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Archaic Greek foundation poetry: questions of genre and occasion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2013

Carol Dougherty
Carol Dougherty
Affiliation:
Wellesley College, Massachusetts
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Extract

From the eighth to the sixth centuries BCE the Greeks settled an astounding number of new cities on foreign lands from the Black Sea to the coast of Spain, and these new civic foundations generated narratives designed to record and celebrate a city's origin. In general, the Greeks loved to speculate about beginnings; the births of heroes, the origins of cults, and the founding of cities all formed part of their aetiological repertoire. While tales of city foundations appear prominently in archaic literature, I will argue that foundation (or ktisis) poetry does not, as is commonly assumed, function as an autonomous literary genre in the archaic period. Genre is determined by type of occasion, not by content, at this time, and there is no evidence for any one specific occasion for which ktisis poetry was intentionally composed and performed. Instead, the foundation narrative always functions as part of a larger project; we find it embedded in many different poetic genres. For these reasons, the ktisis is better understood as a literary topos or theme which adds geographical detail and aetiological focus to a variety of poetic contexts and thus is performed on more than one occasion.

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Articles
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 114 , November 1994 , pp. 35 - 46
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1994

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References

1 Among discussions of foundation poetry, the work of one scholar, Schmid, P.B., Studien zu griechischen Ktisissagen (Freiburg 1947Google Scholar) (hereafter Schmid), has proved particularly influential. Although he is very careful at each step to acknowledge, especially for the early poets, the hypothetical nature of his evidence, nevertheless, he comes to the conclusion that poets of the archaic period were writing ktisis poetry and that we can isolate certain components and characteristics of that genre. From the fragments and book titles which remain, he argues that as the archaic colonization movement unfolded, elegiac poets began to treat foundation stories in their works, and ‘in der Folge entstand eine eigene Literaturgattung, die der Ktiseis, welche, wie der Name schon besagt, Stadtgründungserzählung zum Gegenstand hatte’ (xiii-iv). Lasserre, F., ‘L'historiographie grecque à l'époque archaïque’, QSt iv (1976) 113–142 (hereafter Lasserre)Google Scholar; Bowie, E.L., ‘Early Greek elegy, symposium and public festival’, JHS cvi (1986) 13–35 (hereafter Bowie)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Burnett, A.P., ‘Jocasta in the west: the Lille Stesichorus‘, CA vii (1988) 107–154Google Scholar also seem to believe in a genre of ktisis poetry although it is not clear what their definition of that genre would be.

2 Ar. Av. 904–906.

3 Ar. Av. 926–30; cf. Pindar fr. 105a Snell ‘Σύνες ὅ τοι λέγω, ζαθέων ἱερῶν ἐπώνυμε πάτερ, κτίστορ Αἴτνας’. At Av. 939, the poet describes his song as a ‘Πινδάρειον ἔπος’.

4 It is unclear what kind of poetry is meant by κύκλια it is most often read as a reference to the circular choruses of dithyrambic poetry; cf. Nub. 333. On the circular nature of the dithyramb, see Pickard-Cambridge, A.W., Dithyramb, tragedy and comedy (Oxford 1962) 32Google Scholar; Calame, C., ‘Réflexions sur les genres littéraires en Grèce archaïque’, QUCC xvii (1974) 77–84.Google Scholar

5 Norden, E., Die germanische Urgeschichte in Tacitus' Germania (Leipzig 1922) 16Google Scholar; Schmid 4–8.

6 Schmid 6.

7 The colonial legend of Ozolian Lokris was also motivated by a quarrel between father and son; see Plut. Mor. 294e. Other cities were founded as a result of familial conflict between two brothers; see, for example, Bacchyl. 11.59–81 on the conflict between Proitos and Akrisios and the founding of Tiryns; Paus, vii 2.1 on the conflict between Neleus and Medon and the colonization of Ionia; Hdt. v 42 on the conflict between Kleomenes and Dorieus that prompted Dorieus to set out on a colonial expedition. Schmid does not mention the Doulichion account in his discussion of the Rhodes ktisis.

