History of Greek Literature

From Homer to the Hellenistic Period

Albrecht Dihle, Clare Krojzl

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134679775
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

The bibliography has been specially revised for the use of English-speaking readers Very well-respected author Textbook - wide appeal to students Covers subjects that everyone doing Greek literature courses has to cover

Part I

ARCHAIC LITERATURE

1

THE BEGINNINGS AND THE EARLY EPIC POEM

There has been a need felt since the very earliest times to stylise verbal utterances containing a meaning that transcends the specifically everyday context. This is accomplished by employing rhythmic and tonal counterparts, and by distinguishing such utterances from everyday speech with the aid of a specially selected vocabulary. In this way, the invocation of gods, magic spells, accounts of memorable events and the formulation of a personal experience or of craftsmanship skills are all made easier to memorise, as well as being endowed through their very outward form with greater force than the casual utterances of everyday life. Virtually every nation can be shown to possess the above-mentioned dispositions towards a literature, arising as they do out of the aspiration to clothe significant utterances that are worth being handed down in a form that is appropriate to circumstances.

We tend to associate the word ‘literature’ with the notion of a written form, but the art of verbal stylisation connected with significant utterances can clearly attain a high standard of accomplishment without the society in question necessarily having a written language at its disposal. Conversely, it has also been shown that the writing systems of ancient or exotic peoples were by no means always used, or even devised, for literary purposes. In many cases they were developed in the first instance to facilitate trade and administration in such tasks as drawing up inventories and similar documents.

Where, however, a writing system is indeed used to record literary texts, this has major repercussions for the art of language. Fresh potential arises for handing down texts, for literary reference to earlier works, for the arrangement of subject-matter and for imparting language skills. One of the unique attributes of Greek literature, indeed, is the fact that the two earliest known extant works, which for various reasons exerted an influence on subsequent developments that can scarcely be overestimated, both date from the transition period between oral and written poetry. This holds good not merely in the mechanical sense that they represent the first written records of works both composed and handed down in oral form. They in fact document the use of stylistic devices that were originally invented for oral purposes, in poetry composed in written form, but intended for oral performance. These documents thus form an inseparable compositional unity with purely oral poetry.

In this very specific sense, therefore, the two major extant epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey, document the emergence of literature in a way unmatched by any other extant work in world literature. More than this, they represent the earliest and perhaps most impressive records depicting the Greek world and its people, as well as the threshold to a long literary tradition in which authors were to have recourse to them again and again as admired models.

The historical preconditions that led up to the emergence of Greek epic poetry are briefly as follows: the first Greek-speaking tribes to migrate into the Balkan peninsula in the period around 2000 BC were very soon influenced in their new homeland by an advanced pre-Greek civilisation centred on the wealthy palaces of Crete. This highly distinctive culture, which was in communication with both the Greek mainland and Egypt by virtue of its vigorous maritime commercial traffic, was to live on in later Greek tradition in the legends about King Minos of Knossos. It is for this reason that archaeologists, excavating Cretan palaces since the beginning of the twentieth century, tend to refer to it as the Minoan civilisation. Under this influence, the Greeks had developed an advanced culture by the middle of the second millennium BC. Despite adopting countless details from Crete in terms of mores, dress, technology and religion, among other spheres, it differed in a number of substantial respects from its Cretan archetype. The palaces of Crete, for example, are open edifices, evincing a sophisticated capacity for the enjoyment of life. The seats of the rising early Greek state, on the other hand, are defiant, massive strongholds.

By the middle of the second millennium BC, the Greeks seem to have gained hegemony over previous cultural centres. They continued the commercial activity of their Minoan predecessors, cultivating links with Syria, Egypt, Sicily and Spain, founding colonies on the Aegean islands, as well as on the mainland of Asia Minor.

Greek acquisitions from the Cretans included a writing system that they adapted to suit their language. This system has been successfully deciphered: the texts — clay tablets documenting lists of tribute and similar material — provide insight into the make-up of the state and society. Theirs was a state system and society rigidly structured along hierarchical lines, with an extensive bureaucracy and highly advanced military organisation — a fitting counterpart to the monarchies in power in the Near East and Egypt at that time. This culture was highly homogeneous throughout Greece, and has left palpable archaeological relics in the form of strongholds, sewage systems, ostentatious tombs and other such monuments. Its main centres were in the fertile plains of Messenia and Laconia, on Aegina and in Athens, Boeotia and Thessaly, as well as on the Ionian islands. The most impressive of all its cultural centres, however, was located in the Argolis where, to this day, the massive walls of Tiryns and Mycenae bear witness to the glory of the age. It is not known whether the dynasty resident in Mycenae exercised hegemony over the remainder of Greece, but Mycenae has rightly lent its name to the whole culture in the language of scholarship.

