CHAPTER 8
Tom Phillips
It is a truth universally acknowledged that texts are understood in contexts. But deciding what these contexts consist of, and understanding what kind of effects they might have on reading (or listening), and how they relate to the contexts that texts create for themselves, pose insistently difficult problems. The literary history of archaic and classical Greek lyric poetry within antiquity is particularly challenging in this respect, involving a broad shift from performance to reading, and a complex reception history that inflected ancient readers’ approaches to the texts, and continues to affect reading practices today. An historical sketch of lyric transmission will illustrate some important features of this history; I shall then focus on citation and commentaries as frames for lyric reading.
Reading Contexts
Archaic lyric was transmitted predominantly in performance. It is difficult to tell when the practice of reading lyric, and indeed other poetry, began to acquire cultural importance (see further Spelman (Chapter 19) in this volume). References to writing in poetry of the early fifth century, as well as vase paintings showing the Muses with books, suggest an increasing awareness of the importance of the book (see Phillips 2016: 2–4), but given that writing appears in Greece in the eighth century, books may have played a limited role for considerably longer. We are told that a copy of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo was kept on Delos, and on this model it has been plausibly suggested, for instance, that an “edition” of Alcman’s poems was preserved at Sparta (Carey 2011: 454–456). How much such books might have been subject to reading as a self-contained activity, as opposed to serving as scripts for performance, we cannot tell.1 By the later fifth century, however, a thriving “book trade” (Ar. Frogs 52–54, Xen. An. 7.5.14) testifies to a nascently “literary” culture, in which books were significant objects in themselves and reading was gaining in cultural importance, coinciding with a culture of performance.
Even as the “New Musicians” produced their musically and verbally daring compositions (see LeVen (Chapter 25) in this volume), and new cult songs continued to be performed across the Greek world, by the middle of the fourth century some of the older lyric poets had already achieved something like “canonical” status. The writings of Plato and Aristotle make clear the central role that performance, reading, quotation, and analysis of such authors played in the intellectual culture of the period. Although not as influential as Homer, they were nonetheless authorities who could be mined for memorable statements, as well as targets of contestation. Thus, Aristotle quotes from Simonides and Pindar to illustrate general principles, while the Phaedrus is deeply imbued with echoes of lyric language as well as engagements with specific poets (Capra 2012: 27–87). The interpretation of Simonides in the Protagoras and of Pindar’s statement “custom is the king of all” (fr. 169a.1 S–M) in the Gorgias show lyric being used to crystallize philosophical issues and catalyze discussion (Payne 2006: 165–173). Chamaeleon of Pontus, a Peripatetic contemporary of Aristotle, wrote biographical works on Pindar and Sappho, as well as on Alcman and Simonides: the lives and works of the lyric poets were becoming subjects of interest in their own right.
Close engagement with lyric continues in the third century (see Morrison (Chapter 27) in this volume). Sappho and Simonides are frequent intertextual presences in the poetry of Apollonius of Rhodes and Theocritus, and the early epigrammatists such as Asclepiades and Nossis, while Pindar is an important model for Callimachus (Richardson 1986). With Callimachus, we also begin to see evidence of the scholarly activity that was to shape future readers’ access to lyric poems. Along with several other scholars, Callimachus contributed to a debate about the correct generic classification of Pindar’s Pythian 2 (recorded by the scholia; scholia Pyth.2 = ii 31 Dr). There is no evidence that Callimachus edited Pindar, and his intervention may well derive from his famous Pinakes, a list of all known works of literature, arranged by author, title, and genre (see Pfeiffer 1968: 127–131; Montana 2015: 107–108). Indeed, evidence for the appearance and organization of books during this period is meager. Although some third-century papyri have colometric arrangements (see Montana 2015: 120 n. 276 for evidence and discussion), the fourth-century papyrus of Timotheus’ Persae (Fig. 17 in Sampson’s chapter) has a text in scriptio continua, without colometry, marginal signs or comments, and many lyric books may well have continued to look more or less like this well into the third century.
A clearer picture of the material conditions of lyric reading begins to emerge for the late-third and early-second centuries BC, when two crucial scholarly forms emerge: authoritative editions and commentaries. Aristophanes of Byzantium is credited with producing colometrized texts of Pindar (Montana 2015: 119–122; Phillips 2016: 53–60) during this period. His successor as head of the library of Alexandria was Apollonius the Eidographer (ὁ εἰδογράφος, “compiler of forms”), who apparently classified poetry by musical genre (Et. Gen. AB s.v. εἰδογράφος), although the precise meaning of this assessment is disputed and it is not clear what texts he worked on (Montana 2015: 129). He in turn was succeeded by Aristarchus of Samothrace, the most brilliant and prolific scholar of the period. In addition to his extensive work on Homer, he produced editions of Alcaeus and (probably) Anacreon, as well as commentaries on Alcman, Pindar, and Bacchylides (Montana 2015: 137). It is from exegetical works such as these, and the responses to them by later scholars such as Didymus, Aristonicus, and Theon, that the scholia preserved in medieval manuscripts ultimately descend (overview in Reynolds and Wilson [1968] 2013: 5–19).
