Homeric Hymn to Demeter
Source: Thucydides (c.460/455-c.399 BCE): Peloponnesian War, Book 2.34-46 An Introduction to Archilochos
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Source: Thucydides (c.460/455-c.399 BCE): Peloponnesian War, Book 2.34-46 An Introduction to Archilochos From Guy Davenport, 7 Greeks (New Directions, 1995), pages 1-4 Of the Greek poets of the seventh century BC we know almost nothing and none of their poems has come down to us entire. Archilochos was a professional soldier from the Aegean island of Paros; Sappho a member of a distinguished family on Lesbos, an island off the coast of Asia Minor; and Alkman was a slave and choirmaster in the Lydian city Sardis before he emigrated, or was sold to, Sparta, where he wrote the two hymns, to Artemis and Hera, which assure him a place all his own in literature. Archilochos is the second poet of the West. Before him the archpoet Homer had written the two poems of Europe; never again would one imagination find the power to move two epics to completion and perfection. The clear minds of these archaic, island-dwelling Greeks survive in a few details only, fragment by fragment, a temple, a statue of Apollo with a poem engraved down the thighs, generous vases with designs abstract and geometric. They decorated their houses and ships like Florentines and Japanese; they wrote poems like Englishmen of the court of Henry, Elizabeth and James. They dressed like Samurai; all was bronze, terra cota, painted marble, dyed wool, and banquets. Of the Arcadian Greece of Winckelmann and Walter Pater they were as ignorant as we of the ebony cities of Yoruba and Benin. The scholar poets of the Renaissance, Ambrogio Poliziano and Christopher Marlowe, whose vision of antiquity we have inherited, would have rejected as indecorous this seventh-century world half oriental, half Viking. Archilochos was both poet and mercenary. As a poet he was both satirist and lyricist. Iambic verse is his invention. He wrote the first beast fable known to us. He wrote marching songs, love lyrics of frail tenderness, elegies. But most of all he was what Meleager calls him, "a thistle with graceful leaves." There is a tradition that wasps hover around his grave. To the ancients, both Greek and Roman, he was The Satirist. We have what grammarians quote to illustrate a point of dialect or interesting use of the subjunctive; we have brief quotations by admiring critics; and we have papyrus fragments, scrap paper from the households of Alexandria, with which third-class mummies were wrapped and stuffed. All else is lost. Horace and Catullus, like all cultivated readers, had Archilochos complete in their libraries. Even in the tattered version we have of Archilochos, some three hundred fragments and about forty paraphrases and indirect quotations in the Budé edition (1958, revised 1968) of Professors Lasserre and Bonnard [Archiloque, Fragments, texte établi par François Lasserre, traduit et commenté par André Bonnard, Collection des Universités de France, publié sous le patronage de l'Association Guillaume Budé (Paris, 1958; 2nd ed. rev., 1968)] a good half of them beyond conjecture as to context, so ragged the papyrus, or brief ("grape," "curled wool," "short sword") the extraordinary form of his mind is discernible. Not all poets can be so broken and still compel attention. Like the brutal but gallant Landsknecht Urs Graf, both artist and soldier, or the condottiere, poet, military engineer, and courtly amorist Sigismondo Malatesta of Rimini, Archilochos kept his "two services" in an unlikely harmony. Ares did not complain that this ash-spear fighter wrote poems, and the Muses have heard everything and did not mind that their horsetail-helmeted servant sometimes spoke with the vocabulary of a paratrooper sergeant, though the high-minded Spartans banned Archilochos's poems for their mockery of uncritical bravery. And the people of his native Paros made it clear, when they honored him with a monument, that they thought him a great poet in spite of his nettle tongue. Apollo in an ancient conceit read Archilochos with delight and was of the opinion that his poems would last as long as mankind. "Hasten on, Wayfarer," Archilochos's tomb bore for inscription, "lest you stir up the hornets." Leonidas the epigrammatist imagined the Muses hopelessly in love with Archilochos, and Delian Apollo to boot, for how else account for such melody, such verve? Quintilian admired his richness of blood, meaning liveliness, we suppose, and his abundance of muscle. Plutarch in his essay on music places Archilochos among the innovators of metric, and Horace, imitating Archilochos, congratulated himself on bringing Greek numbers into Italy. Pindar called him Archilochos the Scold. Writers as different as Milton, who mentions him in the Areopagitica as trying the patience of the defenders of the freedom of speech, and Wyndham Lewis, who spits like a cat at his reputation, took his satiric talent for granted without really knowing what he wrote. Hipponax alone among the archaic poets, we are told, has as sharpened a stylus as Archilochos, and Hipponax is remembered for a grim little couplet: Woman is twice a pleasure to man, The wedding night and her funeral. Though he is said to have written with venom and, according to Gaitylikos, splashed Helicon with gore, we