This culture suffered complete disintegration during the last quarter of the second millennium, the Mycenaean strongholds being destroyed and abandoned. This occurred against the background of a huge wave of migration that shook the entire eastern Mediterranean region, also putting an end to the great Hittite Empire in Anatolia. Around this time, a new, as yet uncivilised Greek tribe migrated into Hellas. It is difficult to ascertain whether these Dorians drove out or wiped out the ruling class of Mycenaean culture everywhere. Social upheavals may also have been taking place apart from any action by the Dorians. At all events, the Greek population was in a state of flux, so that by the onset of the historical age, some time around the tenth century BC, a distinct division of dialects had taken place that sheds light on the outcome of those upheavals.

Extending over wide areas of the Peloponnese, northern and central Greece, and the southern islands of the Aegean, was the region of the Doric, north-western Greek language, dominated by the idiom of the most recent immigrants. Major local differences in the degree of persistence of certain earlier dialect features were nevertheless retained. In the heart of the Peloponnese, in the inaccessible mountain country of Arcadia, as well as on remote Cyprus, a dialect persisted that may be regarded as a direct descendant of Mycenaean Greek. Numerous inhabitants from Mycenaean cultural areas seem to have migrated en masse at the end of the second millennium BC to Attica, where the Dorians were never able to penetrate. Refugees such as these then settled both on the central Aegean islands and along the coast of Asia Minor immediately opposite them — an ancient outlet for Mycenaean commerce. Similarly, the Ionic linguistic region extended from Attica across Euboea, Chios, Naxos and other islands, as far as Ephesus and Miletus in Anatolia. Migrants from northern Greece ultimately settled the islands of the northern Aegean and the north-west coast of Asia Minor. Like Ionic, their dialect, known as Aeolic, also derives from Mycenaean, although remaining more akin to it than the former.

The differentiation process of Greek dialects, documented by inscriptions, persisted until the final centuries of the pre-Christian era, and was to become a major factor in Greek literature. The fact that these differences could develop to such a marked degree (Spanish and Italian are probably more closely related than Lesbian and Laconian) relates to social and economic developments following the demise of the Mycenaean culture. The ensuing, so-called ‘dark centuries’ witnessed throughout Greece a simple, robust peasant culture associated with a feudal social structure. They are also known as the geometric period on account of the exclusively geometrically stylised ornamentation (circles, curves, angles, etc.) used to decorate the austerely structured clay vessels of that time. Unlike the various districts during the Mycenaean era, in this period there was considerable divergence among material cultures, which may be attributed to their distinctly separate ways of life. Similarly, links with the non-Greek world were far more limited than in the Mycenaean period. It was the Phoenicians who carried on the heritage of the Mycenaeans as the leading trading nation of the eastern Mediterranean, and it was from them that the Greeks took their script, adapting it to their own language, at the end of this ‘dark age’, some time in the mid-eighth century BC. The writing skill utilised by the Mycenaean authorities, and possibly mastered by no more than a handful of professional scribes, had disappeared with the destruction of their strongholds.

The Greeks of this ‘dark age’ none the less continued to recall the glorious Mycenaean age: the massive walls of the abandoned strongholds were there for all to see. The cult of the dead persisted for centuries at a number of royal burial places, while many a noble dynasty rightly or wrongly traced its origins back to those who had once reigned in the great strongholds. Such recollection of the magnificent past was particularly active among Greeks who had found a new home in Asia Minor. Precisely because the land in which they had settled was devoid of all traces of Mycenaean history, they felt the need for this cultivation of a verbal tradition. A typical colonial people in this regard, they were able to deal with that tradition with greater intellectual agility than the Greeks of the mother country.

None the less, it was through the medium of oral epic poetry that information about this long-lost glory was formed into a garland of myths, which even today has lost none of its attractive force, and which continues to supply European literature with motifs, metaphors and symbols.

Oral heroic poetry exists or has existed among many peoples. Our understanding of Homeric poetry has been greatly enhanced by the Austrian scholar Murko and the American scholar Milman Parry, who have made detailed studies of the oral poetry of south Slavonic Muslims, which was still a living tradition until very recently. The preconditions and structural elements of oral epic poetry may be described roughly as follows.

In a society of largely aristocratic make-up, and above all among its leading families, there is a need to keep alive the memory of forefathers and their deeds. This helps to bolster both their own privileged position and the system of values associated with it. In other forms of society, a sense of history of this kind is linked more with such social institutions as the believing community, the nation or class. Leisure time is thus pleasurably taken up with listening again and again to accounts of the deeds of forefathers, already highly familiar in outline. The more often they are repeated, the better it is to hear them from people who are outstanding for their powers of recollection, their creative genius and their elegance of speech. This earliest class of ‘intellectuals’ thus found itself responsible for the technical perfection of these accounts. Over the course of generations, this work produced a poetry, often accompanied by music. During this process, oral epic poetry was able to draw in full measure on the specific technical achievements of other forms of early poetry, prayer and magic formulas, and working and marching songs.

