Hexametrical Genres from Homer to Theocritus

263 Pages·2021·2.34 MB·English

by  Christopher Athanasious Faraone

Hexametrical Genres from
Homer to Theocritus

Hexametrical
Genres from Homer
to Theocritus
CHRISTOPHER ATHANASIOUS FARAONE
1
3
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Faraone, Christopher A., author.
Title: Hexametrical Genres from Homer to Theocritus /
Christopher Athanasious Faraone.
Description: New York : Oxford University Press, 2021. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020043988 | ISBN 9780197552971 (hardback) |
ISBN 9780197552988 (updf) | ISBN 9780197553008 (oso) |
ISBN 9780197552995 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Hexameter. | Greek poetry—History and criticism.
Classification: LCC PA3095 .F37 2021 | DDC 881/.0109—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020043988
DOI: 10.1093/ oso/ 9780197552971.001.0001
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America
for Bruce Lincoln and Jamie Redfield,
dear friends and fellow travelers
Preface and Acknowledgments
This study arises from my ongoing interest in the hexametrical poetry of
the archaic and Hellenistic periods, as well as in ancient Greek religion
and magic, and from my firm belief that much profit arises when all three
are studied together. Of the four short genres of hexametrical poetry that
I most closely interrogate, I began to work on incantations at least twenty-
five years ago, when I published a series of loosely connected articles,1 in
which I unwittingly laid the foundation for Chapter 5 of this volume, work
that I returned to with renewed vigor when Dirk Obbink and I published
our book on the Getty Hexameters in 2013.2 Chapter 3 on hymns also
evolved slowly over a number of years, first in a graduate seminar on an-
cient Greek hymns that I teach regularly at the University of Chicago and
then in articles on the paean and the Homeric Hymn to Apollo.3 The four
internal chapters themselves initially took shape as lectures. The main ar-
gument for Chapter 3 (Hymn) was presented at the University of Lausanne
(September 2010); the University of Missouri at Columbia (March 2011);
at a meeting of the “Orality and Literacy” group at University of Michigan
(June 2012); and at Cambridge University (May 2014). In the last two
venues I owe special thanks to Ruth Scodel and Richard Hunter for their
vigorous and friendly skepticism, which helped me simplify and hone my
arguments.
Especially helpful, too, were the comments of my former colleague Boris
Maslov at a conference entitled “Historical Poetics: Past, Present and Future”
held at the University of Chicago in May 2011 and those that I received in
February 2016, when Richard Martin kindly invited me to give a work-
shop at Stanford University on a draft of Chapter 6 (Lament). The central
arguments in Chapter 4 (Oracle) were presented in 2018 at the Australian
National University in Canberra and in 2019 at the University of Southern
California, and I am grateful for the comments of Elizabeth Minchin at the
1 Faraone (1992a, 1995, 1996, 2001a–c , 2004a– b, 2006b– c, 2011b, and 2013b–c ).
2 Faraone and Obbink (2013).
3 Faraone (2011a, 2015, and 2018a)
x Preface and Acknowledgments
former venue and Greg Thalmann at the latter. Special thanks go, finally, to
Cléo Carastro for arranging a series of lectures in Paris in December 2017,
at which I presented Chapters 4– 6 in sequence for the first time and in the
process profited from the comments of Cléo herself, Renaud Gagné, and
John Scheid, the last of whom made me aware of some crucial evidence about
early Sibylline oracles.
The manuscript itself has also profited from the comments of many.
I thank Seth Schein for his comments on and critique of an early ver-
sion of Chapter 3, especially his advice on how to change the sequence of
the argument, and I owe a debt of gratitude to Margalit Finkelberg, Boris
Maslov, Radcliffe Edmonds, and Marco Fantuzzi, who read through and
commented on different parts of the manuscript, and special thanks to
Janet Downie, who gave me crucially important advice about the shape
and content of the Introduction and Chapter 2. And I will always be
grateful to Julia Kindt and the staff at the Centre for Classical and Near
Eastern Studies of Australia, University of Sydney for making the month
of February 2018 an exceptionally productive one, ending, as it did,
with the first fully annotated typescript of the book. I am also grateful
to Hannah Dubinski and Anna Darden, who did a stellar job assembling
the indices and to Karen Donohue for her careful copy-editing. Early
versions of some of the arguments in this volume were published in Greece
& Rome (part of Section 3.4), the Journal of Hellenic Studies (Sections
5.1– 2 and 5.5), Antichthon (Section 5.2 and Appendix C), Classical
Quarterly (Section 5.4), the American Journal of Philology (Section 2.2)
and Transactions of the American Philological Association (Appendix E);
in each case, I have profited much from the comments of various editors
and anonymous referees, as I have from the anonymous readers of this
volume. I should also add that the production of this book was delayed