8 Bowie 27–34.

9 Schmid 8–11 on Kallinos as ktisis poet; on the connection between ktisis and elegy, 9: ‘Gründungssagen besangen bereits die ersten Elegiker’.

10 Strab xiii 4.8 = Fr. 5bW.

11 Fr. 3W; cf. Athen. 525c: ‘the Magnesians of Magnesia on Maeander were destroyed, as we read in the Elegiac Poems of Kallinos and in Archilochos, by excessive luxury, their city being captured by the Ephesians.’

12 Fr. 8W. None of these citations refers to a specific work by title; Strabo only says that Kallinos wrote elegiac poetry.

13 Fr. 10W.

14 Schmid 13–16; see esp. 14: ‘Im Folgenden, ein wenig weiter unten zitiert er (Strabo) sodann einige Verse, die deutlich auf die Ktisis von Kolophon Bezug nehmen.’ He further suggests that in this poem, Mimnermos may have put these words into the mouth of the oikist himself. In his subsequent discussion, Schmid also concludes that both passages belong to the same work, and he suggests (182–88) that the theme of the hybris of the founder expressed in the fragment is a common theme of foundation literature.

15 For more detailed discussions of the evidence, see West, M.L., Studies in Greek elegy and iambus (Berlin/New York 1974) 72–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Adkins, A.W.H., Poetic craft in the early Creek elegists (Chicago 1985) 93–5Google Scholar; Bowie 29–30.

16 Porph. on Hor. Epist. ii 2.99.

17 Cf. Bowie 28: ‘I accept West's [1974] reconstruction of Mimnermus’ oeuvre as consisting (at least for the Hellenistic period) of two books, referred to by the titles Nanno (at least six times) and Smyrneis (once). It is difficult not to conclude that Nanno is the title of one book, Smyrneis of the other, and West made a strong case for Nanno being a collection of short poems'. Bowra, C.M., Early Greek elegists (Cambridge, MA 1938CrossRefGoogle Scholar) 27 says that the ‘large woman’ is the Nanno; West (n. 15) 74–6 and Adkins (n. 15) 93–4 argue that Callimachus uses ‘the tall woman’ to mean the Smyrneis.

18 Paus, ix 29.4: ‘Mimnermos, in the Prelude to the elegiac lines he writes on the battle between the Smyrnaeans and Gyges and his Lydians…’

19 Bowie 29.

20 Bowie 29–30.

21 West (n. 15) 75–76. See p. 75 on the problem of the accuracy of the titles for Mimnermos' poems.

22 The smaller poems referred to by Callimachus need not be titled either Nanno or Smyrneis; they may not have received a book title at all. Even though two titles of Mimnermos' work survive, and Callimachus says that he wrote two books, given the problematic and inconsistent nature of poetic titles, we need not conclude that the two titles we have refer to two separate books. Indeed, Smyrna is the name of an Amazon who may have been celebrated as the eponymous foundress of that city, and Callimachus could be alluding to the Amazonian title by calling the poem ‘a tall lady’. Bowie 28 suggests that Callimachus may be contrasting the Nanno, whose title perhaps includes a play on νᾶνος, dwarf, with the tall lady, but Bowie also notes in n. 81 that there may be equal wit in alluding to the personal name Nanno by the expression ‘tall lady’. Bowie insists that this reading of the evidence still leaves us with the problematic reference to the Smyrneis as αἱ κατὰ λεπτόν. But, as I have suggested, this phrase may refer to a completely different collection of short poems.

23 Lasserre 124–5 includes the Smyrneis within his discussion of historical, narrative epic as the beginning of historical writing in the archaic period.

24 D.L. ix 18: ‘Banished from his birthplace <he lived> at Zancle in Sicily, <took part in the settlement of Elea by a colony from that city, and taught there> (Diels' supplement)…’ We know that he lived in Elea (Arist. Rhet. ii 1400b55; Pl. Soph. 242d), but he did not necessarily take part in the colonization.

