II.1 Introduction
In this chapter, I will explore the early Greek precedent for the most famous and frequent index of allusion in Roman poetry, the ‘Alexandrian footnote’. As we have seen, Latin poets often signposted their allusions to and departures from tradition through vague appeals to the transmission of talk and hearsay (§i.1.1). By prefacing their allusive references with vague gestures to others’ words, they signposted their intertextual gestures, appropriating, challenging and creatively reworking the authority of tradition.
In the sections that follow, I argue that this same indexical potential is already manifest in archaic Greek poetry’s engagement with hearsay and its transmission. From Homer onwards, archaic poets evoke, confront and revise what others have previously ‘said’.
II.2 Epic Fama
In the world of archaic epic, fame and renown play a prominent role. Both Homeric poems convey a strong impression of tales and traditions circulating between individuals and communities. This is especially visible in the Odyssey, where we witness the stories of the Achaeans’ returns recounted by Phemius, Nestor and others, as well as Telemachus’ active quest to seek news (ἀκουήν, Od. 14.179) of his father’s fortunes. Yet even in the Iliad, stories of the past circulate continuously, as characters repeatedly appeal to a range of past tales as paradigms for their own circumstances (e.g. Bellerophon, Meleager and Niobe). Nor is this concern with the telling of tales limited to a retrospective concern with the past; it also looks to the present and future. In both epics, Homer’s characters are intimately concerned to preserve their own κλέος, a word which is often translated as ‘fame’, ‘renown’ or ‘legacy’, but which etymologically means ‘that which is heard’ (cf. κλύω, ‘I hear’). Heroes may win κλέος on the battlefield (Il. 5.3, 18.121), in athletic contests (Od. 8.147–8) or even for fine words in council (Od. 16.241–2). And throughout Homeric society, there is a recurring concern with how future generations will hear of and judge their actions.Footnote 1 Even objects can enjoy a κλέος of their own, often through elaborate stories attached to them, such as Agamemnon’s sceptre (Il. 1.234–9) and Meriones’ boar-tusk helmet (Il. 10.261–71).Footnote 2 In the words of one critic, the Homeric universe is bound together by ‘an elaborate network of gossip, rumor, and reputation’.Footnote 3 It is κλέος which drives heroic activity. And it is κλέος which eventually becomes memorialised in song.Footnote 4
Throughout both Homeric poems and archaic Greek epic more generally, characters often appeal to these circulating traditions in vague and generalised terms through verbs of hearing and speaking, especially the third-person plural φασί (‘they say’).Footnote 5 In current scholarship, such gestures are frequently interpreted as part of a larger epic contrast between reliable first-hand experience and the indirect transmission of hearsay.Footnote 6 Since these appeals to tradition are primarily found in the mouths of mortal characters, who sometimes acknowledge their lack of direct autopsy, they are thought to reflect the limitations and fallibility of human knowledge, a foil to the omniscient and divinely authorised perspective of the epic narrator.Footnote 7 In the invocation of the Muses in Iliad 2, the poet famously remarks that ‘you are goddesses and are present and know all things, whereas we hear only a rumour and know nothing’ (ὑμεῖς γὰρ θεαί ἐστε, πάρεστέ τε, ἴστέ τε πάντα, | ἡμεῖς δὲ κλέος οἶον ἀκούομεν οὐδέ τι ἴδμεν, Il. 2.485–6). As Ford has argued from this and other such passages, the ‘fiction’ of the Muses conceals the reality of bardic education and transmission, freeing the Homeric narrator – unlike his characters – from needing to rely on ‘mere’ κλέος.Footnote 8 By presenting matters in this way, Homer is said to establish his own poetry’s κλέος as superior to other socially embedded, self-interested forms of oral report.Footnote 9
There is certainly an element of truth to this opposition, but it is overly reductive to restrict every instance of φασί to such rhetorical posturing. After all, the same idiom also appears in the mouths of epic narrators (Il. 2.783, 17.674; Od. 6.42; Theog. 306; Op. 803),Footnote 10 alongside a number of other remarks which acknowledge the limitations of their knowledge (Il. 12.176, 17.260–1; Theog. 369).Footnote 11 A straight dichotomy between mortal ignorance and poetic omniscience simply cannot hold. Nor does inspiration from the Muses deny poets’ independence: it is clear from the Odyssey that this is conceived as a familiar instance of ‘double determination’, involving both divine and human agency.Footnote 12 Phemius famously declares that he is both self-taught and the recipient of divine aid (αὐτοδίδακτος δ’ εἰμί, θεὸς δέ μοι ἐν φρεσὶν οἴμας | παντοίας ἐνέφυσεν, Od. 22.347–8), while Alcinous’ description of Demodocus makes it clear that his poetry is both god-given and the product of his own thumos, ‘spirit’ (τῷ γάρ ῥα θεὸς περὶ δῶκεν ἀοιδὴν | τέρπειν, ὅππῃ θυμὸς ἐποτρύνῃσιν ἀείδειν, Od. 8.44–5). The poet’s divinely inspired status is not opposed to but rather complements his own poetic craftsmanship on the mortal plane. In the words of Jonathan Ready, the poet has ‘agency as a mediating performer’ and is not simply a ‘mere instrument’ of the Muse.Footnote 13 However hard Homer tries to conceal his fallibilities behind the smokescreen of the Muses, he ultimately cannot avoid embracing and engaging with other traditions and ‘what people say’.
In fact, on closer examination, Homeric uses of φασί and other related expressions, in both the narrator’s and characters’ mouths, often highlight connections with other traditions and stories, playing an important role in situating each epic within the larger mythical traditions of archaic Greece. Far from simply downgrading other forms of speech, appeals to rumour and hearsay mark an engagement with broader traditions of myth and poetry. In this section, I will explore the indexical potential of these appeals. I argue that scenes in which characters talk of receiving and transmitting news serve as a model for how we conceive of epic poets’ own intertextual relationships, as they gesture to and incorporate other traditions.
We shall begin with the first φασί of the Iliad, a rare instance of the device in the narrator’s own voice, but one which already exhibits all the hallmarks of the ‘Alexandrian footnote’ (§ii.2.1). We will then turn to consider one further paradigmatic case in character speech (§ii.2.2), before broadening out to examine the particular prevalence of appeals to hearsay focused on the Trojan war tradition (§ii.2.3). In these sections, we will see how Homer deploys indexical hearsay to acknowledge his own encyclopaedic mastery of tradition. In the following section, by contrast, we will explore more agonistic gestures to suppressed narrative alternatives and rival traditions (§ii.2.4). To close, we will look beyond the Homeric poems to the use of this device in the wider corpus of archaic Greek epic (§ii.2.5).
II.2.1 The Iliad’s First φασί and Theogonic Myth
The first instance of φασί in the Iliad, and one of the few in the narrator’s voice, is a prime example of the verb’s indexical function. It occurs at the end of the Catalogue of Ships in Iliad 2, within a pair of climactic similes that connect the events unfolding on earth with the supernatural strife of Zeus and Typhoeus (Il. 2.780–5):
So they [the Greeks] went as if the whole earth was being devoured by fire; and the earth groaned beneath them, just as beneath Zeus who delights in thunder, when in anger he lashes the earth around Typhoeus in the land of the Arimoi, where they say Typhoeus has his resting place. So then the earth groaned greatly beneath their feet as they went.
Scholars have long admired the artistry of these lines, which close the Greek catalogue with an elaborate ring composition, echoing the series of similes with which it opened: the scorched land of verse 780 generalises and extends the devastation of the forest fire at 2.455–8, while the earth groaning beneath the Greeks’ feet (784) recalls the earlier emphasis on the din of their steps (αὐτὰρ ὑπὸ χθὼν | σμερδαλέον κονάβιζε ποδῶν αὐτῶν τε καὶ ἵππων, 2.465–6).Footnote 14 Yet these lines themselves also offer a miniature ring composition of their own: the chiastic arrangement of γαῖα δ’ ὑπεστενάχιζε (781) … στεναχίζετο γαῖα (784) is framed in turn by two verbs describing the Greeks’ advance (ἴσαν, 780; ἐρχμομένων, 785).Footnote 15 Less attention has been paid, however, to the unobtrusive φασί clause in verse 783, an aside which attributes part of the Typhoeus tale to the anonymous talk of men.
Eustathius interpreted this appeal to hearsay as a distancing device (Eust. 347.8–9 ad Il. 2.783 = i.544.6–7 van der Valk):
τὸ δέ “φασίν” εἶπε κατὰ τοὺς παλαιοὺς ὁ ποιητής, ἵνα μὴ προσκρούοιμεν ὡς Ὁμηρικῷ ὄντι διὰ τὸ μυθῶδες.
According to older critics,Footnote 16 the poet said ‘they say’ so that we do not disapprove of the passage in seeing it as a strictly Homeric tale, on account of its fabulous character.
Building on a remark of the Homeric scholia (Σ b Il. 2.783a ex.), the Byzantine scholar constructs Homer in his own rationalistic image, distancing himself from an implausible, legendary myth. Such an apologetic interpretation may misconstrue the full significance of φασί here. The verb certainly acknowledges the narrator’s distance in space and time from the events he describes, but that alone does not necessarily imply doubt, especially given the absence of any further hints of hesitation or qualification.Footnote 17 Yet even so, Eustathius is right to note how the verb acknowledges Homer’s debts: the poet gestures to an independent pre-existing tradition.Footnote 18 Eustathius does not take this point further and nor – as far as I am aware – have modern scholars. But his remark demands further consideration. Who are the anonymous ‘they’ who claim that Typhoeus’ bed is among the Arimoi?
For scholars who regard Homer as engaging allusively with Near Eastern sources, one possible answer to this question might be that φασί points to the poetic traditions of the Near East. Typhoeus appears to have a Semitic pedigree (compare the alternative spelling of his name ‘Typhon’ with the Canaanite-Phoenician name ṣāpōn), and Homer’s placement of him here among the Arimoi (= Aramaeans?) has been interpreted as a self-conscious acknowledgement of the myth’s eastern origins.Footnote 19 However, as I argued in Chapter i (§i.2.2), we should be cautious of this approach which assumes an active and interpretable engagement with Near Eastern myth. Here in particular, the Aramaean location appears to be a traditional feature engrained in the Greek tradition (cf. Hes. Theog. 304; Pind. fr. 93), and it is far more easily explained as the passive trace of a more distant literary genealogy, rather than a self-conscious nod to an earlier Near Eastern tradition. It is unlikely that φασί would direct any audience member to Near Eastern myth, a distant ‘source’ which would add little to our immediate appreciation of this simile.
Instead, a more likely answer to the significance of Homer’s φασί may be found in the numerous similarities shared by these Iliadic verses and Hesiod’s description of Typhoeus’ defeat in the Theogony (843–7, 857–9):
and the earth groaned in response. A conflagration from them both engulfed the violet-dark sea, a conflagration of thunder and lightning and fire from the monster, of tornado winds and the blazing thunderbolt. The whole earth seethed, and the sky and sea … but when he [Zeus] had overpowered him, lashing him with blows, he [Typhoeus] fell down wounded, and the monstrous earth groaned; a flame darted forth from the thunderstruck lord.
In this climactic passage, Zeus secures his control over the universe by conquering Typhoeus, his last major adversary, just as he had earlier defeated the Titans.Footnote 20 There are a number of significant parallels between this narrative and Homer’s simile.Footnote 21 In both accounts, Zeus lashes the ground (ἱμάσσῃ, Il. 2.782) or his foe (ἱμάσσας, Theog. 857), and the earth groans under the weight of these blows (γαῖα δ’ ὑπεστενάχιζε, Il. 2.781; στεναχίζετο γαῖα, Il. 2.784) or the warring participants themselves (Typhoeus: στενάχιζε δὲ γαῖα, Theog. 858; Zeus: ἐπεστενάχιζε δὲ γαῖα, Theog. 843). In the wider context of both passages, emphasis is laid on Zeus’s thunder as the weapon which vanquishes Typhoeus (Διὶ ὣς τερπικεραύνῳ, Il. 2.781 ~ κεραυνοῦ, Theog. 846; κεραυνόν, Theog. 854; κεραυνωθέντος, Theog. 859) and the blazing destruction of the whole earth (πυρὶ χθὼν πᾶσα νέμοιτο, Il. 2.780 ~ καῦμα … πυρός, Theog. 844–5, χθὼν πᾶσα, Theog. 847). Within a handful of Iliadic lines, there are numerous verbal connections with Hesiod’s account of Typhoeus’ defeat, connections which again reinforce the closural ring composition of this simile: already before the Catalogue, the earth had thundered terribly beneath the Achaeans’ feet (χθὼν | σμερδαλέον κονάβιζε, Il. 2.465–6), just as it did in Hesiod’s Typhonomachy (σμερδαλέον κονάβησε, Theog. 840).
Of course, the relationship between Homer and Hesiod is a matter of much debate. Most today would take Homer to be prior, but a number of eminent scholars have argued for the opposite conclusion.Footnote 22 If we tentatively accept this latter hypothesis, we could see a direct Iliadic allusion here to Hesiod’s Theogony, signposted through a footnoting φασί. The Iliad’s Typhoeus simile appears to offer a compact and miniature postscript to a major episode of Hesiod’s poem, highlighting how the defeated Typhoeus continues to be punished in terms precisely comparable to his initial defeat (note the subjunctive ἱμάσσῃ in 782, indicating a recurring action). The effect is very similar to that later found in Pindar’s first Pythian (1.13–28), where Typhoeus’ ongoing imprisonment is presented in language reminiscent of his original defeat. As Tom Phillips remarks, ‘even as Pindar’s narrative positions Zeus’s battle with Typhon in the past, echoes of the Th[eogony] replay it’.Footnote 23 The same dynamics of recollection and replay are at work in Homer’s simile, which depicts the aftermath of the conflict while echoing the language of its climax. Within a handful of verses, Homer appears to invoke and epitomise a central episode of another poem, indexed through φασί.
We might be able to extend this conclusion further. The precise detail that Homer attributes to hearsay is that the resting place of Typhoeus is among the Arimoi, a detail which again finds close parallel in the Theogony (304–8):
Baneful Echidna keeps guard among the Arimoi under the earth, an immortal nymph, unageing through all her days. They say that Typhon – terrible, insolent and lawless – mingled in love with her, a glancing-eyed girl; and she became pregnant and bore mighty-hearted children.
Just as Homer places Typhoeus’ bed ‘among the Arimoi’ (εἰν Ἀρίμοις, Il. 2.783), Hesiod claims that Typhoeus slept with Echidna εἰν Ἀρίμοισιν.Footnote 24 Here too, we could see Homer allusively reshaping the Hesiodic narrative. The noun εὐνάς (Il. 2.783) is pointedly ambiguous. It could at a push refer to the ‘bed’ where Typhoeus once slept with Echidna (as in Theog. 304–6), but this makes little sense in the context of Zeus’s ongoing punishment of the monster in the present. More plausibly, it can be taken euphemistically to refer to the ‘tomb’ that became his final resting place.Footnote 25 But in that case, this detail departs from the Hesiodic conclusion, in which Typhoeus was ultimately dispatched to Tartarus (Theog. 868). Homer’s φασί appears to index tradition precisely at the point where it is most contestable.Footnote 26
It is thus possible to discern a remarkably intricate intertextual relationship between this Iliadic simile and the Theogony. If we accept Hesiod’s priority, Homer can be seen to replay, revise and epitomise key aspects of the original Hesiodic conflict. However, as I outlined in Chapter i (§i.2), such a direct connection between two ‘texts’ is difficult to reconcile with the oral environment of early Greek epic, not to mention with the uncertainties over the relative dates of our Iliad and Theogony. I thus prefer to see Homer here evoking a more general Typhoean and theogonic tradition, rather than a specific text. The contours of such a Typhoeus tradition were evidently well established already in the archaic age. The Iliad assumes its audience’s familiarity with a version of theogonic narrative very similar to that preserved in our Theogony and readily evokes key features of the succession myth elsewhere (e.g. in Thetis’ rescue of Zeus, Il. 1.396–406).Footnote 27 Moreover, the fact that the Homeric mention of Typhoeus occurs in a simile (a narrative device which frequently introduces familiar and relatable material) raises the expectation that Homer’s audience would be acquainted with the myth.Footnote 28
In any case, Homer’s account certainly appears to reflect core features of the fabula of Zeus’s fight with Typhoeus that transcend Hesiod’s specific telling. These include the presence of fire, lashing, thunder and the groaning earth. Such elements are familiar to modern readers from Hesiod’s poem, but they evidently pre-dated it. Watkins has argued that the lashing/binding motif is a very old element of the tradition, originally deriving from earlier Hittite versions of the tale.Footnote 29 Even if we do not follow his broader conclusions, the Near Eastern parallels for the myth certainly suggest that the episode had a considerably ancient pedigree.Footnote 30 Within the Greek tradition alone, moreover, the lashing motif appears to have been an integral feature of the myth: in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, Typhoeus’ mother Hera similarly whips the earth before giving birth to the monster (ἵμασε χθόνα, HhAp. 340). The key moments of Typhoeus’ life (his birth and defeat) are both marked by the same violent act.Footnote 31
Moreover, it is notable that Hesiod’s own mention of Typhoeus’ mingling with Echidna among the Arimoi is also indexed with a φασί – the sole use of the device in the whole poem (Theog. 306).Footnote 32 If Homer and Hesiod were contemporaneous Hellenistic poets, scholars might argue that this pair of indices marks a reciprocal relationship between these two passages – a self-reflexive cycle of cross referencing, in which each author knowingly nods to the ‘talk’ of their poetic peer. In the context of archaic epic, however, it is likely that each φασί rather points to a pre-existing Typhoean tradition with which each poet is engaged.Footnote 33
In both Iliad 2 and the Theogony, therefore, φασί signposts engagement with traditional theogonic narratives. In both cases, the index acknowledges the authority (and contestability) of tradition, marking each poet’s encyclopaedic control of their poetic heritage. For Hesiod, the device authorises his primary narrative; but for Homer, it is also a means to introduce another mythical tradition as a foil for his own. Through his simile, the pending conflict between the Greeks and Trojans becomes a replay of the cosmic struggle between Zeus and Typhoeus, between the defender of civilisation and the threat of chaos.Footnote 34 Homer signals his appropriation of theogonic myth as he encapsulates it and subsumes it within a handful of verses. The mortal conflict of Greece and Troy is established as a fair match for the divine and primeval discord of theogonic myth.
The first Iliadic φασί thus has a strong claim to act as a ‘pre-Alexandrian footnote’, indexing Homer’s allusion to theogonic tradition. It is worth noting, however, that this indexed allusion introduces a parallel which continues to underlie much of the remainder of the poem. Typhonomachic imagery recurs throughout the epic in various forms. Similes repeatedly compare the action of the poem to the desolation of the natural world, recalling the elemental disruption of the Typhonomachy.Footnote 35 The threats which the other gods pose to Zeus’s rule echo the past dangers of both the Titans and Typhoeus: Zeus threatens to hurl them to Tartarus like his previous adversaries (Il. 8.13–16 ~ Theog. 717–20, 868),Footnote 36 and in anger at Hera and Athena, he causes Olympus to shake beneath his feet, just as when he faced Typhoeus.Footnote 37 More specifically, the clash of the gods in Iliad 20 (Il. 20.54–75) is introduced with imagery that evokes the environmental upheaval of both theogonic episodes: Zeus thunders terribly (Il. 20.56 ~ Theog. 839), the world trembles (Il. 20.57–60 ~ Theog. 680–2) and Hades is terrified by the immense shaking above (Il. 20.61–5 ~ Theog. 850–2).Footnote 38 In addition, Achilles’ theomachic fight with the river Scamander in Iliad 21 is similarly bestowed with a cosmic, Typhonomachic grandeur, replete with tumultuous waves, blasts of wind, scorched earth and boiling water (Il. 21.212–382).Footnote 39 The net result of these recurring theogonic resonances is to elevate the events of the Trojan war to the cosmic plane; they become as devastating and momentous as the establishment of Zeus’s rule in heaven.Footnote 40
Significantly, this major and insistent theogonic pattern is inaugurated by Homer’s indexed simile in Book 2. The φασί which accompanies Homer’s Typhoeus simile does not just signpost a passing allusion to another mythical tradition but rather keys the audience into a recurring mythological paradigm that underpins the whole Iliad. This inceptive function of the index is something that we will see on a number of other occasions in Greek epic and lyric. The appeal to ‘what people say’ establishes a link to another myth which remains active for the remainder of the poem.
In its very first appearance in the Iliad, therefore, φασί already exhibits many of the key features associated with the footnoting of Alexandrian and Roman poets. It signposts allusion to another tradition (theogonic myth), if not text (Hesiod’s Theogony), acknowledges competing traditions surrounding Typhoeus’ final resting place and initiates an ongoing allusive dialogue with Typhoean tradition, aligning the war at Troy with the cosmic upheaval of the heavens. In his own voice, the poet indexes a major myth that serves as both a model and a foil.