Different organizational principles were applied to editions depending on the content of the poetry. Sappho’s poems are grouped by meter and subject; the first book, for instance, consists of poems in the Sapphic stanza dealing with a variety of subjects (although it is unclear which scholar was primarily responsible for this edition: see Yatromanolakis 1999). The ten books of Alcaeus’ corpus were arranged by content, and at least some seem to have been arranged to fit a chronology of the poet’s life (Porro 1994: 5–6). Epinicians tend to be organized according to the importance of the event and the victor (Lowe 2007; on classification more generally see Harvey 1955), although in the case of Pindar’s first Olympian we are told that Aristophanes placed in first because it dealt with the origin of the games (Phillips 2016: 122–123; Prodi 2017b: 553–560). The use of marginal signs such as coronides to mark the end of poems, and paragraphoi to mark stanza divisions, is systematized in this period: both Aristophanes and Aristarchus made important contributions to this practice. It is likely that, once they had been decided on by the Alexandrian editors (by no means a straightforward process: see Porro 2009: 187–188), the order of poems within books of the lyric poets was reasonably stable, not least because of the practical difficulties involved in making alterations.
Despite the limitations of our evidence, it is clear that by the late-second and first-centuries BC, the “lyric canon” is firmly established, and defined by three principal features: a group of poets who have undisputed “classic” status, editions of these poets organized according to recognized principles, and commentaries devoted to explaining and interpreting their works. Several epigrams of the later Hellenistic period address the canonical lyric poets as a well-defined group, each with their particular stylistic features and subject matter (e.g., AP 9.184, 571; see Barbantani 1993). Some epigrams play on the fact that poems originally composed for performance are now read (Antipater of Sidon has Anacreon acknowledge that his poetry now consists of books, whereas he once “sang in Dionysus’ revels,” AP 7.26), while Antipater of Thessalonica remarks that Alcman’s birthplace, whether Sparta or Lydia, is “a source of strife to two continents” (AP 7.18.5), alluding to a controversy that goes back at least to the fourth century. Together with the scholarly debates surrounding it and the conditions within which readers engage with its contents, the canon itself has become a literary topos.
Extensive exegetical and literary critical engagement with lyric poetry continues in the late Hellenistic and into the Imperial periods (see Matthaios 2015: 213–247 for an overview of commentators active at this time).2 Didymus of Alexandria, active in the second half of the first century BC, is an important representative of the first trend. His output, famously voluminous, included commentaries on Bacchylides’ and Pindar’s epinicians and the latter’s Paeans (Montana 2015: 172–174). The evidence of the scholia to Pindar’s epinicians, in which Didymus is frequently cited contesting the interpretations put forward by Aristarchus, and as the source of much historical information, suggests that his influence on later exegetical materials was considerable. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, contemporary with Didymus, produced readings of Sappho, Pindar, and Simonides that evince a different approach. Dionysius’ method, clearly influenced by the “euphonist” literary critics of the earlier Hellenistic period (for whose activity see especially Janko 2001: 165–189), is to subject the sound structures and rhythms of these texts to microscopic analysis, in order to demonstrate their stylistic qualities. Certain authors embody certain styles, Pindar the “austere” style, Sappho the “smooth”; others, such as Homer and Alcaeus, achieve a “blend” that balances competing stylistic features. Didymus and Dionysius embody two of the major critical frameworks that would have shaped ancient readers’ encounters with lyric texts, the former oriented to line-by-line exegesis of language, syntax, points of historical and mythographical interest, the other to a more sensory appreciation of the poems as materially affective artifacts.
Authors of the Imperial period continue and engage with these scholarly trends. Longinus (date and identity uncertain, although often placed in the first century AD) offers a memorable reading of Sappho fr. 31 V; Plutarch cites lyric poetry regularly, and wrote a life of Pindar (fr. 9 Sandbach). Lucian assumes a good knowledge of Pindar in his readers, while Athenaeus’ Deipnosophistae (“Philosophers at Dinner”) testifies to and comments on a literary milieu in which familiarity with canonical lyric was expected (see in general Bowie 2006). Although lyric was not as central to education as the Homeric poems, it still played an important role (on education see Morgan 1998; Cribbiore 2001); the extensive use of analytical paraphrase in the scholia to Pindar, for instance, results in part from the analysis in the schoolroom (McNamee 2007: 63–77; Porro 2009: 202). Nor should engagement with lyric be seen as the preserve of a narrow scholarly elite, or confined to centers of learning such as Alexandria. Papyrus finds in Memphis and Oxyrhynchus show that lyric was being read and studied with some sophistication in mid-sized Egyptian towns during the second century AD; the papyri to which we owe the preservation of Pindar’s Paeans, Bacchylides, and Alcman’s “Louvre Partheneion,” contain many learned marginalia and references to the works of important Hellenistic scholars.
