CHAPTER 20
Ettore Cingano
Ibycus
Life and Works
By the sixth century BC, lyric poetry was flourishing in the Western colonies, notably in Sicily with Stesichorus (see Finglass (Chapter 16) in this volume), and in Magna Graecia with Ibycus, a native of Rhegium, a Chalcidian foundation (second half of the eighth century BC) on the Strait with a presence of colonists from Messene.2 The city was a prominent place for trade, and had an important religious center dating from the sixth century BC; in that period at Rhegium the Homeric epics were interpreted by Theagenes, an early pioneer of literary and philological criticism. The dialect of Rhegium was mixed, containing Chalcedonian and Doric elements, and the ancients characterized Ibycus’ dialect as eminently Doric (see de Kreij (Chapter 10) in this volume). The date of Ibycus is controversial: ancient sources disagree on the time of his journey to Samos and on the identity of the tyrant Polycrates for whom he composed an enkomion: in a passage likely to be corrupt, the Byzantine lexicon Suda places his stay in Samos under the patronage of a Polycrates in the first half of the sixth century BC, in the time of the Lydian king Croesus (564/560 BC, 54th Olympiad). On the other hand, according to Eusebius, Ibycus reached his poetic akmē in the second half of the sixth century, in the sixtieth Olympiad (540/539 BC), and Herodotus (3.121.1) brings Polycrates in connection with Anacreon and with the Persian king Cambyses (ca. 530–522 BC).3 The latter chronology is more plausible, insofar as it allows us: a) to synchronize Ibycus with Anacreon, who also sojourned at the court of Polycrates and was slightly younger than Ibycus (see below); b) to account for the tone and meaning of the address to a young Polycrates in the closing of his ode (S 151). Considering that Polycrates accessed to power as a tyrant in 533 BC and was murdered by the satrap Oroetes in 522 BC, the composition of the enkomion can roughly be placed between 540 and 530 BC.
The poetic output of Ibycus was arranged in seven books by the Alexandrian grammarians, with no further indication concerning the length and genre of his poems and the presence of a title. Compared to Stesichorus, whose poems were arranged in 26 books and cited by title, the number of Ibycus’ books is limited and may also reflect the much smaller size of his poems. The love poems appear to have been quite short, similarly to those of Anacreon; a more substantial length is implied by two incomplete triadic poems containing a mythical narrative, the ode to Polycrates (S 151) which must have exceeded 52 lines, and another fragmentary poem (S 166) exceeding 42 lines. Still, even these surely did not match the impressive length of some poems by Stesichorus (more than 1300 lines).
The classification of Ibycus’ poems must have been problematic: they are cited by book number in few ancient sources, but we also have evidence that some poems composed for individuals (enkomia or skolia) were referred to by the name of the addressee, as with fr. 289 (“in the poem to Gorgias”) and in a papyrus scrap bearing the title Kallias (S 221), a practice unattested but for the epinicians of the late archaic poets. Since the editorial practice of the Alexandrian scholars varied from one poet of the lyric canon to the other, the scarce extant evidence suggests that other poems may have been classified differently, according to the genre. We know that Ibycus composed at least one dithyramb (fr. 296), and a few papyrus fragments indicate that he may also have composed epinicians.
Ibycus can be related in various ways to the other major lyric poets: in the ancient sources he is often included with Alcaeus and Anacreon in the lyric triad of the erotic-sympotic poets;4 besides, if he initiated the epinician genre, he can effectively be taken as a forerunner of the three later praise poets, Simonides, Pindar, and Bacchylides. Moreover, despite the different length of their poems and the fact that Stesichorus’ poems look ostensibly closer to the world of epic, Ibycus was often paired or even confused with Stesichorus in antiquity, for reasons related to proximity in time and place (they were both active in Sicily and Magna Graecia in the sixth century BC), to the common use of a Doric dialect combined with Chalcedonian features, and to the sharing of several heroic themes (although probably with a different narrative technique), centered for example on the war at Troy (Iliupersis, Nostoi), on the deeds of individual heroes (Heracles, Jason, and Meleager), on the birth of Athena.5 These elements explain why the authorship of a poem on the funeral games of Pelias was disputed between the two poets, until Athenaeus (4.172de) assigned it to Stesichorus on the ground of a quotation by a third poet, Simonides (Simon. PMG 564/fr. 273 P; cf. Stes. frr. 1–4F). However, since a lyric fragment on papyrus attributed to Ibycus by the majority of scholars lists a few heroes who competed at the funeral games for Pelias, it is possible that two lyric narratives on the Games for Pelias were circulating in Western Greece, an expanded poem by Stesichorus, and a more concise and selective account by Ibycus.6 To date, no evidence is provided from the extant fragments to support the view expressed by F.W. Schneidewin in 1833, and accepted by several scholars, that Ibycus started his career composing long heroic poems under the influence of Stesichorus, and shifted toward shorter sympotic and erotic poems in the course of his stay at Samos at the court of Polycrates.