II.2.2 Other Worlds and Others’ Words: Tydeus and Theban Myth
More frequently in both Homeric poems, φασί appears in the mouth of internal characters. Within the internal story world, their gestures to hearsay reflect their limited first-hand knowledge and reliance on external sources. But these same gestures can also be interpreted on an extradiegetic level as the poet’s invocation of a wider canon of tradition, triggering links with other myths and other domains of knowledge. As I have already noted, such a shift from the perspective of the character to the narrator is assisted by ancient literary critics’ conception of poetic impersonation: at any moment, a character’s words are simultaneously the poet’s (§1.2.4). When Homer’s characters indicate their debt to the words of others, the poet simultaneously indexes other familiar traditions, marking his own encyclopaedic mastery of them.
This indexical aspect of characters’ appeals to hearsay is best exemplified by the second φασί of the Iliad, when Agamemnon recalls the exploits of Diomedes’ father Tydeus (Il. 4.370–5):
Ah me, son of battle-minded, horse-taming Tydeus, why are you cowering and gazing on the lines of battle? It was not Tydeus’ habit to cower away like this, but to fight the enemy far ahead of his own companions; that’s what those who saw him in action used to say. I myself never met him or saw him, but they say that he surpassed all others.
This elaborate source-attribution serves as a springboard into a miniature narrative on Tydeus’ adventures in the build-up to the Theban war (Il. 4.376–400). Agamemnon recounts how Diomedes’ father visited Mycenae alongside Polynices to recruit ‘famed allies’ (κλειτοὺς ἐπικούρους, 4.379) for their expedition against Thebes; and although the Mycenaeans were initially willing, Zeus discouraged their involvement by displaying signs of ill omen (παραίσια σήματα, 4.381). At a later time, Tydeus was sent on a solo mission to Thebes itself, where he challenged the Thebans to athletic contests and won everything easily with Athena’s help (ἐπίρροθος ἦεν Ἀθήνη, 4.390). Angered by his success, the Thebans ambushed him with fifty men, but Tydeus again emerged victorious, sparing only Maeon, whom he sent back to Thebes in obedience to the portents of the gods (θεῶν τεράεσσι πιθήσας, 4.398). Such extraordinary achievements, Agamemnon suggests, are beyond the reach of Tydeus’ son Diomedes, who is inferior to his father in battle (4.399–400), seeing how he now cowers apart from the battle lines (4.371).Footnote 41
Agamemnon thus introduces the tale of Tydeus as a hortatory paradigm to provoke Diomedes to action.Footnote 42 Within the context of the narrative, his appeal to the talk of others, particularly those who witnessed these events first-hand, authorises the validity of his account; it is grounded in a reliable tradition and foregrounds the fact that neither Agamemnon nor Diomedes witnessed these events at first hand. After all, Diomedes stresses elsewhere that he has no direct memory of his father, who left while he was still young (Il. 6.222–3); he has to rely on the report of others to know anything of his father.Footnote 43 Nevertheless, the vagueness of Agamemnon’s attribution encourages us to ask what the ‘tradition’ invoked here actually is, especially since the second φασί seems to be more general in scope than the first φάσαν: Agamemnon has heard this tale not just from those who saw Tydeus at first hand (a phrase which itself evokes the Homeric fiction of bardic autopsy), but also from ‘people’ in general. As in Book 2’s Typhoeus simile, this generalised appeal to hearsay invites Homer’s audience to recall other tales and traditions, in this case those surrounding Theban myth and Tydeus’ exploits.Footnote 44
Unlike in the case of theogonic myth, we are less well furnished with the early epic treatments of the Theban cycle, possessing only a handful of fragments, none of which refer directly to this episode.Footnote 45 Yet there are still good grounds for seeing a pre-existing Theban tradition behind Agamemnon’s account. For a start, the brevity and concision of his narrative suggest a miniaturised version of a larger story, especially when we note its underlying doublet structure. As Benjamin Sammons has highlighted, the tale is shaped by anticipatory doublets, the typical building blocks of large-scale epic narrative: Tydeus’ initial embassy to Mycenae prepares for his more involved and dangerous embassy to Thebes, where we also find paired scenes of conflict, the hero’s victory in the athletic contest paving the way for his defeat of the ambush.Footnote 46 As Sammons notes, ‘anticipatory doublets underlie relatively large-scale narrative structures and development of themes across passages; these functions are not relevant or even particularly desirable in such small-scale narratives’.Footnote 47 The structure and detail of Agamemnon’s account go considerably beyond the ruler’s immediate rhetorical purposes and betray a larger underlying narrative (i.e. fabula) which Homer has miniaturised.Footnote 48
This same episode is also recalled several other times in the Iliad with considerable consistency, further suggesting that it is not solely an ad hoc invention for this moment: Athena summarises the same events when spurring Diomedes to action in the next book (Il. 5.800–13), while Diomedes cites Athena’s former support of his father on this occasion as precedent to ask for her continuing help during the Doloneia (Il. 10.284–90).Footnote 49 There are many verbal and thematic overlaps between these accounts,Footnote 50 which seem to reflect a consistent fabula whose traces we can reconstruct: Tydeus set out alone and displayed his strength in the Theban heartland, before facing and overcoming an ambush on his return.Footnote 51 Of course, many elements of such a narrative would have been composed of familiar type scenes, including the embassy, the challenge of a guest and the ambush.Footnote 52 Yet the specific combination of elements in this case would have produced a distinctive Tydean fabula to which the Iliad poet could allude. In particular, Tydeus’ emphatically solo mission to the Cadmeans (μοῦνος ἐών, 4.388) alters the traditional pattern in which at least two individuals are normally sent on an embassy, thereby emphasising his exceptionality.Footnote 53
The possibility of an underlying Tydean fabula is further strengthened by the correspondence between Agamemnon’s tale and the details in later accounts of the war, many of which may look back to earlier features of the archaic Theban tradition. Tydeus was always a central figure of the Seven narrative: as son-in-law of Adrastus, he was an early recruit to Polynices’ cause and a quasi-doublet to the Theban, since he too was an exile.Footnote 54 Athena’s support of Tydeus was a mainstay of the myth and crucial for her later abandonment of the hero,Footnote 55 while Apollodorus’ extensive focus on Tydeus’ lineage (Bibl. 1.8.3–4) may reflect a similar concern with the hero’s ancestry in earlier cyclic tradition, as George Huxley has suggested.Footnote 56 Divine disapproval of the whole expedition was also an integral element of the legend.Footnote 57 Indeed, the phrase used to describe this supernatural ill will (παραίσια σήματα, 4.381) is a Homeric hapax legomenon, which has prompted Øivind Andersen to suggest that it ‘perhaps derives from the Theban tradition, where it plays such a large role’.Footnote 58 As for Tydeus’ exploits, later treatments of them by Antimachus and Statius indicate the lengths to which the narrative could be spun.Footnote 59 The sole survivor of Tydeus’ onslaught, Maeon, also seems to have played a significant part in later tradition: in Statius, he is a priest of Apollo (e.g. Theb. 3.104–5, 4.598), a status to which the elliptical θεῶν τεράεσσι πιθήσας of 4.398 could well allude,Footnote 60 while Pausanias (9.18.2) records a Theban tradition that Maeon buried Tydeus in Thebes, matching Diomedes’ later claim that Tydeus lies buried in the city (Il. 14.114).Footnote 61 The authentic Theban name of Maeon’s father (Haemon) may also suggest that he is a pre-existing character of Theban myth,Footnote 62 unlike his co-leader Polyphontes, whose speaking name (‘Much-slaying’), alongside that of his father Autophonus (‘One who slays with his own hands’), rather implies a figure invented for this specific context.Footnote 63 And last but not least, Maeon’s very survival has led some to suggest that tradition demanded he remain available for future deeds.Footnote 64 Of course, later narratives could simply offer expansions and elaborations of this terse Homeric reference,Footnote 65 and at least one ancient scholiast seemed unfamiliar with Maeon’s identity,Footnote 66 so we should remain cautious, but given the intratextual and intertextual congruity of the episode, its underpinning doublet structure, and the repeatedly brief nature of its telling, it is plausible to see a coherent Theban fabula underlying Agamemnon’s account.Footnote 67
Agamemnon’s opening appeal to hearsay can thus be interpreted as a cue for Homer’s audience to focus on his appropriation of this fabula: it is not just those who saw him, but also epic singers of the Theban war who say that Tydeus was pre-eminent. φασί here is not merely a means to legitimise and authorise Agamemnon’s statements within the narrative, but also an external pointer for Homer’s audience, indexing the poet’s engagement with the Theban tradition. When Kirk claims that ‘the stress on Agamemnon’s reliance on hearsay’ in Iliad 4 ‘seems unnecessary’,Footnote 68 he crucially misses the indexical significance of the gesture. It is no simple deference to hearsay and transmitted tradition, nor a simple badge of authority, but a marker of allusive engagement with other mythical traditions. When Diomedes later claims that his fellow Greeks must have previously ‘heard’ of his father Tydeus (τὰ δὲ μέλλετ’ ἀκουέμεν, Il. 14.125), we have a further example of the same phenomenon: as Diomedes perpetuates his ancestral fame, Homer flags his external audience’s familiarity with the hero’s Theban genealogy, whether from previous tellings of the myth or – for a newcomer to the epic tradition – from the earlier Iliadic accounts of Diomedes’ ancestry.
In a character’s voice, as much as the narrator’s, therefore, φασί can index other mythical traditions. Agamemnon’s appeal to hearsay signposts the ruler’s ensuing miniaturisation of Theban myth. And as with the theogonic allusion of Iliad 2, so too here we can identify a significant inceptive function. Not only does the index introduce Agamemnon’s ensuing mythical narrative, but it also establishes a pattern of Theban allusion that continues to resonate throughout the epic. We have already noted how Tydeus’ past exploits recur as a paradigm later in the poem, establishing an ongoing synkrisis between father and son. But the frequency with which Diomedes continues to be identified by his patronymic throughout the epic ensures that he can never escape his father’s shadow, even when his deeds are not directly recalled.Footnote 69 We shall see later how Sthenelus’ response to Agamemnon in Book 4 reframes this intergenerational relationship in agonistic terms, with possible repercussions for our understanding of the Iliad’s relationship to Theban myth (§iv.2.3). But for now, we can also observe how the Theban tradition rears its head in many other parts of the Iliad: the walls of both Troy and the Achaean camp echo those of seven-gated Thebes; the Trojans are aligned with the defeated Seven through the epithet ‘famed allies’ (κλειτοὺς ἐπικούρους); and Diomedes’ retreat at the threat of Zeus’s thunderbolt (Il. 8.133–6) echoes and rewrites the unhappy fate of Sthenelus’ father Capaneus, who was killed by this very divine instrument.Footnote 70 Just as the indexed Typhoeus simile in Iliad 2 establishes an ongoing dialogue with theogonic myth, Agamemnon’s story introduces an enduring intertextual foil for Homer’s narrative, centred on (but by no means restricted to) the figure of Diomedes.
A number of indexical appeals to hearsay thus gravitate towards those myths which are of most significance for the poem as a whole, especially those which feature near the outset of the poem, serving as paradigmatic models and foils. On a micro-level, φασί marks allusion, but on a macro-level, it foregrounds some of the most important mythical intertexts for an entire work.Footnote 71
II.2.3 The Trojan War Tradition
Given this foregrounding function of φασί, it is perhaps unsurprising that the majority of Homeric appeals to hearsay cluster around the Trojan war tradition itself, the primary mythological context in which both the Iliad and Odyssey situate their narratives. Homer’s characters often cite hearsay when referring to different episodes or characters of the war. In part, this reflects the chaotic workings of rumour and hearsay during the Trojan war and its aftermath, as heroes rely on word of mouth for information about both their enemies and their friends. But these gestures to tradition also acknowledge the traditionality of the events narrated, while also hinting that a newly developing tradition is emerging surrounding the war: before our very eyes (and ears), these events are transcending into the world of legend.
Myth in the Making
In the Iliad, Achilles attributes his knowledge of both Ilion and Priam to hearsay. He refers to all the wealth which ‘they say’ (φασίν) Ilion once possessed ‘in previous times of peace’ (τὸ πρὶν ἐπ’ εἰρήνης, Il. 9.401–3), and similarly claims that ‘we hear’ Priam ‘was previously happy’ (τὸ πρὶν μὲν ἀκούομεν ὄλβιον εἶναι, Il. 24.543), since ‘they say’ that he surpassed all his neighbours in wealth and sons (πλούτῳ τε καὶ υἱάσι φασὶ κεκάσθαι, Il. 24.546). Knowledge of a distant people naturally relies on information from others, and such rumours of Trojan affluence doubtless circulated in the build-up to the expedition as a further incentive to join Agamemnon’s force.Footnote 72 After all, Hector himself claims that ‘previously all mortal men used to talk of Priam’s city as rich in gold and bronze’ (πρὶν μὲν γὰρ Πριάμοιο πόλιν μέροπες ἄνθρωποι | πάντες μυθέσκοντο πολύχρυσον πολύχαλκον, Il. 18.288–9). Besides this practical reality, however, these statements can also be taken more broadly to imply that Troy and its ruler have already become figures of legend. Even as the events of the war are unfolding, they have gained a traditional status in the talk of men.
Such a conception of a pre-existing and developing tradition surrounding Troy is felt even more clearly in the Odyssey.Footnote 73 Even before his departure for the war, Penelope remembers how Odysseus had attributed the Trojans’ reputation of military might to hearsay (φασί, Od. 18.261), pointing to the pre-existing traditionality of their valour in martial epic. In context, we would have to imagine that Odysseus was thinking of Troy’s earlier war against Heracles, a core feature of tradition that is mentioned repeatedly in the Iliad (§iii.2.1), but an audience of the Odyssey itself may also anachronistically recall the very war at Troy in which Odysseus himself had since fought, the subject of the Iliad and other cyclic poems. The ten-year duration of that war attests to the fact that the Trojans are indeed formidable ‘fighting men’ (μαχητὰς … ἄνδρας, Od. 18.261). But it also renders ironic Odysseus’ following claim that they are the kind who ‘very quickly decide the great strife of equal war’ (οἵ τε τάχιστα | ἔκριναν μέγα νεῖκος ὁμοιΐου πτολέμοιο, Od. 18.263–4); in reality, there was nothing ταχύς (‘quick’), let alone τάχιστος (‘very quick’), about the war over Helen. Crucial for our current discussion, however, is the fact that the Trojans are once more represented as figures of legend. They are invoked in the same manner as heroes of the past: they have already joined the annals of tradition, alongside the likes of Typhoeus and Tydeus.
Elsewhere in the Odyssey, other recent events are similarly presented as established features of hearsay. When Telemachus first arrives in Pylos, he asks his host Nestor for news of his father, contrasting Odysseus’ unknown fate (ἀπευθέα) with what ‘we have heard’ about all the others (πευθόμεθ’, Od. 3.86–8):Footnote 74
Now for all the others who warred with the Trojans, we have heard where each of them died a woeful death; but as for that man [Odysseus], the son of Cronus has put even his death beyond men’s hearing.
This rhetoric of Odyssean exceptionality echoes that of the narrator at the outset of the Odyssey (1.11–15), who similarly claims that ‘all the others who had escaped sheer destruction’ were already home (ἄλλοι μὲν πάντες, ὅσοι φύγον αἰπὺν ὄλεθρον, 1.11 ~ ἄλλους μὲν γὰρ πάντας, ὅσοι, 3.86), whereas Odysseus alone (τὸν δ’ οἶον, 1.13) was still stuck mid-journey.Footnote 75 By referring to these other returns through the language of hearsay, however, Telemachus acknowledges that they are already developing into an independent tradition in their own right. After all, we know that Telemachus has indeed heard about such nostoi from the poet Phemius on Ithaca, who sang in Book 1 ‘of the return of the Achaeans, the woeful return which Pallas Athena laid upon them from Troy’ (ὁ δ’ Ἀχαιῶν νόστον ἄειδε | λυγρόν, ὃν ἐκ Τροίης ἐπετείλατο Παλλὰς Ἀθήνη, Od. 1.326–7, cf. λυγρῷ, 3.87).Footnote 76 In appealing to what he has heard, Telemachus practically cites other poetic and mythical traditions about the aftermath of the war.
In response, Nestor embarks on a summary of the whole Trojan war and its aftermath (Od. 3.103–200, 254–316), offering a miniature overview of cyclic tradition from the events of the Cypria down to those of the Nostoi.Footnote 77 He first recounts the events at Troy, introducing them with the language of memory, a reflection of his first-hand experience (ἔμνησας, Od. 3.103, cf. μνῆσαι, Od. 3.101: §iii.2). But when he reaches the final part of the ‘Returns’, he invokes the authority of hearsay (Od. 3.186–94):
But as for the news I hear as I sit in my halls, you shall learn it all, as is right – and I won’t hide anything. They say that the Myrmidon spearmen came home safely, those whom the glorious son of great-hearted Achilles led; safe too was Philoctetes, Poias’ brilliant son. And Idomeneus brought all his companions to Crete, all those who escaped the war; the sea robbed him of none of them. But as for the son of Atreus, even you yourselves hear – though you live far away – how he came home and how Aegisthus devised his woeful death.
Within the immediate context, Nestor’s repeated invocations of others’ talk suggests his incomplete knowledge and reliance on external sources, since he did not witness these events directly: after reaching safety himself, he does not know for certain who died or was saved (3.184–5). But the emphasis on verbal transmission also figures the traditionality of these events, pointing to the numerous traditions of other heroes’ homecomings which were later crystallised in the Nostoi and which here serve as foils and paradigms for Odysseus’ ongoing return.Footnote 78 In particular, Nestor claims that ‘even you yourselves hear’ of Agamemnon’s death (καὶ αὐτοὶ ἀκούετε, Od. 3.193), nodding to the centrality of this specific narrative as a foil for Odysseus’ return, while also acknowledging the frequency with which it recurs in the Odyssey, from Zeus’s opening speech onwards (see §iii.2.1 n. 38). After all, Telemachus has indeed already heard of it from the disguised Athena (Od. 1.298–300).Footnote 79 Besides signposting the allusive density of Nestor’s speech, however, this emphasis on hearsay also reflects the mechanics of tradition: Nestor claims that Telemachus will ‘learn’ all that he knows (δαήσεαι, Od. 3.187), figuring his speech as an act of transmission. His speech represents the dispersion of tradition, the gradual spread of ‘what people say’. In this scene between Telemachus and Nestor, the poet not only indexes his engagement with a host of other Nostoi traditions, but simultaneously depicts the development of his own tradition.
This self-reflexivity is even more visible in the way that events more contemporary with the Odyssey are represented as the object of hearsay. Shortly after his first Trojan war summary, Nestor notes that he has also heard talk of how Penelope’s many suitors devise evil in Telemachus’ halls (φασὶ μνηστῆρας σῆς μητέρος εἵνεκα πολλοὺς | ἐν μεγάροις ἀέκητι σέθεν κακὰ μηχανάασθαι, Od. 3.212–13).Footnote 80 Again, at one level this φασί acknowledges Nestor’s reliance on reports from afar; but for Homer’s audience, this is a situation which we have seen all too clearly in the first two books of the poem. Indeed, we might suspect that Homer here advertises the budding fame of his own version of events even as they unfold: the suitors’ wrongdoing, like the Trojans’ wealth, are solidifying into elements of tradition as the epic progresses.Footnote 81 Besides this interpretation, however, the reference may also bear an additional significance, pointing beyond Homer’s narrative to other pre-existing traditions of Odysseus’ homecoming. Many scholars have suspected that our Odyssey repeatedly alludes to alternative and competing versions of Odysseus’ nostos, including one version which involved a more ‘realistic’ itinerary that took the hero to real-world locations such as Crete and Thesprotia.Footnote 82 The contents of any such alternative traditions are extremely conjectural and often based on little more than late sources and the internal evidence of the Odyssey itself,Footnote 83 but they are at least partly presupposed by the Odyssean proem, in which Homer asks the Muse to ‘speak to us too from some point in the story’ (τῶν ἁμόθεν γε … εἰπὲ καὶ ἡμῖν, Od. 1.10), an expression that seems to acknowledge bardic predecessors to whom the Muse has previously told the same Odyssean tale.Footnote 84 If we accept the possibility of other Odyssean traditions underlying our poem, then Nestor’s words gain further resonance: the suitors’ misbehaviour is indeed part of what ‘they talk about’ in the wider mythical tradition. The situation of Penelope and her suitors was already a well-known and established part of the fabula.Footnote 85
Character (Por)traits
Besides such general evocations of broad events from the Trojan war tradition, Homer’s characters also appeal to hearsay when referring to more precise and detailed traits of specific characters. In such cases, we find fine-grained indexing of particular details from individual heroes’ biographies, not just allusion to the general contours of tradition in broad brushstrokes.
