre.’ ''CR'' 63: 47–8.
* Ziegler, K. 1936. ‘Der Tod des Lucretius.’ ''Hermes'' 71: 421─40.

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</div>
<div id="notes"></div>

[[Category:Guides by Nora Goldschmidt]]

Lucretius: A Guide to Selected Sources

2015-11-15T15:33:54Z

NickFreer: /* Bibliography */

{{GuideHighlightBox}}
'''''Nora Goldschmidt'''''
{{#howtoquote:}}
<div id="guide">{{GuideTextsBy|Nora Goldschmidt}}
Titus Lucretius Carus (‘Lucretius’) was a Roman poet of the first century BCE, best known as the author of the didactic poem ''De rerum natura'' (''On the Nature of the Universe''). The oldest account we have of his life is a short report found in {{#lemma: Jerome’s version of the ''Chronicle of Eusebius'' | [[Jerome, Chronica ad Ol. 171.3 (94 BC) | Jer. ''Chron.'' ad Ol. 171.3 (94 BC)]]}} under the year 94 BC. According to Jerome, the poet went mad after drinking a love potion; in the lucid intervals between periods of insanity, he wrote several books, which were later edited by his famous contemporary, the orator Cicero. Lucretius finally commited suicide at the age of 44.

Embellished versions of Jerome’s story are then found in a number of later sources. One of the most notable is the so-called {{#lemma: ''Vita Borgiana'' | [[Vita Borgiana | ''Vita Borgiana'']]}}, a life of Lucretius compiled in the early modern period by Girolamo Borgia and discovered in the British Library in the late nineteenth century. Once thought to be based on a lost ancient biography of the poet, this is now more commonly recognised as a text invented or collated from later sources (Fabbri 1984; Holford-Strevens 2002: 2). The life adds a number of details to Jerome’s account, including the claim that the poet’s mother was sterile for a long time before she conceived him (''matre natus diutius sterili'', a phenomenon Lucretius himself describes in ''De rerum natura'' 12.4.1251-3) and that the love-philtre was administered by a ‘wicked woman’ (''femina improba''), while Cicero – a paradigm of classical decorum – is not merely said to edit the poem after his death, but becomes the poet’s intimate acquaintance and literary advisor, who takes particular exception to Lucretius’ lack of restraint in the use of metaphor (cf. Solaro 2000 for discussion and a full transcription).

Apart from the Borgia life, the story of the love potion and madness captured the imaginations of later readers and underwent a number of metamorphoses. At some point in the tradition ─ probably originating from a reading of a remark about a woman called ‘Lucilia’ who gave her husband ‘the cup of madness instead of the cup of love’ found in Walter Map’s ''On Courtly Fripperies'' (twelfth century) ─ the woman, identified as Lucretius’ wife or girlfriend, also acquires the name Lucilia (Holford-Strevens 2002: 5; Reeve 2007: 208). In a further variation mentioned briefly by the fifteenth-century humanist Pomponius Laetus, the boy Asterion, named ‘for his fairness and remarkable beauty’ after the word for star (Latin ''astrum''; Greek ἀστήρ), is identified as the cause of the poet’s downfall (Solaro 1993: 60-3). Later, Lucilia, who {{#lemma: ‘found/ Her master cold’ | [[Alfred Lord Tennyson, ‘Lucretius’ |Tennyson, ‘Lucretius’ 1-2]]}} and acquired the potion that caused the poet’s madness, inspired one of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s most fraught and fascinating engagements with the classical tradition in the poem {{#lemma: ‘Lucretius’ | [[Alfred Lord Tennyson, ‘Lucretius’ | Tennyson, ‘Lucretius’]]}} (1868) on the last days of poet’s life (Johnson 2000; Priestman 2007). Lucretius’ imaginary biography has also been the topic of one of the ''Vies imaginaires'' (1896) by the French symbolist author Marcel Schwob and ''Nei pleniluni sereni: Autobiografia immaginaria di Tito Lucrezio Caro'' (1995) by the Italian author and classical scholar Luca Canali.

Despite the staying power of Jerome’s account, modern critics recognise its ostensible ‘facts’ as fiction. In an attempt to debunk the somewhat undignified story of the love potion by finding its true ‘origin’, scholars often explain the fictive content of the life as originating in confusion: e.g., that Jerome or his source confused Lucretius with a certain ‘Lucullus’, who was driven mad by drugs given to him by his love-sick freedman (Wilkinson 1949). In the end, however, the origin of the legend remains lost to us. What matters, and what has mattered to generations of readers, is the fact that the biography functions substantially as a reading of Lucretius’ poem. De rerum natura, a poem on the philosophy of Epicurus contains a long section on love and sex (4.1030-1287) which has been seen both as ‘the finest description of sexual intercourse ever written’ (by W. B. Yeats) and as an expression of the tragedy of ‘the incomplete fruitions of souls pent up within their frames of flesh’ (according to the Victorian essayist J. A. Symonds: Gillespie and Hardie 2007: 12). Reflecting the Epicurean attitude that condemns passionate desire as intrinsically destructive, Lucretius provides a powerful description of the intense frustrations and hallucinatory passion of the lover, as ‘madness grows day by day’ (''in ... dies gliscit furor''), ''DRN'' 4.1069. More broadly, it is possible to read in the poem a pervading set of contradictions that have been seen to reflect the presence of a mind at war with itself, or even, for some, a sense of ‘morbid depression’ (Bailey 1947: 1.12). The result has been a series of mutually reinforcing biographical fictions and critical readings: the legend of mad Lucretius reflects latent elements in his poem; the biography, in turn, has been read back into the work, deliberately emphasising the ‘anti-Lucretius in Lucretius’ (cf. Johnson 2000).

Another reason why Jerome’s story has been particularly hard to shake off is the perceived close link between madness and creativity. Even in antiquity, the poet Statius could write of the combination of lofty inspiration and learned care that underwrites De rerum natura in his picture of ‘the sublime frenzy of learned Lucretius’, ''docti furor arduus Lucreti'' (''Silvae'' 2.7.76), a literal reading of which (''furor'' carries the sense of frenzied madness as well as frenzied inspiration) might have bolstered Jerome’s story (Bailey 1947: 8). It is easy to see in the poem’s tone, style and ambition the kind of ‘flight of the mind’ that Lucretius ascribed to his master Epicurus (1.62-79). As Thomas Creech put it in the early modern period, in an edition illustrated by the image of the poet bathed in the light of celestial inspiration, it was, or so later readers have liked to think, through his madness that Lucretius ‘in a poetical rapture ... could fly with Epicurus beyond the limits of this world’.

[[File:Lucretius.jpg|thumb|center|360px|link=|Detail from the title-page to Thomas Creech, ''Of the Nature of Things'' (2<sup>nd</sup> and 3<sup>rd</sup> editions), 1682-3.]]

----

== Bibliography ==

<div id="bibliography">
* Bailey, C. (ed.) 1947. ''Titi Lucreti Cari de rerum natura libri sex.'' 3 vols. Oxford.
* Canfora, L. 1993. ''Vita di Lucrezio.'' Palermo.
* Fabbri, R. 1984. ‘La “Vita Borgiana” di Lucrezio nel quadro delle biografie unmanistiche.’ ''Lettere Italiane'' 36: 348-66.
* Gillespie, S. and Hardie, P. R. (eds.) 2007. ''The Cambridge Companion to Lucretius.'' Cambridge.
* Holford-Strevens, L. 2002. ‘''Horror vacui'' in Lucretian Biography.’ ''Leeds International Classical Studies'' 1.1: 1-23.
* Johnson, W. R. 2000. ''Lucretius and the Modern World.'' London.
* Priestman, M. 2007. ‘Lucretius in Romantic and Victorian Britain.’ In S. Gillespie and P. R. Hardie (eds.): 289-305.
* Reeve, M. 2007 . ‘Lucretius in the Middle Ages and Early Renaissance: Transmission and Scholarship’. In S. Gillespie and P. R. Hardie (eds.): 205-213.
* Solaro, G. 1993. ''Pomponio Leto, ‘Lucrezio’.'' Palermo.
** 2000. ''Lucrezio: Biografie umanistiche.'' Bari.
* Wilkinson, L. P. 1949. ‘Lucretius and the love-philtre.’ ''CR'' 63: 47–8.
* Ziegler, K. 1936. ‘Der Tod des Lucretius.’ ''Hermes'' 71: 421─40.

</div>
</div>
<div id="notes"></div>

[[Category:Guides by Nora Goldschmidt]]

Lucan: A Guide to Selected Sources

2015-11-15T15:33:00Z

NickFreer: /* Bibliography */

{{GuideHighlightBox}}
'''''Nora Goldschmidt'''''
{{#howtoquote:}}
<div id="guide">{{GuideTextsBy|Nora Goldschmidt}}
Marcus Annaeus Lucanus (‘Lucan’, AD 39-65) was a Roman poet of the Neronian period, famously compelled to commit suicide at the age of 25 after becoming involved in a conspiracy to overthrow the emperor Nero. He is best known for his epic ''De bello ciuili'' (often called ''Pharsalia''), a poem in ten books on the civil war between Pompey and Julius Caesar.

Even as a toddler, Lucan inspired a short character sketch from his uncle, the philosopher and playwright {{#lemma: Seneca | [[Seneca, De consolatione ad Heluiam matrem, 18.4-5 | Sen. ''Helv.'' 18.4-5]]}} (Fantham 2011: 3). The first extended biographical narrative, however, was written shortly after Lucan’s death by the poet Statius (Newlands 2011b). In a posthumous poem composed for the anniversary of Lucan’s birthday and addressed to his widow, Polla, {{#lemma: Statius | [[Statius, Silvae 2.7 | Stat. ''Silv.'' 2.7]]}} embeds a life of Lucan narrated in the voice of the muse Calliope (lines 36−106). Part of Statius’ purpose is to rehabilitate Lucan after the poet’s disgrace (Newlands 2011a and 2011b): in doing so he remains largely silent on Lucan’s political life, and instead writes a ''poetic'' biography. Calliope describes how the infant poet, favoured by her from birth, will go on to produce a catalogue of works, despite ‘ungrateful Nero’ (''ingratus Nero''), all at a remarkably young age. For Statius, Lucan, despite his short life, reached full maturity as a poet, producing an epic to rival Virgil’s: the ''Aeneid'' itself will venerate Lucan as he sings to the Romans, ''ipsa te Latinis/Aeneis uenerabitur canentem'' (''Silvae'' 2.7.79−80: Quint 1993: 131−4; Newlands 2011b). Another of Lucan’s contemporaries, {{#lemma: Martial | [[Martial 7.21-3 | Mart. 7.21-3]]}}, wrote a cycle of epigrams, likewise for the anniversary of Lucan’s birthday and likewise concerned to rehabilitate the poet, in which he calls Lucan Apollo’s poet (7.22.1) and criticises ‘cruel Nero’ (''Nero crudelis'') (7.21.3) for his unjust death. Snippets of Lucan’s life and death are found, too, in passing remarks by the historian {{#lemma: Tacitus | [[Tacitus Annals 15.49; 56.3-4; 58.1; 70.1; 71 | Tac. ''Ann.'' 15.49; 56.3-4; 58.1; 70.1; 71]]}} in his account of the conspiracy against Nero and its aftermath. According to Tacitus, when he was arrested, Lucan gave up his own mother even though she had nothing to do with the plot (15.56; a claim repeated in Suetonius’ ''Life of Lucan'' and the Codex Vossianus), while his death was fit for a poet: as the blood left his body, Lucan, still in control of his mind, quoted with his last breath from his own epic on the death of a wounded soldier (15.70).

Apart from these piecemeal poetic lives, two principal ancient prose biographies of Lucan survive. The first is by {{#lemma: Suetonius | [[Suetonius, Vita Lucani | Suet. ''Vita Luc.'']]}}, composed roughly fifty years after Lucan’s death, and the second by the otherwise unknown {{#lemma: ‘Vacca’ | [[Vita Vaccae | ''Vita Vaccae'']]}}, probably written in or after the fifth century CE (Fantham 2011: 4). A third anonymous life found in the {{#lemma: second Codex Vossianus | [[Codex Vossianus II | Codex Vossianus II]]}} seems to depend to a large extent on Suetonius (Asso 2010: 2). All share a central concern with Lucan’s precocious talent and consequent life-long rivalry with Nero ― the emperor who traditionally had such an inflated sense of himself as an artist that he famously ‘fiddled while Rome burned’, and with his dying breath lamented, ‘What an artist dies in me!’, ''qualis artifex pereo'' (Suetonius, ''Life of Nero'' 49). Suetonius is the more critical of the two, painting a picture of a rash poet with a diva’s ego to match Nero’s own. In his account, after Nero called an unnecessary meeting simply in order to pour cold water over a performance of Lucan’s poetry, the young poet, incensed, engaged in a sustained programme of self-sabotage. Not least of his actions was farting loudly in the public toilets while reciting one of Nero’s own verses (cf. Cowan 2011): ''sub terris tonuisse putes'', ‘you would think thunder had broken out under the earth’.

The later and more eulogistic Life of Lucan by Vacca is much closer to Statius and Martial in constructing Lucan as a poet born. This life, originally composed as an introduction to the epic, tells the remarkable anecdote of an omen in which a swarm of bees spontaneously hovered around the infant poet’s cradle and settled on his lips, either in order to drink in the ‘sweet breath’ (''spiritum ... dulcem'') of poetry already emanating from the infant Lucan’s mouth, or else as a prophecy of the great verbal power to come. Similar anecdotes involving bees and young poets are also attested in the Greek biographical tradition. According to Vacca, following Tacitus and Cassius Dio (62.29), Nero explicitly banned Lucan from writing poetry, and it was this which drove him to join the ill-fated conspiracy. In the end, it was Lucan’s own prodigious talent, piquing the emperor’s vanity, that brought about his death.

It may be that Lucan’s death was in fact an execution and the story of his voluntary suicide, explicit only in Vacca, is an extrapolation from his epic: Suetonius has Lucan offer his wrists to be slit by a physician (''bracchia ad secandas uenas praebuit medico'') and Tacitus skirts the issue (Tucker 1987; Masters 1992: 216 n.1). ''De bello ciuili'' is in many ways a poem ''about'' suicide, in which civil war is seen as a kind of national self-immolation that invades every level of Lucan’s universe (cf. ''De bello ciuili'' 1.2−3; Masters 1992: 29, 41-2; Bartsch 1997: 24−5). Whatever the truth of the circumstances of his death, with the inevitability of hindsight, Lucan himself ― the young genius who produced the true Roman epic to rival Virgil’s at an age when Virgil had not even written his juvenilia (Statius ''Silvae'' 2.7.73-4; Suetonius ''Life of Lucan''; Quint 1993: 132) ― can be seen to have inscribed the myth of his own death into his poem.

----

== Bibliography ==

<div id="bibliography">
* Asso, P. 2010. ''A Commentary on Lucan, De bello civili IV.'' Berlin.
** (ed.) 2011. ''Brill’s Companion to Lucan.'' Leiden.
* Bartsch, S. 1997. ''Ideology in Cold Blood: A Reading of Lucan’s Civil War.'' Cambridge, Mass.
* Cowan, R. 2011. ‘Lucan’s Thunder-box: Scatology, Epic and Satire in Suetonius’ ''Vita Lucani.''’ ''HSCP'' 106: 301-313.
* Fantham, E. 2011. ‘A Controversial Life.’ In P. Asso (ed.): 3−20.
* Masters, J. 1992. ''Poetry and Civil War in Lucan’s Bellum Ciuile.'' Cambridge.
* Newlands, C. E. (ed.). 2011a. ''Statius, Silvae Book II.'' Cambridge.
** 2011b. ‘The First Biography of Lucan: Statius’ ''Silvae'' 2.7.’ In P. Asso (ed.): 435−51.
* Quint, D. 1993. ''Epic and Empire.'' Princeton.
* Tucker, R. A. 1987. ‘Tacitus and the Death of Lucan.’ ''Latomus'' 46: 330−7.
</div>
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<div id="notes"></div>

[[Category:Guides by Nora Goldschmidt]]

Catullus: A Guide to Selected Sources

2015-11-15T15:29:39Z

NickFreer: /* Bibliography */

{{GuideHighlightBox}}
{{Author|Jane Burkowski}}
{{#howtoquote:}}
<div id="guide">
Gaius Valerius Catullus (‘Catullus’) was a Roman poet of the first century BC. His works have come down to us in a single collection of around a hundred poems, which has probably been drawn together from at least three separate books (Minyard 1988). The most striking feature of this collection is the variety of verse forms, subject matter, and tones represented: Catullus’ poems range from pointed two-line epigrams and obscene invective, through emotionally intense lyric soliloquies, to Alexandrian-style ''epyllia'' (‘miniature epics’) running to hundreds of lines. Catullus is the only largely extant representative of an avant-garde school of poetry known as the {{#lemma: ‘neoterics’ (‘poets in the new style’) | [[Cicero, Letter to Atticus 7.2.1|Cic. ''Att.'' 7.2.1]]}}. They rejected bombastic diction and epic subjects in favour of a Hellenistic-inspired appreciation of well-turned phrases, subjective emotion, and learned allusions (Quinn 1959; Lyne 1978).

The neoterics, Catullus foremost among them, had a profound influence on later literature. The nature of Catullus’ influence has varied widely from period to period, as each generation has seen its own tastes reflected in a different aspect of his multifarious corpus. These shifting perspectives on Catullus’ works have in turn influenced conceptions of his life and character. Readers and critics, ancient and modern, have tended to conflate Catullus the first-person poetic speaker with Catullus the real-life poet, reconstructing the incidents of his life and his personality around the content and tone of his poems. Given that Catullus’ own statement, {{#lemma: in an aggressive response to critics of his amatory poems| [[Catullus, Poem 16|Catull. ''Carm.'' 16]]}}, that ‘it is right for an inspired poet to be chaste, but his verses need not be so’ has been among the most imitated passages of his corpus (Winter 1973: 258-9; cf. Ovid, ''Tristia'' 2.353-4, Pliny, ''Letter'' 4.14, Apuleius, ''Apology'' 11.3), it is ironic that the tendency towards ‘biographical’ interpretation has been even stronger in his case than in that of other ancient poets. It is, however, not surprising: such interpretation is practically encouraged by the ostensibly ‘sincere’ and personal nature of much of his poetry, combined with the fact that few details of his life have come down to us from other sources.

No ancient biography of Catullus survives. Jerome provides only birth and death dates, {{#lemma: 87-58 BC | [[Jerome, Chronicle, Olympiad 173.2 (87BC)|Jer. ''Chron. ad Ol.'' 173.2]] [[Jerome, Chronicle, Olympiad 180.3 (58 BC)|Jer. ''Chron. ad Ol.'' 180.3]]}}, which must be inaccurate, as Catullus makes reference to events dateable to after 58 BC. Beyond this, we have only isolated anecdotes, such as {{#lemma: Suetonius’ claim | [[Suetonius, Life of the Deified Julius 73|Suet. ''Iul.'' 73]]}} that Julius Caesar once took umbrage at political invective aimed at him by Catullus, and had to be placated by the poet’s father. Most other biographical details have evidently been extrapolated from Catullus’ works; this may include even {{#lemma: allusions to Verona as his birthplace | [[Ovid, Amores 3.15.7|Ov. ''Am.'' 3.15.7]] [[Martial, Epigram 1.61.1|Mart. ''Ep.'' 1.61.1]] [[Martial, Epigram 14.100|Mart. ''Ep.'' 14.100]] [[Martial, Epigram 14.152|Mart. ''Ep.'' 14.152]] [[Martial, Epigram 14.195|Mart. ''Ep.'' 14.195]]}}, since {{#lemma: Catullus refers to it as such himself | [[Catullus, Poem 35.1-3|Catull. ''Carm.'' 35.1-3]] [[Catullus, Poem 67.34|Catull. ''Carm.'' 67.34]] [[Catullus, Poem 68.27-8|Catull. ''Carm.'' 68.27-8]]}}. The most tantalising scrap of information, though, which has fuelled the most speculation, is {{#lemma: Apuleius’ assertion | [[Apuleius, Apology 10|Apul. ''Apol.'' 10]]}} that the real woman behind Lesbia, the fictionalised mistress to whom Catullus addresses most of his love poems, was named Clodia. This irresistibly suggests Clodia Metelli, the sister of Clodius Pulcer and the object of Cicero’s rhetoric in his speech ''In Defence of Marcus Caelius'', since his unflattering picture of Clodia chimes with Catullus’ caricatures of Lesbia’s worst excesses. The association between the two is strengthened by an apparent pun on Clodius’ name in {{#lemma: one of Catullus’ poems | [[Catullus, Poem 79|Catull. ''Carm.'' 79]]}}, which begins ''Lesbius est pulcer'' (‘Lesbius is a pretty-boy’ / ‘Lesbius is Pulcer’) and hints at incest between Lesbia and her brother (cf. similar implications at Cicero, ''In Defence of Marcus Caelius'' 13). The identification of Lesbia with Clodia Metelli has been questioned by some scholars (Wiseman 1974, Hillard 1981; ''contra'', see Skinner 2011: 131-44), and remains a matter for debate. It has, however, been taken as a given throughout most of history, so that Cicero’s devastating portrait of Clodia and Catullus’ account of his relationship with Lesbia have been knit together into a single story. Thornton Wilder’s depiction in his novel ''The Ides of March'' of a real-life relationship between Catullus and Clodia as the model for his relationship with Lesbia is one prominent fictionalised example.

Only a fraction of Catullus’ poems treat his relationship with Lesbia, but these have had disproportionate weight in later views of his life and works, in part because they represent one of his most influential poetic choices. {{#lemma: Propertius and Ovid each mention Catullus by name | [[Propertius, Elegy 2.25.3-4|Prop. ''El.'' 2.25.3-4]] [[Propertius, Elegy 2.34.87-8|Prop. ''El.'' 2.34.87-8]] [[Ovid, Tristia 2.427-30|Ov. ''Tr.'' 2.427-30]]}}, citing his love poetry as an important precedent for theirs; his innovative approach, of charting the ups and downs of his speaker’s difficult relationship with and inescapable love for one mistress, laid the foundation for love elegy as a genre, and thus for much Western love poetry since (Lyne 1978: 176-80; DeMaria and Brown 2007: 329-30). This influence is reflected in the title of Tom Stoppard’s play ''The Invention of Love'', which refers in part to Catullus’ ‘invention’ of the love poem as we know it, and thus of the modern conception of love itself.

Catullus’ formative role in the development of love poetry, though, was for centuries destined to be an indirect one, carried forward only via the later poets he had influenced. Catullus’ own works had waned in popularity by the end of the second century AD, and soon disappeared almost without trace. Martial, a prolific epigrammatist of the first century AD, in citing Catullus as a model, had depicted him as a writer of cleverly crafted epigrams, rather than as a subjective love poet; it is possible that this view, which misrepresented the scope of his works, contributed to their decline (Gaisser 1993: 7-15; Swann 1994: 32-81; Lorenz 2007). Catullus’ corpus was not rediscovered until the late fourteenth century; unlike Virgil, Horace, or Ovid, then, whose presence loomed large in medieval literature, Catullus ‘landed in the Renaissance virtually out of nowhere . . . with no baggage of late antique or medieval imitation, interpretation, or scholarship’ (Gaisser 2007: 441). Due to the popularity of epigram as a genre in the Italian Renaissance, and to the prominence of Martial as the acknowledged master of that genre, it was his image of Catullus as a wry epigrammatist that was to dominate for the first two hundred years after the rediscovery of his works (Gaisser 1993, 2007; Swann 1994).

But, as literary fashions changed, so did the focus of each era’s appreciation of Catullus. As subjective love poetry became fashionable again, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, that aspect of Catullus’ works came to the fore, and he began to be translated and imitated in that vein. This resurgence of Catullus as love poet formed the basis for the image of him that crystallised in the nineteenth century, and that has dominated literary and scholarly conceptions of him ever since. Poets of the Romantic period and, later, of the Modernist movement, identified with Catullus’ combination of self-conscious artistry with intense and ‘genuine’ feeling, and used him as a symbol of passion, fierce individuality, and emotional truth. Coleridge, Tennyson, Ezra Pound, and others have translated or adapted his works and acknowledged his influence (Arkins 2007). Swinburne, for example, in his ''To Catullus'', feels such kinship with the ancient poet that he hails and laments him as a ‘brother’, echoing Catullus’ own epitaph for his dead brother (101). W. B. Yeats, in his ''The Scholars'', reflects sarcastically on the contrast between the Classical scholars who ‘shuffle’ and ‘cough in ink’, and ‘their Catullus’, one of the ‘young men, tossing on their beds’ whose feverish love poems they annotate. Perhaps most strikingly, Louis MacNeice, in his ''Epitaph for Liberal Poets'', depicts Catullus as the type of the free-thinker quashed by convention, lamenting that

<blockquote>
The Individual has died before; Catullus<br />
Went down young, gave place to those who were born old<br />
And more adaptable and were not even jealous<br />
Of his wild life and lyrics.
</blockquote>

In short, each generation of scholars and artists has seen something of itself in Catullus, or at least in the picture of himself that he presents in and through his works. Given the endlessly multifaceted nature of that picture, it is likely that the currently dominant picture will not remain dominant forever, and that Catullus will continue to produce new and different reflections for as long as his works are read and reinterpreted by new audiences.

----

== Bibliography ==

<div id="bibliography">
*Arkins, B. 2007. ‘The Modern Reception of Catullus.’ In M. B. Skinner (ed.): 461-78.
*DeMaria, R. Jr. and Brown, R. D. (eds.) 2007. ''Classical Literature and Its Reception''. Oxford.
*Gaisser, J. H. 1993. ''Catullus and his Renaissance Readers''. Oxford.
** 2007. ‘Catullus in the Renaissance.’ In M. B. Skinner (ed.): 439-60.
*Hillard, T. W. 1981. ‘''In triclinio Coam, in cubiculo Nolam'': Lesbia and the Other Clodia.’ ''LCM'' 6.6: 149-54.
*Lorenz, S. 2007. ‘Catullus and Martial.’ In M. B. Skinner (ed.): 418-38.
*Lyne, R. O. A. M. 1978. ‘The Neoteric Poets.’ ''CQ'' 28.1: 167-87.
*Minyard, J. D. 1988. ‘The Source of the ''Catulli Veronensis Liber''.’ ''CW'' 81.5: 343-53.
*Quinn, K. 1959. ''The Catullan Revolution''. Melbourne.
*Skinner, M. B. (ed.) 2007. ''A Companion to Catullus''. Oxford.
** 2011. ''Clodia Metelli: The Tribune’s Sister''. Oxford.
*Swann, B. W. 1994. ''Martial’s Catullus: The Reception of an Epigrammatic Rival''. Hildesheim.
*Winter, T. N. 1973. ‘Catullus Purified: A Brief History of Carmen 16.’ ''Arethusa'' 6: 257-65.
*Wiseman, T. P. 1974. ''Cinna the Poet and Other Roman Essays''. London.
</div>
</div>
<div id="notes"></div>

[[Category:Guides by Jane Burkowski]]

Catullus: A Guide to Selected Sources

2015-11-15T15:29:20Z

NickFreer: /* Bibliography */

{{GuideHighlightBox}}
{{Author|Jane Burkowski}}
{{#howtoquote:}}
<div id="guide">
Gaius Valerius Catullus (‘Catullus’) was a Roman poet of the first century BC. His works have come down to us in a single collection of around a hundred poems, which has probably been drawn together from at least three separate books (Minyard 1988). The most striking feature of this collection is the variety of verse forms, subject matter, and tones represented: Catullus’ poems range from pointed two-line epigrams and obscene invective, through emotionally intense lyric soliloquies, to Alexandrian-style ''epyllia'' (‘miniature epics’) running to hundreds of lines. Catullus is the only largely extant representative of an avant-garde school of poetry known as the {{#lemma: ‘neoterics’ (‘poets in the new style’) | [[Cicero, Letter to Atticus 7.2.1|Cic. ''Att.'' 7.2.1]]}}. They rejected bombastic diction and epic subjects in favour of a Hellenistic-inspired appreciation of well-turned phrases, subjective emotion, and learned allusions (Quinn 1959; Lyne 1978).

The neoterics, Catullus foremost among them, had a profound influence on later literature. The nature of Catullus’ influence has varied widely from period to period, as each generation has seen its own tastes reflected in a different aspect of his multifarious corpus. These shifting perspectives on Catullus’ works have in turn influenced conceptions of his life and character. Readers and critics, ancient and modern, have tended to conflate Catullus the first-person poetic speaker with Catullus the real-life poet, reconstructing the incidents of his life and his personality around the content and tone of his poems. Given that Catullus’ own statement, {{#lemma: in an aggressive response to critics of his amatory poems| [[Catullus, Poem 16|Catull. ''Carm.'' 16]]}}, that ‘it is right for an inspired poet to be chaste, but his verses need not be so’ has been among the most imitated passages of his corpus (Winter 1973: 258-9; cf. Ovid, ''Tristia'' 2.353-4, Pliny, ''Letter'' 4.14, Apuleius, ''Apology'' 11.3), it is ironic that the tendency towards ‘biographical’ interpretation has been even stronger in his case than in that of other ancient poets. It is, however, not surprising: such interpretation is practically encouraged by the ostensibly ‘sincere’ and personal nature of much of his poetry, combined with the fact that few details of his life have come down to us from other sources.

No ancient biography of Catullus survives. Jerome provides only birth and death dates, {{#lemma: 87-58 BC | [[Jerome, Chronicle, Olympiad 173.2 (87BC)|Jer. ''Chron. ad Ol.'' 173.2]] [[Jerome, Chronicle, Olympiad 180.3 (58 BC)|Jer. ''Chron. ad Ol.'' 180.3]]}}, which must be inaccurate, as Catullus makes reference to events dateable to after 58 BC. Beyond this, we have only isolated anecdotes, such as {{#lemma: Suetonius’ claim | [[Suetonius, Life of the Deified Julius 73|Suet. ''Iul.'' 73]]}} that Julius Caesar once took umbrage at political invective aimed at him by Catullus, and had to be placated by the poet’s father. Most other biographical details have evidently been extrapolated from Catullus’ works; this may include even {{#lemma: allusions to Verona as his birthplace | [[Ovid, Amores 3.15.7|Ov. ''Am.'' 3.15.7]] [[Martial, Epigram 1.61.1|Mart. ''Ep.'' 1.61.1]] [[Martial, Epigram 14.100|Mart. ''Ep.'' 14.100]] [[Martial, Epigram 14.152|Mart. ''Ep.'' 14.152]] [[Martial, Epigram 14.195|Mart. ''Ep.'' 14.195]]}}, since {{#lemma: Catullus refers to it as such himself | [[Catullus, Poem 35.1-3|Catull. ''Carm.'' 35.1-3]] [[Catullus, Poem 67.34|Catull. ''Carm.'' 67.34]] [[Catullus, Poem 68.27-8|Catull. ''Carm.'' 68.27-8]]}}. The most tantalising scrap of information, though, which has fuelled the most speculation, is {{#lemma: Apuleius’ assertion | [[Apuleius, Apology 10|Apul. ''Apol.'' 10]]}} that the real woman behind Lesbia, the fictionalised mistress to whom Catullus addresses most of his love poems, was named Clodia. This irresistibly suggests Clodia Metelli, the sister of Clodius Pulcer and the object of Cicero’s rhetoric in his speech ''In Defence of Marcus Caelius'', since his unflattering picture of Clodia chimes with Catullus’ caricatures of Lesbia’s worst excesses. The association between the two is strengthened by an apparent pun on Clodius’ name in {{#lemma: one of Catullus’ poems | [[Catullus, Poem 79|Catull. ''Carm.'' 79]]}}, which begins ''Lesbius est pulcer'' (‘Lesbius is a pretty-boy’ / ‘Lesbius is Pulcer’) and hints at incest between Lesbia and her brother (cf. similar implications at Cicero, ''In Defence of Marcus Caelius'' 13). The identification of Lesbia with Clodia Metelli has been questioned by some scholars (Wiseman 1974, Hillard 1981; ''contra'', see Skinner 2011: 131-44), and remains a matter for debate. It has, however, been taken as a given throughout most of history, so that Cicero’s devastating portrait of Clodia and Catullus’ account of his relationship with Lesbia have been knit together into a single story. Thornton Wilder’s depiction in his novel ''The Ides of March'' of a real-life relationship between Catullus and Clodia as the model for his relationship with Lesbia is one prominent fictionalised example.

Only a fraction of Catullus’ poems treat his relationship with Lesbia, but these have had disproportionate weight in later views of his life and works, in part because they represent one of his most influential poetic choices. {{#lemma: Propertius and Ovid each mention Catullus by name | [[Propertius, Elegy 2.25.3-4|Prop. ''El.'' 2.25.3-4]] [[Propertius, Elegy 2.34.87-8|Prop. ''El.'' 2.34.87-8]] [[Ovid, Tristia 2.427-30|Ov. ''Tr.'' 2.427-30]]}}, citing his love poetry as an important precedent for theirs; his innovative approach, of charting the ups and downs of his speaker’s difficult relationship with and inescapable love for one mistress, laid the foundation for love elegy as a genre, and thus for much Western love poetry since (Lyne 1978: 176-80; DeMaria and Brown 2007: 329-30). This influence is reflected in the title of Tom Stoppard’s play ''The Invention of Love'', which refers in part to Catullus’ ‘invention’ of the love poem as we know it, and thus of the modern conception of love itself.

Catullus’ formative role in the development of love poetry, though, was for centuries destined to be an indirect one, carried forward only via the later poets he had influenced. Catullus’ own works had waned in popularity by the end of the second century AD, and soon disappeared almost without trace. Martial, a prolific epigrammatist of the first century AD, in citing Catullus as a model, had depicted him as a writer of cleverly crafted epigrams, rather than as a subjective love poet; it is possible that this view, which misrepresented the scope of his works, contributed to their decline (Gaisser 1993: 7-15; Swann 1994: 32-81; Lorenz 2007). Catullus’ corpus was not rediscovered until the late fourteenth century; unlike Virgil, Horace, or Ovid, then, whose presence loomed large in medieval literature, Catullus ‘landed in the Renaissance virtually out of nowhere . . . with no baggage of late antique or medieval imitation, interpretation, or scholarship’ (Gaisser 2007: 441). Due to the popularity of epigram as a genre in the Italian Renaissance, and to the prominence of Martial as the acknowledged master of that genre, it was his image of Catullus as a wry epigrammatist that was to dominate for the first two hundred years after the rediscovery of his works (Gaisser 1993, 2007; Swann 1994).

But, as literary fashions changed, so did the focus of each era’s appreciation of Catullus. As subjective love poetry became fashionable again, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, that aspect of Catullus’ works came to the fore, and he began to be translated and imitated in that vein. This resurgence of Catullus as love poet formed the basis for the image of him that crystallised in the nineteenth century, and that has dominated literary and scholarly conceptions of him ever since. Poets of the Romantic period and, later, of the Modernist movement, identified with Catullus’ combination of self-conscious artistry with intense and ‘genuine’ feeling, and used him as a symbol of passion, fierce individuality, and emotional truth. Coleridge, Tennyson, Ezra Pound, and others have translated or adapted his works and acknowledged his influence (Arkins 2007). Swinburne, for example, in his ''To Catullus'', feels such kinship with the ancient poet that he hails and laments him as a ‘brother’, echoing Catullus’ own epitaph for his dead brother (101). W. B. Yeats, in his ''The Scholars'', reflects sarcastically on the contrast between the Classical scholars who ‘shuffle’ and ‘cough in ink’, and ‘their Catullus’, one of the ‘young men, tossing on their beds’ whose feverish love poems they annotate. Perhaps most strikingly, Louis MacNeice, in his ''Epitaph for Liberal Poets'', depicts Catullus as the type of the free-thinker quashed by convention, lamenting that

<blockquote>
The Individual has died before; Catullus<br />
Went down young, gave place to those who were born old<br />
And more adaptable and were not even jealous<br />
Of his wild life and lyrics.
</blockquote>

In short, each generation of scholars and artists has seen something of itself in Catullus, or at least in the picture of himself that he presents in and through his works. Given the endlessly multifaceted nature of that picture, it is likely that the currently dominant picture will not remain dominant forever, and that Catullus will continue to produce new and different reflections for as long as his works are read and reinterpreted by new audiences.