have no evidence of anything so caustic. We have to take antiquity's word for it, or assume that the Panhellenes were far touchier than we about satire. Certainly their sense of honor was of an iron strictness. To mock, a Greek proverb goes, is to thumb through Archilochos. "The longer your letters, the better," Aristophanes complimented a friend, "like the poems of Archilochos." It is precisely the tone of Archilochos that gives us a problem with no solution. In 1974 a new poem of Archilochos's was published in R. Merkelbach's and M.L. West's Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik. It was discovered on a papyrus mummy wrapping, identified and edited (ten years' work it was) by Anton Fackelmann, translated here as Fragment 18. Its tone would be aesthetically difficult even if we were surer of its meaning. Our fortune in having it at all is immense and vies in importance with the utterly new dimension of lyric poetry which it gives to our tentative and sketchy knowledge of the dawn of European literature. Is it a comic poem, a raucous anecdote with a hilarious punch line? Is it frankly an erotic poem (Peter Green has waggishly titled it "The Last Tango on Paros") [Times Literary Supplement, 14 March 1975, p. 272]. There is nothing in Greek literature like its last three stanzas. We can understand the robust bawdy of Aristophanes and Herondas, the vivid eroticism of Sappho and Anakreon, but these lines of Archilochos - sung in barracks, on the march, in village squares, at singing contests? - are they satire or salacity, private or public? I would like to believe that it is a satiric collision of a love song and a biological fact, the kind of comedy you get if Juliet on her balcony had dislodged a flowerpot in her ecstasy and beaned Romeo below. Of the man himself we know that he was born on Paros in the Cyclades in the first half of the seventh century BC. Pausanias knew a tradition that makes him the descendant of one Tellis, or Telesikles, who was distinguished enough to have figured in Polygnotos's frescoes at Delphi, where he was shown with Kleoboia, who introduced the Eleusinian mysteries into Thasos, an island that owes much to Archilochos's family. A Byzantine encyclopedia credits his father with founding a town on Thasos, "an island crowned with forests and lying in the sea like the backbone of an ass," as Archilochos describes it in a poem. As his name means First Sergeant (leader of a company of ash-spearmen or hoplites), he may have given it to himself, or used it as a nom de guerre et de plume. Some scholars say that he was a bastard, accepted by his father, but the son of a slave woman named Enipo. The poems reveal a man who took pride in his hard profession of mercenary, who cultivated a studied lyric eroticism, and had a tender eye for landscape. His companion was one Glaukos, Gray Eyes, and several fragments address him in a brotherly manner. At one time he contracted marriage with a daughter of Lykambes, Neobulé, probably a settlement that would have retired him from campaigning. "O to touch Neobulé's hand!" is the oldest surviving fragment of a love lyric in Greek. But Lykambes took back his word and the wedding was canceled. All Greece soon knew, and later Rome, Archilochos' bitter poem in which he wished that Lykambes might freeze, starve, and be frightened to death simultaneously. And all schoolboys, before Greek was expelled from classrooms, knew Lykambes to be synonymous with a broken word of honor. Archilochos was killed by a man named Crow. The death was either in battle or a fight; nevertheless, Apollo in grief and anger excommunicated Crow from all the temples; so spoke the entranced oracle at Delphi. Archilochos, P. Colon. 7511 Translation copyright 1995 Guy Davenport; all rights reserved. Republished from 7 Greeks (New Directions, 1995) with permission [ ] Back away from that, [she said] And steady on [ ] Wayward and wildly pounding heart, There is a girl who lives among us Who watches you with foolish eyes, A slender, lovely, graceful girl, Just budding into supple line, And you scare her and make her shy. O daughter of the highborn Amphimedo, I replied, of the widely remembered Amphimedo now in the rich earth dead,
For young men to choose from Among the skills of the delicious goddess
When the shadows go black and quiet, Let us, you and I alone, and the gods,
I shall be tame, I shall behave And reach, if I reach, with a civil hand.
You'll not say no, Sweetheart, to this? I shall come no farther than the garden grass.
Any man who wants her may have her. Aiai! She's past her day, ripening rotten. The petals of her flower are all brown. The grace that first she had is shot. Don't you agree that she looks like a boy?
She should get herself a job as a scarecrow. I'd as soon hump her as [kiss a goat's butt].
With such a woman as her for a wife! How could I ever prefer her to you?
Each of her faces is as sharp as the other, Which way she's turning you never can guess.
Were I to foster get upon her, throwing Them blind, and all on the wrongest day.
Laid her down in a thousand flowers, And put my soft wool cloak around her.
To still the fear in her eyes, For she was trembling like a fawn,
Spraddled her neatly and pressed Against her fine, hard, bared crotch.
And came in a sudden white spurt While I was stroking her hair.