Myth, Praise, and Lyric Poetry
The relation of Ibycus to the heroic themes of epic poetry is made clear in his longest extant poem, the enkomion of Polycrates (S 151) composed mainly of dactylic cola, whose beginning is missing (at least the stanza of the first triad): it is therefore difficult to tell whether the occasion of the poem was mentioned in the proem, as was the usual practice in praise poetry. The first lines of the papyrus (1–9) offer a précis of the war at Troy with a reference to the plans of Zeus which is reminiscent of the Cypria, the first poem of the Trojan epic cycle (cf. Cypria, fr. 1 Bernabé). There follows what looks like a transition to the present time, with a first-person statement by the poet (νῦ]ν δέ μοι) declaring his intention not to deal with the facts at Troy (line 10 “but now it is not my heart’s wish to sing of Paris, deceiver of his host …”),7 nor with the main heroes, exemplified by Agamemnon (14–22). Surprisingly, after the mention of the leader of the expedition comes another long break, contrasting the boundless poetic skill of the Muses with the limits of a mortal man in embarking on a detailed narrative of the Trojan war (23–31). As further proved by the mention of the “great number of ships that came from Aulis across the Aegean sea from Argos to … Troy” (27–29), the whole passage clearly points back to the Homeric invocation to the Muses preceding the Catalogue of Ships in the Iliad (2.484–93), while also hinting at some Hesiodic passages. Yet, instead of moving on to a new theme of song as implied by this second dismissal of the Trojan story, Ibycus proceeds to mention the Greeks’ arrival at Troy and the two best Greek warriors celebrated by Homer, Achilles, and Ajax (32–35).
As a matter of fact, properly speaking, a clear-cut rejection of the epic themes of the Iliad never occurs in the poem: the protracted praeteritio appears to be used as a foil which allows Ibycus to recall the main warlike theme of the most celebrated epic while slowly unveiling his poetics and the gist of his lyric narrative. With great skill and timing, at the turn of the last triad Ibycus operates an internal shift toward a different view of the heroic world, where the two sides of the war are reconciled in the name of beauty and youth (cf. the juxtaposition of “Trojans and Greeks” (Τρῶες Δ[α]ναοί τ’) at line 44). Surfacing from a minor local tradition rooted in North-eastern Peloponnese, the little-known Sicyonian and Argive heroes Zeuxippos and Cyanippos, who are absent in Homer, are projected on the Trojan scene and singled out as an everlasting example of beauty, to be surpassed only by the unrivalled beauty of the Trojan Troilos (36–45), the youngest of Priam’s sons killed by Achilles, as Homer recalls in the only occurrence of the name in the poem (Il. 24.257). Here Ibycus departs from the epic-Homeric tradition in many ways: by giving pre-eminence to beauty over prowess in war, by harmonizing Greeks and Trojans in acknowledging the unmatched beauty of Troilus, and by rejecting the weigh of the Iliad, which singled out Achilles as first, and Nireus as second in beauty in the Greek army. In a subtle way, the beauty of the young Trojan boy is thus celebrated over the beauty of Greek Achilles, who was the slayer of Troilos in a famous episode narrated in the epic Cypria and by Ibycus himself in another poem (cf. S 224.4–10); its popularity is attested by many Greek vases (and on Etruscan tombs) from the sixth century BC onward (for instance in the magnificent François Vase, ca. 570 BC).
The extended celebration of beauty effects the transition to the closing of the poem (46–48) where its occasion is revealed (or re-stated, if it was announced in the missing proem): “Among them you too, Polycrates, will have immortal fame for beauty forever, as according to my song and fame” (… κλέος ἄφθιτον ἑξεῖς/ὡς κατ’ ἀοιδὰν καὶ ἐμὸν κλέος).8 These verses reveal that the main purpose of Ibycus is to praise the young Polycrates, whose beauty recalls that of the young heroes at Troy: the word for “beauty” κάλλεος at line 46 picks up the adjective “most beautiful” (κάλλι]στος) applied to Cyanippos at line 37, and the “lovely form” (ἐρό[ε]σσαν μορφάν) of Troilos at lines 44–45.
