Nine to the Universe - The Greek Lyric Poets Hall of Fame

Xaire!

At some point during the Hellenistic Period, scholars at the great centres of learning such as the great library of Alexandria created a list of nine ancient Greek Lyric poets that they deemed worthy of recording in the archives for posterity and study as outstanding exemplars of the art. Sappho and Alcaeus are included the list but as well as a brief introduction to these two figures who will be the subjects of our next Legendum meeting, I thought it would interested to look at the other seven as well.

I was also curious to look at Lyric poetry as a genre; what is Lyric as opposed to Iambics or Elegy? How and when did it originate? Once we have gained an outline idea of what lyric is we shall look at the nine exemplars to give us some background for Sappho and Alcaeus and their reception in the ancient world.

Greek Lyric – Some observations

The information that comes to us from the ancient Greek sources indicate the period when Lyric flourished to be sometime between the 7th and 5th centuries before our era, although it is very likely that it has its origins deeper in antiquity and further east. The Lyres of Ur as represented on the ‘peace’ side of the so-called standard of Ur provide us with an image of the earliest context of lyric, a long haired (female) singer who stands next to a lyre player and seems to be clapping in time to keep the beat while chanting or singing. The standard of Ur is dated to about 25th C before our era suggesting that lyric in its earlier forms had a considerable precedence in the Mesopotamian and Egyptian cultures, before filtering through Mycenaean culture (14th-12th  centuries BCE) and reaching a peak production and acme of perfection (at least in the eyes of the Alexandrian archivists). In the 7th to 5th Centuries BCE in Greece.

Thus, from earliest times, when there was an important (usually elite) occasion to mark, a victory, a memorial, or a birth perhaps or marriage or coronation, solo or group chanting and lyre playing seem to have been an integral part of the celebration. A common occasion and one requiring less formal recognition was the symposium or drinking party – one can imagine that this was the most frequent occasion for song, when friends or members of kinship or other type of affiliated groups would get together and pass the wine cups around and enjoy the latest expert performances. At some point the Greeks innovated upon the original remit of general celebration to more personalised, nuanced expressions of love, desire, jealousy as well as personal and searing political invective.

Sappho and Alcaeus are prime examples of this highly innovative, impassioned style despite having mere fragments upon which to base such an impression.  They realised that the lyric could be used for a wider range of highly personalised expression previously unimagined or taboo – much like comparing the lyrics of the happy go lucky cheery popular songs of the 1940s and 50s ‘hit parade’ with its searing endpoint in Lou Reeds ‘Heroin’ or Nirvana’s Rape Me. You never know however, how wild the lyrics might have gotten with the Lyres of Ur – judging from the extremely violent scenes on the ‘war ‘ panel of the Ur standard – they could have come up with songs that wouldn’t have looked out of place on an early Sabbath album! The phrase itself, The Lyres of Ur is so fecund with suggestion! I can imagine a very bored customer dining at Douglas Adams’ Restaurant at the End of the Universe asking for an exclusive cocktail entitled ‘the Lyres of Ur’.

I think that a lot of musical development is circular or at least goes in spiralling upwards or downwards trends – constantly swinging between order and decadence so it’s possible to imagine that even the Greek lyric was revisiting themes or styles of the distant past as it followed its own meandering trajectory from the shores of Apollo to the peaks of Dionysos. But enough of these bizarre ramblings! Let us take a closer look at the nine Melians, starting with Alcman. I thought we would take a sort criminal record sheet/top trumps type of approach…

1. ALCMAN OF SPARTA

Name:   Alcman

Floruit:  7th C  BCE

Birth place:  Sardis, the ancient capital of Lydia (?), The Suda has him down as hailing from Messoa.

Date/Cause of Death:  Unknown date, from an infestation of lice (Aristotle), buried in Sparta next to the tomb of Helen of Troy (Pausanias)

Metrical Forms: Dactylic tetrameter/mixed metrical forms in composite long sections and repeated them strophically.

Dialect: Composite/Doric

Poetry: There were six books of choral poetry extant in antiquity (50-60 poems) but had disappeared by the beginning of the Middle Ages.  An 1855 discovery at Saqqara was made of a part of one of his poems; other fragments have been emerging from the Oxyrynchus papyrus dump since the 1960s. The predominant form of his poetry seems to have hymns, although it’s difficult to make an accurate judgement. The First Parthenaeion was such a choral/hymnal work to be performed by choroi of unmarried women.

Bonus Factoids: He seems to have been into praising the Gods, the beauty of women and the minute observation of natural flora and fauna around him

Melian Star rating (out of 10):  8 (one of the earliest lyric poets, stately with an eye for the detail of ritual practice.

2. SAPPHO OF LESBOS

Name:   Sappho

Floruit:  Born between 630-612 BCE

Birth place:  Island of Lesbos (other traditions suggest Mytilene or Eresos

Date/Cause of Death:  570 BCE, some sources suggest suicide but this is not regarded as historical by most scholars. Exiled to Sicily sometime between 604-594 BCE and probably died in maturity.

Metrical Forms: Sapphic Stanzas, Alcaeics

Dialect: Aeolic

Poetry:  Around 10,000 Lines of poetry, of which 650 survive. The Suda attributes elegiacs, iambics and epigram in addition to her lyric works. The lyric poetry was collected by the Alexandrian archivists into a collection of around eight books. Most of her poetry is lost – we have the Oxyrynchus fragments to thank for continuing discoveries and publications, notably the Brothers Poem and the Kypris Poem, both published in 2014. Her poetry is direct, vivid and immediate with sharp imagery and emotive expressions. The poems celebrate the passion of love and of the memorialisation of events and festivals occasions.

