“Kyrnos, this city is pregnant and I am afraid she will bear a man
Meant to correct our evil arrogance.
The citizens are still sane, but the leaders have changed
And have fallen into great evil.
Good people, Kyrnos, have never yet destroyed a city,
But whenever it pleases wicked men to commit outrage,
They corrupt the people and issue legal judgment in favor of the unjust,
For the sake of their own private profit and power.
Don’t expect this city to stay peaceful for very long
Even if it is not at a moment of great peace now,
When these deeds are dear to evil men,
As their profit accrues with public harm.
Civil conflicts and murder of kin comes from this,
And tyrants do too: may this never bring our city pleasure.”
“Stranger passing by the humble grave of Anakreon,
If my books were of any use to you,
Pour some wine on my ashes, pour it out in drops
So that my bones can smile, refreshed a bit by wine,
so I, who loved the shouting raves of Dionysus,
so I, who was a partner of music matched to drink,
may not lie dead apart from Bacchus in this place below,
the land which all the race of mortals one day must know.”
“I don’t love the man who while drinking next to a full cup
Talks about conflicts and lamentable war.
But whoever mixes the shining gifts of Aphrodite and the Muses
Let him keep in mind loving, good cheer.”
A twitter correspondent asked a question about a passage I posed by Simonides earlier today.
Isn't "χερσίν τε καὶ ποσὶ" a phrase—like "head to toe?" So maybe "well-built hand and foot." Or are they metaphors (as each words often is)? If so, maybe: "built equally for (strength of) hand and (fleetness of) foot." Simonides was pretty clever, so maybe it's all in there.
Gregory Nagy (Best of the Achaeans 1979, 1999) has drawn on the work of others to argue that in early Greek poetry (especially Homer and Hesiod) there is a tension between character and activities associated with force (biê) and intelligence (mêtis). He sees Achilles and Odysseus as representing these vectors respectively and, in turn, as the antagonism or contrast between the heroes and (in part) their epics as an extension or embodiment of these basic qualities. Similarly, structural interpretations of Greek myth have mapped these tensions onto gendered polarities as well—for Hesiod’s Theogony, the conflict between the male and female forces can be conceptualized as well as one between male biê and female mêtis. (For this, see especially, Leonard Muellner, The Anger of Achilles 1996)
In Simonides (above) the “hands and feet” are metonyms for physical deeds while the mind (noos) represents acts of mêtis (be them planning or speaking). In the Odyssey, the hero’s mêtis is often illustrated with reference to his noos or operations thereof. That the reference to a complete man by Simonides recalls these tensions and laments the rarity of the person who can resolve them is supported in part by a few passages from the Odyssey. In the first, it is clear that “hands and feet” represent deeds. In the second, Odysseus himself opposes this concern with the hands and feet as those of “appearance” and not thought or speaking.
Odyssey 8.147-8
“For as long as he lives, a man has no greater glory
than that which he wins with his own hands and feet”
“Friend, you don’t speak well. No, you’re like a wreck of a man.
The gods don’t distribute charms in this well to all men,
Not in form, brains or their ability to speak
For while one man is less than impressive in appearance,
But a god crowns his form with words. And people delight
As they gaze upon him, while he speaks strongly,
With reverent shame, and he is conspicuous among those assembled
As they look upon his travel to the city as if he were a god.
Another man in turn is similar to the immortals in appearance,
But not charm hands about his words at all.
That’s you: brilliant in appearance and not anyone
Not even a god could make you otherwise. But you’re useless at thinking.”
The passage above is especially charged in the Odyssey for a few reasons. For one, by calling the young Phaeacian prince atasthalos (ἀτασθάλῳ ἀνδρὶ ἔοικας) Odysseus aligns them with people who bring destruction upon themselves, including his own men and the suitors in Ithaca (For the atasthalia theme in the Odyssey see especially Cook, The Odyssey in Athens 1995; Bakker, The Meaning of Meat 2013, 96-119). I think that the comparison of the Phaeacians to the suitors is especially damning here. Both groups are characterized as being especially stupid, reckless, and concerned overmuch with leisure activities.
I think there is also an emerging political valence to the contrast. A presocratic fragments supports this.
Xenophanes, fr. 2. 16-19
“Swiftness of feet—the thing honored most in all of man’s acts of strength in the contest—could never make a city governed well.”
As I have written elsewhere, “swiftness of feet” is a metonym for biê and the type of hero who succeeds through force and deeds rather than intelligence. For Xenophanes, this quality is an obstacle to eunomia (good governance). I cannot help but think that Simonides, Xenophanes and Homer are all involved in the same debate about what kind of a person should lead a city. Let’s not forget Archilochus too:
Archilochus, fr. 114
“I don’t love a tall leader, or one striding far,
Or one who takes pride in his hair or shaved head.
No, give me a shorter man, who looks bowed near the shins
But who is sure on his feet, and strong of heart.”
c. 530 BCE (Miletus). Held in the British Museum: 1864,1007.156
Post-Script
The Odyssey pretty clearly falls on the side of mêtis and speech, as is clear from its hero. Ancient scholars sensed the themes deployed with Telemachus as well.
Schol QT ad Od. 8.166
“Friend, you do not speak well”: It is the Homeric custom to evaluate even the character of one you meet from his words. For elsewhere someone says about Telemachus “you are one of noble blood, dear child, based on the way you are speaking” (4.611). This is because he thinks that being well-born and educated necessarily coincide, and that speaking is conspicuous beyond all else. But Odysseus, does not maintain absolutely that he is reckless, but instead that he is like someone who is thanks to his response and what he said.”