----

== Bibliography ==

<div id="bibliography">
*Arkins, B. 2007. ‘The Modern Reception of Catullus.’ In M. B. Skinner (ed.): 461-78.
*DeMaria, R. Jr. and Brown, R. D. eds. 2007. ''Classical Literature and Its Reception''. Oxford.
*Gaisser, J. H. 1993. ''Catullus and his Renaissance Readers''. Oxford.
** 2007. ‘Catullus in the Renaissance.’ In M. B. Skinner (ed.): 439-60.
*Hillard, T. W. 1981. ‘''In triclinio Coam, in cubiculo Nolam'': Lesbia and the Other Clodia.’ ''LCM'' 6.6: 149-54.
*Lorenz, S. 2007. ‘Catullus and Martial.’ In M. B. Skinner (ed.): 418-38.
*Lyne, R. O. A. M. 1978. ‘The Neoteric Poets.’ ''CQ'' 28.1: 167-87.
*Minyard, J. D. 1988. ‘The Source of the ''Catulli Veronensis Liber''.’ ''CW'' 81.5: 343-53.
*Quinn, K. 1959. ''The Catullan Revolution''. Melbourne.
*Skinner, M. B. (ed.) 2007. ''A Companion to Catullus''. Oxford.
** 2011. ''Clodia Metelli: The Tribune’s Sister''. Oxford.
*Swann, B. W. 1994. ''Martial’s Catullus: The Reception of an Epigrammatic Rival''. Hildesheim.
*Winter, T. N. 1973. ‘Catullus Purified: A Brief History of Carmen 16.’ ''Arethusa'' 6: 257-65.
*Wiseman, T. P. 1974. ''Cinna the Poet and Other Roman Essays''. London.
</div>
</div>
<div id="notes"></div>

[[Category:Guides by Jane Burkowski]]

Ovid: A Guide to Selected Sources

2015-11-15T15:26:49Z

NickFreer: /* Bibliography */

{{GuideHighlightBox}}
{{Author|Nora Goldschmidt}}
{{#howtoquote:}}
<div id="guide">
Publius Ovidius Naso (‘Ovid’) was a Roman poet of the late Augustan period who later became one of the most popular and influential writers to survive from antiquity. Perhaps best known for his mythological epic, ''Metamorphoses'' (‘Transformations’), and collection of erotic poems, ''Amores'' (‘Loves’), his extant works also include the ''Ars amatoria'' (‘The Art of Love’) and ''Remedia amoris'' (‘Cures for Love’), a didactic poem on make-up for women (''Medicamina faciei femineae''), a series of mythical letters known as the ''Heroides'' (‘Heroines’), as well as a number of influential poems written in exile, ''Tristia'' (‘Sorrows’), ''Ibis'', and ''Epistulae ex Ponto'' (‘Letters from the Black Sea’).

Like Alexander Pope who claimed to have ‘lisp’d in numbers’, everything Ovid touched is said to have turned to verse. As the elder {{#lemma: Seneca | [[Seneca the Elder, Controversies 2.2.8|Sen. ''Controv.'' 2.2.8]]}} remembers him, even when he was studying rhetoric as a young man, his speeches inevitably turned into ‘poetry in prose’—a story which Ovid himself was eager to confirm (''Tristia'' 4.10.24). Apart from Seneca’s memories, though, while the lives of Ovid’s older contemporaries Virgil and Horace were taken up early on by ancient biographers, there is no surviving ancient life of Ovid ({{#lemma: Jerome’s | [[Jerome, Chronicle, Olympiad 184.2 (43 BC)|Jer. ''Chron. ad'' Ol. 184.2 (43 BC)]] [[Jerome, Chronicle, Olympiad 199.1 (17 AD)|Jer. ''Chron. ad'' Ol. 199.1 (17 AD)]]}} two very brief notices give little more than dates and places). What we do have, however, is an extensive series of autobiographical statements—overt and covert—in the poet’s own works. Ovid talked more about himself than any other Roman poet, constructing a semi-fictional autobiography that would tantalize and inspire later writers to fill in its gaps and transform its tropes. From the beginning, Ovid’s statements about himself participate in the play of fictions that characterise his work as a whole, teasing the reader about their ‘factual’ status (Volk 2010: 20-2; cf. Hardie 2002, Gildenhard and Zissos 2000). The poet swings between asking his readers to see his poetry as a mirror to his life (‘Naso, the poet of my own wantonness’ (''Amores'' 2.1.2)) to exhorting them to make a clear distinction between the two (‘your credulity is harming me!’ (''Amores'' 3.12.44), ‘my character is different from my poems: my life is chaste, my Muse a jokester’ (''Tristia'' 2.353-4)).

Every one of Ovid’s surviving works, often written in the first-person, arguably leaves ‘a space for self-expression’ (Barchiesi and Hardie 2010: 59). But the most explicit ‘autobiographical’ content appears in the poems from exile. In AD 8, Ovid was relegated to Tomis on the Black Sea, and the poems he wrote there both speak of his current circumstances and continuously interrogate and re-fashion his life in Rome. Among the most significant are ''Tristia'' 2, addressed to Augustus, which talks cryptically of a ''carmen et error'' (‘a song and a mistake’ 2.207) that brought about the poet’s banishment (a trope which continuously resurfaces in the exile poetry: cf. Ingleheart 2010: 121-2), and, above all, {{#lemma: ''Tristia'' 4.10 | [[Ovid, Sorrows 4.10|Ov. ''Tr.'' 4.10]]}}. This last—the closing poem of Book 4—is sometimes seen to fall within the literary tradition of the ''sphragis'' (Greek ‘seal’, ‘signature’) where the poet ‘signs off’ at the end of the work in his own voice. More than the traditional ''sphragis'', however, the poem is arguably a full-blown autobiography in verse, extending to 132 lines (e.g., Misch 1950: vol. I, 295, D’Agostino 1969, Fredericks 1976, Fairweather 1987, Viarre 1993). Written with posterity in mind (''accipe posteritas'' 4.10.2), Ovid traces the events of his life (''uitae … acta'' 4.10.92) from his birth in Sulmo (''Sulmo mihi patria est'' 4.10.3), charting his growth as a poet, and finally prophesying his own posthumous fame (4.10.129-30).

Despite Ovid’s warnings about the dangers of taking his biographical statements too seriously, his poems were frequently read autobiographically in later times and the clues (or red herrings) which he left became particularly important for later readers. The poet had already prophesied his own afterlife in a number of works, including the {{#lemma: famous close of the ''Metamorphoses'' | [[Ovid, Metamorphoses 15.871-9|Ov. ''Met.'' 15.871-9]]}}, which ends with the assertion that even after his death his legacy would continue (''uiuam'', ‘I shall live’; cf. e.g. ''Amores'' 1.15.41-2; ''Tristia'' 4.10.130); Ovid’s life has, accordingly, been invented and reinvented through the ages in ways the ancient poet could never have imagined. The Middle Ages, and especially the twelfth and thirteenth centuries—famously dubbed ‘the Ovidian age’ (''aetas Ovidiana'') by Ludwig Traube—were particularly concerned with the poet’s imaginary life (see esp. Ghisalberti 1946). The period also saw the composition of ''De vetula'' (‘On the old woman’), a three-book hexameter poem which claims to be Ovid’s hitherto lost autobiography from exile, discovered sealed in the poet’s tomb (Knox 2009b, Hexter 1999 and 2002, Godman 1995; cf. Lyne 2002: 288-98 for Renaissance versions of Ovid as lover and exile).

In more recent times, Ovid the exile has fascinated modern writers (cf. Kerrigan 1992, Pana 1993, Hardie 2002: 326-37, Ziolkowski 2005: 99-145). Late modern authors have found particular affinity with the exilic voice: in ‘Ovid in Tomis’ (1980), Derek Mahon makes Ovid ‘weep for our exile’ (Ziolkowski 2005: 128-9), while in prose fiction, the post-colonial voice of David Malouf’s ''An Imaginary Life'' (1978) sees the urbane western poet ''par excellence'' eventually long for a return to nature beyond the limits of language and the ‘civilised’ world. Notable, too, is Christoph Ransmayr’s ''Die letzte Welt'' (‘The Last World’, 1988), where Tomis, the site of Ovid’s exile, is figured as a ''Zwischenwelt'', full of rusted iron, dilapidated buses, firearms and corruption, a place between fiction and reality. Fittingly, in Ransmayr’s postmodern last world, the Roman poet—so elusive in his own ‘autobiographical’ statements—can never actually be found (cf. Ziolkowski 2005: 176-83).

----

== Bibliography ==

<div id="bibliography">
* Barchiesi, A. and Hardie, P. R. 2010. ‘The Ovidian Career Model: Ovid, Gallus, Apuleius, Boccaccio.’ In P. R. Hardie and H. Moore (eds.), ''Classical Literary Careers and their Reception''. Cambridge: 59-88.
* D’Agostino, V. 1969. ‘L’elegia autobiografica di Ovidio: ''Tristia'' IV, 10.’ ''Latomus'' 101: 293-302.
* Fairweather, J. 1987. ‘Ovid's Autobiographical Poem, Tristia 4.10.’ ''CQ'' 37: 181- 96.
* Fredericks, B. R. 1976. ‘''Tristia'' 4.10: Poet's Autobiography and Poetic Autobiography.’ ''TAPA'' 106: 139-54.
* Ghisalberti, F. 1946. ‘Medieval biographies of Ovid.’ ''JWCI'' 9: 10-59.
* Gildenhard, I. and Zissos, A. 2000. ‘Inspirational Fictions: Autobiography and Generic Reflexivity in Ovid’s Proems.’ ''G & R'' 47: 67-79.
* Godman, P. 1995. ‘Ovid's sex-life.’ ''Poetica'' 27: 101-8.
* Hardie, P. R. 2002. ''Ovid’s Poetics of Illusion''. Cambridge.
* Hexter, R. 1999. ‘Ovid's Body.’ In J. I. Porter (ed.), ''The Construction of the Classical Body''. Ann Arbor: 327-54.
** 2002. ‘Ovid in the Middle Ages.’ In B. W. Boyd (ed.), ''Brill's Companion to Ovid''. Leiden: 413-42.
* Ingleheart, J. 2010. ''A Commentary on Ovid, Tristia: Book 2''. Oxford.
* Kerrigan, J. 1992. ‘Ulster Ovids.’ In N. Corcoran (ed.), ''The Chosen Ground: Essays on the Contemporary Poetry of Northern Ireland''. Bridgend: 237–69.
* Knox, P. E. 2009a. ‘A Poet’s Life.’ In P. E. Knox (ed.), ''A Companion to Ovid''. Malden, MA: 3-7.
* Knox, P. E. 2009b. ‘Lost and Spurious Works.’ In P. E. Knox (ed.), ''A Companion to Ovid''. Malden, MA: 207-16.
* Lyne, R. 2002. ‘Love and Exile After Ovid.’ In P. R. Hardie (ed.), ''The Cambridge Companion to Ovid''. Cambridge: 288-300.
* Misch, G. 1950. ''A History of Autobiography in Antiquity''. Trans. by E. Dickes and G. Misch. 2 vols. London.
* Pana, I. G. 1993. ‘The Tomis Complex: Versions of Exile in Australian literature.’ ''WLT'' 67: 523–32.
* Volk, K. (2010) ''Ovid''. Malden, MA.
* Viarre, S. 1993. ‘''Tristes'' IV, 10: L’Histoire récente de l’interprétation et la signification poétique.’ In G. Arrighetti and F. Montanari (eds.), ''La componente autobiografica nella poesia Greca e Latina fra realità e atrificio letterario''. Pisa: 255-74.
* Zambon, E. 2011. ‘Life and Poetry: Differences and Resemblances between Ovid and Dante.’ In J. Ingleheart (ed.), ''Two Thousand Years of Solitude: Exile After Ovid''. Oxford: 23-40.
* Ziolkowski, T. 2005. ''Ovid and the Moderns''. Ithaca.
</div>
</div>
<div id="notes"></div>

[[Category:Guides by Nora Goldschmidt]]

Ovid: A Guide to Selected Sources

2015-11-15T15:25:17Z

NickFreer: /* Bibliography */

{{GuideHighlightBox}}
{{Author|Nora Goldschmidt}}
{{#howtoquote:}}
<div id="guide">
Publius Ovidius Naso (‘Ovid’) was a Roman poet of the late Augustan period who later became one of the most popular and influential writers to survive from antiquity. Perhaps best known for his mythological epic, ''Metamorphoses'' (‘Transformations’), and collection of erotic poems, ''Amores'' (‘Loves’), his extant works also include the ''Ars amatoria'' (‘The Art of Love’) and ''Remedia amoris'' (‘Cures for Love’), a didactic poem on make-up for women (''Medicamina faciei femineae''), a series of mythical letters known as the ''Heroides'' (‘Heroines’), as well as a number of influential poems written in exile, ''Tristia'' (‘Sorrows’), ''Ibis'', and ''Epistulae ex Ponto'' (‘Letters from the Black Sea’).

Like Alexander Pope who claimed to have ‘lisp’d in numbers’, everything Ovid touched is said to have turned to verse. As the elder {{#lemma: Seneca | [[Seneca the Elder, Controversies 2.2.8|Sen. ''Controv.'' 2.2.8]]}} remembers him, even when he was studying rhetoric as a young man, his speeches inevitably turned into ‘poetry in prose’—a story which Ovid himself was eager to confirm (''Tristia'' 4.10.24). Apart from Seneca’s memories, though, while the lives of Ovid’s older contemporaries Virgil and Horace were taken up early on by ancient biographers, there is no surviving ancient life of Ovid ({{#lemma: Jerome’s | [[Jerome, Chronicle, Olympiad 184.2 (43 BC)|Jer. ''Chron. ad'' Ol. 184.2 (43 BC)]] [[Jerome, Chronicle, Olympiad 199.1 (17 AD)|Jer. ''Chron. ad'' Ol. 199.1 (17 AD)]]}} two very brief notices give little more than dates and places). What we do have, however, is an extensive series of autobiographical statements—overt and covert—in the poet’s own works. Ovid talked more about himself than any other Roman poet, constructing a semi-fictional autobiography that would tantalize and inspire later writers to fill in its gaps and transform its tropes. From the beginning, Ovid’s statements about himself participate in the play of fictions that characterise his work as a whole, teasing the reader about their ‘factual’ status (Volk 2010: 20-2; cf. Hardie 2002, Gildenhard and Zissos 2000). The poet swings between asking his readers to see his poetry as a mirror to his life (‘Naso, the poet of my own wantonness’ (''Amores'' 2.1.2)) to exhorting them to make a clear distinction between the two (‘your credulity is harming me!’ (''Amores'' 3.12.44), ‘my character is different from my poems: my life is chaste, my Muse a jokester’ (''Tristia'' 2.353-4)).

Every one of Ovid’s surviving works, often written in the first-person, arguably leaves ‘a space for self-expression’ (Barchiesi and Hardie 2010: 59). But the most explicit ‘autobiographical’ content appears in the poems from exile. In AD 8, Ovid was relegated to Tomis on the Black Sea, and the poems he wrote there both speak of his current circumstances and continuously interrogate and re-fashion his life in Rome. Among the most significant are ''Tristia'' 2, addressed to Augustus, which talks cryptically of a ''carmen et error'' (‘a song and a mistake’ 2.207) that brought about the poet’s banishment (a trope which continuously resurfaces in the exile poetry: cf. Ingleheart 2010: 121-2), and, above all, {{#lemma: ''Tristia'' 4.10 | [[Ovid, Sorrows 4.10|Ov. ''Tr.'' 4.10]]}}. This last—the closing poem of Book 4—is sometimes seen to fall within the literary tradition of the ''sphragis'' (Greek ‘seal’, ‘signature’) where the poet ‘signs off’ at the end of the work in his own voice. More than the traditional ''sphragis'', however, the poem is arguably a full-blown autobiography in verse, extending to 132 lines (e.g., Misch 1950: vol. I, 295, D’Agostino 1969, Fredericks 1976, Fairweather 1987, Viarre 1993). Written with posterity in mind (''accipe posteritas'' 4.10.2), Ovid traces the events of his life (''uitae … acta'' 4.10.92) from his birth in Sulmo (''Sulmo mihi patria est'' 4.10.3), charting his growth as a poet, and finally prophesying his own posthumous fame (4.10.129-30).

Despite Ovid’s warnings about the dangers of taking his biographical statements too seriously, his poems were frequently read autobiographically in later times and the clues (or red herrings) which he left became particularly important for later readers. The poet had already prophesied his own afterlife in a number of works, including the {{#lemma: famous close of the ''Metamorphoses'' | [[Ovid, Metamorphoses 15.871-9|Ov. ''Met.'' 15.871-9]]}}, which ends with the assertion that even after his death his legacy would continue (''uiuam'', ‘I shall live’; cf. e.g. ''Amores'' 1.15.41-2; ''Tristia'' 4.10.130); Ovid’s life has, accordingly, been invented and reinvented through the ages in ways the ancient poet could never have imagined. The Middle Ages, and especially the twelfth and thirteenth centuries—famously dubbed ‘the Ovidian age’ (''aetas Ovidiana'') by Ludwig Traube—were particularly concerned with the poet’s imaginary life (see esp. Ghisalberti 1946). The period also saw the composition of ''De vetula'' (‘On the old woman’), a three-book hexameter poem which claims to be Ovid’s hitherto lost autobiography from exile, discovered sealed in the poet’s tomb (Knox 2009b, Hexter 1999 and 2002, Godman 1995; cf. Lyne 2002: 288-98 for Renaissance versions of Ovid as lover and exile).

In more recent times, Ovid the exile has fascinated modern writers (cf. Kerrigan 1992, Pana 1993, Hardie 2002: 326-37, Ziolkowski 2005: 99-145). Late modern authors have found particular affinity with the exilic voice: in ‘Ovid in Tomis’ (1980), Derek Mahon makes Ovid ‘weep for our exile’ (Ziolkowski 2005: 128-9), while in prose fiction, the post-colonial voice of David Malouf’s ''An Imaginary Life'' (1978) sees the urbane western poet ''par excellence'' eventually long for a return to nature beyond the limits of language and the ‘civilised’ world. Notable, too, is Christoph Ransmayr’s ''Die letzte Welt'' (‘The Last World’, 1988), where Tomis, the site of Ovid’s exile, is figured as a ''Zwischenwelt'', full of rusted iron, dilapidated buses, firearms and corruption, a place between fiction and reality. Fittingly, in Ransmayr’s postmodern last world, the Roman poet—so elusive in his own ‘autobiographical’ statements—can never actually be found (cf. Ziolkowski 2005: 176-83).

----

== Bibliography ==

<div id="bibliography">
* Barchiesi, A. and Hardie, P. R. 2010. ‘The Ovidian Career Model: Ovid, Gallus, Apuleius, Boccaccio.’ In P. R. Hardie and H. Moore (eds.), ''Classical Literary Careers and their Reception''. Cambridge: 59-88.
* D’Agostino, V. 1969. ‘L’elegia autobiografica di Ovidio: ''Tristia'' IV, 10.’ ''Latomus'' 101: 293-302.
* Fairweather, J. 1987. ‘Ovid's Autobiographical Poem, Tristia 4.10.’ ''CQ'' 37: 181- 96.
* Fredericks, B. R. 1976. ‘''Tristia'' 4.10: Poet's Autobiography and Poetic Autobiography.’ ''TAPA'' 106: 139-54.
* Ghisalberti, F. 1946. ‘Medieval biographies of Ovid.’ ''JWCI'' 9: 10-59.
* Gildenhard, I. and Zissos, A. 2000. ‘Inspirational Fictions: Autobiography and Generic Reflexivity in Ovid’s Proems.’ ''G & R'' 47: 67-79.
* Godman, P. 1995. ‘Ovid's sex-life.’ ''Poetica'' 27: 101-8.
* Hardie, P. R. 2002. ''Ovid’s Poetics of Illusion''. Cambridge.
* Hexter, R. 1999. ‘Ovid's Body.’ In J. J. Porter (ed.), ''The Construction of the Classical Body''. Ann Arbor: 327-54.
** 2002. ‘Ovid in the Middle Ages.’ In B. W. Boyd (ed.), ''Brill's Companion to Ovid''. Leiden: 413-42.
* Ingleheart, J. 2010. ''A Commentary on Ovid, Tristia: Book 2''. Oxford.
* Kerrigan, J. 1992. ‘Ulster Ovids.’ In N. Corcoran (ed.), ''The Chosen Ground: Essays on the Contemporary Poetry of Northern Ireland''. Bridgend: 237–69.
* Knox, P. E. 2009a. ‘A Poet’s Life.’ In P. E. Knox (ed.), ''A Companion to Ovid''. Malden, MA: 3-7.
* Knox, P. E. 2009b. ‘Lost and Spurious Works.’ In P. E. Knox (ed.), ''A Companion to Ovid''. Malden, MA: 207-16.
* Lyne, R. 2002. ‘Love and Exile After Ovid.’ In P. R. Hardie (ed.), ''The Cambridge Companion to Ovid''. Cambridge: 288-300.
* Misch, G. 1950. ''A History of Autobiography in Antiquity''. Trans. by E. Dickes and G. Misch. 2 vols. London.
* Pana, I. G. 1993. ‘The Tomis Complex: Versions of Exile in Australian literature.’ ''WLT'' 67: 523–32.
* Volk, K. (2010) ''Ovid''. Malden, MA.
* Viarre, S. 1993. ‘''Tristes'' IV, 10: L’Histoire récente de l’interprétation et la signification poétique.’ In G. Arrighetti and F. Montanari (eds.), ''La componente autobiografica nella poesia Greca e Latina fra realità e atrificio letterario''. Pisa: 255-74.
* Zambon, E. 2011. ‘Life and Poetry: Differences and Resemblances between Ovid and Dante.’ In J. Ingleheart (ed.), ''Two Thousand Years of Solitude: Exile After Ovid''. Oxford: 23-40.
* Ziolkowski, T. 2005. ''Ovid and the Moderns''. Ithaca.
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[[Category:Guides by Nora Goldschmidt]]

Ovid: A Guide to Selected Sources

2015-11-15T15:24:45Z

NickFreer: /* Bibliography */

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{{Author|Nora Goldschmidt}}
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Publius Ovidius Naso (‘Ovid’) was a Roman poet of the late Augustan period who later became one of the most popular and influential writers to survive from antiquity. Perhaps best known for his mythological epic, ''Metamorphoses'' (‘Transformations’), and collection of erotic poems, ''Amores'' (‘Loves’), his extant works also include the ''Ars amatoria'' (‘The Art of Love’) and ''Remedia amoris'' (‘Cures for Love’), a didactic poem on make-up for women (''Medicamina faciei femineae''), a series of mythical letters known as the ''Heroides'' (‘Heroines’), as well as a number of influential poems written in exile, ''Tristia'' (‘Sorrows’), ''Ibis'', and ''Epistulae ex Ponto'' (‘Letters from the Black Sea’).

Like Alexander Pope who claimed to have ‘lisp’d in numbers’, everything Ovid touched is said to have turned to verse. As the elder {{#lemma: Seneca | [[Seneca the Elder, Controversies 2.2.8|Sen. ''Controv.'' 2.2.8]]}} remembers him, even when he was studying rhetoric as a young man, his speeches inevitably turned into ‘poetry in prose’—a story which Ovid himself was eager to confirm (''Tristia'' 4.10.24). Apart from Seneca’s memories, though, while the lives of Ovid’s older contemporaries Virgil and Horace were taken up early on by ancient biographers, there is no surviving ancient life of Ovid ({{#lemma: Jerome’s | [[Jerome, Chronicle, Olympiad 184.2 (43 BC)|Jer. ''Chron. ad'' Ol. 184.2 (43 BC)]] [[Jerome, Chronicle, Olympiad 199.1 (17 AD)|Jer. ''Chron. ad'' Ol. 199.1 (17 AD)]]}} two very brief notices give little more than dates and places). What we do have, however, is an extensive series of autobiographical statements—overt and covert—in the poet’s own works. Ovid talked more about himself than any other Roman poet, constructing a semi-fictional autobiography that would tantalize and inspire later writers to fill in its gaps and transform its tropes. From the beginning, Ovid’s statements about himself participate in the play of fictions that characterise his work as a whole, teasing the reader about their ‘factual’ status (Volk 2010: 20-2; cf. Hardie 2002, Gildenhard and Zissos 2000). The poet swings between asking his readers to see his poetry as a mirror to his life (‘Naso, the poet of my own wantonness’ (''Amores'' 2.1.2)) to exhorting them to make a clear distinction between the two (‘your credulity is harming me!’ (''Amores'' 3.12.44), ‘my character is different from my poems: my life is chaste, my Muse a jokester’ (''Tristia'' 2.353-4)).

Every one of Ovid’s surviving works, often written in the first-person, arguably leaves ‘a space for self-expression’ (Barchiesi and Hardie 2010: 59). But the most explicit ‘autobiographical’ content appears in the poems from exile. In AD 8, Ovid was relegated to Tomis on the Black Sea, and the poems he wrote there both speak of his current circumstances and continuously interrogate and re-fashion his life in Rome. Among the most significant are ''Tristia'' 2, addressed to Augustus, which talks cryptically of a ''carmen et error'' (‘a song and a mistake’ 2.207) that brought about the poet’s banishment (a trope which continuously resurfaces in the exile poetry: cf. Ingleheart 2010: 121-2), and, above all, {{#lemma: ''Tristia'' 4.10 | [[Ovid, Sorrows 4.10|Ov. ''Tr.'' 4.10]]}}. This last—the closing poem of Book 4—is sometimes seen to fall within the literary tradition of the ''sphragis'' (Greek ‘seal’, ‘signature’) where the poet ‘signs off’ at the end of the work in his own voice. More than the traditional ''sphragis'', however, the poem is arguably a full-blown autobiography in verse, extending to 132 lines (e.g., Misch 1950: vol. I, 295, D’Agostino 1969, Fredericks 1976, Fairweather 1987, Viarre 1993). Written with posterity in mind (''accipe posteritas'' 4.10.2), Ovid traces the events of his life (''uitae … acta'' 4.10.92) from his birth in Sulmo (''Sulmo mihi patria est'' 4.10.3), charting his growth as a poet, and finally prophesying his own posthumous fame (4.10.129-30).

Despite Ovid’s warnings about the dangers of taking his biographical statements too seriously, his poems were frequently read autobiographically in later times and the clues (or red herrings) which he left became particularly important for later readers. The poet had already prophesied his own afterlife in a number of works, including the {{#lemma: famous close of the ''Metamorphoses'' | [[Ovid, Metamorphoses 15.871-9|Ov. ''Met.'' 15.871-9]]}}, which ends with the assertion that even after his death his legacy would continue (''uiuam'', ‘I shall live’; cf. e.g. ''Amores'' 1.15.41-2; ''Tristia'' 4.10.130); Ovid’s life has, accordingly, been invented and reinvented through the ages in ways the ancient poet could never have imagined. The Middle Ages, and especially the twelfth and thirteenth centuries—famously dubbed ‘the Ovidian age’ (''aetas Ovidiana'') by Ludwig Traube—were particularly concerned with the poet’s imaginary life (see esp. Ghisalberti 1946). The period also saw the composition of ''De vetula'' (‘On the old woman’), a three-book hexameter poem which claims to be Ovid’s hitherto lost autobiography from exile, discovered sealed in the poet’s tomb (Knox 2009b, Hexter 1999 and 2002, Godman 1995; cf. Lyne 2002: 288-98 for Renaissance versions of Ovid as lover and exile).

In more recent times, Ovid the exile has fascinated modern writers (cf. Kerrigan 1992, Pana 1993, Hardie 2002: 326-37, Ziolkowski 2005: 99-145). Late modern authors have found particular affinity with the exilic voice: in ‘Ovid in Tomis’ (1980), Derek Mahon makes Ovid ‘weep for our exile’ (Ziolkowski 2005: 128-9), while in prose fiction, the post-colonial voice of David Malouf’s ''An Imaginary Life'' (1978) sees the urbane western poet ''par excellence'' eventually long for a return to nature beyond the limits of language and the ‘civilised’ world. Notable, too, is Christoph Ransmayr’s ''Die letzte Welt'' (‘The Last World’, 1988), where Tomis, the site of Ovid’s exile, is figured as a ''Zwischenwelt'', full of rusted iron, dilapidated buses, firearms and corruption, a place between fiction and reality. Fittingly, in Ransmayr’s postmodern last world, the Roman poet—so elusive in his own ‘autobiographical’ statements—can never actually be found (cf. Ziolkowski 2005: 176-83).

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== Bibliography ==

<div id="bibliography">
* Barchiesi, A. and Hardie, P. R. 2010. ‘The Ovidian Career Model: Ovid, Gallus, Apuleius, Boccaccio.’ In P. R. Hardie and H. Moore (eds.), ''Classical Literary Careers and their Reception''. Cambridge: 59-88.
* D’Agostino, V. 1969. ‘L’elegia autobiografica di Ovidio: ''Tristia'' IV, 10.’ ''Latomus'' 101: 293-302.
* Fairweather, J. 1987. ‘Ovid's Autobiographical Poem, Tristia 4.10.’ ''CQ'' 37: 181- 96.
* Fredericks, B. R. 1976. ‘''Tristia'' 4.10: Poet's Autobiography and Poetic Autobiography.' ''TAPA'' 106: 139-54.
* Ghisalberti, F. 1946. ‘Medieval biographies of Ovid.’ ''JWCI'' 9: 10-59.
* Gildenhard, I. and Zissos, A. 2000. ‘Inspirational Fictions: Autobiography and Generic Reflexivity in Ovid’s Proems.’ ''G & R'' 47: 67-79.
* Godman, P. 1995. ‘Ovid's sex-life.’ ''Poetica'' 27: 101-8.
* Hardie, P. R. 2002. ''Ovid’s Poetics of Illusion''. Cambridge.
* Hexter, R. 1999. ‘Ovid's Body.’ In J. J. Porter (ed.), ''The Construction of the Classical Body''. Ann Arbor: 327-54.
** 2002. ‘Ovid in the Middle Ages.’ In B. W. Boyd (ed.), ''Brill's Companion to Ovid''. Leiden: 413-42.
* Ingleheart, J. 2010. ''A Commentary on Ovid, Tristia: Book 2''. Oxford.
* Kerrigan, J. 1992. ‘Ulster Ovids.’ In N. Corcoran (ed.), ''The Chosen Ground: Essays on the Contemporary Poetry of Northern Ireland''. Bridgend: 237–69.
* Knox, P. E. 2009a. ‘A Poet’s Life.’ In P. E. Knox (ed.), ''A Companion to Ovid''. Malden, MA: 3-7.
* Knox, P. E. 2009b. ‘Lost and Spurious Works.’ In P. E. Knox (ed.), ''A Companion to Ovid''. Malden, MA: 207-16.
* Lyne, R. 2002. ‘Love and Exile After Ovid.’ In P. R. Hardie (ed.), ''The Cambridge Companion to Ovid''. Cambridge: 288-300.
* Misch, G. 1950. ''A History of Autobiography in Antiquity''. Trans. by E. Dickes and G. Misch. 2 vols. London.
* Pana, I. G. 1993. ‘The Tomis Complex: Versions of Exile in Australian literature.’ ''WLT'' 67: 523–32.
* Volk, K. (2010) ''Ovid''. Malden, MA.
* Viarre, S. 1993. ‘''Tristes'' IV, 10: L’Histoire récente de l’interprétation et la signification poétique.’ In G. Arrighetti and F. Montanari (eds.), ''La componente autobiografica nella poesia Greca e Latina fra realità e atrificio letterario''. Pisa: 255-74.
* Zambon, E. 2011. ‘Life and Poetry: Differences and Resemblances between Ovid and Dante.’ In J. Ingleheart (ed.), ''Two Thousand Years of Solitude: Exile After Ovid''. Oxford: 23-40.
* Ziolkowski, T. 2005. ''Ovid and the Moderns''. Ithaca.
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[[Category:Guides by Nora Goldschmidt]]

Lucretius: A Guide to Selected Sources

2015-11-15T14:56:58Z

NickFreer: /* Bibliography */

{{GuideHighlightBox}}
'''''Nora Goldschmidt'''''
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Titus Lucretius Carus (‘Lucretius’) was a Roman poet of the first century BCE, best known as the author of the didactic poem ''De rerum natura'' (''On the Nature of the Universe''). The oldest account we have of his life is a short report found in {{#lemma: Jerome’s version of the ''Chronicle of Eusebius'' | [[Jerome, Chronica ad Ol. 171.3 (94 BC) | Jer. ''Chron.'' ad Ol. 171.3 (94 BC)]]}} under the year 94 BC. According to Jerome, the poet went mad after drinking a love potion; in the lucid intervals between periods of insanity, he wrote several books, which were later edited by his famous contemporary, the orator Cicero. Lucretius finally commited suicide at the age of 44.

Embellished versions of Jerome’s story are then found in a number of later sources. One of the most notable is the so-called {{#lemma: ''Vita Borgiana'' | [[Vita Borgiana | ''Vita Borgiana'']]}}, a life of Lucretius compiled in the early modern period by Girolamo Borgia and discovered in the British Library in the late nineteenth century. Once thought to be based on a lost ancient biography of the poet, this is now more commonly recognised as a text invented or collated from later sources (Fabbri 1984; Holford-Strevens 2002: 2). The life adds a number of details to Jerome’s account, including the claim that the poet’s mother was sterile for a long time before she conceived him (''matre natus diutius sterili'', a phenomenon Lucretius himself describes in ''De rerum natura'' 12.4.1251-3) and that the love-philtre was administered by a ‘wicked woman’ (''femina improba''), while Cicero – a paradigm of classical decorum – is not merely said to edit the poem after his death, but becomes the poet’s intimate acquaintance and literary advisor, who takes particular exception to Lucretius’ lack of restraint in the use of metaphor (cf. Solaro 2000 for discussion and a full transcription).

Apart from the Borgia life, the story of the love potion and madness captured the imaginations of later readers and underwent a number of metamorphoses. At some point in the tradition ─ probably originating from a reading of a remark about a woman called ‘Lucilia’ who gave her husband ‘the cup of madness instead of the cup of love’ found in Walter Map’s ''On Courtly Fripperies'' (twelfth century) ─ the woman, identified as Lucretius’ wife or girlfriend, also acquires the name Lucilia (Holford-Strevens 2002: 5; Reeve 2007: 208). In a further variation mentioned briefly by the fifteenth-century humanist Pomponius Laetus, the boy Asterion, named ‘for his fairness and remarkable beauty’ after the word for star (Latin ''astrum''; Greek ἀστήρ), is identified as the cause of the poet’s downfall (Solaro 1993: 60-3). Later, Lucilia, who {{#lemma: ‘found/ Her master cold’ | [[Alfred Lord Tennyson, ‘Lucretius’ |Tennyson, ‘Lucretius’ 1-2]]}} and acquired the potion that caused the poet’s madness, inspired one of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s most fraught and fascinating engagements with the classical tradition in the poem {{#lemma: ‘Lucretius’ | [[Alfred Lord Tennyson, ‘Lucretius’ | Tennyson, ‘Lucretius’]]}} (1868) on the last days of poet’s life (Johnson 2000; Priestman 2007). Lucretius’ imaginary biography has also been the topic of one of the ''Vies imaginaires'' (1896) by the French symbolist author Marcel Schwob and ''Nei pleniluni sereni: Autobiografia immaginaria di Tito Lucrezio Caro'' (1995) by the Italian author and classical scholar Luca Canali.

Despite the staying power of Jerome’s account, modern critics recognise its ostensible ‘facts’ as fiction. In an attempt to debunk the somewhat undignified story of the love potion by finding its true ‘origin’, scholars often explain the fictive content of the life as originating in confusion: e.g., that Jerome or his source confused Lucretius with a certain ‘Lucullus’, who was driven mad by drugs given to him by his love-sick freedman (Wilkinson 1949). In the end, however, the origin of the legend remains lost to us. What matters, and what has mattered to generations of readers, is the fact that the biography functions substantially as a reading of Lucretius’ poem. De rerum natura, a poem on the philosophy of Epicurus contains a long section on love and sex (4.1030-1287) which has been seen both as ‘the finest description of sexual intercourse ever written’ (by W. B. Yeats) and as an expression of the tragedy of ‘the incomplete fruitions of souls pent up within their frames of flesh’ (according to the Victorian essayist J. A. Symonds: Gillespie and Hardie 2007: 12). Reflecting the Epicurean attitude that condemns passionate desire as intrinsically destructive, Lucretius provides a powerful description of the intense frustrations and hallucinatory passion of the lover, as ‘madness grows day by day’ (''in ... dies gliscit furor''), ''DRN'' 4.1069. More broadly, it is possible to read in the poem a pervading set of contradictions that have been seen to reflect the presence of a mind at war with itself, or even, for some, a sense of ‘morbid depression’ (Bailey 1947: 1.12). The result has been a series of mutually reinforcing biographical fictions and critical readings: the legend of mad Lucretius reflects latent elements in his poem; the biography, in turn, has been read back into the work, deliberately emphasising the ‘anti-Lucretius in Lucretius’ (cf. Johnson 2000).