The poem is neatly structured through the contrast between two cities and armies, Troy and Argos/Greece (cf. 2, 8, 14, 19, 29, 37, vs 3, 27, 28, 37), and through a network of heroic names carefully grouped by three, and topped at the beginning by the name of the one and only cause of the war, Helen (5). The Trojan triad of Paris, Cassandra, and Priam (1, 10–13) is contrasted with the triad of the most representative Greek leaders (20–34, Agamemnon, Achilles, Ajax Telamonios), which is then dismissed in favor of a truly innovative triad, unifying Greeks and Trojans and reflecting at one time Ibycus’ poetics and the encomiastic nature of the poem: the beautiful pair of Zeuxippos and Cyanippos, and the utmost beauty of Trojan Troilos. The war theme of the expedition against Troy is here reshaped in order to represent the transition from the world of heroic epic to the context of encomiastic lyric poetry.
The elaborate texture of the final lines effectively singles out patron and poet, who alone has the power to bestow immortal fame onto the addressee by way of his song.9 The anonymous and elusive poetic persona of the Homeric bard praising heroes from a distant past has given way to a pan-Hellenic poet fully aware of the persuasive/celebrative power of his song, and of the praise-expectations of tyrants, dynasts, and aristocrats in his own times. As far as we can tell, Ibycus’ poem underlies for the first time the idea that a poet praises an individual in exchange for xenia (hospitality) or for a fee.10 The privileged bond between patron and poet will become a recurrent theme in the epinician poetry of Pindar and Bacchylides, while the power to perpetuate the fame of glorious deeds is stressed by Simonides in the Plataea elegy, where a parallel is created between the victory of the Greeks over the Trojans and their present victory over the Persians (Simon. fr. el. 11 W2, 15–28 ἀθά]νατον … κλέος~κλέος ̣] …| ἀθάνατο⟨ν⟩). Ibycus’ final statement finds a parallel in the poetic self-awareness displayed by Theognis in his elegiac verses to Cyrnus (236–253), albeit in a different social context. His relation to the addressee is not based on patronage, but on eros: the everlasting verses of the unhappy erastēs Theognis are dedicated to his eromenos, whose name will receive “immortal fame” (κλέος … ἄφθιτον, 245–246).11
Encomiastic Love
Ibycus appears to have composed mainly poems for individuals rather than for communities such as cities or religious places. The tone and subject matter of his praise seem to have changed according to the addressee: other poems display a more explicit erotic tone and content than the praise of beauty in the ode to Polycrates. Along with some preserved fragments (mostly frr. 286–288), the tattered papyrus findings of the last decades—POxy 2637, 2735 and 3538—have confirmed that eros was at the center of his poetry and clarified why he was labeled as “crazed with love for boys” by the ancients.12 A common feature of several sympotic poems (skolia or enkomia) is the presence of myths centered on love and passion, such as the love between Rhadamantys and Talos (fr. 309), the abduction of Ganymede by Zeus in the ode to Gorgias which also recalled the story of Tithonos abducted by Dawn (fr. 289a), the wedding between Achilles and Medea in the afterlife, in the Elysian plain (fr. 291), another poem recalling the death of Troilos and comparing him to the gods (S 224), and the seduction of Menelaos by Helen during the sack of Troy (fr. 296, see below). Although nearly no verses survive from these poems, it is a safe guess that the myths were strongly related to the genre and occasion of the poems. Considering that Ibycus also narrated the story of the sacrifice of Polyxena, the young sister of Troilos, at the hands of Neoptolemus over the tomb of Achilles (fr. 307), one wonders if in that case too her death was connected to eros: according to some later sources, Achilles’ desire for her was the cause of his death in an ambush in the sanctuary of Thymbraean Apollo (cf. Lycophr. Alex. 323–329; scholl. Eur. Hec. 41; Troad. 16 Schw.).
