4§2 Before I explain my use of this new terminology, I need to review some points I made in Chapter 3 about the Panathenaic Homer, which need to be linked to the points I will be making here about the imperial Homer. As we saw in Chapter 3, Plato was bent on discrediting not only Homeric poetry in general but the Panathenaic Homer in particular – as represented by the rhapsōidikē tekhnē ‘rhapsodic craft’ of rhapsodes like Ion of Ephesus. As we also saw, the new sophistikē tekhnē ‘sophistic craft’ of sophists like Hippias was derived from this same old rhapsōidikē tekhnē ‘rhapsodic craft’ as practiced by rhapsodes like Ion when they were performing Homer at the festival of the Panathenaia in Athens. The craft of the sophist was becoming a new alternative to the craft of the rhapsode, and the stakes were high not only for rhapsode and sophist but also for the philosopher who presented himself as {450|451} an alternative to both, Socrates. The dialogues of Plato that we have considered, especially the Ion and the Hippias Minor, dramatize an ongoing struggle to displace the old craft of the rhapsode and the newer craft of the sophist, both of which depended on Homer as a central point of reference, by substituting the newest craft of them all, philosophy. This craft, which is for Plato’s Socrates a non-craft that subsumes all crafts, was meant to be independent of Homer. The philosopher’s struggle to displace the crafts of the rhapsode and the sophist, as we can see from Plato’s own work, began not in the fourth century, in the age of Plato. It began earlier, in the fifth century, in the historical time that corresponds to the dramatic time of these Platonic dialogues.

4§3 The term imperial Homer is apt for the historical period marked by the life and times of Socrates – a period in the fifth century BCE when the Athenian empire was reaching the summit of its prestige as the leading political and cultural force in the ancient Greek-speaking world. Tracing our steps backward in time, we have come to a point in world history when Homer was imagined as a spokesman for the Athenian empire.

4§4 In the title of my chapter, I could have referred to this historical period as the age of Socrates – or even as the age of Pericles, whose name is linked most closely to the Athenian empire at the height of its glory. Instead, I call this period the age of Pheidias. My reason for choosing the sculptor Pheidias and not the philosopher Socrates or the statesman Pericles will be explained as my argumentation proceeds. What cannot wait and needs to be explained without delay, however, is my reason for saying that Homer was a spokesman for the Athenian empire.

4§5 In the Prolegomena, I said I would argue that Homer’s poetry gave meaning not only to Athenian civilization in general but to the Athenian empire in particular. For the Athenian empire in the age of Pheidias, Homer was a classic, an Athenian classic. As I now proceed to make this argument in earnest, I will need to reconsider the Panathenaic standard of Homeric poetry. In the fourth century BCE, as we saw in Chapter 3, this Panathenaic standard was primarily a matter of cultural hegemony. In other words, the performance of the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey at the Athenian festival of the Panathenaia reflected the cultural predominance of Athens in the ongoing evolution of poetry and song. In the fifth century BCE, on the other hand, the Panathenaic standard was a matter of political as well as cultural hegemony. In other words, the Panathenaic Homer reflected the political as well as the cultural predominance of Athens as an imperial power. That is what I mean when I say that Homer was a spokesman for the Athenian empire. That is what I mean by using the term imperial Homer. {451|452}

4§6 Already in the Prolegomena, I observed that I could have chosen to describe the historical reality behind the concept of an Athenian empire in a variety of alternative ways, steering clear of the English words empire, imperial, and imperialism. Still, I hope to justify my use of these words precisely because I intend to foreground their Roman source, the Latin word imperium. My usage will help highlight the parallels I see between the Roman empire on the one hand and, on the other, what we call the Athenian empire. Although the political causes of the Roman empire were of course different, its poetic effects were noticeably similar to those of the empire ascribed to the Athenians. As we will see later on, the similarities are most striking when we consider the idea of empire as pictured in the epic poetry of Virgil’s Aeneid. Before we can turn – or rather, return – to Virgil, however, I need to consider the idea of an Athenian empire on its own terms, as pictured by Athenian audiences of the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey in the age of Pheidias.

4ⓢ2. The imperial Homer of Ion of Ephesus

4§10 In support of this formulation, I highlight the use of the word arkhein ‘rule’ in Plato’s Ion. Before I quote the relevant wording, I summarize the context. We are about to read a brief exchange between Plato’s Socrates and the rhapsode Ion. Socrates has been questioning the expertise of Ion in the craft of a stratēgos ‘general’ – a craft supposedly derived from Homer’s own expertise in matters of war. In response to this questioning, Ion points out that his home city of Ephesus has no generals of its own, since it is ‘ruled’ (arkhetai, from arkhein) by Athens:

4ⓣ1 Plato Ion 541b-c

ΣΩ. Τί δή ποτ’ οὖν πρὸς τῶν θεῶν, ὦ Ἴων, ἀμφότερα ἄριστος ὢν τῶν Ἑλλήνων, καὶ στρατηγὸς καὶ ῥαψῳδός, ῥαψῳδεῖς μὲν περιιὼν τοῖς Ἕλλησι, στρατηγεῖς δ’ οὔ; ἢ {c} ῥαψῳδοῦ μὲν δοκεῖ σοι χρυσῷ στεφάνῳ ἐστεφανωμένου πολλὴ χρεία εἶναι τοῖς Ἕλλησι, στρατηγοῦ δὲ οὐδεμία;

ΙΩΝ. Ἡ μὲν γὰρ ἡμετέρα, ὦ Σώκρατες, πόλις ἄρχεται ὑπὸ ὑμῶν καὶ στρατηγεῖται καὶ οὐδὲν δεῖται στρατηγοῦ, ἡ δὲ ὑμετέρα καὶ ἡ {453|454} Λακεδαιμονίων οὐκ ἄν με ἕλοιτο στρατηγόν· αὐτοὶ γὰρ οἴεσθε ἱκανοὶ εἶναι.

SOCRATES: Why, I swear by the gods! Then how is it – if you are both the best general and the best rhapsode among the Hellenes – that you go around performing rhapsodically for the Hellenes but you are not a general for them? Do you think there is a great need among the Hellenes for a rhapsode garlanded with a golden garland but no need for a general?

4§16 Here I return to the remark made by Plato’s Socrates when Ion the rhapsode points to the status of his native city of Ephesus as a tributary of Athens. As we have seen, Socrates follows up by remarking that Ephesus is after all a daughter city of Athens. In other words, Ion of Ephesus is a virtual Athenian, since Ion’s identity as an Ionian is not only dominated by the Athenians: it is actually determined by them.