25 D.L. ix 20.

26 Schmid 24–35.

27 Bowie 32: ‘The title of the Colophonian section–κτίσις–shows that foundation (and, presumably, early history) was a major theme.’

28 See Jacoby, F., Atthis (Oxford 1949) 364 n. 62 and his commentary to FGrH 450 T 1.Google Scholar

29 Athen. 526a = Fr. 3W on the τρυφή of the Kolophonians; discussed by Bergk, T., Poetae Lyrici Graeci (Leipzig 1900) at Xenophanes fr. 3: Schmid 26.Google Scholar

30 Pollux preserves a fragment that might also come from a narrative elegy in which Xenophanes discusses the possibility that the Lydians were the first to strike coins (Onom. ix 82). The unattributed fragment could also come from Xenophanes’ philosophical poetry.

31 Arist. Mir. Ause. 833a16.

32 Suda s.v. Πανύασσις: ‘he wrote…an Ionika in pentameter, that is, a work about Kodros and Neleos and the Ionian colonies in 6,000 verses.’

33 Jacoby (n. 28) 363–4 n. 62 is doubtful about the authenticity of this work as well, and once again suggests Lobon as the author of the title. He argues that it is remarkable for a work of this size not to be cited.

34 Apoll, iii 14.4 cited by Schmid 36–42.

35 Schmid 12–13 suggests that Archilochos wrote an elegiac ktisis. He brings circumstantial biographical evidence to his argument. Archilochos' father, Telesikles, was the founder of Paros' colony, Thasos in the North Aegean, and Archilochos himself probably took part in the early stages of the colony, especially in the subsequent wars against the native Thracian tribes. Furthermore, a fragment of Archilochos' poetry leads us to believe that he went to the colony of Siris in southern Italy before going to Thasos. Lasserre 120–21, on the other hand, argues that Archilochos had to use a written poem as his source for his poem, and he deduces that it was a Ktisis of Syracuse written by Eumelos of Corinth. His argument, however, is not persuasive. He uses evidence from the chronology of Clement of Alexandria and notes that Clement dates Eumelos with respect to Archias and Archias with respect to Archilochos. ‘Il fallait donc non seulement qu'Archiloque ait évoqué Archias, ce que nous pouvons vérifier, mais aussi qu'Eumélos lui ait fait une place dans l'un de ses poèmes.’ Lasserre also brings in an oral tradition about the founding of Croton and Syracuse which associates the founder of Syracuse with potential wealth (Strab. vi 2.4) and argues that this is the same theme as Archias benefitting from Aithiops’ folly. Neither of these arguments proves that Archilochos used a written ktisis as his source.

36 Lasserre 120–21, for the glorification of Archias. For satirical comments on historical figures, see, e.g., frr. 19W (Gyges); 114W (στρατηγός).

37 Frr. 92–105W; see also 20–22W.

38 Other narrative poems which appear to have included foundation material include an Archaeology of the Samians by Semonides of Amorgos (see Schmid 16–21; Lasserre 125–6; Jacoby FGrH 534 Tl commentary) and an elegiac poem on Chios by Ion of Chios (see von Blumenthal, A., ion von Chios (Stuttgart/Berlin 1939) 15–18Google Scholar; Schmid 43–52; Jacoby, F., ‘Some remarks on Ion of Chios’, CQ xli (1947) 5.Google Scholar Genealogical poetry would also incorporate foundation tales, especially those with eponymous heroes. See, for example, the work of Asios of Samos included in Schmid 21–24.