In Odyssey 4, for example, Peisistratus reminisces about his dead brother Antilochus, whom ‘they say excelled all others, pre-eminent in speed of foot and as a fighter’ (περὶ δ’ ἄλλων φασὶ γενέσθαι | Ἀντίλοχον, περὶ μὲν θείειν ταχὺν ἠδὲ μαχητήν, Od. 4.201–2). Within the internal story world, this remark reflects Peisistratus’ lack of direct acquaintance with his brother’s exploits, given that he was not himself present at Troy to see them (οὐ γὰρ ἐγώ γε | ἤντησ’ οὐδὲ ἴδον, Od. 4.200–1), but it also evokes the Trojan war traditions through which Antilochus’ fame has reached him and with which Homer’s audience would have been familiar. The Pylian youth played a significant part in the war as a close friend of Achilles, especially after Hector’s killing of Patroclus. In particular, his death at the hands of the Ethiopian Memnon was a prominent feature of the larger tradition, a key episode in the later Cyclic Aethiopis (Aeth. arg. 2c GEF) and one which the Homeric narrator has just recalled with the loaded language of memory (μνήσατο, ἐπιμνησθείς, Od. 4.187–9: §iii.2.1). Peisistratus’ appeal to hearsay acknowledges the central role that his brother played in the Trojan war fabula.
The emphasis on Antilochus’ speed, however, points not so much to the hero’s duel with Memnon as to his more general reputation as a runner in the wider tradition. In the Iliad’s footrace, he is introduced as the fastest of all the Achaean youths (ὃ γὰρ αὖτε νέους ποσὶ πάντας ἐνίκα, Il. 23.756), while Menelaus earlier claims that he is unmatched in his youth, speed and valour, paralleling Peisistratus’ description of his brother’s key traits (οὔ τις σεῖο νεώτερος ἄλλος Ἀχαιῶν, | οὔτε ποσὶν θάσσων, οὔτ’ ἄλκιμος ὡς σὺ μάχεσθαι, Il. 15.569–70). Elsewhere in the Iliad, moreover, Antilochus is called a ‘swift warrior’ (θοὸς … πολεμιστής, Il. 15.585) – a phrase used only once elsewhere in Homer of Aeneas, another hero renowned for his speedFootnote 86 – and his agility is repeatedly stressed in his key contribution to the Iliadic narrative: his delivery of the news of Patroclus’ death to Achilles (θᾶσσον ἰόντα, Il. 17.654; βῆ δὲ θέειν, 17.698; πόδες φέρον, 17.700; πόδας ταχὺς ἄγγελος, 18.2).Footnote 87 Although we do not have other evidence for his depiction elsewhere in archaic Greek epic, such a character trait was presumably an established feature of Antilochus in the Trojan war myth, not just limited to the Iliad. Indeed, earlier in the Odyssey, Nestor has already described his son in precisely the same terms as Peisistratus does here, suggesting that the attributes are formulaic and traditional (Ἀντίλοχος, περὶ μὲν θείειν ταχὺς ἠδὲ μαχητής, Od. 3.112 ~ Od. 4.202). After all, it is especially appropriate for Antilochus to share a major attribute of his companion, ‘swift-footed’ Achilles (e.g. Ἀχιλῆα πόδας ταχύν, Il. 13.348).Footnote 88 Peisistratus’ appeal to hearsay in Odyssey 4 thus looks beyond the immediate narrative to point to Antilochus’ pre-eminence as a runner in the wider Trojan tradition. By indexing another element of cyclic epic, Homer signals not just his allusion to other features of the Trojan war narrative, but also his mastery over the mass of mythical material at his disposal.
In the Iliad, meanwhile, Antilochus himself appeals to hearsay when talking of Odysseus’ ‘raw old age’ during the funeral games for Patroclus (ὠμογέροντα δέ μίν φασ’ ἔμμεναι, Il. 23.791). On one level, this index simply reflects Odysseus’ traditional seniority within the Greek camp (especially when viewed from Antilochus’ youthful perspective).Footnote 89 But as de Jong notes, φασί seems to place a particular emphasis on the preceding adjective ὠμογέροντα, making it ‘a kind of quotation, a nickname of Odysseus’.Footnote 90 The word is a Homeric hapax legomenon, which was variously interpreted in antiquity as referring either to ‘early’ or to ‘premature’ old age.Footnote 91 But if it is a ‘quotation’ of sorts, from what kind of tradition does it derive? Given the generally proleptic flavour of the funeral games, which foreshadow many later events of the Trojan cycle (§iv.2), I would suggest that this reference also looks forward: in this case, to the wider fabula of Odysseus’ later life, as known from the Odyssey and Telegony. Unlike the ‘swift-fated’ Achilles, destined to die young at Troy, Odysseus was traditionally associated with a long and prosperous old age.Footnote 92 The hero spends much of the second half of the Odyssey disguised as an old man (παλαιοῦ … γέροντος, Od. 13.432) and is repeatedly addressed as a γέρων (e.g. Od. 14.37, 45, 122, etc.).Footnote 93 But this deceptive role-playing only foreshadows his future old age beyond the bounds of the poem, as reflected in Teiresias’ prophecy (Od. 11.100–37) and as subsequently narrated in the Telegony (arg. 1–3 GEF).Footnote 94 More generally, the centrality of old age to the Odyssean tradition is further reflected in the figure of the hero’s father, Laertes, who is in many ways a doublet of his son;Footnote 95 indeed, he is explicitly described as being beset by a ‘raw old age’, just like the Iliadic Odysseus (ἐν ὠμῷ γήραϊ, Od. 15.357).Footnote 96 Senectitude, therefore, is a prominent feature of Odysseus’ fabula; it was perhaps this very association which encouraged pseudo-Longinus to conceive of the Odyssey as the product of Homer’s old age (Subl. 9.11–14).Footnote 97
Antilochus’ description of ὠμογέρων Odysseus thus taps into a wider tradition of Odyssean old age. The adjective ὠμογέρων parallels the situation of the Odyssean Laertes (ἐν ὠμῷ γήραϊ, Od. 15.357), but it also resonates with Teiresias’ prophetic mention of Odysseus’ sleek old age (γήρᾳ … λιπαρῷ, Od. 11.136), another rare phrase which seems to have been particularly associated with Odysseus (cf. Od. 19.368, 23.283). The only other epic instance of a similar idiom relates to Nestor (λιπαρῶς γηρασκέμεν, Od. 4.210) in a context celebrating his fortunate long life (perhaps as a model for Odysseus?), while its two other pre-Hellenistic appearances both evoke Odysseus as a model of long life and continued familial prosperity.Footnote 98 The hero was the archetype of a full and gentle old age, ensuring a prosperous stability for his people (λαοὶ | ὄλβιοι, Od. 11.136–7). In describing the hero as ὠμογέρων, Homer thus appears to disrupt linear time by looking forward to these events that lie strictly beyond the Iliad. Within the wider proleptic context of the funeral games, Antilochus’ reference to Odysseus’ old age alludes to yet another later episode of the Trojan war tradition, signposted through φασί.
Such self-aware citation of tradition may even extend to direct textual allusion. The strongest case for this comes from the Odyssey, when Telemachus reports to Mentor-Athena that Nestor has been king for three generations of men (Od. 3.243–5):
But now I want to enquire and ask Nestor about another story, since he knows what is right and wise beyond all others. For they say that he has ruled over three generations of men.
On an internal level, this reference to Nestor’s age emphasises his wisdom and authority. He is a reliable source of information for Telemachus to consult. Such fabled seniority is the very kind of thing that Telemachus would have heard stories about as he was growing up on Ithaca, so φασίν makes natural sense within the story world: this is precisely the kind of tale that people tell, and the very kind of detail for which Telemachus would have to rely on the experience of others. As scholars have long recognised, however, this description of the Pylian king also closely resembles his opening description in the Iliad (Il. 1.247–52):
Among them rose up sweetly spoken Nestor, the clear-voiced speaker of the Pylians, from whose tongue speech flowed sweeter than honey. He had already seen two generations of mortal men pass away, those who had previously been born and reared with him in holy Pylos, and now he ruled over the third.
This connection was already noted by ancient and Byzantine scholars. The Odyssean scholia remark that Telemachus’ sentiment ‘has been adapted from the phrase in the Iliad’ (παρὰ τὸ ἐν Ἰλιάδι πεποίηται “μετὰ δὲ τριτάτοισιν ἄνασσεν”, Σ EHMaT Od. 3.245a Ariston.), while Eustathius comments that ‘the poet succinctly paraphrases what was said about Nestor at more length in the Iliad’ (παραφράζων συντόμως ὁ ποιητὴς τὸ ἐν Ἰλιάδι περὶ Νέστορος πλατύτερον ἱστορηθέν, Eust. 1465.46–7 ad Od. 3.245–6 = i 124.5–6 Stallbaum). Of course, the two passages are not identical, and scholars have long been vexed by a slight discrepancy between them: on a literal reading, Nestor appears to have only ruled for one generation in the Iliad, but three in the Odyssey.Footnote 99 Martin West’s assessment is not atypical: he describes the Odyssean line as ‘an egregiously unsuccessful attempt to reproduce the sense of A 250–2’.Footnote 100 However, Grethlein has highlighted the essential consistency between both passages: in each case, Nestor is pictured as having ruled over his own generation, as well as those of his children and grandchildren. As he acknowledges, the resulting timeframe skews both epics’ implicit chronology (seemingly interposing another generation between Nestor and his sons), but in both passages this can be explained as an exaggeration to reinforce Nestor’s authority.Footnote 101 Given the similar hyperbole and the shared emphasis on Nestor’s age, experience and wisdom, this thus remains a strikingly close parallel.
For scholars who are prepared to see a direct intertextual connection between the Iliad and Odyssey, this is certainly an attractive case for a direct, indexed allusion in archaic Greek epic: beneath Telemachus’ vague, pluralised φασίν, we may detect a specific reference to the Iliad. After all, the Iliadic passage derives from Nestor’s very first appearance in that poem, part of a memorable description of the Pylian king’s mellifluous speech (Il. 1.248–9).Footnote 102 It is – to use a phrase familiar from later periods – a ‘purple patch’ that could easily stick in an audience’s mind. By evoking it here, Homer and Telemachus would draw on literary precedent to authorise their exaggerated claim about Nestor’s age, gesturing to the fuller prior account of the Iliad, a truly ‘brief paraphrase’ as Eustathius claimed. Indeed, we could even see this allusion pre-empted in Telemachus’ wish to ἔπος ἄλλο μεταλλῆσαι (Od. 3.243), literally ‘enquire about another story’, but perhaps also ‘search after another epic’ (i.e. the Iliad).Footnote 103
Such a direct connection is certainly possible, and one that I would not want to rule out. It is likely, however, that such a characterisation of Nestor’s seniority and triple-rule would not have been restricted to these two places in the archaic epic tradition. Nestor is a mainstay of the Trojan war story (cf. §i.2.1), who features across the Epic Cycle from the Cypria to the Nostoi, with a series of old and only partially understood epithets which indicate a character of considerable antiquity. His seniority and experience are essential parts of his mythical fabula; throughout the Iliad, his exceptional age is a recurring characteristic, already fixed in tradition (cf. Il. 2.555; §iv.2.1). In that case, we may suspect here engagement with the larger tradition surrounding Nestor, not restricted to a single source.Footnote 104 This detail of his age and triple-rule is indeed what epic bards repeatedly ‘tell of’; the Iliad and Odyssey are simply two instantiations of what was most likely a common motif. It is significant, however, that this index comes in the voice of Telemachus, a figure who is no stranger to song (Od. 1.325–59). Once more, the distinction between song within and outside the story world begins to break down.
Regardless of one’s stance on the precise ‘target’ of this allusion, therefore, what is clear is that this φασίν – embedded in the voice of an internal character – already points to poetry beyond the Odyssey. Like the previous indices we have examined in this section, the device situates Homer’s poetry within a larger road map of myth, highlighting the poet’s detailed and encyclopaedic mastery of his mythical repertoire – not only on the level of plot and action, but also in the construction and articulation of individual characters.
Prominent Protagonists
Such indexed allusions to specific characters gravitate most towards the major protagonist of each Homeric epic: Achilles in the Iliad and Odysseus in the Odyssey. By concentrating on the talk swirling around each hero, Homer signposts his engagement and adaptation of prior traditions, while also acknowledging the key role which his own poetry plays in shaping the mythological record.
In the case of Achilles, these indices centre especially around the hero’s mixed parentage and ambiguous position between the mortal and divine worlds. We will consider Agenor’s indexed assertion of Achilles’ mortality below (Il. 21.568–70: §ii.2.4), but for now we can cite other cases in which internal characters comment on Achilles’ status. In Iliad 6, the Trojan augur Helenus introduces Achilles’ descent from a goddess with φασί (ὅν πέρ φασι θεᾶς ἐξ ἔμμεναι, Il. 6.100), marking the traditional and central role of Thetis in the hero’s biography. Similarly, when Aeneas later faces Achilles, he emphasises that they are both familiar with each other’s ancestry: they ‘know’ it from ‘hearing the ancient legends told by [or ‘about’] mortal men’ (ἴδμεν … | πρόκλυτ’ ἀκούοντες ἔπεα θνητῶν ἀνθρώπων, Il. 20.203–4). As Edwards notes, this comment can easily be taken as a reference ‘to epic poetry celebrating the exploits of the two heroes’,Footnote 105 a reference which is reinforced by the use of the noun ἔπεα: not just ‘words’ in general, but also ‘poetic’ or even ‘epic utterances’.Footnote 106 Alongside the mention of ἄνθρωποι (‘people’), commonly singled out as the audience and propagators of epic poetry elsewhere,Footnote 107 Aeneas’ emphasis on the fame and antiquity of these ἔπεα highlights the epic traditionality of both his and Achilles’ lineage.Footnote 108 In his following words (206–7), Aeneas proves the accuracy of his knowledge, claiming that ‘they say’ that Achilles is the offspring of Peleus and Thetis (φασί, Il. 20.206). Once more, Achilles’ divine ancestry is pinpointed as a key feature of tradition.
In the Odyssey, meanwhile, Odysseus’ mythical career and accomplishments are similarly marked through the language of hearsay. When addressing Nestor in Book 3, Odysseus’ son Telemachus claims that his father ‘once, they say, fought by your side and sacked the city of the Trojans’ (ὅν ποτέ φασι | σὺν σοὶ μαρνάμενον Τρώων πόλιν ἐξαλαπάξαι, Od. 3.84–5), while when reunited with his father, he remarks that ‘I have always heard of your great fame, that you were a spearman in strength of hand and wise in counsel’ (ἦ τοι σεῖο μέγα κλέος αἰὲν ἄκουον, | χεῖράς τ’ αἰχμητὴν ἔμεναι καὶ ἐπίφρονα βουλήν, Od. 16.241–2). Although these cases may simply reflect Telemachus’ limited direct knowledge about his own father and thus inevitable resort to indirect hearsay (cf. Od. 1.215–16), they nevertheless suggest that both the events of the Trojan War and Odysseus’ exploits in them have already become established (and frequent, αἰέν) in the talk of men, as indeed they had: we can readily compare Demodocus’ first and third songs in Odyssey 8, or Menelaus’ and Helen’s competing accounts in Odyssey 4, which together emphasise the centrality of Odysseus as both warrior and schemer.Footnote 109
It is particularly Odysseus’ resourcefulness, however, that is acknowledged as an established feature of tradition. Later in the poem, Telemachus again attributes his father’s reputation to hearsay, now with a focus on his cunning (Od. 23.124–6): ‘they say’ (φάσ’) Odysseus is pre-eminent in wiles (μῆτιν, 23.125). Similarly, when Odysseus himself reveals his identity in Scheria, he asserts that he is ‘an object of concern to all men’ for his tricks (δόλοι) and that his ‘fame reaches the heavens’, employing language that mirrors Circe’s allusive nod to Argonautic myth (ὃς πᾶσι δόλοισιν | ἀνθρώποισι μέλω, καί μευ κλέος οὐρανὸν ἵκει, Od. 9.19–20; cf. Ἀργὼ πᾶσι μέλουσα, Od. 12.70).Footnote 110 These comments point to the well-established tradition of Odysseus as the arch-deviser of the Trojan war myth, a reputation reflected in his formulaic epithet πολύμητις (‘of many wiles’), and more than deserved by his role in such episodes as the ambushes of Dolon, Rhesus and Helenus, as well as his various spying missions in Troy and the mobilisation of the Wooden Horse (Il. 10.338–579; Il. Parv. arg. 2a, 4b–d GEF; Od. 8.500–20). These indices highlight the traditionality of Odysseus’ cunning, while also acknowledging the Odyssey’s role in cementing it.Footnote 111 Like Achilles, Odysseus emerges from his epic as a figure who is much talked of – and even more so, given his absence from Ithaca for the majority of the poem.
Homer thus indexes allusions to familiar aspects of the Trojan war tradition through the words of his characters. In some cases, he gestures to general events and broader elements of the mythical story: the Trojans’ might, the suitors’ insolence and the returns of the Greeks from Troy. But he also indexes specific characteristics of individual heroes: Antilochus’ speed, Odysseus’ old age and Nestor’s experience, as well as Achilles’ divine parentage and Odysseus’ cunning guile. In so doing, the poet emphasises the traditionality of his material, while also foregrounding his mastery over the larger mythical canon: in gesturing to what ‘others say’, he highlights his selective control of his inherited tradition.
In many respects, these examples support Scodel’s concept of Homer’s ‘rhetoric of traditionality’. As she has argued, the poet presents his material as traditional and familiar, eliding his own authorial presence and effacing any hint of originality.Footnote 112 By presenting these events and details as what ‘they say’, Homer does indeed position them within a pre-existing canon of tradition and distances them from his own creativity. The Homeric epics are a retelling of what has been said before. However, Scodel’s theory does not work for all cases of indexical hearsay. On some occasions, indexed allusions involve a more competitive engagement with tradition. We have already noted Homer’s possible nod to competing traditions over Typhoeus’ final resting place (§ii.2.1), while Telemachus’ indexing of Odysseus’ μῆτις includes an assertion that no one could contend with his father’s guile (ἐρίσειε, Od. 23.126) – a statement that suggests the pre-eminence of not only Odysseus, but also the very poem which preserves his deeds.Footnote 113 In the following section, we will consider further appeals to hearsay which foreground a more competitive engagement with the mythic tradition.
II.2.4 Contesting Tradition
Far from always asserting the authority of tradition, some characters’ appeals to hearsay bear a far more agonistic edge, not just acknowledging the wider mythical canon, but directing an audience to specific elements of it which Homer has pointedly suppressed or diverged from. What ‘people say’ can prove a distancing foil as much as a legitimising badge of authority.
Lies, Lies
On some occasions, the talk of others is explicitly branded as deceitful lies. In Iliad 5, for example, the Greek Tlepolemus accuses Lycian Sarpedon (Zeus’s son) of failing to live up to the standards of his own father Heracles, another son of Zeus (Il. 5.633–7):Footnote 114
Sarpedon, counsellor of the Lycians, why must you cower here, being a man unskilled in battle? They lie when they say that you are the offspring of aegis-bearing Zeus, since you fall far short of those men who were born to Zeus in previous generations of men.
Tlepolemus accuses Sarpedon of cowering from battle as Agamemnon criticised Diomedes in Book 4 (τίς τοι ἀνάγκη | πτώσσειν, 5.633–4 ~ τί πτώσσεις, 4.371: §ii.2.2),Footnote 115 but here he goes even further than the Greek general by actively challenging the tradition of Sarpedon’s divine parentage.Footnote 116 Of course, in this case his assertions prove misguided: Homer has already introduced the pair as a son and grandson of Zeus (5.631), while Tlepolemus’ swift death and Zeus’s later support of Sarpedon demonstrate through action that what ‘they say’ about the Lycian is indeed correct. But the hero’s countering of hearsay serves as a model for the poet’s own conduct elsewhere. Like Tlepolemus, Homer attempts to substitute tradition with a replacement narrative. But unlike his characters, the poet’s divine support and broader vantage point allows him to sift through the realms of hearsay with much more authority – and success.
Looking beyond the Iliad and Odyssey for a moment, the fragmentary Homeric Hymn to Dionysus opens with an extended instance of such contestation (HhDion. A.2–8):Footnote 117
For some say it was at Dracanum, some on windy Icarus, some on Naxos, O Zeus-born Bull god, and some by the Alpheius, the deep-eddying river, {that Semele conceived and bore you to Zeus who delights in thunder}; and others, lord, say that you were born at Thebes. But they are all liars. The father of gods and men begot you far from humankind, in secret from white-armed Hera.
The poet begins by canvassing a range of locations for Dionysus’ birthplace, all of which are attributed to the common talk of men (φάσ’, 3; λέγουσι, 6). But the poet – like Tlepolemus – dismisses such traditions as lies (ψευδόμενοι, 7), in favour of his own alternative explanation (Nysa, 9). In some respects, this opening priamel fits into the common hymnic motif of aporia, in which a poet expresses his hesitation about where or how to begin (e.g. πῶς τάρ σ’ ὑμνήσω, HhAp. 19).Footnote 118 But here, there is in fact no uncertainty about where or how the poet is starting: he is set on the god’s birthplace from the start, and the only question is which tradition is correct.Footnote 119 We are no longer in a position to determine whether the dismissed locations represent pre-existing alternative traditions which the poet counters, or simply foils that he has invented for rhetorical effect. But what is crucial for us here is the fact that the poet represents these dismissed alternatives as belonging to the domain of hearsay: it is what others say – and they are explicitly wrong.