The fragments and some other sources have been used to argue that Sappho engaged in homoerotic relationships with her female companions but the evidence is thin and unclear. Up until the 17th Century she was considered heterosexual and increasingly in modern times has become a gay icon. The contents of the fragments could be argued either way.  It could also be argued that she engaged in sexual relationships across the gender spectrum but we should heed a caveat against putting too much of a modern interpretation based on such limited evidence.

Bonus Factoids: The works of Sappho and Alcaeus were publicly burnt by the church authorities in Constantinople and Rome in 1073. (cited by Will Durant after Mahaffy)

Melian Star rating (out of 10):  9 Highly rated by ancients and moderns alike.

3. ALCAEUS OF MYTILENE

Name:   Alcaeus

Floruit:  c.620 BCE – 6th C BCE

Birth place:  Island of Lesbos, Mytilene

Date/Cause of Death:  Unknown

Metrical Forms: Alcaeic, Sapphic Stanzas (?)

Dialect: Aeolic

Poetry: His works were collected into ten books by the Alexandrian scholars Aristophanes of Byzantium and Aristarchus of Samothrace during the 3rd C BCE. Subject matter covered such genres as political songs, drinking songs, love songs and miscellaneous others. The sources for the fragments in which his work survives are a result of the scholarship of the renaissance and finds from our old friend the Oxyrynchus papyrus dump. Alcaeus is often contrasted with Sappho as being a bit low key in terms of emotions, but more versatile if less sophisticated verse.

Bonus Factoids: He was involved throughout his life in political struggles with a series of tyrants or tyrannical factions on the island, suffering exile as a result at least once. This political activity is alluded to in many of his poems. He was a contemporary of Sappho and rumoured to be a lover of hers at some time.

Melian Star rating (out of 10):  8.5

4. ANACREON OF TEOS

Name:   Anacreon (of Teos)

Floruit:  582-485 BCE

Birth place:  Teos, an Ionian coastal city and one of the 12 cities forming the Ionian League.

Date/Cause of Death:  485 in his home town of Teos from natural causes. There is a dubious apocryphal anecdote (Pliny Elder) that he dies from choking on a grape stone.

Metrical Forms: Anacreonteus. Long and short vowels alternation peculiar to his dialect lent a natural musicality to the recitation/chanting of lyrics.

Dialect: Ionic

Poetry: There were five books of poetry mention in the Suda, of which only fragments survive and the poems covered the usual themes of love with its attendant ups and downs, festivals, celebrations and arrange of quotidian themes.

Bonus Factoids: Hipparchus who was quite a fan of all things literary, had Anacreon ferried over to Athens in a 50-oar galley to join his court as official poet.  The ancient equivalent of flying your favourite rock star in on private jet!

Melian Star rating (out of 10):  9 (for the above anecdote alone!)

5.  STESICHORUS

Name:   Stesichorus

Floruit:  c.630-555 BC (The Suda chronology has been disputed by at least one scholar (M.L.West, 'Stesichorus', The Classical Quarterly, New Series Vol.21, No.2 (Nov. 1971) page 302)

Birth place:  Metauros in Calabria, southern Italy

Date/Cause of Death:  555 BCE in Catania, Sicily.

Metrical Forms: Lyric (Epic), Dactyls predominantly. Due to his bardic style poetical activities he is a possible link or bridge poet between Homer and Pindar. He composed verse forms in strophe, antistrophe and epode ‘The Stesichoran Threes’.

Dialect: Doric

Poetry: Originally his poetry was collected in 26 books and included epic tales in lyric form (a genre for which he was noted). Only a few fragments survive of his work and he seems to have scant commentary from the Alexandrian scholars and archivists. The Geryonis poem consisted of 1500 lines of poetry and took four hours to perform (presumably with lyre and dancers – ancient prog rock!)

Bonus Factoids: Went blind due to verses critical of Helen of Troy, but cured later after composing verses praising her. Menippeans take note! He was exiled from Arcadia for political reasons (Tegean/Spartan rivalry). According to Legend (Pliny the Elder) a nightingale flew in through the window at his birth, perched upon his lips and sang, imparting its skill to him.

Melian Star rating (out of 10):  8, (Not much is known of him but he is a survivor and a reformed character!

6.  IBYCUS

Name:   Ibycus

Floruit:  Latter half of 6th C BCE. Our information comes from the Suda and again the biography and chronology is suspect or muddled at best – the dates and other contemporaries don’t tally well or are perhaps mixed narratives at cross purposes.

Birth place:  Rhegium

Date/Cause of Death:  Unknown date, but captured by bandits and murdered.

Metrical Forms: choral style based upon Stesichorus so presumably, dactylic, lyric.

Dialect: Epic, Doric with some borrowed Aeolisms from Sappho and Alcaeus.

Poetry: Known to the ancients for composing verses on the theme of boy love and in addition lyric on mythological themes in the vein of Stesichorus. His works survive in quotations of ancient scholars and some papyrus fragments from Egypt. Works amounted to seven books compiled by the Alexandrian scholars.

Bonus Factoids: ‘The Cranes of Ibycus’ was a saying coined from a revenge myth related to the tormenters of Ibycus, who were warned by him that cranes flying over at the time of his ill treatment by them would be his avengers. He invented the triangular Lyre, as revolutionary for its time as the Gibson Flying V!

Melian Star rating (out of 10):  10…anyone who invents a triangular lyre has my highest praise!

7. SIMONIDES OF CEOS

Name:   Simonides

Floruit:  556-468 BCE Suda is the source and the usual problems are noted when trying to match with other sources, Olympiad dates etc.

Birth place:  Ioulis, Ceos

Date/Cause of Death: Date as above. Cause unknown but after a few lucky and legendary escapes its seems likely that he died of natural causes.

Metrical Forms: Choral lyric, encomium (in particular the Victory Ode) for which he is credited as the inventor,elegiac, dithyramb (songs sung originally in honour of Dionysus but extended later to long encomiums on heroes and mythical personages)

Dialect: Ionian, Doric.

