2017.09.08 | By Gregory Nagy
Paper presented at the symposium “Culture and Society in ‘the Lyric age’ of Greece”: A Joint Conference with the European Network for the Study of Ancient Greek History and the Network for the Study of Archaic and Classical Greek Song, Princeton University, September 8–9, 2017.
Introduction
§1. There was a general consensus, already in the ancient world, that the era of Homer as a practitioner of Epic was earlier than the era of poets like Anacreon and Ibycus, who were practitioners of Lyric. Such an understanding persists to this day, since it is nowadays simply assumed that the age of Epic as represented by, say, Homer is older, while the age of Lyric as represented by the likes of Anacreon and Ibycus is newer. Relevant is the title for the Lyric Network Symposium of 2017, “Culture and Society in the Greek Lyric Age.” There is a problem with the term “Lyric Age” as used here, since it can lead to misunderstandings. A case in point is the use of this term by A. R. Burn, as signaled already in the title of a book he published in 1960, The Lyric Age of Greece. For Burn and many others, it is assumed that the so-called Lyric Age of Greece is a new age in the sense that Lyric, whatever it is, supposedly originates from this age. The paper that I present here raises questions about such an assumption.
§2. Some of these questions go back to a chapter I contributed to The Cambridge Companion to Greek Mythology, edited by Roger D. Woodard, as listed in the Bibliography. Here is what I say in that chapter, right at the beginning:
In the history of Greek literature, poets of “lyric” are conventionally associated with the archaic period, which came to an end around the middle of the fifth century BCE. Some, like A. R. Burn, would go so far as to call this period a “lyric age,” to be contrasted with an earlier age represented by Homer and Hesiod, poets of “epic.” […]
There is a lack of precision in such a general use of the term lyric. It is commonly associated with a variety of assumptions regarding the historical emergence of a “subjective I,” as represented by the individual poet of lyric, who is to be contrasted with the generic poet of epic, imagined as earlier and thus somehow less advanced. By extension, the subjective I is thought to be symptomatic of emerging notions of authorship. Such assumptions, I argue, cannot be sustained.
Lyric did not start in the archaic period. It is just as old as epic, which clearly predates the archaic period. And the traditions of lyric, like those of epic, were rooted in oral poetry, which is a matter of performance as well as composition (Lord 1995:22–68, “Oral Traditional Lyric Poetry”).
These two aspects of oral poetry, composition and performance, are interactive, and this interaction is parallel to the interaction of myth and ritual. In oral poetry, the performance of a composition is an activating of myth, and such activation is fundamentally a matter of ritual (Nagy 1994/1995). – Nagy 2007a:19.
§3. In this paper, as also in the chapter from which I have quoted the formulation that I have just presented, I argue that the “Lyric Age” was “new” only insofar as Lyric is textually attested for the first time only in the given age as defined by Burn and others.
§4. I also argue that lyric is in many ways more conservative than epic. That is why, in the book on myth as edited by Roger Woodard, the chapter
Nagy, “Lyric and Greek Myth,”
http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hlnc.essay:Nagy.Lyric_and_Greek_Myth.2007
precedes rather than follows the chapter
Nagy, “Homer and Greek Myth,”
http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hlnc.essay:Nagy.Homer_and_Greek_Myth.2007.
§5. Why am I going out of my way here in highlighting these relative chronologies? It is because, in the chapter of mine entitled “Lyric and Greek Myth,” I was arguing that the poetry of the “Greek lyric age” is in some ways even older—or I would prefer to say more conservative—than the “straw man,” which is “the Age of Greek Epic” or whatever we want to call it. On the basis of my cumulative work over forty years (starting with Nagy 1974), I can show most easily what I mean here by highlighting the multiple meters of Lyric and the singular meter of Epic. It is easy to show that the meters of Lyric are far more conservative than the meter of Epic. But I am dealing not only with meter but also with phraseology. And, further, I am dealing with “theme” in the sense of the term as used by Lord in his earliest publications. Even further, as I was trying to show in the book edited by Roger Woodard, we can broaden the picture by proceeding from meter to phraseology to theme to larger units of content—in the case of the book edited by Roger Woodard, let’s call that content myth. And we can take it even beyond myth and deal with world view or even historical contexts. This way, we can approximate what is called “age” in the title of our symposium, “the Greek lyric age.”
§6. In order to speak about content in the broadest sense of the word as we consider the poetry of “the Greek lyric age,” it is important to keep in mind the historical contexts of this “age.” And, for that, it is not enough to talk about the poets but also about the traditions that gave rise to the poetry attributed to them. In the case of “Lyric and Greek Myth,” I found a most informative context to explore in the Lesbos of Sappho and Alcaeus. And, in the chapter “Lyric and Greek Myth,” I therefore concentrated primarily on Sappho and Alcaeus.
§7. In this paper, by contrast, I have chosen Anacreon and Ibycus as my primary points of concentration—in the historical context of their status as poets working under the patronage of Polycrates, tyrant of Samos.
Texts 1 2 3 4, preceded and followed by comments
§8. In another project, Nagy 2007c in the Bibliography, I have already studied Text 1 as it relates to Anacreon, with a focus on this question: how does the songmaking of Anacreon function as a “channel,” as it were, for the songmaking of both Sappho and Alcaeus? And, in even earlier work going all the way back to my first attempts at comparing Lyric and Epic, Nagy 1974, I studied Text 2 as it relates to Ibycus, with a focus on a different kind of question: how can we compare the use of the expression kleos aphthiton ‘unwilting fame’ in the songmaking of Ibycus, as shown in Text 2, and of Sappho, as shown in Text 3, with the use of the same expression in Homeric poetry, as shown in Text 4? In this paper, Texts 1 2 3 4 will be the same as before, but I will focus on different questions.