4§19 The fact is, the Athenians considered the figure of Homer to be their universal educator, and Homer’s art of teaching was a craft transmitted by the rhapsodes. A case in point is a passage we have already seen in the Panegyricus of Isocrates, where the orator refers to the tekhnē ‘craft’ of Homeric poetry as a tradition designed for two central applications: (1) Homeric performances by rhapsodes in athloi ‘contests’, implicitly at the Panathenaia, and (2) Homeric paideusis ‘education’ of the young. I quote the passage again:

4ⓣ2 Isocrates (4) Panegyricus 159

οἶμαι δὲ καὶ τὴν ῾Ομήρου ποίησιν μείζω λαβεῖν δόξαν ὅτι καλῶς τοὺς πολεμήσαντας τοῖς βαρβάροις ἐνεκωμίασεν καὶ διὰ τοῦτο βουληθῆναι τοὺς προγόνους ἡμῶν ἔντιμον αὐτοῦ ποιῆσαι τὴν τέχνην ἔν τε τοῖς τῆς μουσικῆς ἄθλοις καὶ τῇ παιδεύσει τῶν νεωτέρων, ἵνα πολλάκις ἀκούοντες τῶν ἐπῶν ἐκμανθάνωμεν τὴν ἔχθραν τὴν ὑπάρχουσαν πρὸς αὐτοὺς καὶ ζηλοῦντες τὰς ἀρετὰς τῶν στρατευσαμένων τῶν αὐτῶν ἔργων ἐκείνοις ἐπιθυμῶμεν. {457|458}

4§20 Another case in point is a passage from the Republic of Plato where Socrates interrogates the figure of Homer himself about the Poet’s expertise in tekhnai ‘crafts’ that involve matters of the greatest importance and beauty. The pratictioners of these crafts are listed as (1) generals, (2) administrators of cities, and (3) educators:

4ⓣ3 Plato Republic 10.599c-d

μηδ’ αὖ περὶ τὰς ἄλλας τέχνας αὐτοὺς ἐρωτῶμεν, ἀλλ’ ἐῶμεν· περὶ δὲ ὧν μεγίστων τε καὶ καλλίστων ἐπιχειρεῖ λέγειν ῞Ομηρος, πολέμων τε πέρι καὶ στρατηγιῶν καὶ διοικήσεων πόλεων, καὶ {d} παιδείας πέρι ἀνθρώπου, δίκαιόν που ἐρωτᾶν αὐτὸν πυνθανομένους· Ὦ φίλε Ὅμηρε, εἴπερ …

Let’s not interrogate them [= the poets] concerning the other tekhnai. Let’s let those things go. But concerning the greatest and most beautiful things that Homer attempts to speak about – wars and things having to do with generals and administrations of cities and about the education [paideia] of a person, it is I should think a just thing if we, seeking answers, interrogate Homer as follows: [The interrogation begins.] “Dear Homer, if indeed….”

4§21 From what we have seen so far, it is evident that the identity of Ion as rhapsode was defined by the Panathenaic Homer, that is, by Homer as performed at the Panathenaia. Now we are about to see that even the identity of Athens as an imperial power was defined by this Panathenaic Homer. The {458|459} Athenian standard for performing Homer at the Panathenaia was a self-expression of the Athenian empire. The Panathenaic Homer was an imperial Homer.

4§22 What I am calling an Athenian standard was simultaneously an Ionian standard. In other words, the Panathenaic Homer was simultaneously an Ionian Homer. That is because the Athenian empire was at least notionally an Ionian empire. The Delian League, as an earlier form of the Athenian empire, was a clear and most forceful expression of Ionian identity. Moreover, the Ionian identity of the Athenian empire could be maintained and even reaffirmed most consistently by invoking the idea that Athens is the metropolis or ‘mother city’ of all Ionian cities. As we see in Plato’s Ion, this idea explains how a rhapsode like Ion could be pictured as performing for all Ionians by virtue of performing Homer at the festival of the Panathenaia.

4§25 A word that most clearly expresses the duality of democracy and empire in Athenian civic discourse is the adjective koinos, in the dual sense of ‘common’ and ‘standard’. To be sure, koinos in the general sense of ‘common’ – that is, ‘common’ to any group of people who have something ‘in common’ – was used in a wide variety of political and social contexts throughout the history of the ancient Greek-speaking world. What I highlight here, however, is the use of koinos in the specific sense of referring to a ‘standard’ way of thinking. As we are about to see, the ‘standard’ Athenian way of thinking {459|460} is that the self-interest of the Athenian empire is the ‘common’ interest of the subject states that are ruled by the Athenian empire. Such usage is clearly attested in the civic discourse of Athenians in the fifth century BCE. The premier example is a passage where Thucydides re-enacts the relevant wording of the statesman Pericles. According to Pericles, it is imperative for the citizens of Athens to promote actively the sōtēria ‘preservation’ of their empire, to which their leader refers simply as to koinon, that is, the thing that is ‘common’ to all (2.60.4, 2.61.4). Ideologically, the Athenian empire is the ‘common good’ not only for the citizens of the democracy that is Athens but also for all Hellenes under the arkhē ‘rule’ of Athens – Ionians and non-Ionians alike. In other words, what is ‘common’ to all is ‘standard’, that is, ‘standardized’ by Athens.

4§26 This ideology of Athenian self-interest as a common good that must be standardized for all is made explicit in the Melian Dialogue of Thucydides, where the historian dramatizes a debate between a delegation representing the elites of the non-Ionian island-state of Melos and a delegation of Athenian military leaders sent by their city to demand the submission of the Melians to the imperial power of the Athenian state. For the Athenians, such a submission is equivalent to the sōtēria or ‘preservation’ of the Melians, since the alternative to submission is the destruction of those who resist, and this sōtēria is equated with the self-interest of the Athenian arkhē or ‘empire’ (5.91.2): ὡς δὲ ἐπ’ ὠφελίᾳ τε πάρεσμεν τῆς ἡμετέρας ἀρχῆς καὶ ἐπὶ σωτηρίᾳ νῦν τοὺς λόγους ἐροῦμεν τῆς ὑμετέρας πόλεως ‘we will now speak arguments to show that we are here in order to promote the interests of our empire [arkhē] and the preservation [sōtēria] of your city’. In other words, the sōtēria or ‘preservation’ of the island-state of the Melians is being equated with the self-preservation of the Athenian empire. What is driving the Athenian argumentation here is the principle of expediency, not justice, and this principle is meant to apply to both sides in the debate.