As is well known, late antiquity sees the loss of almost the whole lyric corpus, together with the exegetical materials attached to it. Although the history of lyric reception in the Byzantine period is beyond the remit of this overview, it is important to dwell briefly on the relationship between the marginalia found in medieval manuscripts and the ancient commentaries from which they derive. The basic story is one of repeated redaction, as material was transferred from one commentary to another, and eventually into the margins of texts. This process entailed “constant reworking of the contents of this marginal apparatus, from one manuscript exemplar to another, by means of cuts and additions that sprang from the concrete requirements of readers, users, and purchasers of the books” (Montana 2011: 111). Some scholars see this process of redaction as beginning in the fifth to sixth centuries AD, while others place it later (for an overview and further references see Montana 2011: 117–118). However we conceptualize the precise details of this process, the crucial historical point is that the scholia contained by the medieval manuscripts present us with, at best, a filtered and selective picture of the ancient commentaries from which they are descended. Except in cases where scholars such as Aristarchus are named, we usually cannot know much about the date or provenance of a particular interpretation, even if it is generally thought that little new material entered the scholiographic corpus in later antiquity. Many scholia are therefore better treated as rough guides, rather than sure evidence, for what commentators during the Hellenistic and Imperial periods wrote and thought.
The corpora of scholia also exemplify the general point which the rest of this essay will address, that the material conditions of reading are both influenced by and exert influence on how people read. Paratextual features, for instance, respond to readerly needs (explanatory paraphrases are designed to help schoolchildren read difficult poems, while critical signs such as the “paragraphos” or the “coronis” mark divisions between stanzas and the ends of poems), but they also encourage specific readings. The ordering of poems in books is motivated by various editorial exigences, but also encourages readers to see some poems as more important than others. In considering particular interpretative questions, commentators not only argue for particular interpretations or approaches, but also establish what sort of questions count as important. When non-lyric authors cite lyric poems, they encourage readers to focus on certain aspects of the poems being cited, and thus affect readers’ notions of what is significant and worthwhile in these texts. The rest of this essay will look in more detail at these last two phenomena.
Citations: Lyric Detached
An awareness that songs will be performed in multiple times and places is central to lyric self-consciousness, and is already a topic of literary comment in the fifth century. In the Acharnians, Aristophanes flags his ability to protect Athens from being dazzled by the praise offered by sycophantic envoys (633–638):
Your poet claims that he’s worthy of many fine rewards, because he stops you from being too much gulled by the words of foreigners, and taking pleasure in being flattered, and becoming empty-headed citizens. In former times, envoys from the cities (ἀπὸ τῶν πόλεων οἱ πρέσβεις) would gull you first by calling you violet-crowned (πρῶτον μὲν ἰοστεφάνους ἐκάλουν); whenever someone said this, because of the crowns, you’d immediately sit up on the tips of your arse-cheeks. And if someone were to flatter you by calling you shining Athens (λιπαρὰς καλέσειεν Ἀθήνας) he could win anything he wanted from you because of that “shining,” fastening on you an honour fit only for sardines.
We are told by the scholium on 637 that ἰοστεφάνους and λιπαρὰς … Ἀθήνας are “like the phrases ‘shining and violet-crowned Athens’ from Pindar’s dithyrambs” (παρὰ τὰ ἐκ τῶν Πινδάρου διθυράμβων “αἱ λιπαραὶ καὶ ἰοστέφανοι Ἀθῆναι”: see Rawles 2013: 177–178). The target of Aristophanes’ jibe is envoys who borrow well-known lyric tags, in this case from Pindar, to curry favor with their audience. Aristophanes’ corrective consists in implying that such terms are emptied of meaning by being reused in this way, becoming a reflection of the envoys’ intention to flatter and deceive rather than signifying the qualities they ostensibly denote. Beyond its immediate argumentative point, Aristophanes’ lines illustrate how easily lyric’s quotability can shade into bombast. Equally, his “quotation” registers the impact of Pindar’s language on Athens’ self-conception and the textures of political life.
Aristophanes’ lines implicitly assume that, in creating densely evocative and memorable expressions, lyric poets anticipate and aim at quotability. Equally, lyric ecphrases or micronarratives lend themselves to treatment as self-contained totalities. Citations of lyric poems that separate off certain especially memorable passages or lines therefore continue processes that are already at work within the poems themselves. By transplanting lyric language into new contexts, citations enact lyric’s claims to the attention of posterity. Yet such claims are not unique to lyric. Numerous passages in the Iliad and the Odyssey dramatize a concern with the poems’ reception, perhaps the most famous being Helen’s notion of herself and Paris as subjects for future song at Il. 6.358. Nor are the ways in which lyric is cited unique. Lyric authors, like Homer, Hesiod, the mythographers, and other poets, are often cited as sources for mythological data. Like Homer and Hesiod, lyric poets are sources for ethical precepts.
Nevertheless, citations can also bring out qualities and features that are distinctive to lyric poems. The nature and function of citations depends as much on the quoting author as on the text being quoted. Authors frame and discuss quotations more and less extensively, build quotations into arguments or narratives, create situations in which the quoted text takes on a function that might be quite different from that which it had in its original setting(s) or in quoting the text without much accompanying comment allow the text to speak for itself. Quotations are therefore often not sure guides to how a quoted text might have been performed, or what it might have meant in the larger poetic framework from which it was drawn. Generic specificity can be effaced as well as emphasized, and lyric poems’ self-decontextualization can be reflected in the ways they are quoted.