Another reason why Jerome’s story has been particularly hard to shake off is the perceived close link between madness and creativity. Even in antiquity, the poet Statius could write of the combination of lofty inspiration and learned care that underwrites De rerum natura in his picture of ‘the sublime frenzy of learned Lucretius’, ''docti furor arduus Lucreti'' (''Silvae'' 2.7.76), a literal reading of which (''furor'' carries the sense of frenzied madness as well as frenzied inspiration) might have bolstered Jerome’s story (Bailey 1947: 8). It is easy to see in the poem’s tone, style and ambition the kind of ‘flight of the mind’ that Lucretius ascribed to his master Epicurus (1.62-79). As Thomas Creech put it in the early modern period, in an edition illustrated by the image of the poet bathed in the light of celestial inspiration, it was, or so later readers have liked to think, through his madness that Lucretius ‘in a poetical rapture ... could fly with Epicurus beyond the limits of this world’.

[[File:Lucretius.jpg|thumb|center|360px|link=|Detail from the title-page to Thomas Creech, ''Of the Nature of Things'' (2<sup>nd</sup> and 3<sup>rd</sup> editions), 1682-3.]]

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== Bibliography ==

<div id="bibliography">
* Bailey, C. (ed.) 1947. ''Titi Lucreti Cari de rerum natura libri sex.'' 3 vols. Oxford.
* Canfora, L. 1993. ''Vita di Lucrezio.'' Palermo.
* Fabbri, R. 1984. ‘La “Vita Borgiana” di Lucrezio nel quadro delle biografie unmanistiche.’ ''Lettere Italiane'' 36: 348-66.
* Gillespie, S. and Hardie, P. R. (eds.) 2007. ''The Cambridge Companion to Lucretius.'' Cambridge.
* Holford-Strevens, L. 2002. ‘''Horror vacui'' in Lucretian Biography.’ ''Leeds International Classical Studies'' 1.1: 1-23.
* Johnson, W. R. 2000. ''Lucretius and the Modern World.'' London.
* Priestman, M. 2007. ‘Lucretius in Romantic and Victorian Britain.’ In Gillespie and Hardie eds. 289-305.
* Reeve, M. 2007 . ‘Lucretius in the Middle Ages and Early Renaissance: Transmission and Scholarship’. In S. Gillespie and P. R. Hardie (eds.): 205-213.
* Solaro, G. 1993. ''Pomponio Leto, ‘Lucrezio’.'' Palermo.
** 2000. ''Lucrezio: Biografie umanistiche.'' Bari.
* Wilkinson, L. P. 1949. ‘Lucretius and the love-philtre.’ ''CR'' 63: 47–8.
* Ziegler, K. 1936. ‘Der Tod des Lucretius.’ ''Hermes'' 71: 421─40.

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[[Category:Guides by Nora Goldschmidt]]

Lucan: A Guide to Selected Sources

2015-11-15T14:52:01Z

NickFreer: /* Bibliography */

{{GuideHighlightBox}}
'''''Nora Goldschmidt'''''
{{#howtoquote:}}
<div id="guide">{{GuideTextsBy|Nora Goldschmidt}}
Marcus Annaeus Lucanus (‘Lucan’, AD 39-65) was a Roman poet of the Neronian period, famously compelled to commit suicide at the age of 25 after becoming involved in a conspiracy to overthrow the emperor Nero. He is best known for his epic ''De bello ciuili'' (often called ''Pharsalia''), a poem in ten books on the civil war between Pompey and Julius Caesar.

Even as a toddler, Lucan inspired a short character sketch from his uncle, the philosopher and playwright {{#lemma: Seneca | [[Seneca, De consolatione ad Heluiam matrem, 18.4-5 | Sen. ''Helv.'' 18.4-5]]}} (Fantham 2011: 3). The first extended biographical narrative, however, was written shortly after Lucan’s death by the poet Statius (Newlands 2011b). In a posthumous poem composed for the anniversary of Lucan’s birthday and addressed to his widow, Polla, {{#lemma: Statius | [[Statius, Silvae 2.7 | Stat. ''Silv.'' 2.7]]}} embeds a life of Lucan narrated in the voice of the muse Calliope (lines 36−106). Part of Statius’ purpose is to rehabilitate Lucan after the poet’s disgrace (Newlands 2011a and 2011b): in doing so he remains largely silent on Lucan’s political life, and instead writes a ''poetic'' biography. Calliope describes how the infant poet, favoured by her from birth, will go on to produce a catalogue of works, despite ‘ungrateful Nero’ (''ingratus Nero''), all at a remarkably young age. For Statius, Lucan, despite his short life, reached full maturity as a poet, producing an epic to rival Virgil’s: the ''Aeneid'' itself will venerate Lucan as he sings to the Romans, ''ipsa te Latinis/Aeneis uenerabitur canentem'' (''Silvae'' 2.7.79−80: Quint 1993: 131−4; Newlands 2011b). Another of Lucan’s contemporaries, {{#lemma: Martial | [[Martial 7.21-3 | Mart. 7.21-3]]}}, wrote a cycle of epigrams, likewise for the anniversary of Lucan’s birthday and likewise concerned to rehabilitate the poet, in which he calls Lucan Apollo’s poet (7.22.1) and criticises ‘cruel Nero’ (''Nero crudelis'') (7.21.3) for his unjust death. Snippets of Lucan’s life and death are found, too, in passing remarks by the historian {{#lemma: Tacitus | [[Tacitus Annals 15.49; 56.3-4; 58.1; 70.1; 71 | Tac. ''Ann.'' 15.49; 56.3-4; 58.1; 70.1; 71]]}} in his account of the conspiracy against Nero and its aftermath. According to Tacitus, when he was arrested, Lucan gave up his own mother even though she had nothing to do with the plot (15.56; a claim repeated in Suetonius’ ''Life of Lucan'' and the Codex Vossianus), while his death was fit for a poet: as the blood left his body, Lucan, still in control of his mind, quoted with his last breath from his own epic on the death of a wounded soldier (15.70).

Apart from these piecemeal poetic lives, two principal ancient prose biographies of Lucan survive. The first is by {{#lemma: Suetonius | [[Suetonius, Vita Lucani | Suet. ''Vita Luc.'']]}}, composed roughly fifty years after Lucan’s death, and the second by the otherwise unknown {{#lemma: ‘Vacca’ | [[Vita Vaccae | ''Vita Vaccae'']]}}, probably written in or after the fifth century CE (Fantham 2011: 4). A third anonymous life found in the {{#lemma: second Codex Vossianus | [[Codex Vossianus II | Codex Vossianus II]]}} seems to depend to a large extent on Suetonius (Asso 2010: 2). All share a central concern with Lucan’s precocious talent and consequent life-long rivalry with Nero ― the emperor who traditionally had such an inflated sense of himself as an artist that he famously ‘fiddled while Rome burned’, and with his dying breath lamented, ‘What an artist dies in me!’, ''qualis artifex pereo'' (Suetonius, ''Life of Nero'' 49). Suetonius is the more critical of the two, painting a picture of a rash poet with a diva’s ego to match Nero’s own. In his account, after Nero called an unnecessary meeting simply in order to pour cold water over a performance of Lucan’s poetry, the young poet, incensed, engaged in a sustained programme of self-sabotage. Not least of his actions was farting loudly in the public toilets while reciting one of Nero’s own verses (cf. Cowan 2011): ''sub terris tonuisse putes'', ‘you would think thunder had broken out under the earth’.

The later and more eulogistic Life of Lucan by Vacca is much closer to Statius and Martial in constructing Lucan as a poet born. This life, originally composed as an introduction to the epic, tells the remarkable anecdote of an omen in which a swarm of bees spontaneously hovered around the infant poet’s cradle and settled on his lips, either in order to drink in the ‘sweet breath’ (''spiritum ... dulcem'') of poetry already emanating from the infant Lucan’s mouth, or else as a prophecy of the great verbal power to come. Similar anecdotes involving bees and young poets are also attested in the Greek biographical tradition. According to Vacca, following Tacitus and Cassius Dio (62.29), Nero explicitly banned Lucan from writing poetry, and it was this which drove him to join the ill-fated conspiracy. In the end, it was Lucan’s own prodigious talent, piquing the emperor’s vanity, that brought about his death.

It may be that Lucan’s death was in fact an execution and the story of his voluntary suicide, explicit only in Vacca, is an extrapolation from his epic: Suetonius has Lucan offer his wrists to be slit by a physician (''bracchia ad secandas uenas praebuit medico'') and Tacitus skirts the issue (Tucker 1987; Masters 1992: 216 n.1). ''De bello ciuili'' is in many ways a poem ''about'' suicide, in which civil war is seen as a kind of national self-immolation that invades every level of Lucan’s universe (cf. ''De bello ciuili'' 1.2−3; Masters 1992: 29, 41-2; Bartsch 1997: 24−5). Whatever the truth of the circumstances of his death, with the inevitability of hindsight, Lucan himself ― the young genius who produced the true Roman epic to rival Virgil’s at an age when Virgil had not even written his juvenilia (Statius ''Silvae'' 2.7.73-4; Suetonius ''Life of Lucan''; Quint 1993: 132) ― can be seen to have inscribed the myth of his own death into his poem.

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== Bibliography ==

<div id="bibliography">
* Asso, P. 2010. ''A Commentary on Lucan, De bello civili IV.'' Berlin.
** (ed.) 2011. ''Brill’s Companion to Lucan.'' Leiden.
* Bartsch, S. 1997. ''Ideology in Cold Blood: A Reading of Lucan’s Civil War.'' Cambridge, Mass.
* Cowan, R. 2011. ‘Lucan’s Thunder-box: Scatology, Epic and Satire in Suetonius’ ''Vita Lucani.''’ ''HSCP'' 106: 301-313.
* Fantham, E. 2011. ‘A Controversial Life.’ In P. Asso (ed.): 3−20.
* Masters, J. 1992. ''Poetry and Civil War in Lucan’s Bellum Ciuile.'' Cambridge.
* Newlands, C. (ed.). 2011a. ''Statius, Silvae Book II.'' Cambridge.
** 2011b. ‘The First Biography of Lucan: Statius’ ''Silvae'' 2.7.’ In P. Asso (ed.): 435−51.
* Quint, D. 1993. ''Epic and Empire.'' Princeton.
* Tucker, R. A. 1987. ‘Tacitus and the Death of Lucan.’ ''Latomus'' 46: 330−7.
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[[Category:Guides by Nora Goldschmidt]]

Lucan: A Guide to Selected Sources

2015-11-15T14:51:04Z

NickFreer: /* Bibliography */

{{GuideHighlightBox}}
'''''Nora Goldschmidt'''''
{{#howtoquote:}}
<div id="guide">{{GuideTextsBy|Nora Goldschmidt}}
Marcus Annaeus Lucanus (‘Lucan’, AD 39-65) was a Roman poet of the Neronian period, famously compelled to commit suicide at the age of 25 after becoming involved in a conspiracy to overthrow the emperor Nero. He is best known for his epic ''De bello ciuili'' (often called ''Pharsalia''), a poem in ten books on the civil war between Pompey and Julius Caesar.

Even as a toddler, Lucan inspired a short character sketch from his uncle, the philosopher and playwright {{#lemma: Seneca | [[Seneca, De consolatione ad Heluiam matrem, 18.4-5 | Sen. ''Helv.'' 18.4-5]]}} (Fantham 2011: 3). The first extended biographical narrative, however, was written shortly after Lucan’s death by the poet Statius (Newlands 2011b). In a posthumous poem composed for the anniversary of Lucan’s birthday and addressed to his widow, Polla, {{#lemma: Statius | [[Statius, Silvae 2.7 | Stat. ''Silv.'' 2.7]]}} embeds a life of Lucan narrated in the voice of the muse Calliope (lines 36−106). Part of Statius’ purpose is to rehabilitate Lucan after the poet’s disgrace (Newlands 2011a and 2011b): in doing so he remains largely silent on Lucan’s political life, and instead writes a ''poetic'' biography. Calliope describes how the infant poet, favoured by her from birth, will go on to produce a catalogue of works, despite ‘ungrateful Nero’ (''ingratus Nero''), all at a remarkably young age. For Statius, Lucan, despite his short life, reached full maturity as a poet, producing an epic to rival Virgil’s: the ''Aeneid'' itself will venerate Lucan as he sings to the Romans, ''ipsa te Latinis/Aeneis uenerabitur canentem'' (''Silvae'' 2.7.79−80: Quint 1993: 131−4; Newlands 2011b). Another of Lucan’s contemporaries, {{#lemma: Martial | [[Martial 7.21-3 | Mart. 7.21-3]]}}, wrote a cycle of epigrams, likewise for the anniversary of Lucan’s birthday and likewise concerned to rehabilitate the poet, in which he calls Lucan Apollo’s poet (7.22.1) and criticises ‘cruel Nero’ (''Nero crudelis'') (7.21.3) for his unjust death. Snippets of Lucan’s life and death are found, too, in passing remarks by the historian {{#lemma: Tacitus | [[Tacitus Annals 15.49; 56.3-4; 58.1; 70.1; 71 | Tac. ''Ann.'' 15.49; 56.3-4; 58.1; 70.1; 71]]}} in his account of the conspiracy against Nero and its aftermath. According to Tacitus, when he was arrested, Lucan gave up his own mother even though she had nothing to do with the plot (15.56; a claim repeated in Suetonius’ ''Life of Lucan'' and the Codex Vossianus), while his death was fit for a poet: as the blood left his body, Lucan, still in control of his mind, quoted with his last breath from his own epic on the death of a wounded soldier (15.70).

Apart from these piecemeal poetic lives, two principal ancient prose biographies of Lucan survive. The first is by {{#lemma: Suetonius | [[Suetonius, Vita Lucani | Suet. ''Vita Luc.'']]}}, composed roughly fifty years after Lucan’s death, and the second by the otherwise unknown {{#lemma: ‘Vacca’ | [[Vita Vaccae | ''Vita Vaccae'']]}}, probably written in or after the fifth century CE (Fantham 2011: 4). A third anonymous life found in the {{#lemma: second Codex Vossianus | [[Codex Vossianus II | Codex Vossianus II]]}} seems to depend to a large extent on Suetonius (Asso 2010: 2). All share a central concern with Lucan’s precocious talent and consequent life-long rivalry with Nero ― the emperor who traditionally had such an inflated sense of himself as an artist that he famously ‘fiddled while Rome burned’, and with his dying breath lamented, ‘What an artist dies in me!’, ''qualis artifex pereo'' (Suetonius, ''Life of Nero'' 49). Suetonius is the more critical of the two, painting a picture of a rash poet with a diva’s ego to match Nero’s own. In his account, after Nero called an unnecessary meeting simply in order to pour cold water over a performance of Lucan’s poetry, the young poet, incensed, engaged in a sustained programme of self-sabotage. Not least of his actions was farting loudly in the public toilets while reciting one of Nero’s own verses (cf. Cowan 2011): ''sub terris tonuisse putes'', ‘you would think thunder had broken out under the earth’.

The later and more eulogistic Life of Lucan by Vacca is much closer to Statius and Martial in constructing Lucan as a poet born. This life, originally composed as an introduction to the epic, tells the remarkable anecdote of an omen in which a swarm of bees spontaneously hovered around the infant poet’s cradle and settled on his lips, either in order to drink in the ‘sweet breath’ (''spiritum ... dulcem'') of poetry already emanating from the infant Lucan’s mouth, or else as a prophecy of the great verbal power to come. Similar anecdotes involving bees and young poets are also attested in the Greek biographical tradition. According to Vacca, following Tacitus and Cassius Dio (62.29), Nero explicitly banned Lucan from writing poetry, and it was this which drove him to join the ill-fated conspiracy. In the end, it was Lucan’s own prodigious talent, piquing the emperor’s vanity, that brought about his death.

It may be that Lucan’s death was in fact an execution and the story of his voluntary suicide, explicit only in Vacca, is an extrapolation from his epic: Suetonius has Lucan offer his wrists to be slit by a physician (''bracchia ad secandas uenas praebuit medico'') and Tacitus skirts the issue (Tucker 1987; Masters 1992: 216 n.1). ''De bello ciuili'' is in many ways a poem ''about'' suicide, in which civil war is seen as a kind of national self-immolation that invades every level of Lucan’s universe (cf. ''De bello ciuili'' 1.2−3; Masters 1992: 29, 41-2; Bartsch 1997: 24−5). Whatever the truth of the circumstances of his death, with the inevitability of hindsight, Lucan himself ― the young genius who produced the true Roman epic to rival Virgil’s at an age when Virgil had not even written his juvenilia (Statius ''Silvae'' 2.7.73-4; Suetonius ''Life of Lucan''; Quint 1993: 132) ― can be seen to have inscribed the myth of his own death into his poem.

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== Bibliography ==

<div id="bibliography">
* Asso, P. 2010. ''A Commentary on Lucan, De bello civili IV.'' Berlin.
** (ed.) 2011. ''Brill’s Companion to Lucan.'' Leiden.
* Bartsch, S. 1997. ''Ideology in Cold Blood: A Reading of Lucan’s Civil War.'' Cambridge, Mass.
* Cowan, R. 2011. ‘Lucan’s Thunder-box: Scatology, Epic and Satire in Suetonius’ ''Vita Lucani.''’ ''HSCP'' 106: 301-313.
* Fantham, E. 2011. ‘A Controversial Life.’ In P. Asso (ed.): 3−20.
* Masters, J. 1992. ''Poetry and Civil War in Lucan’s Bellum Ciuile.'' Cambridge.
* Newlands, C. ed. 2011a. ''Statius, Silvae Book II.'' Cambridge.
** 2011b ‘The First Biography of Lucan: Statius’ ''Silvae'' 2.7.’ In P. Asso (ed.): 435−51.
* Quint, D. 1993. ''Epic and Empire.'' Princeton.
* Tucker, R. A. 1987. ‘Tacitus and the Death of Lucan.’ ''Latomus'' 46: 330−7.
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[[Category:Guides by Nora Goldschmidt]]

Guides

2015-11-15T14:36:59Z

NickFreer: /* Author */

Explore how the ancient poets of Greece and Rome were imagined, and re-imagined, through the ages. These short articles offer guidance on the sources assembled in our collections; sources that have not yet been uploaded appear in red.

This is how to [[Quoting guidelines | quote our guides]].

They can be accessed by title or author.

{| style="width: 100%" |
|style="width: 50%" |
=== Greek Poets ===

* [[Aeschylus: A Guide to Selected Sources]]
* [[Anacreon: A Guide to Selected Sources]]
* [[Archilochus: A Guide to Selected Sources]]
* [[Aristophanes: A Guide to Selected Sources]]
* [[Euripides: A Guide to Selected Sources]]
* [[Homer: A Guide to Selected Sources]]
* [[Homer: A Guide to Sculptural Types]]
* [[Hesiod: A Guide to Selected Sources]]
* [[Orpheus: A Guide to Selected Sources]]
* [[Pindar: A Guide to Selected Sources]]
* [[Sophocles: A Guide to Selected Sources]]

=== Latin Poets ===
* [[Catullus: A Guide to Selected Sources]]
* [[Gallus: A Guide to Selected Sources]]
* [[Horace: A Guide to Selected Sources]]
* [[Lucan: A Guide to Selected Sources]]
* [[Lucretius: A Guide to Selected Sources]]
* [[Ovid: A Guide to Selected Sources]]
* [[Plautus: A Guide to Selected Sources]]
* [[Terence: A Guide to Selected Sources]]
* [[Virgil: A Guide to Selected Sources]]

=== Essays ===

* [[The Perils of Autobiography]]
* [[Picturing Poets]]

=== Author ===

* [[:Category:Guides by Paola Bassino|Paola Bassino]]
* [[:Category:Guides by Nicholas Boterf and Erika Taretto|Nicholas Boterf and Erika Taretto]]
* [[:Category:Guides by Jane Burkowski|Jane Burkowski]]
* [[:Category:Guides by Nicholas Freer|Nicholas Freer]]
* [[:Category:Guides by Nora Goldschmidt|Nora Goldschmidt]]
* [[:Category:Guides by Andrew Laird|Andrew Laird]]
* [[:Category:Guides by Micah Young Myers|Micah Young Myers]]
* [[:Category:Guides by Verity Platt|Verity Platt]]
* [[:Category:Guides by William Wallis|William Wallis]]
* [[:Category:Guides by Sarah Burges Watson|Sarah Burges Watson]]
|}

[[Category:HideModDate]]

Guides

2015-11-15T14:36:16Z

NickFreer: /* Author */

Explore how the ancient poets of Greece and Rome were imagined, and re-imagined, through the ages. These short articles offer guidance on the sources assembled in our collections; sources that have not yet been uploaded appear in red.

This is how to [[Quoting guidelines | quote our guides]].

They can be accessed by title or author.

{| style="width: 100%" |
|style="width: 50%" |
=== Greek Poets ===

* [[Aeschylus: A Guide to Selected Sources]]
* [[Anacreon: A Guide to Selected Sources]]
* [[Archilochus: A Guide to Selected Sources]]
* [[Aristophanes: A Guide to Selected Sources]]
* [[Euripides: A Guide to Selected Sources]]
* [[Homer: A Guide to Selected Sources]]
* [[Homer: A Guide to Sculptural Types]]
* [[Hesiod: A Guide to Selected Sources]]
* [[Orpheus: A Guide to Selected Sources]]
* [[Pindar: A Guide to Selected Sources]]
* [[Sophocles: A Guide to Selected Sources]]

=== Latin Poets ===
* [[Catullus: A Guide to Selected Sources]]
* [[Gallus: A Guide to Selected Sources]]
* [[Horace: A Guide to Selected Sources]]
* [[Lucan: A Guide to Selected Sources]]
* [[Lucretius: A Guide to Selected Sources]]
* [[Ovid: A Guide to Selected Sources]]
* [[Plautus: A Guide to Selected Sources]]
* [[Terence: A Guide to Selected Sources]]
* [[Virgil: A Guide to Selected Sources]]

=== Essays ===

* [[The Perils of Autobiography]]
* [[Picturing Poets]]

=== Author ===

* [[:Category:Guides by Paola Bassino|Paola Bassino]]
* [[:Category:Guides by Nicholas Boterf and Erika Taretto|Nicholas Boterf and Erika Taretto]]
* [[:Category:Guides by Jane Burkowski|Jane Burkowski]]
* [[:Category:Guides by Nicholas Freer|Nicholas Freer]]
* [[:Category:Guides by Nora Goldschmidt|Nora Goldschmidt]]
* [[:Category:Guides by Andrew Laird|Andrew Laird]]
* [[:Category:Guides by Micah Myers|Micah Myers]]
* [[:Category:Guides by Verity Platt|Verity Platt]]
* [[:Category:Guides by William Wallis|William Wallis]]
* [[:Category:Guides by Sarah Burges Watson|Sarah Burges Watson]]
|}

[[Category:HideModDate]]

Guides

2015-11-12T00:18:41Z

NickFreer: /* Essays */

Explore how the ancient poets of Greece and Rome were imagined, and re-imagined, through the ages. These short articles offer guidance on the sources assembled in our collections; sources that have not yet been uploaded appear in red.

This is how to [[Quoting guidelines | quote our guides]].

They can be accessed by title or author.

{| style="width: 100%" |
|style="width: 50%" |
=== Greek Poets ===

* [[Aeschylus: A Guide to Selected Sources]]
* [[Anacreon: A Guide to Selected Sources]]
* [[Archilochus: A Guide to Selected Sources]]
* [[Aristophanes: A Guide to Selected Sources]]
* [[Euripides: A Guide to Selected Sources]]
* [[Homer: A Guide to Selected Sources]]
* [[Homer: A Guide to Sculptural Types]]
* [[Hesiod: A Guide to Selected Sources]]
* [[Orpheus: A Guide to Selected Sources]]
* [[Pindar: A Guide to Selected Sources]]
* [[Sophocles: A Guide to Selected Sources]]

=== Latin Poets ===
* [[Catullus: A Guide to Selected Sources]]
* [[Gallus: A Guide to Selected Sources]]
* [[Horace: A Guide to Selected Sources]]
* [[Lucan: A Guide to Selected Sources]]
* [[Lucretius: A Guide to Selected Sources]]
* [[Ovid: A Guide to Selected Sources]]
* [[Plautus: A Guide to Selected Sources]]
* [[Terence: A Guide to Selected Sources]]
* [[Virgil: A Guide to Selected Sources]]

=== Essays ===

* [[The Perils of Autobiography]]
* [[Picturing Poets]]

=== Author ===

* [[:Category:Guides by Paola Bassino|Paola Bassino]]
* [[:Category:Guides by Nicholas Boterf and Erika Taretto|Nicholas Boterf and Erika Taretto]]
* [[:Category:Guides by Jane Burkowski|Jane Burkowski]]
* [[:Category:Guides by Nicholas Freer|Nicholas Freer]]
* [[:Category:Guides by Nora Goldschmidt|Nora Goldschmidt]]
* [[:Category:Guides by Andrew Laird|Andrew Laird]]
* [[:Category:Guides by William Wallis|William Wallis]]
* [[:Category:Guides by Sarah Burges Watson|Sarah Burges Watson]]
|}

[[Category:HideModDate]]

Draft:Picturing Poets

2015-11-12T00:16:59Z

NickFreer: NickFreer moved page Draft:Picturing Poets to Picturing Poets

#REDIRECT [[Picturing Poets]]

Picturing Poets

2015-11-12T00:16:58Z

NickFreer: NickFreer moved page Draft:Picturing Poets to Picturing Poets

{{GuideHighlightBox}}
{{Author|Verity Platt}}
{{#howtoquote:}}
<div id="guide">
== Fantasy Faces ==

Like biographies, portraits cluster around many of the most famous poets of antiquity. They are found in multiple periods, contexts and media, from Classical Greek vase-paintings to Imperial Roman garden statuary (Zanker 1995; Schefold and Bayard 1997). Like biographies, portraits also have a complex relationship to the ‘truth’ of the figures they depict. Even the most candid snapshot of an individual is subject to matters of framing, medium and style, which create interpretative distance between the sitter and his or her image.

This is especially the case with ancient portraiture, which combined the rhetoric of visual ‘likeness’ with notions of subjectivity and psychology that are significantly different from our own (Dillon 2006). Add to this the fact that certain features of physical appearance (such as dress, posture, hairstyle and expression) were loaded with specific meanings according to period and context, and it becomes clear that rather than offering truthful representations of the ancient poets, portraits present us with elaborate visual exercises that might tell us far more about the process of cultural reception. This is particularly the case for posthumous portraits (as most of our examples are), often commissioned long after the lifetime of the poet. In the case of a figure like Homer, who has an especially rich portrait tradition (see [[Homer: A Guide to Sculptural Types]]), the fictionality of the portrait is so indisputable that it arguably invites its viewers to speculate precisely on the processes of reading and literary interpretation that gave form to his imagined ‘likeness’.

The question we should bring to ancient poet portraits, then, is not ‘Did s/he really look like this?’, but rather ‘Why was it important to ancient patrons, artists and viewers, that s/he looked like this? What does the commission and display of poet portraits tell us about the cultural values invested in specific genres of poetry? And why were these values explored and expressed through the visual representation of the author?’

== Making poetry visible ==
Take, for example, the portrait tradition associated with the tragedian Sophocles, represented by three portrait ‘types’, surviving in multiple copies. The best known of these, {{#lemma: a full-length marble statue in the Lateran Museum in Rome | [[File:Lateran Type Sophocles.jpg|200px|link=Lateran Type Sophocles]]}}, is often identified with a lost bronze original commissioned by the Athenian politician Lycurgus in the 330s BCE, which was displayed in the Theatre of Dionysus in Athens alongside portraits of Aeschylus and Euripides. Designed several decades after Sophocles’ death, the portrait cannot be a precise ‘likeness’; rather, its confident, open stance, carefully coiffed hair and beard, and draped ''himation'' (cloak) draws upon the iconography of the Classical Greek good citizen, aligning Sophocles’ contributions to Athenian literary heritage with the civic values of the democratic polis at a time when its political independence was threatened by Macedonia (Zanker 1995). The portrait’s style and appearance, then, are heavily influenced by the conventions of Classical honorific statuary and the public context of the original’s display: rather than giving access to Sophocles ‘himself’, they testify to an early moment in his literary reception, and the cultural value afforded to the genre of Athenian tragedy, in particular (Hanink 2014).

Might the Lateran Sophocles tell us anything more about the life, or the works, of the man, however? The vigorous maturity yet calm repose of his face might certainly suggest the serenity and insight associated with Sophocles in the biographical tradition (on which, see [[Sophocles: A Guide to Selected Sources]]), while his balanced features and lushly curling hair and beard might also evoke the beauty attributed to both the tragedian and his verse. At the same time, these details also evoke the iconography of deities such as Zeus and Asclepius: is this ‘divine’ quality an allusion to Sophocles’ celebrated religiosity, and even his epiphanic encounter with Asclepius as ‘Dexion’ (Connolly 1998)? Is it a reflection of the attention to ritual piety found in his tragedies? Or is it simply characteristic of the idealised mature male type found in Athenian honorific and funerary portraiture of the period?

The difficulty of assigning meaning to such iconographic and physiognomic details is characteristic of poet portraits in general, even when they seem more idiosyncratic (and thus ‘realistic’) in style. On the one hand, we should bear in mind the influence of period styles, iconographic conventions and contexts of display. On the other hand, we might also ask how renditions of the body (and especially the face) of the poet can make visible certain ideas about poetic genre, subject-matter and aesthetics. What does it tell us about attitudes to New Comedy, for example, that the comic poet Menander is depicted as urbane, clean-shaven and contemplative, and that he is one of antiquity’s most popular figures, surviving in at least 73 copies (Fittschen 1991; Nervegna 2013; see also [[Menander: A Guide to Selected Sources]])? The methodological challenges that poet portraits present – and the subjectivity of scholarly interpretation – are starkly demonstrated by the fact that until the recent uncovering of an inscription, the Menander type was associated with quite a different kind of author – the Roman poet Virgil!

== Encounter ==

Whatever the significance of specific visual details, however, it is clear that portraits offered their beholders a form of physical encounter with the poet himself, as made manifest in his or her image. Texts, of course, can only do this in a limited sense, by means of the materiality of the book: they primarily draw us in by generating an imaginative engagement through reading. Portraits remind us that poetry comes from living, thinking, performing bodies, which inhabited the same world as readers and viewers. In the context of the Theatre of Dionysus, the physical presence of Athens’ three great tragedians attested to their dynamic role as playwright-citizens (and the ongoing relevance of their works). Displayed on tombs, in hero shrines and temples, portraits attested to the poet’s ability both to mediate between the realms of the living, the dead and the divine, and to give others access to these realms, whether through his or her verse or the regular performance of funerary or votive rituals (Clay 2004). Encountered in Hellenistic and Roman porticoes, gardens and villa complexes, poet portraits took their place alongside those of other intellectuals and historical figures, prompting all manner of poetic, rhetorical and scholarly performances as part of a dynamic culture of learning (''paideia''). Significantly, all these forms of interaction require a process of ‘reading’ through the poet’s body, in a manner which is biographical (in that it accesses the poet’s work by means of his once living presence) and spatially and temporally specific, situating the viewer within a precise context of reception and encounter.

== Layered Receptions ==

The Roman context of many such encounters should also alert us to a crucial detail of ancient poet portraits (which also presents us with an enduring methodological stumbling block): for almost all surviving examples, including those of Greek poets, are not original commissions but Roman ‘copies’. The ‘Lateran Sophocles’, for example, is not the bronze statue ordered by Lycurgus in the 330s, but probably dates to the second century CE, and was found near Rome. Unlike the majority of surviving copies, it is a complete figure; {{#lemma: most Sophoclean portraits, however, are busts, | [[File:Type III Sophocles.jpg|200px|link=Type III Sophocles]]}} many of them originally mounted on herms. In analysing such objects, then, we must attend not only to the period styles, conventions and ideologies that shaped the form of their originals, but also to the processes of extraction, translation, emulation and variation that influenced their Roman renditions (Perry 2005; Marvin 2008). What does it mean, for example, to encounter a portrait of Sophocles (based on the Lateran type) in the form of a ‘double herm’, paired with the comic poet Aristophanes (dated c.130 CE)? Not only has the head been detached from its body (with all its associations of masculinity and citizenship) and depicted in a different medium; it has also been detached from its original display context (alongside fellow tragedians in the Athenian theatre), and paired with a figure exemplifying a different theatrical genre. As the supreme representatives of tragedy and old comedy, these portraits took their place within the imperial villa complex of Hadrian at Tivoli, where they were instead encountered as embodiments of Classicism, celebrated as canonical figures according to the philhellenic ''paideia'' that characterised the so-called ‘Second Sophistic’ (Macdonald and Pinto 1995; Goldhill 2002; Borg 2004). Although the iconographic details of the face may look back to late Classical posthumous models, then, the medium, form and context of the double herm attests to quite a different moment of cultural reception – and a very different mode of reading.

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== Bibliography ==

<div id="bibliography">
* Clay, D. 2004. ''Archilochos Heros: The Cult of Poets in the Greek Polis.'' Cambridge, Mass.
* Connolly, A. 1998. ‘Was Sophocles Heroised as Dexion?’ ''JHS'' 118: 1-21.
* Dillon, S. 2006. ''Ancient Greek Portrait Sculpture: Contexts, Subjects, and Styles.'' Cambridge.
* Fittschen, K. 1991. ‘Zur Rekonstruktion griechischer Dichterstatuen. 1. Die Statue des Menander.’ ''AM'' 106: 243-279.
* Goldhill, S. (ed.) 2001. ''Being Greek Under Rome: Cultural Identity, the Second Sophistic and the Development of Empire.'' Cambridge.
* Hanink, J. 2014. ''Lycurgan Athens and the Making of Classical Tragedy.'' Cambridge.
* Macdonald, W. L., and Pinto, J. A. 1995. ''Hadrian’s Villa and Its Legacy.'' New Haven and London.
* Marvin, M. 2008. ''The Language of the Muses: the Dialogue Between Greek and Roman Sculpture.'' Los Angeles.
* Nervegna, S. 2013. ''Menander in Antiquity: the Contexts of Reception.'' Cambridge.
* Perry, E. 2005. ''The Aesthetics of Emulation in the Visual Arts of Ancient Rome.'' Cambridge.
* Richter, G. M. A. 1965. ''Portraits of the Greeks'' (abridged and revised by R. R. R. Smith, 1984). London.
* Schefold, K. and Bayard, A.-C. 1997. ''Die Bildnisse der Antiken Dichter, Redner und Denker.'' Basel.
* Zanker, P. 1995. ''The Mask of Socrates: The Image of the Intellectual in Antiquity'' (Shapiro, A., trans.). Berkeley.
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[[Category:Guides by Verity Platt]]

Gallus: A Guide to Selected Sources

2015-09-29T16:59:11Z

NickFreer: /* Bibliography */

{{GuideHighlightBox}}
{{Author|Micah Young Myers}}
{{#howtoquote:}}
<div id="guide">
C. Cornelius Gallus (‘Gallus’) was a Roman poet of the first century BCE, known for his elegiac love poetry. {{#lemma: In the view of Ovid and Quintilian | [[Ovid, Sorrows 4.10.53-4|Ov. ''Tr.'' 4.10.53-4]] [[Quintilian, Institutes of Oratory 10.1.93|Quint. ''Inst.'' 10.1.93]]}}, he is the first in a dynasty of four major Latin love elegists (Hollis 2007: 229). There is debate about whether Gallus also wrote hexameter poetry (Ross 1975: 39-46; Zetzel 1977: 250-3). {{#lemma: Servius | [[Servius on Virgil, Eclogue 10.1|Serv. ''ad Ecl.'' 10.1]]}} reports that Gallus wrote four books of elegies, perhaps entitled ''Amores'' (‘Loves’). {{#lemma: One pentameter | [[Gallus fr. 1]]}} of Gallus’ poetry survives via the manuscript tradition; {{#lemma: fragments of twelve elegiac verses | [[Gallus fr. 2]]}} were discovered in 1978 on a papyrus at Qasr Ibrîm in Lower Nubia.