Text 1
καὶ τὸν Πολυκράτεα τυχεῖν κατακείμενον ἐν ἀνδρεῶνι, παρεῖναι δέ οἱ καὶ Ἀνακρέοντα τὸν Τήιον
[And they say that] he [= a herald] found Polycrates reclining in the men’s quarters, in the company of Anacreon of Teos.
Herodotus 3.121
Text 2
καὶ σύ, Πολύκρατες, κλέος ἄφθιτον ἑξεῖς
ὡς κὰτ ἀοιδὰν καὶ ἐμὸν κλέος.
So also you, O Polycrates, will have a glory-[kleos]-of-song that is unwilting [aphthiton], | as in line with the song and with my own glory-[kleos]-of-song.
Ibycus S151.47–48
Text 3
τάς τ’ ἄλλας Ἀσίας .[.]δε.αν κλέος ἄφθιτον·
The rest of Asia […], a glory-[kleos]-of-song that is unwilting [aphthiton]
Sappho F 44.4
Text 4
ὤλετο μέν μοι νόστος, ἀτὰρ κλέος ἄφθιτον ἔσται·
then my safe homecoming [nostos] will be destroyed for me, but I will have a glory-[kleos]-of-song that is unwilting [aphthiton]
Iliad 9.413
§9. In Texts 1 and 2, we already engage with the three figures whose names are featured in the title of my paper: Polycrates, Anacreon, Ibycus. In the actual texts of both Text 1 and Text 2, we see the name of Polycrates, tyrant of Samos, who was a patron of both Anacreon and Ibycus. Also, in the text of Text 1, we see the actual name of Anacreon, master of Lyric. The context is clear enough: the poet and his patron are participating in a symposium.[1] As for Text 2, a passage attributed to Ibycus, we see an explicit poetic declaration about the reciprocity that exists between the tyrant Polycrates as patron and the poet Ibycus as his protégé.[2]
§10. The expression kleos aphthiton ‘unwilting fame’, as used in the wording of Ibycus in Text 2, is comparable to the same expression as used in the wording of Sappho in Text 3 and in the wording attributed to Homer in Text 4.
§11. From a comparative point of view, as I argued already in Nagy 1974 (there is a summary in Nagy 2016.08.31), the meters of Lyric (= lyric songmaking) as represented by Ibycus and Sappho in Text 2 and Text 3 respectively are cognate with the meter of Epic (= epic poetry) as represented by Homeric poetry in Text 4. That is to say, the Glyconic meter of Sappho F 44.4, as shown in Text 3, is cognate with the Pherecratic meter of Ibycus S151.47, as shown in Text 2. Further, both these meters are cognate with the Homeric hexameter, as shown in Text 4. Even further, the phraseology that frames the expression kleos aphthiton in the medium of Lyric as represented in Texts 2 and 3 is cognate with the phraseology that frames the same expression in the medium of Epic as represented in Text 4.
§12. So far, in Text 1 and in Text 2, I am already focusing on the two masters of Lyric who figure in the title of my paper: first Anacreon, in Text 1, and second, Ibycus, in Text 2. Then, after Text 3, where we see phraseology that is cognate with what we find in Text 2, we proceed to Text 4, which shows phraseology that is likewise cognate, but here we see a transition from Lyric to Epic. And who is the master of Epic here? We could say that he is Homer. But Homer’s name is absent from the title of my paper, and this absence is justified, is it not? After all, Polycrates is surely not the patron of Homer—or is he? Although I am content with leaving Homer out of the title for this paper, I am ready to propose that Polycrates is indeed a patron of Homeric poetry—though not in the same way he is patron of the songs made by Ibycus, for example, in Text 2. What I am proposing here can be formulated this way:
§13. The kleos or ‘glory’ of song that the speaking persona of Ibycus promises for the tyrant Polycrates in the wording of Text 2 implies that this ruler, who is a patron of Lyric as a form of songmaking that is represented directly by Ibycus, is also a patron of Epic as represented indirectly by Homer.
Text 5, preceded and followed by comments
§14. Essential for my proposal as formulated in §13 is a text that I show here as Text 5. Before I analyze the content, I offer a few comments on the historical background.