This discourse of poetic lies has a wider currency in archaic Greek epic, especially as refracted through the voices of internal figures.Footnote 120 At the outset of the Theogony, the Muses claim that they can speak ‘lies that seem like the truth’ (Theog. 27–8):
We know how to speak many lies that seem like the truth, and we know – when we wish – how to sing truth.
This statement has often been interpreted as a polemical dig against the falsities of Homeric epic, especially given the verbal parallel with Od. 19.203 (ἴσκε ψεύδεα πολλὰ λέγων ἐτύμοισιν ὁμοῖα).Footnote 121 Even if we do not accept such a precise intertextual connection, however, it is likely that Hesiod here distances himself from the ‘falsehoods’ of other (epic?) poetic traditions in favour of his own truth-speaking poetry. Elsewhere in his works, he presents ψεύδεα in a pejorative light: Falsehoods are the children of Eris (‘Strife’) alongside a host of horrific siblings like Famine and Ruin (Theog. 226–32), while in the Works and Days they are among Hermes’ gifts to the destructive Pandora (Op. 78).Footnote 122 Unlike the deceptive falsities of other poetry, Hesiod implies that his own Muses do want to speak ἀληθέα, ‘true things’. Like the narrator of the Homeric Hymn to Dionysus, he opens by dismissing prior traditions as ‘false’ to carve out his own space in the tradition.
This pejorative rejection of ‘false’ alternative traditions also lends some support to those scholars who have seen an allusive polemic underlying the ‘lying tales’ of the Odyssey. In the second half of the epic, the disguised hero utters five false tales about his own nostos, all of which are patently false within Homer’s narrative world (cf. Od. 13.254–5, 19.203).Footnote 123 Many scholars suspect that these tales reflect pre-existing alternative traditions of Odysseus’ return which the poet has incorporated into his epic but de-authorised by recasting them as lies.Footnote 124 This is an attractive, if speculative suggestion. But it may be strengthened by the fact that Odysseus also presents parts of his tales as the object of hearsay. In his fictional tales to Eumaeus and Penelope, the hero claims that he has ‘learned’ of Odysseus (Ὀδυσῆος ἐγὼ πυθόμην, Od. 14.321) and ‘recently heard’ of his return from Pheidon, the king of the Thesprotians (ἤδη Ὀδυσῆος ἐγὼ περὶ νόστου ἄκουσα | ἀγχοῦ, Od. 19.270–1, cf. ἀκοῦσαι, Od. 17.525) – just as Nestor has ‘learned’ of the Achaeans’ returns and Telemachus has heard of Agamemnon’s death (πεύθομαι, Od. 3.187; ἀκούετε, Od. 3.193). It is thus very possible that Homer – more implicitly than the poet of the Homeric Hymn – is downgrading other Odyssean traditions as mere lies, asserting the primacy and authority of his own version of events over the talk of others. While exploiting the language of hearsay to evoke the larger oral tradition within which he works, Homer would then be highlighting his own superiority by discounting the truth value of rival and alternative traditions. Like Tlepolemus, Hesiod, and the poet of the Homeric Hymn to Dionysus, here too, the circulating stories of others would be dismissed as lies.
Achillean (Im)mortality: Suppressing Alternatives
Presenting alternative versions of myth as ‘false words’ thus seems to have been an established mode for delegitimising rival traditions. But mere appeals to hearsay could also carry the same polemical charge, even without an explicit comment on a specific claim’s truth value. When Homer’s characters report what ‘they say’, we are invited to reconsider the details under discussion and ask whether others or indeed Homer himself would report things differently.
In the Iliad, such combative positioning is especially centred around the figure of Achilles. When Eurypylus claims that ‘they say’ (φασίν) Patroclus learnt his knowledge of healing herbs from Achilles, who in turn learnt it from Cheiron (Il. 11.830–2), the poet gestures to the tradition of Achilles’ tuition by Cheiron, a fantastical version of the hero’s upbringing which Homer tends to downplay elsewhere.Footnote 125 More polemical, however, is Agenor’s assertion of Achilles’ mortality, that ‘people say he is mortal’ (Il. 21.568–70):
His flesh, too, I suspect, can be pierced with sharp bronze; there is only one life in him, and people say he is mortal. But Zeus the son of Cronus is granting him glory.
Unlike all the other examples of φασί I have discussed so far, this example is unusual since it does not lack a nominative agent, prompting de Jong to group it under her category (A) of φασί-utterances, those ‘with definite subject’.Footnote 126 Yet the noun ἄνθρωποι (‘mankind’) hardly provides much more precise specification than the usual anonymous use of φασί; it is an ill fit when grouped alongside other specified subjects such as the Trojans and their allies (Il. 9.234), Ajax’s comrades (Il. 17.637), the suitors (Od. 2.238), the Phaeacians (Od. 7.322) or Odysseus’ father and son (Od. 11.176). The apparently superfluous ἄνθρωποι thus lays unusual stress on the phrase. On the one hand, this may play on the subject of the talk: ‘mortals’ claim that Achilles is ‘mortal’. But it is also significant that the noun ἄνθρωποι indicates the audience or propagators of poetry elsewhere in early Greek epic: Helen and Paris will be the subject of song for men of future generations (καὶ ὀπίσσω | ἀνθρώποισι … ἀοίδιμοι ἐσσομένοισι, Il. 6.357–8); Odysseus claims that he is the subject of song among men because of his trickery (πᾶσι δόλοισιν | ἀνθρώποισι μέλω, Od. 9.19–20); and Agamemnon’s shade claims that Clytemnestra will be the subject of a hateful song among men (στυγερὴ δέ τ’ ἀοιδὴ | ἔσσετ’ ἐπ’ ἀνθρώπους, Od. 24.200–1).Footnote 127 It is thus tempting to treat this φασί as an invitation for Homer’s audience to consider other poetic traditions surrounding Achilles and questions of his (im)mortality: ‘people say’ that Achilles is mortal, but are they right?Footnote 128 As with Achilles’ tuition from Cheiron, φασί here allusively acknowledges but simultaneously rejects an alternative tradition in which Achilles was more than mortal.
Of course, direct evidence for the tradition of Achilles’ immortality is attested only far later. The first extant instances of Thetis’ attempts to immortalise Achilles occur in the Hellenistic period, with passing references in Dosiadas’ Altar (σποδεύνας ἶνις Ἐμπούσας, AP 15.26.3) and Lycophron’s Alexandra (178–9, with Tzetz. ad Alex. 178). Apollonius of Rhodes offers a fuller account in his Argonautica (4.869–79), but this seems to draw heavily on Demeter’s similar treatment of Demophon in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter (231–91), which complicates any attempt to trace the myth’s earlier history.Footnote 129 Moreover, the Styx-dipping tradition, the most famous aspect of the myth in modern popular culture, is only securely attested even later: besides a possible passing allusion in the Batrachomyomachia (233), this detail of the myth appears first in literature only in Statius’ Achilleid (Achil. 1.133–4, 268–70, 480–1), and even later in art.Footnote 130 It is thus possible that traditions of Achilles’ immortality are a post-Homeric invention. Indeed, some scholars suspect a Hellenistic origin for the myth.Footnote 131
Despite our late and limited evidence, however, it is likely that earlier traditions did exist surrounding Thetis’ concern over Achilles’ mortality and the hero’s subsequent invulnerability.Footnote 132 The obliqueness and brevity of Statius’ triple allusion to the Styx story suggest that the poet is drawing on an already familiar tradition, which he even indexes through temporal adverbs (saepe, iterum, Achil. 1.133–4). This alone would not rule out a Hellenistic origin for the myth, but there are strong grounds for tracing it back earlier. Invulnerability was a common attribute of other heroes in archaic myth,Footnote 133 and we can find a number of hints that it was also applied to Achilles at an early date. The Hesiodic Aegimius already recounted Thetis’ attempts to test the immortality of her children by Peleus, here too by dipping them in water (Hes. fr. 300); we know that Achilles already enjoyed quasi-immortality in the Aethiopis with his afterlife on the White Isle – thanks again to Thetis’ intervention (Aeth. arg. 4b GEF); and the Iliad itself also conceals a veiled allusion to Achilles’ heel and associated invulnerability in Homer’s treatment of Diomedes’ foot-wound from Paris (Il. 11.369–83), part of Diomedes’ larger adoption of Achillean traits in the first half of the poem (§i.2.2).Footnote 134 Various hints in archaic poetry thus suggest that the myth was of considerable antiquity.
Such a conclusion can be bolstered further by a neoanalytical case of motival priority. A number of scholars have argued that the Apollonian ‘immortalisation by fire’ is more appropriate to Achilles than Demophon, and thus cannot be wholly derived from the Homeric Hymn.Footnote 135 The logic of the myth appears to be that fire burns off the infant’s mortal half, leaving only his immortal nature.Footnote 136 And as Burgess notes, it is Achilles, not Demophon, who ‘is semidivine, and so could logically become immortalised if his mortality were burned away’.Footnote 137
It is thus plausible that traditions about Thetis’ attempted immortalisation of her son existed already in the archaic period and that Homer’s original audiences may well have been aware of them.Footnote 138 The Iliad’s general silence on this specific tradition would be in keeping with its suppression of immortality elsewhere, so as to emphasise the stark dichotomy between short-lived mortals and the immortal gods.Footnote 139 Yet by having a character insist on the hero’s mortality with an indexical φασί, the poet acknowledges this alternative tradition, while pointedly highlighting his denial and divergence from it. In this case, Homer’s perspective coheres with what Agenor claims ‘people say’, but it is implicitly set against a major narrative variant.Footnote 140
Competing Traditions: Penelope versus the Women of the Catalogue
The same agonistic strategy is also in play when Homer situates his own epic against other traditions of poetry and myth beyond those of the Trojan war. In such cases, the poet does not so much deny the truth value of other traditions, but rather uses them as a foil to assert the supremacy of his own narrative. A prime example is the relationship of the Odyssey to female catalogue poetry. Scholars have long recognised that the Iliad and Odyssey presuppose earlier traditions of female catalogue poetry familiar to us from the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women. Margalit Finkelberg has argued that Ajax’s appearance in the list of Helen’s suitors (Hes. fr. 204.44–51) lies behind his entry in the Homeric Catalogue of Ships (Il. 2.557–8),Footnote 141 while Ian Rutherford has highlighted various correspondences between the Catalogue of Women and other poems in the early epic tradition.Footnote 142 In particular, Odysseus’ catalogue of heroines in the Nekyia (Od. 11.225–329) displays considerable overlap with the Hesiodic poem, especially visible in the case of its first heroine, Tyro, and her liaison with Poseidon (Od. 11.235–59): the preserved words of several Hesiodic lines precisely parallel Odysseus’ account of the episode,Footnote 143 while the Odyssey’s comparison of surging water to a mountain when Poseidon conceals their lovemaking is also said to have occurred in the Catalogue (Od. 11.243–4, Hes. fr. 32).Footnote 144 Despite the fragmentary state of the Hesiodic poem, there is a clear and strikingly close connection between these two passages.
What we make of these parallels depends in part on our theoretical preconceptions, but I am inclined to accept the conclusion of Rutherford that the Catalogue narrative likely pre-dated the Odyssey, even if the Catalogue as we have it is of a later date – a similar conclusion to that regularly drawn concerning the Epic Cycle.Footnote 145 In that case, the surviving fragments of the Catalogue offer potential evidence for the kind of pre-Homeric traditions with which the Odyssey may have engaged. Of course, we must handle this evidence with considerable care and caution, since parts of the Catalogue as we have it may display some Homeric influence,Footnote 146 but even so, our surviving fragments still provide the best window onto the possible contours of lost pre-Homeric traditions. In the immediate context of Odyssey 11, I thus consider it plausible that Homer is evoking earlier female catalogue traditions that would later coalesce into our Hesiodic Catalogue of Women.Footnote 147 As in later literature, so already in the Odyssey, the Underworld is a natural site for direct engagement with the literary past.Footnote 148
However, the Odyssey’s engagement with catalogue traditions is first signalled far earlier in the poem and in a far more overtly agonistic manner, during the Ithacan assembly of Book 2. Antinous, in his frustration at Penelope’s devious tricks for delaying the suitors’ advances, claims that she is unrivalled, even among women of a former age (Od. 2.115–22):
But if she will continue to vex the sons of the Achaeans for a long time, mindful in her heart of the things which Athena has granted her above other women: knowledge of most beautiful handiwork, good sense, and cunning – such as we have never yet heard that any of the women of old knew, those lovely-haired women who lived long ago: Tyro, Alcmene and Mycene of the lovely garland – not one of them had thoughts similar to Penelope’s. But this at any rate she has devised improperly.
Antinous here compares Penelope with three women of the distant past: Tyro, Alcmene and Mycene, all of whom occupy prominent positions in Greek myth as the ancestors of many of its most famous heroes. In giving birth to Aeson, Pheres, Amythaon, Pelias and Neleus (Od. 11.254–9), Tyro in particular counts numerous heroes from the Trojan, Theban and Argonautic sagas in her lineage, including Melampus, Jason, Admetus, Adrastus and Nestor; Alcmene was the mother of Heracles, whose numerous affairs ensured a plentiful progeny; and Mycene, the eponymous heroine of Mycenae, was a significant ancestor in the Argive family tree as the mother of Argus, guardian of Io. By claiming that Penelope surpasses such eminent figures of the distant past, Antinous aims to criticise her unconventional ‘cunning’ (κέρδεα, 118), a trait that he has already blamed for the current impasse on Ithaca (2.88).Footnote 149 But in so doing, he inadvertently praises Penelope’s exceptionality and highlights her obvious appeal: on this logic, whoever succeeds in wooing her will enjoy an illustrious and unsurpassed progeny – though as Danek notes, this comparison also exposes the suitors’ hybris: all three of these mythical women had divine lovers, so if Penelope is superior to them, she is completely out of the suitors’ league.Footnote 150
Besides this ironic reflection on the suitors’ situation, Antinous’ direct contrast between Penelope and these other mythical women also activates a more allusive contrast between the Odyssey and female genealogical poetry. All three of Antinous’ comparanda also feature prominently in Hesiodic catalogue poetry: we have already encountered Tyro’s presence in both the Hesiodic Catalogue and the Odyssean Nekyia (Od. 11.235–59; Hes. frr. 30–2), while we can find Alcmene in both lists (Od. 11.266–8; Hes. fr. 193.19–20, fr. 195.8–63 = Scut. 1–56), as well as in the Great Ehoiai (frr. 248–9), where Mycene is also said to have featured (fr. 246).Footnote 151 Given the close combination of these women here, Antinous’ words point towards pre-existing female catalogue traditions, just as Odysseus’ do in the Nekyia. The likelihood of a reference to such traditions is further reinforced by the very nature of these lines: by listing the women in a miniature catalogue, Antinous repeats the compositional technique of Ehoiai poetry itself, while the word with which he introduces them, the relative pronoun οἷα (Od. 2.118), acts as a generic signpost, echoing the common introductory formula of such poetry (ἢ οἵη).Footnote 152 Antinous’ comparison thus imitates the key features of Hesiodic catalogue poetry at the same time as he evokes some of its principal protagonists.Footnote 153
The allusive nature of these verses is sealed, however, by their indexical framing: Antinous introduces these women by appealing to hearsay (ἀκούομεν, 118) and antiquity (παλαιῶν, 118; πάρος, 119). The names of these women have reached him through transmitted tales, while their age marks the venerability of these traditions and heightens the contrast with the present. Stephanie West remarks that ‘the antiquarian note’ of these lines ‘is slightly strange’,Footnote 154 yet viewed as indices of allusion, their function is clear: once more, appeal to hearsay signposts allusive interactions.Footnote 155 After all, as regular ‘auditors’ of Phemius’ songs (ἀκούοντες, Od. 1.325–7), the suitors are themselves ‘aficionados of epic poetry’; it is no surprise if they derive their knowledge from older song traditions.Footnote 156
Given this evocation of Hesiodic Catalogue poetry, Antinous’ comparison thus does much more than simply highlight Penelope’s desirability and objectionable craftiness. It also sets her Odyssean self against representatives of another rival poetic tradition. Despite Antinous’ attempts to criticise her κέρδεα, this comparison is in fact very favourable when viewed against the poem’s broader ideological framework. Penelope’s exceptional κέρδεα make her a prime match for Odysseus, whose own unrivalled κερδοσύνη (‘cunning’) is repeatedly highlighted in the epic (esp. Od. 19.285–6; cf. 4.251, 13.297, 14.31; cf. Il. 23.709). In addition, the only other specific figures whose κέρδεα are mentioned in the Odyssey are the couple’s son, Telemachus (18.216, 20.257), and Odysseus’ divine patron, Athena (13.297, 299). Within the broader context of the poem, κέρδεα are valorised as the emblematic and unifying trait of Odysseus’ household: κέρδεα are ‘arguably a defining theme of the Odyssey itself’.Footnote 157 By having Antinous assert Penelope’s superiority to catalogic women in these terms, Homer thus agonistically hints at the superiority of the tale in which she features: just as Penelope surpasses these women of the past, so too does the Odyssey trump the Hesiodic tradition of female catalogues. Antinous’ ensuing claim seals this agonistic one-upmanship: Penelope is winning great κλέος for herself – not just a ‘notorious reputation’, but also ‘epic fame’ (μέγα μὲν κλέος ἀυτῇ | ποιεῖτ’, 2.125–6).Footnote 158 As she surpasses the likes of Tyro and Alcmene, she too joins the ranks of those who are the subject of song in their own right.Footnote 159
The polemic of this comparison is heightened when we consider how these Hesiodic women were themselves presented as unrivalled paragons of womanhood. The Hesiodic Catalogue explicitly sets out to list those women who were ‘the best at that time [and the most beautiful on the earth]’ (α̣ἳ τότ’ ἄρισται ἔσαν̣ [καὶ κάλλισται κατὰ γαῖαν], Hes. fr. 1.3),Footnote 160 and both Tyro and Alcmene are further celebrated as flawless models of femininity in their entries in the Catalogue: Tyro surpasses all female women in beauty (εἶδος | [πασάων προὔχεσκε γυναι]κῶν θηλυτεράων, fr. 30.33–4) and is praised for her beautiful hair ([ἐϋπ]λόκαμος, fr. 30.25, notably the same epithet that Antinous uses of the Achaean women of the past: ἐϋπλοκαμῖδες Ἀχαιαί, Od. 2.119). Alcmene, meanwhile, receives a particularly lavish encomium (fr. 195.11–17 = Scut. 4–10):
She surpassed the tribe of female women in beauty and stature; and as for her mind, no woman could rival her, out of all those whom mortal women bore after sleeping with mortal men. Such charm wafted from her head and dark eyelids as comes from golden Aphrodite. And she honoured her husband in her heart as no other female woman has ever yet honoured hers.
In part, these verses draw on traditional elements of epic encomium: εἶδος (‘beauty’) and μέγεθος (‘stature’) are frequently combined in the praise, criticism or description of an individual’s physique, alongside other nouns such as δέμας (‘body’) and φυή (‘form’).Footnote 161 The image of wafting beauty is paralleled elsewhere in the Catalogue (fr. 43a.73–4) and the Homeric Hymn to Demeter (276). Yet the larger focus here on Alcmene’s νόος (‘mind’) and marital fidelity are uncommon in such descriptions. Somebody’s φρένες (‘wits’) are sometimes picked out for comment,Footnote 162 yet the only other mention of νόος in such contexts is Odysseus’ negative dismissal of Euryalus’ ‘stunted mind’ during the Phaeacian games of Odyssey 8, in comparison to his outstanding looks (εἶδος μὲν ἀριπρεπές, … νόον δ’ ἀποφώλιός ἐσσι, Od. 8.176–7). The Hesiodic poet’s emphasis on this attribute here, then, in notably combative terms (οὔ τις ἔριζε, fr. 195.12), highlights Alcmene’s exceptionality. So too does the ‘honour’ which she pays to her husband (fr. 195.16–17), an expression which finds no direct parallel in the early Greek tradition,Footnote 163 although there is perhaps an underlying touch of irony given her coming ‘affair’ with Zeus during Amphitryon’s absence.Footnote 164 In any case, if these two traits (intelligence and fidelity) were particularly associated with Alcmene in early genealogical traditions, as the uniqueness of these lines may suggest, Antinous’ use of her in the Odyssey as a foil to Penelope is even more pointed. Not only does Penelope surpass the best women of the past, but she eclipses even her closest rival in wit and marital loyalty.Footnote 165 She remains faithful to her husband,Footnote 166 and displays an unparalleled facility with κέρδεα (2.118). Penelope’s intelligence is unsurpassed, which makes her the perfect match for Odysseus and – ironically – completely unsuitable for Antinous, whose very name betrays his hostility to sensible thought (ἀντί + νόος: ‘enemy of discernment’).Footnote 167
Antinous’ words in Odyssey 2 thus position Penelope against key representatives of female catalogue poetry. Penelope proves superior even to the most intelligent and loyal women of this rival poetic tradition, a pre-eminence which reflects positively on the Homeric poet: his subject matter surpasses that of his predecessors. Near the start of the whole epic, Homer asserts the pre-eminence of his female protagonist and his own poetry, and he does so – rather ironically – through the ambivalent voice of a suitor. Although Antinous may attempt to criticise Penelope’s cunning, his synkrisis in fact foregrounds her exceptionality and unwittingly proves how suitable she is not only as a match for Odysseus but also as an emblem for the poem itself.