one who understands the Muses’ lovely gifts. (4W) Come, cup in hand, across the benches of the swift ship roam and drink deeply from the hollow casks. Gulp down the red wine to the lees, for we shall not be able to stay sober on this guard. (5W) Some Thracian tribesman flaunts my shield. I left it Blameless in a bush – betrayed it there unwillingly – and yet I saved myself, so what’s that shield to me? To hell with it, I’ll buy another every bit as good. [Trans. Anne Burnett] (42W) Like some Phrygian or Thracian sucking beer through a straw, she bent and drank him off. (43W) ‘His cock overflowed like that of a barley-fed ass from Priene.’ (114W)I do not like a tall commander, strutting about, primping in curls or with only half a beard. Give me a short leader you can clearly see bandy-legged, solid on his feet and full of courage. (188W) No more does your soft flesh bloom, its folds have given up their fruit and ugly old age [with hoe in hand?] comes to clear the ground …
So strong it pour a cloud of mist Upon my eyes and stole my feeble senses From my breast. [Trans. Anne Burnett] GLOSSARY OF KEY GREEK WORDS Depending on context, adjectives in -os (masc.), may be given with other endings: -ê (fem.),-on (neut.),-oi (masc. pl.),-ai (fem. pl.), -a (neut. pl.). agathos ‘good, noble’ agôn, pl. agônes ‘coming together; contest; agony; ordeal; trial’ agorâ, pl. agorai ‘public assembly, place of public assembly’ aidôs ‘shame, sense of shame; sense of respect for others; honorableness’ ainos ‘authoritative utterance for and by a social group; praise; fable’; ainigma ‘riddle’ aitios ‘responsible, guilty’; aitiâ ‘responsibility, guilt; cause, case’ akhos ‘grief, public expression of grief by way of lamentation or keening’ alêthês (adjective) ‘true, true things’; alêtheia (noun) ‘truth’ aretê ‘striving for a noble goal, for high ideals; noble goal, high ideals’ aristos ‘best’, superlative of agathos; aristeia: designates the hero's great epic moments that demonstrate his being aristos atê, pl. atai ‘veering, aberration, derangement; disaster; punishment for disaster’ âthlos (aethlos) ‘contest, ordeal’; âthlêtês ‘athlete’ biâ (biê in the language of Homeric poetry) ‘force, violence’ daimôn, pl. daimones ‘supernatural force (= unspecified god or hero) intervening in human life’; eudaimôniâ ‘state of being blessed with a good daimôn’ dêmos, pl. dêmoi ‘district, population of a district; community’ dikê, pl. dikai ‘judgment (short-range); justice (long-range)’; dikaios ‘just’ ekhthros ‘enemy [within the community], non-philos’ epos, pl. epea ‘utterance, poetic utterance’ eris ‘strife, conflict’ esthlos ‘genuine, good, noble’; synonym of agathos genos ‘stock (“breeding”); generating [of something or someone]; generation’ hêrôs, pl. hêrôes ‘hero’ hêsukhos ‘serene’; hêsukhiâ ‘state of being hêsukhos’ hieros ‘sacred, holy’ hôrâ, pl. hôrai ‘season, seasonality; time; timeliness’ hubris ‘outrage’ (etc.) kakos ‘bad, evil, base, worthless, ignoble’; kakotês ‘state of being kakos; debasement’ kerdos, pl. kerdea ‘gain, profit; desire for gain; craft employed for gain; craftiness’ kharis, pl. kharites ‘reciprocity, give-and-take, reciprocal relationship; initiation of reciprocal relationship; the pleasure or beauty derived from reciprocity, from a reciprocal relationship; gratification; grace, gracefulness; favor, favorableness’ khoros ‘chorus’ = ‘group of singers/dancers’ kleos, pl. klea ‘glory, fame (especially as conferred by poetry); that which is heard’ koros ‘being satiated; being insatiable’ kosmos ‘arrangement, order, law and order, the social order, the universal order’ krînô ‘sort out, separate, decide, judge’ lussa ‘rage, fury, frenzy’. This word is related to the word lukos ‘wolf’, so the image is one of wolf-like rage. mantis ‘seer, prophet’ mênis ‘supernatural anger’ menos ‘power, life-force, activation’ (divinely infused into cosmic forces, like fire and wind, or into heroes); a partial synonym of thûmos; a partial synonym of mênis mêtis ‘artifice, stratagem, cunning intelligence’ moira, pl. moirai ‘plot of land; portion; lot in life, fate, destiny’ mûthos ‘special speech; special utterance; myth’ nemesis ‘the process whereby everyone gets what he or she deserves’ nomos, pl. nomoi ‘local custom; customary law; law’ noos: designates realm of consciousness, of rational functions; ‘intuition, perception’; principle that reintegrates thûmos (or menos) and psukhê after death nostos ‘return, homecoming; song about homecoming; return to light and life’ oikos ‘house, abode; resting place of cult hero; family line’; verb oikeô ‘have an abode’ olbios ‘blessed, blissful; fortunate'; olbos ‘bliss’ (pictured as material security) paskhô ‘suffer, experience, be treated [badly or well]’; pathos ‘suffering, experience’ penthos ‘grief, public expression of grief by way of lamentation or keening’ philos ‘friend’ (noun); ‘dear, near-and-dear, belonging to self’ (adjective); philotês or philiâ ‘the state of being philos’ phrên, pl. phrenes: physical localization of the thûmos polis ‘city, city-state’ ponos ‘ordeal, labor, pain’ pontos ‘sea’ (‘crossing’) psukhê, pl. psukhai: synonym of thûmos (or menos) at the moment of death; essence of life while one is alive; conveyor of identity while one is dead sêma, pl. sêmata ‘sign, signal, symbol; tomb'; sêmainô (verb) ‘indicate, use a sêma’ sophos ‘skilled, skilled in understanding special language’; sophiâ ‘being sophos’ sôphrôn ‘balanced, with equilibrium, moderate’; sôphrosunê ‘being sôphrôn’ sôtêr ‘savior’ (either ‘bringing to safety’ or, mystically, ‘bringing back to life’); sôtêriâ ‘safety, salvation’; sôzô (verb) ‘save; be a sôtêr (for someone)’ stasis ‘division in a group; strife; division [= part of an organization, like a chorus]’ telos ‘coming full circle, rounding out, fulfillment, completion, ending, end; successfully passing through an ordeal; ritual, rite’ themis, pl. themistes ‘something divinely ordained’ therapôn, pl. therapontes ‘attendant, minister; ritual substitute’ thûmos: designates realm of consciousness, of rational and emotional functions tîmê, pl. tîmai ‘honor; honor paid to a supernatural force by way of cult’ turannos, pl. turannoi (Lydian word for ‘king’): ‘king’ (from the viewpoint of most Greek dynasties); ‘unconstitutional ruler’ (from the viewpoint of Greek democracy) xenos, pl. xenoi ‘stranger who should be treated like a guest by a host, or like a host by a guest; xeniâ ‘reciprocal relationship between xenoi’; when the rules of xeniâ do not work, a xenos risks defaulting to the status of simply a ‘stranger’ 1This name designates both the god of the underworld and the underworld itself. 2As we shall now see, the narcissus is the trigger for the “trap door.” 3On the division of the world, to be shared by the three brothers Zeus, Poseidon, and Hadês, cf. Iliad XV 189-191. 4That is, with the dead. 5Different locales had different traditions about where Demeter was first recognized and where her cult and her Mysteries were first established. 6Eleusis is the locale of the Eleusinian Mysteries; both Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries were eventually appropriated by the polis of Athens. 7That is, the polis of Eleusis. 8Evidently the oldest sister was speaking on behalf of the others as well. 9The name suggests somebody who is a ‘giver of gifts’. 10The textual transmission is garbled here, and my translation of this line is tentative (the key, I propose, is in the connections with lines 149-150). 11The “gifts of the gods” can be good fortune or bad fortune, making people rejoice or grieve. This theme is relevant to the ad hoc name of Demeter at line 122. 12All this is an exercise in religious hindsight. The temple of “today” is the palace of “yesterday,” the age of heroes. The priest of “today,” descended as he is from an influential aristocratic family, is the king of “yesterday.” At a complex cult-center or “temple” like that of Eleusis, which is run by an accretive hierarchy of hereditary priesthoods, the religious hindsight requires that the accretion of priestly offices in the temple be retrojected as an aggregation of kings in the “palace,” who are also the cult-heroes in the “temple.” Notice that, although Kallidikê promises Demeter a catalogue of the kings, what she says turns out to be a catalogue of queens, who are named in terms of their husbands. The husbands are in the foreground, but the wives in the background are the ones who manage the palace. The kings are all special cult-heroes connected with the worship of Demeter. Triptolemos, the primeval Ploughman, is a local hero of Athens. Dioklos is a local hero of Megara (according to Megarean tradition, he was the Megarean ruler of Eleusis who was expelled by the Athenian hero Theseus: Plutarch Theseus 10; the Megarean character in Aristophanes Acharnians 774 swears by him as a cult-hero). We know less about Polyxenos, but here too we have evidence for his cult in symbiosis with the cult of Demeter; keeping in mind the theme of god-hero antagonism, I note that poluxenos ‘he who has many guests’ is a conventional epithet of Hadês. As for Eumolpos ‘he who sings and dances well’, he is the hero-ancestor of the ultimately dominant priestly family at the cult-center of Eleusis; he represents the most current tradition in Eleusis itself. Dolikhos was a cult-hero connected with the Eleusinian Games (Richardson commentary p. 199). Keleos seems to be a figure parallel to Eumolpos (cf. Richardson commentary p. 303). 13Note the roles of the father and the mother. 14Again, note the roles of the father and the mother. 15Note the diametrical oppositions between Demeter and the girls, both in movement and in appearance. In the cult of Demeter, such diametrically opposite movements and appearances are suitable for ritual re-enactment, in song and dance, by ensembles of specially-chosen girls and women. 16An epithet appropriate to kings, reflecting a myth-pattern that connects royal sovereignty with dew from heaven. 17We know from other sources that such a stool with a fleece on it was a “prop” for the purification ritual at Eleusis. 18Iambê, as we shall now see, is a personification of the iambic tradition, which reflects a ritual discourse that provokes laughter and thereby promotes fertility. This discourse, which makes fun of its targets, is often obscene in nature. The obscenity, it goes without saying, is ritual obscenity. 19The name of a ritual potion in the Eleusinian Mysteries. 20Another name for Demeter. 21The hosia is whatever can be considered specific to the sphere of humans, not gods, in a ritual. For example, hosia is when humans take a drink at a ritual, whereas the god involved does not. From the standpoint of myth, however, when the ritual is founded, the god has to show the way by doing it first, so that humans will have precedent. In such a case, the god does it “for the sake of hosia” (cf. Richardson commentary p. 225). 