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Iranian Evidence for Pindar's ‘Spurious San’?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 May 2015

John S. Sheldon
John S. Sheldon*
Affiliation:
Macquarie University
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Extract

In a much discussed passage Pindar uses the expression when speaking of early performances of the dithyramb. The passage was famous in antiquity and before the discovery of a papyrus fragment early in the Twentieth Century, we owed our knowledge of it chiefly to citations in Athenaeus. In discussing it, Athenaeus explains the words in the context of asigmatic odes, i.e. odes in which for the sake of euphony the letter sigma was avoided or omitted altogether. This explanation remains the most commonly accepted one, though scholars continue to puzzle over it, as it is hard to see why Pindar would use the word which means ‘false’ or ‘counterfeit’ in such a context. A more natural interpretation, and one which would, I believe, have been readily accepted had it not been for the comments of Athenaeus, is that in early dithyrambic performances the ‘s’ sound was in some way impure or unauthentic when compared with current practice. In what follows, I will re-open the discussion, arguing that Athenaeus misunderstood the passage or based his explanation on a tradition which obscured its true meaning. It will be necessary in the first place to examine evidence for the pronunciation of Greek sibilants and it is here that some light may be cast upon the discussion from a rather unexpected source—the adaptation of the Greek alphabet for writing down the Middle Iranian language of Bactria.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antichthon , Volume 37 , November 2003 , pp. 52 - 61
Copyright
Copyright © Australasian Society for Classical Studies 2003

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References

1 Ath. 448d, 455c, 467b.

2 Lucian's Iudicium Vocalium, the authenticity of which as a work of the author is reasonably assured, provides an amusing court scene where the letter tau is arraigned before the court of the vowels by sigma who claims that tau has been stealing his words', examples given include Lucían may have derived the idea from a comedy of Callias (mid fifth century B.C.) entitled ‘The Alphabet Revue’ min which letters of the alphabet were the characters. See Ath. 7.276a and 10.453e; cf. Amott, P.D. ‘The Alphabet Tragedy of Callias’, CP 55 (1960) 178–80Google Scholar; Stanford, W.B., The Sound of Greek (Berkeley and Cambridge 1967) 18 and passimGoogle Scholar. In a discussion of Attic inscriptions, Allen, , Vox Graeca (Cambridge 1968) 11 n.2Google Scholar, notes that towards end of the fourth century, the Koine word appears, and unlike most words containing ττ is always written with σσ. LSJ do not give Lucian's but quote from Demosthenes 59.74 and Menander 907.

3 Allen, Vox Graeca (n.2) 12 states ‘This ττ of pure Attic is part of an isogloss having its probable point of origin in Boeotian. This ττ does not derive directly from the σσ shown by other dialects; but both ττ and σσ are separate developments from an earlier more complex sound.’

4 See Jeffery, L.H., The Local Scripts of Archaic Greece (Oxford 1962) 38 ffGoogle Scholar.

5 See Allen, , Vox Graeca (n.2) 10 ff. and 57–8Google Scholar.

6 Sec, for example, Schwyzcr, E.Griechische Grammatik, I (Handbuch der Altertumswissenschaft, II, n.i.I), (Munich 1938, 3rd imp. 1959) 318Google Scholar, and Palmer, L.R., The Greek Language (London 1980) 211Google Scholar, ‘The separate development in Attic and Ionic indicates that the affricate pronunciation (or the palatalised plosive) was still maintained in the Attic-Ionic period’.

7 See Jeffery, , Local Scripts (n.4) 39Google Scholar.

8 Sophocles, E.A., Greek Lexicon of the Roman and Byzantine Periods (Harvard 1914) 974Google Scholar, believed that to denote the numeral 900 ‘the grammarians employed the Semitic shin.’

9 Sophocles, , Greek Lexicon (n.8) 974Google Scholar, forthrightly declares ‘The name or does not occur in any known author—it owes its existence to supposition, assumption and conjectural emendation.’ The letter appears in different shapes in various occurrerices. The Byzantine name is applicable to one shape which bears some resemblance to a rotated pi,

10 See Hilgard, A., Grammatici Graeci I pars iii (Leipzig 1901)Google Scholar.

11 Sophocles, , Greek Lexicon (n.8) 846Google Scholar translates it as ‘additional birth, a name given to the numeral 900.’