Poetry: Fragments and quotations in other ancient sources give us a general idea of his work. He became very sought after as an epitaph writer and possibly made his fame and living chiefly from this although his work ranges over other genres.

Bonus Factoids: Composed the commemorative verse for the Athenian war dead at Marathon, apparently being chosen by them for the job in preference to Aeschylus much to the latter’s chagrin.

There are two interesting accounts of miraculous escapes that Simondes made. The first when he was the feast guest of a certain Thessalian chieftain Scopas. He was summoned out of the feast hall by two mysterious visitors and just after he left, the ceiling of the hall collapsed killing everyone in it, including Scopas. This has the added touch of being a revenge tale as well as a miraculous survival tale in that prior to the escape, Simonides had been involved in a payment dispute with Scopas who had commissioned him to compose one of his famous victory odes in honour of a local boxer. Simonides had made so many references to Castor and Pollux that Scopas threatened to pay half of the fee to them!

Melian Star rating (out of 10):  For the verse commemorating the war dead at Marathon claim to fame surely a 9!

8. BACCHYLIDES

Name:   Bacchylides

Floruit:  518-451 BCE (Yes I know Sudas, Sudas..so much to answer for)

Birth place:  Strabo tells us he was born on Ceos (Ioulis) but the details of his life are scanty.

Date/Cause of Death:  The Suda's dates are again not without difficulty but some point before the Peloponnesian War, 451 BCE

Metrical Forms: Encomium,  Choral and individual Lyric and  mythic using the usual meters as per Simonides as far as I can ascertain since Uncle and nephew were in the same line of business, and possibly rivals. Ancient scholars and for that matter a number of more recent figures too have tended to depict Bacchylides as inferior in quality and ingenuity to his uncle Simonides. Bacchylides covers a wider range of genres than all of the other Lyric poets, paean, dithyramb, partheneia, prosodia etc, probably due to his career as a jobbing poetaster around the Greek world.

Dialect: Ionian

Poetry: Nine books of poetry were compiled by the Alexandrian Grammarian Didymus (3rd C BCE). Only fragments survive and he also survives in the quotations of other ancient scholars and commentators.

Bonus Factoids:  Nephew of Simonides of Ceos and possibly an inheritor/imitator of his style. A major discovery/purchase in Egypt by the Egyptologist Wallis Budge of a large papyrus fragment in the 19th C added to our knowledge of his poetry considerably, enabling Frederic Kenyon of the British Museum department of manuscripts to publish an edition of twenty poems, six of them more or less complete.

Melian Star Rating (out of 10): 8. Living in the shadow of Simonides, more eloquent but not an innovator and lacking the deeper insight and philosophical nuance of his uncle's works. He could be looked at as a successor rather than a serious rival to his uncle.

9. PINDAR

Name:   Pindar

Floruit:  522-443 BCE

Birth place:  Thebes

Date/Cause of Death:  440 BCE of natural causes while attending a festival at Argos

Metrical Forms: Mixed strophic but the usual for choral and lyric as well as epinika.

 Dialect:  Predominantly Doric (although he spoke in Boeotian dialect)

Poetry: Alexandrian scholars collected his compositions into 17 books according to genre, so like his contemporaries (?) Simonides and Bacchylides his range was considerably wide. He did not create any new lyrical genres however.

Bonus Factoids: The first Greek poet to discuss poetry itself and its nature and purpose and the role the poet played in society.

 Melian Star rating (out of 10):  10 if we are to believe Horace and many other commentators, but it may be due to the fact that a lot more of his work survives (Epinikia or Victory Odes etc).

I have been crushingly brief with Pindar who really deserves a page wholly devoted to him since there is by far so much more extant of his works quoted in the works of other ancients and surviving complete odes. However my aim was to give you a quick run through of the nine in order to provide a backdrop for the two we are going to look at in more detail. Something of an image however dim comes to me from looking into the backgrounds of these melian greats ; a gradual blossoming of the performed song from private recital at symposiums amongst elite groups or in choral from as part of a city wide religious festival into a sort of Greek version of travelling singing stars criss-crossing the seas of the known world of the time, composing and performing for fees and patronage of kings and tyrants, influencing each other as rivals in the same highly competitive and lucrative activity - carving out a name and legacy for themselves with their innovative style of song, lyric and even instrument. Very much the itinerant blues players or seafaring rockstars of their day. I look forward to imagining their lyrics setting our hearts and minds aflame when we next meet!

Euge!

Raptores Orbis vs Britannorum Fugacissimi - The Battle Speeches of Calgacus and Agricola Ag.29-34

Salve!

The culminating battle at Mons Graupius between the amassed remaining free tribes of the far North of Scotland and the Roman forces under Agricola brings the Agricola to a sharply defined conclusion.

Despite not marking the end of the text physically, all that comes after seems like an appendix or series of footnotes, a bit like the credits at the end of a film based on true events filling in on what the characters went on to do once the main story had ended. This is the end story of the conquest of Britannia and where the life of Agricola has its focus. Graupius is both a physical and metaphorical peak – the crowning event of Agricola’s stint as Governor and as Tacitus depicts it the high watermark of Roman conquest and expansion at its northernmost extent.

The two speeches run over sections 29 (end of) until 34 with the longer and more rhetorically developed of Calgacus first, followed by Agricola’s significantly shorter and more down-to-earth  even ‘realistic’ speech . Predictably, scholarship has fluctuated in its attitude to what’s going on with these two back to back pre-battle pep-talks and tend to pivot weathervane-like depending on the changing attitudes to empire, military expansion and conquest. It is possible to contrast the speeches in various ways – one would be to continue the theme of the exempla virtutis touched upon in my last post.