22With reference to the cutting of roots: this riddling euphemism designates extracts that serve as ingredients for magic potions. 23Literally, an ‘anti-cutting’. 24Apparently the same threat as the Undercutter. 25Literally, ‘he who shines for the dêmos’. 26Commentary in Nagy, Best of the Achaeans pp. 181-182. 27With downturned palms: a ritual gesture, described also in the Iliad. 28In other versions, Demeter just leaves the baby in the fire, letting him perish right then and there (cf. Richardson commentary 244). 29Styx (the word stux conveys the nervous reaction of recoiling at something that is chillingly ice-cold) is a river in Hadês, and the gods swear by it when they guarantee the absolute truth of what they are saying. 30Commentary in Nagy, Best of the Achaeans p. 184. 31In the present version of the Demeter myth, Metaneira’s mistake thus causes the boy’s eventual death. In other versions, as already mentioned, it causes the boy’s immediate death in the fire. 32This refers to a ritual mock-battle at Eleusis, a quasi-athletic event known as the Ballêtus, which was officially held on a seasonally-recurring basis to compensate for the death of the baby cult-hero Demophon. This mock-battle seems to have been the ritual kernel of a whole complex of events known as the Eleusinian Games (cf. Richardson commentary p. 246). Parallels: the Nemean and the Isthmian Games, pan-Hellenic athletic events, were held on a seasonally-recurring basis to compensate for the deaths of the baby cult-heroes Arkhemoros and Melikertes respectively. 33Meaning: ‘the beautiful place of dancing’. 34Gods are larger-than-life-size. 35I see here a veiled reference to the ultimate development of the entire religious complex of Eleusis. 36The meaning of this word is opaque; it probably conveys some mythological theme of anthropogony. 37There were two ways of offering meat to the gods: as portions to be set aside and eaten (e.g. by the priests) or to be burned on the altar. The gods give vegetation to humans, who give their meat-offerings to the gods. If humans get no vegetation in order to sustain their life, the gods cannot get meat-offerings to sustain their timê. 38Her golden wings are on her heels. 39Hermes was the killer of a monster called Argos, who was himself a Hermetic figure. The form argos conveys swiftness and brightness, and the form Argei-phontês may well convey both ‘Argos-killer’ and ‘he who kills with swiftness and brightness’. 40The text of lines 349-350 is garbled, and the translation here is merely an approximation. 41Commentary on lines 351-354 in Nagy, Best of the Achaeans pp. 186-187. 42This is conventionally said about a “knowing” smile: Hadês knows more than he lets on. 43Hadês is acting furtively (Richardson commentary p. 277). 44Maenads are frenzied devotees of Bacchus = Dionysus. 45These lines are incomplete: the gaps in the text are caused by a tear in the manuscript (the Hymn to Demeter is preserved in only one medieval manuscript). The reconstructed context: Persephone also runs to her mother. Demeter finds out that Persephone has eaten of the pomegranate that had been offered her by Hadês. It is determined that Persephone must therefore stay in Hadês for one-third of the year, even though she may spend the other two-thirds with her mother. 46Demeter is asking Persephone this question. 47As we know from external sources, both the crocus and the narcissus are sacred to Demeter and Persephone. 48It is a religious principle that Demeter and Persephone, on the occasion of their mother-daughter reunion, are “like-minded.” 49A cult-place associated with the Eleusinian Mysteries and with the myth about the first ploughing. Demeter is here, at the time: see lines 457-458. 50There is a lacuna in the first part of this line. 51Editors tend to skip the next line, which repeats the names of some, but not all, of the recipients of Demeter’s revelation of sacred mysteries. 52In what follows, note especially the image of a wondrous horse conjured up in the simile describing the beauty of the maiden Hagesikhora, center of attention in the song-and-dance ensemble: "a horse, well-built, a prize-winner, with thundering hooves,from out of those dreams underneath the rock" (lines 47-49). 53The Louvre Papyrus, our source for the Partheneion, preserves the first column of its text for this song only in the most fragmentary condition. 54The Hippokoontidai, a set of male heroes who died on account of deeds of hubris. 55Hagesikhora. 56Hagesikhora. 57Scythia and Lydia would be considered two extremes of the known world. The racehorses are so exotic as to be otherworldly. Both kinds of racehorse are so superior that the imagination boggles, in the words of the song, at the very thought of matching them against each other. 58The gaps in the papyrus at this line make the interpretation less than certain. 59Gaps in the papyrus. The idea seems to be: "receive their offerings, O gods!" 60The syntax here is not clear. There may be a shift of speakers here. 61It is possible that the speaker is referring to herself by name here. 62Gaps in the papyrus. The idea seems to be: the chorus-members must follow Hagesikhora as if she were a tracehorse. 63Gaps in the papyrus. 64Gaps in the papyrus. Some assume a missing negative. 65Gaps in the papyrus. 66Gaps in the papyrus. Some interpret: one girl has been taken away, and only ten remain from an original set of eleven. 67Gaps in the papyrus. 