39 Schmid, for example, does not include this passage in his discussion of the ktisis genre. For a fuller discussion of this poem and its use of a colonial narrative, see Dougherty, C., The poetics of colonization (Oxford 1993) 120–35 (hereafter Dougherty).Google Scholar

40 Hdt. iv 150–58. The lions, while absent from Herodotus' account, appear in Pythian 9 as well. For a more detailed discussion of how Pindar's treatment here of Cyrene's foundation works within the larger scheme of colonial representation, see Dougherty 103–19 and 136–56; C. Calarne, ‘Narrating the foundation of a city: the symbolic birth of Cyrene’, in Edmunds ed, L.. Approaches to Greek myth (Baltimore/London 1990) 277–341Google Scholar; Segal, C., Pindar's mythmaking: the fourth Pythian ode (Princeton 1986).Google Scholar

41 Pindar also uses the founding tradition of Cyrene in Pythians 4 and 9; the foundation of Aitna is the focus of Pythian 1; Bacchylides includes the founding of Tiryns in Ode 11. See Dougherty 103–56. It is interesting to note that Schmid does not mention any of these epinikian poems as examples of ktisis poetry.

42 Cf. Dougherty 83–102.

43 Cf. Calame, C., Les choeurs de jeunes filles en Grèce archaïque (Rome 1977).Google Scholar Calame's study of the function of the chorus in archaic Sparta has shown that the composition of adolescent choruses depends narrowly on the political structures of the city. In the Laws 799 a-b; 828 a-c, Plato explains that in establishing the festivals and religious ceremonies for a new state, choruses will be chosen to reflect the geographical division of the city. Cf. Burnett, A.P., The art of Bacchylides (Cambridge, MA 1985) 50Google Scholar and 175 n. 6 for passages where the epinikian poet equates the chorus and the city. Cf. Pickard-Cambridge (n. 4) 35–7 on the dithyrambic competition in the Dionysia at Athens: each chorus is drawn entirely from one of the ten tribes; there are five choruses of men and boys so all ten tribes compete. The chorus leaders, or choregoi, were chosen by tribal officials and the victory was primarily that of the tribe. Cf. Demosth. xxi 5.6; Lys. iv 3. See also Nagy, G., Pindar's Homer: the lyric possession of an epic past (Baltimore/London 1990) 364–68Google Scholar, who argues that civic divisions are reproduced and acted out in the process of establishing and constituting choral performance.

44 The genre distinctions we now use for Greek poetry were not fully conceptualized until the time of the Alexandrian poet-scholars in the Hellenistic period, and for this reason, these classifications prove to be problematic when applied to earlier poetry. For more complete discussions of genre distinctions in the archaic period, see Davies, M., ‘Monody, choral, lyric, and the tyranny of the handbook’, CQ xxxviii (1988) 52–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Calame 1974 (n. 4) 113–128; Calame 1977 (n. 43) 149–76; Rossi, L.E., ‘I generi letterari e le loro leggi scritte e non scritte nelle letterature classiche’, BICS xviii (1971) 69–94Google Scholar; Harvey, A.E., ‘The classification of Greek lyric poetry’, CQ v (1955) 156–75.Google Scholar For a collection of Alexandrian references to lyric genres, see Färber, H., Die Lyrik in der Kunsttheorie der Antike (Munich 1936).Google Scholar

45 Cf. Calame 1977 (n. 43) 117 n. 12 for examples.

46 This reveals the extent to which the Greeks liked to connect the present with the past by linking the story of a city's origins with a variety of public occasions like victory celebrations, paians, or drama.

47 For discussion of the scholarly movement at Alexandria, see Pfeiffer, R., History of classical scholarship (Oxford 1968) 87–151.Google Scholar

48 See works by Calame, Harvey, Rossi, cited in n. 44, for discussion of genre in the Alexandrian period.

49 Schmid 53–55 discusses the Hellenistic ktisis in the context of the new colonial movement, with a description of Hellenistic texts to follow (55–89).

50 For Apollonius, see Powell, J.U., Collectanea Alexandrina (Oxford 1925) frr. 4–12.Google Scholar Some of the titles include Ἀλεξανδρείας κτίσις; Καύνου κτίσις; Κνίδου κτίσις. Callimachus included foundation material in the Aetia ii fr. 43 De Siciliae urbibus, and the Suda gives us the following title: κτίσεις νήσων καὶ πόλεων καὶ μετονομασίαι.

51 Schmid 53–5.

52 Schmid 64–83.

53 Cf. Harvey (n. 44) 158.

54 Pfeiffer (n. 47) 115–16.