“Simonides seems to have been the first to adapt money-making to songs and to compose his works for pay. This is what Pindar says deceptively in his second Isthmian: “For the Muse was not then greedy or out for hire.”
The story of Simonides’ boxes is also told, that he had two boxes next to him, one empty and one full—and he used to say that the former was full of favors and the latter full of money. [Someone] else also calls him greedy, which is why Xenophanes calls him a cheapskate.”
Many authors from the ancient world—including Pausanias, Strabo, Pliny, Longinus and Herodotus–have left testimony of a seventh century BCE epic poet named Aristeas who came from Asia Minor and composed a poem, Arimaspea, of his travels in the wilds of the North. Here are the substantial fragments—I find the last especially haunting.
Fr. 4
‘The Issedoi [Issedones] glory in their long hair”
᾿Ισσηδοὶ χαίτηισιν ἀγαλλόμενοι ταναῆισι.
Fr. 5
“And they say there are neighboring men above them
To the north, many fine men and strong fighters too,
Wealthy in horses, with many lambs and many cattle.
“This is also a great marvel for our minds:
The men inhabit the water in the sea away from land.
They are dreadful people who do pitiful work.
They keep their eyes in the stars but their soul in the sea.
True, too, I think, when they raise their dear hands often to the gods
They pray with sacrificial victims terribly thrown around.”
The last line (σπλάγχνοισι κακῶς ἀναβαλλομένοισι) is translated by W. Rhys Roberts as “And with hearts in misery”. The verb anaballo can have this metaphorical meaning, but in combination with prayer and the noun splangkhnon (which typically means innards or sacrificial victim) the scene seems more to me to describe a strange or sacrilegious sacrifice (from the Greek point of view), especially with the adverb κακῶς. I am probably wrong about this…
“Polemon, in the twelfth book of his To Timaios, writes about his studies on the authors of parody “I would call Boeiotos and Euboios word-smiths since they play deftly with multiple meanings and they surpass the poets who preceded them in earlier generations. But it must be admitted that the founder of this genre was Hipponax, the iambic poet. For he writes as follows in hexameter:
“Muse, tell me the tale the sea-swallowing
Stomach-slicing, son of Eurymedon, who eats without order,
How he died a terrible death thanks to a vile vote
in the public council along the strand of the barren sea.”
Parody is also accredited to Epicharmus of Syracuse in some of his plays, Cratinus the Old Comic poetry in his play The Sons of Eunêos, and also to Hegemon of Thasos, whom they used to call “Lentil Soup”, as he says himself.”
“I was in love—who wasn’t? I partied. Who didn’t?
But what made me crazy? Was it a god?
Let him go. For now in place of my dark hair
I am growing gray, announcing the age of ‘knowing better’.
When it was the time to play, we played. Now the time is done,
We will reach for more elevated thought.”
“….Divine Philonis
Who bore Autolykos and Philammon*, famous for his voice;
She gave birth to the first after she was impregnated by Apollo,
And then, after she had lovely sex with Hermes too,
She gave birth to Autolykos with the Kyllenian slayer of Argos.”
*Philammon became a powerful singer thanks to his father, Apollo, and in some traditions is credited with founding the practice of singing hymns to Leto, Artemis and Apollo. He has a son with the nymph Argiope, Thamyris, who challenges the Muses in a singing competition and loses. Autolykos’ daughter, Antiklea, is Odysseus’ mother.
Fragment 67
Aeidelon means unseen. Eido is to recognize something, whence we derive “I know” (oida) Eidelos is formed the way pempelos is from pempô. Formed with a suffix, aeidelos is someone that is not seen. In the work of Nicander, it comes from that which is always apparent. He explains about this that it is derived from aeidêlon with a shortening of the eta to an epsilon. But a very clear meaning has been established for aeidelos. For Hesiod uses the word concerning Autolykos to indicate what is unseen:
“Whatever he took with his hands, he made it all unseen” (fr. 67 MW)
For, since he was a thief, he would steal horses and make them look different. He changed their colors. Cf. to aidêlon.
“Good government makes everything well ordered and fit,
And at the same time it throws shackles on the unjust.
It levels out the rough, stops insolence, and weakens arrogance.
It causes the growing blossoms of blindness to wither.
It straightens crooked judgments and it levels out over-reaching deeds.
It stops the acts of civil conflict and
It stops the anger of grievous strife and because of it
Everything among men is wisely and appropriately done.”
From the fragmentary Anacreonta (imitations of Anacreon once thought to be real), we have another mention of Thebes and Troy together:
Anacreonta, fr. 26
“You narrate the events of Thebes;
he tells Trojan tales;
but I tell my conquests.
No horse has destroyed me,
nor foot soldier, nor ships,
nor will any other new army
hurl me from my eyes.”
This complaint is a generic and contextual one: the narrator doesn’t want a mixing of the themes of war with his own, which are love, drinking and the feast. Another fragment of Anacreon makes this clear:
Anacreon fr. 2
“I don’t love the man who while drinking next to a full cup
Talks about conflicts and lamentable war.
But whoever mixes the shining gifts of Aphrodite and the Muses
Let him keep in mind loving, good cheer.”
