The First Poets

by Schmidt, Michael;

  27. Evelyn-White, fr 22.

  28. Taplin, Literature in the Greek and Roman Worlds, p. 51, cites Walter Burkert.

  29. Collection in the Ruhr-Universität, Bochum.

  30. Lillian E. Doherty, Siren Songs: Gender, Audience, and Narrators in the Odyssey (1995).

  31. Lesky, op. cit., p. 77.

  32. Taplin, op. cit., p. 53.

  33. Elements in the Iliad are extraneous and contradictory. It is the ninth year of the Trojan War. The famous Catalogue of Ships may have been imported from another poem in the cycle. Certainly, so late in the day, Helen telling Priam the names of the Greek warriors is useful to us as auditors but in terms of plausible realism it does not score very high. There are other odd elements, some structural, some lapses of memory, where a character is dead and then appears alive and fighting, or lamenting, later on.

  34. Jacqueline de Romilly, A Short History of Greek Literature (Chicago, 1985).

  35. Lesky, op. cit. details some awkwardness and inconsistencies in the Odyssey. There is a problem of the “Telemachiad” itself, the strange repetition—what Romilly calls “Doublets”—of the council of the gods in I and IV, Poseidon’s intermittent, inconsistent rage. There are many smaller and larger problems in narrative structure, inconsistencies: one thing promised, another delivered. The nekyia (visit to the dead) probably includes archaic material, interpolation, etc. These problems were clear to some ancient editors, e.g., Aristarchus, Aristophanes of Byzantium.

  36. Ibid., p. 52.

  37. Taplin, “Homer,” p. 72.

  38. Ibid., p. 73.

  39. Ibid., p. 77.

  40. He insists kings and noble basilees are generally shown in a bad light, and the lay people, the laos or demos, are always present and not despised (though they are not individuated either).

  41. Luce, op. cit., p. 22.

  42. Ibid., p. 49.

  43. Lesky, op. cit., p. 70.

  44. James Morrison, Homeric Misdirection: False Predictions in the Iliad (Michigan, 1994).

  45. Lesky, op. cit., p. 32.

  46. Burckhardt, op. cit., p. 145, insists on comic effects in Iliad III, l. 437, for example. Humour, directness, guilelessness in Odyssey IV, ll. 100–3, 190–5, 212–7.

  47. See John Peradotto’s “Bakhtin, Milman Parry, and the Problem of Homeric Originality,” in R. Bracht Banham (ed.), Bakhtin and the Classics (Evanston, 2002), where he considers Weber, Durkheim, Lévy-Bruhl and the syntheses effected by Bakhtin with his notions of heteroglossia, centripetal and centrifugal language, and the multiple dialogue each text represents: a character speaking in a poem, to whom, how many, about what; and the poem speaking to reader/auditor, where, why. Language is conducting a number of negotiations at any one time. He refers us to Peter Rose’s historicist-Marxist reading, Sons of God, Children of Earth: Ideology and Literary Form in Ancient Greece (Ithaca, 1992), which sees the Iliad as torn between a centripetal linguistic ideology, endorsing forms of kingship, and social relation and centrifugal ideology, critical of them.

  48. Lesky, op. cit., p. 39.

  49. Taplin, “Homer.”

  50. Calvino, op. cit.

  51. Luce, op. cit., p. 37.

  VI HESIOD

  1. Evelyn-White, op. cit., test (testimonium) 47 (j), Simonides’ apophthegms.

  2. aoidos is “poet-singer” (used by Hesiod and Homer).

  3. Pausanias, Volume I, op. cit., IX, l. 29, “In my time one tower and nothing more was left of Askre to remember it by.”

  4. Hesiod, Works and Days and Theogony, translated by Stanley Lombardo, introduction by Robert Lamberton (Indianapolis, 1993), p. 2.

  5. Mary R. Lefkowitz, The Lives of the Greek Poets (London, 1981), p. 6, p. 64.

  6. I say “firmly,” but Pausanias, Volume I, p. 365, says, “… I know Hesiod or the forger of Hesiod’s Theogony writes that Chaos was born first, then Earth and Hell and Love.”

  7. Evelyn-White, op. cit., p. 48, ll. 636f.

  8. Legend, keen to make divine associations, gives him an exalted mother. “Now some say that he [Homer] was earlier than Hesiod, others that he was younger and akin to him. They give his descent thus: Apollo and Arethusa, daughter of Poseidon, had a son Linus, to whom was born Pierus. From Pierus and the nymph Methone sprang Oeager; and from Oeager and Calliope, Orpheus; from Orpheus, Dres; and from him, Eucles. The descent is continued through Iadmonides, Philoterpes, Euphemus, Epiphrades and Melanopus, who had sons Dius and Apelles. Dius by Pycimede, the daughter of Apollo had two sons, Hesiod and Perses; while Apelles begot Maeon, who was the father of Homer by a daughter of the River Meles” (Evelyn-White, op. cit., “The Contest of Homer and Hesiod”).