== Origins ==

No ancient biography of Gallus survives. According to {{#lemma: Jerome | [[Jerome, Chronicle, Olympiad 188.17 (27 BC)|Jer. ''Chron. ad'' Ol. 188.17]]}}, Gallus was born in 70 BCE and died in 27 BCE; {{#lemma: Dio | [[Dio, Roman History 53.23|Dio Cass. 53.23]]}} dates his death to 26 BCE. The evidence is insufficient for favouring one date over the other (Daly 1979: 292-4). {{#lemma: Suetonius | [[Suetonius, The Deified Augustus 66|Suet. ''Aug.'' 66]]}} reports that Gallus was from a modest background. {{#lemma: Jerome | [[Jerome, Chronicle, Olympiad 188.17 (27 BC)|Jer. Chron. ''ad Ol.'' 188.17]]}} describes him as ''Foroiuliensis'', i.e., from Forum Iulium, a place name that would have been anachronistic at the time of his birth, but later became the appellation of multiple towns. Gallus’ Forum Iulium is most often identified as Fréjus in Narbonese Gaul (Syme 1938: 39-40).

== Political Career, Disgrace, and Death ==

In addition to writing poetry, {{#lemma: Gallus had a military career that culminated in his appointment as the first equestrian prefect of Egypt in 30 BCE | [[CIL 3.14147|''CIL'' 3.14147]]}}. {{#lemma: By 27/6 BCE, however, he was disgraced and committed suicide | [[Jerome, Chronicle, Olympiad 188.17 (27 BC)|Jer. Chron. ad Ol. 188.17]][[Dio, Roman History 53.23|Dio Cass. 53.23]]}}. {{#lemma: Suetonius | [[Suetonius, The Deified Augustus 66| Suet. ''Aug.'' 66]]}} and {{#lemma: Dio | [[Dio, Roman History 53.23|Dio Cass. 53.23.6]]}} represent Gallus as corrupted by his success and his connections to Octavian/Augustus, who eventually withdrew his friendship, leading to Gallus’ downfall. Dio links Gallus’ disgrace to prideful behavior while Egyptian prefect. Similarly, {{#lemma: Ammianus | [[Ammianus 17.4.5|Amm. Marc. 17.4.5]]}}, as part of a larger illustration of the corrupting power of Egyptian riches, depicts Gallus as a greedy provincial administrator whose plundering of Egyptian Thebes causes his downfall. Ammianus’ and especially Dio’s reports continue to be widely cited, although {{#lemma: more chronologically proximate sources | [[Propertius 2.34.91-2|Prop. 2.34.91-2]][[Ovid, Loves 3.9.59-4|Ov. ''Am.'' 3.9.59-4]] [[Ovid, Sorrows 2.445-6|Ov. ''Tr.'' 2.445-6]][[Suetonius, The Deified Augustus 66|Suet. ''Aug.'' 66]][[Suetonius, On Teachers of Grammar and Rhetoric 16.1-2|Suet. ''De Gramm. et Rhet.'' 16.1-2]]}} are ambiguous about the causes of Gallus’ downfall, nor do they mention any misbehaviour in Egypt (for the stele at Philae bearing {{#lemma: ''CIL'' 3.141475 | [[CIL 3.141475|''CIL'' 3.141475]]}}, which has often been cited as confirmation of Dio’s narrative, see the recent reappraisal by Hoffmann, Minas-Nerpel, and Pfeiffer 2009).

== Gallus in Antiquity ==

The earliest reference to Gallus may come in {{#lemma: 45 BCE, when Cicero mentions ''cantores Euphorionis'' (‘singers of Euphorion’) | [[Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 3.45|Cic. ''Tusc.'' 3.45]]}}. Although Cicero does not specify to whom he refers, Gallus may be one of the ''cantores'' meant, {{#lemma: given his association with Euphorion elsewhere | [[Servius on Virgil, Eclogue 6.72|Serv. ''ad Ecl.'' 6.72]][[Servius on Virgil, Eclogue 10.1|Serv. ''ad Ecl.'' 10.1]] [[Ps.-Probus on Eclogue 10.50|Ps.-Prob. ''ad Ecl.'' 10.50]][[Diomedes GL 1.484.21|Diomedes, ''GL'' 1.484.21]]}} (Lightfoot 1999: 57-64; Hollis 2007: 230-4). {{#lemma: A letter from 43 BCE | [[Cicero, Letters to Friends 10.32.5|Cic. ''Ad Fam.'' 10.32.5]] [[cf. Cicero, Letters to Friends 10.31.6|cf. Cic. ''Ad Fam.'' 10.31.6]]}}, in which Asinius Pollio tells Cicero to ask Gallus for a copy of a ''praetexta'' (‘Roman historical drama’), indicates that Gallus was part of the elite Roman social and literary milieu of the late republic, as does the fact that {{#lemma: Parthenius dedicated his ''Erotika Pathemata'' (‘Sufferings in Love’) to him | [[Parthenius of Nicaea, Sufferings in Love (preface)|Parth. ''Amat. narr.'' praef.]]}}.

The fragments of Gallus’ poetry offer little in the way of autobiographical representation other than suggesting that {{#lemma: he depicts his poetic ''persona'' in the manner of the unhappy lover familiar from subsequent Latin love elegy | [[Gallus fr. 2|Gallus fr. 2]]}}. Gallus also appears in the poetry of his contemporaries. In {{#lemma: ''Ecl.'' 6 | [[Virgil, Eclogue 6.64-73|Verg. ''Ecl.'' 6.64-73]]}} Virgil presents Gallus as a poet initiated by the muses, evoking a tradition that stretches back to Hesiod (see [[Hesiod: A Guide to Selected Sources]]). In ''Ecl.'' 10 Virgil describes Gallus as a close friend who is a victim of unhappy love: his beloved Lycoris has accompanied another man on campaign; Gallus wanders through an Arcadian landscape, pondering pastoral life and pastoral poetry as a remedy for his broken heart. {{#lemma: Servius | [[Servius on Virgil, Eclogue 10.46|Serv. ''ad Ecl.'' 10.46]]}} reports that parts of ''Ecl.'' 10 are based on Gallus’ own poetry. Yet the extent to which Virgil alludes to Gallus’ poetry is much debated (Coleman 1977 ad loc.; Clausen 1995 ad loc.). The intimate friendship between Gallus and Virgil {{#lemma: is also reflected in Servius|[[Servius on Virgil, Eclogue 10.1|Serv. ''ad Ecl.'' 10.1]]}}; {{#lemma: Ps.-Probus| [[Ps.-Probus on Virgil's Eclogues (preface)|Ps.-Prob. ''ad Ecl.'' praef.]]}} even makes them schoolmates. Propertius addresses five poems in the ''Monobiblos'' to a Gallus or multiple Galluses (1.5, 10, 13, 20, 21). Whether any or all of Propertius’ “Gallus” elegies address his poetic predecessor Cornelius Gallus is also debated (e.g., Ross 1975: 82-4). If Propertius’ “Gallus” elegies do evoke Cornelius Gallus, he presents a multifaceted figure: a lover, friend, rival, and, most problematically, given that the ''Monobiblos’'' publication was prior to Gallus’ suicide, a dying soldier.

== Gallus After Antiquity ==

The combination of the loss of Gallus’ poetry along with his presence in the work of other Augustan poets makes him an intriguing figure for post-antique sources as well. In his play ''The Poetaster'' (1601), Ben Jonson depicts a Gallus who finds redemption rather than disgrace. Gallus is one of the ringleaders at a dinner party in which the guests dress as gods, an event that leads Augustus to exile Ovid during the course of the play. Despite Gallus’ role in the same dinner party and references to his time in Egypt (5.1.7-10), Jonson’s Augustus grants him clemency. Gallus then becomes aligned with the virtuous poets in the play, Virgil and Horace. In another reflection of early modern interest in Gallus, in 1590 Aldus Manutius the Younger published supposed newly discovered elegiacs by Gallus, which Manutius apparently composed himself; Scaliger soon detected the fraud (Riese 1869 on ''Anth. Lat.'' 914; Navarro López 2000).

Gallus is also the subject of Wilhelm Becker’s 1838 historical fiction, ''Gallus, oder römische Scenen auf der Zeit Augusts: zur genaueren Kenntnis des römischen Privatlebens''. Becker’s book, which was aimed at a popular audience and translated into English in 1844, presents Roman social life in a series of episodes organized around the fall of Gallus. For Becker, Gallus is a figure whose upward social mobility and talents in both the political and poetic spheres make him the ideal subject through which to depict the Augustan age, even if he feels obliged to admit that he may present Gallus’ character too positively (Becker 1866: xiv-xviii). But Becker’s Gallus is ultimately a tragic figure: the book is set after he returns to Rome from Egypt as disgrace looms. The final chapter depicts his funeral.

As Tom Stoppard’s ''The Invention of Love'' demonstrates, Gallus continues to represent a meaningful mix of poetic oblivion and poetic immortality in contemporary literature. Near the close of the play, Stoppard’s A. E. Housman remarks to his younger self that, although almost all of Gallus’ poetry is lost, thanks to his friend Virgil he is remembered even in twentieth century England (1997: 98):

<blockquote>
Virgil wrote a poem for him: how much immortality does a man need? –his own poetry, all but a line, as if he had never been, but his memory alive in a garden of an empire that disappeared fifteen hundred years ago.
</blockquote>

----

== Bibliography ==

<div id="bibliography">
* Becker, W. A. 1866. ''Gallus or Roman Scenes in the Time of Augustus'' (trans. Metcalfe, F., 2nd ed.). New York.
* Boucher, J.-P. 1966. ''Caius Cornélius Gallus.'' Paris.
* Cairns, F. 1983. ‘Propertius 1.4 and 1.5 and the ‘Gallus’ of the Monobiblos.’ ''PLLS'' 4: 61-103.
* Clausen, W. 1994. ''Virgil: Eclogues.'' Oxford.
* Coleman, R. 1977. ''Vergil: Eclogues.'' Cambridge.
* Daly, L. 1979. ‘The Gallus Affair and Augustus’ ''lex Iulia maiestatis'': A Study in Historical Chronology and Causality.’ ''SLLRH'' 1: 289-311.
* Faoro, D. 2007. ‘Sull’origo e sugli esordi politici di Cornelio Gallo.’ ''Forum Iulii'' 31: 27-38.
* Hoffmann, F., Minas-Nerpal, M., and Pfeiffer, S. 2009. ''Die dreisprachige Stele des C. Cornelius Gallus.'' Berlin.
* Hollis, A. 2007. ''Fragments of Roman Poetry c. 60 BC-AD 20.'' Oxford.
* Janan, M. 2001. ''The Politics of Desire: Propertius IV.'' Berkeley.
* Keefe, D. E. 1982. ‘Gallus and Euphorion.’ ''CQ'' 32: 237-8.
* Lightfoot, J. L. 1999. ''Parthenius of Nicaea: Extant Works Edited with Introduction and Commentary.'' Oxford.
* Manzoni, G. E. 1995. ''Foroiuliensis poeta: Vita e poesia de Cornelio Gallo.'' Milan.
* Navarro López, J. 2000. ‘‘Anthologia Latina’ 914 Riese: Galo falsificado.’ ''CR'' 1: 247-58.
* Pincus, M. 2004. ‘Propertius’s Gallus and the Erotics of Influence.’ ''Arethusa'' 37: 165-96.
* Riese, A. 1869. ''Anthologia Latina siue Poesis Latinae Supplementum.'' Vol. 1. Leipzig.
* Ross, D. 1975. ''Backgrounds to Augustan Poetry: Gallus, Elegy and Rome.'' Cambridge.
* Syme, R. 1938. ‘The Origin of Cornelius Gallus.’ ''CQ'' 32: 39-44.
* Zetzel, J. 1977. ‘Gallus, Elegy, and Ross.’ ''CP'' 72: 249-60.
</div>
</div>

<div id="notes"></div>

[[Category:Guides by Micah Young Myers]]

Gallus: A Guide to Selected Sources

2015-09-29T16:58:22Z

NickFreer: /* Bibliography */

{{GuideHighlightBox}}
{{Author|Micah Young Myers}}
{{#howtoquote:}}
<div id="guide">
C. Cornelius Gallus (‘Gallus’) was a Roman poet of the first century BCE, known for his elegiac love poetry. {{#lemma: In the view of Ovid and Quintilian | [[Ovid, Sorrows 4.10.53-4|Ov. ''Tr.'' 4.10.53-4]] [[Quintilian, Institutes of Oratory 10.1.93|Quint. ''Inst.'' 10.1.93]]}}, he is the first in a dynasty of four major Latin love elegists (Hollis 2007: 229). There is debate about whether Gallus also wrote hexameter poetry (Ross 1975: 39-46; Zetzel 1977: 250-3). {{#lemma: Servius | [[Servius on Virgil, Eclogue 10.1|Serv. ''ad Ecl.'' 10.1]]}} reports that Gallus wrote four books of elegies, perhaps entitled ''Amores'' (‘Loves’). {{#lemma: One pentameter | [[Gallus fr. 1]]}} of Gallus’ poetry survives via the manuscript tradition; {{#lemma: fragments of twelve elegiac verses | [[Gallus fr. 2]]}} were discovered in 1978 on a papyrus at Qasr Ibrîm in Lower Nubia.

== Origins ==

No ancient biography of Gallus survives. According to {{#lemma: Jerome | [[Jerome, Chronicle, Olympiad 188.17 (27 BC)|Jer. ''Chron. ad'' Ol. 188.17]]}}, Gallus was born in 70 BCE and died in 27 BCE; {{#lemma: Dio | [[Dio, Roman History 53.23|Dio Cass. 53.23]]}} dates his death to 26 BCE. The evidence is insufficient for favouring one date over the other (Daly 1979: 292-4). {{#lemma: Suetonius | [[Suetonius, The Deified Augustus 66|Suet. ''Aug.'' 66]]}} reports that Gallus was from a modest background. {{#lemma: Jerome | [[Jerome, Chronicle, Olympiad 188.17 (27 BC)|Jer. Chron. ''ad Ol.'' 188.17]]}} describes him as ''Foroiuliensis'', i.e., from Forum Iulium, a place name that would have been anachronistic at the time of his birth, but later became the appellation of multiple towns. Gallus’ Forum Iulium is most often identified as Fréjus in Narbonese Gaul (Syme 1938: 39-40).

== Political Career, Disgrace, and Death ==

In addition to writing poetry, {{#lemma: Gallus had a military career that culminated in his appointment as the first equestrian prefect of Egypt in 30 BCE | [[CIL 3.14147|''CIL'' 3.14147]]}}. {{#lemma: By 27/6 BCE, however, he was disgraced and committed suicide | [[Jerome, Chronicle, Olympiad 188.17 (27 BC)|Jer. Chron. ad Ol. 188.17]][[Dio, Roman History 53.23|Dio Cass. 53.23]]}}. {{#lemma: Suetonius | [[Suetonius, The Deified Augustus 66| Suet. ''Aug.'' 66]]}} and {{#lemma: Dio | [[Dio, Roman History 53.23|Dio Cass. 53.23.6]]}} represent Gallus as corrupted by his success and his connections to Octavian/Augustus, who eventually withdrew his friendship, leading to Gallus’ downfall. Dio links Gallus’ disgrace to prideful behavior while Egyptian prefect. Similarly, {{#lemma: Ammianus | [[Ammianus 17.4.5|Amm. Marc. 17.4.5]]}}, as part of a larger illustration of the corrupting power of Egyptian riches, depicts Gallus as a greedy provincial administrator whose plundering of Egyptian Thebes causes his downfall. Ammianus’ and especially Dio’s reports continue to be widely cited, although {{#lemma: more chronologically proximate sources | [[Propertius 2.34.91-2|Prop. 2.34.91-2]][[Ovid, Loves 3.9.59-4|Ov. ''Am.'' 3.9.59-4]] [[Ovid, Sorrows 2.445-6|Ov. ''Tr.'' 2.445-6]][[Suetonius, The Deified Augustus 66|Suet. ''Aug.'' 66]][[Suetonius, On Teachers of Grammar and Rhetoric 16.1-2|Suet. ''De Gramm. et Rhet.'' 16.1-2]]}} are ambiguous about the causes of Gallus’ downfall, nor do they mention any misbehaviour in Egypt (for the stele at Philae bearing {{#lemma: ''CIL'' 3.141475 | [[CIL 3.141475|''CIL'' 3.141475]]}}, which has often been cited as confirmation of Dio’s narrative, see the recent reappraisal by Hoffmann, Minas-Nerpel, and Pfeiffer 2009).

== Gallus in Antiquity ==

The earliest reference to Gallus may come in {{#lemma: 45 BCE, when Cicero mentions ''cantores Euphorionis'' (‘singers of Euphorion’) | [[Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 3.45|Cic. ''Tusc.'' 3.45]]}}. Although Cicero does not specify to whom he refers, Gallus may be one of the ''cantores'' meant, {{#lemma: given his association with Euphorion elsewhere | [[Servius on Virgil, Eclogue 6.72|Serv. ''ad Ecl.'' 6.72]][[Servius on Virgil, Eclogue 10.1|Serv. ''ad Ecl.'' 10.1]] [[Ps.-Probus on Eclogue 10.50|Ps.-Prob. ''ad Ecl.'' 10.50]][[Diomedes GL 1.484.21|Diomedes, ''GL'' 1.484.21]]}} (Lightfoot 1999: 57-64; Hollis 2007: 230-4). {{#lemma: A letter from 43 BCE | [[Cicero, Letters to Friends 10.32.5|Cic. ''Ad Fam.'' 10.32.5]] [[cf. Cicero, Letters to Friends 10.31.6|cf. Cic. ''Ad Fam.'' 10.31.6]]}}, in which Asinius Pollio tells Cicero to ask Gallus for a copy of a ''praetexta'' (‘Roman historical drama’), indicates that Gallus was part of the elite Roman social and literary milieu of the late republic, as does the fact that {{#lemma: Parthenius dedicated his ''Erotika Pathemata'' (‘Sufferings in Love’) to him | [[Parthenius of Nicaea, Sufferings in Love (preface)|Parth. ''Amat. narr.'' praef.]]}}.

The fragments of Gallus’ poetry offer little in the way of autobiographical representation other than suggesting that {{#lemma: he depicts his poetic ''persona'' in the manner of the unhappy lover familiar from subsequent Latin love elegy | [[Gallus fr. 2|Gallus fr. 2]]}}. Gallus also appears in the poetry of his contemporaries. In {{#lemma: ''Ecl.'' 6 | [[Virgil, Eclogue 6.64-73|Verg. ''Ecl.'' 6.64-73]]}} Virgil presents Gallus as a poet initiated by the muses, evoking a tradition that stretches back to Hesiod (see [[Hesiod: A Guide to Selected Sources]]). In ''Ecl.'' 10 Virgil describes Gallus as a close friend who is a victim of unhappy love: his beloved Lycoris has accompanied another man on campaign; Gallus wanders through an Arcadian landscape, pondering pastoral life and pastoral poetry as a remedy for his broken heart. {{#lemma: Servius | [[Servius on Virgil, Eclogue 10.46|Serv. ''ad Ecl.'' 10.46]]}} reports that parts of ''Ecl.'' 10 are based on Gallus’ own poetry. Yet the extent to which Virgil alludes to Gallus’ poetry is much debated (Coleman 1977 ad loc.; Clausen 1995 ad loc.). The intimate friendship between Gallus and Virgil {{#lemma: is also reflected in Servius|[[Servius on Virgil, Eclogue 10.1|Serv. ''ad Ecl.'' 10.1]]}}; {{#lemma: Ps.-Probus| [[Ps.-Probus on Virgil's Eclogues (preface)|Ps.-Prob. ''ad Ecl.'' praef.]]}} even makes them schoolmates. Propertius addresses five poems in the ''Monobiblos'' to a Gallus or multiple Galluses (1.5, 10, 13, 20, 21). Whether any or all of Propertius’ “Gallus” elegies address his poetic predecessor Cornelius Gallus is also debated (e.g., Ross 1975: 82-4). If Propertius’ “Gallus” elegies do evoke Cornelius Gallus, he presents a multifaceted figure: a lover, friend, rival, and, most problematically, given that the ''Monobiblos’'' publication was prior to Gallus’ suicide, a dying soldier.

== Gallus After Antiquity ==

The combination of the loss of Gallus’ poetry along with his presence in the work of other Augustan poets makes him an intriguing figure for post-antique sources as well. In his play ''The Poetaster'' (1601), Ben Jonson depicts a Gallus who finds redemption rather than disgrace. Gallus is one of the ringleaders at a dinner party in which the guests dress as gods, an event that leads Augustus to exile Ovid during the course of the play. Despite Gallus’ role in the same dinner party and references to his time in Egypt (5.1.7-10), Jonson’s Augustus grants him clemency. Gallus then becomes aligned with the virtuous poets in the play, Virgil and Horace. In another reflection of early modern interest in Gallus, in 1590 Aldus Manutius the Younger published supposed newly discovered elegiacs by Gallus, which Manutius apparently composed himself; Scaliger soon detected the fraud (Riese 1869 on ''Anth. Lat.'' 914; Navarro López 2000).

Gallus is also the subject of Wilhelm Becker’s 1838 historical fiction, ''Gallus, oder römische Scenen auf der Zeit Augusts: zur genaueren Kenntnis des römischen Privatlebens''. Becker’s book, which was aimed at a popular audience and translated into English in 1844, presents Roman social life in a series of episodes organized around the fall of Gallus. For Becker, Gallus is a figure whose upward social mobility and talents in both the political and poetic spheres make him the ideal subject through which to depict the Augustan age, even if he feels obliged to admit that he may present Gallus’ character too positively (Becker 1866: xiv-xviii). But Becker’s Gallus is ultimately a tragic figure: the book is set after he returns to Rome from Egypt as disgrace looms. The final chapter depicts his funeral.

As Tom Stoppard’s ''The Invention of Love'' demonstrates, Gallus continues to represent a meaningful mix of poetic oblivion and poetic immortality in contemporary literature. Near the close of the play, Stoppard’s A. E. Housman remarks to his younger self that, although almost all of Gallus’ poetry is lost, thanks to his friend Virgil he is remembered even in twentieth century England (1997: 98):

<blockquote>
Virgil wrote a poem for him: how much immortality does a man need? –his own poetry, all but a line, as if he had never been, but his memory alive in a garden of an empire that disappeared fifteen hundred years ago.
</blockquote>

----

== Bibliography ==

<div id="bibliography">
* Becker, W. A. 1866. ''Gallus or Roman Scenes in the Time of Augustus'' (trans. Metcalfe, F., 2nd ed.). New York.
* Boucher, J.-P. 1966. ''Caius Cornélius Gallus.'' Paris.
* Cairns, F. 1983. ‘Propertius 1.4 and 1.5 and the ‘Gallus’ of the Monobiblos.’ ''PLLS'' 4: 61-103.
* Clausen, W. 1994. ''Virgil: Eclogues.'' Oxford.
* Coleman, R. 1977. ''Vergil: Eclogues.'' Cambridge.
* Daly, L. 1979. ‘The Gallus Affair and Augustus’ ''lex Iulia maiestatis'': A Study in Historical Chronology and Causality.’ ''Studies in Latin Literature and Roman History'' 1: 289-311.
* Faoro, D. 2007. ‘Sull’origo e sugli esordi politici di Cornelio Gallo.’ ''Forum Iulii'' 31: 27-38.
* Hoffmann, F., Minas-Nerpal, M., and Pfeiffer, S. 2009. ''Die dreisprachige Stele des C. Cornelius Gallus.'' Berlin.
* Hollis, A. 2007. ''Fragments of Roman Poetry c. 60 BC-AD 20.'' Oxford.
* Janan, M. 2001. ''The Politics of Desire: Propertius IV.'' Berkeley.
* Keefe, D. E. 1982. ‘Gallus and Euphorion.’ ''CQ'' 32: 237-8.
* Lightfoot, J. L. 1999. ''Parthenius of Nicaea: Extant Works Edited with Introduction and Commentary.'' Oxford.
* Manzoni, G. E. 1995. ''Foroiuliensis poeta: Vita e poesia de Cornelio Gallo.'' Milan.
* Navarro López, J. 2000. ‘‘Anthologia Latina’ 914 Riese: Galo falsificado.’ ''CR'' 1: 247-58.
* Pincus, M. 2004. ‘Propertius’s Gallus and the Erotics of Influence.’ ''Arethusa'' 37: 165-96.
* Riese, A. 1869. ''Anthologia Latina siue Poesis Latinae Supplementum.'' Vol. 1. Leipzig.
* Ross, D. 1975. ''Backgrounds to Augustan Poetry: Gallus, Elegy and Rome.'' Cambridge.
* Syme, R. 1938. ‘The Origin of Cornelius Gallus.’ ''CQ'' 32: 39-44.
* Zetzel, J. 1977. ‘Gallus, Elegy, and Ross.’ ''CP'' 72: 249-60.
</div>
</div>

<div id="notes"></div>

[[Category:Guides by Micah Young Myers]]

Embodiments of Literature

2015-09-29T16:58:12Z

NickFreer: /* Bibliography */

{{GuideHighlightBox}}
{{Author|Barbara Graziosi}}
{{#howtoquote:}}
<div id="guide">
Literature is often presented as something ethereal and intangible. It concerns the life of the mind, unconstrained by the material realities of the body. It does not depend on the senses, particularly: we can appreciate Homer by listening, reading, or touching Braille. These different sensory approaches affect our experience, of course, but we are still recognisably confronted with the same text. ''Logos'', language, and literature pertain to the mind rather than the body (and this explains, in part, why literature is placed above material culture in traditional hierarchies). There are, however, ways of thinking about literature as an embodied experience. Gorgias suggests one (''Encomium of Helen'' 7-9):

<blockquote>εἰ δὲ βίαι ἡρπάσθη καὶ ἀνόμως ἐβιάσθη καὶ ἀδίκως ὑβρίσθη, δῆλον ὅτι ὁ ἁρπάσας ἢ ὑβρίσας ἠδίκησεν, ἡ δὲ ἁρπασθεῖσα ἢ ὑβρισθεῖσα ἐδυστύχησεν. [...] (8) εἰ δὲ λόγος ὁ πείσας καὶ τὴν ψυχὴν ἀπατήσας, οὐδὲ πρὸς τοῦτο χαλεπὸν ἀπολογήσασθαι καὶ τὴν αἰτίαν ἀπολύσασθαι ὧδε. λόγος δυνάστης μέγας ἐστίν, ὃς σμικροτάτωι σώματι καὶ ἀφανεστάτωι θειότατα ἔργα ἀποτελεῖ· δύναται γὰρ καὶ φόβον παῦσαι καὶ λύπην ἀφελεῖν καὶ χαρὰν ἐνεργάσασθαι καὶ ἔλεον ἐπαυξῆσαι. ταῦτα δὲ ὡς οὕτως ἔχει δείξω· (9) δεῖ δὲ καὶ δόξηι δεῖξαι τοῖς ἀκούουσι· τὴν ποίησιν ἅπασαν καὶ νομίζω καὶ ὀνομάζω λόγον ἔχοντα μέτρον· ἧς τοὺς ἀκούοντας εἰσῆλθε καὶ φρίκη περίφοβος καὶ ἔλεος πολύδακρυς καὶ πόθος φιλοπενθής, ἐπ' ἀλλοτρίων τε πραγμάτων καὶ σωμάτων εὐτυχίαις καὶ δυσπραγίαις ἴδιόν τι πάθημα διὰ τῶν λόγων ἔπαθεν ἡ ψυχή. </blockquote>

<blockquote>If she was seized by force, unlawfully constrained, and unjustly abused, it is clear that the man who seized or abused did wrong, and that the woman who was seized or abused suffered misfortune. […] (8) But if speech persuaded and deceived her soul, it is also not difficult to offer a defence for that and to dismiss the accusation in the following way. Speech is a powerful lord, which by the smallest and most invisible body achieves the most divine works; for it can stop fear, remove pain, produce joy, and increase pity. And I shall prove that this is the case; (9) and I must prove it to my listeners by reference to opinion as well. I consider and define all poetry as speech with metre. A fearful shudder, tearful pity, and grievous longing come upon those who hear it, and on account of words the soul suffers its own affliction at the successes and misfortunes of others’ affairs and bodies.</blockquote>

The corporeal nature of this passage is difficult to capture, in part because of the modern divide between mind and body: φρίκη περίφοβος, for example, becomes ‘a fearful fright’ in MacDowell’s standard translation, when the Greek describes a shudder. More strikingly, not once does MacDowell translate Gorgias’ σῶμα as ‘body’, even though it is the key term in our passage (see MacDowell 1982: 25). The small and invisible body of ''logos'' has very real power, he insists. The proof is its effect on the body of those who listen. Gorgias uses the most physical metaphor – rape – to illustrate what words can do. And yet even he must admit that the σῶμα of words cannot be apprehended directly – it cannot be touched or seen, even if its effects are felt in the body.

This contribution explores the material reception of literature, by considering portraits and places associated with ancient literary figures. I return at the end to Gorgias’ challenging proposition: that we feel literature in our body.

==Portraits==

The creation of the author is an aspect of the reception of his or her work. Just as the Lives of the ancient poets are largely based on their works, so are their portraits. So, for example, Demodocus is interpreted as an autobiographical character, and Homer is depicted as a blind bard. Or again, Sappho describes how painful it is when a girl leaves her circle, and an important (if neglected) vase depicts this moment of separation:

<center>[[File: Kunstsammlungen_der_Ruhr-Universität,_Bochum.png‎|link=Kunstsammlungen der Ruhr-Universität, Bochum]]</center>
<blockquote>''Red-figure krater, Tithonus painter, ca 480 BCE: the figure on the left is named ‘Sappho’, the figure on the right is labelled ‘the girl’.''
''Kunstsammlungen der Ruhr-Universität, Bochum.''</blockquote>

Sappho and ‘the girl’ (ἡ παῖς: a designation that could apply to several of her girls) are depicted walking in opposite directions, but looking back at each other. As an object, the krater is as unsettling as Sappho’s poems of separation. Many vases play on the theme of the amorous chase: because they are round, whoever chases will in turn be chased, in an exhilarating spiral, in which the viewer can take part by turning the vase round and round. This vase is more awkward to view and handle: the body goes one way, the gaze, the longing, (and, we are reminded, the poetry) quite another.

There is some fun to be had when looking at material depictions of authors, and reading them as receptions of their work. The development of portrait types, for example, is influenced by literary canons, and simultaneously contributes to creating them. Juxtaposition with (and typological similarity to) other categories of portrait situates ancient authors within specific cultural and intellectual milieux: it transforms literary traditions into visual experiences and reifies them in the form of material objects. Portraits allow patrons to ‘possess’ specific literary traditions, genres or poems, and simultaneously generate an intellectual process by which the viewer is asked to ‘read’ the author’s work through the interpretation of specific details of physiognomy, expression, gesture, and placement in relation to other figures. Reading the image and reading the text become connected enterprises (Zanker 1995).

Several ancient sources comment on the relationship between portrait and ''oeuvre''. Theocritus, for example, writes an epigram about a statue of Anacreon placed in the poet’s native island of Teos:

{|
|style="width: 50%;vertical-align:top;"|
Θᾶσαι τὸν ἀνδριάντα τοῦτον, ὦ ξένε,<br />
     σπουδᾷ, καὶ λέγ’, ἐπὴν ἐς οἶκον ἔνθῃς·<br />
“Ἀνακρέοντος εἰκόν’ εἶδον ἐν Τέωι,<br />
     τῶν πρόσθ’ εἴ τι περισσὸν ᾠδοποιῶν.”<br />
προσθεὶς δὲ χὤτι τοῖς νέοισιν ἅδετο,<br />
     ἐρεῖς ἀτρεκέως ὅλον τὸν ἄνδρα.<br />
|style="width: 50%;vertical-align:top;"|
Look well upon this statue, stranger, and say, when you get home, “I saw the likeness of Anacreon in Teos, one of the greatest among the poets of old.” Add to this that he loved young men, and you will have accurately described the whole man.
|}

Here the whole legacy of Anacreon is reduced to a statue (whether real or made up in poetry) and a sentence: ‘he enjoyed young boys’. There is apparently no need to read Anacreon’s work: the stranger is simply invited to visit Anacreon’s place of birth, look at the statue, and remember Theocritus’ own pithy statement. Readers will thus know ‘the whole man’ by a very quick and simple process. Unsurprisingly, there has been some debate about the word ὅλον. Some readers take it at face value (Rossi 2001: 284-5), others point out that the mini biography provided by Theocritus cannot be taken to represent all of Anacreon’s ''oeuvre'', just as he fails to provide a satisfying ekphrasis of the statue (Bing 1988: 121). This seems true – and I add that Theocritus himself, as a poet, cannot possibly want to be reduced to a portrait and a sentence. His in-your-face Doric θᾶσαι at the beginning of this epigram (which is written in honour of an Ionian poet, after all, and purportedly placed on an Ionian island!) inscribes Theocritus’ own place of birth, as well as his voice and genre, in the composition, suggesting a more broad-ranging literary and personal engagement than his summary biography. Unlike the statue, literature is never confined to one place. As Pindar taught us ({{#lemma: ''Nemean'' 5.1-3 | [[Pindar, Nemean 5.1-3|Pind. ''N.'' 5.1-3]]}}), it can travel on every ship and skiff.

Ovid has equally thought-provoking things to say about portraits and places (''Sorrows'' 1.7.1-14):

{|
|style="width: 50%;vertical-align:top;"|
Siquis habes nostris similes in imagine uultus,<br />
     deme meis hederas, Bacchica serta, comis.<br />
ista decent laetos felicia signa poetas:<br />
     temporibus non est apta corona meis.<br />
hoc tibi dissimula, senti tamen, optime, dici,<br />
     in digito qui me fersque refersque tuo,<br />
effigiemque meam fuluo complexus in auro<br />
     cara relegati, quae potes, ora uides.<br />
quae quotiens spectas, subeat tibi dicere forsan<br />
     "quam procul a nobis Naso sodalis abest!"<br />
grata tua est pietas, sed carmina maior imago<br />
     sunt mea, quae mando qualiacumque legas,<br />
carmina mutatas hominum dicentia formas,<br />
     infelix domini quod fuga rupit opus.<br />
|style="width: 50%;vertical-align:top;"|
Whoever has a portrait of my face, remove the ivy, garland of Bacchus, from my hair. Such signs of fortune suit happy poets: a wreath is not fitting for my temples. Conceal – but know – that I say this to you, best friend, who carry me here and there on your finger, and who, clasping my image on the yellow gold, see the dear face, all that you can, of an exile. Whenever you look at it, perhaps you will be prompted to say, “How far away is our friend Ovid!” Your love is a comfort, but my verses are a better portrait, and I urge you to read them such as they are, verses that tell of human transformations, the work broken off by the unhappy flight of its author.
|}

Commentators move swiftly past the first lines – which they find embarassing, both to Ovid’s fan and to Ovid himself, who imagines this person. They move straight beyond the longing for physical contact to line 11, and discuss what Ovid has to say about the ''Metamorphoses'': the poem speaks of altered forms, and Ovid himself is an altered man. I suggest we should pay a bit more attention to the bust crowned with ivy, and the signet ring – not just as objects, but as objects that inspire physical responses to poetry. Removing the ivy means not just recognising Ovid’s unhappiness, but also his new work, the ''Sorrows'', and ensuring that the author continues to remain an accurate ''imago'' of his oeuvre. As for the signet ring, new work by Chris Faraone on amulets may, in due course, provide an important interpretative framework. There is a well attested ritual whereby people who want to communicate with a god wear a signet ring with the deity’s image on it. Magical texts recommend wearing the image turned inwards, on the side of the palm, and sleeping with one ear next to it, in the hope that the god might send a message in a dream. This ritual of private communication may be relevant here. The addressee who loves Ovid needs to understand and yet dissimulate what the poet tells him (line 5, which is textually uncertain). There is the conceit of personal contact, even though Ovid does not even know who he may be addressing: ''siquis''. This person should not seek the poet just through portraits, however, but rather by finding new meaning in the ''Metamorphoses''. This meaning is personal – not just for the poet, and his changed ''oeuvre'' and life – but personal to the reader, who needs to guard his interpretation as closely as he keeps his signet ring.

Admiration for literature repeatedly finds expression in the desire to encounter the author face-to-face. Pliny comments, “Our longings give birth to likenesses that have not been passed down to us, as in the case of Homer” (''Natural History'' 35.2: ''pariunt desideria non traditos uultus, sicut in Homero euenit''). Petrarch laments the fact that, because he lacks a proper translation of the ''Iliad'', he can only catch glimpses of Homer’s face ({{#lemma: ''Familiar Letters'' 24.12.2 | [[Petrarch, Familiar Letters 24.12.2|Petr. ''Fam.'' 24.12.2]]}}). In a different letter, he writes of embracing a copy of the ''Iliad'', as if he were actually touching his beloved friend Homer ({{#lemma: ''Familiar Letters'' 18.2.6 | [[Petrarch, Familiar Letters 18.2.6|Petr. ''Fam.'' 18.2.6]]}}). Elsewhere still, he admits that being close to an author has nothing to do with material objects. It is a personal connection, as if with a living person ‘made of flesh’, a connection that provides Petrarch with a suitable interlocutor and distances him from the ''uulgus'' ({{#lemma: ''Familiar Letters'' 8.3.6 | [[Petrarch, Familiar Letters 8.3.6|Petr. ''Fam.'' 8.3.6]]}}).