68Gaps in the papyrus, and the next and fourth column of the song is completely lost. 69Alternatively: “with varieties of brocaded flowers on your gown”—G.N. 70Euphemism for female genitalia. 71The word hêsukhiâ, designating the feeling of serenity that comes with the successful accomplishment of an ordeal, is here divinely personified as a goddess. 72Porphyrion was king of the Giants, mentioned later on as such. 73The word kerdos ‘gain’ designates the benefits to be won through the craft (in positive contexts) or the craftiness (in negative contexts) of the poet. 74Kirrha is another name for Delphi, site of the Pythian Games. 75Aristomenes is the son of Xenarkes. 76The “crown” bestowed on victors at the Pythian Games is a wreath of laurel. 77The word kômos ‘band of revelers’ is used in Pindar's songmaking tradition to refer to the chorus, that is, the singing and dancing ensemble that performs the composition of Pindar. 78The island Aigina, native land of the victor Aristomenes and setting for the performance of Pindar's Pythian 8, counts as a city-state or polis. This island-state is described as a “polis of dikê” on the basis of the myth of Aiakos, the prototypical hero of Aigina who was worshipped as the originator of the human race in Aigina. This hero was considered by all Greeks to be an ultimate exponent of dikê. Further details in the next note. 79Aiakidai = ‘descendants of Aiakos’; the hero Aiakos was also considered by the people of Aigina to be the ancestor of the human race in Aigina. Two of Aiakos' sons were Telamon and Peleus. Telamon was father of Aias=Ajax, Peleus was father of Achilles. Thus Aiakos is not only the stylized ancestor of the population of Aigina (by way of being considered the ancestor of the elite of the polis, who presumably claimed to represent the whole population): he is also the “real” ancestor of some of the greatest epic heroes of Homeric poetry, which was considered the shared cultural heritage of all Hellenes in Pindar's era. Pindar's words seem to be intentionally blurring the distinction between the two types of ancestry. For more on the Aiakidai, see note 39. 80Pindar's wording modulates from the world of heroes who had struggled in ordeals and battles of old to the world of latter-day athletes who have achieved victory in the pan-Hellenic Games. I take it that the men here are being juxtaposed with the heroes just mentioned. 81The word oikos ‘house’ refers to the victor's ancestral lineage or “clan.” 82Meidulidai is the name of the victor's ancestral lineage. 83Amphiaraos, one of the Seven Against Thebes, was the son of Oikles. The heroes known as the Seven Against Thebes had failed in their expedition against Thebes. Myth has it that Thebes had Seven Gates, each attacked by one of the Seven Against Thebes and each defended by a corresponding Theban hero. 84The verb ainissomai ‘say in a riddling way’ is derived from ainigma ‘riddle, enigma’, which is derived from ainos. Since Amphiaraos died in the failed expedition of the Seven Against Thebes, what he says here is obviously meant to be understood as if spoken from the grave. There is historical evidence for a hero-cult of Amphiaraos, located at the very spot where myth says that the earth had engulfed him, chariot-team and all, as he was riding away from Thebes after the expedition failed. Worshippers would come to consult Amphiaraos, who was believed to have the power of communicating with them from the dead. 85The Sons are the Sons of the Seven Against Thebes. Whereas the original Seven Against Thebes had failed in their expedition against Thebes, the Sons of the Seven Against Thebes were successful. 86Epigonoi ‘The Descendants’ is another way of referring to the Sons of the Seven Against Thebes. 87Amphiaraos. 88The “fathers” here are ancestors, that is, a succession of fathers through time, not a collection of fathers at one time. The word patro- 'ancestor, father' is found in the first part of the name Patroklos Patroklês), which means 'he who has the kleos of the ancestors'. 89The hero Alkmaion is the son of Amphiaraos. 90In traditional Greek poetry, the image represented on a shield, in this case a snake, would be called a sêma. 91Kadmos was known as the primordial founder of Thebes. 92The original expedition of the Seven Against Thebes. 93In Homeric poetry, Danaoi is the synonym of Akhaioi (Achaeans) and Argeioi (Argives). 94The son of the hero Adrastos was called Aigialeus. 95Abas was a primordial ruler of Argos. So the “public places of Abas” is a reference to Argos. 96It is not clear to us (though we may be sure that it was to Pindar and his audience) whether this is Alkmaion or Amphiaraos. 97To say that the hero was a “neighbor” is a conventional way of saying that a cult-hero showed favor to the one who worshipped him. 98The word phulax, pl. phulakes ‘guardian(s)’ describes cult-heroes in Hesiod Works and Days 253 (and 123). 99He appeared to me. The voice of the poet goes on to say that he "met" the hero on the way to Delphi (Pythian 8.56-60): that is, he experienced an epiphany of the hero, which is the inspiration, as it were, of Pindar's words. The theme of epiphany is relevant to the expression 'the will of the ancestors [pateres] shines through from them, in what is inborn in the nature of their sons' (43-44). It is also relevant to what the voice of the poet is about to announce at lines 95-97. 100Delphi. 101Apollo. 102Delphi. 103Victory to Aristomenes in the Pythian Games at Delphi. 104The reference here is to a local athletic event at a feast of Apollo in Aigina. 