If Ibycus’ mostly attested topics deal with love, one should however be wary not to take at face value as autobiographical insights the passionate statements found in his poems, and attribute them to a genuine love relation with the various addressees (e.g., Euryalus, Gorgias, Callias). As was acutely noted long ago by F.G. Welcker, his love poems (called paideioi hymnoi or paidika) must be firmly placed within the context of the symposium and of the highly sophisticated and conventional language of praise poetry.13 Along with wine and song, the erotic element cannot but be one of the main ingredients in the sympotic praise of young boys whose only credit resided in beauty and grace: it should be taken as “… a conventional form of communal praise and affirmation of social pre-eminence.”14 Nevertheless, Ibycus’ relation to his addressees must have been different from Alcaeus—who was also credited with erotic songs (although very little has survived)—insofar as it was not based on a bond of hetaireia and the sharing of political views and initiatives: no interconnection between homoeroticism and politics seems implied, although the Polycrates ode undoubtedly fulfilled a propagandistic purpose, given the social and political status of the addressee. The same applies, to a greater extent, to the enkomia of Simonides, Pindar, and Bacchylides composed for the rulers of their times, such as Hieron of Syracuse, Theron of Acragas, Arcesilaus of Cyrene, the Thessalian dynasts, the Macedonian Alexander, son of Amyntas. In other words, the pan-Hellenic status of Ibycus which is attested by his relation to different places and addressees of the Greek world from West to East (Syracuse, Leontini, Sparta, Athens, Samos), reflects a poet with no particular connection to a specific local context, as is also the case with Anacreon. The pan-Hellenic nature of Ibycus’ Muse may also explain the difference from the erotic elegiacs of Theognis, whose love for boys expressed in the ritualized venue of the aristocratic symposium shows a more ideological and paideutic approach.
In the best preserved fragments (frr. 286–287), which may also read well as complete monostrophic poems,15 Ibycus gives an effective first-person description of the devastating and inescapable consequences of love (Eros), by focusing exclusively on his own poetic persona, without mentioning the gender or naming the object of desire, unless it occurred in the missing part of the poems (cf. the name Euryalos in fr. 288.1). Fr. 286 is clearly divided in two contrasting parts (1–6, 6–12): the gentle, idyllic setting of an uncut garden of maidens in the spring, well watered and adorned with plants, fruit and vine, is disrupted by the sudden confession of the poetic persona “for me love is at rest in no season” (6–7), introducing a radical change of tone and the transition to the inner landscape of the poet’s mind and heart. The following onslaught of the strong and cold wind Boreas blowing from the North reveals that the poet is doomed by implacable love any time of the year, with no possibility to exert control over his feelings (8–12): “like the Thracian north wind blazing with lightning rushing from the Cyprian [Aphrodite] with parching fits of madness, dark and shameless, it powerfully shakes my heart from the roots” (trans. Campbell). Two traditional images found in separate poems of Sappho, the locus amoenus (Sappho fr. 2 Campbell) and love shaking the heart as a strong wind on the oaks of a mountain (fr. 47 Campbell), are skillfully combined in Ibycus: here the quiet growth of nature in the spring is contrasted with the destructive force of the wind of passion, shaking Ibycus’ heart but potentially threatening also the stillness of a blossoming and well protected garden. The vivid image of the lightning associated with fits of madness creates an additional and powerful effect on the consequences of love.
The shorter fr. 287 also shows a bipartite structure: a more subtle first-person description of a new assault of Eros on the poet (1–4) is followed by his alarmed reaction at the prospect of falling in love again, with a bold equation between his own feelings and those of an aging horse reluctant to engage in yet another race (5–7): “Again Love, looking at me meltingly from under his dark eyelids, hurls me with his manifold enchantments into the boundless nets of the Cyprian. How I fear his onset, as a prize-winning horse still bearing the yoke in his old age goes unwillingly with swift chariot to the race” (trans. Campbell). Here the threat represented by a personified Eros acting as a helper of Aphrodite is expressed through a frequent image in homoerotic lyric poetry, the melting gaze of the eyes (cf. Alcman, frr. 3.61–62, 59a PMGF; Pindar, fr. 123 Maehler; cf. Simonides, fr. el. 22.10–12 W2). Similarly, the fear of the poet finds a parallel in Sappho, fr. 31.6 Campbell. The context of the fragments just quoted where the gaze occurs, however, is clearly encomiastic, whereas in Ibycus it sounds more like a paradigmatic utterance closer to the explorations of Sappho’s own self. The image of the hunting net transforms the poet into an animal about to be caught, and prepares the simile with the yoked horse forced to enter another race, which in turn evokes the uncertainty of any love contest/relationship. At the same time it should be noted that at line 1 the inescapability and turmoil of love onslaughts are mitigated by the adverb αὖτε “again,” a telling word frequently found in erotic lyric at the beginning of a poem (alternating with δἦυτε), with Eros as the explicit or implied subject of the action (cf. Sappho, frr. 1.15–18, 130.1 Campbell; Alcman, fr. 59a PMGF; see also below on Anacreon).16 The awareness provided by αὖτε that any love experience, no matter how intense and excruciating, will be overcome and is bound to happen again, helps to reduce the emotional stress and impact on the person enduring it.