This emphasis on Penelope’s incomparability recurs several times later in the Odyssey with a similarly agonistic point.Footnote 168 When Penelope speaks to the disguised Odysseus on his return to Ithaca, she wants him to learn whether she is ‘pre-eminent among other women’ for her ‘intelligence and prudent cunning’ (δαήσεαι εἴ τι γυναικῶν | ἀλλάων περίειμι νόον καὶ ἐπίφρονα μῆτιν, Od. 19.325–6), while in the second Nekyia (Od. 24.192–202), Agamemnon compares her favourably with Clytemnestra (who also features in the Catalogue: frr. 23a.13–30, 176.5–6). However, it is especially Telemachus’ compliments before the bow contest in Odyssey 21 which resonate with Antinous’ earlier words (Od. 21.106–10):
But come now, you suitors, since this here is your prize before you: a woman who has no peer today throughout the Achaean land, neither in holy Pylos, nor in Argos, nor in Mycenae. [Nor in Ithaca itself, nor on the dark mainland.] But you know this yourselves – why do I need to praise my mother?
Like Antinous’ former praise, these verses evoke key features of the Hesiodic catalogue tradition: the οἵη (Od. 21.107) nods to the formula of catalogue poetry, like οἷα in Book 2,Footnote 169 while the very context of these lines – the wooing of a woman and the idea of a woman as a prize (ἄεθλον) – resonates with many of the common themes of the catalogic genre.Footnote 170 Here too, Penelope is set against the traditions of the Catalogue and comes out on top. Yet these lines also have a closer connection with Antinous’ earlier words than has been observed before. The initial trio of cities which Telemachus lists are all intimately linked with Antinous’ exempla: Tyro’s descendants ruled Pylos (Neleus/Nestor); Alcmene was from Argos, while her son Heracles was frequently imagined as the ruler of the locality (cf. Il. 15.29–30); and the city of Mycenae drew its name from Mycene herself.Footnote 171 Telemachus’ words thus not only evoke traditions of female catalogue poetry but also recall the implicitly agonistic intertextuality of the earlier episode. After all, he ends by claiming that the suitors themselves ‘know’ of Penelope’s incomparability (καὶ δ’ αὐτοὶ τόδε γ’ ἴστε, Od. 21.110), a remark that acknowledges their (and the external audience’s) familiarity with Antinous’ earlier words. Like the Iliadic allusions to Typhoeus and Tydeus, the indexed allusion in Odyssey 2 thus continues to resonate throughout the remainder of the poem, establishing an enduring contrast with another literary tradition and its paradigmatic representatives.Footnote 172
Indexical appeals to hearsay in Homer, therefore, not only flag and signpost allusion but also mark a deeply agonistic engagement with other traditions. As in later Latin poetry, the device is used to mark out a larger map of poetic territories within and against which a poet defines himself. The device exhibits not only an encyclopaedic but also an agonistic drive. In the following section, we shall see how this same combination of nuances co-exists in our wider corpus of archaic Greek epic.
II.2.5 Beyond Homer
As we have seen, Homeric appeals to hearsay in both the characters’ and narrator’s voice highlight the poet’s mastery of his mythical repertoire, within which he selects and builds his own narrative, following some paths of song while pointedly suppressing others. These indices exhibit an array of functions: most fundamentally, they signpost allusion to other traditions (if not texts), but they can also initiate an allusive dialogue that continues to resonate throughout a poem, or polemically challenge pre-existing and alternative strands of myth. Yet in all these cases, Homer uses such indices to position his poem against the larger store of traditional tales from which he draws his material, gesturing to an archive of epic song.
However, the Homeric epics were not unique in such applications of indexical hearsay. The broader corpus of archaic Greek epic displays many comparable instances of such encyclopaedic and agonistic engagement with tradition. We have already noted several possible examples: the Homeric Hymn to Dionysus’ dismissal of competing talk surrounding the god’s birthplace, Hesiod’s footnoting of Typhoeus’ sex life and his potential downgrading of other poetic traditions as ‘lies that seem like the truth’. But we can also cite a range of other cases in which archaic Greek epic poets indexed other traditions – or perhaps even other texts – through appeal to hearsay.
Take, for example, a papyrus fragment (ascribed to Hesiod or the epic Minyas) which draws on the authority of tradition with a character’s indexing φασί (P. Ibscher col. i; Minyas fr. 7* GEF = fr. *6 EGEF = Hes. fr. 280).Footnote 173 After encountering Meleager in the Underworld, Theseus justifies his and Peirithous’ katabasis in search of Persephone by arguing that Peirithous is merely following the example of the gods in desiring to marry a relative: ‘for they say that they too [sc. the gods] woo their glorious sisters and marry without the knowledge of their dear parents’ ([καὶ γὰρ] ἐκείνους φασὶ κασιγνήτας μεγ̣[ακ]υ̣δ̣εῖς | [μνησ]τ̣εύειν, γαμέειν δὲ φίλων ἀπ̣ά̣ν̣[ευθε τοκήων], 15–16). On one level, this index points to the traditional incest of the Olympian pantheon, an established feature of myth. But the phrase φίλων ἀπ̣ά̣ν̣[ευθε τοκήων] may also invite us to recall the most famous divine union of all, that of Zeus and Hera. In the Iliadic Δίος Ἀπάτη, Zeus is famously struck by a passion equal to that when he and his sister first furtively slept together ‘without their parents’ knowledge’ (φίλους λήθοντε τοκῆας, Il. 14.296), a phrase that closely parallels the sense and structure of the papyrus in the very same metrical sedes. Some caution is required, given the fragmentary nature of the papyrus, and the frequency with which ‘parents’ (τοκῆες) are ‘dear’ (φίλοι) throughout early Greek poetry.Footnote 174 But if Peirithous were indeed modelling his behaviour on that of Zeus (either as a reference to the Iliad or to the fabula of the divine marriage), it would reinforce the brazenness (and ultimate futility) of his already hybristic mission: Meleager is right to shudder at what he hears (Οἰνε̣ί̣δ̣η̣ς̣ δ̣ὲ κατέστυγε μῦθον ἀκού̣σ̣α̣ς̣, v. 24).Footnote 175
A stronger case for a direct textual echo can be made for the sole instance of φασί in the Works and Days, a case that parallels Telemachus’ potentially textual evocation of the Iliadic Nestor in the Odyssey. In the closing catalogue of ‘Days’, Hesiod claims that ‘on the fifth day, they say the Erinyes attended the birth of Oath, whom Eris bore as a bane for perjurers’ (ἐν πέμπτῃ γάρ φασιν Ἐρινύας ἀμφιπολεύειν | Ὅρκον γεινόμενον, τὸν Ἔρις τέκε πῆμ’ ἐπιόρκοις, Op. 803–4). We do not find this precise detail of the Erinyes attending Oath’s birth elsewhere, but this index attests to the traditional association that personified Oath (Op. 219) and the Erinyes (Il. 19.259–60, cf. 3.278–9) had with the punishment of perjurers, while also providing an aetiological explanation for the dangers that the fifth day of each month presented to those who were forsworn.Footnote 176 Most significantly, however, the detail of Oath’s birth looks back to its similar description in the Theogony, where the catalogue of Eris’ fourteen offspring (including Ψεύδεα: cf. §ii.2.4 above) reaches a climactic conclusion with Oath (Theog. 231–2):Footnote 177
and Oath, who is truly the greatest bane for humans on the earth, whenever someone deliberately swears a false oath.
Besides the general thematic link, the Works and Days echoes this passage verbally, ἐπιόρκοις and πῆμ’ picking up on the Theogony’s πημαίνει and ἐπίορκον – a rare verbal combination which only appears once elsewhere in extant Greek literature: of the river Styx in the Theogony, the divine equivalent of Oath, who is a ‘great bane’ for any divinity who swears a false oath (μέγα πῆμα θεοῖσιν. | ὅς κεν τὴς ἐπίορκον ἀπολλείψας ἐπομόσσῃ | ἀθανάτων κτλ., Theog. 792–4). Given the numerous close connections between the Theogony and the Works and Days (§i.2.3), it is very possible that, here too, we should see a specific cross reference to Hesiod’s earlier poem, drawing on its established authority. Of course, the Theogony did not specify the date of Oath’s birth or the presence of the Erinyes, but its precedent nevertheless buttresses the addition of these new details. In gesturing to hearsay, Hesiod expands and develops a pre-existing strand from his own poetry.
A more agonistic appeal to hearsay is offered by the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, in which the eponymous god attributes Apollo’s art of prophecy to tradition (HhHerm. 471–2):Footnote 178
They say that you learned prophecies from Zeus’s utterance, Far-worker (all divine decrees come from Zeus).
Besides the irony that the newborn Hermes is already somehow immersed in the currents of hearsay, this phrase is a clear reference to the traditional association of Apollo with prophecy, an association already attested in the Iliad by his patronage of the prophet Calchas (Il. 1.72). Beyond this general association, however, it is notable that Hermes’ words here are repeated by Apollo later in the same poem (ὅσα φημὶ δαήμεναι ἐκ Διὸς ὀμφῆς. | μαντείην, HhHerm. 532–3). The verbal repetition may suggest an independent formulaic phrase to which Hermes’ earlier φασί could allude, but the repetition may also add a touch of humorous irony: Hermes has prophetically pre-empted Apollo’s own claim to prophecy. It is as if he has proleptically heard and quoted Apollo’s sentiments, beating him at his own game of prophetic prediction. This agonistic one-upmanship would fit into the Hymn’s larger intertextual engagement with the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, a ‘sibling’ hymn with which it has been seen to compete agonistically elsewhere.Footnote 179 In the Apolline poem, Apollo’s oracular ability also plays a central role: indeed, the god’s opening words prophetically predict his future occupation (χρήσω τ’ ἀνθρώποισι Διὸς νημερτέα βουλήν, ‘I shall prophesy Zeus’s unerring plan to mortals’, HhAp. 132), a phrase that matches the sense, if not the vocabulary, of Hermes’ sentiment. Hermes’ appeal to hearsay in his own Hymn could thus point not only to Apollo’s established role as an oracular deity, but also to his particular establishment as such in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo.Footnote 180 By co-opting the prophetic voice himself, Hermes positions his own poem against that of his sibling rival, just as Antinous’ words in Odyssey 2 set Homer’s poem against female catalogue poetry.
To close this section, however, let us turn to an example which appears to be doing something a little different to what we have seen so far: not simply invoking or contesting the authority of tradition, but openly reworking it. In the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, the disguised goddess of love fabricates a patently false genealogy during her seduction of Anchises, which she legitimises through appeal to hearsay (HhAphr. 111–12):
My father is Otreus, whose name is famous – if you’ve perhaps heard of him; he rules over the whole of well-walled Phrygia.
Aphrodite conceals her fabrications with the veneer of hearsay, appropriating the authority of tradition. Indeed, her language is very similar to that of Sinon in Aeneid 2, in a comparable case of disguised invention (εἴ που ἀκούεις ~ si forte tuas pervenit ad auris, Aen. 2.81; ὀνομάκλυτος ~ incluta fama | gloria, Aen. 2.82–3: §i.1.1). In context, this is a patent lie. Aphrodite is not the son of a mortal, but of Zeus, king of the gods, as the narrator has just reminded us (Διὸς θυγάτηρ Ἀφροδίτη, HhAphr. 107). But her fictitious cover story is not an outright invention. It rather builds on and adapts tradition. We know barely anything else about Otreus, the man whom she co-opts as her father, but he is mentioned once elsewhere in archaic Greek literature, as one of two Phrygian rulers whom Priam assisted during an Amazon invasion (Il. 3.186). In later sources, he was considered Priam’s maternal grandfather (Apollod. Bibl. 3.12.3) or Dymas’ son, and so Hecuba’s brother (Σ T Il. 3.189 ex.). He may thus belong to lost traditions of Trojan and Phrygian conflicts against the Amazons, perhaps part of the larger background of Penthesilea’s involvement in the later stages of the Trojan war. But this alone hardly warrants his description as ὀνομάκλυτος (‘of famous name’).
There is thus considerable irony in the obscurity of this allegedly ‘famous’ father. If the Hymn’s audiences were familiar with the Iliad, Aphrodite’s εἴ που ἀκούεις (‘if you’ve perhaps heard of him’) could even playfully index Otreus’ sole Iliadic mention, inviting them to test their knowledge of the literary tradition: can they remember ‘hearing’ this name before?Footnote 181 Further encouragement to recall this specific Iliadic scene could also be found in Aphrodite’s later mention of the ‘Phrygians with darting steeds’ (Φρύγας αἰολοπώλους, HhAphr. 137), which picks up unique language from the same Iliadic passage (Φρύγας ἀνέρας αἰολοπώλους, Il. 3.185).Footnote 182 Douglas Olson has pursued such an Iliadic allusion even further, however. He notes that Otreus’ sole mention in the Iliad occurs during the Teichoscopia and suggests that the hymnist’s unique εὐτειχήτοιο (‘well-walled’) could gesture to this context. Similarly, the adjective used to describe Otreus in the Hymn (ὀνομάκλυτος) is a Homeric hapax legomenon that appears in Iliad 22, when Priam appeals to Hector, again from the vantage point of the Trojan walls (Il. 22.51).Footnote 183 Combining this evidence, Olson has proposed that ‘Aphrodite’s lying tale – which leads directly to the birth of Aeneas, who escaped the destruction of Troy – thus engages pointedly with the story of the ruin of Priam and his branch of the royal family’.Footnote 184 Through a strong emphasis on hearsay, her audience would then be invited both to see through her fiction and to ask where they have heard these words before.
This is an attractive reading, but the intricate verbal precision may go a little too far. After all, although the adjective ὀνομάκλυτος is strictly a Homeric hapax legomenon, it does occur again in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes (HhHerm. 59), and – in divided form as a noun and adjective – twice in the Odyssey (ὄνομα κλυτόν, Od. 9.364; 19.183).Footnote 185 In both Odyssean instances, the phrase refers to two of Odysseus’ false names (Outis and Aethon), suggesting that it may well have had a traditional association with fabricated identities, an association that would be particularly apt for Aphrodite’s lying tale here. A precise link to Iliad 22 thus seems implausible, especially given the absence of any real thematic connection. As for εὐτείχητος, the adjective may be unique, but the comparable εὐτείχεος occurs seven times in the Iliad, which suggests that describing something as ‘well-walled’ carries a generic force; it is a stretch to see a direct link to the Iliadic Teichoscopia. Even so, however, the traditional resonance of the epithet may still lend a note of foreboding to Aphrodite’s words: every Homeric instance of εὐτείχεος appears in the context of city-sacking, six times of Troy (Il. 1.129, 2.113, 2.288, 5.716, 8.241, 9.20) and once of Briseis’ hometown (Il. 16.57).Footnote 186 When used of Phrygia in the Hymn, the epithet may thus look ahead to the future defeat of the Trojans and Phrygians in the coming war, even if not to the specific fate of Priam.
Once again, a character’s emphasis on hearsay invites an audience to situate her words against the larger epic tradition. But in this case, the index plays a further role: marking and authorising the poet’s openly creative reworking of tradition. In this regard, the hymnic poet appears to pre-empt an aspect of indexical hearsay which is more familiar from later literature: ‘faux footnoting’. We have not seen a clear instance of such indexed innovation in the Homeric poems, although we can identify potential candidates. For example, the Odyssean narrator indexes his elaborate description of stable Olympus (Od. 6.41–6: φασί, 42) whose snowless state appears to contradict two traditional epithets of ‘snowy’ Olympus elsewhere (οὔτε χιὼν ἐπιπίλναται, 6.44),Footnote 187 while Achilles employs φασί in his description of Mount Sipylus after his patent adaptation of the Niobe myth (Il. 24.614–17).Footnote 188 In neither of these cases, however, is the apparent innovation as directly connected to the appeal to hearsay as in the Homeric Hymn. We shall see later how this aspect of the index is further developed in lyric poetry, especially Pindaric epinician (§ii.3.4). But we can conclude here that it is an element which possesses at least some epic pedigree. Even if we cannot identify a clear case in the Iliad or Odyssey, we can in the larger corpus of archaic Greek epic.Footnote 189
Throughout early Greek epic, therefore, hearsay was already a well-established motif for the transmission and interaction of songs and stories. Characters’ and narrators’ appeals to what ‘people say’ and what their audiences have heard frequently signalled references to other traditions or even – on occasion – specific texts. These indices variously flag a poet’s encyclopaedic control of his material, an agonistic urge to suppress alternative accounts and even – on at least one occasion – the creative reworking of tradition. The various functions of the ‘Alexandrian footnote’ that I traced in Chapter i (§i.1.1) are thus already deeply engrained in the allusive system of our earliest Greek poetry. From the very start, Greek poets could self-consciously index other myths to carve out their space in the broader tradition. Both halves of the ‘Alexandrian’ ‘footnote’ are a misnomer: it is not intrinsically tied to the scholarly interests and pedantic learning of the Alexandrian library.
As we turn now to lyric poets’ use of indexical hearsay, we shall see that this allusive device remained an integral feature of early Greek intertextual practice throughout the archaic age. It was not just limited to the epic genre.
II.3 Lyric Fama
Like their epic peers, lyric poets display a strong interest in the circulation of news and stories. In the present, they are concerned with the preservation and memorialisation of their own subject matter, setting it on a par with the poetry of the past. Epinician poets, in particular, repeatedly stress the importance of the report of victory and the enduring fame it will provide for their laudandi, as well as their family and homelands. But they are far from alone in doing so: Sappho is concerned with the immortalising power of poetry (fr. 55, Aristid. Or. 28.51 = fr. 193), Theognis claims that Cyrnus’ name and fame will never die (Thgn. 245–6) and Ibycus even promises Polycrates κλέος ἄφθιτον (‘undying fame’), that prized goal of epic heroes (S151.47, cf. Il. 9.413). Lyric poets are deeply committed to the propagation of renown.
In addition, lyric poets are equally concerned with stories and myths of the past, which they commonly cite as exempla. Here too, these myths are regularly marked by the language of hearsay and rumour. φασί and similar forms occur frequently across the extant canon of early Greek lyric poetry, now accompanied by a string of abstract nouns which refer to self-standing stories without mention of a speaking agent (e.g. λόγος). Such language is occasionally used in gnomic contexts, appealing to the authority of anonymous wisdom,Footnote 190 but it is more frequently used to introduce specific mythological tales. As in epic, these appeals to tradition can be interpreted as having a strong indexical force, flagging engagement with and departure from the literary tradition. In contrast to epic, however, we can more frequently make a stronger case for the indexing of precise sources, rather than the indexing of traditions in general.
In the sections that follow, we will first explore how indexical hearsay performs the same functions as we have seen in epic: it may gesture to the authority of tradition (§ii.3.1) or mark agonistic engagement with rival or suppressed narrative alternatives (§ii.3.2). In addition, however, it also develops aspects which we saw only rarely in epic: inviting audiences to supplement a tale with their larger knowledge of tradition (§ii.3.3) or legitimising a poet’s creative reworking of their mythical inheritance (§ii.3.4).
II.3.1 Indexing Authority: Traditions and Texts
Archaic lyric poets frequently invoke hearsay when mentioning and narrating myths, imbuing their accounts with the authority of tradition. Due to our limited extant evidence and the fragmentary state of many of these poems, it is often difficult to situate cases of indexical hearsay within the larger traditions surrounding a given myth.Footnote 191 But even from what we have, we can identify numerous plausible cases from the seventh century onwards. We shall begin here by exploring the phenomenon in general, before turning to further nuances of its use in the following sections.
Early Indices: Archilochus, Sappho, Alcaeus
Our earliest lyric cases of indexical hearsay look not to the lofty traditions of epic, but to the far humbler genre of fable. On several occasions in his surviving iambic fragments, Archilochus explicitly introduces his fables as αἶνοι – a word which not only signals his generic consciousness, but also his debt to pre-existing traditions.Footnote 192 He begins his account of ‘the fox and the monkey’ by claiming that he will tell his addressee Cerycides an αἶνος (ἐρέω τιν’ ὕμιν αἶνον, ὦ Κηρυκίδη, fr. 185.1) and similarly introduces his tale of the fox and eagle as ‘a fable told among men’ (fr. 174):
This is a fable told among men, how a fox and an eagle joined in partnership.
The specification here of an audience of ἄνθρωποι (a noun which we have already seen combined with allusive indices in epic)Footnote 193 emphasises the traditionality of the tale and the authority of its moral message.Footnote 194 Such explicit citations of αἶνοι appear to have been an established part of the handling of fable from Hesiod onwards,Footnote 195 and the repeated use of the indefinite article τις retains the vagueness of reference that we have seen with other verbal indices. In this second Archilochean case, however, we have some evidence that the poet is indeed following an established fabula. The remaining words of Archilochus’ fragment closely resemble the beginning of the later Aesopic version of the same fable, centred on the friendship and union of the two animals (ὡς ἆρ’ ἀλώπηξ καἰετὸς ξυνεωνίην | ἔμειξαν, fr. 174.2–3 ~ ἀετὸς καὶ ἀλώπηξ φιλίαν πρὸς ἀλλήλους ποιησάμενοι, fab. 1 Perry).Footnote 196 Admittedly, the text of this version is late, written probably between the first and third centuries ce, but it must derive from an older tradition, since Aristophanes’ Peisetaerus too refers to the same Aesopic fable with similar phrasing and indexing (Av. 651–3):Footnote 197
Watch out now, because in Aesop’s fables there’s some story told about the fox, how she once fared wretchedly in her partnership with an eagle.