Plutarch’s How to Study Poetry advances the argument that poetry is best studied as a preparation for serious philosophical study; readers must be equipped to detect and resist poets’ narrative falsehoods, and ethically misleading or deleterious statements.3 This overall aim colors Plutarch’s treatment of individual lines, as we seen in his citation of Bacchylides 1.159–61 (36c): “I shall state that virtue has the highest fame, but wealth accompanies even wretched men” (φάσω μέγιστον/κῦδος ἔχειν ἀρετάν· πλοῦ-/τος δὲ καὶ δειλοῖσιν ἀνθρώπων ὁμιλεῖ). The citation occurs as part of Plutarch’s argument that one can often find in the poets “neat” (ἀστεῖον) statements of positions more fully elaborated by philosophers; in such cases, poetry and philosophy can support each other (35f). Quoting the poets to such ends “brings poems out of the realm of myth” and “invests their useful sayings with seriousness” (σπουδὴν περιτίθησιν αὖ τοῖς χρησίμως λεγομένοις, 36d).
Accordingly, what matters for Plutarch here is the philosophical force of Bacchylides’ statement, the extraction of which from its poetic context is helpful in drawing attention to its intellectual usefulness. Plutarch’s approach may result in part from the sources he is drawing on. The fact that quotation of Bacchylides is followed by a “similar” (παραπλησίως) pair from Euripides, one of which has clearly been abbreviated in transmission, and that he seems to know little of Bacchylides’ life, suggests that he may be drawing here on an anthology of quotations.4 By juxtaposing Bacchylides and Euripides, Plutarch emphasizes their shared thought to the exclusion of their generic or contextual differences. The juxtaposition itself drives home the point that what ultimately matters about these texts is not their incidental poetic qualities, but their propositional content.
The effects created by Athenaeus’ quotations from the poets are rather different. Composed for an educated readership familiar with the extensive use of quotations in commentaries and collections of sayings, as well as in literary texts (Jacob 2013), the Deipnosophistae is much looser and more various in argument and structure than Plutarch’s treatise. Speakers will often reel off a series of quotations on a given topic in order to illustrate a particular historical fact or philosophical proposition, but without attempting to tie the quotations together: readers are asked to draw parallels and ponder differences for themselves. Although, like Plutarch, Athenaeus is clearly reproducing and reconfiguring previous collections of quotations, he also draws attention to how his (speakers’) disposition of material reflects and engenders particular approaches to the texts being cited. In this sense, the Deipnosophistae is a text about quotation.
At 13.564b-f, Athenaeus has one of his speakers, Myrtilus, quote a series of poems to illustrate the truth of a remark made by Aristotle, that “lovers pay attention to no other part of their beloveds than the eyes.” After quoting Sophocles’ Hippodameia on the effect that Pelops’ eyes have on her, Myrtilus proceeds through a series of lyric texts. After Licymnius of Chios describing Sleep “lulling [Endymion] to sleep with open eyes,” we have Sappho addressing a “handsome” man and enjoining him to “spread the delight that is in your eyes” (καὶ τὰν ἐπ’ ὄσσοις ὀμπέτασον χάριν, fr. 138). Then Anacreon (fr. 360 PMG):
ὦ παῖ παρθένιον βλέπων,
δίζημαί σε, σὺ δ’ οὐ κλύεις,
οὐκ εἰδὼς ὅτι τῆς ἐμῆς
ψυχῆς ἡνιοχεύεις.
O boy who glances girlishly, I seek you but you do not listen, not knowing that you hold the reins of my soul.
There follows a section of Pindar’s encomium for Theoxenus of Tenedos (fr. 123 S–M) in which the speaker asks “who would not be buffetted with desire” (ὃς μὴ πόθωι κυμαίνεται) when looking at the “sparkling beams” from Theoxenus’ eyes (ἀκτῖνας < πρὸς > ὄσσων μαρμαριζοίσας). Then a change of tone: Philoxenus of Cytherea’s Polyphemus “foresaw his blindness,” and therefore praised everything about Galateia except her eyes (ὦ καλλιπρόσωπε, χρυσεοβόστρυχε,/χαριτόφωνε, θάλος, Ερώτων, fr. 821 PMG), but according to Myrtilus, “this praise is blind and nothing like that of the famous Ibycus” (τυφλὸς ὁ ἔπαινος καὶ κατ’ οὐδὲν ὅμοιος τῶι Ἰβυκείωι ἐκείνωι):
Εὐρύαλε, γλαυκέων Χαρίτων θάλος < … >
καλλικόμων μελέδημα, σὲ μὲν Κύπρις
ἅ τ’ ἀγανοβλέφαρος Πει-
θὼ ῥοδέοισιν ἐν ἄνθεσι θρέψαν.
Euryalus, scion of the blue-eyed Graces, cared for by the lovely-haired …, Cypris and Persuasion of the gentle glances reared you among the rose-petals.
