Poetry in Fragments

Christos Tsagalis, Christos Tsagalis

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9783110536805
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Ancient & Classical Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Next to the Theogony and the Works and Days stands an entire corpus of fragmentary works attributed to the Boeotian poet Hesiod that has during the last thirty years attracted growing scholarly interest. Whereas other studies have concentrated either on the interpretation of the best preserved work of this corpus, the Catalogue of Women, or have offered detailed commentaries, this volume aims at bringing together studies focusing on generic and contextual factors pertaining to the various works of the Hesiodic corpus, the Catalogue of Women included, and the corpus' afterlife in Rome and Byzantium.

Part I:Genre and Context

† Antonio Aloni

Hesiod Between Performance and Written Record

Translated by L. Edmonds.

The visit that Pausanias made to Askra and the Valley of the Muses in the foothills of Mt. Helikon held many surprises for him (Paus. 9.29–31). It was, as Calame has said, a real journey through the poetic and mythical past of the region.23 The first and fundamental problem that faces Pausanias in the Valley of the Muses seems to be the need to harmonize a local tradition about the Muses – three Muses on Helikon – with the better known and more widespread nine Muses, daughters of Zeus and resident in Pieria at the foot of Olympos (Paus. 9.29.1–4). Two of the founders of Askra, the brothers Otos and Ephialtes, the sons Aloeus, established a cult to the three Muses of Helikon. They gave the Muses the names Melete, Mneme and Aoide. The nine Panhellenic Muses were imported by the Macedonian Pieros, who introduced their cult in Thespiai, establishing the names by which they came to be known. It is not clear if this duplication of the Muses should be understood as a chronological sequence or a geographical distinction. Does the cult at Thespiai replace the one at Askra, or join it? It is clear, however, that Thespiai and Askra are the two poles around which this dual designation of the Muses revolves.

Most of the monuments that Pausanias saw and describes refer in various ways to the Muses: Eupheme is nurse of the Muses, Linos is recipient of an annual sacrifice that precedes the one offered to the Muses, and the monuments dedicated to poets and musicians of Panhellenic fame, from Thamyris to Arion to Sakadas, and even to Orpheus, also bear affinity to the Muses.

Set between the statue of Sakadas and the monumental group dedicated to Orpheus, there is the description of a statue of Hesiod.24 In Pausanias’ itinerary Hesiod in fact plays an important role as a local poet of Panhellenic renown, equally devoted to the ancient Muses of Helikon and those of Olympus. However, this Hesiod functions primarily to serve Pausanias’ point of view or the horizon of expectations within which Pausanias believes he can inscribe the poet. It must be said that in reality the Hesiod that Pausanias finds in Askra and its environs is a particular Hesiod, somewhat different from the one he knows, and this is exactly what causes surprise and some embarrassment.

The Works and Days as a Sylloge

The three monuments in particular that Pausanias sees and describes are the signs of a hero cult dedicated to the poet:25 a statue of the poet sitting with a kithara on his knees (Paus. 9.30.3), the tripod won by the poet in the contest at Chalkis and dedicated to the Helikonian Muses (Paus. 9.31.3), and finally, at the fountain Hippokrene, the tablet (or more likely the tablets) of lead with Works and Days inscribed upon them (Paus. 9.31.4–5). Twice Pausanias intervenes directly in his own account of these monuments to compare and correct what he sees and is told with what he knows and what is commonly known about the poet.

The description of the statue with a kithara is followed by a sort of exclamation: οὐδέν τι οἰκεῖον Ἡσιόδωι φόρημα (‘not at all an ornament that suits Hesiod’). The Hesiod of Helikon is one who sings, a poet similar to the ancient aoidoi (like Thamyris) or a lyric poet. For Pausanias it is evident that the sculptor, and/ or those who commissioned the statue, did not know the Theogony well, where the object symbolizing Hesiod’s poetic activity is the laurel staff. Continuing, Pausanias can see the tripod, of venerable antiquity, that Hesiod won at the contest in Chalkis and then devoted to the Helikonian Muses, according to the account in Works and Days (658–659).