12 See Schwyzer, , Griechische Grammatik (n.6) 149Google Scholar.

13 See also Jeffery, , Local Scripts (n.2) 39Google Scholar.

14 See Lejeune, M., Phonétique Historique du Mycénien et Grec Ancien (Paris 1972) 101 n.6Google Scholar.

15 See Jeffery, , Local Scripts (n.2) 117Google Scholar.

16 See Lejeune, , Phonétique Historique (n.3) 89 n.3aGoogle Scholar.

17 Hdt. 1.139; Lejeune, , Phonétique Historique (n.3) 89Google Scholar. Inscriptional evidence fully supports Herodotus’ comments about san and sigma. Not only did the Ionians and Dorians give a different name to ‘s’, but they wrote it with a different letter. Coming from Hali-carnassus, Herodotus would be in a good position to know about this, as his mother city, originally Dorian, had become thoroughly Ionicised. Halicarnassus had been founded from Troezen (Hdt. 1.99) and was therefore part of the Doric Hexapolis. It bordered, however, on the Ionian region and seems to have adopted the Ionic style of writing quite early, possibly in the Seventh Century B.C. (Jeffery, , Local Scripts [n.2 353Google Scholar). Herodotus tells us that Halicarnassus was excluded from the Hexapolis owing to the misdemeanour of an athlete (Hdt. 1.144), but this is probably only the occasion for the exclusion as remembered in local history. The true cause is more likely to be the alienation of Halicarnassus from the other Dorian cities owing to its increasingly Ionian ways; it may also have been influenced by the culture of Caria in which it was situated.

18 Ar. Nu. 122 and 1298. The word also occurs at Eq. 603, where the scholiast comments probably echoing Hdt. 1.139.

19 Although the term ‘affricate’ has been used throughout, it is possible that we may be dealing with a fricative ‘sh’ from the earliest times or owing to a later development of the affricate at some stage in the transmission.

20 This name is not actually attested in existing Old Persian inscriptions, but is securely derived from its constituent elements viz čięa- (cf. Avestan čithra ‘seed, lineage’), which appears in OP names Ariya-ćięa, Ciça-taxma etc, and fama- (cf Avestan xwrƏnah OP farnah ‘glory’) which appears for example in the name Vindafarna Gk. —see Bailey, H.W.Zoroastrian Problems in the Ninth Century Books (Oxford 1971), esp. 1-3, 73–7Google Scholar, and Kent, R.G.Old Persian Grammar (Connecticut 1953) 31 and 208Google Scholar; Brandenstein, W. and Mayrhofer, M., Handbuch des Altpersischen (Wiesbaden 1964)37,38,41Google Scholar

21 See Sims-Williams, N. and Cribb, J., ‘A New Bactrian Inscription of Kanishka the Great’, Silk Road Art and Archaeology 4 (1996) 75–142Google Scholar.

22 See Sims-Williams, N. ‘Bactrian Documents’ in Corpus Inscriptionum lranicarum. Pt. 11 vol. vi (Oxford 2000)Google Scholar; also id. ‘Ancient Afghanistan and its invaders: Linguistic Evidence from the Bactrian Documents and Inscriptions’, in id. (ed.) Indo-Iranian Languages and Peoples: Proceedings of the British Academy 116 (Oxford 2002)Google Scholar.

23 See Henning, W.B. ‘The Bactrian Inscription’ BSOAS 1960 47 ff.Google Scholar, and ‘Surkh-Khotal und Kanishka’ ZDMG CXV 75 ffGoogle Scholar. Before the discovery of the so-called Nokonzok inscription in 1957 by the French Archaeological Delegation in Afghanistan, the fragments of Bactrian were called Hephthalite owing to their being written in a cursive Greek script resembling Hephthalite coin legends.

24 Gershevitch, I., Cambridge History of Iran 3.2 (Cambridge 1983) 1254Google Scholar, opines that in Bactria, unlike the homelands of Middle Persian, Parthian, Sogdian and Chorasmian, Macedonian occupation lasted about two centuries, and that under this Greek domination native literacy (i.e. writing in Aramaic according to his theory of alloglotto-graphy) would not survive. Greeks would use their own language in administering Bactrian affairs. He continues ‘in what language would ambitious Bactrians be more likely to have their sons trained than in Greek?’

25 See Gershevitch, , Cambridge History of Iran (n.24) 1255 ffGoogle Scholar. It is interesting to note the caique of the Greek which exists in other Middle Iranian languages (e.g. Sogdian xydyw) appears now in Bactrian See Sims-Williams, , ‘Ancient Afghanistan’ (n.22), 228–9Google Scholar.

26 The letter bears some resemblance to Greek capital rho. The earlier shape of the letter may have been adapted by rotating the top horizontal line to the right. It is of course conceivable that the letter was incorporated into the Graeco-Bactrian alphabet from some other (non-Greek) source.