Like Archilochus, Aristophanes introduces the fable by foregrounding the coming together of bird and beast (ἐκοινώνησεν, 653), while also employing the indefinite τι (652). But he attributes the tale not to Archilochus, but to the λόγοι of Aesop (651). Given the consistency of the fable in these later parallels, as well as Archilochus’ own gestures to independent, pre-existing αἶνοι, it is likely that such a fabular tradition already circulated in the mid-seventh century.Footnote 198 Through such a self-conscious citation (αἶνός τις ἀνθρώπων), Archilochus signposts his allusive adoption of another tradition, just as Homer indexed his engagement with other myths.Footnote 199
The melic poetry of Sappho and Alcaeus, by contrast, indexes epic myth on a number of occasions. In a small fragment of Sappho, we find an indexed allusion to traditions about Helen’s birth (fr. 166):
they say that Leda once found a hyacinth-coloured egg, covered …
The wider context of this fragment is lost, but what we have corresponds to the version of the myth in which Helen was not the daughter of Zeus (or Tyndareus) and Leda, but rather the product of a liaison between Zeus and Nemesis – born from an egg that Leda received from a wandering shepherd or Hermes.Footnote 200 The story was a popular subject of fifth-century vase painting and also featured in Cratinus’ Nemesis,Footnote 201 but it was already well established before the fifth century: elements of the myth suggest a primal and even pre-Homeric pedigree,Footnote 202 and it certainly featured already in the Cyclic Cypria (frr. 10–11 GEF). Sappho may or may not have known the story from this specific poem, but her broad engagement with Trojan themes elsewhere attests to her familiarity with cyclic myth, which she must have known at least in part through epic poetry.Footnote 203 Her opening φαῖσι (alongside a temporal ποτά) signposts her introduction of a familiar mythical episode, cueing her audience’s knowledge of this cyclic tradition.Footnote 204
A comparable engagement with epic myth can also be found in Alcaeus, who appeals to hearsay when discussing Priam’s grief and the destruction of Troy ‘because of Helen’ (fr. 42.1–4, suppl. Page):
As the story goes, because of wicked deeds bitter grief once came to Priam and his sons from you, Helen, and Zeus destroyed sacred Ilion with fire.
Alcaeus’ index points to the ruin and destruction at the heart of the Trojan war tradition. But within this, it also evokes a larger epic discourse surrounding Helen’s responsibility for the conflict: the phrase ἀμφ’ Ἐ[λένᾳ] in the fragment’s penultimate verse (v. 15) appears to have been a set formula associated with the war,Footnote 205 while ἐκ σέθεν (v. 3) similarly recalls other formulaic phrases attributing blame to Helen (e.g. Ἑλένης εἵνεκα).Footnote 206 Besides the general Trojan myth, the poem fits into a larger tradition of Helen kakegoria, to which Stesichorus’ Palinode (esp. οὐκ ἔστ’ ἔτυμος λόγος οὗτος, fr. 91a) and the incipit of an anonymous lyric poem also gesture ([Ἑ]λένην ποτὲ λόγος, P. Mich. 3250c recto col. i.5): all three index pre-existing stories (λόγοι) about the Spartan princess.Footnote 207
It was not only traditional myths that were the subject of the Lesbian poets’ indexical references, however. In a more self-reflexive move, a poet could also signpost engagement with the traditions of their own poetry. Take, for example, Sappho’s (unprovenanced) Brothers Poem, the first extant quatrain of which reads as follows (fr. 10.5–8):Footnote 208
But you’re always chattering that Charaxus came with a full ship. Zeus knows these things, I imagine, and all the gods; but you shouldn’t think about them.
Both the speaker and the addressee of these verses are unknown. A common interpretation is that Sappho addresses her mother or another family member, but alternatively Sappho herself might be the chatterer, critiqued by another speaker or addressing herself in a soliloquy.Footnote 209 In any case, the description of the addressee’s ‘chatter’ has a derogatory flavour: θρυλέω is a relatively rare verb, primarily found in prose and used of both repetitive and grating talk in a private or public setting.Footnote 210 If it is used here of Sappho or another female family member, it likely implies a gendered dismissal of ‘women’s prattle’, in contrast to the socially sanctioned speech act of prayer (λί̣σσεσθαι, fr.10.10).Footnote 211
In addition to this gendered resonance, however, it is also possible to take this initial ‘chatter’ as a reference to Sappho’s own poetry. As Dirk Obbink has highlighted, Sappho’s poems repeatedly refer to Charaxus in terms of his movement and travels: he is always said to have ‘come’ or be ‘coming’ somewhere or other.Footnote 212 Obbink thus suggests that these verses act as a kind of ‘intertextual reference or self-citation’, acknowledging the frequency with which Sappho’s poetry chatters about Charaxus in this way.Footnote 213 Peter O’Connell has taken this argument even further by speculating that a real or notional ‘welcome song’ for Charaxus might underlie these words, given the lexical parallels shared with other archaic songs of that subgenre.Footnote 214 Sappho’s words would then be evoking and critiquing a specific song from her larger repertoire – an attractive, if ultimately unprovable, conjecture.
Given the various ways in which these verses seem to recall Sappho’s broader corpus, it may thus be possible to see a further indexical edge to θρύλησθα, especially if we take Sappho as the addressee (‘You, Sappho, are always chattering in your poetry …’).Footnote 215 The flexibility of the Sapphic speaking ‘I’ and the fact that Sappho is frequently addressed elsewhere in her extant corpus make this a plausible hypothesis.Footnote 216 As does the fact that later authors also employ the verb θρυλέω to refer to poetry and to index literary quotation: Plato and Polybius explicitly apply it to poetic chatter,Footnote 217 and Euripides’ Bellerophon uses it to introduce a quotation of a gnome that is ‘chattered about everywhere’.Footnote 218 Epicurus, meanwhile, uses the verb to mark a cross reference within his own work: φον[ὴ] μόνον ἀμ[ίβε]ται, καθάπερ πάλαι θρυ[λῶ] (‘only the sound is changed, as I have long been chattering’, fr. 34.30.5–7).Footnote 219 In a similar manner, Sappho’s θρύλησθα may thus not only dismiss excessive female prattling, but also look back to her previous songs about Charaxus’ travels, which are here revised and corrected in the face of fresh news.
Of course, the fragmentary opening of the poem resists absolute conclusions, but on available evidence it is plausible to see θρυλέω as a more colourful alternative to the likes of λέγω and φημί, indexing prior poetic speech. If so, this example is more direct and explicit than the other indices we have explored. In comparison to the third-person forms of φημί and the abstract nouns λόγος and αἶνος, the second-person θρύλησθα points to speech within a specific context – which is apt for the more self-reflexive nature of the index, within Sappho’s own speech world. Yet this is not an isolated moment: in later chapters, we will see how Sappho similarly indexes engagement with her wider poetic traditions through appeals to memory (§iii.3.3) and temporality (§iv.3.1 and iv.3.2). Her repeatedly indexed self-references contribute to her creation of a consistent story world and of distinctive song cycles.
Fifth-Century Footnotes: Pindar, Bacchylides, Skolia
It is in the fifth century, however, that indexical hearsay is particularly prominent. Bacchylides indexes his account of Heracles’ katabasis in pursuit of Cerberus ( [π]οτ’, 5.56; λέγουσιν, 5.57),Footnote 220 as well as his treatment of Euenus’ harsh treatment of his daughter Marpessa (λ̣έ̣γ̣ουσι, fr. 20a.14).Footnote 221 Yet it is Pindar who is the most intense and frequent footnoter of tradition. He indexically marks a wide range of myths, including Zeus’s flooding of the earth and the story of Deucalion and Pyrrha (λέγοντι μάν, Ol. 9.49);Footnote 222 the deaths of Otus and Ephialtes, the theomachic sons of Iphimedeia and Aloeus (φαντί, Pyth. 4.88);Footnote 223 Ixion’s words as he is turned on the wheel (φαντί, Pyth. 2.21);Footnote 224 Antaeus’ audition of how Danaus once devised a way for his daughters to marry in Argos (ἄκουσεν, ποτ’, Pyth. 9.112);Footnote 225 Zeus’s rape of Danae as a shower of gold (φαμέν, Pyth. 12.17);Footnote 226 Perseus’ flight from the Gorgons (λέγοντι δὲ βροτοί, fr. 70a.15);Footnote 227 Zeus’s keeping watch over Leto’s birth pains (λέγο[ντι], Pae. 12.9);Footnote 228 Cadmus’ marriage of Harmonia (ποθ’ … [φ]ά̣μα, fr. 70b.27);Footnote 229 Zeus’s fathering of Aeacus and Heracles (λέγοντι, Nem. 7.84); and the fame of Aeacus (κλεινὸς Αἰακοῦ λόγος, Isth. 9.1).Footnote 230 In many of these cases, we do not possess full earlier accounts of the myth in question, but from the limited picture we have, these indices seem to mark references to established and familiar traditions.
This impression is reinforced when we consider Pindar’s indexical treatment of Trojan myth, where we have a clearer view of the traditions with which he could engage. In Isthmian 8, Zeus’s assent to the marriage of Peleus and Thetis is signposted with φαντί (Isth. 8.46a); the poet signals his engagement with the larger tradition of the pair’s wedding and the threatening power of Thetis’ offspring (§iii.3.1). In Pythian 3, Nestor and Sarpedon are singled out as ‘the talk of men’ (ἀνθρώπων φάτις, Pyth. 3.112), known to later generations from ‘such resounding verses as wise craftsmen constructed’ (Pyth. 3.113–14); we are invited to recall the pair’s prominent role in early Greek epic, perhaps especially in the Iliad.Footnote 231 In Olympian 2, meanwhile, the poet indexes Ino’s immortal life among the Nereids (λέγοντι, Ol. 2.28–30), an account which might look to the Odyssey’s specific description of her immortalisation and new life in the sea (Od. 5.333–5: cf. Σ Ol. 2.51d).Footnote 232 Given Ino’s mentions elsewhere in archaic literature, a more general nod to her mythical fabula is more likely,Footnote 233 although an Odyssean reference would fit with the poem’s larger appropriation of Homeric passages to construct a particular view of the afterlife.Footnote 234 Alongside his frequent indexing of non-Trojan myth, therefore, it is clear that Pindar frequently marked his mythical allusions through the language of hearsay, authorising his account with the backing of tradition.
Such appeals to hearsay are not restricted to the epinician genre in the fifth century, however. A similar indexical appeal to epic traditions is also visible in a pair of Attic skolia preserved by Athenaeus (15.695c = Carm. Conv. 898–9 PMG):
Son of Telamon, spearman Ajax, they say that you were the best of the Danaans to come to Troy after Achilles.
Telamon, they say, was first among the Danaans to come to Troy, Ajax second alongside Achilles.
The first skolion focuses on the credentials of the Greek hero Ajax, gesturing to a well-established tradition of this hero as the second-best of the Achaeans. The sentiment recurs repeatedly in Homer and a variety of later authors, suggesting that it was a fixed part of Ajax’s fabula.Footnote 235 Indeed, it is a crucial element of the hero’s mythical biography, since it explains the great shame and anger he feels after he fails to beat Odysseus in the contest for Achilles’ arms. The arms were a ‘victory prize for the best’ (τῷ ἀρίστῳ νικητήριον, Apollod. Epit. 5.6). Based on the form of tradition, Ajax should have been their rightful heir. Aided by the indexical λέγουσι, these verses thus evoke an established element at the heart of Ajax’s mythical fabula.
The second skolion, however, builds on and caps the first by imitating its allusive strategy while simultaneously shifting its point of comparison from heroic excellence to temporal priority.Footnote 236 Ajax is now a peer of Achilles, but still in second place because his father Telamon beat him to Troy by a whole generation. The skolion picks up on and reworks the earlier poem’s patronymic (παῖ Τελαμῶνος), as well as its concern with Ajax’s status. Indeed, the hero is explicitly marked as δεύτερος here (in comparison to the first poem’s ἄριστος), an adjective which may itself reflect this skolion’s secondary and epigonal status in relation to its predecessor.Footnote 237 Crucially, however, this poem clinches its argument through another appeal to hearsay, marking its allusion to another well-established element of Trojan myth: the tradition of Heracles’ earlier expedition against Troy, in which Telamon played a key role.Footnote 238 Like its predecessor, this skolion thus alludes to an established feature of the Trojan war fabula and legitimises its claim with an indexing λέγουσιν. As a pair, they both invoke familiar features of tradition to justify their competing perspectives on Ajax. As generically ‘low’ sympotic song, they invoke the lustre of epic to authorise their own status as literature.
Besides gesturing to the authority of tradition at large, however, the first skolion may also look back to a specific, famous instantiation of the Ajax-as-second-best motif. In Odyssey 11, when Odysseus encounters his adversary’s shade, he not only recalls the arms contest (Od. 11.544–9) and twice expresses the second-best motif (Od. 11.469–70, 550–1) but also addresses the hero as παῖ Τελαμῶνος (Od. 11.553), the same apostrophe that we find in the skolion. This is a notably rare collocation that appears elsewhere only in Sophocles’ Ajax (Aj. 183) and an anonymous epigram in the Palatine Anthology (AP 9.116.3), both in the context of the arms contest and its aftermath.Footnote 239 Given the unique combination of the motif with this rare vocative address, the skolion may thus look back to Odysseus’ account of the Underworld encounter, an episode in which Ajax’s status played an important role. Behind the vague λέγουσι, we could see a specific reference to Homer and Odysseus as the key authorities for this claim. Even in this case, however, we should be wary of overplaying the evidence, especially given the frequency with which Ajax is defined by his patronymic elsewhere in early Greek poetry (Τελαμωνιάδης, e.g. Il. 9.623, Od. 11.543, Pind. Nem. 4.47; υἱὸς Τελαμῶνος, Il. 13.177, 17.284, 17.293, Pind. Nem. 8.23). The collocation παῖ Τελαμῶνος is ultimately not as distinctive as it first seems. Alongside the numerous other evocations of the second-best motif, and further echoes of epic phraseology in the skolion itself,Footnote 240 it is thus more plausible to see here an evocation of a more general motif of the epic tradition, rather than one specific instantiation. The skolion poet musters the support of tradition to prove his point, invoking a familiar and well-established feature of Ajax’s mythical fabula.
Indexing Texts: Pindar and Simonides on Hesiod
So far, we have seen that lyric poets frequently indexed their mythical references by appealing to hearsay, signposting and authorising their engagement with other traditions (or even perhaps specific texts: the Cypria, Iliad and Odyssey). In two further cases, however, we can be very confident that an index points to a precise text even in spite of the appeal to anonymous hearsay.
The first of these is found in Pindar’s sixth Pythian, a poem which celebrates a Pythian chariot victory by Xenocrates of Akragas and dwells on the filial piety of his son Thrasybulus. The youth, Pindar claims, follows the advice which the centaur Cheiron once gave to the young Achilles (Pyth. 6.19–27):
Indeed, by keeping it at your right hand, you correctly follow the precept which they say Philyra’s son once commended to the mighty son of Peleus in the mountains, when he was separated from his parents: above all gods to worship Cronus’ son, deep-voiced lord of thunder and lightning; and never to deprive his parents of the same honour during their destined lifespan.
These instructions, to revere both the gods and one’s parents, form a stock part of Greek moral didacticism.Footnote 241 But the scholia note a possible source for this maxim, the Precepts of Cheiron (αἱ Χείρωνος Ὑποθῆκαι), a work attributed in antiquity to Hesiod (Σ Pyth. 6.22, quoting Hes. fr. 283):
They attribute to Hesiod The Precepts of Cheiron, which begin as follows:
Now consider well each of these things in your prudent mind: first, whenever you arrive home, perform a beautiful sacrifice to the immortal gods.
Scholars have often taken this scholiastic note as evidence that the maxim in Pyth. 6.23–7 derives directly from this Hesiodic poem,Footnote 242 although the scholia do not quite say as much: all they actually claim is that Hesiod was attributed a poem on the same topic. Yet it is a plausible inference that Pindar had this specific poem in mind.Footnote 243 Both Pindar and Bacchylides appear to have alluded to the work elsewhere,Footnote 244 and the reverent and religious sensibility of the advice in Pythian 6 closely parallels the Hesiodic fragment’s injunction to sacrifice to the gods. There are thus strong grounds for seeing φασί here directing Pindar’s audience to a specific didactic predecessor. Given the fragmentary state of the Hesiodic poem, we cannot determine how Pindar manipulated his model, beyond his exploitation of Cheiron as an authorising figure of paraenetic authority.Footnote 245 But even from what remains, we can see that Pindar here indexed a precise citation through a vague appeal to hearsay.
Our second example offers an even stronger case for a direct citation of a specific poetic predecessor. It is a particularly well-known case of early Greek allusion, Simonides’ fragment on the mountain of Arete (fr. 579):Footnote 246
There is a certain tale that Arete dwells among rocks which are difficult to ascend … and occupies a holy place. She is not visible to the eyes of all mortals, but only to the one upon whom heart-biting sweat comes from within and who reaches the peak of manliness.
These lines are a clear adaptation of a passage from Hesiod’s Works and Days on the diverging paths of ἀρετή and κακότης (Op. 287–92):
It is easy to seize Kakotes (Wretchedness) even in droves; the road is smooth, and she dwells very near. But the immortal gods have set sweat before Arete (Success/Virtue); the path to her is long and steep, and rugged at first. But when one reaches the peak, then the path is easy, difficult though it was.
Simonides’ evocation of this passage is secured by a number of verbal and thematic parallels: in Simonides’ fragment, Arete dwells (ναίειν, fr. 579.2 ~ ναίει, Op. 288 of Κακότης) among rocks which are ‘difficult to ascend’ (δυσαμβάτοισ’, fr. 579.2), just as the Hesiodic path to Arete is ‘long, steep and rough’ (μακρὸς δὲ καὶ ὄρθιος … | καὶ τρηχύς, Op. 290–1); and both passages focus on reaching the pinnacle (ἵκῃ τ’ἐς ἄκρον, fr. 579.7 ~ εἰς ἄκρον ἵκηται, Op. 291), an endeavour which requires much sweat (ἱδρώς, fr. 579.5 ~ ἱδρῶτα, Op. 289).Footnote 248 Although Simonides attributes this image to a mere, indefinite λόγος, there is thus a clear connection to the Works and Days passage, a connection which is further reinforced by the personification of Arete: as Richard Hunter notes, personification is a typically Hesiodic trope, through which Simonides ‘leaves little doubt stylistically as to which poet he is following’.Footnote 249 Behind its vague and riddling anonymity, the opening phrase ἐστί τις λόγος points not only to a familiar commonplace, but also to a specific literary predecessor.Footnote 250
This anonymity also conceals Simonides’ selective adaptation of his source. As scholars have highlighted, Simonides updates and rebrands Hesiod’s original image, eliding all mention of Κακότης and injecting Ἀρετή with a more moral aspect. Whereas in Hesiod the noun stood largely for agricultural success and material prosperity, Simonides restricts it to those who exhibit manly virtue (ἀνδρεία), internalising the toil and struggle required to achieve it (cf. ἔνδοθεν, v. 6).Footnote 251 As Daniel Babut remarks, Simonides has ‘profoundly modified the structure and significance’ of Hesiod’s parable, rebranding it into a moral object lesson.Footnote 252 Simonides’ opening appeal to hearsay thus not only points to a precise literary predecessor, but also appropriates Hesiod’s authority to legitimise his new moral outlook. Simonides presents a pointedly appropriative intertextuality, signposted through the indexical introduction: ἐστί τις λόγος.
In a host of lyric poets, therefore, indexical hearsay functioned as a way of marking allusion to other texts and traditions, appropriating their authority and signalling the poet’s command of their sources. The phenomenon is very similar to what we saw in epic, but here we are often on far stronger ground when arguing for the precise citation of earlier texts. As Scodel once claimed for Pindar, ‘What “they say” here may be what earlier canonical poetry said.’Footnote 253 But, as we have seen, this is not solely a Pindaric phenomenon. If we had more texts surviving from antiquity, it is plausible that we could identify further precise references in many of the other cases we have explored. As things stand, however, we are simply no longer in a position to track their precise contours.
II.3.2 Suppression and Contestation
In other lyric cases, we find more agonistic and polemical invocations of alternative details of myth, a phenomenon we have already seen in epic with Homer’s allusion to Achilles’ immortality (§ii.2.4). In lyric poetry, too, we find instances where poets employ the language of hearsay to highlight their suppression of further details of a myth or their engagement with a particularly contestable point of tradition.
