Saint Paul that cals the Cretians lyers, doth it but indirectly and upon quotation of their owne Poet. It is as bloody a thought in one way as Neroes was in another. For by a word wee wound a thousand, and at one blow assassine the honour of a Nation. It is as compleate a piece of madnesse to miscall and rave against the times, or thinke to recall men to reason, by a fit of passion: Democritus that thought to laugh the times into goodnesse, seemes to me as deeply Hypochondriack, as Heraclitus that bewailed them; it moves not my spleene to behold the multitude in their proper humours, that is, in their fits of folly and madnesse, as well understanding that Wisedome is not prophan’d unto the World, and ’tis the priviledge of a few to be vertuous. They that endeavour to abolish vice destroy also vertue, for contraries, though they destroy one another, are yet the life of one another.
According to some testimonia Melinno was Nossis’ daughter. The Following poem may be a poem to the city of Rome or to strength Personified (in Greek, rhômê)
Would I, if I saw you and Gabinius fixed upon the cross, be affected with greater happiness from the laceration of your body than I am affected by the ruin of your fame? It is to be thought no punishment if by some chance even good and brave men are able to be affected by hit. Indeed, even those pleasure loving Greeks of yours say the same thing – if only you would hear them as they ought to be heard, you would never have plunged yourself so deep into the whirlpool of disgrace. But you listen to them in brothels, in the middle of adultery, in the midst of your food and wine.
But even they themselves, who define evil as pain and good as pleasure, assert that the wise man, even if he were enclosed in the bull of Phalaris, and being burned by the fires lit below, would say that even that pain was pleasant and that he was not moved by it even a little. They would have it that the strength of virtue is so great that no man could be good and not be happy. What then is penalty or punishment? In my opinion, it is that which can fall to no one unless they are guilty: fraud taken up, a mind both blocked and oppressed, the hatred of good people, the mark of the senate branded upon you, and the loss of dignity.
An ego, si te et Gabinium cruci suffixos viderem, maiore adficerer laetitia ex corporis vestri laceratione quam adficior ex famae? Nullum est supplicium putandum quo adfici casu aliquo etiam boni viri fortesque possunt. Atque hoc quidem etiam isti tui dicunt voluptarii Graeci: quos utinam ita audires ut erant audiendi; numquam te in tot flagitia ingurgitasses. Verum audis in praesepibus, audis in stupris, audis in cibo et vino. Sed dicunt isti ipsi qui mala dolore, bona voluptate definiunt, sapientem, etiam si in Phalaridis tauro inclusus succensis ignibus torreatur, dicturum tamen suave illud esse seque ne tantulum quidem commoveri. Tantam virtutis vim esse voluerunt ut non posset esse umquam vir bonus non beatus. Quae est igitur poena, quod supplicium? Id mea sententia quod accidere nemini potest nisi nocenti, suscepta fraus, impedita et oppressa mens, bonorum odium, nota inusta senatus, amissio dignitatis.
Before he drained the Fucine Lake, Claudius commissioned a mock naval battle. When the marine combatants shouted, ‘Ave emperor, those who are about to die salute you,’ Claudius responded, ‘Or perhaps those not about to die.’ After hearing these words, no one wanted to fight, as if some special forbearance had been granted. Claudius doubted for a while whether he should have all of them killed by fire and sword, but then he finally got up from his seat, and hurrying about along the extent of the lake (not without an ugly wavering motion), he, partly through threats and partly through exhortation, finally compelled them to battle. In this battle, the fleets of Sicily and Rhodes came against each other; each of the fleets was made of twelve triremes, and the signal was given by a silver Triton playing a trumpet, which had emerged from the middle of the lake by means of a machine.
Quin et emissurus Fucinum lacum naumachiam ante commisit. Sed cum proclamantibus naumachiariis: “Have imperator, morituri te salutant!” Respondisset: “Aut non,” neque post hanc vocem quasi venia data quisquam dimicare vellet, diu cunctatus an omnes igni ferroque absumeret, tandem e sede sua prosiluit ac per ambitum lacus non sine foeda vacillatione discurrens partim minando partim adhortando ad pugnam compulit. Hoc spectaculo classis Sicula et Rhodia concurrerunt, duodenarum triremium singulae, exciente bucina Tritone argenteo, qui e medio lacu per machinam emerserat.
But in everything, the most difficult matter is to set out the form (which is called character in Greek) of the best, since the best seems different to different people. One might say, ‘I take delight in Ennius,’ because he does not deviate from the common use of words. Another might say, ‘I like Pacuvius: all of his verses are ornate and smell of the lamp, while Ennius’ are wrought more negligently.’ Another might like Accius, for judgments are various, as is the case for the Greek authors, and it is not easy to explain which form excels the most. In paintings, some people like horrible, messy, obscure, and opaque pieces, while others like shining, happy, illuminated works. How can you set out some prescription or rule, when each one excels in his own genre, and when there are so many genres?
Sed in omni re difficillimum est formam, qui charakter Graece dicitur, exponere optimi, quod aliud aliis videtur optimum. Ennio delector, ait quispiam, quod non discedit a communi more verborum; Pacuvio, inquit alius: omnes apud hunc ornati elaboratique sunt versus, multo apud alterum neglegentius; fac alium Accio; varia enim sunt iudicia, ut in Graecis, nec facilis explicatio quae forma maxime excellat. In picturis alios horrida inculta, abdita et opaca, contra alios nitida laeta conlustrata delectant. Quid est quo praescriptum aliquod aut formulam exprimas, cum in suo quidque genere praestet et genera plura sint?