27 The use of sampi in the creation of the Slavonic characters may be further evidence for its continued use.

28 See app. crit. in OCT Pindar (1958) fig. 61.

29 Pickard-Cambridge, A.W., Dithyramb, Tragedy, & Comedy, 2nd edn. rev. Webster, T.B.L. (Oxford, 1962)23Google Scholar.

30 See Pickard-Cambridge, , Dithyramb (n.29) 37Google Scholar.

31 d'Angour, A., ‘How the Dithyramb got its Shape’, CQ 47 (1997), 331–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 See Bowra, M., Pindar (Oxford 1964) 195, with referencesGoogle Scholar.

33 von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, U., Pindaros (Berlin 1922) 342Google Scholar.

34 E.g. Sir John Sandys in the Loeb edition 559; Grenfell and Hunt in their notes accompanying Pap. Oxy. 1604; Pickard-Cambridge, , Dithyramb (n.29) 37Google Scholar; Bowra (n.32) 195. The last three, however, express some uncertainty about it.

35 Wilamowitz, , Pindaros (n.33) 342Google Scholar.

36 This would certainly be true of an affricate, but could possibly refer to a sibilant.

37 A. d'Angour, ‘How the Dithyramb got its Shape’ (n.58).

38

39 d'Angour, , ‘How the Dithyramb got its Shape’ (n.58) 342Google Scholar, gives this example: ‘A Lasian might have riddled about the snake-like appearance of the slow-moving, hissing Schlange of the dithyrambic Thus, to a question “What crawls like a snake but does not hiss?” the answer would have been “An asigmatic dithyramb”.’

40 The earliest example of such metaphors would probably be the use of ‘stitch’ in Hes. frg. 265 cf. Pindar' (Nem.2.2.) with the sense of ‘stitching’ (‘creating’ or ‘putting together’) poetry. The expression in Ar, Ra. 1292 ‘songs of the rope-twister’ provides us with another such metaphor for which a number of conjectural explanations have been given (see Stanford's edition [London 1958] 180).What is interesting here is the refrain containing the ττ which may be identified, I think, with the affricate— ‘spurious —and which may in some way characterise the sounds made by the rope-twisters, unless it is simply onomatopoeic. Stanford notes that some editors ‘explain it as a reference to the battle of Marathon … implying that sounds barbaric enough to be Persian.’ The possibility is that both Pindar and Aristophanes are referring to a type of song containing an old-fashioned affricate sound which is in some way connected with rope stretching or twisting. The Scholiast on the verse in Aristophanes refers to as the song sung by those using the ‘rope’ while drawing water. Call, . Hecale 260.66Google Scholar in Pfeiffer provides another reference to the ‘rope song’. I would add to these metaphors Ar. Nu. 332 where the chorus speaks of ‘song benders of cyclic choruses’. Another obscure metaphor appears in Pindar Ol. 13.19Google Scholar where the dithyramb is described as apparently ‘ox-driving’ though no convincing explanation has been given, as far as I am aware (see Pickard-Cambridge, , Dithyramb [n.29] 6 ff.)Google Scholar. It is no doubt a palaeographic error but perhaps worth noting that, when our passage is quoted in Ath. 455c, the manuscript reads instead of Another intriguing passage which may well belong in this discussion is found in Plato Cratylus 409c where an outlandish word is invented for the sake of the argument. In the dialogue Socrates refers to the invention as ‘of Dithyrambic type’ which seems to suggest that ungainly compounds are characteristic of that form of poetry and reminds us albeit obscurely of the formation of but beyond that it is difficult to go.

41 Quoted by d'Angour, , ‘How the Dithyramb got its Shape’ (n.31) 332–3Google Scholar.

42 Pindar's metaphorical use of ‘counterfeit’ to describe the letter san seems to anticipate the later use of the term ‘spurious pregnancy’ to describe the ‘sampi’ letter. It is hard to believe that the similarity is purely coincidental.

43 Huxley, G., Pindar's Vision of the Past (Belfast 1975)Google Scholar, speculates ‘that dithyrambs were imported from Anatolia and that the pronunciation of ‘s’ as ‘sh’ preserved evidence of their “outlandish” origin.’ I owe this citation to d’Angour, ‘How the dithyramb got its shape’ (n.31) 133, and would comment that this is a possibility, but less likely and more difficult to establish than the thesis presented here. Pindar himself assigns the birthplace of the dithyramb variously to Corinth, Thebes and Naxos (see Bowra, , Pindar [n.32] 286Google Scholar), the last named being Ionic and therefore little different from Anatolian in Huxley's sense.