Suppressed Alternatives: Theognis on Atalanta
In Theognis’ elegy on Atalanta, the footnoting φασίν invites an audience to situate a specific telling of a myth within its wider mythological context (Thgn. 1283–94):
Boy, don’t wrong me. I still want to be dear to your heart, understanding this with good cheer. You won’t pass by me with a trick, nor will you cheat me. For though you have been victorious and have an advantage in the future, yet I will wound you as you flee from me, as once, they say, the daughter of Iasius, the Iasian maiden, refused marriage with men and fled, though she was in her prime. Blonde Atalanta girded herself and accomplished fruitless deeds, after leaving her father’s home. She went off to the lofty peaks of the mountains, fleeing lovely marriage, the gift of golden Aphrodite. But in the end she came to know it, despite her staunch refusal.
In these verses, the spurned speaker uses the exemplum of Atalanta to show that his addressee cannot run from him forever: just as Atalanta fled from marriage (γάμον … | φεύγειν, 1289–90; φεύγουσ’ … γάμον, 1293), but eventually and unwillingly succumbed to its τέλος (1294), so too will the addressee, despite spurning love now (φεύγοντα, 1287), eventually feel the ‘wound’ of love (the speaker’s τέλος).Footnote 254 Scholars have recently suggested that the introductory phrase ὥς ποτέ φασιν is ‘a reference to poetic tradition’.Footnote 255 But more than that, I contend, it also encourages an audience to look beyond the bare details of Theognis’ account to what the poet has left untold.
Kirk Ormand has noted that the opening verses of the poem, directed to the addressee, are larded with imagery evocative of racing and competition: the boy will not pass the speaker by (παρελεύσεαι, 1285 – a verb commonly used in agonistic contexts), the boy has been victorious (νικήσας, 1286) and the speaker will ‘wound’ his fleeing beloved (1287, evoking a scene of hunting or battle).Footnote 256 Given such preparatory clues, Theognis leads his audience to expect that the ensuing Atalanta exemplum will narrate the maiden’s footrace against her suitors, known from the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women and several other later sources.Footnote 257 But this expectation is frustrated. Instead of the race, we are simply told that Atalanta retreated into the lonely mountains (1292).
This omission is particularly striking since in some versions of the tale (most probably including the Catalogue), Atalanta was said to have raced after her suitors fully armed, imitating a hunt, and to have killed them if she overtook them.Footnote 258 Such a narrative of violence would more appropriately parallel the speaker’s desire to ‘wound’ his fleeing beloved here (σ’ ἐγὼ τρώσω φεύγοντά με, 1287). Theognis’ avoidance of this version is thus particularly surprising, all the more so since his ensuing narrative shares a number of phrases with the Catalogue’s treatment of the episode, especially fr. 73.4–5 and fr. 76.6:Footnote 259
She refused to keep company with the tribe [of humans, hoping to flee] marriage [with men] who eat bread.
She raced on, refusing the gifts [of golden Aphrodite].
Just as in Theognis, so too in the Catalogue, Atalanta flees from marriage and the gifts of Aphrodite (~ ἀναινομένην γάμον ἀνδρῶν | φεύγειν, Thgn. 1289–90; φεύγουσ’ ἱμερόεντα γάμον, χρυσῆς Ἀφροδίτης | δῶρα, Thgn. 1293–4).Footnote 260 Admittedly, these parallels rely partly on reconstructions of the Catalogue which may be inspired by Theognis’ verses. But these reconstructions are very plausible in their own right,Footnote 261 and even without any supplementation the fragments still exhibit a clear emphasis on marriage and its refusal. Indeed, φεύγειν γάμον appears to have been a formula particularly associated with Atalanta’s fabula. Besides its use in a misogynistic gnome by Hesiod (Theog. 603), it appears nowhere else in extant archaic literature, while Aristophanes’ later use of the phrase for Atalanta’s lover Melanion offers a playfully comic distortion of the same myth, as he – rather than Atalanta – runs in flight (Lys. 781–96).Footnote 262
In Theognis’ elegy, it is thus attractive to see the poet drawing on key vocabulary attached to the fabula of Atalanta’s race, or even the Catalogue’s specific instantiation of it, reapplying this traditional phrasing to a different context: the mountains rather than the racetrack. Theognis elides the expected tale of the footrace, while still evoking it through the opening language of violent competition and several verbal echoes of its traditional fabula.Footnote 263 The effect is to maintain a more direct analogy between Atalanta and the recalcitrant παῖς as passive fleers of love. But the lingering echoes of the Catalogue tradition also align the speaker with the pursuing and violent Atalanta of the race story, destabilising any neat mapping. There may even be some irony in the sympotic speaker’s failure to control the full meaning of his exemplum.
The introductory ὥς ποτέ φασιν thus invites an audience to integrate this particular version of the tale within their wider knowledge of the myth, to appreciate the poet’s subtle appropriation and refashioning of a conflicted tradition. The phrase is not simply a mark of authority, but also a cue for the poet’s audience to incorporate their broader knowledge of the myth and to consider the significance of what ‘others say’ about Atalanta, including – at least from our perspective – the poet of the Hesiodic Catalogue.
Is That So? Bacchylides on Heracles’ Tears
An even more knowing gesture to contestable tradition comes in Bacchylides’ fifth epinician, a poem whose embedded myth of Heracles’ katabatic encounter with Meleager is introduced – as we have already noted – with a footnoting λέγουσιν (Bacchyl. 5.57: §ii.3.1). Over 100 lines later, however, the narrative closes with a further index, framing Bacchylides’ whole account in an allusive ring composition and placing additional weight on the poet’s final claim (Bacchyl. 5.155–8):
They say that the son of Amphitryon, undaunted by the battle-cry, wetted his eyelids then and only then, pitying the fate of a man who has endured sorrow.
Such an indexical frame may mark the general traditionality of this episode: after all, Heracles’ katabatic encounter with Meleager was also narrated by Pindar (fr. 70b, 249a, fr. dub. 346c). But in addition, Bacchylides’ φασίν encourages an audience to recall other aspects of the myth beyond those directly relayed here. In claiming that Heracles shed tears in his life ‘then and only then’ (μοῦνον δὴ τότε, 5.156), the poet appears to be protesting a little too much, and his indexical appeal to hearsay invites his audience to recall another later occasion on which Heracles was also said to cry: his death by the poisoned robe he had received from his wife Deianeira.Footnote 264
In Sophocles’ later tragic account of that myth, the hero’s tears are a prominent motif: Heracles seeks pity for his pitiable self (οἴκτιρόν τέ με | πολλοῖσιν οἰκτρόν, Trach. 1070–1; contrast his pitying of Meleager in Bacchylides: οἰκτίροντα, 5.158) and claims that he has never cried before (καὶ τόδ’ οὐδ’ ἂν εἷς ποτε | τόνδ’ ἄνδρα φαίη πρόσθ’ ἰδεῖν δεδρακότα, | ἀλλ’ ἀστένακτος αἰὲν εἰχόμην κακοῖς, Trach. 1072–4). Sophocles’ treatment post-dates Bacchylides’ Ode,Footnote 265 so it cannot be a specific intertext for his epinician, but it is plausible that similar sentiments would have been expressed already in one of the many earlier treatments of the Heracles myth, especially given the hero’s broader tearless reputation in antiquity.Footnote 266 After all, in Bacchylides’ own dithyrambic treatment of the hero’s demise, Fate is said to ‘weave a shrewd, tear-filled plan’ for Deianeira, a phrase that suggestively alludes to the tears that result from her jealous attempts to regain Heracles’ love (ἄμαχος δαίμων | Δαϊανείρᾳ πολύδακρυν ὕφανε | μῆτιν ἐπίφρον’, Bacchyl. 16.23–5). And already in the Hesiodic Catalogue, the narrative of Heracles’ death (fr. 25.20–5) closes with the hero going down to the ‘much-lamenting house of Hades’ (Ἄΐδ[αο πολύστονον ἵκε]το δῶμα, fr. 25.25), a phrase which – if we accept Merkelbach’s plausible supplement – may not only evoke the generic doom and despair of the Underworld, but also the specific tears and lamentation of Heracles’ end, a contrast to his previously ἀστένακτος existence.Footnote 267
It is likely, therefore, that Heracles would have traditionally broken his tearless reputation only at the very end of his life, rather than in one chance encounter with a deceased hero in the middle of his labours. By importing the motif into Heracles’ katabasis (an adventure that itself imitates the end of life), Bacchylides is thus self-consciously innovating, introducing an ominous allusion to the hero’s future fate by means of ‘motif transference’.Footnote 268 For a knowing audience, Bacchylides’ claim that this was the only occasion on which Heracles cried would be transparently untraditional and open to question. The claim is supposed to be challenged, and φασίν marks it as such: ‘who else has said this?’ we are invited to ask. The answer? ‘Nobody.’ Just as in Agenor’s Iliadic evocation of Achilles’ mortality, the indexical φασίν highlights a point of tradition at the point where it is most contestable.Footnote 269
An audience member who makes such a connection with Heracles’ future death, moreover, would find great irony in the fact that this Underworld encounter with Meleager is also the very moment that precipitates Heracles’ future tears. It is in this meeting that the Theban hero first hears of his future wife Deianeira, Meleager’s sister (Δαϊάνειραν, 5.173). The closing reference to Deianeira as ‘still without experience of golden Cypris, that enchantress of men’ (νῆϊν ἔτι χρυσέας | Κύπριδος θελξιμβρότου, 5.174–5) is especially pointed, since Deianeira will kill Heracles precisely when she resorts to magic and θέλξις in an attempt to regain his love, the domain of Cyprian Aphrodite.Footnote 270 Bacchylides’ φασίν is thus extremely loaded, inviting his audience to challenge his assertion and recall another occasion on which Heracles was traditionally thought to have cried. Indeed, Heracles’ Underworld tears proleptically foreshadow those which are still to come.Footnote 271 Ultimately, Heracles’ fate is not very dissimilar to Meleager’s own, and Heracles is not far from the truth when he suspects that he will be killed by Meleager’s murderer (5.89–91). Their killers are not the same, but still very similar: close female relatives, δαΐφρων Althaea (5.137) and Deianeira (Δαϊάνειραν, ‘man-destroyer’, 5.173).Footnote 272 Both heroes thus prove to be archetypal embodiments of the maxim which introduced Bacchylides’ extended narrative: ‘no man is fortunate in all things’ (οὐ | γά⸤ρ τις⸥ ἐπιχθονίων | π⸤άντ⸥α γ’ εὐδαίμων ἔφυ, 5.53–5). Far from simply highlighting the traditionality of Bacchylides’ account, this concluding index encourages an audience to situate this specific version within their wider knowledge of the myth, emphasising the contestability of tradition and looking forward to Heracles’ traditional tears that are still to come.
As in Theognis, Bacchylides’ use of indexical hearsay thus has an agonistic edge. The index encourages an audience to set rival and competing alternatives against each other. Theognis relocates Atalanta’s asceticism from the racecourse to the mountains, and Bacchylides invites his audience to challenge the assertion that Heracles cried only in his meeting with Meleager, rather than at the traditional moment of his death. As in epic, so too in lyric: indexical appeals to hearsay frequently emphasise the flexibility and fierce contestability of the mythical tradition.
II.3.3 The Poetics of Supplementation
These last examples, those of Theognis and Bacchylides, also exhibit an aspect of indexical hearsay that is considerably widespread in lyric – indices which invite an audience to supplement the immediate narrative at hand with their larger knowledge of tradition. Just as Bacchylides invites audiences to recall Heracles’ future demise at the hands of Deianeira, so too do other lyric poets frequently prompt an audience to supplement their sparse telling of a myth with further details. Such an invitation to ‘fill in the gaps’ was less common in epic. It presumably stems from lyric poetry’s briefer and more self-contained treatment of myth, with very few extensive narrations. Within lyric poets’ selective treatments of a story, indexical appeals to hearsay evoke other untold details that complicate, ironise and enrich the present telling.
A familiar case of such signposted supplementation is Sappho fr. 44, an epicising fragment on the wedding of Hector and Andromache. When the Trojan herald Idaeus predicts future κλέος ἄφθιτον (‘undying fame’) as a result of the marriage (fr. 44.4), the audience are invited to supplement Sappho’s selective treatment of the myth with their wider knowledge of the couple’s famous but unhappy future: Hector’s death, Andromache’s enslavement and their son’s brutal murder.Footnote 273 Even at this joyous moment of marriage, Sappho’s invocation of the pair’s ‘undying fame’ invites her audience to incorporate their awareness of the larger Trojan war tradition or even the Iliad specifically, looking forward to the end of their marriage, just as Homer, at Hector’s death, looks back to its very start (Il. 22.466–72).Footnote 274 In this case, the spur to supplement is particularly strong given the emphatically epic resonance of the phrase κλέος ἄφθιτον (cf. Il. 9.413, Hes. fr. 70.5). But other appeals to hearsay can also encourage audiences to draw on their broader knowledge of tradition.
Ibycus and Cassandra’s Fame
A less well-known invitation to ‘fill in the gaps’ occurs in a short fragment of Ibycus, whose context is now lost (fr. 303a):
The talk of mortals keeps hold of grey-eyed Cassandra, Priam’s daughter with lovely locks.
Cassandra is here presented as a traditional figure of myth, within the grip of fama itself, as indeed she was. She appears in a number of archaic epic poems, where her beauty is similarly highlighted (cf. ἐρασιπλόκαμον, v. 2): in the Iliad, she is the most beautiful of Priam’s daughters (13.365–6) and directly likened to Aphrodite (24.699). Yet besides her epic appearances, she also features in Alcaeus, Bacchylides and Pindar, as well as frequently in archaic art.Footnote 275 In Ibycus’ own Polycrates Ode, she appears again as the subject of song ([ὑμ]νῆν Κασσάνδραν, S151.12) in a poem that similarly emphasises her physical attractiveness (‘slender-ankled’, τανί[σφ]υρ[ον], S151.11), as well as the traditionality of the Trojan war myth: ‘the much-sung strife’ ([δῆ]ριν πολύυμνον, S151.6) around the ‘most renowned’ city of Troy (περι̣κ̣λεές, S151.2). The short Ibycan fragment in question here, however, lacks a clear context. It is unlikely to be a complete poem, given the subjunctive ἔχησι, but we do not know what came before or after it. Even so, the extant verses exhibit a strong epic flavour, akin to Sappho fr. 44 with their epic-style compound adjectives and -οιο genitive ending. As in Sappho’s fragment, we are thus encouraged to think of this φᾶμις as taking a specifically epic form.
But more than this, given the traditional resonance of the fragment’s epithets, the indexical φᾶμις may also point to a specific moment in Cassandra’s mythical biography. The adjective γλαυκῶπις is a notably unusual choice for Cassandra: besides its appearance here, it is only ever used of Athena in archaic epic and lyric. Indeed, it is a stock epithet of the goddess, used over ninety times of her in the Iliad and Odyssey alone.Footnote 276 Given its traditional association, Ibycus’ innovative redeployment of the epithet for Cassandra suggests a close association between the goddess and the Trojan princess.Footnote 277 As Claire Wilkinson has suggested, the resulting link may parallel the beauty of both figures, but it also evokes the story of Cassandra’s rape by Locrian Ajax, an episode in which Athena played a central role. Not only did the rape take place in her temple at Troy, violating the goddess’ cult statue, but Athena was also the one to punish Ajax with death at sea and the rest of the Greeks with a stormy nostos.Footnote 278 Through the unusual adjective, Ibycus gestures to this specific aspect of Cassandra’s mythical fabula, supported by the indexical force of φᾶμις.
This allusion is reinforced further by the other adjective used to describe Cassandra in these verses, ἐρασιπλόκαμος (‘lovely-locked’). This is a very rare epithet, used elsewhere in extant Greek literature before late antiquity only twice of other mythical rape victims: of Tyro, who was raped by Poseidon (Τυροῦς ἐρασιπλοκάμου γενεά, Pyth. 4.136; cf. παῖ Ποσειδᾶνος, 4.138), and of the Muse Calliope, who gave birth to Orpheus after being raped by Oeagrus or Apollo (Μούσας ἐρασιπ[λοκάμου], Bacchyl. 29d.9).Footnote 279 It thus appears to have been an epithet especially used to describe victims of male sexual violence. Its use here would further encourage the recall of Cassandra as Ajax’s victim, just as γλαυκῶπις evokes Cassandra as a favourite of Athena.Footnote 280 Given these hints, it would be unsurprising if these Ibycan verses were originally followed by a narrative account of the rape, similar to that we find in Alcaeus fr. 298; the allusive hints in Ibycus’ language would then set the course for the ensuing narrative. But even if the original poem contained nothing more than a passing reference to Cassandra, its vocabulary, alongside the indexical φᾶμις, still points to a specific moment in the heroine’s fabula. Ibycus’ allusive index invites an audience to look beyond (and through) his immediate words to harness the larger, unexpressed tradition that lies beyond them.
Sappho and the Tithonus Myth
As a final example, we may turn to a particularly rich instance of such signposted supplementation: the recently reconstituted Sapphic poem on Tithonus and old age. In this poem, the poet’s persona laments her ageing physique before ending with a mythical exemplum that proves mortals’ inability to escape senile decrepitude (Sapph. fr. 58c.8–12):Footnote 281
It is not possible for a human to become ageless. Yes, for they used to say that once rose-armed Dawn, schooled by love, went to the ends of the earth carrying away Tithonus since he was young and beautiful; but even still, grey old age eventually grasped hold of him, even though he had an immortal wife.
Tithonus, the mortal husband of Dawn, is introduced to prove that even those intimately connected with the gods cannot escape old age: γῆρας still seized him, just as it did frail Laertes in the Odyssey (κατὰ γῆρας ἔμαρψεν, Od. 24.390, cf. fr. 58c.11–12). At the outset, this tale is indexically marked as the subject of hearsay and a familiar part of tradition (ἔφαντο, fr. 58c.9). Indeed, Tithonus was a well-known mythical character from Homer onwards. In both the Iliad and the Odyssey, he is already the spouse of Dawn, lying in her bed as she rises to inaugurate the day (Il. 11.1–2, Od. 5.1–2), while in Hesiod, he and Dawn are named as the parents of Memnon and Emathion (Theog. 984–5). He may also, moreover, have made an appearance in the Aethiopis and its associated traditions, in which his son Memnon also receives immortality thanks to the intervention of Dawn (Aeth. arg. 2e GEF).Footnote 282 However, it is only a little later that we first encounter clear evidence for the tradition of his flawed immortality, as evoked here by Sappho: he was granted exemption from death, but he could not stop the process of ageing and gradually withered away. In addition to Sappho fr. 58c, this tradition of Tithonus’ unavoidable ageing appears in the work of Sappho’s contemporary Mimnermus (fr. 4), as well as more extensively in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, when Aphrodite introduces Tithonus’ plight as an exemplum for Anchises of the dangers of divine–mortal relations (HhAphr. 218–38).Footnote 283 Sappho’s ἔφαντο thus points to a well-established tradition of Tithonus as Dawn’s spouse and a figure of perpetual ageing.Footnote 284 Indeed, it may even point to our Homeric Hymn as a privileged intertext.Footnote 285
Besides invoking a specific tradition or text, however, Sappho’s ἔφαντο also prompts her audience to recollect an aspect of the myth about which others have previously ‘talked’, but which she leaves unmentioned here: Tithonus’ subsequent transformation into a cicada. The Trojan prince wasted away to such an extent that he eventually became a tiny insect that feeds only on dew, left with nothing more than his own beautiful voice – an aetion to explain the fact that cicadas start chirping around dawn. The earliest explicit mention of this metamorphosis comes from Hellanicus of Lesbos in the fifth century – notably, a compatriot of Sappho, perhaps suggesting a particularly Lesbian or Aeolic interest in this myth (fr. 140 EGM).Footnote 286 Yet earlier texts already hint at this tradition, especially the Homeric Hymn. As Johannes Kakridis has argued, the description of Tithonus’ ceaselessly flowing voice matches the constant chirping of the cicada (φωνὴ ῥέει ἄσπετος, HhAphr. 237), and he is locked away in his chamber like a cicada in a basket (HhAphr. 236).Footnote 287 More significantly, Richard Janko notes that the description of ‘shedding old age’ (ξῦσαί τ’ ἄπο γῆρας, HhAphr. 224) evokes the tradition of cicadas shedding their skin, playing on the polyvalent potential of γῆρας to mean both ‘old age’ and ‘exuvia’,Footnote 288 while Richard Rawles has suggested that the rare noun κῖκυς (‘strength’, HhAphr. 237) puns on the ‘kik’ sound of the insect (a sound also reflected in the insect’s Latin name, cicada, and in Greek vocabulary: κίκους· ὁ νέος τέττιξ, ‘kikous: the young cicada’, Hsch. κ 2662).Footnote 289
Despite no explicit mention, therefore, the hymnic poet leaves a number of traces that hint at the cicada metamorphosis, suggesting that this feature of the myth may have also been in the background of Sappho’s fragment.Footnote 290 Indeed, the metamorphic myth could even be traced back to the Iliad, with its famous comparison of Trojan elders to cicadas (Il. 3.149–53). Just like their relative Tithonus, these aged men are worn down by old age (γήραϊ, 150), and though no longer fit for battle, they remain good speakers (ἀγορηταὶ | ἐσθλοί, 150–1).Footnote 291 The simile encapsulates the core elements of Tithonus’ transformation: the physical decay of the body, but the enduring power of the voice. It is thus certainly possible that this metamorphosis already formed an established part of the literary tradition with which Sappho worked. And indeed, Helen King has argued that another Sapphic fragment may even allude to the myth directly.Footnote 292 We could thus interpret ἔφαντο here as another act of signposted supplementation, prompting audiences to consider the larger tradition of the story with which they are familiar. As Rawles notes, such a reference would certainly resonate against the poem’s larger concerns, adding a note of consolation to the dreary inevitability of old age. The insect’s enduring voice parallels the poetess’ immortal song: although Sappho’s body cannot conquer death, her poetry certainly can.Footnote 293
Sappho’s ἔφαντο, like her κλέος in fr. 44, thus gestures to larger Trojan traditions: Tithonus’ marriage to the immortal Dawn, his inescapable ageing and his eventual transformation into a cicada. In our discussion so far, however, I have avoided commenting on one feature of Sappho’s ‘footnote’ that has caused a great deal of scholarly consternation: its unusual past tense. Instead of the usual φασί, we have the imperfect ἔφαντο, a form elsewhere found predominantly in epic.Footnote 294 There have been many attempts to explain the apparent anomaly,Footnote 295 but one particularly intriguing suggestion is that of Luca Bettarini, who has argued that the verb’s tense establishes a contrast between two different versions of the Tithonus myth, one old and outdated, the other new and current.Footnote 296 According to his argument, Sappho’s predecessors ‘used to say’ that Tithonus became immortal and ageless, remaining both young and beautiful ([κ]ά̣λ̣ο̣ν καὶ νέον, v. 11), with no negative complications. Such a tradition, he argues, is reflected in Homeric dawn periphrases (Il. 11.1–2, Od. 5.1–2), where Eos is pictured rising from the side of Tithonus, a detail that others too have taken to imply that – in Homer at least – ‘he was immortal and ageless like her’.Footnote 297 In Sappho’s day, by contrast, following Bettarini’s argument, Tithonus is said to be immortal but still ageing: in this newer and still current version, even he could not escape the onset of γῆρας. For Bettarini, Sappho’s ἔφαντο thus points to a former tradition that is no longer active, contrasting it with the more recent and complicated instantiation of the myth with which she is concerned. If true, Sappho’s index here would not only point to other texts and traditions but also exhibit an intense literary historical awareness, reflecting on the diachronic development of a specific myth.