§15. This Text 5 as I am about to quote it comes from a work that originates from the Academy of Plato—though the author of that work is generally thought to be someone other than Plato himself. In any case, the source of my quotation is a Platonic work named after Hipparkhos, son of Peisistratos. Hipparkhos and his brother Hippias were rulers of Athens from 528/7 BCE, which was in all probability the year when Peisistratos died, all the way to 514 BCE, which was the year when Hipparkhos was assassinated. After the assassination, the government of Athens underwent a transformation that eventually gave way to what became known, by hindsight, as an early form of democracy. By contrast, Peisistratos and his sons become known, again by hindsight, as tyrants of Athens, even though it seems clear to me that not one of these Peisistratidai, which is how I will refer to them from here on, preferred to be called turannoi or ‘tyrants’. For now, in any case, I focus on an event that happened during the years when Hipparkhos and Hippias were politically dominant in Athens. The year was 522 BCE—that is the best estimate—and something big, very big, happened in that year to the régime of the tyrant Polycrates. This happening, I argue, proved to become a major stroke of good fortune for the régime of the Peisistratidai, and ultimately, for the city of Athens. What happened was that the maritime empire that Polycrates had built over the years suddenly imploded, and the Peisistratidai were presented with the opportunity of picking up the pieces, as it were. The implosion was triggered by the treacherous capture and brutal execution of Polycrates by Oroites, satrap of the Persian Empire, who was stationed at Sardis. We can read the details of the death of Polycrates in Herodotus 3.120, which is a passage that leads into the passage we already saw at 3.121, as quoted in Text 1, picturing Polycrates together with his court poet Anacreon. In a separate project that I am publishing elsewhere, I delve into some of those details about the death of Polycrates, among which is the fact that Oroites, his Persian executioner, was something of a “wild card” in the history of the Persian Empire, in that the dealings of this satrap with the Asiatic Greeks of Ionia and beyond enabled him to develop a kind of semi-hemi-demi-autonomy within the confines of the Persian Empire writ large. In this context, I am also ready to say that Polycrates himself was another such “wild card”—in the sense that this tyrant of Samos, despite his imperial ambitions, actually operated within the larger confines of the Persian Empire. For the moment, however, I need to say no more about Oroites or even about Polycrates, since we already have enough historical background for me to analyze the relevance of Text 5.
§16. As we now start to engage with the content of Text 5, I will concentrate on what happened to Anacreon, master of Lyric and protégé of Polycrates, tyrant of Samos, at a time soon after this tyrant’s maritime empire imploded—which was a time when Hipparkhos and Hippias, tyrants in Athens, were busy picking up the pieces, as I already noted:
Text 5
[…] Ἱππάρχῳ, ὃς ἄλλα τε πολλὰ καὶ καλὰ ἔργα σοφίας ἀπεδέξατο, καὶ τὰ Ὁμήρου ἔπη πρῶτος ἐκόμισεν εἰς τὴν γῆν ταύτην, καὶ ἠνάγκασε τοὺς ῥαψῳδοὺς Παναθηναίοις ἐξ ὑπολήψεως ἐφεξῆς αὐτὰ διιέναι, ὥσπερ νῦν ἔτι {c} οἵδε ποιοῦσιν, καὶ ἐπ’ ᾿Ανακρέοντα τὸν Τήιον πεντηκόντορον στείλας ἐκόμισεν εἰς τὴν πόλιν, Σιμωνίδην δὲ τὸν Κεῖον ἀεὶ περὶ αὑτὸν εἶχεν, μεγάλοις μισθοῖς καὶ δώροις πείθων· ταῦτα δ’ ἐποίει βουλόμενος παιδεύειν τοὺς πολίτας, ἵν’ ὡς βελτίστων ὄντων αὐτῶν ἄρχοι, οὐκ οἰόμενος δεῖν οὐδενὶ σοφίας φθονεῖν, ἅτε ὢν καλός τε κἀγαθός.
[I am referring to] Hipparkhos, who accomplished many beautiful things in demonstration [apodexis] of his expertise [sophiā], especially by being the first to bring over [komizein] to this land [= Athens and Attica] the verses [epos plural] of Homer, and he forced the rhapsodes [rhapsōidoi] at the Panathenaia to go through [diienai] these verses in sequence [ephexēs], by relay [ex hupolēpseōs], just as they [= the rhapsodes] do even nowadays. And he sent out a fifty-oar state ship to bring over [komizein] Anacreon of Teos to the city [= Athens]. He [= Hipparkhos] also always kept in his company Simonides of Keos, persuading him by way of huge fees and gifts. And he did all this because he wanted to educate the citizens, so that he might govern the best of all possible citizens. He thought, noble [kalos k’āgathos] as he was, that he was obliged not to be stinting [phthoneîn] in the sharing of his expertise [sophiā] with anyone.
“Plato” Hipparkhos 228b–c
§17. I have analyzed this Text 5 at length in my book Homer the Preclassic [Nagy 2009|2010], listed in the Bibliography, and I epitomize here at §§18–26 what I presented in that analysis (pp. 26–28). My epitome, I need to emphasize, reflects considerable rethinking.
§18. To start, I highlight the two instances of the word sophiā ‘expertise’ in Text 5. The use of this word here is strikingly archaic, or, I would rather say, conservative: what sophiā expresses in Text 5 is not some generalized kind of wisdom but rather, much more specifically, a poetic expertise. The idea here is that Hipparkhos is demonstrating his expertise in poetry by virtue of sponsoring poets like Homer, Anacreon, and Simonides, all three of whom are described in this passage as ultimate standards for measuring expertise in poetry. [[I just used the word sponsoring here, but I could have said instead acting as the patron of.]] In the overall logic of the narrative, Hipparkhos makes this kind of gesture because he wants to demonstrate to the citizens of Athens that he is not ‘stinting with his sophiā’ (σοφίας φθονεῖν 228c), since he is oh-so generously providing his people with the poetry and songmaking of Homer, Anacreon, and Simonides; by implication, his sophiā ‘expertise’ is the key to the performances, in Athens, of the poetry composed by these poets.
§19. The idea of reciprocity that is built into the word sophiā here, referring to the ‘expertise’ or ‘skill’ that is needed to make poetry, is comparable to the reciprocity of kleos, the ‘glory’ of poetry, in the passage from Ibycus that I cited in Text 2. I say it this way because sophiā is a word used in poetry to indicate the expertise of the poet in practicing the art of his poetry. The sophiā of the poet is a demonstration of his expertise. But here in Text 2 it is the patron of the poet who likewise demonstrates his own sophiā. The coextensiveness of reciprocity between the ruler as patron and the poet as protégé makes the poetic expertise mutual.