The overwhelming force of eros seems to have been displayed by Ibycus also in a genre other than enkomia and skolia. A scholion to Euripides’ Andromache (= Ibycus, fr. 296) informs that Ibycus narrated in a dithyramb the episode of Helen facing a raging Menelaus during the sack of Troy after a pursuit through the citadel, with the aim to kill her. The episode was also narrated in the epic poem Little Iliad, although we do not know in what length and form (fr. 19 Bernabé). An intense and dramatic (pre-tragic) dialogue between Helen and Menelaus featured in Ibycus’ poem: the Euripidean scholion tells that “the version is better handled by Ibycus; in his version Helen takes refuge in the temple of Aphrodite and speaks from there with Menelaus who is overcome by love and drops his sword. Ibycus of Rhegion in a dithyramb gives a version similar to this [i.e., the one by Euripides]” (= Ibyc. fr. 296). As can be gathered from other sources, in the last attempt to save her life, Helen unveiled her breast, thus persuading Menelaus to drop his sword.17
Along with the composition of enkomia and skolia praising love and beauty, the papyrus fragments seem to attest the composition of enkomia which also refer to victories in athletic contests held in different places; the possibility thus arises that Ibycus composed an early form of epinician enkomion, less structured than those of the late archaic poets. Despite the scantiness of evidence, in S 166 the mention of athletic games occurs combined with the praise of a Spartan boy; an athletic element (foot race?) also surfaces in S 220 for a young athlete from Leontini.18 For what concerns the mode of performance of Ibycus’ poems, no information is provided by the ancient sources. The reduced length of his erotic poems suggests that they were likely to be performed monodically in the restricted setting of a symposium; on the other hand, the longer, more solemn enkomion of Polycrates, and most of all the status of the addressee and the propaganda factor strongly suggest that it would have better fulfilled its purpose and impressed the audience if it was performed by a chorus in the setting of a large feast; the same can apply to the epinician enkomia just mentioned, which may have been performed in a larger space in front of the local community. Moreover, the narrative dithyramb on Helen and Menelaus, a choral genre par excellence, confirms the possibility that some at least of Ibycus’ poems were originally performed by a chorus.19
Anacreon
Life and Works
Although the chronology presented by Suda under his entry is multiple and controversial (s.v. Ἀνακρέων, A 1916, i 171 s. Adler), the times and whereabouts of Anacreon are better grounded than those of Ibycus.20 He was born in Teos, an Ionian city on the coast of Asia Minor, and lived through the second half of the sixth century BC.21 Anacreon can be safely connected to four different places: he left Teos when it was attacked by the Medes led by Harpagus, and settled in Abdera, in Thrace, with the Tean community (Strabo, 14.1.30; Suda); he then went to Samos at the court of the tyrant Polycrates, and left presumably at his death (522 BC), having been invited to Athens by one of the Pisistratids, Hipparchus (who died in 514 BC), whose interest in poetry is confirmed by his invitation also of Simonides ([Plato] Hipparchus 228 BC; Aristot. Athen. Pol. 18.1). In Athens Anacreon got in touch also with other prominent people like the family of Critias (grandfather of the fifth-century BC poet and politician), whom he praised in at least one poem (cf. Plato, Charm. 157e = Anacr. frr. 495; 412), and Xanthippus, the father of Pericles.22 The connection of Anacreon to these places is shown in various degrees in his poetry (cf. frr. 490, 505; Suda) and his close relation to Polycrates rests on several sources (cf. Anacr. frr. 491; 493; Herodot. 3.121; Strab. 14.1.16; Ael. VH 9.4; Ath. 12.540e; Max. Tyr. or. 37.5; POxy 3722 fr. 16, col. II 13?).23 His immediate popularity in Athens is shown by red-figure vases with his name inscribed dating from 520–500 BC, representing him as a komast performing dance and music, and by a fifth-century BC statue whose later copies have survived.24
In pre-Alexandrian times his figure attracted the interest of the school of Plato and Aristoteles (Chamaeleon, Clearchus, Heraclides Ponticus). At Alexandria his poems were studied by Zenodotus and Didymus, and edited and commented by Aristophanes of Byzantium (cf. fr. 408) and Aristarchus (cf. POxy 3722 fr. 20.4); traces of ancient commentaries to his poems surface in a number of papyri (POxy 2321; 3695; 3722; 4454; PRyl. I 35). His poetry is further celebrated in various epigram composed at different times (see e.g., Leonidas, APlan. 306–307; APlan. 308–309, probably commenting on the statue mentioned above; Antipat. Sidon. AP 7.27; Crinag. AP 9.239), and he exerted a strong influence on the Hellenistic epigram.25 His poetical output was collected in an unspecified number of books:26 the first three books are named by the sources, but paucity of evidence prevents from ascertaining whether each book was arranged according to meter (as was the case with Sappho) or to a different criterion. The fact that the first book was opened by a hymn to Artemis (fr. 348) suggests that the genre and subject matter may have played a role in the arrangement.