Some support for this reading may be found in Pindar, who elsewhere similarly distinguishes different versions of a single myth. Christopher Brown compares Pindar’s first Olympian, where the envious gossip of Pelops’ neighbour (also expressed with the imperfect: ἔννεπε, Ol. 1.47) is set against Pindar’s more ‘recent’ version of the myth (Ol. 1.35–52: §iv.3.3).Footnote 298 An even closer parallel, however, can be found in Pindar’s first Nemean, where the poet claims that he is rousing up an ‘old tale’ (ἀρχαῖον ὀτρύνων λόγον, Nem. 1.34). This appears to contrast his traditional account of Heracles’ infancy (possibly derived from Peisander’s epic Heraclea)Footnote 299 with a more recent version, perhaps Pherecydes’ near-contemporary rationalisation of the myth (in which Amphitryon, not Hera, sent the snakes: frr. 69a–b EGM).Footnote 300 If Pindar could draw such a distinction between different versions of the same myth, we may indeed wonder whether Sappho could do the same a century earlier.Footnote 301
However, I am sceptical whether ἔφαντο alone can mark the differentiation that Bettarini requires of it. At first, his argument appears to be supported by the syntax of these verses: only the claim that Eos ‘went’ to the ends of the earth with Tithonus is strictly part of the indirect speech introduced by ἔφαντο, whereas the onset of old age is described by the poet herself with the indicative ἔμαρψε. The hearsay is thus strictly restricted to Tithonus’ alleged immortality. However, such a transition from oratio obliqua to direct speech can be paralleled elsewhere without implying any significant shift in the truth value of the content: for example, Simonides’ Arete fragment (fr. 579: §ii.3.1) moves from an accusative and infinitive construction (τὰν Ἀρετὰν ναίειν, v.2; ἀμφέπειν, v. 3) to the nominative ἔσοπτος (v. 5, with ἔστί understood) without any clear change in meaning.Footnote 302 Stronger support for Bettarini’s case may still perhaps be found in the verb ἔφαντο, which often appears elsewhere in epic contexts ‘of false hopes or promises’,Footnote 303 a traditional reference that would resonate effectively here: they said (or ‘thought’) that Tithonus was immortal, free from the usual handicaps of mortality, but this was ultimately not true. However, in spite of these supporting arguments, we should question Bettarini’s neat notion of a continuous development from one version of the Tithonus myth to another, an evolutionary model which fails to account for the potential of an ongoing interchange and dialogue between different versions in different contexts. We have, after all, already seen potential hints of Tithonus’ cicada transformation in the Iliad, while even the Homeric dawn periphrases do not explicitly contradict the version of Tithonus’ continuous ageing. Elsewhere in the Iliad, Tithonus is named as a son of Laomedon, a brother of Priam and cousin of Anchises (Il. 20.237). Even if he had not achieved eternal youth, therefore, he would still have been within the usual life cycle of a human being during the events of the Iliad and Odyssey.Footnote 304 There is, in short, no reason for seeing the Homeric formula as evidence for an earlier, more primitive version of the myth in which Tithonus enjoyed an unblemished immortality.
The anomaly of the past tense has also been considerably overplayed; it is not in fact without parallel. Besides the archaic and classical examples cited by other scholars,Footnote 305 it is particularly worth comparing Aratus’ Hellenistic account of Orion’s rape of Artemis and the huntsman’s subsequent death from a scorpion sting (Phaen. 634–46). Just as in Sappho, this tale is attributed to the talk of the poet’s predecessors with the imperfect ἔφαντο (προτέρων λόγος, οἵ μιν ἔφαντο, Phaen. 637), and it also transitions from an infinitive to a simple indicative during the course of its narration (ἑλκῆσαι, Phaen. 638; ἡ δὲ … ἐπετείλατο, Phaen. 641). Yet it ends with a present φασί in a kind of ring composition (Phaen. 645), marking the complementarity of past and present speech. Both φασί and ἔφαντο can thus be used to gesture to other traditions, even within a single passage. Despite its attractions, therefore, we cannot maintain the distinction which Bettarini draws between the two versions of the Tithonus myth, or the significance he places on Sappho’s imperfect. Rather, I contend, ἔφαντο functions like any other index of hearsay, whether in the present or a past tense, alerting an audience member to other tellings of this myth and inviting them to supplement it with their wider knowledge. Indeed, if anything, the rare epic imperfect adds to the Homeric flavour of these lines, reinforcing the potential connection with the hexametric Homeric Hymn. As in Ibycus, Bacchylides and Theognis, Sappho’s appeal to hearsay indexes her engagement with wider traditions and texts surrounding Tithonus, inviting her audience to supplement unmentioned details of the myth.
II.3.4 Lyric Innovation: Faux Footnoting?
So far, we have encountered numerous cases where lyric poets’ appeals to hearsay footnote and signal interactions with other texts and traditions. But it is worth asking whether such indexical appeals to hearsay are always so ‘straight’, or whether they may sometimes conceal a degree of literary innovation. We have already seen the disguised Aphrodite bend the truth of tradition to fit her immediate context in her eponymous Homeric Hymn. And when we turn to lyric poetry, we can identify a number of similar cases where tradition is invoked precisely at points where it is creatively refashioned. Naturally, such an examination is severely hampered by our limited evidence for earlier traditions and literature, and it is often impossible to determine whether some specific element in a narrative is an innovation or a traditional element. Yet despite this degree of uncertainty, we can still explore at least a few possible cases of indexed innovation, especially in the work of Pindar.
Pindar’s Flexible Mythology
On a number of occasions, Pindar alters the literary tradition to heighten the parallelism between a myth and his contemporary present, or to incorporate a primarily local myth into the Panhellenic traditional canon. In such cases, he often appeals to hearsay to embellish his account with the veneer of traditional authority. In Pythian 1, for example, the Theban poet introduces Philoctetes as a parallel for the Sicilian tyrant Hieron, recalling the Greek hero’s physical infirmity, rescue from Lemnos and key role in the sack of Troy (Pyth. 1.50–5). The introductory φαντί (Pyth. 1.52) marks the general traditionality of this myth, nodding to the hero’s gruesome snake wound and Helenus’ prophecy that Troy could not be taken without Philoctetes and Heracles’ bow, familiar from the Epic Cycle and elsewhere.Footnote 306 But it also authorises a patently untraditional element: in other versions of the myth, Philoctetes was cured of his wounds before he entered battle.Footnote 307 In Pindar, by contrast, he continues to ‘walk with a weak body’ (ἀσθενεῖ … χρωτὶ βαίνων, Pyth. 1.55), a detail that renders him a closer parallel for the poet’s sickly patron.Footnote 308 Through the indexical φαντί, Pindar invokes tradition to legitimise this revamped version of the myth.Footnote 309
However, Pindar does not only rewrite tradition to enhance his victors’ glory. At other points, he adapts the mythical past to reflect the contemporary political realities of a victor’s hometown. In Olympian 6, for example, Evadna, the mother of Iamus and the Iamid line, is introduced not as the true biological daughter of Aepytus, the king of Arcadia (as was traditional), but rather as his foster daughter. Instead, her true parents are said (λέγεται, Ol. 6.29) to have been Poseidon and Pitana, the homonymous heroine of a Spartan city. This genealogy appears to reflect the contemporary politics of Pindar’s own day, in which the most famous Iamid prophet, Teisamenus of Elis, had been granted Spartan citizenship.Footnote 310 By incorporating the Spartan Pitana into Iamus’ genealogy, Pindar integrates his contemporary reality into the mythical past. And by appealing to hearsay at this moment, he legitimises this addition with a veneer of traditional authority. In the words of Pavlou, he ‘manages to present the recent insertion into the Iamid genealogy as already traditional and socially authoritative’.Footnote 311
Pindar also appeals to the authority of hearsay when imbuing local, epichoric traditions with a Panhellenic pedigree, as in the mythical aetion of Rhodes in Olympian 7. The poet introduces the emergence of the island from the sea as the ‘ancient talk of men’ (Ol. 7.54–7):
Ancient tales of men say that when Zeus and the immortals were dividing the earth, Rhodes was not yet visible in the vast sea, but the island lay hidden in its salty depths.
The narrative continues with Helios, the sun god, failing to gain a share of land because of his absence during the lot-taking; but he sees Rhodes below the sea and requests it as his future domain when it rises (Ol. 7.58–71). Here, once more, the language of hearsay and antiquity combine to index a mythical reference, alongside the specification of a community of ἄνθρωποι.Footnote 312 However, as the Pindaric scholia note, this tradition of Rhodes’ submergence is not attested in literary sources before Pindar (Σ Ol. 7.101). Rather, the scholia suggest that the poet is drawing on ancient local traditions, a plausible suggestion (Σ Ol. 7.100a, 101). As Barbara Kowalzig has demonstrated, ‘the presence’ of Helios ‘and the importance of his legends on Rhodes at an early time … are undeniable’.Footnote 313 Yet the divine division of lots also has a significant literary heritage of its own, going back at least to Poseidon’s account of the three-way division of the world in the Iliad (15.187–93). Kowalzig has highlighted Pindar’s numerous verbal connections with the Homeric passageFootnote 314 but also notes that the Pindaric scene exhibits a significant discrepancy with its epic forebear: in Homer, the earth remained common to all (γαῖα δ’ ἔτι ξυνὴ πάντων, Il. 15.193), while in Pindar it is precisely the earth that is divided up (ὅτε χθόνα δατέοντο, 55; χώρας ἀκλάρωτον, 59).Footnote 315 Pindar thus appropriates and adapts the authority of the literary tradition to bolster local myth. The introduction of the story with a gesture to ancient hearsay does not so much paper over Pindar’s innovations as much as it endows a local and little-known story with the prestige of canonicity.
The Tyrant Slayers: Inventing Tradition
In lyric poetry, we thus do not find out-and-out mythological inventions disguised as traditional tales, but rather slight adaptations of pre-existing myths to reflect and enhance contemporary circumstances. In such cases, appeals to tradition bestow an element of canonicity on contemporary and epichoric traditions, inscribing them into the wider storehouse of communal song.Footnote 316 This perfectly fits the more general practice of epinician, which often juxtaposes local figures and traditions with the major Panhellenic myths of the Greek world. But it is worth stressing that this is not solely a Pindaric or even epinician phenomenon. We can identify a comparable instance of authorised ‘innovation’ in an Attic skolion on the immortality of the Athenian tyrant slayer Harmodius (Carm. Conv. 894 PMG):
Dearest Harmodius, you are surely not dead: they say that you are alive in the Isles of the Blessed, where swift-footed Achilles is and, they say, Tydeus’ son Diomedes.
This text, as transmitted, contains two indexical appeals to tradition within the space of four lines. The second, if retained,Footnote 317 is the more straightforward and evokes wider traditions surrounding Achilles’ and Diomedes’ immortalisation, here expressed through traditionally epic language.Footnote 318 Achilles, in particular, was associated with a range of afterlife locations after his death: besides the Odyssean Underworld (Od. 11.471–540), he was also situated on the White Isle (Aeth. arg. 4b GEF; Pind. Nem. 4.49–50), the Elysian fields (Ibyc. fr. 291; Simon. fr. 558) and – as here – the isles of the Blessed (Pind. Ol. 2.70–80; Pl. Symp. 179e–180b). Diomedes, meanwhile, was immortalised by Athena, at least according to Pindar (Nem. 10.7) and apparently also Ibycus (fr. 294 = Σ Pind. Nem. 10.12). The second φασί thus marks the traditionality of these heroes’ afterlives, while also perhaps acknowledging the competing alternatives for Achilles’ final resting place.Footnote 319
The first φασίν, however, is more arresting, since it attributes the same immortal status to a historical individual, the Athenian tyrant slayer Harmodius. This youth famously lost his life alongside his adult lover Aristogeiton in their attempt to kill the Athenian tyrant Hippias and his brother Hipparchus in 514 bce. In the grim light of history, their behaviour does not seem equal to that of Homer’s greatest heroes: it was an act of revenge, motivated by a personal slight, and only partially successful. The pair managed to kill Hipparchus but not Hippias, who responded to their plot with a harsher and more repressive rule. Despite these realities, however, Harmodius and Aristogeiton became lauded as ‘tyrant slayers’ in the popular imagination and were refashioned as the poster boys of Athenian democracy, celebrated with statues, song and hero cult.Footnote 320 This skolion, alongside others on the same theme (893, 895–6 PMG), forms part of the larger ideological development of the Harmodius myth, setting the hero on a par with the greatest warriors from the Trojan war. After all, we have already seen in other skolia how one of the heroes mentioned here, Achilles, was singled out as the greatest warrior who went to Troy (898–9 PMG: §ii.3.1). In this context, the poet’s initial φασίν is extremely loaded, drawing on the authority of tradition to authorise this local Athenian legend.
As in Pindar, this innovation is achieved through a creative reworking of tradition. Already in Hesiod’s Works and Days, the Isles of the Blessed were the home of the prosperous heroes (καὶ τοὶ μὲν ναίουσιν … | ἐν μακάρων νήσοισι … | ὄλβιοι ἥρωες, Hes. Op. 170–2). But the skolion appropriates this long-standing epic tradition of heroic immortality for a specifically Athenian purpose, aligning a local hero with the Panhellenic greats.Footnote 321 In so doing, it may also evoke Achilles as a prime model for Harmodius’ pederastic relationship with Aristogeiton. Elsewhere in Attic literature, Achilles and Patroclus are mentioned as ancient analogues for the tyrant slayers (Aeschin. In Tim. 132–3, 140–2; Pl. Symp. 179e–180b, 182c),Footnote 322 and in Plato’s Symposium Phaedrus claims that it is precisely Achilles’ love for his friend which guaranteed his immortalisation on the Isles of the Blessed (179e–180b). Achilles here is thus an exemplar not only of heroic immortality, but also of someone who has achieved it through pederastic devotion. As in Pindar, a local tradition is incorporated into the annals of song and bolstered by the authority of the mythical past. The indexical φασίν both authorises and cements the traditionality of the Harmodius myth.Footnote 323
Appeals to hearsay in lyric, therefore, not only signpost allusions to pre-existing traditions and texts, but also mark and authorise the creative reworking of tradition, building on the epic example we have already seen in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite. These are not so much cases of pure invention and fabrication, as occasions on which poets rework and revise traditional material. Our limited access to the whole range of lyric poetry inhibits a fuller perspective on such practice, but even from these glimpses, we see that lyric poets exploited the indexical potential of hearsay not only to mark and supplement their allusions to pre-existing texts and traditions, but also to authorise their innovative departures from the trodden path.
II.4 Conclusions
The ‘Alexandrian footnote’ has a long history before Alexandria. The various examples treated above demonstrate that this indexing of allusion was not a novelty of the Hellenistic age – it already has considerable archaic precedent.
As we have seen, archaic epic and lyric poets employ this device to signal their mastery and control over the many strands of song. They variously invoke and challenge the authority of prior traditions and texts, but this phenomenon also involves a number of more specific nuances: Homer sometimes appeals to hearsay when foregrounding a major mythical model that continues to underlie his whole poem, while lyric poets frequently invoke tradition at moments of narrative ellipsis, inviting audiences to fill in the blanks of what a poet has left unsaid – a process of signposted supplementation which reflects the lyric genre’s predilection for brief exempla over extensive narrative. Over time, we can also identify an increasing number of indexed innovations, instances where tradition is creatively reworked, but legitimised through appeal to hearsay.
It is worth noting that at least some ancient readers seem to have been attuned to the indexical demands of this poetic language. In many examples where we have accompanying scholia or ancient commentary, these ancient scholars cite a source or parallel for the passage in question, or comment on the significance of φασί as an attribution to another source.Footnote 324 Of course, this inevitably tells us more about the maximally intertextual reading practices of the post-classical age, which cannot necessarily be mapped back directly onto archaic audiences (cf. §i.1.3). Yet even so, these later receptions suggest that Hellenistic and later poets recognised the archaic and classical precedent for their footnoting strategies. In continuing this practice, they were following tradition, not radically innovating on it.
Within the archaic period alone, however, it is also possible to trace some broader developments in the use of this device. In Homeric epic, the ‘pre-Alexandrian footnote’ does largely seem to do what it says on the tin, appealing to the traditions of ‘what people say’ at large, rather than to specific texts. The strongest cases for direct reference can be made for the Hesiodic echoes in Iliad 2 and Telemachus’ reporting of Nestor’s age in Odyssey 3, but even here we have noted reasons for preferring engagement with broader traditions. As we progress to later epic and lyric examples, however, it seems that the likelihood of a direct textual reference becomes greater. In part, this may simply reflect our own improved access to a wider range of possible sources as we move to study increasingly later texts, but it also suggests a gradual shift in ancient poets’ understanding of the literary tradition: from an amorphous mass of tales to a canon of individual, identifiable texts. This transition also seems to be reflected in the expanding range of linguistic manifestations of this device. The initial concentration on verbal forms (such as φασί, πυνθάνομαι and λέγω) gradually expands to incorporate concrete nouns like λόγος, a word which in itself hints at a greater specificity of reference. In addition, these changes may also result from variation by genre. We have already noted lyric poets’ ready use of other poets’ names, in comparison to the silence of Homeric epic (§i.2.3), and it seems likely that the more flexible narrator of lyric poetry would have been more amenable to direct and explicit indexical references.
Despite these changes, however, it is striking that the rhetoric of the device remains permanently attached to the anonymous and the general, even when it becomes directed to individual texts. Even as literacy and writing began to play an increasingly important role in the preservation and commemoration of literature and as poets began to name their contemporaries and predecessors directly, they still regularly employed the vague anonymity of hearsay to signpost their allusions.Footnote 325 In part, this could reflect the conservatism of the Greek poetic tradition: literal appeals to tradition in archaic poetry were adopted into later poets’ repertoire as a stylised rhetorical device, even as the source of their allusive gestures changed – from traditions to texts. But this alone cannot be the whole story. I suspect the anonymity of the device also encouraged its continuing use. On the one hand, it allowed poets to bolster their claims through the abstract authority of the poetic and mythical past, deriving legitimacy from a monolithic and uncontestable ‘tradition’. Yet on the other, it proved a way for them to distinguish themselves and their own individual treatments from this larger tradition, subsuming other past and contemporary poets into a vague and faceless mass of transmitted words. Most importantly, however, the device was also a means of fostering a special and direct connection with (especially elite) members of an audience, flattering them as part of an in-crowd who were already familiar with other texts and traditions, with all that people say and tell.
In whatever way we ultimately account for the device’s enduring appeal, however, one thing should be clear: there was nothing distinctively Alexandrian or scholarly about indexical appeals to hearsay. This was a key intertextual tool from the very start of the Greek poetic tradition.
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