§20. In the case of Homeric poetry, as we see from the larger context of Text 5, the tyrant Hipparkhos is being credited not only with the regulation of Homeric performances at the Athenian festival of the Panathenaia but also with the more basic initiative of supposedly introducing the epic performances of Homeric poetry at this festival. The sophiā of Homer, as an ultimate master of Epic, is being mediated by the sophiā of a patron who supports the public performance of Homeric poetry, thus demonstrating his appreciation of this poetry.
§21. Moreover, the wording of Text 5 makes it clear that this initiative supposedly taken by the tyrant as patron of Homeric poetry is understood to be a parallel to his other initiative of introducing the performances of lyric compositions by contemporary poets such as Anacreon and Simonides. The use of the word komizein (228b), in expressing the idea that Hipparkhos ‘brought over’ to Athens the epē ‘verses’ (= epos plural) of Homer, is parallel to the use of the same word komizein (228c) in expressing the idea that Hipparkhos also ‘brought over’ to Athens the poet Anacreon—on a state ship equipped with 50 oars, from the island of Samos.
§22. Implicit in the second of these two initiatives of Hipparkhos is the idea that the tyrant undertook a veritable rescue operation in transporting to Athens the lyric poet Anacreon himself, in person, from Samos. Back in Samos, Anacreon had been a court poet of the Panionian maritime empire of Polycrates of Samos. In making this point, I recall once again the wording of Text 1. But now I situate this Text 1 in the larger context of the story told by Herodotus (3.125.2–3) about the final days of Polycrates, culminating in the termination of the tyrant’s régime and his gruesome execution by Oroites, a satrap of the Persian empire, in 522 BCE. Right before the bitter end, we get a glimpse of happier times, as reflected in Text 1: as we have already seen, Polycrates is pictured there as reclining on a sympotic couch and enjoying the company of that ultimate luminary of Ionian lyric poetry, Anacreon of Teos (3.121.1). In Pausanias 1.2.3, I should add, the consorting of Anacreon with Polycrates is drawn into a parallel with a wide variety of traditions that picture the consorting of poets with rulers in general, including kings. And such traditions are reflected in what we see at Text 2, where the kleos that comes from the poets of Epic becomes the kleos that comes from the poets of Lyric, which in turn becomes the kleos of those who are patrons of such poets. The patron in Text 2 is Polycrates, tyrant of Samos, whose protégé is Ibycus. So also in Text 1, Anacreon is protégé of Polycrates. And, further, so also in Text 5, Anacreon is protégé first of Polycrates and then, after that tyrant is removed from the picture, he becomes protégé of Hipparkhos, tyrant of Athens.
§23. In terms of the ideology underlying the action taken by Hipparkhos in bringing Anacreon from Samos to Athens, a Panionian lyric tradition as represented by this poet had to be rescued and sustained once the Panionian maritime empire shaped by Polycrates of Samos had imploded in 522 BCE. The cultural as well as political vacuum left by the implosion of this Samian tyrant’s empire was now to be filled by the emerging imperial power of Athens as controlled by Hipparkhos and his brother Hippias. Once the Athenian rescue operation had succeeded, it could now be Hipparkhos of Athens, not Polycrates of Samos, who got to enjoy the sympotic company of lyric celebrities like Anacreon.
§24. It might be tempting to assume that the songs of Anacreon, once he was transferred from Samos to Athens, took place simply in the setting of symposia, end of story. After all, we have seen already in Text 1 that a lavish symposium is being pictured as the context for the sponsoring of Anacreon by Polycrates. So, it is reasonable to infer a comparable sponsoring of Anacreon by Hipparkhos when the poet is transferred to Athens. But the sponsoring or patronage does not stop there. As I argue, the performances of Anacreon and of his successors as masters of Lyric extended from private symposia into the larger context of public competitions at the festival of the Panathenaia in Athens, just as Homeric poetry was performed primarily at the same festival.
§25. In the logic of the narrative we have read in Text 5, Hipparkhos did something far more than simply invite lyric poets for ad hoc occasions of performance at, say, symposia: more than that, he institutionalized their performances. Once his initiative succeeded, the lyric compositions of poets like Anacreon of Teos were performed not only in the setting of a symposium, as implied in the passage I quoted in Text 1, but also in the large-scale setting of public competitions at the festival of the Panathenaia in Athens, along with the lyric compositions of other poets like Simonides of Keos. In a related project, first presented at another meeting of the Lyric Network, I have argued more specifically that poetry composed in elegiac meter by Simonides would have been suitable for competitions in the category of aulodic singing at the Panathenaia, while songs composed in other lyric meters by, say, Anacreon would have belonged to the more varied category of competitions in citharodic singing. In the Appendix, I share the relevant paragraphs, soon to appear in print (Nagy 2017).
§26. I have highlighted here only one of the two Panathenaic initiatives of Hipparkhos as narrated in the Platonic passage that I quoted in Text 5. That initiative was the rescue operation of transporting Anacreon from Samos to Athens. Now I highlight, though only for a brief moment, the other initiative. The same narrative in Text 5 says that Hipparkhos the tyrant undertook another rescue operation: he transported to Athens the epic poetry of Homer. In this case, as I argue at length in Homer the Preclassic (Nagy 2009|2010), it is implied that Hipparkhos transported not the poet Homer but Homer’s notional descendants, called the Homēridai; further, by contrast with the case of Anacreon, Hipparkhos brought the Homēridai over to Athens not from the Ionian island state of Samos but from the Ionian island state of Chios. Here ends the epitome that I started at §18.