Anacreon composed different poetic genres, such as lyric, iambos (including tetrameters), and elegy; a number of epigrams was also transmitted under his name: while some are clearly later, the authenticity of others cannot be proved (CEG 313; 13); accordingly, the hypothesis that he also sojourned in Thessaly and composed two epigrams for the family of Echecratidas rests on thin ice. He is the sole poet to have composed lyric poetry in Ionic dialect, mixing epic and literary forms with vernacular ones. Since Ionic was traditionally associated with iambos, elegy, and epigram, Anacreon may have extended the use of this dialect to lyric with an eye to his audiences in Asia Minor and in Ionian Samos. His lyric poems included hymns, paroinia (or skolia, sympotic songs: Suda, A 1916) and partheneia (little attested: cf. frr. 500–501). The extant lyric poems are short and composed mainly in anacreontic-ionic, iambo-trochaic, and aeolo-choriambic meter: although they are not complete (with the possible exception of frr. 356ab; 357; 358, 388; 395), the genre indicates that they were probably intended for monodic performances in a limited setting, with an exception for the partheneia which imply choral performance in a larger space (cf. Critias, B 1.8, 8 D-K, mentioning female choruses in relation to Anacreon), and possibly for the hymns.
With the possible exception of his iambs and of the hymns, Anacreon seems to have dealt mainly with convivial themes: as the early iconography shows, he was identified from the start with the prototype of the poet singing and dancing in a state of mild intoxication; references to music and dance occur in his poems (cf. frr. 373–375, 386, 390), and he was sometimes credited with the invention of the barbiton (fr. 472). The ancient sources stress his love both for boys and for women (e.g., APlan. 309), to the extent that he was categorized as “the first poet after Sappho of Lesbos to make love his main theme” (Paus.1.25.1).
Wine, Love, and the Symposium
Anacreon’s poetics are concisely expressed in his longest elegiac fragment, made of two couplets (fr. el. 2 W): “I do not like the man who, while drinking his wine beside the full mixing-bowl, talks of strife, and tearful war: I like him who by mingling the splendid gifts of the Muses and Aphrodite remembers the loveliness of the feast” (trans. Campbell). Wine, love, and song are evoked here as the essence of a joyful symposium and contrasted with the gloomy themes that cause contention; a similar programmatic statement is also found in other sixth-century poets, such as Stesichorus and Xenophanes, in the latter case also with reference to a symposium.27 The focus on wine as a key element in a symposium is diversified: he dealt with the various ways of mixing it with water (frr. 356 ab; 396; 409, cf. fr. 383), with the consequences of hard drinking (fr. 412, cf. fr. 373), with a feast to honor Dionysus while wearing garlands (fr. 410; on wine and/or garlands cf. frr. 389; 396–397; 433–434; 442; 454–455; 496; fr. el. 4 W). Love and wine are effectively mingled in fr. 450 (ἔρωτα πίνων, “drinking love”; cf. fr. 376 μεθύων ἔρωτι, “drunk with love”), and the Sicilian game of cottabus which consisted in hitting a plate with drops of wine is recalled in fr. 415 as an erotic component of a symposium (cf. Alc. fr. 322 Campbell.; Bacchyl. fr. 17M.).
Just as he displays different possibilities for enjoying wine, from excess to moderation, Anacreon deals with eros from various angles and gender perspectives: in a way reminiscent of Archilochus or Hipponax, he may be quite explicit in dealing with both sexes,28 but also delicate, as in frr. 380; 402; 418. He confronts the power of love (and of Aphrodite) in a variety of ways: the devastating force experienced also by Ibycus is often mitigated by disenchantment, irony, self-mockery, which make it difficult to gauge how real was his involvment with the stories evoked and if the first person narrative can be identified with his own life experiences at all. In reading the gracious trochaic dimeters on the Thracian filly escaping the bridle and rein of the poet (fr. 417), we are left wondering whether they were in fact addressed simply to a reluctant girl, or to a hetaera, as claimed by the source quoting the fragment: “Thracian filly, why do you look at me from the corner of your eye and flee stubbornly from me, supposing that I have no skill? Let me tell you, I could neatly put the bridle on you and with the reins in my hand wheel you around the turnpost of the race-course; instead, you graze in the meadows and frisk and frolic lightly, since you have no skilled horse-man to ride you” (trans. Campbell; cf. the opposite image of the reins of the poet’s soul, held this time by a boy, in fr. 360). An element stressed by Anacreon and by other archaic poets (see above on Ibycus) is the erotic gaze (cf. also frr. 359–360; 482; test. 11.3; 12.3 Campbell) which creates an inextricable bond between the narrator and his addressees. In one poem the melting power of the gaze, which also occurs in Alcman and Ibycus (see above), is transferred onto eros himself (fr. 459 τακερὸς ἔρως, “melting love”; cf. fr. 444, “gleaming with desire”).