  9. Hesiod makes a joke about Chalcis, Robert Lamberton in Hesiod (New Haven, 1988), points out: he says in Works and Days (ll. 648–59) that his one experience of the sea is crossing the straits between Aulis and Chalcis (about a hundred metres, the closest point between the Boeotian mainland and Euboea), hardly a maritime achievement.

  10. Hesiod, op. cit., p. 43, ll. 726ff.

  11. Evelyn-White, op. cit., Theogony, ll. 31–4.

  12. T. F. Higham and C. M. Bowra (eds.), The Oxford Book of Greek Verse in Translation (Oxford, 1938), Jack Lindsay’s translation.

  13. Pausanias, Volume I, op. cit., p. 375.

  14. Hesiod, op. cit., p. 23, ll. 21–24.

  15. Friedrich Nietzsche, “Homer on Competition,” The Portable Nietzsche (Harmonds-worth, 1976).

  16. Hesiod, op. cit., p. 146, ll. 806–811.

  17. Ibid., p. 46, ll. 812f.

  18. Ibid., p. 32, ll. 324–335.

  19. Pausanias, IX (30).

  20. Lamberton, op. cit., p. 16.

  21. Hesiod, op. cit., p. 63, ll. 66ff.

  22. Ibid., p. 64, 81 ff.

  23. Odyssey XI, l. 631.

  24. Hesiod, op. cit., 97–103: 1 100.

  25. Taplin, Literature in the Greek and Roman Worlds, p. 31.

  26. Hesiod, op. cit., p. 77.

  27. Hesiod, op. cit., p. 68, ll. 243f.

  28. Pausanias, Volume I, op. cit., p. 368,: “Hesiod being a country-mannered man who disliked moving about.”

  29. Lines 126–133, 339–344.

  30. Evelyn-White, op. cit., pp. 586–7.

  31. Tzetzes, in his Life of Hesiod, suggest that Phegeus’ daughter was Ctimene, and that Hesiod begot upon her (possibly by rape) the poet Stesichorus.

  32. In his notes to Pausanias, Volume I, op. cit., p. 327.

  33. Pausanias, IX, 31, p.376.

  VII ARCHILOCHUS OF PAROS

  1. fragment 247, in Gay Davenport, Archilochus Sappho Alkman (Los Angeles, 1980), p. 216.

  2. fr 98.

  3. fr 116.

  4. Herodotus, op. cit, p. 378.

  5. fr 102.

  6. Shrine or chapel dedicated to a demigod or exalted mortal.

  7. Pausanias, Description of Greece, translated by W. H. S. Jones, and H. A. Ormerod (London, 1918): “The other part of the picture, the one on the left, shows Odysseus, who has descended into what is called Hades to inquire of the soul of Teiresias about his safe return home. The objects depicted are as follow. There is water like a river, clearly intended for Acheron, with reeds growing in it; the forms of the fishes appear so dim that you will take them to be shadows rather than fish. On the river is a boat, with the ferryman at the oars. Polygnotus followed, I think, the poem called the Minyad. For in this poem occur lines referring to Theseus and Peirithous … Then the boat on which embark the dead, that the old Ferryman, Charon, used to steer, they found not within its moorings. For this reason then Polygnotus too painted Charon as a man well stricken in years. Those on board the boat are not altogether distinguished. Tellis appears as a youth in years, and Cleoboea as still a maiden, holding on her knees a chest such as they are wont to make for Demeter. All I heard about Tellis was that Archilochus the poet was his grandson, while as for Cleoboea, they say that she was the first to bring the orgies of Demeter to Thasos from Paros (p. 185).

  8
. Herodotus, op. cit., p. 382.

  9. Employed in looking after livestock, from bullocks to cows and heifers.

  10. Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum.

  11. test 3, the Inscription of Mnesiepes.

  12. fr 48.

  13. fr 197.

  14. fr 196.

  15. fr 41.

  16. Herodotus, op. cit., calls the Thracians “barbarians”; he also suggests that the Thracians had a custom that wives were held in common, so that men would not fall out. “The Agathyrsi are a race of men, very luxurious, and very fond of wearing gold on their persons. They have wives in common, that so they may be all brothers, and, as members of one family, may neither envy nor hate one another. In other respects their customs approach nearly to those of the Thracians.”

  17. fr 42. West adds that she was “engaged too from behind,” though the Greek does not quite say this.

  18. fr 45.