4§27 The Melians, on the other hand, while saying that the Athenian demand for their submission violates the principle of justice, likewise invoke the principle of expediency in arguing that the Athenians should not force them to submit, and in so doing they invoke the ideology of the Athenian empire by resorting to the expression to agathon koinon ‘the common good’ (5.90): μὴ καταλύειν ὑμᾶς τὸ κοινὸν ἀγαθόν ‘… that you should not destroy the common [koinon] good’. In effect, they are saying that the Athenians, by forcing the Melians to submit, will be destroying ‘the common good’ by virtue of ultimately destroying themselves in the process of forcing others to submit to their will. {460|461}

4§28 The irony is self-evident: ‘the common good’, which is presumably koinon ‘common’ to Melians and Athenians alike and, by extension, to all Hellenes, is being equated by the Athenians with the special interests of the Athenian empire. The Athenians know it, and the Melians show that they know it, too, since they too resort to the argument of expediency. The problem is, the Athenians in the Melian Dialogue of Thucydides are not really worried about the self-preservation or sōtēria of their empire, despite the warnings of the Melians about its ultimate destruction.

4ⓢ3. The imperial Koine of Homer

4§31 The imperial Athenian usage of koinos with reference to Homer survives indirectly in the Aristarchean concept of Koine (koinē) – in the double sense of ‘common’ and ‘standard’. The sense of ‘common’, as we saw in the Prolegomena, is appropriate not only to the ‘common’ manuscripts available to Aristarchus in establishing a base text of Homer in the second century BCE but also to the ‘common’ usage of Homer as Aristarchus describes it on the basis of the language reflected in the consensus of ‘common’ manuscripts. As for the sense of ‘standard’, it is appropriate to an earlier Athenian phase of Homeric textual transmission as presupposed by Aristarchus in his reconstruction of his base text. Such an Athenian phase can be equated with what I am calling the Panathenaic Homer. This equation is pertinent to my overall thesis, which is, to argue that the concept of a Homeric Koine applies to the Panathenaic Homer in the fifth century, at which time the word koinos conveyed simultaneously the ideas of democracy and empire. In other words, the reconstructed concept of a Homeric Koine (koinē) in the fifth century can be equated with the ideological appropriation of Homer by the Athenian empire. The Homeric Koine was the poetic lingua franca of the empire.

4§33 As we are about to see, Aristarchus imagined the Koine of Homer to be a basic dialect. The Aristarchean idea of the Homeric Koine as an imaginary basic dialect can be traced back to the earlier ideas of Athenians about their actual dialect, Attic. In the fourth century BCE, for example, Isocrates goes on record as saying that the Attic dialect of the Athenians is the universal language of all Greek-speaking people because of its koinotēs ‘communality’ (15.296). In other words, the Attic dialect has a ‘standard’ quality because it is koinē or ‘common’ to all Hellenes.

4§35 Such a modern linguistic reformulation of the Koine is parallel to the ancient philological formulation that I extrapolate from the commentaries of Aristarchus, for whom the ‘Koine’ patterns found in the Homeric texts represent the sunētheia or ‘customary usage’ of the standard ‘dialect’ that he associated with Homer, while the non-‘Koine’ patterns he also found in the Homeric texts represent relatively unaccustomed usages stemming from other ‘dialects’.

4§36 As I showed in the Prolegomena, Aristarchus tested his descriptions of sunētheia ‘customary usage’ in the language of ‘Homer’ by comparing his descriptions of the sunētheia ‘customary usage’ he found in the Greek language as spoken in his own time. I quote again here a particularly telling example:

4ⓣ4 Scholia A ^im for Iliad II 135a (Aristonicus)

<καὶ δὴ δοῦρα σέσηπε νεῶν καὶ σπάρτα λέλυνται:> ὅτι κατὰ τὸν αὐτὸν στίχον καὶ ἑαυτῷ καὶ ἡμῖν συνήθως ἐξενήνοχε τὸ λέλυνται καὶ σέσηπε.

<καὶ δὴ δοῦρα σέσηπε νεῶν καὶ σπάρτα λέλυνται:> [Aristarchus marks this verse in the margin] because he [= Homer] has produced in the same verse, as is customary [sunēthōs] both for him [= Homer] and for us, the λέλυνται and σέσηπε.

4§37 In terms of this observation derived from Aristarchus, the Homeric verse in question features a coexistence of ‘Koine’ and ‘Attic’ usages in the syntax. The syntactical pattern of combining a plural verb with a neuter plural subject is ‘Koine’, whereas the pattern of combining a singular verb with a neuter plural subject is ‘Attic’. In other words, ‘Homer’ could accommodate both the ‘Koine’ and the ‘Attic’ usages: {463|464}

4ⓣ5 Scholia b(BCE³E⁴)T ^il for Iliad II 135b (exegetical scholia)

<καὶ δὴ δοῦρα σέσηπε νεῶν καὶ σπάρτα λέλυνται:> ἐν ἑνὶ στίχῳ ἔθηκε τὴν Ἀτθίδα καὶ κοινὴν χρῆσιν.

<καὶ δὴ δοῦρα σέσηπε νεῶν καὶ σπάρτα λέλυνται:> In the same single verse he [= Homer] placed the Attic and the Koine usage [khrēsis].

4§38 According to Aristarchus, what is spoken in the time of Homer sunēthōs heautōi ‘as is customary for him’ can thus include both ‘Koine’ and ‘Attic’. Such an observation on the part of Aristarchus stems from his comparing Homeric diction with what is spoken sunēthōs hēmīn ‘as is customary for us’, that is, in his own time, when the distinction between ‘Koine’ and ‘Attic’ is evident. Applying the methods of modern linguistics in analyzing what is ‘customary’ in the time of Aristarchus, I repeat my working definition: the Koine is Attic as generalized by way of Ionic.