for at least a year by circumstances beyond the author’s control.
I am, as always, deeply thankful for institutional help. My initial research
was supported by generous grants from the Loeb Classical Foundation Grant
(2009) and NEH Fellowship for University Professors (2013– 14). And at the
University of Chicago I am grateful to two successive deans, Martha Roth
and Anne Robertson, and to two chairs of the Classics Department— Alain
Bresson and Cliff Ando—f or their continued support for serious research at
the University of Chicago in the form of research leave and funding, and, as
always, to Catherine Mardikes, our wizard bibliographer in the Regenstein
Library. The book is dedicated fondly to Jamie Redfield and Bruce Lincoln
Preface and Acknowledgments xi
in deep gratitude for all of the fun we have had over the last thirty years of
team- teaching and especially for all of the things I have learned from them in
the seminar room and in our energetic conversations around various dining-
room tables.
Athens, April 2019
Abbreviations
CEG P.A. Hanson, Carmina Epigraphica Graeca (Berlin 1982–8 9)
DT A. Audollent, Defixionum Tabellae (Paris 1904)
DTA R. Wünsch, Defixionum Tabellae Atticae, IG 3.3 (Berlin 1897)
FGrH F. Jacoby, Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker (Berlin/
Leiden 1923– 58)
GMA R. Kotansky, Greek Magical Amulets. Vol. 1: Papyrologica Coloniensia
22.1 (Opladen 1994)
Heim R. Heim, Incantamenta Magica Graeca- Latina, Jahrbücher für
classische Philologie Suppl. 10 (Leipzig 1892)
IGH T. Preger, Inscriptiones Graecae metricae (Lipsiae 1891)
K- A R. Kassel and C. Austin, Poetae comici Graeci (Berlin 1983– )
LIMC Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (Zurich 1981– )
L- P E. Lobel and D.L. Page, Poetarum Lesbiorum fragmenta (Oxford 1955)
LSJ Liddell, Scott, and Jones et al. (eds.) A Greek- English Lexicon9 with
revised Supplement (Oxford 1996)
PGM K. Preisendanz [and A. Henrichs], Papyri Graecae Magicae: Die
Griechischen Zauberpapyri2 2 vols. (Stuttgart 1973–1 974)
PMG D.L. Page, Poetae melici Graecae (Oxford 1962)
P&W Parke and Wormell (1956)
SEG Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum (Leiden 1923– )
SGD D. Jordan, “A Survey of Greek Defixiones Not Included in the Special
Corpora” GRBS 26 (1985) 151–1 97
SM R. Daniel and F. Maltomini, Supplementum Magicum, 2 vols.,
Papyrologica Coloniensia 16.1 and 2 (Opladen 1990 and 1991)
SMA C. Bonner, Studies in Magical Amulets Chiefly Graeco- Egyptian,
University of Michigan Studies, Humanistic Series 4 (Ann Arbor 1950)
Supp. Hell. H. Lloyd- Jones and P. Parsons, Supplementum Hellenisticum
(Berlin 1983)
1
Introduction
In the late fifth century Aristophanes has his character Aeschylus express a
strongly utilitarian view of early hexametrical poetry:1
σκέψαι γὰρ ἀπ᾿ ἀρχῆς
ὡς ὠφέλιμοι τῶν ποιητῶν οἱ γενναῖοι γεγένηνται.
Ὀρφεὺς μὲν γὰρ τελετάς θ᾿ ἡμῖν κατέδειξε φόνων τ᾿ἀπέχεσθαι,
Μουσαῖος δ᾿ ἐξακέσεις τε νόσων καὶ χρησμούς, Ἡσίοδος δὲ
γῆς ἐργασίας, καρπῶν ὥρας, ἀρότους· ὁ δὲ θεῖος Ὅμηρος
ἀπὸ τοῦ τιμὴν καὶ κλέος ἔσχεν πλὴν τοῦδ᾿, ὅτι χρήστ᾿ ἐδίδαξεν,
τάξεις, ἀρετάς, ὁπλίσεις ἀνδρῶν;
For consider from the start
how useful (ôphelimoi) the noble poets have been:
Orpheus, for one, taught us rituals and to refrain from homicide,
Musaeus, cures for diseases and oracles, and Hesiod,
works of tillage, seasons of harvest and plowing. And the divine Homer,
whence did he obtain honor and glory, if not from this, that he
taught us useful things (chrêsta): tactics, brave deeds,
and the weapons of men?
This passage was central to Havelock’s famous argument that archaic poems
in dactylic hexameters served as a kind of tribal encyclopedia that preserved
all sorts of useful information, for example, when to plow a field or how to
sacrifice a cow.2 Both Aristophanes and Havelock were, of course, prima-
rily concerned with the content of these various poems, an approach that
minimizes the differences between them in terms of poetic style, performa-
tive context, and implied audiences.
Although the passage suggests that these “useful” poets of old were all
individuals, who specialized in one or perhaps two genres, most scholars
1 Frogs 1030– 36. The sequence (Orpheus, Musaeus, Hesiod, Homer) seems to have been the
common way to list early poets, at least in the classical period—s ee, e.g., Hippias DK 86 b6 and Plato
Apology 41a— and it is probably based on some vague perception of their relative chronology; see
Konig (2010) 52–5 5.
2 Havelock (1963) 66 and (1982) 122–2 4. Given the focus elsewhere in the Frogs on the moral or
political utility of poetry, Hunter (2014) 86– 87 suggests that the “useful things” listed here are not, in
fact, bits of factual information, but the moral attitudes that lie behind them. I agree that, given how
the character Aeschylus elsewhere in the play focuses on the moral import of poetry, we might have
expected him to stress this point, but it is hard to see a moralizing definition of “useful things” in the
passage itself.
Hexametrical Genres from Homer to Theocritus. Christopher Athanasious Faraone, Oxford University Press.
© Oxford University Press 2021. DOI: 10.1093/ oso/ 9780197552971.003.0001