Theocritus and His Native Muse: A Syracusan Among Many

376 Pages·2018·2.54 MB·English

by  Poulheria Kyriakou

Poulheria Kyriakou
Theocritus and his native Muse
Trends in Classics –
Supplementary Volumes
Edited by
Franco Montanari and Antonios Rengakos

Associate Editors
Evangelos Karakasis · Fausto Montana · Lara Pagani
Serena Perrone · Evina Sistakou · Christos Tsagalis

Scientific Committee
Alberto Bernabé · Margarethe Billerbeck
Claude Calame · Jonas Grethlein · Philip R. Hardie
Stephen J. Harrison · Richard Hunter · Christina Kraus
Giuseppe Mastromarco · Gregory Nagy
Theodore D. Papanghelis · Giusto Picone
Tim Whitmarsh · Bernhard Zimmermann

Volume 71
Poulheria Kyriakou
Theocritus and his
native Muse
A Syracusan among many
ISBN 978-3-11-061460-2
e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-061527-2
e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-061479-4
ISSN 1868-4785
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018956676
Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie;
detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.
© 2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Editorial Office: Alessia Ferreccio and Katerina Zianna
Logo: Christopher Schneider, Laufen
Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck
www.degruyter.com
Contents
Acknowledgments | VII
Introduction | 1
I.Lovers and friends: lovesickness, advice and illusion | 12
Idyll 14 | 12
Idyll 4 | 18
Idyll 5 | 32
Idyll 10 | 43
Idyll 21 | 51
Idyll 12 | 55
Idyll 29 | 71
Idyll 30 | 75
Idyll 3 | 82
Idyll 11 | 96
Idyll 6 | 111
II.Success and failure in love and song | 122
Idyll 23 | 122
Idyll 20 | 132
Idyll 27 | 140
Idylls 8 & 9 | 147
III. Chambers of echoes: bucolic song and little epics | 162
Idyll 1 | 162
Idyll 7 | 175
Idyll 13 | 193
Idyll 24 | 204
Idyll 22 | 217
IV. Once upon a time and nowadays: song and patronage | 239
Idylls 18 & 26 | 239
Idyll 16 | 258
Idyll 17 | 280
V. Masters and colleagues: epigrams on poets old and new | 300
Bibliography | 343
Index of passages | 357
Index of names | 365

Acknowledgments
Several former students, friends and colleagues generously helped me with the
preparation of this book. My sincere thanks go to Marco Fantuzzi, Evangelos
Karakasis, Orestis Karatzoglou, Lazaros Keramydas, Theophilos Kyriakidis, An-
tonios Rengakos and Evina Sistakou, who provided bibliographical items and of-
fered their kind encouragement. The help and friendship of Alexandros Kampa-
koglou have been invaluable throughout. Maria Leventi graciously found time to
read the typescript and compile the bibliography and the indices. She saved me
much time and effort and also saved me from many blunders. My gratitude can
be only a small reward for her great labors.
My students in courses on Theocritus often made me rethink my certainties
and indeed proved themselves to be “saplings molded for truth”. The two anon-
ymous referees made thoughtful suggestions, for which I am grateful. Many
thanks go also to the editors, Franco Montanari and Antonios Rengakos, for ac-
cepting the book in the series. Over the years, Antonios has always been ready to
respond promptly to requests and offer valuable, unstinting help with various
problems. Katerina Zianna showed admirable patience and efficiency in the pro-
duction of the book.
As always, I owe the greatest debt to a namesake of Theocritus, my husband
and colleague Theokritos Kouremenos. Without his help, support and encourage-
ment in all things, this project would probably not have been completed. The
book is for him, and ἦ μεγάλα χάρις δώρῳ σὺν ὀλίγῳ· αἴθ’ αὐτὰν δυνάμαν καὶ τὰν
ψυχὰν ἐπιβάλλειν.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110615272-202