Citing these texts to illustrate a topos encourages us to see similarities between them. This approach is also invited by the larger context. The lyric quotations differ thematically from texts quoted earlier in the excursus on love, which begins with quotations from Euripides and Pindar that emphasize the need to engage with Eros wisely (561a–c). At 562a–63d, the speaker Plutarch quotes a series of comic texts: the first three are about painters and sculptors not capturing Eros’ qualities properly, while those at 562e–3d are more loosely related, although they share a focus on Eros’ power and the difficulties of men in dealing with him. The lyric texts are more condensed, employ more metaphors, and are more linguistically ornate.
Quoting these texts as a group in relation to the group of comic citations brings such stylistic differences to the fore, and framing them as embodying a topos encourages a sense (however nebulous) of the “lyrical” that cuts across authors and genres. As it emerges here, this discursive quality is a matter of tone, theme, and verbal choices rather than genre (narrowly understood) or function (rhetorical or ritualistic). Yet the texts have been chosen as much for their idiomatic qualities as for their shared theme, and there are occasional nudges toward comparison in the ways the quotations are introduced. Pindar’s quotation is introduced by his description as “Pindar of the greatest voice,” priming us to compare the grandeur, weightiness, and figurative complexity of his verses with the relative simplicity and lightness of Anacreon (a distinction familiar from ancient stylistic criticism). The “blind praise” of Polyphemus is compared negatively to that of the “famous Ibycus.” But the very juxtaposition of the texts encourages attention to their differences. Speakers orient themselves variously: Anacreon turns the boy’s glance on himself, Pindar describes the effect of Tenedos’ eyes on others. Eros’ effects are registered in metaphors of differing tone and complexity. Anacreon’s “you hold the reins” (ἡνιοχεύεις) expresses emotional powerlessness even as it asserts discursive control; Pindar’s more ornate statement that whoever does not find Theoxenus alluring “has forged [for himself] a black heart out of iron or adamant” registers Theoxenus’ appeal by describing the forces necessary to oppose it. Representation of the glance itself also varies. Anacreon’s “glances girlishly” is, like its subject, suggestively beguiling: is the boy’s “maidenly” look indicative of a (feigned?) modesty or deliberate flirtation, or both? Pindar’s “sparkling beams” pose no such questions, figuring the glance as an enchanting but purely perceptual experience. Ibycus points up the Euryalus’ seductiveness by indirection, his eyes’ appearance registered in the epithet applied to Persuasion (ἀγανοβλέφαρος, “of the gentle glances”). The position of these “gentle glances” in a past scenario (emphasized by the aorist “reared”) suggests the lingering of mnemonic impressions within the speaker’s attempt to frame an understanding of Euryalus in the abstract (“Cypris and Persuasion”).
By foregrounding such differences in language, emphasis, and perspective, the quotations invite both an attention to their shared features as “lyric” utterance, and a sensitivity to the distinctions between poets that is familiar from the epigrammatists and literary critics such as Dionysius of Halicarnassus. The obviousness with which the quotations instantiate the point that “lovers pay attention to no other part of their beloveds than the eyes” creates space for more complex reflections. The grouping of quotations implicitly acknowledges that texts can be understood as embodying literary historical continuities, while also allowing authorial idioms to be apprehended by contrast with each other. Unlike in Plutarch, the relatively under-determined nature of the citational frame allows readers to pay more attention to the formal features that allow the quoted texts to function as self-sufficient statements.
The processes of citation create a rather different effect in relation to Alcman fr. 89 PMG, a celebrated ecphrasis of a landscape at night:
εὕδουσι δ’ ὀρέων κορυφαί τε καὶ φάραγγες
πρώονές τε καὶ χαράδραι
φῦλά τ’ ἑρπέτ’ ὅσα τρέφει μέλαινα γαῖα
θῆρές τ’ ὀρεσκώιοι καὶ γένος μελισσᾶν
καὶ κνώδαλ’ ἐν βένθεσσι πορφυρέας ἁλός ·
εὕδουσι δ’ οἰωνῶν φῦλα τανυπτερύγων.
Sleeping are mountain peaks and ravines, and headlands and gullies, and all creeping tribes that the black earth nourishes, and wild mountain animals and the race of bees, and beasts in the heaving sea’s depths, and tribes of long-winged birds are sleeping.