§27. By now I have spelled out what I meant at the beginning of my paper when I spoke of the tyrant Polycrates of Samos as a patron not only of Anacreon and Ibycus as masters of Lyric but also of Homer as a master of Epic. But here I must add a qualification: the would-be Homer of Polycrates was I think different from the Homer of Hipparkhos, since the epic tradition that was supposedly rescued by Hipparkhos originated not from Samos but from Chios, as I just noted. Whereas epic poetry was mediated primarily by the lineage of the Homēridai or ‘sons of Homer’ in the case of Chios, the primary mediators in the case of Samos were a rival lineage who called themselves the Kreοphyleioi or ‘sons of Kreophylos’. Suffice it to add for now that the epic mediated by way of Chios suited the political agenda of Athens in the era of the Peisistratidai, while the epic mediated by Samos was more compatible with the rival politics of Sparta. In a separate project, I plan to elaborate on the rivalry that existed between the island states of Samos and Chios in the transmission of Epic—as also of “sub-epic,” as I plan to call it. For now, however, I simply concentrate on the idea that the patronage extended by tyrants to masters of Epic involved the notional descendants of figures like Homer and Kreophylos, not Homer and Kreophylos themselves, whereas their patronage of Lyric involved lyric masters who were contemporaries of the tyrants—such as Anacreon, Ibycus, and, as we have by now also learned from the testimony of Text 5, Simonides.
§28. My argumentation so far can be divided into two phases. The first phase is primary, centering on Lyric as performed at the Panathenaia. By contrast, the second phase of this argumentation is only secondary, touching on a poetic visualization of a royal symposium that starts as an ostensibly private happening but gets magnified into a spectacular public celebration that rivals in scale and scope the most lavish of all imaginable festivals. This way, from the tyrant’s point of view, he is oh-so generous in sharing his connoisseurship or appreciation of poetry with the hoi polloi. So, the tyrant is ‘unstinting’—as expressed by way of negating such words as phthoneîn ‘be stinting’, as we saw in the wording of Text 5. To be contrasted is an ideologically democratic point of view, according to which the tyrant is oh-so selfish in hoarding poetry and dispensing it to the hoi polloi only at public occasions of his own choosing, which are in reality meant to promote his own power, wealth, and prestige. So, from a democratic point of view, the tyrant is not ‘unstinting’ but ‘stinting’—as expressed by such words as phthoneîn ‘be stinting’.
Texts 6 7 8, preceded and followed by comments
§29. In Text 5, we saw that Hipparkhos figures as an unstinting patron of songmaking in Athens. And I have argued that such songmaking takes place not only at nominally private symposia but also at public competitions in the context of civic festivals, especially at the Panathenaia. Two prime exponents of such songmaking, as we also saw in Text 5, were Anacreon, master of Ionian Lyric, and Simonides, master of Dorian Lyric. Now in Text 6, we will see that the tyrant who figured as a cultural role model for Hipparkhos of Athens, namely, Polycrates of Samos, likewise figured as such an unstinting patron. And he too, like Hipparkhos, had been a patron of Anacreon in the context of a civic festival—in this case, at the Hēraia or ‘Festival of Hera’ at Samos. There is a reference to the relevant wording of Anacreon in an oration composed by Himerius, who flourished in the fourth century CE and who is known for shaping his prose in such a way as to replicate the poetic diction of lyric masters like Anacreon—and Simonides. In Text 6, I quote this reference, which comes from Oration 27 of Himerius. Although the oration itself, as epitomized by Photius, has survived only in a fragmentary state, the relevant wording of what I have selected for Text 6 has fortunately been preserved:
Text 6
ᾖδε δὲ Ἀνακρέων τὴν Πολυκράτους τύχην Σαμίων τῇ θεῷ πέμπουσαν ἱερά
Anacreon sang “the fortune [tukhē] of Polycrates,” which launched-the-procession-that-leads [pempein] sacrifices [hiera] to the goddess [= Hera] of the people of Samos.
Anacreon F 177 ed. Gentili via Himerius Oration 27.2 ed. Colonna
§30. The metaphorical world of the lyric master is captured here in the wording that describes the procession that led into the climax of the seasonally recurring festival that was celebrated in honor of the goddess Hera, and this climax was the grand sacrifice of a hundred oxen. The verb pempein, used here in the literal sense of ‘organize a procession leading to a sacrifice at a festival’, can conventionally take as its outer object the noun hierá or hiereîa in the sense of ‘sacrificial offerings’. Most instructive here is the comment of Tzetzes on the context of the wording Παναθηναίοις as attested at line 386 of the Clouds of Aristophanes:
Text 7
Παναθηναίοις: τὰ Παναθήναια μεγίστη τῶν ἐν Ἀθήναις ἦν ἑορτῶν καὶ δημοθοινία οἵα ἐγίνετο ἐν αὐτοῖς πασῶν τῶν ἀποικισθεισῶν ἀπ’ Ἀθηνῶν πόλεων πεμπουσῶν ἑκάστης ἀνὰ βοῦν εἰς τὴν θυσίαν καὶ ἕτερα ἱερεῖα.