The violence of love is expressed in different ways, in lines adorned with rhetorical devices such as polyptoton (cf. fr. 359) and polar figures, as in fr. 428: ἐρέω τε δηὖτε κοὐκ ἐρέω/καὶ μαίνομαι κοὐ μαίνομαι, “Once again I love and I do not love, I am mad and I am not mad”; despair can bring about the wish to die as the only way to find “release from these troubles” (fr. 411, trans. Campbell) or else, following a practice reportedly attempted also by Sappho (test. 23 Campbell), it triggers the urge to jump from the Leucadian cliff in order to cure the disease (fr. 376): “… once again I climb up and dive from the Leucadian cliff into the grey waves, drunk with love” (trans. Campbell). The repeated intervention of eros/love is experienced as a fight, a boxing game that the poet is expected to play (frr. 346 fr. 4; 393, 396), or an assault with a heavy weapon (fr. 413): μεγάλωι δηὖτε μ ’ Ἔρως ἔκοψεν ὥστε χαλκεὺς/πελέκει, χειμερίηι δ’ ἔλουσεν ἐν χαράδρηι, “Once again Love has struck me like a smith with a great hammer and dipped me in the wintry torrent” (trans. Campbell). However, the frequent use of the adverb δἦυτε (here and in frr. 358; 376.1; 400.1; 428.1) already noticed in Ibycus and other lyric poets mitigates the intensity of Anacreon’s feelings; the overall impression is that of an accomplished game perfectly mastered by the poet on the level of meter, style, form, and vocabulary in quite an effortless, and thus distanced, way, sometimes nearly verging on mannerism, as will later happen in the Anacreontea (see below). His erotic poems for boys probably of aristocratic descent can be differentiated from those composed by Ibycus, insofar as the latter’s poems reflect an encomiastic purpose which seems to be missing in Anacreon’s flirtatious and light-hearted lines. Still, as noted with regard to Ibycus, it would be misleading to identify poet and speaking persona and assume, along the biographical track pursued in antiquity, that the παῖδες repeatedly named in the fragments or by other sources (Smerdies, Megistes, Bathyllos, Cleoboulos, Critias), had all been loved by the poet.29
Other difficulties of interpretation arise in the poems dealing with female figures, some of whom may have been prostitutes. Modern readers can definitely appreciate the elegance and smooth running of fr. 358 composed in glyconics with a final pherecratean,—which may result in a complete eight-line poem on a gentler onslaught of eros, but the meaning and references it evokes are hard to pin down: “Once again golden-haired Love strikes me with his purple ball and summons me to play with the girl in the fancy sandals; but she—she comes from Lesbos with its fine cities —finds fault with my hair because it is white, and gapes after another girl” (trans. Campbell). Even leaving aside an ancient nonsensical interpretation claiming that these lines were addressed by Anacreon to Sappho,30 the humorous allusions of this voyeuristic description cannot be contextualized beyond the very fact that in the text the white-haired speaking persona is attracted by a young girl who, in turn, seems rather attracted by another young girl and therefore scorns the love of the aged male admirer. Given that the girl may well be a prostitute rather than a young person of good background, it is hard to see if the multilayered and sophisticated interpretations offered nowadays by many modern commentators can hit the mark and prove correct. To raise a few points, can the allusion, occurring in a sixth-century BC poem, to the specific provenance of the girl from Lesbos be taken—as most modern readers do—as a clear allusion via Sappho to the homosexual penchant of the girl? Moreover, must the words πρὸς δ’ ἄλλην τινὰ χάσκει (“she gapes in admiration after another”) in the last line be taken as indicating another “girl” (νῆνις, 3), or else could they rather refer to another “set of hair” (κόμην, occurring nearer at line 6), that is, to another male person? Such an interpretation would force us to drop the possibility of a homosexual overtone of the poem (no matter what one makes of the allusion to Lesbos), and open the way for a male confrontation between an old (therefore rejected) male and a younger, attractive man who catches the eye of the (only) girl.31 Furthermore, an obscene (and not very likely, in my opinion) possibility could lurk in the text if one interprets the reference to the hair the girl is gaping at as “pubic hair,” thereby alluding to a potential fellatio, a practice apparently connected to Lesbos by ancient hearsay.