Could we look at the speeches as a rare case of a non-Roman, a Barbarian outside the zone of Imperial order acting nobly and with a moral high ground, especially in the light of Calgacus’ extended riff on the Romans as vicious marauders with unquenchable thirst for blood and riches under the thin veneer of civilisation? Another way of looking at this is Calgacus speech as purely a rhetorical device common to historical and epic where the noble enemy is made to seem as great and as noble as possible in order to render him/her/it as a suitable trophy worthy of its victor. It could be seen as Tacitus extolling the noble virtues and physical prowess of a wild beast before its slaughter, making it all the more glorious. Calgacus therefore rages most poetically in elegant Latin against the evils of empire, as only someone outside its zone of order would be permitted to do;-

‘Raptores orbis, postquam cuncta vastantibus defuere terrae, iam et mare scrutantur: si locuples hostis est, avari, si pauper, ambitiosi, quos non Oriens, non Occidens satiaverit: soli omnium opes atque inopiam pari adfectu concupiscent.  auferre trucidare rapere falsis nominibus imperium, atque ubi solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant.’  [Ag. 30.]

‘ (These)Plunderers of the world, the wide expanses of the whole earth having failed to meet their desires, now even ransack the ocean depths: rich enemies encourage their greed, poor ones their ambition, whom neither East nor West has managed to satisfy; unique among mankind they lust after want and riches equally. Plunder, butchery, rapine; to these they give the false name of Empire: they create a wasteland and call it ‘peace’.

It’s classic Tacitus, language like a gladium, short stabs punching the damnation home with deadly accuracy and blunt almost brutal body blows. However in the mouth of a barbarian curiously permissible. For a Roman speaker to utter this diatribe would be unthinkable – so it’s defused by being uttered from an imagined place of chaos, a tribal chieftain outside of the realm of order. Scholars have tended to focus on this ‘permitted’ critique of empire from a barbarian point of view as an extension of rhetorical device. But perhaps there is something to be said for Tacitus’ own attitudes, since it is really his words not Calgacus’ that we are looking at. It’s very unlikely that such a speech was delivered in reality and in any case it would have been very difficult to reconstruct such a speech in a barbarian language – would anyone be that interested anyway after the defeat? Therefore surely we are looking at a permission for Tacitus to vent his ironic misgivings regarding the ‘benefits’ of empire and civilisation for those at the thin end of its world pillaging wedge. It is strange that there isn’t much about this amongst the articles on Agricola I could find – that is perhaps because most of it is firmly in the rhetorical device camp and because of the careful framing of the speech. That may be the case but the quoted section above seems a particularly strong critique going beyond the limits of mere literary embellishment. Is it a critique of Order or Chaos? Or both, being deliberately two-edged in its attack?

By contrast, Agricola’s speech is one of affectionate, fatherly encouragement to his troops – detailing the trials and tribulations they have all gone through together against Britain as foe collectively and individually as a chaotic force of rugged nature in the form of its forests, rivers and mountains. Chaotic nature has been tamed – what was previously unknown has become known to paraphrase that other well known world plunderer of more recent history.

Ergo egressi, ego veterum legatorum, vos priorum exercitum terminus, finem Britanniae non fama nec rumore, sed castris et armis tenemus: inventa Britannia et subacta.’ [Ag. 33.]

‘So we have outdone them, I previous governors, you the armies before you; today we have taken hold of Britain’s’ furthermost reaches not by rumour and hearsay, but with military camps and soldiers.’

Tacitus through the exhortations of Agricola to his troops focuses on the practical the task of the soldier to pierce the unknown and subdue it and not think about the loftier ideals of civilisation. The work of the XXth Valeria Victrix legionary – his comrades in his unit and his leaders are what matters. These ideals are conspicuous by their relative absence – where Calgacus rails against the evils that empire wreaks on the world, focussing on its immorality, Agricola just tells his men – ‘focus on the job in hand – that of defeating a long hunted enemy and victory is yours. It’s a further irony that the men in the front line of the attack on Calgacus are not even Romans in the true sense – they are Batavian auxiliaries – already subdued to the Imperial war machine for the purpose of wiping out the last remnants of chaotic freedom in the form of the Caledonian tribes.

Is this speech meant to underline the image of Agricola as a virtuous man just doing his job – a noble and ideal military leader working to the best of his ability under a morally dubious regime? Or does Tacitus himself, even as he puts the stinging diatribe into the mouth of the noble barbarian Calgacus, inwardly albeit reluctantly accept that for all its evils, Imperium is the marginally lesser of the two evils of lawless chaos and civilised destruction with Agricola as its duped servant?

You decide!                                                                                                                                     

Vale!

Agricola 1-9, Tacitean panegyric and the Stoic exempla virtutis

Salve!

The first nine sections of the Agricola appear to be a standard introduction section of panegyric, introducing the theme of the work ostensibly as that of preserving for posterity the ‘clarorum virorum facta moresque’ (Ag.1.1), the acts and character of men of renown to posterity. But there is something else going on, not merely panegyric, but the sense that Tacitus is looking back over his shoulder at a troubled age where to praise certain prominent figures of whom the emperor disapproved would invariably lead to a death sentence and simultaneously casting a moralistic glance at the evils and decadence of the present. It is panegyric shot through with the classic Tacitean raspberry ripple swirls of moral disdain and cynical foreboding, never entirely free of the PTSD resulting from the imposed silence of the troubled reign of Domitian. Tacitus never fails to remind us, in a way which to has a distinctly old Roman, republican vibe, that everything was more pure, more morally elevated in the old days, virtue was its own reward, good men really were sometimes in the forefront of society and their qualities were celebrated and honoured without guile...he ends the first section in typical pithy epigrammatic style with his terse verbal finger pointed at the present…’, tam saeva et infesta virtutibus tempora’(Ag.1.4) So harsh is the spirit of our times, so hostile towards virtue.’