After the suitor Amphimedon arrives in the underworld and tells the story of Penelope’s shroud and Odysseus’ return, Agamemnon responds:
Odyssey 24.192-202:
“Blessed child of Laertes, much-devising Odysseus,
You really secured a wife with magnificent virtue!
That’s how good the brains are for blameless Penelope,
Ikarios’ daughter, how well she remembered Odysseus,
Her wedded husband. The fame of her virtue will never perish,
And the gods will craft a pleasing song
Of mindful Penelope for mortals over the earth.
This is not the way for Tyndareos’ daughter.
She devised wicked deeds and since she killed
Her wedded husband, a hateful song
Will be hers among men, she will attract harsh rumor
To the race of women, even for those who are good.”
More than half of this speech praises Penelope for being a loyal, ‘good’ wife (and that is another issue of its own). Of course, this makes Agamemnon think of Klytemnestra. There’s a lot to be said about how this passage sets up the end of the Odyssey, but Agamemnon’s words are striking because they reflect a sad reality not just about misogynistic thinking but about the operation of human thought.
Let’s start with the misogyny: Agamemnon says here, quite clearly, that because of the behavior of one woman (well, two if we hear ambiguity in the phrase “Tyndareos’ daughter” and think of Helen too) all women have bad fame, even if they are “good”? A simple response to this is to wonder whether the same applies to men (of course not…) Let’s pass over the fact that the murder of Agamemnon was probably well deserved. I think this passage also reflects human cognition: the story of Klytemnestra is paradigmatic. We learn basic patterns about people and the world and apply these patterns (prejudices) as substitutions for deeper thought.
I am not sure whether this serves as a bit of an anticipatory apologetic on the part of epic–that the tale of Penelope cannot match up to negative messages about women. It probably stands as an acknowledgement of a “negative expectancy effect”–we are primed to hear negative tales and to believe negative things. I suspect that on Homer’s part this is probably less about women and more about anticipating the reception of this poem.
But, at the very least, this is a clear indication that Homer knows the way it goes: we live in a cultural system that discounts positive stories about women in favor of negative ones and which, accordingly, downgrades the authority of the stories they tell. In our responses to the testimonies of men and women, men have the privilege of being individuals whose lives might be ruined by rumor and false claims, while women are always already undermined. This is is an example of structural misogyny.
For discussions of this passage see: On the contrasting fame of Klytemnestra and Penelope, see Franco 2012, 60–61. For invocations of Klytemnestra as an example of how a woman can ruin a nostos, see Murnaghan 2011, chapter 4 and Nagy 1999, 36–39.
Classical myth deserves trigger warnings.
Franco, Cristina. 2012. “Women in Homer,” in Sharon L. James and Sheila Dillon, eds., A Companion to Women in the Ancient World. London. 55–65.
Marquardt, Patricia. 1989. “Love’s Labor’s Lost: Women in the Odyssey,” in Robert Sutton, ed., Daidalikon: Studies in Honor of Raymond V. Schoder, S.J. Chicago. 239-248.
Murnaghan, Sheila. 2011. Disguise and Recognition in the Odyssey, Second Edition. Lanham.
Nagy, Gregory 1996. Poetry as Performance: Homer and Beyond. Cambridge
Christos Tsagalis talks about inscriptions like this in his 2008Inscribing Sorrow : Fourth-Century Attic Funerary Epigrams, (Trends in Classics. Suppl. Vol., 1) 2008, although his claim that the ἀντὶ γάμου is “especially suitable for young girls” (280) probably needs a little more nuance (I have found it in inscriptions for many young men too cf. e.g. SEG 42:212).
There are, of course, other expressions for the same idea. For instance, from nearly seven centuries later, the first half of IGBulg V5930 (The PHI link):
“Look at this grave marker, friend, and ask “who made this”?
Hermogenes made me in longing, seeking to honor his own daughter
Well-tressed Theklê, whom strong fate stole away
Before she saw a marriage, before she joined a husband in bed,
Before she suffered anything in her soul, she went unpolluted to god.”
“The land is full of evils; the sea is full of evils.
Diseases come to humans at day and at night
they come on their own bringing evils to mortals in silence
Since devious Zeus took their voices away.”
“The whole state often suffers because of a wicked man
Who transgresses the gods and devises reckless deeds.
Kronos’ son rains down great pain on them from heaven:
Famine and plague and the people start to perish.
[Women don’t give birth and households waste away
Thanks to the vengeance of Olympian Zeus.] And at other times
Kronos’ son ruins their great army or their wall
Or he destroys their ships on the the sea.”
“They claim that after some time Themis was given by Gaia whatever he share was and then that Apollo received that as a gift from Themis. They say that Apollo gave to Poseidon the portion of land called Kalauria which is near Troizen as an exchange-gift for the oracle. I have also heard that men who were shepherding their flocks chanced upon the oracle and were inspired by the mist and then acted as prophets of Apollo. The account with the most adherents is the story of Phêmonoê, that she was the first prophet of the god and the first person who sang hexameters.
Boiô, a local woman who created a Hymn for the Delphians, used to say that people who visited from the Hyperboreans along with others and Olên created the oracle for the god and that he, Olên, was the first to give prophecies and to sing a hexameter.
Boiô composed these verses: “Here in fact, they built the oracle of good memory / the children of the Hyperboreans, Pagasos and shining Aguieus.”
Once she has named other Hyperboreans, near the end of the hymn she mentioned Olên: “And Olên who was the first prophet of Phoibos / and the first to make the song of ancient epic verses.” There is in common memory no mention of him at all; all that is left is the prophecy of women only.”