Introduction
This is a book about Theocritus’ way of handling the power and limitations of
language and poetry, illusion, and his capacity as poet, vis-à-vis his predecessors
and contemporaries. Like all Hellenistic poets, and indeed most if not all artists
who are heirs of long and complex traditions, Theocritus had to perform a sort of
a juggling act. He and his colleagues opted, and were very likely expected, to deal
meaningfully, i.e. innovatively and interestingly, and perhaps competitively,
with the tradition they inherited. Their work should not disappoint and alienate
the sophisticated or jaded members of their audience, which included potentially
spiteful or antagonistic colleagues. Poets also needed to secure the goodwill of
actual or potential patrons, rich men and powerful rulers such as the Ptolemies
and Antigonids, with their own geopolitical agendas and cohorts of lackeys or
aspiring protégés.
Recent scholarship has come to the fruitful conclusion that, despite their af-
finities, Hellenistic poets were not all products of the same mold, and their work
did not follow any one set of aesthetic rules such as brevity, commonly associated
primarily with Callimachus.1 The loss of most of their works and the scarcity of
available secondary evidence hamper a comprehensive appraisal of strategies
and outcomes. Nevertheless, the remains show fairly clearly that poets chose not
only different genres but also different ways of handling the challenges they
faced in balancing the weight of the tradition, negotiating favorable reception
and, not least, securing patronage. Scholars seeking to define the poetic individ-
uality of Hellenistic poets have often turned to their statements about poetry and
other metapoetic strategies.2
Of the great Hellenistic trio, Apollonius, who chose to compose a heroic epic,
unsurprisingly eschews references to eponymous colleagues and literary polem-
ics. Already in the proem, though, the narrator states that the construction of
Argo is still celebrated in the songs of earlier bards and thus he will not recount
it (Arg. 1.18–19). With this early and no doubt significant reference to predeces-
sors Apollonius neither denigrates nor dismisses them. He does not seem to pur-
sue a strategy of self-promotion but marks his own poetic territory by indicating
that his song begins differently (1.20–22). His references to Apollo and the Muses
in the proem (1.1, 22) and elsewhere (2.844–45, 3.1–5, 4.1–5, 984–85, 1381–90)
||
1 See the volumes edited by Gutzwiller (2007), Clauss and Cuypers (2010), and Harder et al.
(2014). For overviews of the history of critical trends in the study of Hellenistic poetry see
Klooster (2014) 159–65, and Pontani (2014).
2 See e.g. Morrison (2007), and Klooster (2011).
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110615272-001
2 | Introduction
have been interpreted as declarations of a new poetics. I do not share this view,
but Apollonius did manage to construct a novel work, a hymnic epic and love
story, within the boundaries of the tradition and on its terms.3 In Callimachus’
surviving work several older and contemporary poets are mentioned by name ap-
preciatively, or at least without hostility.4 In the Aetia Prologue he may refer to
Antimachus’ Lyde (fr. 1.12 Harder) but not necessarily to Antimachus, and the
fragments name no (other) rival. However, Callimachus’ praise is hardly ever un-
qualified, and he adopts a polemical stance against some unnamed predecessors
(H. 1.59–64) and (alleged) contemporary critics or rivals (Aet. fr. 1 Harder, H.
2.105–12, Iamb. 4, 13; cf. AP 12.43.1 = 28.1 Pf.), implying his own poetic excellence.
This is certainly not an unprecedented strategy, as Pindar, for instance, repeat-
edly exalts his poetry and attacks predecessors (N. 7.20–23, P. 2.52–56, fr. 52h.11–
22, 70b1.26 Maehler) and contemporaries (O. 2.86–88, N. 3.80–82; cf. O. 1.111–16),
but the credentials of the tradition do not soften the asperity of Callimachus’ at-
tacks. Some pieces on old poets by epigrammatists such as Posidippus of Pella
(AB 118, 122) and Leonidas of Tarentum (Pl. 306, 307; cf. AP 7.28, Dioscorides AP
7.31), who, like Callimachus (AP 9.507 = 27 Pf.), also praises Aratus (AP 9.25),
seem to be closer to the Callimachean than the Apollonian or, as I will argue, the
Theocritean model.
Theocritus adopts a third way, which, as far as may be known, is not shared
by any contemporary and has not been investigated adequately. It is hardly un-
expected that Theocritus would differ in this respect too, as his multi-faceted orig-
inality is obvious even to a casual reader. He composed poetry in various the-
matic, generic and dialectal registers, and his bucolic pieces stand at the head of
the so-called pastoral tradition that continues in several permutations to the pre-
sent day. Irrespective of the origins of his bucolic poetry, which are now largely
beyond secure reconstruction, he casts his bucolic universe, which he apparently
invented, at least to a considerable extent, as part of a venerable tradition. The
hexametric vehicle and dramatic form of most of the bucolic poems and several
others point to two major parts of Theocritus’ inheritance, epic and drama respec-
tively. The virtual omnipresence of the themes of song and music in general and
the Aeolic pieces in particular also place lyric conspicuously in the spotlight.
||
3 For my view of the Apollonian narrator and his divinities see Kyriakou forthcoming.
4 The list includes Homer (Ep. 6 Pf.), Hesiod (AP 9.507 = 27 Pf.), Mimnermus (Aet. fr. 1.11 Harder,
Iamb. 13.7), Hipponax (Iamb. 1; cf. 13.12–14), Simonides (Aet. fr. 64 Harder), Ion of Chios (Iamb.
13.44–49), Aratus (AP 9.507 = 27 Pf.), Heraclitus (AP 7.80 = 2 Pf.) and Theaetetus (AP 9.565 = 7
Pf.). He also mentions Archilochus’ iambic sharpness (fr. 380 Pf.) and his inebriation (fr. 544 Pf.).