4§39 This relationship of Koine and Attic is indirectly reflected in later ancient commentaries that happen to be derived from Aristarchus: there too the Koine usage is more generalized, in that it represents what Attic and Ionic have in common, whereas the Attic usage is more specialized, in that it represents what is idiosyncratic about Attic as opposed to the Koine. Here are six examples:

4ⓣ6 Scholia A for Iliad I 216a

χρή: ὀξυτονούμενον καὶ ἐν τῇ συντάξει βαρυνόμενον σημαίνει ἐπίρρημα τὸ δεῖ, … περισπώμενον δὲ ῥῆμα Ἀττικόν· ἀπὸ γὰρ τοῦ χρῶμαι τὸ δεύτερον τῆς κοινῆς διαλέκτου ἐστὶ χρᾷ ᾿Ιωνικῶς, ᾿Αττικὸν δὲ χρῇ

4ⓣ7 Scholia A for Iliad II 115a (Aristonicus)

δυσκλέα Ἄργος: ὅτι κατὰ συστολὴν Ὅμηρος τὰ τοιαῦτα ἐκφέρει, δυσκλέα καὶ ἀκλέα, ᾿Ιωνικῶς. οἱ δὲ ᾿Αττικοὶ ἐκτείνουσιν.

δυσκλέα Ἄργος: [Aristarchus marks this verse in the margin] because Homer produces such forms with a short [final -α], δυσκλέα and ἀκλέα [Odyssey iv 728], which is the Ionic way. But the Attic people produce a long [final -α].

4ⓣ8 Scholia A for Iliad II 532b1

Αὐγειάς: ὡς καλιάς· συνήθης γὰρ ἡ τοιαύτη ἀνάγνωσις παρὰ τῷ ποιητῇ ᾿Ιωνικωτέρα οὖσα.

Αὐγειάς: Like καλιάς. That is because such a reading [anagnōsis] is customary [sunēthēs] in the Poet, since it is more Ionic.

4ⓣ9 Scholia b(BCE³) for Iliad II 532b2

… ὡς παρειάς· ἡ γὰρ τοιαύτη ἀνάγνωσις ᾿Ιωνικωτέρα οὖσα συνήθης ῾Ομήρῳ ἐστίν.

… or like παρειάς [Iliad III 35 etc.]. That is because such a reading [anagnōsis], since it is more Ionic, is customary [sunēthēs] for Homer.

4ⓣ10 Scholia A for Iliad I 85c (Herodian)

{θαρσήσας μάλα} εἰπέ: τρία εἰσὶ τὰ ἐν τῇ κοινῇ ὀξυνόμενα, ἐλθέ, εὑρέ, εἰπέ. ἰδίως δὲ καὶ μακρᾷ παραλήγονται. ᾿Αττικοὶ δὲ καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν βραχυπαραλήκτων ὀξύνουσι τὸ ἰδέ καὶ λαβέ.

{θαρσήσας μάλα} εἰπέ: In the Koine there are these three forms that have acute accent on the ultimate syllable: ἐλθέ, εὑρέ, εἰπέ. They share the property of having a long penultimate syllable. But the Attic people produce acute accent on the last syllable even in forms that have a short penultimate syllable, in the case of ἰδέ and λαβέ.

4ⓣ11 Scholia D for Iliad VIII 352

νῶϊ. ἡμεῖς. κοινὴ ἡ διάλεκτος. Δωριεῖς δέ φασιν, ἄμμες. Αἰολεῖς, ἄμμε. ᾿Αττικοὶ δὲ, νῶϊ. ῎Ιωνες, ἡμέες. {465|466}

4§40 The last statement needs special clarification. The point being made here is that the ‘Koine’ form of Homeric usage would be ἡμεῖς. By implication, the verse-final οὐκέτι νῶϊ as attested at Iliad VIII (352) was matched by a variant οὐκέτι ἡμεῖς, featuring the ‘Koine’ form ἡμεῖς as opposed to the ‘Attic’ form νῶϊ in the dual (the dual usage is supposedly an aspect of the ‘Atticism’ here). As a formulaic parallel for οὐκέτι ἡμεῖς I cite verse-final οὐδέ τοι ἡμεῖς at Iliad XIX (409).

4§41 In later phases of the commentary tradition, the distinctness of ‘Attic’ from ‘Koine’ tends to be forgotten, as we see from this later comment on the same Homeric verse, where ‘Attic’ is actually being equated with ‘Koine’:

4ⓣ12 Scholia (recentiora) for Iliad VIII 352

οὐκέτι νῶϊ] κοινῇ ἡμῖν· Δωριεῖς γάρ φασιν ἄμμες, ᾿Αττικοὶ δὲ νώ, ῎Ιωνες ἡμέας.

οὐκέτι νῶϊ [is the lēmma]. This is the way it is common [koinē] for us. For the Dorians say ἄμμες, the Attic people say νώ, and the Ionians say ἡμέας.

4§42 As I already argued in the Prolegomena, the Aristarchean distinction between ‘Koine’ and ‘Attic’ is generally blurred in the post-Aristarchean era, when scholars tend to equate uncritically the ancient usage of Homer with the contemporary usage described by Aristarchus.

4§43 The construction κοινῇ ἡμῖν ‘in the way that is common [koinē] for us’ is comparable to the construction ἡμῖν συνήθως ‘in the way that is customary [sunēthēs] for us’ in the scholia for Iliad II 135. The latter construction, as we saw earlier, comes from a description that goes back to the time of Aristarchus, when the distinction was still being made between ‘Koine’ and ‘Attic’.

4§44 From that Aristarchean description in the scholia for Iliad II 135, we saw that ‘Koine’ usage and ‘Attic’ usage supposedly coexist within the overall ‘Homeric’ usage. Despite such coexistence, however, the ‘Koine’ usage is still the overall ‘Homeric’ usage, not the ‘Attic’, as I already showed in the examples {466|467} where the Aristarchean commentary isolates an ‘Attic’ form as a textual variant of a ‘Koine’ form and then proceeds to opt for the ‘Koine’ form.

4§46 Reading the linguistic standards of Aristarchus as indications of an overall cultural standard, I conclude that the Koine of Homer is a form of imperial discourse. It is a standardized Ionic dialect that speaks to the Ionians of the Athenian empire and that overrides even the local dialect of the Athenians. So, linguistically, the Athenian empire is an Ionian construct. And the imperial Homer, as represented by Ionians like Ion of Ephesus, is likewise an Ionian construct.

4ⓢ4. The imperial Homer of Hippias of Elis

4§47 This imperial Homer is represented not only by Ionians like Ion of Ephesus. An example of a non-Ionian representative is Hippias of Elis, a historical figure who is dramatized in two Platonic dialogues named after him, the Hippias Maior and the Hippias Minor. The dramatic date of these two dialogues, like that of the Ion, highlights the era of the Athenian empire at its apogee. As we will see, both these dialogues make it clear that the Athenian {467|468} standard of Homeric poetry was politically dominant not only within the Athenian empire but even in places beyond the empire’s reach. Among those places was Sparta, the city that figured as the principal enemy of Athens in the Peloponnesian War.