105Again the word kômos ‘band of revelers’. 106Local to Aigina. 107This fleeting reference serves as a nostalgic reminder of the glory days of Aigina, when its navy was still a major power, as in the Sea Battle of Salamis in the Persian War, described by Herodotus 8.40-97; note especially the role of the Aiakidai in 8.64 and 8.83-84. 108I translate komizô here as ‘bring back to light and life’ in view of the traditional correlation of this verb with the noun nostos. 109Compare Herodotus 8.64: “At sunrise ... there was an earthquake on land and sea, and they resolved to pray to the gods and summon the Aiakidai as allies. When they had so resolved, they did as follows: they prayed to all the gods called Ajax and Telamon to come straight from Salamis, and sent a ship to Aigina for Aiakos and the other Aiakidai [besides Ajax and Telamon].” 110As I argue in Best of the Achaeans 176-177, the phraseology here implies that Achilles was destined to have a kleos that is a-phthi-ton 'unwilting', as explicitly formulated at Iliad 9.413. 111You as well as the heroes just mentioned in the song. 112Polykrates was Tyrant of Samos, patron of the poet Ibycus. 113 Agamedes was the brother of Trophonios. In the corresponding myth, Agamedes died when the two brothers were buried alive, while Trophonios escaped; later, he experiences the mystical process of "engulfment": Pausanias 9.37.5ff, quoted below. 114 Note that Pausanias considers the hero in the afterlife to be a theos 'god'. 115 Notice the focal point of the myth and the ritual: it is a pit [bothros]. This pit marks the spot where the hero Trophonios was engulfed by the earth. It also marks the spot where the hero-worshipper sheds the blood of the ram that is sacrificed to the hero. The pouring of blood into a pit is a primary form of libation. Libation is in general the ritual pouring of a liquid, be it blood, wine, water, or whatever mixture. The blood establishes mental communion with the consciousness of the dead hero. In ancient Greek hero cults, it was believed that the blood of a sacrificed animal activates the consciousness of the dead hero. In other contexts, the ritually correct pouring of libations in general can activate that consciousness. 116Herodotus means that the Phoenicians came from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea and settled in the area of modern Lebanon. 117Herodotus uses “Spartans” and “Lacedaemonians” almost interchangeably. Sparta is the leading city of Lacedaemonia. Lacedaemonia and Laconia are alternate names for the same region in the Peloponnese. 118“Friendly to xenoi.” The Black Sea was given that name by the Hellenes in an effort to tame this hostile region. Cf. the myth of the Symplegades, the crashing rocks at its entrance, in Medea. 119Herakleidai means literally ‘sons of Herakles’. 120Priestess of Apollo at Delphi. 121One talent weighs approximately 57 pounds. 122Shepherd’s pipe. 123A special form of song and dance performed by a khoros. 124One stadion equals 600 feet. 125The word translated as ‘seeing the world’ is theôria. 126The oracle of Amphiaraos was thought to issue pronouncements by way of the spirit of the hero Amphiaraos, one of the Seven against Thebes. 127That is, the holy of holies at Delphi. 128The adjective “Attic” and the place-name “Attica” refer to the territory of Athens. 129The usual word for bodyguards. 130The hero Herakles was traditionally pictured as brandishing a wooden club. 131The name can be translated as something like “Natural Grandeur/Beauty.” 132Megakles belonged to the lineage of the Alkmaionidai. 133That is, contrary to nomos. 134The name Attica defines the territory of Athens. 135The title of Apollo at Delphi. 136Kyrnos is modern Corsica. Also the name of a son of Herakles. The men from the ship were now prisoners of war. 137The verb is enagizô ‘to make offerings to a dead hero, to participate in the pollution of’, from agos ‘pollution’. 138The verb ktizô means both ‘found a city’ and ‘institute a cult’. 139Verb enagizô. 140Such as Orpheus and Linos. 141The epic tradition that was banned in Sikyon may have been an equivalent of our Iliad and Odyssey. Or it may have been along the lines of a Seven against Thebes narrative. 142Herodotus means the corpse of the hero Melanippos. 143The equivalent of a town hall, which is being set aside here as the sacred space for hero cult. 144The story of Melanippos and Tydeus was part of the Seven against Thebes epic tradition. 145His name means ‘he who benefits the people’. 146Herodotus regularly uses this word for “taking the Persian side”, and frequently uses “Mede” for “Persian”, since the Persians took over the empire of the Medes. 147Meaning the Persians, as often in the subsequent narrative. 148Hippias succeeded his father [cf. 1.59-64] as turannos of Athens, until he was driven out and fled to Persia. 149Cf. 6.34-8. 150Meaning the Persians, as often in Herodotus. 151Famous tyrannicides who assassinated Hipparkhos, brother of Hippias. 152Brother of Aeschylus. Aeschylus himself fought at Marathon. 153The Achaemenids were the Persian royal family. 154Earth and water were tokens of submission. 155In 430, during the Peloponnesian War, 50 years later. 156Meaning “the place of the sepia.” It was here, according to epic tradition, that Peleus and Thetis conceived Achilles. 157“The Gates,” since it served as the entrance into Greece from the north. Thermopylae means “the Hot Gates,” from the warm springs there. 