Section two opens with a couple of human exampla virtutis, moral examples of those who lost their lives in publicly extolling the virtues of others, Rusticus Arulenus and Herennius Senecio, with the fascinating image of the executioner given the task of burning the books that these men had written, as if to extinguish their very thoughts - to erase them from the record and block their road to the minds of the future. Prescient shades of the Nazis and even 1984. Rusticus Arulenus (35-93  CE) or rather Arulenus Rusticus was a Roman senator and friend and admirer of Thrasea Paetus the notable stoic senator and enemy of Nero. Rusticus tried to save Thrasea from being condemned to death by senatorial vote by offering to veto the decision but Thrasea stopped him knowing that such an act would not only be in vain but also be very likely to result in his own death. In the end Thrasea was unable to save him and Rusticus too was handed an Imperial death sentence under Domitian.

Herrenius Senecio (sentenced to death in 93 CE), another Stoic leaning senator and the author of a biography of the Stoic martyr Helvidius Priscus and linked to Thrasea by the fact of his marriage to his daughter Fannia, was another victim of the Domitian era persecution. Perhaps Tacitus is alluding to the ongoing culture wars between some of the heavily stoic pro-republican members of the senate who felt that the principate was trying to render them politically irrelevant. Tacitus’ use of these men as examples of the dangers of panegyric is slightly odd to me because elsewhere in his work he implies that he disapproves of the Stoics outspoken behaviour and in his eyes futile and over the top acts of self-sacrifice (see for example his comment on this very issue in Ag.42.4)

'sciant, quibus moris est inlicita mirari posse etiam sub malis principibus magnos viros esse, obseqiumque ac modestiam, si industria ac vigor adsint, eo laudis escendere, quo plerique per abrupta, sed in nullam rei publicae usum, ambitiosa morte inclaruerunt.'

'Let those whose way it is to admire only things forbidden learn from him that great men can live even under bad rulers; and that submission and moderation, if animation and energy go with them, reach the same pinnacle of fame, whither more often men have climbed, with no profit to the state, by the steep path of a pretentious death.'

 He clearly disapproves of the noble suicide so beloved of the Stoics while admiring their courage in standing up for the continued role of the senate as guardians of law and order both in Rome and in the provinces. It’s a compromised attitude (not in a completely negative sense) for me since I feel that Stoicism as a thought system is very much interlaced with old school republicanism, something dear to Tacitus’ heart and to a significant extent anti tyrannical in outlook, hence the inevitable and fatal clash with the political role and state actions of the principate. In a way, throughout Nero’s and later Domitian's reigns, the senate was struggling to answer the question of their meaningful function in the principate, both within itself as a legislative body and within the Imperial entourage for example in the form of Seneca as Nero’s Stoic influenced advisor. It is also interesting to note that Tacitus may have been providing the differing but not inconsistent Stoic approaches to tyranny in the contrasting exempla of Thrasea and Agricola; the former of outright confrontation and the latter of wise and informed and ultimately more productive accommodation.

In short, Tacitus was certainly bound up with the idea of history as a moral force with his extensive use of exempla but how much of that force should be wedded to the core concepts of Stoicism is less clear or at least it is difficult to determine which concepts he fully subscribed to and which he thought were not useful to his purpose or even potentially counterproductive to it.

Tacitus neatly contrasts the servitude that this imposed tyranny of censorship resulted in with the freedom and license of previous ages ‘; et sicut vetus aetas vidit quid ultimum in libertate esset, ita nos quid in servitute, adempto per inquisitiones etiam loquendi audiendique commercio.’ (Ag.2.3) ‘ and just as previous ages were witness to the extremes of freedom, so in our times we see the depths of our servitude in which informers have deprived us even of the free exchange of listening and speaking with one another.’ Grim times indeed - Tacitus seems a man for our own times too if we consider our current political controversies over the freedom of information and personal privacy.

But all is not lost as section three opens with a return a trope of panegyric, a thinly veiled exhortation to the virtues and great beneficence of the current ruler Nerva, who has once again united previously incompatible concepts, Empire and Liberty. Tacitus returns again to the theme of the damage of the previous era, the men who were in their prime losing fifteen years of their life, the mature men reduced to decrepitude and both under the yoke of enforced silence unable to speak out against the crimes of that era. With Section four we move into more familiar Panegyric territory with a brief outline of Agricola’s birth in Forum Iulii in Gaul and education in the city of Massilia - a city combining Greek refinement and provincial simplicity. Luckily for his mother, he doesn’t succumb to the philosophy of the Greeks too much and goes on after his schooling to a standard elite Roman career path, serving as tribune under the then provincial Governor Suetonius Paulinus in Britain in around 58 CE. It was certainly a good time to cut your military teeth – Britain was in revolt and at times things appeared to be on a knife edge ‘; trucidati veterani, incensae coloniae, intercepti exercitus; tum de salute, mox de victoria certavere.’ (Ag.5.3-4) Veterans were slaughtered, colonies were razed, military units cut off from their base, the men at one point fighting for their lives and the next fighting for victory.’

Agricola is recalled to Rome after a modest but respectable performance in Britain, by all accounts preferring to discuss the finer points of military strategy and camp morale with his superiors rather than getting pissed up on the best Falernian in the junior officer’s mess surrounded by alluring pale skinned slaves. He marries into a respectable elite family and then his career continues with quaestorships in Asia, followed by tribune of the plebs back in Rome and a praetorship where he is careful to walk the delicate balance between excessively mean and dangerously profligate in his role of provider of the official games..Tacitus has him being ‘far from extravagant but also mindful of public opinion’

From section seven onwards we are nearing the era of the year of the four emperors (69 CE) and Agricola is struck by sudden misfortune when he receives that wandering marauders in the service of one the Imperial wannabes Otho have killed his mother during a raid on the family estate in Liguria. He swiftly joins arms with Vespasian and assists him in his path to victory. After things settle down at Rome, Agricola is sent back to Britain, this time as commander of legio XX Valeria Victrix assisting Petilius Cerialis in the suppression of the Brigantes in the northern reaches of the island province in 71-4(?) CE. He then has a three-year stint as the governor of Aquitania and then, after marrying his daughter to Tacitus…heads off to Britain to assume the governorship proper in 77 CE which leads us to the start of the main body of the Britannia narrative.