4§48 For background on Hippias of Elis, I look back to the previous chapter, where I compared him directly to Ion the rhapsode. As we saw there, the displays of Homeric performance by the sophist Hippias at the Olympics in Olympia resembled the displays of Homeric performance by the rhapsode Ion at the Panathenaia in Athens. Both kinds of Homeric displays, as we also saw, followed the Panathenaic standard of performing Homer. To that extent, Hippias of Elis rivaled Ion of Ephesus as a performer and interpreter of Homer. Here were two Homeric experts who both considered themselves the absolute best in what they did, immeasurably better, each in his own way, than any of their competitors. Each of the two had worked out his own definition of what exactly it was that they did as Homeric experts. And Homer was for both the absolute measure of perfection.

4§49 The Homeric virtuoso Ion, in terms of his self-definition, is bound both politically and professionally to the Athenian standard of the Panathenaic Homer. He is bound politically as an Ionian and professionally as a rhapsode. By contrast, the Homeric virtuoso Hippias is bound to this standard neither politically, since he is a non-Ionian, nor professionally, since he is a sophist. Rather, the ties that bind Hippias to the Athenian standard of the Panathenaic Homer are simply cultural. Accordingly, Plato’s Socrates uses divergent strategies in undermining his two intellectual adversaries: as we saw in Chapter 3, what undermines Ion in Plato’s Ion is this rhapsode’s inability to think independently of Homer; what undermines Hippias in the Hippias Minor, as we will now see, is this sophist’s inability to think the way Homer really thinks.

4§50 Unlike Plato’s Socrates, who focuses on the divergences between Ion as a rhapsode and Hippias as a sophist, we as independent observers can focus on the convergences in their professional claims, and those convergences bring us back to the concept of the Panathenaic signature, that is, the Athenian standard for performing the Panathenaic Homer. The status of Hippias as grand master of poetry and song is correlated with the keen interest shown by this sophist in the orthotēs ‘correctness’ of grammata ‘letters’ and in other such matters relating to various tekhnai ‘crafts’ of poetry and song (Hippias Minor 368a-e). This interest requires critical judgment, as signaled by the verb dia-krinein ‘decide [between X and Y]’ in the description we saw of the sophist seated on a throne and responding to questions as if he were Minos himself (Plato Protagoras 315c διέκρινεν). We may compare the interest {468|469} shown by Ion the rhapsode in making critical judgments concerning questions of Homeric verbal artistry – that is, whether Homer says his epē (= epos plural) ‘verses’ orthōs ‘correctly’ or not (Ion 537b-c τὰ ἔπη εἴτε ὀρθῶς λέγει Ὅμηρος εἴτε μή). In the Ion, when Plato’s Socrates asks Ion to tell him what are the things about which the craft of the rhapsode can enable Ion to ‘make critical judgments’, that is, dia-krinein, the rhapsode replies: ‘all things’ (Ion 539e).

4§51 A related point, made in Chapter 3, bears repeating here. By way of metonymy, the craft of the rhapsodes can subsume other crafts. It is as if the mastery of Homeric poetry were the same thing as a mastery of all crafts. We saw this idea proclaimed by the rhapsode Ion in Plato’s Ion. This stance of Ion the rhapsode is remarkably similar to the stance of Hippias the sophist. Hippias too is a specialist in Homer (Hippias Minor 363b-c). The difference is, Hippias does not consider himself a specialist in rhapsōidikē tekhnē. Rather, he seems to be a generalist in sophistikē tekhnē. The sophist’s mastery of the rhapsode’s craft is merely the primary example of his mastery of all crafts. What makes all the difference is the sophist’s overall mastery of the mnēmonikon tekhnēma ‘mnemonic technique’ (Hippias Minor 368d, 369a).

4§52 Hippias was renowned for his prodigious mental powers of recalling any and all Homeric verses. It is in this context that we see him described as a specialist in ‘mnemonic technique’, mnēmonikon tekhnēma. As I have argued in Chapter 3, the supposedly novel mnemonic technique of Hippias was derived from the same old rhapsōidikē tekhnē ‘rhapsodic craft’ as practiced by Ion the rhapsode at the Panathenaia. Unlike Ion, however, Hippias was not politically dependent on Athens. Elis, the home city of Hippias, was independent of the Athenian arkhē ‘rule’. And it had to deal on its own with another city whose leaders hoped to possess arkhē on their own terms, that is, with the city of Sparta.

4§55 The first of the two examples is worded by Philostratus as follows (Lives 1.11.3): γένη τε διήιει πόλεων καὶ ἀποικίας καὶ ἔργα ‘he [= Hippias] would go through [verbally] the genealogies of cities and narratives about how they were founded and about related accomplishments’. Here is Plato’s fuller version of this first example:

4ⓣ13 Plato Hippias Maior 285d-e

ΙΠ. Περὶ τῶν γενῶν, ὦ Σώκρατες, τῶν τε ἡρώων καὶ τῶν ἀνθρώπων, καὶ τῶν κατοικίσεων, ὡς τὸ ἀρχαῖον ἐκτίσθησαν αἱ πόλεις, καὶ συλλήβδην πάσης τῆς ἀρχαιολογίας ἥδιστα {e} ἀκροῶνται, ὥστ’ ἔγωγε δι’ αὐτοὺς ἠνάγκασμαι ἐκμεμαθηκέναι τε καὶ ἐκμεμελετηκέναι πάντα τὰ τοιαῦτα.

HIPPIAS: They [= the Spartans] get the greatest pleasure from hearing about the genealogies, Socrates, of both heroes and humans, and about how cities were founded in the past and, taken all together, about all knowledge of the past. So, because of them [= the Spartans], I have been forced to memorize thoroughly and to rehearse thoroughly all such matters.

