Hope in Ancient Literature, History, and Art

Ancient Emotions I

George Kazantzidis, Dimos Spatharas

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9783110597103
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia antigua

Although ancient hope has attracted much scholarly attention in the past, this is the first book-length discussion of the topic. The introduction offers a systematic discussion of the semantics of Greek elpis and Latin spes and addresses the difficult question of whether hope -ancient and modern- is an emotion. On the other hand, the 16 contributions deal with specific aspects of hope in Greek and Latin literature, history and art, including Pindar's poetry, Greek tragedy, Thucydides, Virgil's epic and Tacitus' Historiae. The volume also explores from a historical perspective the hopes of slaves in antiquity, the importance of hope for the enhancement of stereotypes about the barbarians, and the depiction of hope in visual culture, providing thereby a useful tool not only for classicist but also for philosophers, cultural historians and political scientists.

Part I:Elpis. ‘Hope’ in Greek Literature

Alexandre Johnston

“Poet of Hope”: Elpis in Pindar

In a recent monograph on God and eternity, the theologian George Pattison, following the late Michael Theunissen, calls Pindar “poet of hope”.74 Although my own chapter differs greatly in scope and approach from their two works, it shares with them the broad premise that hope is a central aspect of Pindar’s poetry, and one that is given a highly sophisticated treatment. The vast majority of Pindar’s extant poetry consists of victory odes or “epinicians”, composed and performed to commemorate athletic success in the Panhellenic games.75 These are poems fundamentally concerned with the possibility and tangible reality of exceptional human achievement, and as such, they celebrate hope as a positive and necessary drive to action, victory, and prosperity. Yet at the same time, like much archaic and classical Greek literature, they also emphasise the volatile and dangerous nature of hope, given the epistemic deficiencies which characterise humans and the unpredictability of the future. The word most frequently used for hope, elpis, encompasses a range of phenomena including expectation, supposition, and illusion;76 in some contexts, it seems very close semantically to terms such as erōs, desire, and pothos, longing or yearning. These words can all carry broadly positive connotations, as (for instance) vehicles through which the poet, his patrons, and his mythical characters are able to visualise and entertain the possibility of success; yet they are also frequently associated with excess, suffering, and destruction. This ambiguity will be the focus of the first and second sections of the chapter, in which I explore the ethical, religious, and poetic contexts in which Pindaric hope operates. In the third and final part, I analyse the ways in which hope is conceptualised as affecting the human mind and body, in an attempt to delineate some of the contours of its elusive phenomenology. In this way, I hope to suggest that Pindar’s poetry can provide some historical perspective on the vexed question of whether or not hope is an emotion.77

1Nemean 11: Positive and negative Hope?

The first poem with which I am concerned, Nemean 11, is not properly an epinician in that it did not arise from an athletic success, but it does celebrate a particular achievement, and in doing so it deploys many of the themes and techniques familiar from other victory odes.78 The poem was composed to celebrate the installation of a man named Aristagoras as prytanis on the island of Tenedos.79 Following an exhortation to praise the new magistrate and a catalogue of his successes in local athletic contests (17–21), the poetic speaker takes the unusual80 step of blaming his parents for their “too hesitant” or “fearful” hopes or expectations (ἐλπίδες ὀκνηρότεραι, 22), which stopped their son from fulfilling his athletic potential at Delphi and Olympia. Had they had more ambitious elpides for Aristagoras, he would have had a glorious career in the Panhellenic games (24–9), bringing to fruition the inborn potential which he inherited from his ancestors (33–7).81 In this context, elpis appears to be a stimulus to action, enabling the individual to project her-/ himself into the future and to entertain the possibility of success. It is a necessary step in the coming into being of one’s aretē and the achievement of glory. One might say that the poetic speaker himself demonstrates the very elpis which Aristagoras’ parents lacked as he narrates the young man’s imagined victories in a contra-factual conditional (24–6, “for I swear that, in my judgement, had he gone to Castalia …”):82 in implicit contrast to the overly hesitant hopes of verse 22, the speaker boldly visualises a brilliant career for Aristagoras, culminating in a victory kōmos at Olympia (27–8).