For technical reasons of memorability and educational psychology, the verse form, recited or sung in a continuous rhythm, recommended itself for such accounts, having been adapted more and more to the requirements of narrative within the craftsmanship tradition. It was this form that lent oral performance its memorable quality. Accounts composed in verse form, however, cannot simply be repeated word for word every time. The audience hopes each time to hear the well-known episode about the combat between two famous heroes performed more beautifully than ever before by the wandering bard. The latter is only able to meet this demand for a freshly formulated, improvised account, firstly by possessing a perfect command of every single detail of the handed-down version, and secondly by having at his disposal a readily accessible storehouse of expressions adapted to the verse form.

The development of a storehouse of formulas is indeed the main prerequisite for oral epic poetry. Traditionally, every hero is associated with a particularly remarkable weapon; in other cases the name of his father is important; a famous horse is distinguished by its colour, or a town by its seven gates, etc. Each and every hero and theme is in this way endowed with at least one epithet that triggers the familiar association in the listener. However, such a combination of a noun and its characteristic adjective cannot, for reasons of rhythm, simply be inserted at any point in the verse, particularly if it is structured in a regular sequence of long and short syllables. This situation is further complicated by the fact that the rhythmic value of the combination can change as soon as it is placed in a different number or case. All this called for a large number of parallel forms, to enable the characters and themes of a narrative to appear if possible at any point in the verse and in any grammatical context, and still be properly recognised as such. In the case of simple appellatives such as cow, town, sea or sword, performers could obviously bring in as many synonyms as possible.

On the other hand, the use of differently worded formulas having the same meaning and rhythmical value was avoided, simply in order not to overtax the memory. It goes without saying that this stereotyped language, refined and consolidated by centuries of constantly renewed accounts of the same events, came to describe in a virtually mechanical way an abundance of long-forgotten themes and circumstances, involving many words and names whose meaning was no longer understood by anyone, including the poet. It was these very words, firmly embedded in verse, however, which lent poetry its ceremonial, momentous tone.

Nevertheless, the use of formulas went further than this. Memorable incidents from the heroic past include typical features. The taking of arms, combat, injury, councils of war, meals, burial and other scenes are mostly described by the improvising poet using set formulas, which may comprise one or several verses. Overall, therefore, it may be asserted that such a poet composes his or her work of art from formulas rather than words as such. All this applies to extant Homeric poetry, whose total of 28,000 verses contain at least 25,000 formulas, and which by comparison display few features suggesting a written conception of the relevant passages.

It may be stated with some certainty that oral epic poetry of the kind described above already existed in the Mycenaean period. Book 10 of the Iliad, for example, describes through the devices of epic language a helmet which according to current (archaeological) knowledge of the era had already fallen into disuse by the end of the Mycenaean period, hence prior to the final catastrophe. The Greeks — or the Achaeans, as they are called in the Iliad, written before the name Hellenes became a generic term — are denoted by the epithet ‘those with the good greaves’. This relates to the fact that throughout the Mediterranean world of the second millennium BC greaves were an item of armour known solely in Greece, whereas by the first millennium they had become indispensable for heavily armed men everywhere. Similarly, a number of locations mentioned in the Iliad and the Odyssey, verifiable from the descriptions given, bear names which were unknown to the Greeks of the historical age, and which must, therefore, derive from Mycenaean names.

A study of Homeric language is similarly instructive. Scholars have long been aware that this poetry was written in a synthetic language that had never been spoken, combining elements which never appeared side by side in any historically demonstrable dialect. Homeric Greek is closest, if anything, to the Ionic dialect; to this may be added the fact that diverse traditions tell of a particularly active cultivation of epic poetry in the Ionian colonial lands in Asia Minor and its offshore islands.

Nevertheless, so deeply embedded in the Ionic fund of poetry that its various layers are impossible to separate, are elements that were formerly termed Aeolic, denoting a stage in the development of epic poetry that can be located in the north-west Anatolian colonial region. Nowadays, however, there is an increasing tendency to regard these elements as archaisms, components from Mycenaean Greek which preceded the process of dialect differentiation after the great wave of migration.

The picture that emerges from all this is of a history of oral epic poetry in which a shift took place from the princely courts of the Mycenaean period to the noble courts and rising towns of Ionian and Aeolian emigrants to Asia Minor, culminating in the first written records of oral compositions some time after the adoption of the Phoenician alphabet.

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• Preface
• Part I Archaic literature
• Part II Classical literature of the fifth century BC
• Part III Classical literature of the fourth century BC
• Part IV Hellenistic literature
• Epilogue
• Bibliography
• Index