4§56 The second example of various kinds of verbal displays performed by Hippias in Sparta is related directly to Homeric poetry (Philostratus Lives of Sophists 1.11.4): ἔστιν δὲ αὐτῷ καὶ Τρωικὸς διάλογος, οὗ λόγος· ὁ Νέστωρ ἐν Τροίᾳ ἁλούσῃ ὑποτίθεται Νεοπτολέμῳ τῷ Ἀχιλλέως, ἃ χρὴ ἐπιτηδεύοντα ἄνδρα ἀγαθὸν φαίνεσθαι ‘he [= Hippias] also has a Trojan Dialogue, the plot of which is this: Nestor, in Troy after it is captured, gives instruction to Neoptolemos son {470|471} of Achilles concerning what things one must pursue in order to appear to be a good man’. Here is Plato’s fuller version of this second example:

4ⓣ14 Plato Hippias Maior 286a-c

ΙΠ. Καὶ ναὶ μὰ Δί’, ὦ Σώκρατες, περί γε ἐπιτηδευμάτων καλῶν καὶ ἔναγχος αὐτόθι ηὐδοκίμησα διεξιὼν ἃ χρὴ τὸν νέον ἐπιτηδεύειν. ἔστι γάρ μοι περὶ αὐτῶν παγκάλως λόγος συγκείμενος, καὶ ἄλλως εὖ διακείμενος καὶ τοῖς ὀνόμασι· πρόσχημα δέ μοί ἐστι καὶ ἀρχὴ τοιάδε τις τοῦ λόγου. ἐπειδὴ ἡ Τροία ἥλω, λέγει ὁ λόγος ὅτι Νεοπτόλεμος {b} Νέστορα ἔροιτο ποῖά ἐστι καλὰ ἐπιτηδεύματα, ἃ ἄν τις ἐπιτηδεύσας νέος ὢν εὐδοκιμώτατος γένοιτο· μετὰ ταῦτα δὴ λέγων ἐστὶν ὁ Νέστωρ καὶ ὑποτιθέμενος αὐτῷ πάμπολλα νόμιμα καὶ πάγκαλα. τοῦτον δὴ καὶ ἐκεῖ ἐπεδειξάμην καὶ ἐνθάδε μέλλω ἐπιδεικνύναι εἰς τρίτην ἡμέραν, ἐν τῷ Φειδοστράτου διδασκαλείῳ, καὶ ἄλλα πολλὰ καὶ ἄξια ἀκοῆς· ἐδεήθη γάρ μου Εὔδικος ὁ Ἀπημάντου. ἀλλ’ ὅπως παρέσῃ {c} καὶ αὐτὸς καὶ ἄλλους ἄξεις, οἵτινες ἱκανοὶ ἀκούσαντες κρῖναι τὰ λεγόμενα.

4§58 In Plato’s Hippias Minor, we find three more examples of verbal displays being made by Hippias, and I will now add them to the previous three examples we have just considered in the Hippias Maior. By the time we are finished, we will have six Platonic examples in all. Of these six, we will see that the third and the fourth function as alternatives to each other. Whereas the performance of the Trojan Dialogue by Hippias in Athens is viewed prospectively by the speakers in the third example, which is in the Hippias Maior, it is viewed retrospectively by the same speakers in the fourth example, which is in the Hippias Minor.

4§59 In order to explain my description of the fourth example as an alternative to the third, I need to make a point about the fifth example, which is the actual text of Plato’s Hippias Minor. In this text, considered in its entirety, we see Hippias engaging in a textually simulated display of a Trojan Dialogue with Socrates in Athens, and the textuality of their dialogue is to be contrasted with the performativity of the corresponding dialogue in the fourth example. That fourth example is mentioned only in passing within the overall Hippias Minor. In this passing mention, we see a reference to an earlier display by Hippias of a Trojan Dialogue performed in a public setting in Athens (364b-c) – earlier, that is, than the textually simulated Trojan Dialogue with Socrates that we know as the Hippias Minor. Here is the relevant wording in the Hippias Minor: ἡνίκα μὲν γὰρ πολλοὶ ἔνδον ἦμεν καὶ σὺ τὴν ἐπίδειξιν ἐποιοῦ ‘when there were many of us within that space and you were making your display [epideixis]’ (364b). Plato’s Socrates makes it clear that he had attended that earlier performance {472|473} of Hippias in Athens but had chosen not to engage in dialogue with Hippias in that setting (364b). And it was definitely a public setting, as we see from this wording: ὄχλος τε πολὺς ἔνδον ἦν ‘there was a big crowd within that space’ (364b). That space, if we are to trust Plato’s sense of precision in creating this scene, is the same setting as the one to which Socrates refers when he says at a later point (368b): πάντως δὲ πλείστας τέχνας πάντων σοφώτατος εἶ ἀνθρώπων, ὡς ἐγώ ποτέ σου ἤκουον μεγαλαυχουμένου, πολλὴν σοφίαν καὶ ζηλωτὴν σαυτοῦ διεξιόντος ἐν ἀγορᾷ ἐπὶ ταῖς τραπέζαις. ἔφησθα δὲ ἀφικέσθαι ποτὲ εἰς Ὀλυμπίαν ἃ εἶχες περὶ τὸ σῶμα ἅπαντα σαυτοῦ ἔργα ἔχων· πρῶτον μὲν δακτύλιον – ἐντεῦθεν γὰρ ἤρχου … ‘You [= Hippias] are absolutely the most skilled [sophos] of men in the greatest number of crafts [tekhnai] by far, as I once heard you boast when you were describing your great and enviable skill [sophia]. It was in the agora [= the agora of Athens], near the money-changers’ tables [trapezai]. You were telling how you once upon a time went to Olympia, and everything you wore was your own work: first, your ring [daktulios] – you started with that …’.

4§60 A moment ago, I described this fourth example, taken from the Hippias Minor, as an alternative to the third, that is, to the Trojan Dialogue that Hippias at the beginning of the Hippias Maior says he will perform in Athens on the third day after his dialogue with Socrates there. Whereas that particular Trojan Dialogue as viewed prospectively in the Hippias Maior seems to be a set piece, the alternative Trojan Dialogue as viewed retrospectively in the Hippias Minor seems to be the opposite of a set piece: it is an actual dialogue between Hippias and his audience. I see here a symmetry: the dialogue of Hippias with Socrates in the Hippias Maior is imagined as preceding a scheduled public performance of the Trojan Dialogue by Hippias, which is the set piece, whereas the dialogue of Hippias with Socrates in the Hippias Minor is imagined as following a spontaneous public performance of an alternative to the Trojan Dialogue, which is not a set piece but a dialogue between Hippias and his audience in the agora of Athens.

4§61 I stress that the textually simulated dialogue between Hippias and Socrates in the Hippias Minor writ large – our fifth example – is dramatized as taking place in a setting that seems to have no public to speak of – that is, in comparison to the setting of the fourth example, reporting a public dialogue that took place earlier between Hippias and his audience in the agora of Athens. The absence of a public for Plato’s Hippias Minor may be viewed as a theatrical illusion induced by the genre we know as the Platonic dialogue. The public for a Platonic dialogue is after all a reading public. In the setting of the Hippias Minor, Socrates says, he can feel more confident about asking {473|474} questions of Hippias – and about getting answers – than in the public setting of the earlier dialogue in the agora of Athens (364b-c, 368b). The stage may be smaller, but the rules of the game in staging the questions seem to be analogous: the questions are Homeric questions, debated in a format that corresponds to the ways in which rhapsodes performed and commented on Homer in dialogue with their public.