The themes and context of the symposium hereabove recalled do not fill the full range of Anacreon’s poetry. Another female presence which raises problems of interpretation, this time for the incompleteness of the papyrus text, surfaces in fr. 347.11–18, where what looks like a new poem unconnected to the preceding lines seems to introduce the lament or regret of a woman—with words recalling the Homeric Penelope—on her present condition, a topic similar to Alcaeus, fr. 10 Campbell. Scrappy papyrus fragments from a commentary mainly from POxy 3722 stress the peculiar skill of Anacreon in sketching known individuals in a most caricatural way, and his love for allegory and metaphor. The first of these qualities can be admired in the humorous, destructive, and skillfully constructed (12 lines) mockery of the parvenu Artemon, who rose from rags to riches (fr. 388, cf. fr. 372). Moreover, the iambic poems (frr. iamb. 1–7) may have presented different themes with a stronger satyrical tinge; in one fragment the speaking persona is a woman, complaining about her physical decadence with words not very different from the Cologne papyrus of Archilochus (frr. 196a, 24–30 W2): Anacr. fr. iamb. 5 (= fr. 432 PMG) “Already I am becoming a wrinkled old thing, over-ripe fruit, thanks to your lust” (trans. Campbell).32 Regarding the hymns it is possible that, besides the fictitious hymn to Dionysus where the poet once again asks for help in a love affair with Cleoboulos (fr. 357), some hymns were intended for a real cultic occasion outside the sympotic setting. The hymn to Artemis Leukophryene (fr. 348, 9 lines: it may be complete or miss a following stanza), who was worshipped with a cult at Magnesia on the Meander, focuses on the bond between the goddess, the city, and its inhabitants, and may have implied a religious ceremony in spite of the initial address by the poet: “I beseech you, deer-shooter, fair-haired child of Zeus, Artemis, queen of wild beasts, who now somewhere by the eddies of the Lethaeus look down on a city of bold-hearted men and rejoice, since the citizens you shepherd are not untamed” (trans. Campbell). Likewise, a fragment mentioning Zeus Eubuleus may hint at a local cult rooted in Samos or another place in Asia Minor.33
A role in the reception of Anacreon’s poetry, and probably in the loss of some poems not necessarily aimed at the symposium, was undoubtedly played by the popularity of a collection of songs called Anacreontea, which were reputed to have been composed by Anacreon: their authenticity was undisputed from Antiquity to the nineteenth century. The corpus consists in 60 poems (and two fragments) dating from different times, from the first century BC to the sixth century ad; they were composed in Anacreontic meter and later preserved under the name of Anacreon in the tenth-century manuscript of the Palatine Anthology. The name of the poet rarely occurs in the songs, and the first-person speaker is often replaced by a third person; the Anacreontea aim at developing the merry, light-hearted and convivial style and the themes of the poet in a more elusive way, sometimes appropriating his genuine lines and elaborating on the more popular poems. Their focus too is on love, old age, wine, Dionysus, with the additional description of works of art. Some of the songs display grace and wit; still, the original tie to the archaic symposium and its social setting is entirely missing, and the frequent mention of Graces, Erotes, and roses produces a sense of oversweetness. Deprived as they are of cultic, political, or historical elements, of the iambic-satyrical element, of references to places and persons, to most of the boys sung by Anacreon but for an impersonal Bathyllos, taken as a whole the Anacreontea convey an impression of superficiality and excessive mannerism, if one compares them to the original. It must however be recognized that, if in trying to imitate Anacreon the Anacreontea altered his identity for posterity, they widened the reception and influence of his poetry in the modern age from Renaissance to the eighteenth century: in a peculiar way, they stand as a longlasting tribute to the personality and status of Anacreon in antiquity.34
FURTHER READING
I am deliberately leaving aside the bibliography focused on single poems. On the importance and function of the symposium in archaic Greece see the essays collected in Murray 1990, Hobden 2013, Węcowski 2014. On eros and praise in lyric poetry see further Gentili 1988, Nicholson 1999–2000, Davidson 2013. On the transmission of the text of Ibycus see Ucciardello 2005. On Anacreon see the commentary of the erotic fragments by Leo 2015 and the recent complete commented edition by Bernsdorff 2020, who adopts the numeration of PMG. The standard edition of the Anacreontea is West 1993c.
The corpus of the papyri of Anacreon is now collected and commented upon in CLGP: 27–154; see also Benelli 2011, Bernsdorff 2011. On the Anacreontea see further Zotou 2014; Baumbach and Dümmler 2014.
Notes