Because the process of imagining the face and the body of the author involves a private and personal act of reading, real portraits can come into conflict with the imagined face. Libanius ({{#lemma: ''Letters'' 143.3 | [[Libanius, Letters 143.3|Lib. ''Ep.'' 143.3]]}}), for example, is desperate to obtain a portrait of Aristides, but when he actually receives one he refuses to accept that it is a true likeness (Petsalis-Diomidis 2006). Surely, he argues, Aristides could not have looked so healthy, or have such luscious hair! Eventually, on receiving a second portrait that agrees with the first, Libanius accepts that the images must reflect how Aristides actually looked. But he is still puzzled by the hair, and demands to know how it could have been so abundant. He also wants a full portrait ({{#lemma: ''Letters'' 143.5 | [[Libanius, Letters 143.5|Lib. ''Ep.'' 143.5]]}}).

There are many other examples of desire for ancient authors (Güthenke forthcoming) and of disappointment with their portraits. John Cosin (1594–1672), Prince Bishop of Durham, ordered that his library on Palace Green be decorated with portraits of ancient philosophers and fathers of the Church, and insisted that that they be based on genuine ancient artefacts. When he actually saw them, however, he was appalled: ‘They look like Saracens!’ he declared in one of his furious letters to the artist.

It seems, then, that portraits become sites of ''competitive'' reception, where different visions of ancient authors come to clash. The cognitive process by which the act of reading results in a private image of the author is destabilised by the objectivity of actual portraits.

==Places==

Because bodies are located in space and time, embodied responses to literature clash with the intangible ubiquitousness of words. The krater depicting Sappho makes the point: bodies go their separate ways, but longing and poetry still connect them. Theocritus objects to ancient literary tourism: the Hellenistic desire to celebrate the poets in the places where they were born, through cultic statues and monuments (Clay 2004), is exposed as inadequate: he tells us to look at an Ionian poet, on an Ionian island, by addressing us in his own native Doric, θᾶσαι, and thus making us think of Sicily instead. Ovid speaks of the physical intimacy established by wearing a signet ring, and then suggests that the act of reading the ''Metamorphoses'' is equally close and personal. Petrarch embraces a Greek manuscript of Homer’s ''Iliad'', but then blames Homer for ‘having forgotten his Latin’ – i.e. for not having inspired adequate Latin translations. The problem is not just linguistic, for Petrarch: he resents Homer’s cultural and geographical distance, in an attitude of suspicion and superiority towards Byzantine culture (Dionisotti 1967). Bishop Cosin thinks that the ancient philosophers are like him, and is dismayed to find out that they look like Saracens.

The problem of place and possession resonates through the history of classical culture, of course. We are all familiar with the distaste and disorientation of northern Europeans, when confronted with modern southerners living in ancient landscapes. When Freud visits the acropolis, physical closeness to the ancient world inspires a reflection on cultural distance, not least from his own father (Leonard forthcoming). The Sicilian poet Salvatore Quasimodo (Nobel laureate 1962) tries to capture his physical closeness to Aeschylus in an invective against an unnamed poet of the north:

{|style="width:100%"
|style="width: 50%;vertical-align:top;"|
''A un poeta nemico''<br />
Sulla sabbia di Gela colore della paglia<br />
mi stendevo fanciullo in riva al mare<br />
antico di Grecia con molti sogni nei pugni<br />
stretti nel petto. Là Eschilo esule<br />
misurò versi e passi sconsolati,<br />
in quel golfo arso l’aquila lo vide<br />
e fu l’ultimo giorno. Uomo del Nord, che mi vuoi <br />
minimo o morto per tua pace, spera:<br />
la madre di mio padre avrà cent’anni<br />
a nuova primavera. Spera: che io domani<br />
non giochi col tuo cranio giallo per le piogge.<br />
|style="width: 50%;vertical-align:top;"|
''To a Hostile Poet''<br />
On the straw-coloured sands of Gela<br />
as a child I would lie by the ancient<br />
Grecian sea, many dreams in my breast<br />
and my clenched fists. Exiled Aeschylus there<br />
scanned over his verses and lines forlorn<br />
in the burning gulf where the eagle spied him<br />
that final day. Man of the North who wish me<br />
nothing, or dead, hope for your own peace:<br />
next spring my father’s mother will be<br />
a hundred years old. Hope that tomorrow I<br />
shall not be playing with your rain-yellowed skull.<br />
|}

Quasimodo alludes to ancient traditions about Aeschylus’ death, according to which a flying eagle saw the bald head of the poet, mistook it for a rock, and dropped a tortoise he was holding in his talons, in order to crack open its shell and eat it (the account may derive from an omen described in some lost play of Aeschylus). Quasimodo leaves out the colourful detail of the tortoise falling from the sky, because it does not fit the starkness of his poem. What he offers instead is the image of a forlorn figure in a vast landscape – a figure that is simultaneously Aeschylus and Quasimodo. It is only halfway through the epigram that the ancient and the modern poet part company. Unlike Aeschylus, Quasimodo is still alive, and does not plan to die any time soon: his grandmother has excellent genes, after all. It is his rival from the north who will go first, as rain falls on his yellowed skull. Quasimodo is still at play on the golden sands of Gela at the end of his poem. The suggestion is that the Sicilian Greek lives like Aeschylus – feels the ancient sand and sea through his own living body – whereas his northern rival can at best die like the ancient poet, with something nasty (rain or tortoise) falling on his head. Here too, competitive literary receptions are negotiated through embodied experience.

What portraits and places bring to the fore are intensely personal responses to ancient literature. Scholars insist, quite rightly, that authorial representations depend on two factors: an interpretation of the author’s ''oeuvre'', and the conventions of biography, portraiture, and other relevant genres. To these two, I would add a third element that determines how ancient authors are represented: the lived, embodied experience of their readers and admirers.

----

== Bibliography ==

<div id="bibliography">

* Bing, P. 1988. ‘Theocritus’ Epigrams on the Statues of Ancient Poets.’ ''A&A'' 34.2: 117-123.
* Clay, D. 2004. ''Archilochos Heros: The Cult of Poets in the Greek Polis''. Cambridge, MA.
* Dionisotti, C. 1967. ''Geografia e storia della letteratura italiana''. Turin.
* Güthenke, C. (forthcoming). ‘“Lives” as Parameter. The Privileging of Ancient Lives as a Category of Research around 1900.’ In R. Fletcher and J. Hanink (eds.), ''Creative Lives. New Approaches to Ancient Intellectual Biography''. Cambridge.
* Leonard, M. (forthcoming). ‘Freud and the Biography of Antiquity.’ In R. Fletcher and J. Hanink (eds.), ''Creative Lives. New Approaches to Ancient Intellectual Biography.'' Cambridge.
* MacDowell , D. M. (ed.) 1982. ''Gorgias. Encomium of Helen''. Bristol.
* Petsalis-Diomidis, A. 2006. ‘Sacred Writing, Sacred Reading: The Function of Aelius Aristides’ Self-Presentation as Author in the ''Sacred Tales''.’ In J. Mossman and B. McGing (eds.), ''The Limits of Ancient Biography''. Swansea: 193-211.
* Rossi, L. 2001. ''The Epigrams Ascribed to Theocritus: A Method of Approach''. Leuven.
* Zanker, P. 1995. ''The Mask of Socrates: The Image of the Intellectual in Antiquity.'' Berkeley and Los Angeles.

</div>
<div id="notes"></div>

[[Category:Guides by Barbara Graziosi]]

Embodiments of Literature

2015-09-29T16:55:39Z

NickFreer:

{{GuideHighlightBox}}
{{Author|Barbara Graziosi}}
{{#howtoquote:}}
<div id="guide">
Literature is often presented as something ethereal and intangible. It concerns the life of the mind, unconstrained by the material realities of the body. It does not depend on the senses, particularly: we can appreciate Homer by listening, reading, or touching Braille. These different sensory approaches affect our experience, of course, but we are still recognisably confronted with the same text. ''Logos'', language, and literature pertain to the mind rather than the body (and this explains, in part, why literature is placed above material culture in traditional hierarchies). There are, however, ways of thinking about literature as an embodied experience. Gorgias suggests one (''Encomium of Helen'' 7-9):

<blockquote>εἰ δὲ βίαι ἡρπάσθη καὶ ἀνόμως ἐβιάσθη καὶ ἀδίκως ὑβρίσθη, δῆλον ὅτι ὁ ἁρπάσας ἢ ὑβρίσας ἠδίκησεν, ἡ δὲ ἁρπασθεῖσα ἢ ὑβρισθεῖσα ἐδυστύχησεν. [...] (8) εἰ δὲ λόγος ὁ πείσας καὶ τὴν ψυχὴν ἀπατήσας, οὐδὲ πρὸς τοῦτο χαλεπὸν ἀπολογήσασθαι καὶ τὴν αἰτίαν ἀπολύσασθαι ὧδε. λόγος δυνάστης μέγας ἐστίν, ὃς σμικροτάτωι σώματι καὶ ἀφανεστάτωι θειότατα ἔργα ἀποτελεῖ· δύναται γὰρ καὶ φόβον παῦσαι καὶ λύπην ἀφελεῖν καὶ χαρὰν ἐνεργάσασθαι καὶ ἔλεον ἐπαυξῆσαι. ταῦτα δὲ ὡς οὕτως ἔχει δείξω· (9) δεῖ δὲ καὶ δόξηι δεῖξαι τοῖς ἀκούουσι· τὴν ποίησιν ἅπασαν καὶ νομίζω καὶ ὀνομάζω λόγον ἔχοντα μέτρον· ἧς τοὺς ἀκούοντας εἰσῆλθε καὶ φρίκη περίφοβος καὶ ἔλεος πολύδακρυς καὶ πόθος φιλοπενθής, ἐπ' ἀλλοτρίων τε πραγμάτων καὶ σωμάτων εὐτυχίαις καὶ δυσπραγίαις ἴδιόν τι πάθημα διὰ τῶν λόγων ἔπαθεν ἡ ψυχή. </blockquote>

<blockquote>If she was seized by force, unlawfully constrained, and unjustly abused, it is clear that the man who seized or abused did wrong, and that the woman who was seized or abused suffered misfortune. […] (8) But if speech persuaded and deceived her soul, it is also not difficult to offer a defence for that and to dismiss the accusation in the following way. Speech is a powerful lord, which by the smallest and most invisible body achieves the most divine works; for it can stop fear, remove pain, produce joy, and increase pity. And I shall prove that this is the case; (9) and I must prove it to my listeners by reference to opinion as well. I consider and define all poetry as speech with metre. A fearful shudder, tearful pity, and grievous longing come upon those who hear it, and on account of words the soul suffers its own affliction at the successes and misfortunes of others’ affairs and bodies.</blockquote>

The corporeal nature of this passage is difficult to capture, in part because of the modern divide between mind and body: φρίκη περίφοβος, for example, becomes ‘a fearful fright’ in MacDowell’s standard translation, when the Greek describes a shudder. More strikingly, not once does MacDowell translate Gorgias’ σῶμα as ‘body’, even though it is the key term in our passage (see MacDowell 1982: 25). The small and invisible body of ''logos'' has very real power, he insists. The proof is its effect on the body of those who listen. Gorgias uses the most physical metaphor – rape – to illustrate what words can do. And yet even he must admit that the σῶμα of words cannot be apprehended directly – it cannot be touched or seen, even if its effects are felt in the body.

This contribution explores the material reception of literature, by considering portraits and places associated with ancient literary figures. I return at the end to Gorgias’ challenging proposition: that we feel literature in our body.

==Portraits==

The creation of the author is an aspect of the reception of his or her work. Just as the Lives of the ancient poets are largely based on their works, so are their portraits. So, for example, Demodocus is interpreted as an autobiographical character, and Homer is depicted as a blind bard. Or again, Sappho describes how painful it is when a girl leaves her circle, and an important (if neglected) vase depicts this moment of separation:

<center>[[File: Kunstsammlungen_der_Ruhr-Universität,_Bochum.png‎|link=Kunstsammlungen der Ruhr-Universität, Bochum]]</center>
<blockquote>''Red-figure krater, Tithonus painter, ca 480 BCE: the figure on the left is named ‘Sappho’, the figure on the right is labelled ‘the girl’.''
''Kunstsammlungen der Ruhr-Universität, Bochum.''</blockquote>

Sappho and ‘the girl’ (ἡ παῖς: a designation that could apply to several of her girls) are depicted walking in opposite directions, but looking back at each other. As an object, the krater is as unsettling as Sappho’s poems of separation. Many vases play on the theme of the amorous chase: because they are round, whoever chases will in turn be chased, in an exhilarating spiral, in which the viewer can take part by turning the vase round and round. This vase is more awkward to view and handle: the body goes one way, the gaze, the longing, (and, we are reminded, the poetry) quite another.

There is some fun to be had when looking at material depictions of authors, and reading them as receptions of their work. The development of portrait types, for example, is influenced by literary canons, and simultaneously contributes to creating them. Juxtaposition with (and typological similarity to) other categories of portrait situates ancient authors within specific cultural and intellectual milieux: it transforms literary traditions into visual experiences and reifies them in the form of material objects. Portraits allow patrons to ‘possess’ specific literary traditions, genres or poems, and simultaneously generate an intellectual process by which the viewer is asked to ‘read’ the author’s work through the interpretation of specific details of physiognomy, expression, gesture, and placement in relation to other figures. Reading the image and reading the text become connected enterprises (Zanker 1995).

Several ancient sources comment on the relationship between portrait and ''oeuvre''. Theocritus, for example, writes an epigram about a statue of Anacreon placed in the poet’s native island of Teos:

{|
|style="width: 50%;vertical-align:top;"|
Θᾶσαι τὸν ἀνδριάντα τοῦτον, ὦ ξένε,<br />
     σπουδᾷ, καὶ λέγ’, ἐπὴν ἐς οἶκον ἔνθῃς·<br />
“Ἀνακρέοντος εἰκόν’ εἶδον ἐν Τέωι,<br />
     τῶν πρόσθ’ εἴ τι περισσὸν ᾠδοποιῶν.”<br />
προσθεὶς δὲ χὤτι τοῖς νέοισιν ἅδετο,<br />
     ἐρεῖς ἀτρεκέως ὅλον τὸν ἄνδρα.<br />
|style="width: 50%;vertical-align:top;"|
Look well upon this statue, stranger, and say, when you get home, “I saw the likeness of Anacreon in Teos, one of the greatest among the poets of old.” Add to this that he loved young men, and you will have accurately described the whole man.
|}

Here the whole legacy of Anacreon is reduced to a statue (whether real or made up in poetry) and a sentence: ‘he enjoyed young boys’. There is apparently no need to read Anacreon’s work: the stranger is simply invited to visit Anacreon’s place of birth, look at the statue, and remember Theocritus’ own pithy statement. Readers will thus know ‘the whole man’ by a very quick and simple process. Unsurprisingly, there has been some debate about the word ὅλον. Some readers take it at face value (Rossi 2001: 284-5), others point out that the mini biography provided by Theocritus cannot be taken to represent all of Anacreon’s ''oeuvre'', just as he fails to provide a satisfying ekphrasis of the statue (Bing 1988: 121). This seems true – and I add that Theocritus himself, as a poet, cannot possibly want to be reduced to a portrait and a sentence. His in-your-face Doric θᾶσαι at the beginning of this epigram (which is written in honour of an Ionian poet, after all, and purportedly placed on an Ionian island!) inscribes Theocritus’ own place of birth, as well as his voice and genre, in the composition, suggesting a more broad-ranging literary and personal engagement than his summary biography. Unlike the statue, literature is never confined to one place. As Pindar taught us ({{#lemma: ''Nemean'' 5.1-3 | [[Pindar, Nemean 5.1-3|Pind. ''N.'' 5.1-3]]}}), it can travel on every ship and skiff.

Ovid has equally thought-provoking things to say about portraits and places (''Sorrows'' 1.7.1-14):

{|
|style="width: 50%;vertical-align:top;"|
Siquis habes nostris similes in imagine uultus,<br />
     deme meis hederas, Bacchica serta, comis.<br />
ista decent laetos felicia signa poetas:<br />
     temporibus non est apta corona meis.<br />
hoc tibi dissimula, senti tamen, optime, dici,<br />
     in digito qui me fersque refersque tuo,<br />
effigiemque meam fuluo complexus in auro<br />
     cara relegati, quae potes, ora uides.<br />
quae quotiens spectas, subeat tibi dicere forsan<br />
     "quam procul a nobis Naso sodalis abest!"<br />
grata tua est pietas, sed carmina maior imago<br />
     sunt mea, quae mando qualiacumque legas,<br />
carmina mutatas hominum dicentia formas,<br />
     infelix domini quod fuga rupit opus.<br />
|style="width: 50%;vertical-align:top;"|
Whoever has a portrait of my face, remove the ivy, garland of Bacchus, from my hair. Such signs of fortune suit happy poets: a wreath is not fitting for my temples. Conceal – but know – that I say this to you, best friend, who carry me here and there on your finger, and who, clasping my image on the yellow gold, see the dear face, all that you can, of an exile. Whenever you look at it, perhaps you will be prompted to say, “How far away is our friend Ovid!” Your love is a comfort, but my verses are a better portrait, and I urge you to read them such as they are, verses that tell of human transformations, the work broken off by the unhappy flight of its author.
|}

Commentators move swiftly past the first lines – which they find embarassing, both to Ovid’s fan and to Ovid himself, who imagines this person. They move straight beyond the longing for physical contact to line 11, and discuss what Ovid has to say about the ''Metamorphoses'': the poem speaks of altered forms, and Ovid himself is an altered man. I suggest we should pay a bit more attention to the bust crowned with ivy, and the signet ring – not just as objects, but as objects that inspire physical responses to poetry. Removing the ivy means not just recognising Ovid’s unhappiness, but also his new work, the ''Sorrows'', and ensuring that the author continues to remain an accurate ''imago'' of his oeuvre. As for the signet ring, new work by Chris Faraone on amulets may, in due course, provide an important interpretative framework. There is a well attested ritual whereby people who want to communicate with a god wear a signet ring with the deity’s image on it. Magical texts recommend wearing the image turned inwards, on the side of the palm, and sleeping with one ear next to it, in the hope that the god might send a message in a dream. This ritual of private communication may be relevant here. The addressee who loves Ovid needs to understand and yet dissimulate what the poet tells him (line 5, which is textually uncertain). There is the conceit of personal contact, even though Ovid does not even know who he may be addressing: ''siquis''. This person should not seek the poet just through portraits, however, but rather by finding new meaning in the ''Metamorphoses''. This meaning is personal – not just for the poet, and his changed ''oeuvre'' and life – but personal to the reader, who needs to guard his interpretation as closely as he keeps his signet ring.

Admiration for literature repeatedly finds expression in the desire to encounter the author face-to-face. Pliny comments, “Our longings give birth to likenesses that have not been passed down to us, as in the case of Homer” (''Natural History'' 35.2: ''pariunt desideria non traditos uultus, sicut in Homero euenit''). Petrarch laments the fact that, because he lacks a proper translation of the ''Iliad'', he can only catch glimpses of Homer’s face ({{#lemma: ''Familiar Letters'' 24.12.2 | [[Petrarch, Familiar Letters 24.12.2|Petr. ''Fam.'' 24.12.2]]}}). In a different letter, he writes of embracing a copy of the ''Iliad'', as if he were actually touching his beloved friend Homer ({{#lemma: ''Familiar Letters'' 18.2.6 | [[Petrarch, Familiar Letters 18.2.6|Petr. ''Fam.'' 18.2.6]]}}). Elsewhere still, he admits that being close to an author has nothing to do with material objects. It is a personal connection, as if with a living person ‘made of flesh’, a connection that provides Petrarch with a suitable interlocutor and distances him from the ''uulgus'' ({{#lemma: ''Familiar Letters'' 8.3.6 | [[Petrarch, Familiar Letters 8.3.6|Petr. ''Fam.'' 8.3.6]]}}).

Because the process of imagining the face and the body of the author involves a private and personal act of reading, real portraits can come into conflict with the imagined face. Libanius ({{#lemma: ''Letters'' 143.3 | [[Libanius, Letters 143.3|Lib. ''Ep.'' 143.3]]}}), for example, is desperate to obtain a portrait of Aristides, but when he actually receives one he refuses to accept that it is a true likeness (Petsalis-Diomidis 2006). Surely, he argues, Aristides could not have looked so healthy, or have such luscious hair! Eventually, on receiving a second portrait that agrees with the first, Libanius accepts that the images must reflect how Aristides actually looked. But he is still puzzled by the hair, and demands to know how it could have been so abundant. He also wants a full portrait ({{#lemma: ''Letters'' 143.5 | [[Libanius, Letters 143.5|Lib. ''Ep.'' 143.5]]}}).

There are many other examples of desire for ancient authors (Güthenke forthcoming) and of disappointment with their portraits. John Cosin (1594–1672), Prince Bishop of Durham, ordered that his library on Palace Green be decorated with portraits of ancient philosophers and fathers of the Church, and insisted that that they be based on genuine ancient artefacts. When he actually saw them, however, he was appalled: ‘They look like Saracens!’ he declared in one of his furious letters to the artist.

It seems, then, that portraits become sites of ''competitive'' reception, where different visions of ancient authors come to clash. The cognitive process by which the act of reading results in a private image of the author is destabilised by the objectivity of actual portraits.

==Places==

Because bodies are located in space and time, embodied responses to literature clash with the intangible ubiquitousness of words. The krater depicting Sappho makes the point: bodies go their separate ways, but longing and poetry still connect them. Theocritus objects to ancient literary tourism: the Hellenistic desire to celebrate the poets in the places where they were born, through cultic statues and monuments (Clay 2004), is exposed as inadequate: he tells us to look at an Ionian poet, on an Ionian island, by addressing us in his own native Doric, θᾶσαι, and thus making us think of Sicily instead. Ovid speaks of the physical intimacy established by wearing a signet ring, and then suggests that the act of reading the ''Metamorphoses'' is equally close and personal. Petrarch embraces a Greek manuscript of Homer’s ''Iliad'', but then blames Homer for ‘having forgotten his Latin’ – i.e. for not having inspired adequate Latin translations. The problem is not just linguistic, for Petrarch: he resents Homer’s cultural and geographical distance, in an attitude of suspicion and superiority towards Byzantine culture (Dionisotti 1967). Bishop Cosin thinks that the ancient philosophers are like him, and is dismayed to find out that they look like Saracens.

The problem of place and possession resonates through the history of classical culture, of course. We are all familiar with the distaste and disorientation of northern Europeans, when confronted with modern southerners living in ancient landscapes. When Freud visits the acropolis, physical closeness to the ancient world inspires a reflection on cultural distance, not least from his own father (Leonard forthcoming). The Sicilian poet Salvatore Quasimodo (Nobel laureate 1962) tries to capture his physical closeness to Aeschylus in an invective against an unnamed poet of the north:

{|style="width:100%"
|style="width: 50%;vertical-align:top;"|
''A un poeta nemico''<br />
Sulla sabbia di Gela colore della paglia<br />
mi stendevo fanciullo in riva al mare<br />
antico di Grecia con molti sogni nei pugni<br />
stretti nel petto. Là Eschilo esule<br />
misurò versi e passi sconsolati,<br />
in quel golfo arso l’aquila lo vide<br />
e fu l’ultimo giorno. Uomo del Nord, che mi vuoi <br />
minimo o morto per tua pace, spera:<br />
la madre di mio padre avrà cent’anni<br />
a nuova primavera. Spera: che io domani<br />
non giochi col tuo cranio giallo per le piogge.<br />
|style="width: 50%;vertical-align:top;"|
''To a Hostile Poet''<br />
On the straw-coloured sands of Gela<br />
as a child I would lie by the ancient<br />
Grecian sea, many dreams in my breast<br />
and my clenched fists. Exiled Aeschylus there<br />
scanned over his verses and lines forlorn<br />
in the burning gulf where the eagle spied him<br />
that final day. Man of the North who wish me<br />
nothing, or dead, hope for your own peace:<br />
next spring my father’s mother will be<br />
a hundred years old. Hope that tomorrow I<br />
shall not be playing with your rain-yellowed skull.<br />
|}

Quasimodo alludes to ancient traditions about Aeschylus’ death, according to which a flying eagle saw the bald head of the poet, mistook it for a rock, and dropped a tortoise he was holding in his talons, in order to crack open its shell and eat it (the account may derive from an omen described in some lost play of Aeschylus). Quasimodo leaves out the colourful detail of the tortoise falling from the sky, because it does not fit the starkness of his poem. What he offers instead is the image of a forlorn figure in a vast landscape – a figure that is simultaneously Aeschylus and Quasimodo. It is only halfway through the epigram that the ancient and the modern poet part company. Unlike Aeschylus, Quasimodo is still alive, and does not plan to die any time soon: his grandmother has excellent genes, after all. It is his rival from the north who will go first, as rain falls on his yellowed skull. Quasimodo is still at play on the golden sands of Gela at the end of his poem. The suggestion is that the Sicilian Greek lives like Aeschylus – feels the ancient sand and sea through his own living body – whereas his northern rival can at best die like the ancient poet, with something nasty (rain or tortoise) falling on his head. Here too, competitive literary receptions are negotiated through embodied experience.

What portraits and places bring to the fore are intensely personal responses to ancient literature. Scholars insist, quite rightly, that authorial representations depend on two factors: an interpretation of the author’s ''oeuvre'', and the conventions of biography, portraiture, and other relevant genres. To these two, I would add a third element that determines how ancient authors are represented: the lived, embodied experience of their readers and admirers.

----

== Bibliography ==

<div id="bibliography">

* Bing, P. 1988. ‘Theocritus’ Epigrams on the Statues of Ancient Poets.’ ''A & A'' 34.2: 117-123.
* Clay, D. 2004. ''Archilochos Heros: The Cult of Poets in the Greek Polis''. Cambridge, MA.
* Dionisotti, C. 1967. ''Geografia e storia della letteratura italiana''. Turin.
* Güthenke, C. (forthcoming). ‘“Lives” as Parameter. The Privileging of Ancient Lives as a Category of Research around 1900.’ In R. Fletcher and J. Hanink (eds.), ''Creative Lives. New Approaches to Ancient Intellectual Biography''. Cambridge.
* Leonard, M. (forthcoming). ‘Freud and the Biography of Antiquity.’ In R. Fletcher and J. Hanink (eds.), ''Creative Lives. New Approaches to Ancient Intellectual Biography.'' Cambridge.
* MacDowell , D. M. (ed.) 1982. ''Gorgias. Encomium of Helen''. Bristol.
* Petsalis-Diomidis, A. 2006. ‘Sacred Writing, Sacred Reading: The Function of Aelius Aristides’ Self-Presentation as Author in the ''Sacred Tales''.’ In J. Mossman and B. McGing (eds.), ''The Limits of Ancient Biography''. Swansea: 193-211.
* Rossi, L. 2001. ''The Epigrams Ascribed to Theocritus: A Method of Approach''. Leuven.
* Zanker, P. 1995. ''The Mask of Socrates: The Image of the Intellectual in Antiquity.'' Berkeley and Los Angeles.

</div>
<div id="notes"></div>

[[Category:Guides by Barbara Graziosi]]

Embodiments of Literature

2015-09-29T16:54:34Z

NickFreer: /* Bibliography */

{{GuideHighlightBox}}
{{Author|Barbara Graziosi}}
{{#howtoquote:}}
<div id="guide">
Literature is often presented as something ethereal and intangible. It concerns the life of the mind, unconstrained by the material realities of the body. It does not depend on the senses, particularly: we can appreciate Homer by listening, reading, or touching Braille. These different sensory approaches affect our experience, of course, but we are still recognisably confronted with the same text. ''Logos'', language, and literature pertain to the mind rather than the body (and this explains, in part, why literature is placed above material culture in traditional hierarchies). There are, however, ways of thinking about literature as an embodied experience. Gorgias suggests one (''Encomium of Helen'' 7-9):

<blockquote>εἰ δὲ βίαι ἡρπάσθη καὶ ἀνόμως ἐβιάσθη καὶ ἀδίκως ὑβρίσθη, δῆλον ὅτι ὁ ἁρπάσας ἢ ὑβρίσας ἠδίκησεν, ἡ δὲ ἁρπασθεῖσα ἢ ὑβρισθεῖσα ἐδυστύχησεν. [...] (8) εἰ δὲ λόγος ὁ πείσας καὶ τὴν ψυχὴν ἀπατήσας, οὐδὲ πρὸς τοῦτο χαλεπὸν ἀπολογήσασθαι καὶ τὴν αἰτίαν ἀπολύσασθαι ὧδε. λόγος δυνάστης μέγας ἐστίν, ὃς σμικροτάτωι σώματι καὶ ἀφανεστάτωι θειότατα ἔργα ἀποτελεῖ· δύναται γὰρ καὶ φόβον παῦσαι καὶ λύπην ἀφελεῖν καὶ χαρὰν ἐνεργάσασθαι καὶ ἔλεον ἐπαυξῆσαι. ταῦτα δὲ ὡς οὕτως ἔχει δείξω· (9) δεῖ δὲ καὶ δόξηι δεῖξαι τοῖς ἀκούουσι· τὴν ποίησιν ἅπασαν καὶ νομίζω καὶ ὀνομάζω λόγον ἔχοντα μέτρον· ἧς τοὺς ἀκούοντας εἰσῆλθε καὶ φρίκη περίφοβος καὶ ἔλεος πολύδακρυς καὶ πόθος φιλοπενθής, ἐπ' ἀλλοτρίων τε πραγμάτων καὶ σωμάτων εὐτυχίαις καὶ δυσπραγίαις ἴδιόν τι πάθημα διὰ τῶν λόγων ἔπαθεν ἡ ψυχή. </blockquote>

<blockquote>If she was seized by force, unlawfully constrained, and unjustly abused, it is clear that the man who seized or abused did wrong, and that the woman who was seized or abused suffered misfortune. […] (8) But if speech persuaded and deceived her soul, it is also not difficult to offer a defence for that and to dismiss the accusation in the following way. Speech is a powerful lord, which by the smallest and most invisible body achieves the most divine works; for it can stop fear, remove pain, produce joy, and increase pity. And I shall prove that this is the case; (9) and I must prove it to my listeners by reference to opinion as well. I consider and define all poetry as speech with metre. A fearful shudder, tearful pity, and grievous longing come upon those who hear it, and on account of words the soul suffers its own affliction at the successes and misfortunes of others’ affairs and bodies.</blockquote>

The corporeal nature of this passage is difficult to capture, in part because of the modern divide between mind and body: φρίκη περίφοβος, for example, becomes ‘a fearful fright’ in MacDowell’s standard translation, when the Greek describes a shudder. More strikingly, not once does MacDowell translate Gorgias’ σῶμα as ‘body’, even though it is the key term in our passage (see MacDowell 1982: 25). The small and invisible body of ''logos'' has very real power, he insists. The proof is its effect on the body of those who listen. Gorgias uses the most physical metaphor – rape – to illustrate what words can do. And yet even he must admit that the σῶμα of words cannot be apprehended directly – it cannot be touched or seen, even if its effects are felt in the body.

This contribution explores the material reception of literature, by considering portraits and places associated with ancient literary figures. I return at the end to Gorgias’ challenging proposition: that we feel literature in our body.

==Portraits==

The creation of the author is an aspect of the reception of his or her work. Just as the Lives of the ancient poets are largely based on their works, so are their portraits. So, for example, Demodocus is interpreted as an autobiographical character, and Homer is depicted as a blind bard. Or again, Sappho describes how painful it is when a girl leaves her circle, and an important (if neglected) vase depicts this moment of separation:

<center>[[File: Kunstsammlungen_der_Ruhr-Universität,_Bochum.png‎|link=Kunstsammlungen der Ruhr-Universität, Bochum]]</center>
<blockquote>''Red-figure krater, Tithonus painter, ca 480 BCE: the figure on the left is named ‘Sappho’, the figure on the right is labelled ‘the girl’.''
''Kunstsammlungen der Ruhr-Universität, Bochum.''</blockquote>

Sappho and ‘the girl’ (ἡ παῖς: a designation that could apply to several of her girls) are depicted walking in opposite directions, but looking back at each other. As an object, the krater is as unsettling as Sappho’s poems of separation. Many vases play on the theme of the amorous chase: because they are round, whoever chases will in turn be chased, in an exhilarating spiral, in which the viewer can take part by turning the vase round and round. This vase is more awkward to view and handle: the body goes one way, the gaze, the longing, (and, we are reminded, the poetry) quite another.

There is some fun to be had when looking at material depictions of authors, and reading them as receptions of their work. The development of portrait types, for example, is influenced by literary canons, and simultaneously contributes to creating them. Juxtaposition with (and typological similarity to) other categories of portrait situates ancient authors within specific cultural and intellectual milieux: it transforms literary traditions into visual experiences and reifies them in the form of material objects. Portraits allow patrons to ‘possess’ specific literary traditions, genres or poems, and simultaneously generate an intellectual process by which the viewer is asked to ‘read’ the author’s work through the interpretation of specific details of physiognomy, expression, gesture, and placement in relation to other figures. Reading the image and reading the text become connected enterprises (Zanker 1995).

Several ancient sources comment on the relationship between portrait and ''oeuvre''. Theocritus, for example, writes an epigram about a statue of Anacreon placed in the poet’s native island of Teos:

{|
|style="width: 50%;vertical-align:top;"|
Θᾶσαι τὸν ἀνδριάντα τοῦτον, ὦ ξένε,<br />
     σπουδᾷ, καὶ λέγ’, ἐπὴν ἐς οἶκον ἔνθῃς·<br />
“Ἀνακρέοντος εἰκόν’ εἶδον ἐν Τέωι,<br />
     τῶν πρόσθ’ εἴ τι περισσὸν ᾠδοποιῶν.”<br />
προσθεὶς δὲ χὤτι τοῖς νέοισιν ἅδετο,<br />
     ἐρεῖς ἀτρεκέως ὅλον τὸν ἄνδρα.<br />
|style="width: 50%;vertical-align:top;"|
Look well upon this statue, stranger, and say, when you get home, “I saw the likeness of Anacreon in Teos, one of the greatest among the poets of old.” Add to this that he loved young men, and you will have accurately described the whole man.
|}

Here the whole legacy of Anacreon is reduced to a statue (whether real or made up in poetry) and a sentence: ‘he enjoyed young boys’. There is apparently no need to read Anacreon’s work: the stranger is simply invited to visit Anacreon’s place of birth, look at the statue, and remember Theocritus’ own pithy statement. Readers will thus know ‘the whole man’ by a very quick and simple process. Unsurprisingly, there has been some debate about the word ὅλον. Some readers take it at face value (Rossi 2001: 284-5), others point out that the mini biography provided by Theocritus cannot be taken to represent all of Anacreon’s ''oeuvre'', just as he fails to provide a satisfying ekphrasis of the statue (Bing 1988: 121). This seems true – and I add that Theocritus himself, as a poet, cannot possibly want to be reduced to a portrait and a sentence. His in-your-face Doric θᾶσαι at the beginning of this epigram (which is written in honour of an Ionian poet, after all, and purportedly placed on an Ionian island!) inscribes Theocritus’ own place of birth, as well as his voice and genre, in the composition, suggesting a more broad-ranging literary and personal engagement than his summary biography. Unlike the statue, literature is never confined to one place. As Pindar taught us ({{#lemma: ''Nemean'' 5.1-3 | [[Pindar, Nemean 5.1-3|Pind. ''N.'' 5.1-3]]}}), it can travel on every ship and skiff.