158That is, one of the Herakleidai, descendants of Herakles. 159The Amphictyonic League was a religious association of numerous Hellenic states, whose emissaries were called Pylagoroi, since they held their agora at Pylae. 160The premier lyric poet of this era, 161The Helots were inhabitants of Messenia and Laconia held as serfs by the Spartans. 162That is, he lost his nerve. 163Literally, “Guardian.” 164Literally, “He who has his own noos.” 165The Isthmus of Corinth is the narrow strip of land that connects the Peloponnese with mainland Greece. Thus the Peloponnese is almost an island, and its name means “the island [nêsos] of Pelops.” 166It was common in local Greek religious practice to conceptualize the spirit of the dead hero as a snake. 167Kroton was a Hellenic polis in Italy. Cf. 5.47 on Philippos. 168The hero Erekhtheus, mentioned in Iliad II 547, was worshipped as the proto-Athenian by the Athenians. 169More on Erekhtheus in Nagy, Best of the Achaeans, pp. 182-183. The verb anatrekhô ‘spring up’, applied here to the shoot of olive, is the same verb applied in Iliad XVIII 56 / 437to the sudden growth-spurt of Achilles. 170Aiakidai = ‘descendants of Aiakos’; the hero Aiakos was considered by the people of Aigina to be the ancestor of the human race in Aigina. See the notes on Pindar, Pythian 8. Two of Aiakos' sons were Telamon and Peleus. Telamon was father of Aias=Ajax, Peleus was father of Achilles. Ajax and Telamon were worshipped by the people of Salamis as their local heroes. Aiakos was not only the stylized ancestor of the population of Aigina (by way of being considered the ancestor of the elite of the polis, who presumably claimed to represent the whole population): he was also the “real” ancestor of some of the greatest epic heroes of Homeric poetry. 171Demeter and Persephone. 172Iakkhos is the cult name of Dionysus in the context of the festival for the Mother and the Maiden. 173In this narrative, Herodotus makes use of the fact that the name of Dikaios happens to mean “man of dikê.” 174Queen of the Carians, ruler of Halicarnassus. Her name happens to mean: “the woman of Artemis.” 175The perioikoi, “neighbors [of Sparta]”, were free inhabitants of Laconia, higher in status than the Helots, but lower than the Spartans themselves. 176Bakis was the personification of a distinguished oracle. 177One of the classes of citizens at Sparta. 178A man who in his own polis looked after the affairs of the citizens of another polis. He maintained xenia with the entire foreign polis. 179Father of Perikles. 180Tarikhos means “preserved by drying.” “Preserved” in the secular sense = “salted fish”, “preserved” in the sacred sense = “mummified corpse.” 181 The jury casts a vote, and finds Socrates guilty. According to Athenian law, votes of conviction and votes of punishment were separate matters, with argument after each phase. Socrates’ opponents pressed for the death penalty—they presumed that Socrates, after his conviction, would offer a more lenient (and acceptable) counterproposal, such as a fine or exile. Socrates’ initial response (below) stuns his opponents and the jury. [TEJ.] 182The name Hêsiodos means ‘he who sends forth the voice’, corresponding to the description of the Muses themselves at lines 10, 43, 65, 67. The element -odos ‘voice’ of Hêsiodos is apparently cognate with audê ‘voice’, the word used at line 31 to designate what was ‘breathed’ into Hesiod by the Muses. 183“‘Truth’, which itinerant would-be oral poets are ‘unwilling’ to tell because of their need for survival [Odyssey 14.124-125], may be ‘willingly’ conferred by the Muses [‘whenever we are willing’ at Theogony line 28]. We see here what can be taken as a manifesto of pan-Hellenic poetry, in that the poet Hesiod is to be freed from being a mere ‘belly’—one who owes his survival to his local audience with its local traditions: all such local traditions are pseudea ‘falsehoods’ in face of the alêthea ‘true things’ that the Muses impart specially to Hesiod. The conceit inherent in the pan-Hellenic poetry of Hesiod is that this overarching tradition is capable of achieving something that is beyond the reach of individual local traditions.”—G. Nagy, Greek Mythology and Poetics (Ithaca 1990; paperback 1992) 45. The pan-Hellenic nature of Hesiodic poetry is conveyed by the absolutist concept of alêthês/alêtheia ‘true/truth’ [‘what is not subject to forgetting or mental disconnection’, as expressed by lêth—‘forget, be mentally disconnected’]. 184I take it that the poet, in embracing a pan-Hellenic perspective, is ostentatiously rejecting local traditions as being too separatist and provincial. From the standpoint of local creation myths, humankind was generated out of oak trees (another variant: ash trees) or out of rocks. 185West Th. commentary p. 180 translates ‘provinces’ or ‘spheres of influence’, citing some very interesting illustrations of this sense. 186Compare the context of neikos at Works and Days 35. 187See the note on line 74. 188Folk etymology from kuklos ‘circle’ and ops ‘eye’. 189A play on the like-sounding forms meid—‘smile’ and mêd(ea) ‘genitals’: philommeidês means ‘lover of smiles’, while philommêdês would mean ‘lover of genitals’. 190'having no versatility, having no power to turn'; cf. Odysseus at Od. 1.1 as polutropos ‘having much versatility, having many ways to turn’. 191 Another name for Ares, god of war. Download 1.08 Mb. Share with your friends:
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