The quotation creates a problem for modern scholars by abstracting the passage from its wider poetic context and giving no clue as to what this context might have been. Various solutions have been canvased: the poem sets the scene for an epiphany or for a nocturnal ritual. It has also been suggested the poem evokes the otherworldly Rhipaean mountains in the far north.5
The passage is quoted by the imperial grammarian Apollonius the Sophist (on whom see Matthaios 2015: 277–278) in his Homeric Lexicon to demonstrate that whereas Homer uses the word θηρίον to refer to all animals, others, like Alcman, use various terms (ἑρπέτά, θῆρές, κνώδαλα). But this point could have been illustrated by quoting just lines 3–6. That Apollonius includes the first two lines suggests that the description as quoted has an internal cohesion and completeness, underlined by the “ring composition” of the word “they sleep,” (εὕδουσι) that lends itself to detachability. This coherence is imaginative as much as formal. Repetition was a feature of lullabies,6 and Alcman’s repeated εὕδουσι invites us to see the lines themselves as having a lullaby-like quality. This feature creates a homology between form and description, the hint that the lines’ lulling musicality puts the world to sleep complementing their statement that the world is sleeping. This suggestion of the lines’ affective force emphasizes that, regardless of whether they refer to a specific, named set of mountains or not, they do not simply describe events, but rather posit a kind of alternate “world” that is brought about by the act of description.7
Although, with the exception of the “beasts in the sea’s depths,” this domain is populated by things that can be encountered in real life, it also flaunts its remove from real experience. Lines four and five put together things normally experienced separately. These juxtapositions create an imaginary journey from mountain peaks to the sea floor that can only be experienced through the poem. Apollonius does not comment on the poem’s rhetorical strategies; for his purposes, such comment would be beside the point. Nevertheless, by quoting the lines as a coherent unit, his citation responds to and accentuates the self-sufficiency of their imaginative work.
Commentaries: Reading Pindar
The scholia to Pindar’s epinicians are our most extensive evidence for ancient exegesis of lyric poetry. They present us with a wealth of information about the critical practices of individual scholars such as Aristarchus and Didymus, and allow us a good, if necessarily provisional, understanding of the interpretative frameworks and particular critical issues with which ancient readers would have been prompted to engage. Until recently, however, the scholia suffered from a rather low literary critical reputation: modern scholars were particularly dismissive of their apparently simplistic historicism and biographical assumptions (Lefkowitz 1985), and their sometimes clumsy application of rhetorical principles to Pindar’s narrative techniques (Wilson 1980). The scholia certainly display different critical interests and procedures from those of many contemporary Pindarists; modern scholars have paid more attention to poetic unity and relations between myth and frame, for instance, than their ancient counterparts.8
Yet the scholia more closely approximate modern scholars in their sustained engagement with Pindar’s language. As well as seeking to explicate lexical and syntactical difficulties, their attempts to explain the author’s verbal choices and aims can enrich our approaches to the poems by alerting us to features that ancient readers found compelling or perplexing. This is illustrated by the remains of ancient commentators’ approaches to the narrative at Isthmian 8.49–55, which recounts Achilles’ deeds at Troy. The passage exemplifies the compression, expressive metaphor, and telescoping of events which characterize Pindar’s style:
ὃ καὶ Μύσιον ἀμπελόεν
αἵμαξε Τηλέφου μέλανι ῥαίνων φόνωι πεδίον 50
γεφύρωσέ τ’ Ἀτρεΐδαι-
σι νόστον, Ἑλέναν τ’ ἐλύσατο, Τροΐας
ἶνας ἐκταμὼν δορί, ταί νιν ῥύοντό ποτε
μάχας ἐναριμβρότου
ἔργον ἐν πεδίωι κορύσσοντα, Μέμνονός τε βίαν
ὑπέρθυμον Ἕκτορά τ’ ἄλλους τ’ ἀριστέας·
And he [sc. Achilles] bloodied Mysia’s vine-clad plain, staining it with Telephus’ dark gore, and he bridged a return for the Atreidae, and freed Helen, cut with spear Troy’s sinews, which once checked him as he marshalled work of man-slaying battle in the plain: both Memnon’s proud might, and Hector, and other nobles.
Lines 49–50 are glossed as follows: “Achilles, the man who also bloodied the vine-bearing plane of Mysia with the gore and capture of Telephus” (scholium 109 = iii 276 Dr). This type of paraphrastic analysis, in which the basic sense of the passage is given and potentially awkward elements expanded to ease comprehension, is typical of the scholia, and is likely to have been shaped at least in part by the exegetical demands of the schoolroom (see Phillips 2016: 170 with further discussion).