Ovid has equally thought-provoking things to say about portraits and places (''Sorrows'' 1.7.1-14):

{|
|style="width: 50%;vertical-align:top;"|
Siquis habes nostris similes in imagine uultus,<br />
     deme meis hederas, Bacchica serta, comis.<br />
ista decent laetos felicia signa poetas:<br />
     temporibus non est apta corona meis.<br />
hoc tibi dissimula, senti tamen, optime, dici,<br />
     in digito qui me fersque refersque tuo,<br />
effigiemque meam fuluo complexus in auro<br />
     cara relegati, quae potes, ora uides.<br />
quae quotiens spectas, subeat tibi dicere forsan<br />
     "quam procul a nobis Naso sodalis abest!"<br />
grata tua est pietas, sed carmina maior imago<br />
     sunt mea, quae mando qualiacumque legas,<br />
carmina mutatas hominum dicentia formas,<br />
     infelix domini quod fuga rupit opus.<br />
|style="width: 50%;vertical-align:top;"|
Whoever has a portrait of my face, remove the ivy, garland of Bacchus, from my hair. Such signs of fortune suit happy poets: a wreath is not fitting for my temples. Conceal – but know – that I say this to you, best friend, who carry me here and there on your finger, and who, clasping my image on the yellow gold, see the dear face, all that you can, of an exile. Whenever you look at it, perhaps you will be prompted to say, “How far away is our friend Ovid!” Your love is a comfort, but my verses are a better portrait, and I urge you to read them such as they are, verses that tell of human transformations, the work broken off by the unhappy flight of its author.
|}

Commentators move swiftly past the first lines – which they find embarassing, both to Ovid’s fan and to Ovid himself, who imagines this person. They move straight beyond the longing for physical contact to line 11, and discuss what Ovid has to say about the ''Metamorphoses'': the poem speaks of altered forms, and Ovid himself is an altered man. I suggest we should pay a bit more attention to the bust crowned with ivy, and the signet ring – not just as objects, but as objects that inspire physical responses to poetry. Removing the ivy means not just recognising Ovid’s unhappiness, but also his new work, the ''Sorrows'', and ensuring that the author continues to remain an accurate ''imago'' of his oeuvre. As for the signet ring, new work by Chris Faraone on amulets may, in due course, provide an important interpretative framework. There is a well attested ritual whereby people who want to communicate with a god wear a signet ring with the deity’s image on it. Magical texts recommend wearing the image turned inwards, on the side of the palm, and sleeping with one ear next to it, in the hope that the god might send a message in a dream. This ritual of private communication may be relevant here. The addressee who loves Ovid needs to understand and yet dissimulate what the poet tells him (line 5, which is textually uncertain). There is the conceit of personal contact, even though Ovid does not even know who he may be addressing: ''siquis''. This person should not seek the poet just through portraits, however, but rather by finding new meaning in the ''Metamorphoses''. This meaning is personal – not just for the poet, and his changed ''oeuvre'' and life – but personal to the reader, who needs to guard his interpretation as closely as he keeps his signet ring.

Admiration for literature repeatedly finds expression in the desire to encounter the author face-to-face. Pliny comments, “Our longings give birth to likenesses that have not been passed down to us, as in the case of Homer” (''NH'' 35.2: ''pariunt desideria non traditos uultus, sicut in Homero euenit''). Petrarch laments the fact that, because he lacks a proper translation of the ''Iliad'', he can only catch glimpses of Homer’s face ({{#lemma: ''Familiar Letters'' 24.12.2 | [[Petrarch, Familiar Letters 24.12.2|Petr. ''Fam.'' 24.12.2]]}}). In a different letter, he writes of embracing a copy of the ''Iliad'', as if he were actually touching his beloved friend Homer ({{#lemma: ''Familiar Letters'' 18.2.6 | [[Petrarch, Familiar Letters 18.2.6|Petr. ''Fam.'' 18.2.6]]}}). Elsewhere still, he admits that being close to an author has nothing to do with material objects. It is a personal connection, as if with a living person ‘made of flesh’, a connection that provides Petrarch with a suitable interlocutor and distances him from the ''uulgus'' ({{#lemma: ''Familiar Letters'' 8.3.6 | [[Petrarch, Familiar Letters 8.3.6|Petr. ''Fam.'' 8.3.6]]}}).

Because the process of imagining the face and the body of the author involves a private and personal act of reading, real portraits can come into conflict with the imagined face. Libanius ({{#lemma: ''Letters'' 143.3 | [[Libanius, Letters 143.3|Lib. ''Ep.'' 143.3]]}}), for example, is desperate to obtain a portrait of Aristides, but when he actually receives one he refuses to accept that it is a true likeness (Petsalis-Diomidis 2006). Surely, he argues, Aristides could not have looked so healthy, or have such luscious hair! Eventually, on receiving a second portrait that agrees with the first, Libanius accepts that the images must reflect how Aristides actually looked. But he is still puzzled by the hair, and demands to know how it could have been so abundant. He also wants a full portrait ({{#lemma: ''Letters'' 143.5 | [[Libanius, Letters 143.5|Lib. ''Ep.'' 143.5]]}}).

There are many other examples of desire for ancient authors (Güthenke forthcoming) and of disappointment with their portraits. John Cosin (1594–1672), Prince Bishop of Durham, ordered that his library on Palace Green be decorated with portraits of ancient philosophers and fathers of the Church, and insisted that that they be based on genuine ancient artefacts. When he actually saw them, however, he was appalled: ‘They look like Saracens!’ he declared in one of his furious letters to the artist.

It seems, then, that portraits become sites of ''competitive'' reception, where different visions of ancient authors come to clash. The cognitive process by which the act of reading results in a private image of the author is destabilised by the objectivity of actual portraits.

==Places==

Because bodies are located in space and time, embodied responses to literature clash with the intangible ubiquitousness of words. The krater depicting Sappho makes the point: bodies go their separate ways, but longing and poetry still connect them. Theocritus objects to ancient literary tourism: the Hellenistic desire to celebrate the poets in the places where they were born, through cultic statues and monuments (Clay 2004), is exposed as inadequate: he tells us to look at an Ionian poet, on an Ionian island, by addressing us in his own native Doric, θᾶσαι, and thus making us think of Sicily instead. Ovid speaks of the physical intimacy established by wearing a signet ring, and then suggests that the act of reading the ''Metamorphoses'' is equally close and personal. Petrarch embraces a Greek manuscript of Homer’s ''Iliad'', but then blames Homer for ‘having forgotten his Latin’ – i.e. for not having inspired adequate Latin translations. The problem is not just linguistic, for Petrarch: he resents Homer’s cultural and geographical distance, in an attitude of suspicion and superiority towards Byzantine culture (Dionisotti 1967). Bishop Cosin thinks that the ancient philosophers are like him, and is dismayed to find out that they look like Saracens.

The problem of place and possession resonates through the history of classical culture, of course. We are all familiar with the distaste and disorientation of northern Europeans, when confronted with modern southerners living in ancient landscapes. When Freud visits the acropolis, physical closeness to the ancient world inspires a reflection on cultural distance, not least from his own father (Leonard forthcoming). The Sicilian poet Salvatore Quasimodo (Nobel laureate 1962) tries to capture his physical closeness to Aeschylus in an invective against an unnamed poet of the north:

{|style="width:100%"
|style="width: 50%;vertical-align:top;"|
''A un poeta nemico''<br />
Sulla sabbia di Gela colore della paglia<br />
mi stendevo fanciullo in riva al mare<br />
antico di Grecia con molti sogni nei pugni<br />
stretti nel petto. Là Eschilo esule<br />
misurò versi e passi sconsolati,<br />
in quel golfo arso l’aquila lo vide<br />
e fu l’ultimo giorno. Uomo del Nord, che mi vuoi <br />
minimo o morto per tua pace, spera:<br />
la madre di mio padre avrà cent’anni<br />
a nuova primavera. Spera: che io domani<br />
non giochi col tuo cranio giallo per le piogge.<br />
|style="width: 50%;vertical-align:top;"|
''To a Hostile Poet''<br />
On the straw-coloured sands of Gela<br />
as a child I would lie by the ancient<br />
Grecian sea, many dreams in my breast<br />
and my clenched fists. Exiled Aeschylus there<br />
scanned over his verses and lines forlorn<br />
in the burning gulf where the eagle spied him<br />
that final day. Man of the North who wish me<br />
nothing, or dead, hope for your own peace:<br />
next spring my father’s mother will be<br />
a hundred years old. Hope that tomorrow I<br />
shall not be playing with your rain-yellowed skull.<br />
|}

Quasimodo alludes to ancient traditions about Aeschylus’ death, according to which a flying eagle saw the bald head of the poet, mistook it for a rock, and dropped a tortoise he was holding in his talons, in order to crack open its shell and eat it (the account may derive from an omen described in some lost play of Aeschylus). Quasimodo leaves out the colourful detail of the tortoise falling from the sky, because it does not fit the starkness of his poem. What he offers instead is the image of a forlorn figure in a vast landscape – a figure that is simultaneously Aeschylus and Quasimodo. It is only halfway through the epigram that the ancient and the modern poet part company. Unlike Aeschylus, Quasimodo is still alive, and does not plan to die any time soon: his grandmother has excellent genes, after all. It is his rival from the north who will go first, as rain falls on his yellowed skull. Quasimodo is still at play on the golden sands of Gela at the end of his poem. The suggestion is that the Sicilian Greek lives like Aeschylus – feels the ancient sand and sea through his own living body – whereas his northern rival can at best die like the ancient poet, with something nasty (rain or tortoise) falling on his head. Here too, competitive literary receptions are negotiated through embodied experience.

What portraits and places bring to the fore are intensely personal responses to ancient literature. Scholars insist, quite rightly, that authorial representations depend on two factors: an interpretation of the author’s ''oeuvre'', and the conventions of biography, portraiture, and other relevant genres. To these two, I would add a third element that determines how ancient authors are represented: the lived, embodied experience of their readers and admirers.

----

== Bibliography ==

<div id="bibliography">

* Bing, P. 1988. ‘Theocritus’ Epigrams on the Statues of Ancient Poets.’ ''A & A'' 34.2: 117-123.
* Clay, D. 2004. ''Archilochos Heros: The Cult of Poets in the Greek Polis''. Cambridge, MA.
* Dionisotti, C. 1967. ''Geografia e storia della letteratura italiana''. Turin.
* Güthenke, C. (forthcoming). ‘“Lives” as Parameter. The Privileging of Ancient Lives as a Category of Research around 1900.’ In R. Fletcher and J. Hanink (eds.), ''Creative Lives. New Approaches to Ancient Intellectual Biography''. Cambridge.
* Leonard, M. (forthcoming). ‘Freud and the Biography of Antiquity.’ In R. Fletcher and J. Hanink (eds.), ''Creative Lives. New Approaches to Ancient Intellectual Biography.'' Cambridge.
* MacDowell , D. M. (ed.) 1982. ''Gorgias. Encomium of Helen''. Bristol.
* Petsalis-Diomidis, A. 2006. ‘Sacred Writing, Sacred Reading: The Function of Aelius Aristides’ Self-Presentation as Author in the ''Sacred Tales''.’ In J. Mossman and B. McGing (eds.), ''The Limits of Ancient Biography''. Swansea: 193-211.
* Rossi, L. 2001. ''The Epigrams Ascribed to Theocritus: A Method of Approach''. Leuven.
* Zanker, P. 1995. ''The Mask of Socrates: The Image of the Intellectual in Antiquity.'' Berkeley and Los Angeles.

</div>
<div id="notes"></div>

[[Category:Guides by Barbara Graziosi]]

Embodiments of Literature

2015-09-29T16:54:01Z

NickFreer: /* Bibliography */

{{GuideHighlightBox}}
{{Author|Barbara Graziosi}}
{{#howtoquote:}}
<div id="guide">
Literature is often presented as something ethereal and intangible. It concerns the life of the mind, unconstrained by the material realities of the body. It does not depend on the senses, particularly: we can appreciate Homer by listening, reading, or touching Braille. These different sensory approaches affect our experience, of course, but we are still recognisably confronted with the same text. ''Logos'', language, and literature pertain to the mind rather than the body (and this explains, in part, why literature is placed above material culture in traditional hierarchies). There are, however, ways of thinking about literature as an embodied experience. Gorgias suggests one (''Encomium of Helen'' 7-9):

<blockquote>εἰ δὲ βίαι ἡρπάσθη καὶ ἀνόμως ἐβιάσθη καὶ ἀδίκως ὑβρίσθη, δῆλον ὅτι ὁ ἁρπάσας ἢ ὑβρίσας ἠδίκησεν, ἡ δὲ ἁρπασθεῖσα ἢ ὑβρισθεῖσα ἐδυστύχησεν. [...] (8) εἰ δὲ λόγος ὁ πείσας καὶ τὴν ψυχὴν ἀπατήσας, οὐδὲ πρὸς τοῦτο χαλεπὸν ἀπολογήσασθαι καὶ τὴν αἰτίαν ἀπολύσασθαι ὧδε. λόγος δυνάστης μέγας ἐστίν, ὃς σμικροτάτωι σώματι καὶ ἀφανεστάτωι θειότατα ἔργα ἀποτελεῖ· δύναται γὰρ καὶ φόβον παῦσαι καὶ λύπην ἀφελεῖν καὶ χαρὰν ἐνεργάσασθαι καὶ ἔλεον ἐπαυξῆσαι. ταῦτα δὲ ὡς οὕτως ἔχει δείξω· (9) δεῖ δὲ καὶ δόξηι δεῖξαι τοῖς ἀκούουσι· τὴν ποίησιν ἅπασαν καὶ νομίζω καὶ ὀνομάζω λόγον ἔχοντα μέτρον· ἧς τοὺς ἀκούοντας εἰσῆλθε καὶ φρίκη περίφοβος καὶ ἔλεος πολύδακρυς καὶ πόθος φιλοπενθής, ἐπ' ἀλλοτρίων τε πραγμάτων καὶ σωμάτων εὐτυχίαις καὶ δυσπραγίαις ἴδιόν τι πάθημα διὰ τῶν λόγων ἔπαθεν ἡ ψυχή. </blockquote>

<blockquote>If she was seized by force, unlawfully constrained, and unjustly abused, it is clear that the man who seized or abused did wrong, and that the woman who was seized or abused suffered misfortune. […] (8) But if speech persuaded and deceived her soul, it is also not difficult to offer a defence for that and to dismiss the accusation in the following way. Speech is a powerful lord, which by the smallest and most invisible body achieves the most divine works; for it can stop fear, remove pain, produce joy, and increase pity. And I shall prove that this is the case; (9) and I must prove it to my listeners by reference to opinion as well. I consider and define all poetry as speech with metre. A fearful shudder, tearful pity, and grievous longing come upon those who hear it, and on account of words the soul suffers its own affliction at the successes and misfortunes of others’ affairs and bodies.</blockquote>

The corporeal nature of this passage is difficult to capture, in part because of the modern divide between mind and body: φρίκη περίφοβος, for example, becomes ‘a fearful fright’ in MacDowell’s standard translation, when the Greek describes a shudder. More strikingly, not once does MacDowell translate Gorgias’ σῶμα as ‘body’, even though it is the key term in our passage (see MacDowell 1982: 25). The small and invisible body of ''logos'' has very real power, he insists. The proof is its effect on the body of those who listen. Gorgias uses the most physical metaphor – rape – to illustrate what words can do. And yet even he must admit that the σῶμα of words cannot be apprehended directly – it cannot be touched or seen, even if its effects are felt in the body.

This contribution explores the material reception of literature, by considering portraits and places associated with ancient literary figures. I return at the end to Gorgias’ challenging proposition: that we feel literature in our body.

==Portraits==

The creation of the author is an aspect of the reception of his or her work. Just as the Lives of the ancient poets are largely based on their works, so are their portraits. So, for example, Demodocus is interpreted as an autobiographical character, and Homer is depicted as a blind bard. Or again, Sappho describes how painful it is when a girl leaves her circle, and an important (if neglected) vase depicts this moment of separation:

<center>[[File: Kunstsammlungen_der_Ruhr-Universität,_Bochum.png‎|link=Kunstsammlungen der Ruhr-Universität, Bochum]]</center>
<blockquote>''Red-figure krater, Tithonus painter, ca 480 BCE: the figure on the left is named ‘Sappho’, the figure on the right is labelled ‘the girl’.''
''Kunstsammlungen der Ruhr-Universität, Bochum.''</blockquote>

Sappho and ‘the girl’ (ἡ παῖς: a designation that could apply to several of her girls) are depicted walking in opposite directions, but looking back at each other. As an object, the krater is as unsettling as Sappho’s poems of separation. Many vases play on the theme of the amorous chase: because they are round, whoever chases will in turn be chased, in an exhilarating spiral, in which the viewer can take part by turning the vase round and round. This vase is more awkward to view and handle: the body goes one way, the gaze, the longing, (and, we are reminded, the poetry) quite another.

There is some fun to be had when looking at material depictions of authors, and reading them as receptions of their work. The development of portrait types, for example, is influenced by literary canons, and simultaneously contributes to creating them. Juxtaposition with (and typological similarity to) other categories of portrait situates ancient authors within specific cultural and intellectual milieux: it transforms literary traditions into visual experiences and reifies them in the form of material objects. Portraits allow patrons to ‘possess’ specific literary traditions, genres or poems, and simultaneously generate an intellectual process by which the viewer is asked to ‘read’ the author’s work through the interpretation of specific details of physiognomy, expression, gesture, and placement in relation to other figures. Reading the image and reading the text become connected enterprises (Zanker 1995).

Several ancient sources comment on the relationship between portrait and ''oeuvre''. Theocritus, for example, writes an epigram about a statue of Anacreon placed in the poet’s native island of Teos:

{|
|style="width: 50%;vertical-align:top;"|
Θᾶσαι τὸν ἀνδριάντα τοῦτον, ὦ ξένε,<br />
     σπουδᾷ, καὶ λέγ’, ἐπὴν ἐς οἶκον ἔνθῃς·<br />
“Ἀνακρέοντος εἰκόν’ εἶδον ἐν Τέωι,<br />
     τῶν πρόσθ’ εἴ τι περισσὸν ᾠδοποιῶν.”<br />
προσθεὶς δὲ χὤτι τοῖς νέοισιν ἅδετο,<br />
     ἐρεῖς ἀτρεκέως ὅλον τὸν ἄνδρα.<br />
|style="width: 50%;vertical-align:top;"|
Look well upon this statue, stranger, and say, when you get home, “I saw the likeness of Anacreon in Teos, one of the greatest among the poets of old.” Add to this that he loved young men, and you will have accurately described the whole man.
|}

Here the whole legacy of Anacreon is reduced to a statue (whether real or made up in poetry) and a sentence: ‘he enjoyed young boys’. There is apparently no need to read Anacreon’s work: the stranger is simply invited to visit Anacreon’s place of birth, look at the statue, and remember Theocritus’ own pithy statement. Readers will thus know ‘the whole man’ by a very quick and simple process. Unsurprisingly, there has been some debate about the word ὅλον. Some readers take it at face value (Rossi 2001: 284-5), others point out that the mini biography provided by Theocritus cannot be taken to represent all of Anacreon’s ''oeuvre'', just as he fails to provide a satisfying ekphrasis of the statue (Bing 1988: 121). This seems true – and I add that Theocritus himself, as a poet, cannot possibly want to be reduced to a portrait and a sentence. His in-your-face Doric θᾶσαι at the beginning of this epigram (which is written in honour of an Ionian poet, after all, and purportedly placed on an Ionian island!) inscribes Theocritus’ own place of birth, as well as his voice and genre, in the composition, suggesting a more broad-ranging literary and personal engagement than his summary biography. Unlike the statue, literature is never confined to one place. As Pindar taught us ({{#lemma: ''Nemean'' 5.1-3 | [[Pindar, Nemean 5.1-3|Pind. ''N.'' 5.1-3]]}}), it can travel on every ship and skiff.

Ovid has equally thought-provoking things to say about portraits and places (''Sorrows'' 1.7.1-14):

{|
|style="width: 50%;vertical-align:top;"|
Siquis habes nostris similes in imagine uultus,<br />
     deme meis hederas, Bacchica serta, comis.<br />
ista decent laetos felicia signa poetas:<br />
     temporibus non est apta corona meis.<br />
hoc tibi dissimula, senti tamen, optime, dici,<br />
     in digito qui me fersque refersque tuo,<br />
effigiemque meam fuluo complexus in auro<br />
     cara relegati, quae potes, ora uides.<br />
quae quotiens spectas, subeat tibi dicere forsan<br />
     "quam procul a nobis Naso sodalis abest!"<br />
grata tua est pietas, sed carmina maior imago<br />
     sunt mea, quae mando qualiacumque legas,<br />
carmina mutatas hominum dicentia formas,<br />
     infelix domini quod fuga rupit opus.<br />
|style="width: 50%;vertical-align:top;"|
Whoever has a portrait of my face, remove the ivy, garland of Bacchus, from my hair. Such signs of fortune suit happy poets: a wreath is not fitting for my temples. Conceal – but know – that I say this to you, best friend, who carry me here and there on your finger, and who, clasping my image on the yellow gold, see the dear face, all that you can, of an exile. Whenever you look at it, perhaps you will be prompted to say, “How far away is our friend Ovid!” Your love is a comfort, but my verses are a better portrait, and I urge you to read them such as they are, verses that tell of human transformations, the work broken off by the unhappy flight of its author.
|}

Commentators move swiftly past the first lines – which they find embarassing, both to Ovid’s fan and to Ovid himself, who imagines this person. They move straight beyond the longing for physical contact to line 11, and discuss what Ovid has to say about the ''Metamorphoses'': the poem speaks of altered forms, and Ovid himself is an altered man. I suggest we should pay a bit more attention to the bust crowned with ivy, and the signet ring – not just as objects, but as objects that inspire physical responses to poetry. Removing the ivy means not just recognising Ovid’s unhappiness, but also his new work, the ''Sorrows'', and ensuring that the author continues to remain an accurate ''imago'' of his oeuvre. As for the signet ring, new work by Chris Faraone on amulets may, in due course, provide an important interpretative framework. There is a well attested ritual whereby people who want to communicate with a god wear a signet ring with the deity’s image on it. Magical texts recommend wearing the image turned inwards, on the side of the palm, and sleeping with one ear next to it, in the hope that the god might send a message in a dream. This ritual of private communication may be relevant here. The addressee who loves Ovid needs to understand and yet dissimulate what the poet tells him (line 5, which is textually uncertain). There is the conceit of personal contact, even though Ovid does not even know who he may be addressing: ''siquis''. This person should not seek the poet just through portraits, however, but rather by finding new meaning in the ''Metamorphoses''. This meaning is personal – not just for the poet, and his changed ''oeuvre'' and life – but personal to the reader, who needs to guard his interpretation as closely as he keeps his signet ring.

Admiration for literature repeatedly finds expression in the desire to encounter the author face-to-face. Pliny comments, “Our longings give birth to likenesses that have not been passed down to us, as in the case of Homer” (''NH'' 35.2: ''pariunt desideria non traditos uultus, sicut in Homero euenit''). Petrarch laments the fact that, because he lacks a proper translation of the ''Iliad'', he can only catch glimpses of Homer’s face ({{#lemma: ''Familiar Letters'' 24.12.2 | [[Petrarch, Familiar Letters 24.12.2|Petr. ''Fam.'' 24.12.2]]}}). In a different letter, he writes of embracing a copy of the ''Iliad'', as if he were actually touching his beloved friend Homer ({{#lemma: ''Familiar Letters'' 18.2.6 | [[Petrarch, Familiar Letters 18.2.6|Petr. ''Fam.'' 18.2.6]]}}). Elsewhere still, he admits that being close to an author has nothing to do with material objects. It is a personal connection, as if with a living person ‘made of flesh’, a connection that provides Petrarch with a suitable interlocutor and distances him from the ''uulgus'' ({{#lemma: ''Familiar Letters'' 8.3.6 | [[Petrarch, Familiar Letters 8.3.6|Petr. ''Fam.'' 8.3.6]]}}).

Because the process of imagining the face and the body of the author involves a private and personal act of reading, real portraits can come into conflict with the imagined face. Libanius ({{#lemma: ''Letters'' 143.3 | [[Libanius, Letters 143.3|Lib. ''Ep.'' 143.3]]}}), for example, is desperate to obtain a portrait of Aristides, but when he actually receives one he refuses to accept that it is a true likeness (Petsalis-Diomidis 2006). Surely, he argues, Aristides could not have looked so healthy, or have such luscious hair! Eventually, on receiving a second portrait that agrees with the first, Libanius accepts that the images must reflect how Aristides actually looked. But he is still puzzled by the hair, and demands to know how it could have been so abundant. He also wants a full portrait ({{#lemma: ''Letters'' 143.5 | [[Libanius, Letters 143.5|Lib. ''Ep.'' 143.5]]}}).

There are many other examples of desire for ancient authors (Güthenke forthcoming) and of disappointment with their portraits. John Cosin (1594–1672), Prince Bishop of Durham, ordered that his library on Palace Green be decorated with portraits of ancient philosophers and fathers of the Church, and insisted that that they be based on genuine ancient artefacts. When he actually saw them, however, he was appalled: ‘They look like Saracens!’ he declared in one of his furious letters to the artist.

It seems, then, that portraits become sites of ''competitive'' reception, where different visions of ancient authors come to clash. The cognitive process by which the act of reading results in a private image of the author is destabilised by the objectivity of actual portraits.

==Places==

Because bodies are located in space and time, embodied responses to literature clash with the intangible ubiquitousness of words. The krater depicting Sappho makes the point: bodies go their separate ways, but longing and poetry still connect them. Theocritus objects to ancient literary tourism: the Hellenistic desire to celebrate the poets in the places where they were born, through cultic statues and monuments (Clay 2004), is exposed as inadequate: he tells us to look at an Ionian poet, on an Ionian island, by addressing us in his own native Doric, θᾶσαι, and thus making us think of Sicily instead. Ovid speaks of the physical intimacy established by wearing a signet ring, and then suggests that the act of reading the ''Metamorphoses'' is equally close and personal. Petrarch embraces a Greek manuscript of Homer’s ''Iliad'', but then blames Homer for ‘having forgotten his Latin’ – i.e. for not having inspired adequate Latin translations. The problem is not just linguistic, for Petrarch: he resents Homer’s cultural and geographical distance, in an attitude of suspicion and superiority towards Byzantine culture (Dionisotti 1967). Bishop Cosin thinks that the ancient philosophers are like him, and is dismayed to find out that they look like Saracens.

The problem of place and possession resonates through the history of classical culture, of course. We are all familiar with the distaste and disorientation of northern Europeans, when confronted with modern southerners living in ancient landscapes. When Freud visits the acropolis, physical closeness to the ancient world inspires a reflection on cultural distance, not least from his own father (Leonard forthcoming). The Sicilian poet Salvatore Quasimodo (Nobel laureate 1962) tries to capture his physical closeness to Aeschylus in an invective against an unnamed poet of the north:

{|style="width:100%"
|style="width: 50%;vertical-align:top;"|
''A un poeta nemico''<br />
Sulla sabbia di Gela colore della paglia<br />
mi stendevo fanciullo in riva al mare<br />
antico di Grecia con molti sogni nei pugni<br />
stretti nel petto. Là Eschilo esule<br />
misurò versi e passi sconsolati,<br />
in quel golfo arso l’aquila lo vide<br />
e fu l’ultimo giorno. Uomo del Nord, che mi vuoi <br />
minimo o morto per tua pace, spera:<br />
la madre di mio padre avrà cent’anni<br />
a nuova primavera. Spera: che io domani<br />
non giochi col tuo cranio giallo per le piogge.<br />
|style="width: 50%;vertical-align:top;"|
''To a Hostile Poet''<br />
On the straw-coloured sands of Gela<br />
as a child I would lie by the ancient<br />
Grecian sea, many dreams in my breast<br />
and my clenched fists. Exiled Aeschylus there<br />
scanned over his verses and lines forlorn<br />
in the burning gulf where the eagle spied him<br />
that final day. Man of the North who wish me<br />
nothing, or dead, hope for your own peace:<br />
next spring my father’s mother will be<br />
a hundred years old. Hope that tomorrow I<br />
shall not be playing with your rain-yellowed skull.<br />
|}

Quasimodo alludes to ancient traditions about Aeschylus’ death, according to which a flying eagle saw the bald head of the poet, mistook it for a rock, and dropped a tortoise he was holding in his talons, in order to crack open its shell and eat it (the account may derive from an omen described in some lost play of Aeschylus). Quasimodo leaves out the colourful detail of the tortoise falling from the sky, because it does not fit the starkness of his poem. What he offers instead is the image of a forlorn figure in a vast landscape – a figure that is simultaneously Aeschylus and Quasimodo. It is only halfway through the epigram that the ancient and the modern poet part company. Unlike Aeschylus, Quasimodo is still alive, and does not plan to die any time soon: his grandmother has excellent genes, after all. It is his rival from the north who will go first, as rain falls on his yellowed skull. Quasimodo is still at play on the golden sands of Gela at the end of his poem. The suggestion is that the Sicilian Greek lives like Aeschylus – feels the ancient sand and sea through his own living body – whereas his northern rival can at best die like the ancient poet, with something nasty (rain or tortoise) falling on his head. Here too, competitive literary receptions are negotiated through embodied experience.

What portraits and places bring to the fore are intensely personal responses to ancient literature. Scholars insist, quite rightly, that authorial representations depend on two factors: an interpretation of the author’s ''oeuvre'', and the conventions of biography, portraiture, and other relevant genres. To these two, I would add a third element that determines how ancient authors are represented: the lived, embodied experience of their readers and admirers.

----

== Bibliography ==

<div id="bibliography">

* Bing, P. 1988. ‘Theocritus’ Epigrams on the Statues of Ancient Poets.’ ''A & A'' 34.2: 117-123.
* Clay, D. 2004. ''Archilochos Heros: The Cult of Poets in the Greek Polis''. Cambridge, MA.
* Dionisotti, C. 1967. ''Geografia e storia della letteratura italiana''. Turin.
* Güthenke, C. forthcoming. ‘“Lives” as Parameter. The Privileging of Ancient Lives as a Category of Research around 1900.’ In R. Fletcher and J. Hanink (eds.), ''Creative Lives. New Approaches to Ancient Intellectual Biography''. Cambridge.
* Leonard, M. forthcoming. ‘Freud and the Biography of Antiquity.’ In R. Fletcher and J. Hanink (eds.), ''Creative Lives. New Approaches to Ancient Intellectual Biography.'' Cambridge.
* MacDowell , D. M. (ed.) 1982. ''Gorgias. Encomium of Helen''. Bristol.
* Petsalis-Diomidis, A. 2006. ‘Sacred Writing, Sacred Reading: The Function of Aelius Aristides’ Self-Presentation as Author in the ''Sacred Tales''.’ In J. Mossman and B. McGing (eds.), ''The Limits of Ancient Biography''. Swansea: 193-211.
* Rossi, L. 2001. ''The Epigrams Ascribed to Theocritus: A Method of Approach''. Leuven.
* Zanker, P. 1995. ''The Mask of Socrates: The Image of the Intellectual in Antiquity.'' Berkeley and Los Angeles.

</div>
<div id="notes"></div>

[[Category:Guides by Barbara Graziosi]]

Embodiments of Literature

2015-09-29T16:52:51Z

NickFreer: /* Bibliography */

{{GuideHighlightBox}}
{{Author|Barbara Graziosi}}
{{#howtoquote:}}
<div id="guide">
Literature is often presented as something ethereal and intangible. It concerns the life of the mind, unconstrained by the material realities of the body. It does not depend on the senses, particularly: we can appreciate Homer by listening, reading, or touching Braille. These different sensory approaches affect our experience, of course, but we are still recognisably confronted with the same text. ''Logos'', language, and literature pertain to the mind rather than the body (and this explains, in part, why literature is placed above material culture in traditional hierarchies). There are, however, ways of thinking about literature as an embodied experience. Gorgias suggests one (''Encomium of Helen'' 7-9):

<blockquote>εἰ δὲ βίαι ἡρπάσθη καὶ ἀνόμως ἐβιάσθη καὶ ἀδίκως ὑβρίσθη, δῆλον ὅτι ὁ ἁρπάσας ἢ ὑβρίσας ἠδίκησεν, ἡ δὲ ἁρπασθεῖσα ἢ ὑβρισθεῖσα ἐδυστύχησεν. [...] (8) εἰ δὲ λόγος ὁ πείσας καὶ τὴν ψυχὴν ἀπατήσας, οὐδὲ πρὸς τοῦτο χαλεπὸν ἀπολογήσασθαι καὶ τὴν αἰτίαν ἀπολύσασθαι ὧδε. λόγος δυνάστης μέγας ἐστίν, ὃς σμικροτάτωι σώματι καὶ ἀφανεστάτωι θειότατα ἔργα ἀποτελεῖ· δύναται γὰρ καὶ φόβον παῦσαι καὶ λύπην ἀφελεῖν καὶ χαρὰν ἐνεργάσασθαι καὶ ἔλεον ἐπαυξῆσαι. ταῦτα δὲ ὡς οὕτως ἔχει δείξω· (9) δεῖ δὲ καὶ δόξηι δεῖξαι τοῖς ἀκούουσι· τὴν ποίησιν ἅπασαν καὶ νομίζω καὶ ὀνομάζω λόγον ἔχοντα μέτρον· ἧς τοὺς ἀκούοντας εἰσῆλθε καὶ φρίκη περίφοβος καὶ ἔλεος πολύδακρυς καὶ πόθος φιλοπενθής, ἐπ' ἀλλοτρίων τε πραγμάτων καὶ σωμάτων εὐτυχίαις καὶ δυσπραγίαις ἴδιόν τι πάθημα διὰ τῶν λόγων ἔπαθεν ἡ ψυχή. </blockquote>

<blockquote>If she was seized by force, unlawfully constrained, and unjustly abused, it is clear that the man who seized or abused did wrong, and that the woman who was seized or abused suffered misfortune. […] (8) But if speech persuaded and deceived her soul, it is also not difficult to offer a defence for that and to dismiss the accusation in the following way. Speech is a powerful lord, which by the smallest and most invisible body achieves the most divine works; for it can stop fear, remove pain, produce joy, and increase pity. And I shall prove that this is the case; (9) and I must prove it to my listeners by reference to opinion as well. I consider and define all poetry as speech with metre. A fearful shudder, tearful pity, and grievous longing come upon those who hear it, and on account of words the soul suffers its own affliction at the successes and misfortunes of others’ affairs and bodies.</blockquote>

The corporeal nature of this passage is difficult to capture, in part because of the modern divide between mind and body: φρίκη περίφοβος, for example, becomes ‘a fearful fright’ in MacDowell’s standard translation, when the Greek describes a shudder. More strikingly, not once does MacDowell translate Gorgias’ σῶμα as ‘body’, even though it is the key term in our passage (see MacDowell 1982: 25). The small and invisible body of ''logos'' has very real power, he insists. The proof is its effect on the body of those who listen. Gorgias uses the most physical metaphor – rape – to illustrate what words can do. And yet even he must admit that the σῶμα of words cannot be apprehended directly – it cannot be touched or seen, even if its effects are felt in the body.

This contribution explores the material reception of literature, by considering portraits and places associated with ancient literary figures. I return at the end to Gorgias’ challenging proposition: that we feel literature in our body.

==Portraits==

The creation of the author is an aspect of the reception of his or her work. Just as the Lives of the ancient poets are largely based on their works, so are their portraits. So, for example, Demodocus is interpreted as an autobiographical character, and Homer is depicted as a blind bard. Or again, Sappho describes how painful it is when a girl leaves her circle, and an important (if neglected) vase depicts this moment of separation:

<center>[[File: Kunstsammlungen_der_Ruhr-Universität,_Bochum.png‎|link=Kunstsammlungen der Ruhr-Universität, Bochum]]</center>
<blockquote>''Red-figure krater, Tithonus painter, ca 480 BCE: the figure on the left is named ‘Sappho’, the figure on the right is labelled ‘the girl’.''
''Kunstsammlungen der Ruhr-Universität, Bochum.''</blockquote>

Sappho and ‘the girl’ (ἡ παῖς: a designation that could apply to several of her girls) are depicted walking in opposite directions, but looking back at each other. As an object, the krater is as unsettling as Sappho’s poems of separation. Many vases play on the theme of the amorous chase: because they are round, whoever chases will in turn be chased, in an exhilarating spiral, in which the viewer can take part by turning the vase round and round. This vase is more awkward to view and handle: the body goes one way, the gaze, the longing, (and, we are reminded, the poetry) quite another.

There is some fun to be had when looking at material depictions of authors, and reading them as receptions of their work. The development of portrait types, for example, is influenced by literary canons, and simultaneously contributes to creating them. Juxtaposition with (and typological similarity to) other categories of portrait situates ancient authors within specific cultural and intellectual milieux: it transforms literary traditions into visual experiences and reifies them in the form of material objects. Portraits allow patrons to ‘possess’ specific literary traditions, genres or poems, and simultaneously generate an intellectual process by which the viewer is asked to ‘read’ the author’s work through the interpretation of specific details of physiognomy, expression, gesture, and placement in relation to other figures. Reading the image and reading the text become connected enterprises (Zanker 1995).