4§62 Whenever we see Homeric poetry being performed in the format of a dialogue, the poetry takes the exterior form of selected quotations from Homer, interwoven with commentaries that engage with the audience. A simulation of such a dialogue is our text of the encounter between Ion the rhapsode and Socrates in Plato’s Ion. Another simulation is the text of the fifth of our six examples of verbal displays performed by Hippias, that is, the Trojan Dialogue that takes place between Hippias and Socrates in Plato’s Hippias Minor, where the sophist engages in a dialogue with Socrates over moral definitions of what it is to be a ‘good’ man.

4§66 For the moment, however, the distinction I am making can be formulated most simply in terms of two kinds of Homeric tradition. The general form, standardized in Athens, represents the first kind. We have here a uniform tradition of Homer, and I will continue to refer to this tradition simply as the Panathenaic Homer. To be contrasted is a specialized form, used ad hoc in live exchanges between the rhapsode and his audience in a variety of different settings – even in different cities. For the time being, I will refer to this Homeric tradition as a private Homer – that is, Homer as applied by an individual performer on a case-by-case basis. The private Homer may still be modeled on the Panathenaic Homer, but it is subject to selective variation, fitting a variety of different occasions in different settings. Whereas the Panathenaic Homer is notionally uniform, the private Homer is potentially multiform.

4§67 With this formulation in place, I come to the sixth of our six Platonic examples of verbal displays by Hippias. This one, in Plato’s Hippias Minor, precedes all the other five in its chronological ordering. Most obviously, this sixth example precedes the fifth, which is the actual text of Plato’s Hippias Minor. It also precedes the fourth and the third examples, which are two different views of a Trojan Dialogue that Hippias performs in Athens – a retrospective view in the Hippias Minor, and a prospective view in the Hippias Maior. Moreover, it precedes the two examples of displays performed in Sparta, as mentioned in the Hippias Maior, where we see Hippias applying his {475|476} mnemonic technique as he dazzles his audiences with his knowledge of antiquity in general and with his performance of a Trojan Dialogue in particular (285d-286c). I repeat what Philostratus says about the motive of Hippias in applying his mnemonic technique in Sparta: ἐπειδὴ οἱ Λακεδαιμόνιοι διὰ τὸ βούλεσθαι ἄρχειν τῇ ἰδέᾳ ταύτῃ ἔχαιρον ‘since the Spartans, through their desire for imperial rule [arkhein], took pleasure in this form [idea]’ (Lives of Sophists 1.11.3).

4§68 The sixth Platonic example not only precedes the other five examples in chronology. It also supersedes them in importance and even subsumes them. Further, the actual setting of this sixth example of displays by Hippias subsumes in its own right all the other settings. It takes place neither in Sparta nor in Athens but in Olympia:

4ⓣ15 Plato Hippias Minor 368c-d

ΣΩ. πρὸς δὲ τούτοις ποιήματα ἔχων ἐλθεῖν, καὶ ἔπη καὶ τραγῳδίας {d} καὶ διθυράμβους, καὶ καταλογάδην πολλοὺς λόγους καὶ παντοδαποὺς συγκειμένους· καὶ περὶ τῶν τεχνῶν δὴ ὧν ἄρτι ἐγὼ ἔλεγον ἐπιστήμων ἀφικέσθαι διαφερόντως τῶν ἄλλων, καὶ περὶ ῥυθμῶν καὶ ἁρμονιῶν καὶ γραμμάτων ὀρθότητος, καὶ ἄλλα ἔτι πρὸς τούτοις πάνυ πολλά, ὡς ἐγὼ δοκῶ μνημονεύειν· καίτοι τό γε μνημονικὸν ἐπελαθόμην σου, ὡς ἔοικε, τέχνημα, ἐν ᾧ σὺ οἴει λαμπρότατος εἶναι·

4§69 Till now, I have not yet emphasized the relevance of Olympia as the setting for such a display by Hippias. This setting, as we will now see, is also relevant to my ongoing examination of the mnēmonikon tekhnēma ‘mnemonic technique’ of Hippias.

4§72 For Hippias (Hippias Minor 368c), the first kind of poetry and song mentioned in the second catalogue is epē ‘epic’ (= epos plural). For him, this genre comes to life in the rhapsodic craft of Homeric performance and dialogue, as we see from the sophist’s subsequent displays in performing and interpreting Homer throughout the Hippias Minor. Given the cultural Athenocentrism implied by the kinds of song and poetry listed in the second catalogue, we might have expected the optimal setting for the sixth Platonic example to be Athens. That is, we might have expected Hippias to display his rhapsodic craft of Homeric performance and dialogue in Athens – on the occasion {477|478} of the feast of the Panathenaia. Instead, the ultimate Homeric display of Hippias takes place in Olympia.

4§74 I quote here in its entirety a detailed description of this technique, which also provides a valuable synthesis of the life and times of Hippias himself:

4ⓣ16 Philostratus Lives of Sophists 1.11.1-8 (= Hippias DK 86 A 2)