The imaginary celebrations are suddenly interrupted by a passage which associates hope with boasting and arrogance (29–32):

ἀλλὰ βροτῶν τὸν μὲν κενεόφρονες αὖχαι

ἐξ ἀγαθῶν ἔβαλον· τὸν δ’ αὖ καταμεμφθέντ’ ἄγαν

ἰσχὺν οἰκείων παρέσφαλεν καλῶν

χειρὸς ἕλκων ὀπίσσω θυμὸς ἄτολμος ἐών.

But the empty-minded boasts of mortals cast one man from success, while a timid spirit, holding back by the hand another man too distrustful of his own strength, deprives him of achievements that belong to him.

These lines are obviously directed to the poem’s addressee: although excessive restraint and overly hesitant elpides thwarted the development of his inborn excellence, he should avoid the opposite extreme, arrogant confidence, and find a balance between the two. Yet the passage also displays the poetic speaker’s consciousness that his own elpis for Aristagoras, functioning as a surrogate for his parents’ ‘timid spirit’ (θυμὸς ἄτολμος), is at risk of straying too far into fantasy as he visualises a glorious but now unrealisable career for his addressee. He thus checks himself before overstepping the mark, acknowledging that excessive hope and confidence may be dangerous for a singer as well as for an athlete, and of course, a magistrate. As in the Third Pythian, where the poet raises the prospect of eternal life for his patron before vehemently denying that such a thing is possible, the speaker of Nemean 11 sings a contra-factual “epinician” celebrating his addressee’s imaginary Panhellenic victories, before reminding himself that these did not, and never will, happen. Restraint is necessary in the singer’s praise as well as in Aristagoras’ ambitions.

In the first half of the third triad (33–42), the speaker situates Aristagoras’ family history and achievements in the context of a principle of alternation governing the natural and human worlds. Inborn excellence, such as that possessed by Aristagoras and his relatives, does not produce success in every generation; rather, like the fields and trees, it flowers at changing times and yields fruit of varying worth (37–42). By gaining success in the local games, Aristagoras revived his family’s ‘ancient virtues’ (ἀρχαῖαι ἀρεταί, 37), which had lain dormant like a fallow field; yet his failure to compete in the Panhellenic festivals suggests that in his case, too, the family’s inborn excellence has not blossomed to its full potential. The reason for this, as we have seen, was the excessive timidity of his parent’s elpides, yet this explanation is now complemented with a broader one: human success and failure follow a movement of alternation, and it is Moira, Fate, who allocates the good and bad gifts sent by Zeus (τὸ δ’ ἐκ Διός, 43);83 humans cannot know in advance whether they will receive one or the other (42–4). In this context of instability and human ignorance, the projection into the future required by the mental act of hoping becomes fraught with uncertainty, and Aristagoras’ parents cannot therefore be blamed for the timidity of their aspirations —rather, the speaker suggests that Aristagoras did extremely well given the difficulties involved in human striving.

In the poem’s final stanza, the theme of the potential risks of elpis reaches its climax. At verse 44, there is a shift in focalisation from the poet’s point of view to that of a collective “we” (44–8):

ἀλλ’ ἔμπαν μεγαλανορίαις ἐμβαίνομεν,

ἔργα τε πολλὰ μενοινῶντες· δέδεται γὰρ ἀναιδεῖ

ἐλπίδι γυῖα, προμαθείας δ’ ἀπόκεινται ῥοαί.

κερδέων δὲ χρὴ μέτρον θηρευέμεν·

ἀπροσίκτων δ’ ἐρώτων ὀξύτεραι μανίαι.

And yet we embark on ambitious projects, yearning for many accomplishments. For our limbs are bound to shameless hope, and the streams of forethought lie far off. One must seek due measure of gains; too sharp...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Preface
• Contents
• Introductory: ‘Hope’, elpis, spes: Affective and Non-affective Expectancy
• Part I: Elpis. ‘Hope’ in Greek Literature
• Part II: Spes. ‘Hope’ in Latin Literature
• Part III: Scripts of ‘Hope’ in History, Art, and Inscriptions
• List of Contributors
• Index Rerum et Nominum
• Index Auctorum Antiquorum et Locorum
• Epigraphic and Papyrological Sources