The second part of the gloss is more analytical, however. Commenting on the word “vine-clad” (ἀμπελόεν), the scholium records the interpretation that the poet has “used this word with reference to both [of the following] things,” namely that “Mysia produces wine,” and “that Achilles captured Telephus, son of Auge and Heracles, when he had been tripped up by the slips of vines.” On this interpretation, the poet combines geographical accuracy and mythological allusion. Importantly, the scholium seems to conceive the latter as involving reference to a story element rather than intertextual interaction with other treatments of the myth, such as that of the Cypria.9
Pindar’s “bridging a return for the Atreidae” and “cutting Troy’s sinews” also called for comment, as demonstrated by the analysis offered by scholium 111 (iii 276–267 Dr). First, Pindar’s metaphorical application of concrete verb to abstract noun in the phrase “he bridged a return for the Atreidae” (γεφύρωσέ τ’ Ἀτρεΐδαισι νόστον) is explained and somewhat simplified by making the “bridge” the object of a common verb: “he established a bridge for the relief of the Atreidae” (κατεβάλετό τε γέφυραν, φησί, τῆς ἀνακομιδῆς τοῖς Ἀτρείδαις). The paraphrase posits a semantic content shared across the two verbal realizations, allowing Pindar’s text to be seen as a kind of translation out of more ordinary language.10
The rest of the scholium is devoted to the metaphor of “sinews”: “after he had killed the men who were maintaining and saving Troy. These men are “sinews” and, as it were, a cord of sinew, just as if they were supporting a body” (ἀνελὼν τοὺς συνέχοντας καὶ ῥυομένους τὴν Τροίαν ἄνδρας· οὗτοι γάρ εἰσιν ἶνες καὶ οἷον νεῦρα καθάπερ σῶμα συνέχοντες). The meaning of Pindar’s “which once checked him” (ῥύοντο) creates greater interpretative difficulties. In scholium 111, ῥύοντό is explained by συνέχοντας καὶ ῥυομένους τὴν Τροίαν, and a similar construal is advanced in scholium 113 (iii 277 Dr), but the verb is given two separate but related senses: the “sinews” are “the noblest men [who] checked Achilles and kept him away from the city” (οἱ γενναιότατοι τῆς πόλεως ἐρρύοντο καὶ ἐκώλυον τὸν Ἀχιλλέα). The phrase “checked him” (ἐκώλυον) alone provides a syntactically and semantically correct rendering of ῥύοντο, but the addition of “kept him away from the city” (τῆς πόλεως ἐρρύοντο) stresses a relation to Troy that is only implicit in the poem. In doing so, the gloss accentuates the multivalent expressiveness of Pindar’s language.
The scholia also manifest an interest in literary relationships. As one might expect, Homer and Hesiod are cited frequently, for a variety of exegetical purposes. Homer is often described as a source from whom Pindar has borrowed (Phillips 2016: 172–193), Hesiod is cited for ethical precepts, and both are cited for mythographical information in comparison or contrast with Pindar’s treatments. Often, however, we find texts juxtaposed without much explanation of their relationship. An especially marked instance of this phenomenon occurs in the scholia to Olympian 1. Before his attempt to win Hippodameia in a chariot race with her father Oenomaus, Pelops prays to Poseidon and requests that the god “stay the bronze spear of Oenomaus” (πέδασον ἔγχος Οἰνομάου χάλκεον, Ol.1.76). The most detailed analysis of the phrase πέδασον ἔγχος is found at Σ Ol.1.122b (i 44–45 Dr), which contains a citation of Apollonius of Rhodes, drawn from the ecphrasis of Jason’s cloak:
“Hold back the spear”: restrain it. Thwart Oenomaus’ spear. For taking his spear in hand he pursued the suitors who drove in front of him, snared and killed them. As Apollonius also records somewhere (1.752-8): “and on it were wrought two competing chariots, and Pelops steered the one in front as he shook the rains. Hippodameia was riding beside him. On the other, Myrtilus drove his horses in close pursuit, and with him was Oenomaus, gripping his forward pointing spear in his hand, but he was falling sideways because the axle had broken in the hub and he was lunging to stab Pelops’ back.”
The citation of Apollonius is primarily designed to flesh out Pindar’s brief detailing (πέδασον ἔγχος, “hold back the spear”) and includes numerous features common in the mythographic tradition (see e.g., Diod. Sic. 4.73.4) supplement Pindar’s brief account of the chariot race itself (Ol.1.88). By specifying that that the suitors were given a head-start, that Oenomaus “pursued” them, and giving Apollonius’ detail that Oenomaus attempted to strike Pelops’ back (758), the scholium suggests that Pindar’s Pelops has knowledge of his adversary’s practice, and that πέδασον ἔγχος is not simply a generic request for assistance, but anticipates the specific moment in the chariot race which Apollonius pictures.
But the citation also brings into the picture the story that Pelops bribed Oenomaus’ charioteer Myrtilus to insert a false axle-pin into his chariot in order to make it crash, to which Apollonius alludes at 757. As scholars have often noted, Pindar suppresses this story (presuming that it pre-dated Olympian 1); instead, Poseidon gave Pelops a “golden chariot and winged, untiring horses; he defeated Oenomaus’ might and took the maiden for wife” (Ol.1.87–88). The absence of any comment on the relationship between Pindar’s narrative and Apollonius’ ecphrasis raises various questions. Does the commentator(s) responsible for the gloss intend to remind readers of a different, more ethically problematic version of the myth, or is Apollonius simply cited because he provides the most vivid and memorable account of the event? Is Apollonius’ status as a later author potentially reacting to or against Pindar’s version of the myth relevant? On the basis of the text we have we cannot be sure. It may be that an analysis of the relationship has been lost in the processes of redaction by which the corpus preserved in the manuscripts was formed, but it is equally possible that even the late Hellenistic or Imperial commentaries that served as a basis for the scholia did not contain any further comments on the two passages.