I think that the questions we need to ask ourselves regarding this initial panegyric section are several: - How well has Tacitus joined this to the body of the narrative which in all likelihood was taken from notes out of his larger work the Annals/Histories? Is it seamless or can we see the cracks? Does it work structurally, thematically? Furthermore, to what extent can we accept Agricola as panegyric exempla as a realistic figure? Is it meant to be taken as real even? Has Tacitus had to compromise somewhere, making of Agricola a traditional stoic exempla of a man cut from the ‘traditional morally upright republican stuff’ but having to tone down the heavier aspects of stoic defiance in the face of tyranny, especially its more suicidal aspects, for example, defiance at all costs, even that of one’s life in service of the truth? Is it sometimes a moral act for Tacitus to serve tyrants rather than foolishly oppose them?

We must not forget that Tacitus contrasts bad princeps with good, Nero/Domitian=bad tyrants versus Nerva=benevolent prince who re-unites Empire with Liberty. So he comes across to the reader as interested to both accommodate respect for the principate and suggest ways in which adherence to exempla virtutis could benefit both camps despite his old school republican and pro-senatorial sympathies. Evidently there is much to chew over.

I look forward to discussing this section and indeed the main text with you all soon.

Vale!

Tacitus - Agricola - The MSS and the SS

Salve!

A copy of the text of the Agricola and Germania is winging its way to me via the Roman coastal fortress town of Crowborough as we speak and while it is I would like to share with you the curious story surrounding one of the Manuscripts of the minor works of Tacitus, the sole survivor of the Renaissance treasures rediscovered in the early years of the 20th Century. The manuscript in question is the Codex Aesinas Latinus 8 (E).

Until its discovery in 1902 in the private library collection of Count Aurelio Gugliemi Balleani of Jesi, there were only two other MSS which were the source of the Agricola text, namely Vatican Lat. 3429 or ‘A’, and Vatican Lat. 4498 or ‘B’ both of which were assumed to be of common ancestry deriving from a now lost Renaissance copy or copies. With the emergence of Codex Aesinas Latinus 8 (E), scholars soon came to the conclusion that this recent addition to the MSS extant, containing folios from the 10th Century could very well be the archetype of the Vatican and other MSS. It’s certainly the closest we have to the original text as imagined by Tacitus himself pace the usual scribal errors.

The codex was thought to have been lost in the intervening years after its initial discovery but resurfaced in 1980 in the collection of Count Arelio’s great nephew, Count Balleschi-Balleani. It was on loan to the Biblioteca Nazionale in Florence and later sold to the Biblioteca Nazionale in Rome and it now listed as Cod.Vitt.Em. 1631.

The curious story I alluded to is recounted in the excellent blog pages of Roger Pearse, whose interest seems to be patristics and related MSS but he covers a wealth of other areas mostly related to classical and late antiquity. Rather than paraphrase and try to rehash what is already an excellent piece of research work, I thought I would direct you to the relevant pages for you to read yourself. You can find the entry relating to the curious tale here and while you are at it please visit Roger Pearse's blog too, its well worth a visit. I hope to pick up the text of the Agricola in a couple of days and so should be posting a few ideas for discussion in the near future. In the meantime I give you this entry in the way of an appetizer, a roasted lark in garum sauce for your delectation!

Vale!

Pliny - Selected Letters

Salve!

I have managed to get hold of a Loeb edition of Pliny’s Letters translated by William Melmoth (revised by W.M.L. Hutchinson) LOEB, Harvard University Press in two volumes, 1953, so I will be using this version to refer to the following suggested selection of letters for us to focus on when we meet again in June.

I must add a note of caution here since I have immediately noticed (as perhaps you have too!) that the numbering of the letters can vary depending on the version you are reading. The Loeb version I have divides the letters into ten books (I-X) over two volumes and I will refer to the letter by its book number first, followed by its individual letter number (both in Roman numerals) and finally as an aid to those reading from different hymnals as it were, the name of the addresses and my own brief descriptive docket title.

I have tried to make a selection based on the more general interest letters that give us a glimpse into the personal life of Pliny, his leisure pursuits, friends and descriptions of remarkable events that happened to catch his attention.

Here then is a draft list of the letters which I think we could take a closer look at. I will give the book number followed by the letter number, addressee and a very brief docket description to aid location. Please let me know if you have any suggestions either way (subtraction or addition!).

Book 1/3 To Caninnus Rufus. Retreat to the country and leisure studies
Book 1/9 To Minucius Fundaminus. Books v trifling work duties
Book 2/6 To Avitus. The treatment of dinner guests.
Book 2/17 To Gallus. My Laurens  Villa.
Book 6/16 and 20. To Tacitus. The Eruption of Vesuvius
Book 7/27 To Sura. Ghosts and the supernatural.
Book 8/19 To Maximus ' Et gaudium mihi et solacium in litteris nihilque tam laetum, quid his laetius, tam triste, quid non per has sit minus triste. The overlooked wonders on your doorstep.
Book 9/33 To Caninnus. Miraculous dolphin.
Book 10/33 Fire in Nicomedia.
Book 10/96 To Trajan. Dealing with Christians

Vale!