The [festival of the] Panathenaia was the greatest of all the festivals in Athens, what with all the public feasting-on-meat at this event, as provided by all the “colonized” cities of Athens, each one of which sent-for-the-procession [pempein], leading to the sacrifice [thusiā], an ox as well as other sacrificial offerings [hiereîa].
Scholia for Aristophanes Clouds 386 (via Tzetzes) ed. Holwerda
§31. As we see from the syntax that is replicated here by Tzetzes, the outer object of the verb pempein ‘launch a procession leading to a sacrifice at a festival’ refers to whatever sacrificial offerings, mostly animal victims—in this case, oxen—are brought in procession to the place of the divinity where they are sacrificed. Alternatively, the outer object of pempein refers to whoever participates in the procession leading to the sacrifice and brings sacrificial animals, as we see in the wording of Thucydides 3.104.6: τοὺς μὲν χοροὺς … μεθ’ ἱερῶν ἔπεμπον ‘they sent [pempein] choruses [to process], along with sacrificial offerings [hierá]’. As for the inner object of the verb pempein ‘organize a procession for a festival’, it would be the noun pompē itself in the sense of ‘a procession leading to a sacrifice at a festival’. A most revealing attestation of this kind of figura etymologica, pempein pompēn, is to be found in Herodotus 5.56, where it is the tyrant Hipparkhos himself who is seen in the act of launching the grand procession of the Panathenaia—the procession that turns out to be the setting for his assassination by Harmodios and Aristogeiton; a comparable attestation, referring to the same historical setting, can be found in Thucydides 6.56.2.
§32. I return to what I quoted in Text 6 from the wording of Anacreon as channeled by Himerius in Oration 27. There we saw the lyric master in the act of glorifying his patron Polycrates in a song performed on the occasion of celebrating the festival of the goddess Hera in Samos, that is, the Hēraia. And I now draw attention to a most remarkable parallel. In his Oration 47, Himerius is channeling another lyric master, Simonides, who is pictured here in the act of performing a song celebrating the festival of the goddess Athena in Athens, that is, the Panathenaia. And, just as Himerius in his Oration 27 imitated the metaphorical world of Anacreon in describing how the story about the good fortune of Polycrates literally launches the actual procession that led to the grand sacrifice at the Hēraia in Samos, he now imitates in his Oration 47 the metaphorical world of Simonides in describing how the Athenian Ship of State is rolled along on wheels in the Panathenaic Procession. The melē ‘tunes’ of the song composed by Simonides and performed by a khoros ‘chorus’ are now seen as propelling the ship as it rolls along in the procession—just as sea breezes propel it, blowing into its sail, whenever this same ship makes its way across the sea (lines 117–123 ed. Colonna). And this ship, on parade, is literally processing toward the goddess as the recipient of all sacrifices, as expressed by way of the verb pempein: in the words of Himerius, the festival of the Panathenaia is an occasion where the Athenians are launching the ship by sending it off in a procession that leads to the goddess herself:
Text 8
ὅταν ἐν τῇδε τῇ πανηγύρει τὴν ἱερὰν Ἀθηναῖοι τριήρη τῇ θεῷ πέμπωσιν
… when, at this festival [= the Panathenaia], the Athenians launch-in-procession [pempein] the sacred trireme-ship for the goddess [= Athena].
Himerius Oration 47 lines 103–104 ed. Colonna
§33. Limitations of space prevent me from commenting here on further relevant details in Oration 47 of Himerius. Instead, I simply emphasize one last time, before proceeding to texts still to be shown, the importance of this prose master’s imitation of Simonides as a parallel to his imitation of Anacreon. Before I leave this oration, however, I must highlight one big question that remains here: who was the patron of this song composed by Simonides and performed by a chorus on the occasion of the Panathenaic Procession? I cannot offer a definite answer for now, but my guess is that this patron was Hipparkhos, just as Polycrates was the patron for the song of Anacreon as imitated by Himerius in Oration 27.
Texts 9 10, preceded and followed by comments
§34. The reference to the song of Anacreon in Oration27 of Himerius, as quoted in Text 6, indicates that the tukhē ‘fortune’ of Polycrates was what animated this song that launched the procession in celebration of Hera as the goddess of Samos. But this word tukhē ‘fortune’ refers here not only to the tyrant’s good fortune in creating and maintaining a mighty empire: it refers also to the story about this good fortune, and that is why my translation of Text 6 shows the word “fortune” within quotation-marks: ‘Anacreon sang “the fortune [tukhē] of Polycrates,” which launched-the-procession-that-leads [pempein] sacrifices [hierá] to the goddess [= Hera] of the people of Samos’ (ᾖδε δὲ Ἀνακρέων τὴν Πολυκράτους τύχην Σαμίων τῇ θεῷ πέμπουσαν ἱερά).The idea of the fortune of Polycrates as the essence of the story about him is brought home in the extended narrative of Herodotus about this tyrant, though of course in this narrative the fortune of the tyrant is destined to turn from good to bad:
Text 9
phrases referring to the fortune of Polycrates in the narrative of Herodotus:
—πάντα οἱ ἐχώρεε εὐτυχέως ‘everything went fortunately [eutukheōs] for him’, 3.39
—εὐτυχέων μεγάλως ‘being-fortunate [eutukheîn] in a big way’, 3.40
—πολλῷ δὲ ἔτι πλέονός οἱ εὐτυχίης γινομένης ‘when by far even more good-fortune [eutukhiā] came his way’, 3.40
—ἐμοὶ δὲ αἱ σαὶ μεγάλαι εὐτυχίαι οὐκ ἀρέσκουσι ‘but your great experiences-of-good-fortune [eutukhiai] are making me [= Amasis] feel uncomfortable’, 3.40
—εὐτυχέειν τῶν πρηγμάτων ‘to have-good-fortune [eutukheîn] in one’s affairs’, 3.40
—εὐτυχέειν τὰ πάντα ‘to have-good fortune [eutukheîn] in every way’, 3.40
—πρὸς τὰς εὐτυχίας ‘with regard to (your) experiences-of-good-fortune [eutukhiai]’, 3.40
—αἱ εὐτυχίαι ‘(your) experiences-of-good-fortune [eutukhiai]’, 3.40
—συντυχίης δεινῆς τε καὶ μεγάλης Πολυκράτεα καταλαβούσης ‘if a terrible and great misfortune [suntukhiā] overtakes Polycrates’, 3.43
—ἐπὶ τοῦτον δὴ ὦν τὸν Πολυκράτεα εὐτυχέοντα τὰ πάντα ‘against this Polycrates, who was having-good fortune [eutukheîn] in every way’, 3.44
—Πολυκράτεος μὲν δὴ αἱ πολλαὶ εὐτυχίαι ἐς τοῦτο ἐτελεύτησαν ‘in this way came to an end the many experiences-of-good-fortune [eutukhiai] that Polycrates once had’, 3.125
§35. The magnificence of Polycrates, augmented by his good fortune before misfortune finally overtook him, moves even Herodotus to describe him as an ideal patron, as reflected by the term megaloprepeiā or ‘grandeur’:[3]
Text 10
ἀπικόμενος δὲ ἐς τὴν Μαγνησίην ὁ Πολυκράτης διεφθάρη κακῶς, οὔτε ἑωυτοῦ ἀξίως οὔτε τῶν ἑωυτοῦ φρονημάτων· ὅτι γὰρ μὴ οἱ Συρηκοσίων γενόμενοι τύραννοι, οὐδὲ εἷς τῶν ἄλλων Ἑλληνικῶν τυράννων ἄξιός ἐστι Πολυκράτεϊ μεγαλοπρεπείην συμβληθῆναι.
When he [= Polycrates] arrived in Magnesia [where he was treacherously captured and then brutally executed by the satrap Oroites], Polycrates perished in a bad kind of way. It was undeserved [adverb of axio– ‘deserving, worthy’]—it did not befit either what he was as a person or what his ways-of-thinking [phronēmata] were. I say this because, except for those who [at a later time] became tyrants of the people of Syracuse, not a single one of the other Greek tyrants was deserving [axios] of comparison to Polycrates when it came to his grandeur [megaloprepeiā].
Herodotus 3.125
§36. The megaloprepeiā or ‘grandeur’ demonstrated by Polycrates is overtly compared here with what is demonstrated, at a later point in history, by the tyrants of Syracuse. In view of this comparison, I draw attention to the stylized description, in Pindar’s Olympian1, of a spectacularly lavish symposium hosted by Hieron, tyrant of Syracuse. Viewed, then, in such a positive light, the megaloprepeiā or ‘grandeur’ of the tyrants shows that they are oh-so unstinting, as it were, in their generosity toward the public. And this generosity is demonstrated not only by way of their power, wealth, and prestige but also by way of their thinking, as expressed here by the noun phronēmata ‘ways-of-thinking’. And the tyrant’s way of thinking, as we saw in Text 5, is demonstrated by his sophiā or ‘expertise’ in poetry and songmaking, which supposedly makes him the ideal patron of poets.
§37. Before closing, I offer an inventory of three subtexts in my argumentation. These three subtexts are not directly applicable to the ten texts I have just analyzed, but they are applicable elsewhere, beyond the scope of my paper here:
Subtext 1. When I used the term Asiatic Greeks in the context of analyzing Text 5, I had in mind an argument that I made in two other projects, Nagy 2014 and Nagy 2017.06.26: in terms of that argument, which had to do mostly with the era preceding, during, and following the so-called Ionian Revolt, Asiatic Greeks would have chosen not to call themselves Hellenes. As a policy, I use the words Hellene and Hellenic simply as translations of Hellēn (pl. Hellēnes) and of related adjectives respectively. The idea of a Hellene in the era of a public personality like Hecataeus, who lived through the Ionian Revolt, was much more restricted than the idea of a Hellene in the era of Herodotus, half a century later. More on Hecataeus in Subtext 2. But Herodotus could still approximate a restricted usage of this idea of Hellene in certain time-sensitive phases of his narrative, as when he tells of the Sea Battle at Salamis. When I say Greek, by contrast with Hellene, I mean any speaker of the Greek language. And I recognize that Hellene has the same meaning as Greek in the default discourse of Herodotus, but, when Herodotus speaks of the era before and during Salamis, the idea of Hellene narrows, and it actually excludes the Asiatic Greeks in some most telling situations. As for Asiatic Greeks I mean the Greeks living on the coastland of Asia Minor and on outlying islands like Samos, Chios, Lesbos. In the era before Salamis, however, there could be further distinctions: the idea of Ionian could include not just Ionians but in some situations also the Aeolians and Dorians of Asia Minor and the outlying islands.
Subtext 2. As I argue in the two projects already cited in Subtext 1, Nagy 2014 and Nagy 2017.06.26, the logioi of the Persians as mentioned by Herodotus 1.1.1 were not Persians but Greek mediators of Persians. Such a Greek mediator was Hecataeus. We may think of Herodotus as a rival of Hecataeus, but we must keep in mind what I already emphasized in Subtext 1: that the voice of Hecataeus is about 50 years older than the voice of Herodotus.