Several ancient sources comment on the relationship between portrait and ''oeuvre''. Theocritus, for example, writes an epigram about a statue of Anacreon placed in the poet’s native island of Teos:

{|
|style="width: 50%;vertical-align:top;"|
Θᾶσαι τὸν ἀνδριάντα τοῦτον, ὦ ξένε,<br />
     σπουδᾷ, καὶ λέγ’, ἐπὴν ἐς οἶκον ἔνθῃς·<br />
“Ἀνακρέοντος εἰκόν’ εἶδον ἐν Τέωι,<br />
     τῶν πρόσθ’ εἴ τι περισσὸν ᾠδοποιῶν.”<br />
προσθεὶς δὲ χὤτι τοῖς νέοισιν ἅδετο,<br />
     ἐρεῖς ἀτρεκέως ὅλον τὸν ἄνδρα.<br />
|style="width: 50%;vertical-align:top;"|
Look well upon this statue, stranger, and say, when you get home, “I saw the likeness of Anacreon in Teos, one of the greatest among the poets of old.” Add to this that he loved young men, and you will have accurately described the whole man.
|}

Here the whole legacy of Anacreon is reduced to a statue (whether real or made up in poetry) and a sentence: ‘he enjoyed young boys’. There is apparently no need to read Anacreon’s work: the stranger is simply invited to visit Anacreon’s place of birth, look at the statue, and remember Theocritus’ own pithy statement. Readers will thus know ‘the whole man’ by a very quick and simple process. Unsurprisingly, there has been some debate about the word ὅλον. Some readers take it at face value (Rossi 2001: 284-5), others point out that the mini biography provided by Theocritus cannot be taken to represent all of Anacreon’s ''oeuvre'', just as he fails to provide a satisfying ekphrasis of the statue (Bing 1988: 121). This seems true – and I add that Theocritus himself, as a poet, cannot possibly want to be reduced to a portrait and a sentence. His in-your-face Doric θᾶσαι at the beginning of this epigram (which is written in honour of an Ionian poet, after all, and purportedly placed on an Ionian island!) inscribes Theocritus’ own place of birth, as well as his voice and genre, in the composition, suggesting a more broad-ranging literary and personal engagement than his summary biography. Unlike the statue, literature is never confined to one place. As Pindar taught us ({{#lemma: ''Nemean'' 5.1-3 | [[Pindar, Nemean 5.1-3|Pind. ''N.'' 5.1-3]]}}), it can travel on every ship and skiff.

Ovid has equally thought-provoking things to say about portraits and places (''Sorrows'' 1.7.1-14):

{|
|style="width: 50%;vertical-align:top;"|
Siquis habes nostris similes in imagine uultus,<br />
     deme meis hederas, Bacchica serta, comis.<br />
ista decent laetos felicia signa poetas:<br />
     temporibus non est apta corona meis.<br />
hoc tibi dissimula, senti tamen, optime, dici,<br />
     in digito qui me fersque refersque tuo,<br />
effigiemque meam fuluo complexus in auro<br />
     cara relegati, quae potes, ora uides.<br />
quae quotiens spectas, subeat tibi dicere forsan<br />
     "quam procul a nobis Naso sodalis abest!"<br />
grata tua est pietas, sed carmina maior imago<br />
     sunt mea, quae mando qualiacumque legas,<br />
carmina mutatas hominum dicentia formas,<br />
     infelix domini quod fuga rupit opus.<br />
|style="width: 50%;vertical-align:top;"|
Whoever has a portrait of my face, remove the ivy, garland of Bacchus, from my hair. Such signs of fortune suit happy poets: a wreath is not fitting for my temples. Conceal – but know – that I say this to you, best friend, who carry me here and there on your finger, and who, clasping my image on the yellow gold, see the dear face, all that you can, of an exile. Whenever you look at it, perhaps you will be prompted to say, “How far away is our friend Ovid!” Your love is a comfort, but my verses are a better portrait, and I urge you to read them such as they are, verses that tell of human transformations, the work broken off by the unhappy flight of its author.
|}

Commentators move swiftly past the first lines – which they find embarassing, both to Ovid’s fan and to Ovid himself, who imagines this person. They move straight beyond the longing for physical contact to line 11, and discuss what Ovid has to say about the ''Metamorphoses'': the poem speaks of altered forms, and Ovid himself is an altered man. I suggest we should pay a bit more attention to the bust crowned with ivy, and the signet ring – not just as objects, but as objects that inspire physical responses to poetry. Removing the ivy means not just recognising Ovid’s unhappiness, but also his new work, the ''Sorrows'', and ensuring that the author continues to remain an accurate ''imago'' of his oeuvre. As for the signet ring, new work by Chris Faraone on amulets may, in due course, provide an important interpretative framework. There is a well attested ritual whereby people who want to communicate with a god wear a signet ring with the deity’s image on it. Magical texts recommend wearing the image turned inwards, on the side of the palm, and sleeping with one ear next to it, in the hope that the god might send a message in a dream. This ritual of private communication may be relevant here. The addressee who loves Ovid needs to understand and yet dissimulate what the poet tells him (line 5, which is textually uncertain). There is the conceit of personal contact, even though Ovid does not even know who he may be addressing: ''siquis''. This person should not seek the poet just through portraits, however, but rather by finding new meaning in the ''Metamorphoses''. This meaning is personal – not just for the poet, and his changed ''oeuvre'' and life – but personal to the reader, who needs to guard his interpretation as closely as he keeps his signet ring.

Admiration for literature repeatedly finds expression in the desire to encounter the author face-to-face. Pliny comments, “Our longings give birth to likenesses that have not been passed down to us, as in the case of Homer” (''NH'' 35.2: ''pariunt desideria non traditos uultus, sicut in Homero euenit''). Petrarch laments the fact that, because he lacks a proper translation of the ''Iliad'', he can only catch glimpses of Homer’s face ({{#lemma: ''Familiar Letters'' 24.12.2 | [[Petrarch, Familiar Letters 24.12.2|Petr. ''Fam.'' 24.12.2]]}}). In a different letter, he writes of embracing a copy of the ''Iliad'', as if he were actually touching his beloved friend Homer ({{#lemma: ''Familiar Letters'' 18.2.6 | [[Petrarch, Familiar Letters 18.2.6|Petr. ''Fam.'' 18.2.6]]}}). Elsewhere still, he admits that being close to an author has nothing to do with material objects. It is a personal connection, as if with a living person ‘made of flesh’, a connection that provides Petrarch with a suitable interlocutor and distances him from the ''uulgus'' ({{#lemma: ''Familiar Letters'' 8.3.6 | [[Petrarch, Familiar Letters 8.3.6|Petr. ''Fam.'' 8.3.6]]}}).

Because the process of imagining the face and the body of the author involves a private and personal act of reading, real portraits can come into conflict with the imagined face. Libanius ({{#lemma: ''Letters'' 143.3 | [[Libanius, Letters 143.3|Lib. ''Ep.'' 143.3]]}}), for example, is desperate to obtain a portrait of Aristides, but when he actually receives one he refuses to accept that it is a true likeness (Petsalis-Diomidis 2006). Surely, he argues, Aristides could not have looked so healthy, or have such luscious hair! Eventually, on receiving a second portrait that agrees with the first, Libanius accepts that the images must reflect how Aristides actually looked. But he is still puzzled by the hair, and demands to know how it could have been so abundant. He also wants a full portrait ({{#lemma: ''Letters'' 143.5 | [[Libanius, Letters 143.5|Lib. ''Ep.'' 143.5]]}}).

There are many other examples of desire for ancient authors (Güthenke forthcoming) and of disappointment with their portraits. John Cosin (1594–1672), Prince Bishop of Durham, ordered that his library on Palace Green be decorated with portraits of ancient philosophers and fathers of the Church, and insisted that that they be based on genuine ancient artefacts. When he actually saw them, however, he was appalled: ‘They look like Saracens!’ he declared in one of his furious letters to the artist.

It seems, then, that portraits become sites of ''competitive'' reception, where different visions of ancient authors come to clash. The cognitive process by which the act of reading results in a private image of the author is destabilised by the objectivity of actual portraits.

==Places==

Because bodies are located in space and time, embodied responses to literature clash with the intangible ubiquitousness of words. The krater depicting Sappho makes the point: bodies go their separate ways, but longing and poetry still connect them. Theocritus objects to ancient literary tourism: the Hellenistic desire to celebrate the poets in the places where they were born, through cultic statues and monuments (Clay 2004), is exposed as inadequate: he tells us to look at an Ionian poet, on an Ionian island, by addressing us in his own native Doric, θᾶσαι, and thus making us think of Sicily instead. Ovid speaks of the physical intimacy established by wearing a signet ring, and then suggests that the act of reading the ''Metamorphoses'' is equally close and personal. Petrarch embraces a Greek manuscript of Homer’s ''Iliad'', but then blames Homer for ‘having forgotten his Latin’ – i.e. for not having inspired adequate Latin translations. The problem is not just linguistic, for Petrarch: he resents Homer’s cultural and geographical distance, in an attitude of suspicion and superiority towards Byzantine culture (Dionisotti 1967). Bishop Cosin thinks that the ancient philosophers are like him, and is dismayed to find out that they look like Saracens.

The problem of place and possession resonates through the history of classical culture, of course. We are all familiar with the distaste and disorientation of northern Europeans, when confronted with modern southerners living in ancient landscapes. When Freud visits the acropolis, physical closeness to the ancient world inspires a reflection on cultural distance, not least from his own father (Leonard forthcoming). The Sicilian poet Salvatore Quasimodo (Nobel laureate 1962) tries to capture his physical closeness to Aeschylus in an invective against an unnamed poet of the north:

{|style="width:100%"
|style="width: 50%;vertical-align:top;"|
''A un poeta nemico''<br />
Sulla sabbia di Gela colore della paglia<br />
mi stendevo fanciullo in riva al mare<br />
antico di Grecia con molti sogni nei pugni<br />
stretti nel petto. Là Eschilo esule<br />
misurò versi e passi sconsolati,<br />
in quel golfo arso l’aquila lo vide<br />
e fu l’ultimo giorno. Uomo del Nord, che mi vuoi <br />
minimo o morto per tua pace, spera:<br />
la madre di mio padre avrà cent’anni<br />
a nuova primavera. Spera: che io domani<br />
non giochi col tuo cranio giallo per le piogge.<br />
|style="width: 50%;vertical-align:top;"|
''To a Hostile Poet''<br />
On the straw-coloured sands of Gela<br />
as a child I would lie by the ancient<br />
Grecian sea, many dreams in my breast<br />
and my clenched fists. Exiled Aeschylus there<br />
scanned over his verses and lines forlorn<br />
in the burning gulf where the eagle spied him<br />
that final day. Man of the North who wish me<br />
nothing, or dead, hope for your own peace:<br />
next spring my father’s mother will be<br />
a hundred years old. Hope that tomorrow I<br />
shall not be playing with your rain-yellowed skull.<br />
|}

Quasimodo alludes to ancient traditions about Aeschylus’ death, according to which a flying eagle saw the bald head of the poet, mistook it for a rock, and dropped a tortoise he was holding in his talons, in order to crack open its shell and eat it (the account may derive from an omen described in some lost play of Aeschylus). Quasimodo leaves out the colourful detail of the tortoise falling from the sky, because it does not fit the starkness of his poem. What he offers instead is the image of a forlorn figure in a vast landscape – a figure that is simultaneously Aeschylus and Quasimodo. It is only halfway through the epigram that the ancient and the modern poet part company. Unlike Aeschylus, Quasimodo is still alive, and does not plan to die any time soon: his grandmother has excellent genes, after all. It is his rival from the north who will go first, as rain falls on his yellowed skull. Quasimodo is still at play on the golden sands of Gela at the end of his poem. The suggestion is that the Sicilian Greek lives like Aeschylus – feels the ancient sand and sea through his own living body – whereas his northern rival can at best die like the ancient poet, with something nasty (rain or tortoise) falling on his head. Here too, competitive literary receptions are negotiated through embodied experience.

What portraits and places bring to the fore are intensely personal responses to ancient literature. Scholars insist, quite rightly, that authorial representations depend on two factors: an interpretation of the author’s ''oeuvre'', and the conventions of biography, portraiture, and other relevant genres. To these two, I would add a third element that determines how ancient authors are represented: the lived, embodied experience of their readers and admirers.

----

== Bibliography ==

<div id="bibliography">

* Bing, P. 1988. ‘Theocritus’ Epigrams on the Statues of Ancient Poets.’ ''A & A'' 34.2: 117-123.
* Clay, D. 2004. ''Archilochos Heros: The Cult of Poets in the Greek Polis''. Cambridge, MA.
* Dionisotti, C. 1967. ''Geografia e storia della letteratura italiana''. Turin.
* Güthenke, C. forthcoming. ‘”Lives” as Parameter. The Privileging of Ancient Lives as a Category of Research around 1900.’ In R. Fletcher and J. Hanink (eds.), ''Creative Lives. New Approaches to Ancient Intellectual Biography''. Cambridge.
* Leonard, M. forthcoming. ‘Freud and the Biography of Antiquity.’ In R. Fletcher and J. Hanink (eds.), ''Creative Lives. New Approaches to Ancient Intellectual Biography.'' Cambridge.
* MacDowell , D. M. (ed.) 1982. ''Gorgias. Encomium of Helen''. Bristol.
* Petsalis-Diomidis, A. 2006. ‘Sacred Writing, Sacred Reading: The Function of Aelius Aristides’ Self-Presentation as Author in the ''Sacred Tales''.’ In J. Mossman and B. McGing (eds.), ''The Limits of Ancient Biography''. Swansea: 193-211.
* Rossi, L. 2001. ''The Epigrams Ascribed to Theocritus: A Method of Approach''. Leuven.
* Zanker, P. 1995. ''The Mask of Socrates: The Image of the Intellectual in Antiquity.'' Berkeley and Los Angeles.

</div>
<div id="notes"></div>

[[Category:Guides by Barbara Graziosi]]

Embodiments of Literature

2015-09-29T16:52:33Z

NickFreer: /* Bibliography */

{{GuideHighlightBox}}
{{Author|Barbara Graziosi}}
{{#howtoquote:}}
<div id="guide">
Literature is often presented as something ethereal and intangible. It concerns the life of the mind, unconstrained by the material realities of the body. It does not depend on the senses, particularly: we can appreciate Homer by listening, reading, or touching Braille. These different sensory approaches affect our experience, of course, but we are still recognisably confronted with the same text. ''Logos'', language, and literature pertain to the mind rather than the body (and this explains, in part, why literature is placed above material culture in traditional hierarchies). There are, however, ways of thinking about literature as an embodied experience. Gorgias suggests one (''Encomium of Helen'' 7-9):

<blockquote>εἰ δὲ βίαι ἡρπάσθη καὶ ἀνόμως ἐβιάσθη καὶ ἀδίκως ὑβρίσθη, δῆλον ὅτι ὁ ἁρπάσας ἢ ὑβρίσας ἠδίκησεν, ἡ δὲ ἁρπασθεῖσα ἢ ὑβρισθεῖσα ἐδυστύχησεν. [...] (8) εἰ δὲ λόγος ὁ πείσας καὶ τὴν ψυχὴν ἀπατήσας, οὐδὲ πρὸς τοῦτο χαλεπὸν ἀπολογήσασθαι καὶ τὴν αἰτίαν ἀπολύσασθαι ὧδε. λόγος δυνάστης μέγας ἐστίν, ὃς σμικροτάτωι σώματι καὶ ἀφανεστάτωι θειότατα ἔργα ἀποτελεῖ· δύναται γὰρ καὶ φόβον παῦσαι καὶ λύπην ἀφελεῖν καὶ χαρὰν ἐνεργάσασθαι καὶ ἔλεον ἐπαυξῆσαι. ταῦτα δὲ ὡς οὕτως ἔχει δείξω· (9) δεῖ δὲ καὶ δόξηι δεῖξαι τοῖς ἀκούουσι· τὴν ποίησιν ἅπασαν καὶ νομίζω καὶ ὀνομάζω λόγον ἔχοντα μέτρον· ἧς τοὺς ἀκούοντας εἰσῆλθε καὶ φρίκη περίφοβος καὶ ἔλεος πολύδακρυς καὶ πόθος φιλοπενθής, ἐπ' ἀλλοτρίων τε πραγμάτων καὶ σωμάτων εὐτυχίαις καὶ δυσπραγίαις ἴδιόν τι πάθημα διὰ τῶν λόγων ἔπαθεν ἡ ψυχή. </blockquote>

<blockquote>If she was seized by force, unlawfully constrained, and unjustly abused, it is clear that the man who seized or abused did wrong, and that the woman who was seized or abused suffered misfortune. […] (8) But if speech persuaded and deceived her soul, it is also not difficult to offer a defence for that and to dismiss the accusation in the following way. Speech is a powerful lord, which by the smallest and most invisible body achieves the most divine works; for it can stop fear, remove pain, produce joy, and increase pity. And I shall prove that this is the case; (9) and I must prove it to my listeners by reference to opinion as well. I consider and define all poetry as speech with metre. A fearful shudder, tearful pity, and grievous longing come upon those who hear it, and on account of words the soul suffers its own affliction at the successes and misfortunes of others’ affairs and bodies.</blockquote>

The corporeal nature of this passage is difficult to capture, in part because of the modern divide between mind and body: φρίκη περίφοβος, for example, becomes ‘a fearful fright’ in MacDowell’s standard translation, when the Greek describes a shudder. More strikingly, not once does MacDowell translate Gorgias’ σῶμα as ‘body’, even though it is the key term in our passage (see MacDowell 1982: 25). The small and invisible body of ''logos'' has very real power, he insists. The proof is its effect on the body of those who listen. Gorgias uses the most physical metaphor – rape – to illustrate what words can do. And yet even he must admit that the σῶμα of words cannot be apprehended directly – it cannot be touched or seen, even if its effects are felt in the body.

This contribution explores the material reception of literature, by considering portraits and places associated with ancient literary figures. I return at the end to Gorgias’ challenging proposition: that we feel literature in our body.

==Portraits==

The creation of the author is an aspect of the reception of his or her work. Just as the Lives of the ancient poets are largely based on their works, so are their portraits. So, for example, Demodocus is interpreted as an autobiographical character, and Homer is depicted as a blind bard. Or again, Sappho describes how painful it is when a girl leaves her circle, and an important (if neglected) vase depicts this moment of separation:

<center>[[File: Kunstsammlungen_der_Ruhr-Universität,_Bochum.png‎|link=Kunstsammlungen der Ruhr-Universität, Bochum]]</center>
<blockquote>''Red-figure krater, Tithonus painter, ca 480 BCE: the figure on the left is named ‘Sappho’, the figure on the right is labelled ‘the girl’.''
''Kunstsammlungen der Ruhr-Universität, Bochum.''</blockquote>

Sappho and ‘the girl’ (ἡ παῖς: a designation that could apply to several of her girls) are depicted walking in opposite directions, but looking back at each other. As an object, the krater is as unsettling as Sappho’s poems of separation. Many vases play on the theme of the amorous chase: because they are round, whoever chases will in turn be chased, in an exhilarating spiral, in which the viewer can take part by turning the vase round and round. This vase is more awkward to view and handle: the body goes one way, the gaze, the longing, (and, we are reminded, the poetry) quite another.

There is some fun to be had when looking at material depictions of authors, and reading them as receptions of their work. The development of portrait types, for example, is influenced by literary canons, and simultaneously contributes to creating them. Juxtaposition with (and typological similarity to) other categories of portrait situates ancient authors within specific cultural and intellectual milieux: it transforms literary traditions into visual experiences and reifies them in the form of material objects. Portraits allow patrons to ‘possess’ specific literary traditions, genres or poems, and simultaneously generate an intellectual process by which the viewer is asked to ‘read’ the author’s work through the interpretation of specific details of physiognomy, expression, gesture, and placement in relation to other figures. Reading the image and reading the text become connected enterprises (Zanker 1995).

Several ancient sources comment on the relationship between portrait and ''oeuvre''. Theocritus, for example, writes an epigram about a statue of Anacreon placed in the poet’s native island of Teos:

{|
|style="width: 50%;vertical-align:top;"|
Θᾶσαι τὸν ἀνδριάντα τοῦτον, ὦ ξένε,<br />
     σπουδᾷ, καὶ λέγ’, ἐπὴν ἐς οἶκον ἔνθῃς·<br />
“Ἀνακρέοντος εἰκόν’ εἶδον ἐν Τέωι,<br />
     τῶν πρόσθ’ εἴ τι περισσὸν ᾠδοποιῶν.”<br />
προσθεὶς δὲ χὤτι τοῖς νέοισιν ἅδετο,<br />
     ἐρεῖς ἀτρεκέως ὅλον τὸν ἄνδρα.<br />
|style="width: 50%;vertical-align:top;"|
Look well upon this statue, stranger, and say, when you get home, “I saw the likeness of Anacreon in Teos, one of the greatest among the poets of old.” Add to this that he loved young men, and you will have accurately described the whole man.
|}

Here the whole legacy of Anacreon is reduced to a statue (whether real or made up in poetry) and a sentence: ‘he enjoyed young boys’. There is apparently no need to read Anacreon’s work: the stranger is simply invited to visit Anacreon’s place of birth, look at the statue, and remember Theocritus’ own pithy statement. Readers will thus know ‘the whole man’ by a very quick and simple process. Unsurprisingly, there has been some debate about the word ὅλον. Some readers take it at face value (Rossi 2001: 284-5), others point out that the mini biography provided by Theocritus cannot be taken to represent all of Anacreon’s ''oeuvre'', just as he fails to provide a satisfying ekphrasis of the statue (Bing 1988: 121). This seems true – and I add that Theocritus himself, as a poet, cannot possibly want to be reduced to a portrait and a sentence. His in-your-face Doric θᾶσαι at the beginning of this epigram (which is written in honour of an Ionian poet, after all, and purportedly placed on an Ionian island!) inscribes Theocritus’ own place of birth, as well as his voice and genre, in the composition, suggesting a more broad-ranging literary and personal engagement than his summary biography. Unlike the statue, literature is never confined to one place. As Pindar taught us ({{#lemma: ''Nemean'' 5.1-3 | [[Pindar, Nemean 5.1-3|Pind. ''N.'' 5.1-3]]}}), it can travel on every ship and skiff.

Ovid has equally thought-provoking things to say about portraits and places (''Sorrows'' 1.7.1-14):

{|
|style="width: 50%;vertical-align:top;"|
Siquis habes nostris similes in imagine uultus,<br />
     deme meis hederas, Bacchica serta, comis.<br />
ista decent laetos felicia signa poetas:<br />
     temporibus non est apta corona meis.<br />
hoc tibi dissimula, senti tamen, optime, dici,<br />
     in digito qui me fersque refersque tuo,<br />
effigiemque meam fuluo complexus in auro<br />
     cara relegati, quae potes, ora uides.<br />
quae quotiens spectas, subeat tibi dicere forsan<br />
     "quam procul a nobis Naso sodalis abest!"<br />
grata tua est pietas, sed carmina maior imago<br />
     sunt mea, quae mando qualiacumque legas,<br />
carmina mutatas hominum dicentia formas,<br />
     infelix domini quod fuga rupit opus.<br />
|style="width: 50%;vertical-align:top;"|
Whoever has a portrait of my face, remove the ivy, garland of Bacchus, from my hair. Such signs of fortune suit happy poets: a wreath is not fitting for my temples. Conceal – but know – that I say this to you, best friend, who carry me here and there on your finger, and who, clasping my image on the yellow gold, see the dear face, all that you can, of an exile. Whenever you look at it, perhaps you will be prompted to say, “How far away is our friend Ovid!” Your love is a comfort, but my verses are a better portrait, and I urge you to read them such as they are, verses that tell of human transformations, the work broken off by the unhappy flight of its author.
|}

Commentators move swiftly past the first lines – which they find embarassing, both to Ovid’s fan and to Ovid himself, who imagines this person. They move straight beyond the longing for physical contact to line 11, and discuss what Ovid has to say about the ''Metamorphoses'': the poem speaks of altered forms, and Ovid himself is an altered man. I suggest we should pay a bit more attention to the bust crowned with ivy, and the signet ring – not just as objects, but as objects that inspire physical responses to poetry. Removing the ivy means not just recognising Ovid’s unhappiness, but also his new work, the ''Sorrows'', and ensuring that the author continues to remain an accurate ''imago'' of his oeuvre. As for the signet ring, new work by Chris Faraone on amulets may, in due course, provide an important interpretative framework. There is a well attested ritual whereby people who want to communicate with a god wear a signet ring with the deity’s image on it. Magical texts recommend wearing the image turned inwards, on the side of the palm, and sleeping with one ear next to it, in the hope that the god might send a message in a dream. This ritual of private communication may be relevant here. The addressee who loves Ovid needs to understand and yet dissimulate what the poet tells him (line 5, which is textually uncertain). There is the conceit of personal contact, even though Ovid does not even know who he may be addressing: ''siquis''. This person should not seek the poet just through portraits, however, but rather by finding new meaning in the ''Metamorphoses''. This meaning is personal – not just for the poet, and his changed ''oeuvre'' and life – but personal to the reader, who needs to guard his interpretation as closely as he keeps his signet ring.

Admiration for literature repeatedly finds expression in the desire to encounter the author face-to-face. Pliny comments, “Our longings give birth to likenesses that have not been passed down to us, as in the case of Homer” (''NH'' 35.2: ''pariunt desideria non traditos uultus, sicut in Homero euenit''). Petrarch laments the fact that, because he lacks a proper translation of the ''Iliad'', he can only catch glimpses of Homer’s face ({{#lemma: ''Familiar Letters'' 24.12.2 | [[Petrarch, Familiar Letters 24.12.2|Petr. ''Fam.'' 24.12.2]]}}). In a different letter, he writes of embracing a copy of the ''Iliad'', as if he were actually touching his beloved friend Homer ({{#lemma: ''Familiar Letters'' 18.2.6 | [[Petrarch, Familiar Letters 18.2.6|Petr. ''Fam.'' 18.2.6]]}}). Elsewhere still, he admits that being close to an author has nothing to do with material objects. It is a personal connection, as if with a living person ‘made of flesh’, a connection that provides Petrarch with a suitable interlocutor and distances him from the ''uulgus'' ({{#lemma: ''Familiar Letters'' 8.3.6 | [[Petrarch, Familiar Letters 8.3.6|Petr. ''Fam.'' 8.3.6]]}}).

Because the process of imagining the face and the body of the author involves a private and personal act of reading, real portraits can come into conflict with the imagined face. Libanius ({{#lemma: ''Letters'' 143.3 | [[Libanius, Letters 143.3|Lib. ''Ep.'' 143.3]]}}), for example, is desperate to obtain a portrait of Aristides, but when he actually receives one he refuses to accept that it is a true likeness (Petsalis-Diomidis 2006). Surely, he argues, Aristides could not have looked so healthy, or have such luscious hair! Eventually, on receiving a second portrait that agrees with the first, Libanius accepts that the images must reflect how Aristides actually looked. But he is still puzzled by the hair, and demands to know how it could have been so abundant. He also wants a full portrait ({{#lemma: ''Letters'' 143.5 | [[Libanius, Letters 143.5|Lib. ''Ep.'' 143.5]]}}).

There are many other examples of desire for ancient authors (Güthenke forthcoming) and of disappointment with their portraits. John Cosin (1594–1672), Prince Bishop of Durham, ordered that his library on Palace Green be decorated with portraits of ancient philosophers and fathers of the Church, and insisted that that they be based on genuine ancient artefacts. When he actually saw them, however, he was appalled: ‘They look like Saracens!’ he declared in one of his furious letters to the artist.

It seems, then, that portraits become sites of ''competitive'' reception, where different visions of ancient authors come to clash. The cognitive process by which the act of reading results in a private image of the author is destabilised by the objectivity of actual portraits.

==Places==

Because bodies are located in space and time, embodied responses to literature clash with the intangible ubiquitousness of words. The krater depicting Sappho makes the point: bodies go their separate ways, but longing and poetry still connect them. Theocritus objects to ancient literary tourism: the Hellenistic desire to celebrate the poets in the places where they were born, through cultic statues and monuments (Clay 2004), is exposed as inadequate: he tells us to look at an Ionian poet, on an Ionian island, by addressing us in his own native Doric, θᾶσαι, and thus making us think of Sicily instead. Ovid speaks of the physical intimacy established by wearing a signet ring, and then suggests that the act of reading the ''Metamorphoses'' is equally close and personal. Petrarch embraces a Greek manuscript of Homer’s ''Iliad'', but then blames Homer for ‘having forgotten his Latin’ – i.e. for not having inspired adequate Latin translations. The problem is not just linguistic, for Petrarch: he resents Homer’s cultural and geographical distance, in an attitude of suspicion and superiority towards Byzantine culture (Dionisotti 1967). Bishop Cosin thinks that the ancient philosophers are like him, and is dismayed to find out that they look like Saracens.

The problem of place and possession resonates through the history of classical culture, of course. We are all familiar with the distaste and disorientation of northern Europeans, when confronted with modern southerners living in ancient landscapes. When Freud visits the acropolis, physical closeness to the ancient world inspires a reflection on cultural distance, not least from his own father (Leonard forthcoming). The Sicilian poet Salvatore Quasimodo (Nobel laureate 1962) tries to capture his physical closeness to Aeschylus in an invective against an unnamed poet of the north:

{|style="width:100%"
|style="width: 50%;vertical-align:top;"|
''A un poeta nemico''<br />
Sulla sabbia di Gela colore della paglia<br />
mi stendevo fanciullo in riva al mare<br />
antico di Grecia con molti sogni nei pugni<br />
stretti nel petto. Là Eschilo esule<br />
misurò versi e passi sconsolati,<br />
in quel golfo arso l’aquila lo vide<br />
e fu l’ultimo giorno. Uomo del Nord, che mi vuoi <br />
minimo o morto per tua pace, spera:<br />
la madre di mio padre avrà cent’anni<br />
a nuova primavera. Spera: che io domani<br />
non giochi col tuo cranio giallo per le piogge.<br />
|style="width: 50%;vertical-align:top;"|
''To a Hostile Poet''<br />
On the straw-coloured sands of Gela<br />
as a child I would lie by the ancient<br />
Grecian sea, many dreams in my breast<br />
and my clenched fists. Exiled Aeschylus there<br />
scanned over his verses and lines forlorn<br />
in the burning gulf where the eagle spied him<br />
that final day. Man of the North who wish me<br />
nothing, or dead, hope for your own peace:<br />
next spring my father’s mother will be<br />
a hundred years old. Hope that tomorrow I<br />
shall not be playing with your rain-yellowed skull.<br />
|}

Quasimodo alludes to ancient traditions about Aeschylus’ death, according to which a flying eagle saw the bald head of the poet, mistook it for a rock, and dropped a tortoise he was holding in his talons, in order to crack open its shell and eat it (the account may derive from an omen described in some lost play of Aeschylus). Quasimodo leaves out the colourful detail of the tortoise falling from the sky, because it does not fit the starkness of his poem. What he offers instead is the image of a forlorn figure in a vast landscape – a figure that is simultaneously Aeschylus and Quasimodo. It is only halfway through the epigram that the ancient and the modern poet part company. Unlike Aeschylus, Quasimodo is still alive, and does not plan to die any time soon: his grandmother has excellent genes, after all. It is his rival from the north who will go first, as rain falls on his yellowed skull. Quasimodo is still at play on the golden sands of Gela at the end of his poem. The suggestion is that the Sicilian Greek lives like Aeschylus – feels the ancient sand and sea through his own living body – whereas his northern rival can at best die like the ancient poet, with something nasty (rain or tortoise) falling on his head. Here too, competitive literary receptions are negotiated through embodied experience.

What portraits and places bring to the fore are intensely personal responses to ancient literature. Scholars insist, quite rightly, that authorial representations depend on two factors: an interpretation of the author’s ''oeuvre'', and the conventions of biography, portraiture, and other relevant genres. To these two, I would add a third element that determines how ancient authors are represented: the lived, embodied experience of their readers and admirers.

----

== Bibliography ==

<div id="bibliography">

* Bing, P. 1988. ‘Theocritus’ Epigrams on the Statues of Ancient Poets.’ ''A&A'' 34.2: 117-123.
* Clay, D. 2004. ''Archilochos Heros: The Cult of Poets in the Greek Polis''. Cambridge, MA.
* Dionisotti, C. 1967. ''Geografia e storia della letteratura italiana''. Turin.
* Güthenke, C. forthcoming. ‘”Lives” as Parameter. The Privileging of Ancient Lives as a Category of Research around 1900.’ In R. Fletcher and J. Hanink (eds.), ''Creative Lives. New Approaches to Ancient Intellectual Biography''. Cambridge.
* Leonard, M. forthcoming. ‘Freud and the Biography of Antiquity.’ In R. Fletcher and J. Hanink (eds.), ''Creative Lives. New Approaches to Ancient Intellectual Biography.'' Cambridge.
* MacDowell , D. M. (ed.) 1982. ''Gorgias. Encomium of Helen''. Bristol.
* Petsalis-Diomidis, A. 2006. ‘Sacred Writing, Sacred Reading: The Function of Aelius Aristides’ Self-Presentation as Author in the ''Sacred Tales''.’ In J. Mossman and B. McGing (eds.), ''The Limits of Ancient Biography''. Swansea: 193-211.
* Rossi, L. 2001. ''The Epigrams Ascribed to Theocritus: A Method of Approach''. Leuven.
* Zanker, P. 1995. ''The Mask of Socrates: The Image of the Intellectual in Antiquity.'' Berkeley and Los Angeles.

</div>
<div id="notes"></div>

[[Category:Guides by Barbara Graziosi]]

Embodiments of Literature

2015-09-29T16:52:21Z

NickFreer: /* Bibliography */

{{GuideHighlightBox}}
{{Author|Barbara Graziosi}}
{{#howtoquote:}}
<div id="guide">
Literature is often presented as something ethereal and intangible. It concerns the life of the mind, unconstrained by the material realities of the body. It does not depend on the senses, particularly: we can appreciate Homer by listening, reading, or touching Braille. These different sensory approaches affect our experience, of course, but we are still recognisably confronted with the same text. ''Logos'', language, and literature pertain to the mind rather than the body (and this explains, in part, why literature is placed above material culture in traditional hierarchies). There are, however, ways of thinking about literature as an embodied experience. Gorgias suggests one (''Encomium of Helen'' 7-9):

<blockquote>εἰ δὲ βίαι ἡρπάσθη καὶ ἀνόμως ἐβιάσθη καὶ ἀδίκως ὑβρίσθη, δῆλον ὅτι ὁ ἁρπάσας ἢ ὑβρίσας ἠδίκησεν, ἡ δὲ ἁρπασθεῖσα ἢ ὑβρισθεῖσα ἐδυστύχησεν. [...] (8) εἰ δὲ λόγος ὁ πείσας καὶ τὴν ψυχὴν ἀπατήσας, οὐδὲ πρὸς τοῦτο χαλεπὸν ἀπολογήσασθαι καὶ τὴν αἰτίαν ἀπολύσασθαι ὧδε. λόγος δυνάστης μέγας ἐστίν, ὃς σμικροτάτωι σώματι καὶ ἀφανεστάτωι θειότατα ἔργα ἀποτελεῖ· δύναται γὰρ καὶ φόβον παῦσαι καὶ λύπην ἀφελεῖν καὶ χαρὰν ἐνεργάσασθαι καὶ ἔλεον ἐπαυξῆσαι. ταῦτα δὲ ὡς οὕτως ἔχει δείξω· (9) δεῖ δὲ καὶ δόξηι δεῖξαι τοῖς ἀκούουσι· τὴν ποίησιν ἅπασαν καὶ νομίζω καὶ ὀνομάζω λόγον ἔχοντα μέτρον· ἧς τοὺς ἀκούοντας εἰσῆλθε καὶ φρίκη περίφοβος καὶ ἔλεος πολύδακρυς καὶ πόθος φιλοπενθής, ἐπ' ἀλλοτρίων τε πραγμάτων καὶ σωμάτων εὐτυχίαις καὶ δυσπραγίαις ἴδιόν τι πάθημα διὰ τῶν λόγων ἔπαθεν ἡ ψυχή. </blockquote>

<blockquote>If she was seized by force, unlawfully constrained, and unjustly abused, it is clear that the man who seized or abused did wrong, and that the woman who was seized or abused suffered misfortune. […] (8) But if speech persuaded and deceived her soul, it is also not difficult to offer a defence for that and to dismiss the accusation in the following way. Speech is a powerful lord, which by the smallest and most invisible body achieves the most divine works; for it can stop fear, remove pain, produce joy, and increase pity. And I shall prove that this is the case; (9) and I must prove it to my listeners by reference to opinion as well. I consider and define all poetry as speech with metre. A fearful shudder, tearful pity, and grievous longing come upon those who hear it, and on account of words the soul suffers its own affliction at the successes and misfortunes of others’ affairs and bodies.</blockquote>

The corporeal nature of this passage is difficult to capture, in part because of the modern divide between mind and body: φρίκη περίφοβος, for example, becomes ‘a fearful fright’ in MacDowell’s standard translation, when the Greek describes a shudder. More strikingly, not once does MacDowell translate Gorgias’ σῶμα as ‘body’, even though it is the key term in our passage (see MacDowell 1982: 25). The small and invisible body of ''logos'' has very real power, he insists. The proof is its effect on the body of those who listen. Gorgias uses the most physical metaphor – rape – to illustrate what words can do. And yet even he must admit that the σῶμα of words cannot be apprehended directly – it cannot be touched or seen, even if its effects are felt in the body.