Lucian - Splendid Boot-boy of the Second Sophistic

    

Xaire! Our attention now turns to Lucian of Samosata (c. 120 – 180CE), failed sculptor’s assistant, turned rhetorician, finally satirist and if we accept the outraged judgement of retired Royal Artillery Officer Henry William Lovett Hime in his 1900 monograph’ Lucian- The Syrian Satirist’, an amoral thug, who enjoys nothing better than uncalled for a repeated literary kicking of the Gods and Heroes of antiquity.

A search for biographical detail (scarce at the best of times for Lucian) trawled up Hime's work as well as the French scholar Professor Maurice Croisset (Essai sur la vie et les oeuvres de Lucien, 1882) which I am still reading, but since Hime often quotes the French scholar favourably it seems appropriate to assume that he shares a lot of the moral outrage at Lucian's apparent unsportsmanlike approach to lampooning those characters and subjects which , at least to these two Edwardian/Late Victorian figures, were deemed sacrosanct and off limits. Is it a case of era sensitive moral outrage or do the critics have something useful to say upon artistic grounds? After all, Hime reminds us grace á Juvenal of the true aim of Satire (at least what was accepted as their benchmark author). And it's a quote by the way that could as easily vindicate as indict Lucian; a matter of rhetoric and perhaps of ironic apposition to the sui generis satirist.

'quidquid agunt homines, votum, timor, ira, voluptas, gaudia, discursus, nostri est farrago libelli'

[Juvenal 1/1:85-6]

Hime adds by way of clarification and probably a bit of classic setting up on the side as a prelude to his damning judgement later on of the Samosatan that satire is -

' the expression of amusement at folly or of disgust at vice. But this expression of ridicule or scorn is subject to two conditions: first, it must be conveyed in literary form (I presume that by the term 'literary', Hime means literary according to classical rules or the rules of his era);and secondly, when aimed at the unseemly it must possess some tincture of wit and humour. The grounds for these conditions are obvious. If literary form be absent, the expression of our contempt or derision degenerates into a sneer or a gibe. If humour and wit be wholly wanting in attacks upon vice, satire sinks into a sermon or invective.' [Hime, Lucian -The Syrian Satirist, Longmans, Green and Co, 1900]

But I'm getting ahead of myself here. Let’s continue to look through the Himian lens as it were but start at the beginning where we get some details of Lucian's life and background to the works before all the moral outrage stuff pours over his head from the Edwardian military heights.

Hime arranges his monograph into five sections covering Lucian’s life, a classification of Lucian’s works, a section he titles the limits of satire (containing his moral objections to Lucian sticking the boot in to no useful purpose), and ends with sections on Lucian’s take on philosophy and religious views and some other characteristics arising from the extant works attributable to Lucian.

As far as I can tell, not much has happened in a 100 years regarding the general biographical details for Lucian, since outside the texts themselves not a lot of information is available. Philostratus’ Lives of the Sophists is one of the only sources apart from a couple of brief mentions in other works and fragments and so we can assume that Hime's outline is about the best we can do. 

Lucian was born around 120/5 CE and died while serving in an Imperial official post in Egypt around 180 CE (recently revised by some scholars to 200 CE).

Lucian left school in around 140 and was apprenticed to his maternal uncle to learn the trade of sculpting images – possibly masks or ornaments but was soon kicked out for incompetence or being otherwise unsuited to the trade. He then makes his way to Ionia which during his time of the Second Sophistic (a literary-historico term to describe Greek writers from the reign of Nero up until about 230 CE) was the Las Vegas for the rhetoricians of the day. Even in his youth Lucian would have been exposed to the stars of rhetoric both past and present through his basic education, and we can imagine he was already a little bookish, precocious and fired up with wanting to learn at the feet of the Ionian rock stars of the profession and perhaps make a name for himself. It appears however that he quickly realised the shortcomings of the rhetoricians and in his Rhetorical Precepts 15 describes the recipe of their success in the amphitheatres and other places they collected in to declaim. Their success for him relied upon:

‘ignorance coupled with impudence, boldness and effrontery. Leave modesty, fair play and a sense shame at home.’

And furthermore:

‘Talk without ceasing say at haphazard whatever occurs to you…but whatever you do, don’t hesitate – talk on and on’

Lucian is in his mid to late twenties in 150 CE and after spending some time in Ionia observing the rhetoricians in action and possibly trying his hand at the profession himself for a couple of years, he moves on to other locations in Greece and then to Rome and on through northern Italy and into Gaul where he settles into an Imperial post and begins to make a comfortable living.

He later returns to Ionia and Samosata as ‘local boy made well’ and for a time turns to the rhetorician’s profession and was in Antioch around 162-3 CE at the time of the Emperor Lucius Verus. He leaves Antioch in 164 and returns to Greece, to sail from the Troad in the ambiguous company of the cynic Peregrinus Proteus (95-165 CE) to Corinth and then to the Olympic Games where Peregrinus very publicly self-immolated after a tepidly received farewell speech. In 165 CE, Lucian apparently gives up the profession of rhetoric (a waste of 15 years of his life in his own opinion) to concentrate on the writing of satire as serious project for his predominantly Greek audience. It is sometime after this that he takes up another Imperial posting in Egypt, possibly someone from his Gaul days had put in a good word for him and as a plus his native fluency in spoken and written Greek would certainly have made him very useful there ( in Alexandria and other major cities of the province). It might not be too fanciful to imagine him as a regular at the great library of Alexandria, mining its treasures in order to flesh out his increasingly popular satirical works

A number of Lucian’s works are both modelled on and a unique departure from the Menippean satirical style. We have touched upon Menippean Satire before when looking at the works of the Roman satirist Juvenal and should remember that this style is characterised by humorous attacks on mental attitudes as opposed to purely ad hominem invective directed at heroic or mythic entities; essentially, mythic parody or burlesque. Lucian takes the Menippean style into disturbing new territory by jettisoning the moral purport overt or implied of the original style and stripping it down to pure ad hominem invective. This is the essence of Hime’s disdain for Lucian, upon both  moral and artistic grounds. The satirist as mirror of society’s ills has become merely an amoral window into its further horror. The rod of moral instruction has become a tool of sadistic enjoyment, a clepsydristic orange redolent of verbal hypraviolence in the best written Greek of the time!