Another way of approaching the citation is to ask what kind of interpretative possibilities it creates for readers. One might note that Apollonius’ array of visually precise detail differs markedly from Pindar’s bare-bones micronarrative, and that the “winged horses” imply a less equal race than Apollonius describes. These contrasts might in turn sharpen attention to the conflation of form and content Pindar achieves. Pelops’ unique gift elevates him beyond the fraught duelling expressed in Apollonius’ phrase “two competing chariots,” while Pindar’s condensed narrative is formally and ethically enactive,11 its brevity connoting the ease with which great deeds can be achieved with the gods’ assistance, and realizing the speaker’s self-limitation by not rehearsing the achievement at length (for the avoidance of excessive narration as a means of circumventing “blame” see Pyth.1.81–82, and the comments of scholium Pyth.1.157a–d, ii 26 Dr). In Longinian terms, Apollonius’ accumulation of visual detail might be compared with Pindar’s sublime expression of a weighty idea by implication (for Longinus on “weighty ideas” see De subl. 9.1–3).12
But the two texts might also be construed more agonistically. Pindar’s claims to narrative authority are compromised by Apollonius’ version, which is not only the more commonly attested and thus reminds readers that Pindar’s account has not gained literary historical pre-eminence,13 but also in presenting a less complimentary picture of Pelops might motivate questions about the value of the respective stories. Is the veracity of Pindar’s version thrown into doubt by the fact of the other being more common? Or does Pindar’s have greater power because it gives a more elevated picture of heroic conduct and achievement, thus constituting a more compelling ethical exemplum for readers? We cannot know how ancient readers might have pondered or responded to these questions, or even if they asked them at all.14 Nevertheless, the citation’s creation of a framework that potentiates and invites such considerations is significant, insofar as it illustrates the kind of contextual influences to which readings of Pindar in later antiquity would have been subject.
Conclusions
Much recent study of Greek lyric has been driven by the imperative to contextualize. Greek lyric was composed for performance, runs the argument, so criticism ought to focus primarily on understanding the poems against the contexts in which they were performed.15 Such approaches are obviously appropriate (Greek lyric was performed) and have done much to sharpen our understanding of the multiple ways in which poetic texts interact with ritual practices, operate in settings such as symposia or festivals, and reflect or contribute to socio-political dynamics. Yet the rich afterlife of the lyric corpus in antiquity reminds us that such critical accounts only tell some of the story. Lyric poems, no less than epic or drama, become (and remain) canonical by travelling. Their power to charm and unsettle, engender reflection and elicit identification is not temporally or contextually determined. Lyric’s claims about experience and constructions of value transcend, and are designed to transcend, any particular setting in which they might occur.16 As well as enjoining attention to the transcontextual dimensions of lyric’s appeal, reading through quotation precludes an idealizing formalist conception of the poem as art-object by making salient specific instances of the receptiveness toward which poems are always reaching, and through which their effects are realized.
Lyric’s afterlives also caution against valuing the “song culture” of archaic and classical Greece as straightforwardly more worthwhile an object of study, or seeing it as the domain in which the poems received their definitive and most meaningful articulations.17 Plutarch’s philosophical readings and Athenaeus’ florilegia assert and complicate lyric’s transcontextual claims, while the juxtaposition of Pindar’s Pelops and Oenomaus story with Apollonius’ enables modes of response necessarily unavailable in Pindar’s time, and creates an interpretative situation in some respects more challenging than that which would have confronted the poem’s early audiences. Engaging with these responses remind us of the situatedness of our own reading practices as well as enabling a better understanding of the ancients’. It is also a productive way of paying attention to the distinctive concinnities of form and theme that make these texts significant.
FURTHER READING
Pfeiffer 1968 remains indispensable as a guide to scholarly developments in the Hellenistic period, with valuable additional discussion in Montana 2015. Bowie 2013 and Jacob 2013 treat quotation in Plutarch and Athenaeus respectively. On Pindar and scholia, see Phillips 2016: 168–210.
Notes
1 For the relationship between reading and reperformance, see Spelman 2018: 37–38 (on Pindar). The place of poetry in the schoolroom is discussed by Spelman 2019.
2 See also Reynolds and Wilson [1968] 2013: 19–34.
3 See Bowie 2013: 183–187 for a helpful overview and discussion.
4 So Hunter and Russell 2011: 204: if this is the case, Plutarch’s argument about decontextualization would be embodied by his sources.
5 Thus Budelmann 2013a with further references.
6 The injunction to “sleep” is repeated at Simon. PMG 543.22 and Theoc. 24.7–8.
7 See Budelmann 2013a: 4–7 on the unusualness of sleeping mountains.
8 Although see ∑ Nem.1.49c (iii 19–21 Dr) for debate over Pindar’s choice of the myth of Heracles and the snakes.
9 It is not clear whether the detail of Telephus tripping on the vines was included in the Cypria: Proclus’ summary simply says that he was wounded.
10 For further discussion see Matzner 2016a: 43.
11 On stylistic enactment in Pindar see Silk 2007.
12 For Longinus, Pindar, and the sublime see Porter 2016: 350–360.
13 See e.g., Soph. El. 504–515, and Finglass 2007: 247–248 for further references.
14 For further remarks on the effects created by the citation, see Phillips 2020: 226.
15 Particularly important representatives of this approach include Gentili 1988, Kurke 2000.
16 See especially Payne 2006.
17 See further Phillips 2016 25.I am grateful to Andrew Mackie, Tim Rood, and Laura Swift for comments on a draft of this chapter.