Subtext 3. Herodotus understands well the political world of the Persian Empire as articulated by earlier authors like Hecataeus. I present the argument in the same two projects I already cited in Subtexts 1 and 2, Nagy 2014 and Nagy 2017.06.26. In the case of Hecataeus, we see a mind-set that I propose to describe this way: Staying East. But, going beyond Hecataeus, well beyond, Herodotus also understands the political world of the Greek West—by which I mean especially Italy and Sicily, as exemplified by his own contacts at cities like Thurii, Croton, Syracuse. We see here a mind-set that I would describe this way: Going West. I am thinking here of public personalities like Ibycus, who left Samos after the implosion there in 522 BCE and headed for Italy and Sicily. And then there is also the mind-set of the so-called “Athenian Empire.” I am thinking here of public personalities like Anacreon, who left Samos but went only as far west as Athens. I would describe such a mind-set this way: Being There. Elsewhere, Nagy 2009|2010:73, I analyzed the case of Pythagoras as another example of the mind-set that I described a minute ago as Going West: under the patronage of Polycrates, Pythagoras performed as Orpheus, just as Kynaithos performed as Homer, but then, after the implosion of 522 BCE in Samos, Pythagoras went west, just like Ibycus.
Appendix
Excerpt from Nagy, G. 2017. “On the Shaping of the Lyric Canon in Athens.” The Reception of Greek Lyric Poetry 600BC-AD400 (ed. B. Currie and I. Rutherford). Forthcoming.
§1 = old §30. I argued in old §30 that the songs of Anacreon, who was personally brought to Athens by Hipparkhos, were integrated into the canonical repertoire of citharodic performances at the Panathenaia. Now I turn to the songs of Simonides. He too, as we saw in the same passage that mentioned Anacreon, was personally brought to Athens by Hipparkhos. And now I will argue that the songs of Simonides were likewise integrated into the repertoire of performances at the Panathenaia. In this case, however, at least some of his songs were integrated into the repertoire of aulodic rather than citharodic performances.
§2 = old §31. Here I return to a specific argument I presented at a conference of the Network held in the summer of 2012 in Washington DC, on which occasion I proposed that the Plataea Elegy of Simonides (F 11 ed. 2 West), celebrating the victory of the Hellenes who fought the Persian forces at the battle of Plataea in 479 BCE (on which see Boedeker and Sider 2001), had become part of the repertoire of the Lyric Canon. In support of my proposal, I cited the work of Ewen Bowie (1986) on the performative traditions of archaic Greek elegy, expressing my agreement with his view that (1) elegiac compositions in the archaic and classical periods were conventionally sung to the accompaniment of the aulos ‘reed’, and (2) there were two basic social contexts for the singing of elegy by men, namely, the symposium and the public festival (Bowie 1986:14–21, 34; also Nagy 2009|2010:38). Accordingly, I argue that the performing of elegy at the Panathenaia belonged to competitions in the category of aulōidiā ‘singing to the accompaniment of the aulos’.
§3 = old §32. This is not at all to say, however, that elegy was the only form of aulōidiā to be performed at the Panathenaia. Besides the stichic form of elegy, I leave room for the possibility that non-stichic forms of aulōidiā also existed in at least the earlier phases of the Panathenaia, just as I have left room for non-stichic forms of kitharōidiā ‘singing to the accompaniment of the kitharā’.
§4 = old §33. I must also note here the possibility that aulodic performances could be interchangeable with citharodic performances, as well as the other way around. A case in point is Women at the Thesmophoria, a comedy by Aristophanes. Here the tragic poet Agathon is depicted as wearing a turban and a woman’s khitōn—costuming that matches the costume of the lyric poet Anacreon as depicted by the Kleophrades Painter (Copenhagen MN 13365).[4] In the comedy of Aristophanes, the stage Agathon even says that his self-staging replicates the monodic stagings of Ibycus, Anacreon, and Alcaeus (verses 159–163). This reference suggests, I argue, that Agathon as a master of tragic poetry was strongly influenced by the monodic performance traditions of lyric song, both citharodic and aulodic, as performed at the Panathenaia.[5]
§5 = old §34. I should emphasize in this context the fact that aulodic compositions were appropriate not only for performance at the competitions of aulodes at the Panathenaia but also for the competitions of choruses who were singing and dancing in the dramas of Athenian State Theater at the City Dionysia and at other dramatic festivals, since the singing and dancing of the songs of drama was conventionally sustained by the accompaniment of a single aulos. So, my point about Agathon is that he was experimenting with compositions in his dramas that would have sounded like aulodic performances by aulodes competing with each other at the Panathenaia. And, going even further, Agathon experimented even with citharodic compositions in his dramas.
§6 = old §35. In short, I propose that the compositions of the Lyric Nine were suitable for both citharodic and aulodic performances at the mousikoi agōnes in at least the earlier phases of the Panathenaia.
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[1] I recommend the comments of Urios-Aparisi 1993:54 on the explicitly sympotic features of the description given by Herodotus in Text 1.
[2] I comment on this reciprocity already in Nagy 1974.
[3] For more on this word, I recommend the observations of Kurke 1999 ch.3, especially pp. 119–121.
[4] Price 1990:169, with further bibliography.
[5] Nagy 2007:245–246 following Bierl 2001:160–163; on Agathon as a stage Anacreon, see Bierl p. 158 n137, 165.