  19. Book XI, ll. 596 ff.

  20. Therapon: implies free service rather than enslavement or employment, but also subordination; in Homer it means “companion in arms”: Patroclus is the companion in arms or esquire of Achilles. Later the word came to mean, simply, servant.

  21. fr 201.

  22. Davenport made two versions, 183 in his numbering.

  23. fr 114.

  24. fr 196a (Davenport: 18).

  25. Aristotle, Poetics (translation by S. H. Butcher).

  26. Douglas E. Gerber, Greek Iambic Poetry (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1999), p. 1; also p. 151, fr 111.

  27. Pythian II, ll. 54–6.

  28. C. M. Bowra, Landmarks in Greek Literature (London, 1970). Bowra’s translation.

  VIII ALCMAN OF SARDIS

  1. David A. Campbell, Greek Lyric Poetry II (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1988), fr 26: “Male halcyons are called ceryli. When they become weak from old age and are no longer able to fly, the females carry them, taking them on their wings. What Alcman says is connected with this: weak from old age and unable to whirl about with the choirs and the girls …” From Antigonus of Carystus (sculptor, writer on art, biographer, fl. 240 BC), Marvels.

  2. L. H. Jeffrey, Archaic Greece: The City-States (London, 1976), pp. 120f.

  3. Ibid., pp. 120f.

  4. Richmond Lattimore, Greek Lyrics (Chicago, 1960), p. 36. Fr 41 (Loeb translation) reads, “for when weighed against the steel fine lyre-playing tips the scales.”

  5. Athenaeus 15. 678b: “According to Sosibios in On Sacrifices, there is a kind of garland at Sparta, made of palm leaves, and known nowadays as psilinos. These garlands, he says, are worn in memory of the victory at Thyrea by the leaders of the choruses which dance on the festival of that victory, which coincides with the Gymnopaideiai, or ‘Feast of Naked Youths.’ These choruses are three in number, the youths in front, the old men on the right, and the men on the left; and they dance naked, singing songs by Thaletas and Alcman and the paeans of the Laconian Dionysodotos.”

  6. test 22.

  7. Guy Davenport, Seven Greeks (New York, 199520Plutarch, On Sparta, trans. Richard), p. 14.

  8. Bowra, Greek Lyric Poetry, p. 12.

  9. fr 1.

  10. Bowra, op. cit., p. 13.

  11. Kurke, op. cit., pp. 79ff.

  12. Kurke, op. cit., p. 81.

  13. “Hymns to boys”; see also p. 214, this volume.

  14. Kurke, op. cit., p. 83.

  15. Ibid.

  16. fr 59.

  17. Bowra, op. cit., pp. 31–3.

  18. Ibid., p. 64.

  19. Grant, op. cit.

  20. Plutarch, On Sparta, trans. Richard J. A. Talbert (Harmondsworth, 1988), p. 71.

  21. Ibid., p. 152.

  22.Horace, Odes, iii ii 13, “It is sweet and proper to die for the fatherland.”

  23. From Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce Et Decorum Est.”

  … If in some smothering dreams you too could pace

  Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

  And watch the white eyes writhing in his face …

  If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

  Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs …

  My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

  To children ardent for some desperate glory,

  The old lie: Dulce et decorum est

  Pro patria mori.

  24. David Mulroy, Early Greek Lyric Poetry (Ann Arbor, 1992).

  25. Bowra, Greek Lyric Poetry, p. 5.

  26. Bowra, op. cit., p. 11.

  27. Mulroy, op. cit., p. 55.

  28. Bowra, op. cit., p. 17, fr 12.

  29. Ibid., p. 72.

  30. fr 3.

  31. fr 56, from Athenaeus, Scholars at Dinner.

  32. fr 92.

  33. fr 94.

  34. fr 19.

  35. fr 99.

  36. fr 17.

  37. fr

  38. test 1.

  39. fr 67.

  40. Bowra, op. cit., p. 2.

  41. Alcman, fr 89.

  42. fr 39.

  43. fr 1: “Choir-leader—if I may speak—I am myself only a girl screeching pointlessly, an owl from a rafter; but even so I long to please Aotis most of all, for she proved the healer of our sufferings.”

  44. fr 40.

  45. fr 89.

  46. fr 82.

  47. fr 76 (Iliad XIX, ll. 404ff.).

  48. fr 90.

  49. The poet Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961).

  50. Pausanias, Volume II, op. cit., p. 51.

  51. fr 3.

  IX MIMNERMUS OF COLOPHON

  1. Mulroy, op. cit., p. 18.

  2. Lesky, op. cit., p. 855.

  3. M.L. West on fr 20 comments on the total solar eclipse (“more likely that of 6 April 648 than that of 28 May 585”). Probably floruit 632–629.