This contribution explores the material reception of literature, by considering portraits and places associated with ancient literary figures. I return at the end to Gorgias’ challenging proposition: that we feel literature in our body.

==Portraits==

The creation of the author is an aspect of the reception of his or her work. Just as the Lives of the ancient poets are largely based on their works, so are their portraits. So, for example, Demodocus is interpreted as an autobiographical character, and Homer is depicted as a blind bard. Or again, Sappho describes how painful it is when a girl leaves her circle, and an important (if neglected) vase depicts this moment of separation:

<center>[[File: Kunstsammlungen_der_Ruhr-Universität,_Bochum.png‎|link=Kunstsammlungen der Ruhr-Universität, Bochum]]</center>
<blockquote>''Red-figure krater, Tithonus painter, ca 480 BCE: the figure on the left is named ‘Sappho’, the figure on the right is labelled ‘the girl’.''
''Kunstsammlungen der Ruhr-Universität, Bochum.''</blockquote>

Sappho and ‘the girl’ (ἡ παῖς: a designation that could apply to several of her girls) are depicted walking in opposite directions, but looking back at each other. As an object, the krater is as unsettling as Sappho’s poems of separation. Many vases play on the theme of the amorous chase: because they are round, whoever chases will in turn be chased, in an exhilarating spiral, in which the viewer can take part by turning the vase round and round. This vase is more awkward to view and handle: the body goes one way, the gaze, the longing, (and, we are reminded, the poetry) quite another.

There is some fun to be had when looking at material depictions of authors, and reading them as receptions of their work. The development of portrait types, for example, is influenced by literary canons, and simultaneously contributes to creating them. Juxtaposition with (and typological similarity to) other categories of portrait situates ancient authors within specific cultural and intellectual milieux: it transforms literary traditions into visual experiences and reifies them in the form of material objects. Portraits allow patrons to ‘possess’ specific literary traditions, genres or poems, and simultaneously generate an intellectual process by which the viewer is asked to ‘read’ the author’s work through the interpretation of specific details of physiognomy, expression, gesture, and placement in relation to other figures. Reading the image and reading the text become connected enterprises (Zanker 1995).

Several ancient sources comment on the relationship between portrait and ''oeuvre''. Theocritus, for example, writes an epigram about a statue of Anacreon placed in the poet’s native island of Teos:

{|
|style="width: 50%;vertical-align:top;"|
Θᾶσαι τὸν ἀνδριάντα τοῦτον, ὦ ξένε,<br />
     σπουδᾷ, καὶ λέγ’, ἐπὴν ἐς οἶκον ἔνθῃς·<br />
“Ἀνακρέοντος εἰκόν’ εἶδον ἐν Τέωι,<br />
     τῶν πρόσθ’ εἴ τι περισσὸν ᾠδοποιῶν.”<br />
προσθεὶς δὲ χὤτι τοῖς νέοισιν ἅδετο,<br />
     ἐρεῖς ἀτρεκέως ὅλον τὸν ἄνδρα.<br />
|style="width: 50%;vertical-align:top;"|
Look well upon this statue, stranger, and say, when you get home, “I saw the likeness of Anacreon in Teos, one of the greatest among the poets of old.” Add to this that he loved young men, and you will have accurately described the whole man.
|}

Here the whole legacy of Anacreon is reduced to a statue (whether real or made up in poetry) and a sentence: ‘he enjoyed young boys’. There is apparently no need to read Anacreon’s work: the stranger is simply invited to visit Anacreon’s place of birth, look at the statue, and remember Theocritus’ own pithy statement. Readers will thus know ‘the whole man’ by a very quick and simple process. Unsurprisingly, there has been some debate about the word ὅλον. Some readers take it at face value (Rossi 2001: 284-5), others point out that the mini biography provided by Theocritus cannot be taken to represent all of Anacreon’s ''oeuvre'', just as he fails to provide a satisfying ekphrasis of the statue (Bing 1988: 121). This seems true – and I add that Theocritus himself, as a poet, cannot possibly want to be reduced to a portrait and a sentence. His in-your-face Doric θᾶσαι at the beginning of this epigram (which is written in honour of an Ionian poet, after all, and purportedly placed on an Ionian island!) inscribes Theocritus’ own place of birth, as well as his voice and genre, in the composition, suggesting a more broad-ranging literary and personal engagement than his summary biography. Unlike the statue, literature is never confined to one place. As Pindar taught us ({{#lemma: ''Nemean'' 5.1-3 | [[Pindar, Nemean 5.1-3|Pind. ''N.'' 5.1-3]]}}), it can travel on every ship and skiff.

Ovid has equally thought-provoking things to say about portraits and places (''Sorrows'' 1.7.1-14):

{|
|style="width: 50%;vertical-align:top;"|
Siquis habes nostris similes in imagine uultus,<br />
     deme meis hederas, Bacchica serta, comis.<br />
ista decent laetos felicia signa poetas:<br />
     temporibus non est apta corona meis.<br />
hoc tibi dissimula, senti tamen, optime, dici,<br />
     in digito qui me fersque refersque tuo,<br />
effigiemque meam fuluo complexus in auro<br />
     cara relegati, quae potes, ora uides.<br />
quae quotiens spectas, subeat tibi dicere forsan<br />
     "quam procul a nobis Naso sodalis abest!"<br />
grata tua est pietas, sed carmina maior imago<br />
     sunt mea, quae mando qualiacumque legas,<br />
carmina mutatas hominum dicentia formas,<br />
     infelix domini quod fuga rupit opus.<br />
|style="width: 50%;vertical-align:top;"|
Whoever has a portrait of my face, remove the ivy, garland of Bacchus, from my hair. Such signs of fortune suit happy poets: a wreath is not fitting for my temples. Conceal – but know – that I say this to you, best friend, who carry me here and there on your finger, and who, clasping my image on the yellow gold, see the dear face, all that you can, of an exile. Whenever you look at it, perhaps you will be prompted to say, “How far away is our friend Ovid!” Your love is a comfort, but my verses are a better portrait, and I urge you to read them such as they are, verses that tell of human transformations, the work broken off by the unhappy flight of its author.
|}

Commentators move swiftly past the first lines – which they find embarassing, both to Ovid’s fan and to Ovid himself, who imagines this person. They move straight beyond the longing for physical contact to line 11, and discuss what Ovid has to say about the ''Metamorphoses'': the poem speaks of altered forms, and Ovid himself is an altered man. I suggest we should pay a bit more attention to the bust crowned with ivy, and the signet ring – not just as objects, but as objects that inspire physical responses to poetry. Removing the ivy means not just recognising Ovid’s unhappiness, but also his new work, the ''Sorrows'', and ensuring that the author continues to remain an accurate ''imago'' of his oeuvre. As for the signet ring, new work by Chris Faraone on amulets may, in due course, provide an important interpretative framework. There is a well attested ritual whereby people who want to communicate with a god wear a signet ring with the deity’s image on it. Magical texts recommend wearing the image turned inwards, on the side of the palm, and sleeping with one ear next to it, in the hope that the god might send a message in a dream. This ritual of private communication may be relevant here. The addressee who loves Ovid needs to understand and yet dissimulate what the poet tells him (line 5, which is textually uncertain). There is the conceit of personal contact, even though Ovid does not even know who he may be addressing: ''siquis''. This person should not seek the poet just through portraits, however, but rather by finding new meaning in the ''Metamorphoses''. This meaning is personal – not just for the poet, and his changed ''oeuvre'' and life – but personal to the reader, who needs to guard his interpretation as closely as he keeps his signet ring.

Admiration for literature repeatedly finds expression in the desire to encounter the author face-to-face. Pliny comments, “Our longings give birth to likenesses that have not been passed down to us, as in the case of Homer” (''NH'' 35.2: ''pariunt desideria non traditos uultus, sicut in Homero euenit''). Petrarch laments the fact that, because he lacks a proper translation of the ''Iliad'', he can only catch glimpses of Homer’s face ({{#lemma: ''Familiar Letters'' 24.12.2 | [[Petrarch, Familiar Letters 24.12.2|Petr. ''Fam.'' 24.12.2]]}}). In a different letter, he writes of embracing a copy of the ''Iliad'', as if he were actually touching his beloved friend Homer ({{#lemma: ''Familiar Letters'' 18.2.6 | [[Petrarch, Familiar Letters 18.2.6|Petr. ''Fam.'' 18.2.6]]}}). Elsewhere still, he admits that being close to an author has nothing to do with material objects. It is a personal connection, as if with a living person ‘made of flesh’, a connection that provides Petrarch with a suitable interlocutor and distances him from the ''uulgus'' ({{#lemma: ''Familiar Letters'' 8.3.6 | [[Petrarch, Familiar Letters 8.3.6|Petr. ''Fam.'' 8.3.6]]}}).

Because the process of imagining the face and the body of the author involves a private and personal act of reading, real portraits can come into conflict with the imagined face. Libanius ({{#lemma: ''Letters'' 143.3 | [[Libanius, Letters 143.3|Lib. ''Ep.'' 143.3]]}}), for example, is desperate to obtain a portrait of Aristides, but when he actually receives one he refuses to accept that it is a true likeness (Petsalis-Diomidis 2006). Surely, he argues, Aristides could not have looked so healthy, or have such luscious hair! Eventually, on receiving a second portrait that agrees with the first, Libanius accepts that the images must reflect how Aristides actually looked. But he is still puzzled by the hair, and demands to know how it could have been so abundant. He also wants a full portrait ({{#lemma: ''Letters'' 143.5 | [[Libanius, Letters 143.5|Lib. ''Ep.'' 143.5]]}}).

There are many other examples of desire for ancient authors (Güthenke forthcoming) and of disappointment with their portraits. John Cosin (1594–1672), Prince Bishop of Durham, ordered that his library on Palace Green be decorated with portraits of ancient philosophers and fathers of the Church, and insisted that that they be based on genuine ancient artefacts. When he actually saw them, however, he was appalled: ‘They look like Saracens!’ he declared in one of his furious letters to the artist.

It seems, then, that portraits become sites of ''competitive'' reception, where different visions of ancient authors come to clash. The cognitive process by which the act of reading results in a private image of the author is destabilised by the objectivity of actual portraits.

==Places==

Because bodies are located in space and time, embodied responses to literature clash with the intangible ubiquitousness of words. The krater depicting Sappho makes the point: bodies go their separate ways, but longing and poetry still connect them. Theocritus objects to ancient literary tourism: the Hellenistic desire to celebrate the poets in the places where they were born, through cultic statues and monuments (Clay 2004), is exposed as inadequate: he tells us to look at an Ionian poet, on an Ionian island, by addressing us in his own native Doric, θᾶσαι, and thus making us think of Sicily instead. Ovid speaks of the physical intimacy established by wearing a signet ring, and then suggests that the act of reading the ''Metamorphoses'' is equally close and personal. Petrarch embraces a Greek manuscript of Homer’s ''Iliad'', but then blames Homer for ‘having forgotten his Latin’ – i.e. for not having inspired adequate Latin translations. The problem is not just linguistic, for Petrarch: he resents Homer’s cultural and geographical distance, in an attitude of suspicion and superiority towards Byzantine culture (Dionisotti 1967). Bishop Cosin thinks that the ancient philosophers are like him, and is dismayed to find out that they look like Saracens.

The problem of place and possession resonates through the history of classical culture, of course. We are all familiar with the distaste and disorientation of northern Europeans, when confronted with modern southerners living in ancient landscapes. When Freud visits the acropolis, physical closeness to the ancient world inspires a reflection on cultural distance, not least from his own father (Leonard forthcoming). The Sicilian poet Salvatore Quasimodo (Nobel laureate 1962) tries to capture his physical closeness to Aeschylus in an invective against an unnamed poet of the north:

{|style="width:100%"
|style="width: 50%;vertical-align:top;"|
''A un poeta nemico''<br />
Sulla sabbia di Gela colore della paglia<br />
mi stendevo fanciullo in riva al mare<br />
antico di Grecia con molti sogni nei pugni<br />
stretti nel petto. Là Eschilo esule<br />
misurò versi e passi sconsolati,<br />
in quel golfo arso l’aquila lo vide<br />
e fu l’ultimo giorno. Uomo del Nord, che mi vuoi <br />
minimo o morto per tua pace, spera:<br />
la madre di mio padre avrà cent’anni<br />
a nuova primavera. Spera: che io domani<br />
non giochi col tuo cranio giallo per le piogge.<br />
|style="width: 50%;vertical-align:top;"|
''To a Hostile Poet''<br />
On the straw-coloured sands of Gela<br />
as a child I would lie by the ancient<br />
Grecian sea, many dreams in my breast<br />
and my clenched fists. Exiled Aeschylus there<br />
scanned over his verses and lines forlorn<br />
in the burning gulf where the eagle spied him<br />
that final day. Man of the North who wish me<br />
nothing, or dead, hope for your own peace:<br />
next spring my father’s mother will be<br />
a hundred years old. Hope that tomorrow I<br />
shall not be playing with your rain-yellowed skull.<br />
|}

Quasimodo alludes to ancient traditions about Aeschylus’ death, according to which a flying eagle saw the bald head of the poet, mistook it for a rock, and dropped a tortoise he was holding in his talons, in order to crack open its shell and eat it (the account may derive from an omen described in some lost play of Aeschylus). Quasimodo leaves out the colourful detail of the tortoise falling from the sky, because it does not fit the starkness of his poem. What he offers instead is the image of a forlorn figure in a vast landscape – a figure that is simultaneously Aeschylus and Quasimodo. It is only halfway through the epigram that the ancient and the modern poet part company. Unlike Aeschylus, Quasimodo is still alive, and does not plan to die any time soon: his grandmother has excellent genes, after all. It is his rival from the north who will go first, as rain falls on his yellowed skull. Quasimodo is still at play on the golden sands of Gela at the end of his poem. The suggestion is that the Sicilian Greek lives like Aeschylus – feels the ancient sand and sea through his own living body – whereas his northern rival can at best die like the ancient poet, with something nasty (rain or tortoise) falling on his head. Here too, competitive literary receptions are negotiated through embodied experience.

What portraits and places bring to the fore are intensely personal responses to ancient literature. Scholars insist, quite rightly, that authorial representations depend on two factors: an interpretation of the author’s ''oeuvre'', and the conventions of biography, portraiture, and other relevant genres. To these two, I would add a third element that determines how ancient authors are represented: the lived, embodied experience of their readers and admirers.

----

== Bibliography ==

<div id="bibliography">

* Bing, P. 1988. ‘Theocritus’ Epigrams on the Statues of Ancient Poets.’ ''A & A'' 34.2: 117-123.
* Clay, D. 2004. ''Archilochos Heros: The Cult of Poets in the Greek Polis''. Cambridge, MA.
* Dionisotti, C. 1967. ''Geografia e storia della letteratura italiana''. Turin.
* Güthenke, C. forthcoming. ‘”Lives” as Parameter. The Privileging of Ancient Lives as a Category of Research around 1900.’ In R. Fletcher and J. Hanink (eds.), ''Creative Lives. New Approaches to Ancient Intellectual Biography''. Cambridge.
* Leonard, M. forthcoming. ‘Freud and the Biography of Antiquity.’ In R. Fletcher and J. Hanink (eds.), ''Creative Lives. New Approaches to Ancient Intellectual Biography.'' Cambridge.
* MacDowell , D. M. (ed.) 1982. ''Gorgias. Encomium of Helen''. Bristol.
* Petsalis-Diomidis, A. 2006. ‘Sacred Writing, Sacred Reading: The Function of Aelius Aristides’ Self-Presentation as Author in the ''Sacred Tales''.’ In J. Mossman and B. McGing (eds.), ''The Limits of Ancient Biography''. Swansea: 193-211.
* Rossi, L. 2001. ''The Epigrams Ascribed to Theocritus: A Method of Approach''. Leuven.
* Zanker, P. 1995. ''The Mask of Socrates: The Image of the Intellectual in Antiquity.'' Berkeley and Los Angeles.

</div>
<div id="notes"></div>

[[Category:Guides by Barbara Graziosi]]

Embodiments of Literature

2015-09-29T16:50:42Z

NickFreer:

{{GuideHighlightBox}}
{{Author|Barbara Graziosi}}
{{#howtoquote:}}
<div id="guide">
Literature is often presented as something ethereal and intangible. It concerns the life of the mind, unconstrained by the material realities of the body. It does not depend on the senses, particularly: we can appreciate Homer by listening, reading, or touching Braille. These different sensory approaches affect our experience, of course, but we are still recognisably confronted with the same text. ''Logos'', language, and literature pertain to the mind rather than the body (and this explains, in part, why literature is placed above material culture in traditional hierarchies). There are, however, ways of thinking about literature as an embodied experience. Gorgias suggests one (''Encomium of Helen'' 7-9):

<blockquote>εἰ δὲ βίαι ἡρπάσθη καὶ ἀνόμως ἐβιάσθη καὶ ἀδίκως ὑβρίσθη, δῆλον ὅτι ὁ ἁρπάσας ἢ ὑβρίσας ἠδίκησεν, ἡ δὲ ἁρπασθεῖσα ἢ ὑβρισθεῖσα ἐδυστύχησεν. [...] (8) εἰ δὲ λόγος ὁ πείσας καὶ τὴν ψυχὴν ἀπατήσας, οὐδὲ πρὸς τοῦτο χαλεπὸν ἀπολογήσασθαι καὶ τὴν αἰτίαν ἀπολύσασθαι ὧδε. λόγος δυνάστης μέγας ἐστίν, ὃς σμικροτάτωι σώματι καὶ ἀφανεστάτωι θειότατα ἔργα ἀποτελεῖ· δύναται γὰρ καὶ φόβον παῦσαι καὶ λύπην ἀφελεῖν καὶ χαρὰν ἐνεργάσασθαι καὶ ἔλεον ἐπαυξῆσαι. ταῦτα δὲ ὡς οὕτως ἔχει δείξω· (9) δεῖ δὲ καὶ δόξηι δεῖξαι τοῖς ἀκούουσι· τὴν ποίησιν ἅπασαν καὶ νομίζω καὶ ὀνομάζω λόγον ἔχοντα μέτρον· ἧς τοὺς ἀκούοντας εἰσῆλθε καὶ φρίκη περίφοβος καὶ ἔλεος πολύδακρυς καὶ πόθος φιλοπενθής, ἐπ' ἀλλοτρίων τε πραγμάτων καὶ σωμάτων εὐτυχίαις καὶ δυσπραγίαις ἴδιόν τι πάθημα διὰ τῶν λόγων ἔπαθεν ἡ ψυχή. </blockquote>

<blockquote>If she was seized by force, unlawfully constrained, and unjustly abused, it is clear that the man who seized or abused did wrong, and that the woman who was seized or abused suffered misfortune. […] (8) But if speech persuaded and deceived her soul, it is also not difficult to offer a defence for that and to dismiss the accusation in the following way. Speech is a powerful lord, which by the smallest and most invisible body achieves the most divine works; for it can stop fear, remove pain, produce joy, and increase pity. And I shall prove that this is the case; (9) and I must prove it to my listeners by reference to opinion as well. I consider and define all poetry as speech with metre. A fearful shudder, tearful pity, and grievous longing come upon those who hear it, and on account of words the soul suffers its own affliction at the successes and misfortunes of others’ affairs and bodies.</blockquote>

The corporeal nature of this passage is difficult to capture, in part because of the modern divide between mind and body: φρίκη περίφοβος, for example, becomes ‘a fearful fright’ in MacDowell’s standard translation, when the Greek describes a shudder. More strikingly, not once does MacDowell translate Gorgias’ σῶμα as ‘body’, even though it is the key term in our passage (see MacDowell 1982: 25). The small and invisible body of ''logos'' has very real power, he insists. The proof is its effect on the body of those who listen. Gorgias uses the most physical metaphor – rape – to illustrate what words can do. And yet even he must admit that the σῶμα of words cannot be apprehended directly – it cannot be touched or seen, even if its effects are felt in the body.

This contribution explores the material reception of literature, by considering portraits and places associated with ancient literary figures. I return at the end to Gorgias’ challenging proposition: that we feel literature in our body.

==Portraits==

The creation of the author is an aspect of the reception of his or her work. Just as the Lives of the ancient poets are largely based on their works, so are their portraits. So, for example, Demodocus is interpreted as an autobiographical character, and Homer is depicted as a blind bard. Or again, Sappho describes how painful it is when a girl leaves her circle, and an important (if neglected) vase depicts this moment of separation:

<center>[[File: Kunstsammlungen_der_Ruhr-Universität,_Bochum.png‎|link=Kunstsammlungen der Ruhr-Universität, Bochum]]</center>
<blockquote>''Red-figure krater, Tithonus painter, ca 480 BCE: the figure on the left is named ‘Sappho’, the figure on the right is labelled ‘the girl’.''
''Kunstsammlungen der Ruhr-Universität, Bochum.''</blockquote>

Sappho and ‘the girl’ (ἡ παῖς: a designation that could apply to several of her girls) are depicted walking in opposite directions, but looking back at each other. As an object, the krater is as unsettling as Sappho’s poems of separation. Many vases play on the theme of the amorous chase: because they are round, whoever chases will in turn be chased, in an exhilarating spiral, in which the viewer can take part by turning the vase round and round. This vase is more awkward to view and handle: the body goes one way, the gaze, the longing, (and, we are reminded, the poetry) quite another.

There is some fun to be had when looking at material depictions of authors, and reading them as receptions of their work. The development of portrait types, for example, is influenced by literary canons, and simultaneously contributes to creating them. Juxtaposition with (and typological similarity to) other categories of portrait situates ancient authors within specific cultural and intellectual milieux: it transforms literary traditions into visual experiences and reifies them in the form of material objects. Portraits allow patrons to ‘possess’ specific literary traditions, genres or poems, and simultaneously generate an intellectual process by which the viewer is asked to ‘read’ the author’s work through the interpretation of specific details of physiognomy, expression, gesture, and placement in relation to other figures. Reading the image and reading the text become connected enterprises (Zanker 1995).

Several ancient sources comment on the relationship between portrait and ''oeuvre''. Theocritus, for example, writes an epigram about a statue of Anacreon placed in the poet’s native island of Teos:

{|
|style="width: 50%;vertical-align:top;"|
Θᾶσαι τὸν ἀνδριάντα τοῦτον, ὦ ξένε,<br />
     σπουδᾷ, καὶ λέγ’, ἐπὴν ἐς οἶκον ἔνθῃς·<br />
“Ἀνακρέοντος εἰκόν’ εἶδον ἐν Τέωι,<br />
     τῶν πρόσθ’ εἴ τι περισσὸν ᾠδοποιῶν.”<br />
προσθεὶς δὲ χὤτι τοῖς νέοισιν ἅδετο,<br />
     ἐρεῖς ἀτρεκέως ὅλον τὸν ἄνδρα.<br />
|style="width: 50%;vertical-align:top;"|
Look well upon this statue, stranger, and say, when you get home, “I saw the likeness of Anacreon in Teos, one of the greatest among the poets of old.” Add to this that he loved young men, and you will have accurately described the whole man.
|}

Here the whole legacy of Anacreon is reduced to a statue (whether real or made up in poetry) and a sentence: ‘he enjoyed young boys’. There is apparently no need to read Anacreon’s work: the stranger is simply invited to visit Anacreon’s place of birth, look at the statue, and remember Theocritus’ own pithy statement. Readers will thus know ‘the whole man’ by a very quick and simple process. Unsurprisingly, there has been some debate about the word ὅλον. Some readers take it at face value (Rossi 2001: 284-5), others point out that the mini biography provided by Theocritus cannot be taken to represent all of Anacreon’s ''oeuvre'', just as he fails to provide a satisfying ekphrasis of the statue (Bing 1988: 121). This seems true – and I add that Theocritus himself, as a poet, cannot possibly want to be reduced to a portrait and a sentence. His in-your-face Doric θᾶσαι at the beginning of this epigram (which is written in honour of an Ionian poet, after all, and purportedly placed on an Ionian island!) inscribes Theocritus’ own place of birth, as well as his voice and genre, in the composition, suggesting a more broad-ranging literary and personal engagement than his summary biography. Unlike the statue, literature is never confined to one place. As Pindar taught us ({{#lemma: ''Nemean'' 5.1-3 | [[Pindar, Nemean 5.1-3|Pind. ''N.'' 5.1-3]]}}), it can travel on every ship and skiff.

Ovid has equally thought-provoking things to say about portraits and places (''Sorrows'' 1.7.1-14):

{|
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Siquis habes nostris similes in imagine uultus,<br />
     deme meis hederas, Bacchica serta, comis.<br />
ista decent laetos felicia signa poetas:<br />
     temporibus non est apta corona meis.<br />
hoc tibi dissimula, senti tamen, optime, dici,<br />
     in digito qui me fersque refersque tuo,<br />
effigiemque meam fuluo complexus in auro<br />
     cara relegati, quae potes, ora uides.<br />
quae quotiens spectas, subeat tibi dicere forsan<br />
     "quam procul a nobis Naso sodalis abest!"<br />
grata tua est pietas, sed carmina maior imago<br />
     sunt mea, quae mando qualiacumque legas,<br />
carmina mutatas hominum dicentia formas,<br />
     infelix domini quod fuga rupit opus.<br />
|style="width: 50%;vertical-align:top;"|
Whoever has a portrait of my face, remove the ivy, garland of Bacchus, from my hair. Such signs of fortune suit happy poets: a wreath is not fitting for my temples. Conceal – but know – that I say this to you, best friend, who carry me here and there on your finger, and who, clasping my image on the yellow gold, see the dear face, all that you can, of an exile. Whenever you look at it, perhaps you will be prompted to say, “How far away is our friend Ovid!” Your love is a comfort, but my verses are a better portrait, and I urge you to read them such as they are, verses that tell of human transformations, the work broken off by the unhappy flight of its author.
|}

Commentators move swiftly past the first lines – which they find embarassing, both to Ovid’s fan and to Ovid himself, who imagines this person. They move straight beyond the longing for physical contact to line 11, and discuss what Ovid has to say about the ''Metamorphoses'': the poem speaks of altered forms, and Ovid himself is an altered man. I suggest we should pay a bit more attention to the bust crowned with ivy, and the signet ring – not just as objects, but as objects that inspire physical responses to poetry. Removing the ivy means not just recognising Ovid’s unhappiness, but also his new work, the ''Sorrows'', and ensuring that the author continues to remain an accurate ''imago'' of his oeuvre. As for the signet ring, new work by Chris Faraone on amulets may, in due course, provide an important interpretative framework. There is a well attested ritual whereby people who want to communicate with a god wear a signet ring with the deity’s image on it. Magical texts recommend wearing the image turned inwards, on the side of the palm, and sleeping with one ear next to it, in the hope that the god might send a message in a dream. This ritual of private communication may be relevant here. The addressee who loves Ovid needs to understand and yet dissimulate what the poet tells him (line 5, which is textually uncertain). There is the conceit of personal contact, even though Ovid does not even know who he may be addressing: ''siquis''. This person should not seek the poet just through portraits, however, but rather by finding new meaning in the ''Metamorphoses''. This meaning is personal – not just for the poet, and his changed ''oeuvre'' and life – but personal to the reader, who needs to guard his interpretation as closely as he keeps his signet ring.

Admiration for literature repeatedly finds expression in the desire to encounter the author face-to-face. Pliny comments, “Our longings give birth to likenesses that have not been passed down to us, as in the case of Homer” (''NH'' 35.2: ''pariunt desideria non traditos uultus, sicut in Homero euenit''). Petrarch laments the fact that, because he lacks a proper translation of the ''Iliad'', he can only catch glimpses of Homer’s face ({{#lemma: ''Familiar Letters'' 24.12.2 | [[Petrarch, Familiar Letters 24.12.2|Petr. ''Fam.'' 24.12.2]]}}). In a different letter, he writes of embracing a copy of the ''Iliad'', as if he were actually touching his beloved friend Homer ({{#lemma: ''Familiar Letters'' 18.2.6 | [[Petrarch, Familiar Letters 18.2.6|Petr. ''Fam.'' 18.2.6]]}}). Elsewhere still, he admits that being close to an author has nothing to do with material objects. It is a personal connection, as if with a living person ‘made of flesh’, a connection that provides Petrarch with a suitable interlocutor and distances him from the ''uulgus'' ({{#lemma: ''Familiar Letters'' 8.3.6 | [[Petrarch, Familiar Letters 8.3.6|Petr. ''Fam.'' 8.3.6]]}}).

Because the process of imagining the face and the body of the author involves a private and personal act of reading, real portraits can come into conflict with the imagined face. Libanius ({{#lemma: ''Letters'' 143.3 | [[Libanius, Letters 143.3|Lib. ''Ep.'' 143.3]]}}), for example, is desperate to obtain a portrait of Aristides, but when he actually receives one he refuses to accept that it is a true likeness (Petsalis-Diomidis 2006). Surely, he argues, Aristides could not have looked so healthy, or have such luscious hair! Eventually, on receiving a second portrait that agrees with the first, Libanius accepts that the images must reflect how Aristides actually looked. But he is still puzzled by the hair, and demands to know how it could have been so abundant. He also wants a full portrait ({{#lemma: ''Letters'' 143.5 | [[Libanius, Letters 143.5|Lib. ''Ep.'' 143.5]]}}).

There are many other examples of desire for ancient authors (Güthenke forthcoming) and of disappointment with their portraits. John Cosin (1594–1672), Prince Bishop of Durham, ordered that his library on Palace Green be decorated with portraits of ancient philosophers and fathers of the Church, and insisted that that they be based on genuine ancient artefacts. When he actually saw them, however, he was appalled: ‘They look like Saracens!’ he declared in one of his furious letters to the artist.

It seems, then, that portraits become sites of ''competitive'' reception, where different visions of ancient authors come to clash. The cognitive process by which the act of reading results in a private image of the author is destabilised by the objectivity of actual portraits.

==Places==

Because bodies are located in space and time, embodied responses to literature clash with the intangible ubiquitousness of words. The krater depicting Sappho makes the point: bodies go their separate ways, but longing and poetry still connect them. Theocritus objects to ancient literary tourism: the Hellenistic desire to celebrate the poets in the places where they were born, through cultic statues and monuments (Clay 2004), is exposed as inadequate: he tells us to look at an Ionian poet, on an Ionian island, by addressing us in his own native Doric, θᾶσαι, and thus making us think of Sicily instead. Ovid speaks of the physical intimacy established by wearing a signet ring, and then suggests that the act of reading the ''Metamorphoses'' is equally close and personal. Petrarch embraces a Greek manuscript of Homer’s ''Iliad'', but then blames Homer for ‘having forgotten his Latin’ – i.e. for not having inspired adequate Latin translations. The problem is not just linguistic, for Petrarch: he resents Homer’s cultural and geographical distance, in an attitude of suspicion and superiority towards Byzantine culture (Dionisotti 1967). Bishop Cosin thinks that the ancient philosophers are like him, and is dismayed to find out that they look like Saracens.

The problem of place and possession resonates through the history of classical culture, of course. We are all familiar with the distaste and disorientation of northern Europeans, when confronted with modern southerners living in ancient landscapes. When Freud visits the acropolis, physical closeness to the ancient world inspires a reflection on cultural distance, not least from his own father (Leonard forthcoming). The Sicilian poet Salvatore Quasimodo (Nobel laureate 1962) tries to capture his physical closeness to Aeschylus in an invective against an unnamed poet of the north:

{|style="width:100%"
|style="width: 50%;vertical-align:top;"|
''A un poeta nemico''<br />
Sulla sabbia di Gela colore della paglia<br />
mi stendevo fanciullo in riva al mare<br />
antico di Grecia con molti sogni nei pugni<br />
stretti nel petto. Là Eschilo esule<br />
misurò versi e passi sconsolati,<br />
in quel golfo arso l’aquila lo vide<br />
e fu l’ultimo giorno. Uomo del Nord, che mi vuoi <br />
minimo o morto per tua pace, spera:<br />
la madre di mio padre avrà cent’anni<br />
a nuova primavera. Spera: che io domani<br />
non giochi col tuo cranio giallo per le piogge.<br />
|style="width: 50%;vertical-align:top;"|
''To a Hostile Poet''<br />
On the straw-coloured sands of Gela<br />
as a child I would lie by the ancient<br />
Grecian sea, many dreams in my breast<br />
and my clenched fists. Exiled Aeschylus there<br />
scanned over his verses and lines forlorn<br />
in the burning gulf where the eagle spied him<br />
that final day. Man of the North who wish me<br />
nothing, or dead, hope for your own peace:<br />
next spring my father’s mother will be<br />
a hundred years old. Hope that tomorrow I<br />
shall not be playing with your rain-yellowed skull.<br />
|}

Quasimodo alludes to ancient traditions about Aeschylus’ death, according to which a flying eagle saw the bald head of the poet, mistook it for a rock, and dropped a tortoise he was holding in his talons, in order to crack open its shell and eat it (the account may derive from an omen described in some lost play of Aeschylus). Quasimodo leaves out the colourful detail of the tortoise falling from the sky, because it does not fit the starkness of his poem. What he offers instead is the image of a forlorn figure in a vast landscape – a figure that is simultaneously Aeschylus and Quasimodo. It is only halfway through the epigram that the ancient and the modern poet part company. Unlike Aeschylus, Quasimodo is still alive, and does not plan to die any time soon: his grandmother has excellent genes, after all. It is his rival from the north who will go first, as rain falls on his yellowed skull. Quasimodo is still at play on the golden sands of Gela at the end of his poem. The suggestion is that the Sicilian Greek lives like Aeschylus – feels the ancient sand and sea through his own living body – whereas his northern rival can at best die like the ancient poet, with something nasty (rain or tortoise) falling on his head. Here too, competitive literary receptions are negotiated through embodied experience.

What portraits and places bring to the fore are intensely personal responses to ancient literature. Scholars insist, quite rightly, that authorial representations depend on two factors: an interpretation of the author’s ''oeuvre'', and the conventions of biography, portraiture, and other relevant genres. To these two, I would add a third element that determines how ancient authors are represented: the lived, embodied experience of their readers and admirers.

----

== Bibliography ==

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* Bing, P. 1988. ‘Theocritus’ Epigrams on the Statues of Ancient Poets.’ ''Antike und Abendland'' 34.2. 117-123.
* Clay, D. 2004. ''Archilochos Heros: The Cult of Poets in the Greek Polis''. Cambridge, MA.
* Dionisotti, C. 1967. ''Geografia e storia della letteratura italiana''. Turin.
* Güthenke, C. forthcoming. ‘”Lives” as Parameter. The Privileging of Ancient Lives as a Category of Research around 1900.’ In R. Fletcher and J. Hanink eds. ''Creative Lives. New Approaches to Ancient Intellectual Biography''. Cambridge.
* Leonard, M. forthcoming. ‘Freud and the Biography of Antiquity.’ In R. Fletcher and J. Hanink eds. ''Creative Lives. New Approaches to Ancient Intellectual Biography.'' Cambridge.
* MacDowell , D. M. (ed.) 1982. ''Gorgias. Encomium of Helen''. Bristol.
* Petsalis-Diomidis, A. 2006. ‘Sacred Writing, Sacred Reading: The Function of Aelius Aristides’ Self-Presentation as Author in the ''Sacred Tales''.’ In J. Mossman and B. McGing eds. ''The Limits of Ancient Biography''. Swansea. 193-211.
* Rossi, L. 2001. ''The Epigrams Ascribed to Theocritus: A Method of Approach''. Leuven.
* Zanker, P. 1995. ''The Mask of Socrates: The Image of the Intellectual in Antiquity.'' Berkeley and Los Angeles.

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[[Category:Guides by Barbara Graziosi]]