Thus Hime’s central issue with Lucian is one of morality pointing out that satire aimed as something which is not a vice (in the Juvenalian definition) such as religious belief constitutes a moral error and an artistic crime. He views this approach as ‘essentially destructive’, rather than constructive satirical criticism and not the mark of a true master.

By way of contrast ,Thomas More (of Utopia fame), although from a  very different era to Hime, displays a surprisingly enlightened attitude to Lucian in the preface addressed to Thomas Ruthall in his introductory apology to his translations:

'If most learned sir, there was anyone who fulfilled the Horatian precept and combined delight with profit, I think Lucian certainly stood primus inter pares in this respect. Refraining both from the arrogant teachings of the philosophers and the more dissolute dallyings of the poets, he everywhere remarks and censures, with very honest and at the same time very amusing wit, the shortcomings of mortals. And this he does so cleverly and so effectively that although no one pricks more deeply, yet there is no one of impartial mind who would not allow his stings of sarcasm.' [More, Opera Omnia, 1689, pp.258ff]

The Horatian precept referred to by More is that of Horace's Ars Poetica 333-4, 'aut prodesse volunt aut delectae poetae aut simul et iucunda dicere vitae' Poets aim either to benefit,or to amuse or to utter words at once both pleasing and helpful to life.

Lucian was at least fair in his treatment and rather than single out the gods, mythic heroes, and the famous of the day, he was also a ‘hater and ridiculer of philosophical systems’. For example in other works such as Charon, we see Socrates throwing a wobbly at entering Hades fearing for his street cred. He is also notably dismissive of the Christians as gullible tools in the hands of charlatans like Peregrinus. For Hime this all boils down to Lucian being an ‘Oriental’ whatever that might mean in ancient terms and he considers such races incapable of developed rational thought being sharp enough at the details but hopeless at the bigger picture of philosophical or religious systems. Croisset tends to concur:

‘..il est vraiment frappe des details, mais il voit peu les ensembles..en literature, en religion, en philosophie, il eu sera de même; partout des observations excellentes, mais nulle synthèse.’ [Essai sur Lucian 101]

Perhaps these two scholars of the early 20th century were missing the point of Lucians style and Hime himself hints as much when he observes ‘one age may read without a smile what another age laughs at’. Could there be such a thing as Lucanian Satire, a dangerous step further beyond moral confines or at perhaps even a subtle sublimation or subversion of the moral codes so that they are present but in an ironic ‘presence by absence’, as employed by the more leftfield comedians of today such as Stewart Lee with his complex multi-faceted adversarial and self-conflicted style. I look forward to discussing the possibility of Lucian’s moral redemption with you soon.

Euge!

You're everywhere and nowhere baby - Homeric topography

           You’re everywhere and nowhere baby – or-
Odyssey Book V -Ogygia and the problem of Homeric geography

Ogygia! Ogygia! It’s only a model - or rather it’s an island, the island of Calypso, the immortal and sorceress daughter of the Titan Atlas who keeps Odysseus captive for seven years as her semi-reluctant boon companion and bedmate.

But where is it? This is a recurring problem with the place names in the Odyssey and I’m using Ogygia here as a symbol of that curious phenomenon. Lift up the name cover on a Homeric location and it could lead you halfway around the known and into the unknown reaches of the ancient Greek world. The connections are fascinating and bizarre..but leave us in the dark as to the precise whereabouts of these islands – perhaps deliberately so since we are trying to pin down legends and myths from as far back as the Greek dark ages. As is often the case, the links, dripping with mythical festoonery take us everywhere and nowhere.

Ogygia has been connected with the mythical lost realm of Atlantis (remember Calypsos fathers name?). Scholars of the late Hellenistic or Alexandrian period such as Euhemerus (4th C BCE) and later endorsed in the comments of Callimachus identify the lsland of Ogygia with the Maltese island of Gozo. However, Aeschylus give the river Nile the epithet, Ogygian and Eustathius the Byzantine Grammarian gives Ogygia as the earliest known name for Egypt. Ogygia may have have some cognate link with Aegyptos but it is just as likely to be an over imaginative linguistic identification – seeing connections where the only evidence is a suggestion word or sound similarity – quite common in ancient Greek commentary (I’m thinking of some of the references in Plutarch’s Moralia here as Pausanias in his Guide to Greece). The description of the islands trees, thick and tall black cypress and the pungent aroma of cedar on the salt breeze, for me heralds distant echoes of Lebanon and scenes from the epic of Gilgamesh.

Bernard Knox, quoted in the Introduction to the Robert Fagles translation of The Odyssey states a clear position on all this – and I think I tend to concur. In the section The Western Seas, he describes Eratosthenes’ disdain of such fruitless enterprises – demonstrating that these attempts to place the Odyssey in a meaningful or reality based geography have been ridiculed since antiquity, not that it seems to stem the flow of countless new theories as to the possible real world identity of many of the islands and strange shores that our hero found himself washed up upon.

The wanderings of Odysseus are rather a topography of the soul,  the map of his changing fortunes, the places where the whim or ire of the gods may place us…the destinations are one of character or fate and the ways in which fate can be challenged and faced and ultimately overcome – though by means obscure and often uncertain. Odysseus is many wiled but is also many guised, hero, pirate, prisoner, escapee, hostage, guest, shipwreck – these then are the places he visits as a psychodramatic template overlaying the mysterious coordinates of the wine-dark sea – they are places inside himself and by extension places that exist in all of us as we navigate through the trials, joys and sufferings of existence.

Euge!