  4. Hipponax 153.

  5. Bowra, op. cit., p. 90; lines 5–10, West and Mulroy translate “vessel” as “couch.”

  6. Plus in amore valet Mimnermi versus Homero (Propertius 1.9.11).

  7. fr 1.

  8. Archibald Allen, The Fragments of Mimnermus: Text and Commentary. Palingenesia 44 (Stuttgart, 1993), p. 60.

  9. Mulroy, op. cit., p. 45.

  10. Most of the longer passages (frs 1–5, 8, 14 [24–25]).

  11. Allen, op. cit., p. 18.

  12. Kurke, op. cit., p. 72.

  13. Bowra, op. cit., p. 161.

  14. C. M. Bowra, Landmarks in Greek Literature, p. 76.

  15. M. L. West, Greek Lyric Poetry (Oxford, 1993), p. 30, fr 14.

  X SEMONIDES OF AMORGOS

  1. Peter Jay (ed.), The Greek Anthology (Harmondsworth, 1973); Jay’s translation, p. 37.

  2. Bowra, Landmarks in Greek Literature, p. 70.

  3. Douglas E. Gerber, Greek Iambic Poetry (Cambridge, Mass., 1999), p. 323, fr 17.

  4. Ibid., p. 327, fr 20.

  5. Some regard the poem as a fragment, with a lost continuation of indeterminate length, but given the completeness of the argument, if elements are missing, they may be minor.

  6. B. C. Hubbard, “Elemental Psychology and the Date of Semonides of Amorgos,” American Journal of Philology 115, 2 (1994), pp. 175–97: Hubbard and others insist that Semonides is in fact sixth century.

  7. West, op. cit., fr 7; Hesiod, Theogony, 535–616, Works and Days, 42–105.

  8. Some attribute the poem to Simonides of Cos.

  9. Gerber, op. cit., p. 341, fr 43. The passage may refer to Simonides and is much disputed.

  10. Bowra, Landmarks in Greek Literature, p. 70.

  11. Gerber, op. cit., p. 299.

  12. Bowra, op. cit., p. 70.

  13. Lesky, op. cit., p. 154.

  14. Bowra, Greek Lyric Poetry, p. 14.

  15. See pages 143–44.

  16. fr (11D) See West, op. cit., 13.

  17. His conclusion is beautifully condescending: “I have already apologised for this author’s want of delicacy, and must further premise, that the following satire affects only some of the lower part of the sex, and not those w
ho have been refined by a polite education, which was not so common in the age of this poet.”

  18. West, op. cit.

  19. Diane Arnson Svarlien writes: “This is a problematic line. The Greek of lines 41–42 seems to mean, ‘Such a woman is most of all like that [the sea] in temperament (orgê); but the sea has a different appearance (phyê).’ So West, in his 1993 verse translation: ‘That’s what this kind of woman’s like—in mood, / I mean; there’s no resemblance in her looks!’ Orgên stands at the beginning of line 42, prominently, in enjambement, followed immediately by phyên de; it certainly looks as if the poet is drawing a contrast between inward disposition and outward form. But for the poet to cap his description of the sea-woman with, ‘But a large body of salt water is unlike a woman in physical appearance!’ seems bizarrely inept.”

  20. Gerber, op. cit., p. 329, fr 23.

  21. Ibid., p. 331, fr 15.

  XI ALCAEUS OF MYTILENE

  1. Tantalus.

  2. E. Lobel and D. L. Page, Poetarum Lesbiorum Fragmenta (Oxford, 1995).

  3. Graves, op. cit.: “mighty one,” the original name of Heracles.

  4. “fragments where it is uncertain which is the author.”

  5. Denis Ferry, Times Literary Supplement, 28 April 2000.

  6. test 15.

  7. Sons of Zeus, brothers of Helen, the so-called Dioscuri.

  8. fr 50.

  9. Strabo: test 1.

  10. Sic.

  11. fr 350.

  12. fr 426.

  13. Herodotus, op. cit., “War accordingly continued, with many and various incidents, whereof the following was one. In a battle which was gained by the Athenians, the poet Alcaeus took to flight, and saved himself, but lost his arms, which fell into the hands of the conquerors. They hung them up in the temple of Minerva at Sigeum; and Alcaeus made a poem, describing his misadventure to his friend Melanippus, and sent it to him at Mytilene. The Mytileneans and Athenians were reconciled by Periander, the son of Cypselus, who was chosen by both parties as arbiter—he decided that they should each retain that of which they were at the time possessed; and Sigeum passed in this way under the dominion of Athens.”

  14. fr 208.

  15. test 4.

  16. See Betty Radice, “The Sayings of the Seven Sages of Greece,” in The Translator’s Art (Harmondsworth, 1987).