The perplexity of Pausanias increases when he is shown the copy of Works and Days which, on one hand, lacks the proem and, on the other, is presented to him as the only authentic work of Hesiod. This forces Pausanias into a short digression that does justice to the poet of Askra, attributing to him, contrary to his countrymen’s opinion, many other poems, from the Catalogue to the Theogony to the Melampodia to the Cheironos Hypothekai (Paus. 9.31.5).26

In short, the Hesiod of Helikon is a poet different from the one known in the rest of Greece: a Hesiod who wields not the laurel staff but the kithara and is reduced to a single work – one that is docked of the preface dedicated to the Muses of Pieria, the nine Panhellenic Muses. Both of these features should be examined carefully, beginning with the absence of the proem.

The absence of the prooemial verses on the tablets of Helikon is not in itself extraordinary given the nature and characteristics of proems. Proems serve to contextualize the ensuing song and to assure the audience of the song’s divine provenance and thus its truth and pragmatic effectiveness. In the context of glorifying a poet now heroized and thus semi-divine, the proem loses its necessity and meaning. In other words, visitors to the Valley of the Muses had no need to be reassured concerning the divine inspiration of the hero-poet whom they worshiped.27

This means, however, that the text seen by Pausanias was not a simple copy of the text recorded as part of the work of Hesiod the Panhellenic poet. Instead he had to rely on a local tradition, to some extent independent of the other one.28 It is a pity that the tablets were so damaged (Paus. 9.31.4: τὰ πολλὰ ὑπὸ τοῦ χρόνου λελυμασμένον, ‘largely ruined by time’) that Pausanias probably could not read the poem and compare it with the one he knew. The fact remains that, with Hesiod thus reduced, the only mention of the Muses in Works and Days is limited to verses 658–659: τὸν μὲν ἐγὼ Μούσηισ᾽ Ἑλικωνιάδεσσ᾽ ἀνέθηκα / ἔνθα με τὸ πρῶτον λιγυρῆς ἐπέβησαν ἀοιδῆς (‘This I dedicated to the Helikonian Muses, where they first set me upon the path of clear-sounding song’),29 in partial contradiction to what is proclaimed in verses 22–25 of the Theogony.30

There exists therefore a Panhellenic tradition, depending on the revelation of the Olympian Muses, attaching to Hesiod and recording in writing a multiplicity of poems under his name. There exists, however, a different tradition, recognized in a single poem, highly localized in its context and in its characters, which affirms the origin of the song in the Muses of Helikon. One possible reason for this could be that Works and Days refers to events and characters who were, at least in origin (see below), rooted in those places. But even such local chauvinism does not seem enough for the radical excision of a single poem from the rest of the Hesiodic poetic corpus. This would, moreover, be a decidedly self-harming chauvinism, which would deprive the poet of a large part of his fame. The real reason must be sought elsewhere. The hypothesis that I will pursue is that Works and Days is a poem entirely different from the rest of the poems of Hesiod that have been (at least partially) preserved and for this reason the possible object of an independent transmission.

We can start from the statue that so surprised Pausanias. A Hesiod with his kithara indicates a poet who sings, but for Pausanias Hesiod has nothing to do with song: the ‘instrument’ that defines him is the staff of the rhapsode, given him by the Olympian Muses. But what Pausanias sees is not the statue of the rhapsode of Panhellenic fame but the monument to a poet revered on Helikon, author of a single poem. It is this poem, Works and Days, that defines a poet who sings.

In a previous study I have argued at length for the original sympotic function of Works and Days, emphasizing the particular performance arena and intentions halfway between iambic aggression and the sententiousness of elegy. I presuppose the conclusions of that work here.31

The poem, in its Panhellenic version,32 opens with a cletic proem, unusual in epic, where a generic assistance is requested of the Muses. The Muses are not the source of the truth that the poetic ‘I’ intends to proclaim, and the relationship between poet and Muse is not one of total dependence, as it is in epic that narrates distant events. Rather, here it is based on a request for generic assistance independent of the contents of the current song.33 At the end of the proem the Muses almost seem destined to do nothing. Zeus is asked to straighten justice, and it is for the ‘I’ to say things that are ἐτήτυμα to Perses.34

The whole system of enunciation that underlies the proem is articulated around this relationship between ‘I’ and ‘you’. 35 The relationship between two people is understood as unidirectional, without, that is, there being any dialogical space available for an inversion of roles between sender and receiver. It is a relationship analogous, or at l...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• Table of Contents
• Note on Transliteration
• Introduction
• Part I: Genre and Context
• Part II: The Catalogue of Women
• Part III: Hesiod’s Fragments in Rome and Byzantium
• List of Contributors
• General Index