Ἱππίας δὲ ὁ σοφιστὴς ὁ Ἠλεῖος τὸ μὲν μνημονικὸν οὕτω τι καὶ γηράσκων ἔρρωτο, ὡς καὶ πεντήκοντα ὀνομάτων ἀκούσας ἅπαξ ἀπομνημονεύειν αὐτὰ καθ’ ἣν ἤκουσε τάξιν, ἐσήγετο δὲ ἐς τὰς διαλέξεις γεωμετρίαν, ἀστρονομίαν, μουσικήν, ῥυθμούς· {2} διελέγετο δὲ καὶ περὶ ζωγραφίας καὶ περὶ ἀγαλματοποιίας· {3} ταῦτα ἑτέρωθι· ἐν Λακεδαίμονι δὲ γένη τε διήιει πόλεων καὶ ἀποικίας καὶ ἔργα, ἐπειδὴ οἱ Λακεδαιμόνιοι διὰ τὸ βούλεσθαι ἄρχειν τῇ ἰδέᾳ ταύτῃ ἔχαιρον. {4} ἔστιν δὲ αὐτῷ καὶ Τρωικὸς διάλογος, οὗ λόγος· ὁ Νέστωρ ἐν Τροίᾳ ἁλούσῃ ὑποτίθεται Νεοπτολέμῳ τῷ Ἀχιλλέως, ἃ χρὴ ἐπιτηδεύοντα ἄνδρα ἀγαθὸν φαίνεσθαι. {5} πλεῖστα δὲ Ἑλλήνων πρεσβεύσας ὑπὲρ τῆς Ἤλιδος οὐδαμοῦ κατέλυσε τὴν ἑαυτοῦ δόξαν δημηγορῶν τε καὶ διαλεγόμενος, ἀλλὰ καὶ χρήματα πλεῖστα ἐξέλεξε καὶ φυλαῖς ἐνεγράφη πόλεων μικρῶν τε καὶ μειζόνων. {6} παρῆλθε καὶ εἰς τὴν Ἰνυκὸν ὑπὲρ χρημάτων, τὸ δὲ πολίχνιον τοῦτο Σικελικοί εἰσιν, οὓς ὁ Πλάτων <ἐν> τῷ Γοργίᾳ ἐπισκώπτει. {7} εὐδοκιμῶν δὲ καὶ τὸν ἄλλον χρόνον ἔθελγε τὴν Ἑλλάδα ἐν Ὀλυμπίᾳ λόγοις ποικίλοις καὶ πεφροντισμένοις εὖ. {8} ἡρμήνευε δὲ οὐκ ἐλλιπῶς ἀλλὰ περιττῶς καὶ κατὰ φύσιν, ἐς ὀλίγα καταφεύγων τῶν ἐκ ποιητικῆς ὀνόματα.

4§78 Although Homer may have been central to the performances of Hippias at Olympia, the sophist has found ways to transcend Homer. We can see signs of this transcendence near the very beginning of Plato’s Hippias Minor, where Socrates tells Eudikos that he needs to address a question to Hippias, who is at this moment already present but has not yet spoken (363a-b). The question asked by Socrates is explicitly about Homer, focusing on Achilles in the Iliad and on Odysseus in the Odyssey (Hippias Minor 363b). We join the dialogue at the moment when Socrates is about to explain why he seeks a response from Hippias to his question:

4ⓣ17 Plato Hippias Minor 363c-364a

… ἐπειδὴ καὶ ἄλλα πολλὰ καὶ παντοδαπὰ ἡμῖν ἐπιδέδεικται καὶ περὶ ποιητῶν τε ἄλλων καὶ περὶ Ὁμήρου. {481|482}

ΕΥ. Ἀλλὰ δῆλον ὅτι οὐ φθονήσει Ἱππίας, ἐάν τι αὐτὸν ἐρωτᾷς, ἀποκρίνεσθαι. ἦ γάρ, ὦ Ἱππία, ἐάν τι ἐρωτᾷ σε Σωκράτης, ἀποκρινῇ; ἢ πῶς ποιήσεις;

ΙΠ. Καὶ γὰρ ἂν δεινὰ ποιοίην, ὦ Εὔδικε, εἰ Ὀλυμπίαζε μὲν εἰς τὴν τῶν Ἑλλήνων πανήγυριν, ὅταν τὰ Ὀλύμπια ᾖ, {d} ἀεὶ ἐπανιὼν οἴκοθεν ἐξ Ἤλιδος εἰς τὸ ἱερὸν παρέχω ἐμαυτὸν καὶ λέγοντα ὅτι ἄν τις βούληται ὧν ἄν μοι εἰς ἐπίδειξιν παρεσκευασμένον ᾖ, καὶ ἀποκρινόμενον τῷ βουλομένῳ ὅτι ἄν τις ἐρωτᾷ, νῦν δὲ τὴν Σωκράτους ἐρώτησιν φύγοιμι. {364 a}

ΣΩ. Μακάριόν γε, ὦ Ἱππία, πάθος πέπονθας, εἰ ἑκάστης Ὀλυμπιάδος οὕτως εὔελπις ὢν περὶ τῆς ψυχῆς εἰς σοφίαν ἀφικνῇ εἰς τὸ ἱερόν· καὶ θαυμάσαιμ’ ἂν εἴ τις τῶν περὶ τὸ σῶμα ἀθλητῶν οὕτως ἀφόβως τε καὶ πιστευτικῶς ἔχων τῷ σώματι ἔρχεται αὐτόσε ἀγωνιούμενος, ὥσπερ σὺ φῂς τῇ διανοίᾳ.

ΙΠ. Εἰκότως, ὦ Σώκρατες, ἐγὼ τοῦτο πέπονθα· ἐξ οὗ γὰρ ἦργμαι Ὀλυμπίασιν ἀγωνίζεσθαι, οὐδενὶ πώποτε κρείττονι εἰς οὐδὲν ἐμαυτοῦ ἐνέτυχον.

SOCRATES: … since he [= Hippias] has displayed [epideiknusthai] so many things about so many poets [poiētai] – and especially about Homer.

EUDIKOS: But it is clear that Hippias will not be ungenerous, if you ask him a question, about giving a response. Isn’t that right, Hippias? If Socrates asks you a question, you will give a response? You will do it, won’t you?

HIPPIAS: It is likely, Socrates, that I for one have indeed experienced this. For ever since I have begun to compete [agōnizesthai] at the Olympics, I have never yet met anyone better than myself in anything.

4§79 A close reading of this passage leads me to make two inferences about the performances of Hippias in Olympia:

(1) Hippias engages in two forms of performance in Olympia. On the one hand, he can perform live dialogues, which resemble in form the simulated live dialogues written down in Plato’s Hippias Minor and Ion. On the other hand, he can perform set pieces, such as the Trojan Dialogue of Nestor and Neoptolemos. (We have already seen a reference to this set piece in Plato Hippias Maior 286a-c.) Within the dialogues of Hippias, he can quote set pieces derived from Homer or from other poets.

(2) The content of the performances undertaken by Hippias can be as varied as his areas of expertise are varied. The relationship of Homer to that content depends on the relationship of the dianoia ‘thinking’ of Homer to the dianoia ‘thinking’ of Hippias. {483|484}

4§82 What applies to Ion the rhapsode and to his dianoia ‘thinking’ applies also to Hippias the sophist: he too is speaking such a dianoia – that is, performing such a Homeric ‘commentary’ (Hippias Minor 364a). As with the thinking of Ion, the thinking of Hippias becomes coextensive with the authorial intent of Homer himself whenever the sophist speaks about Homer (Hippias Minor 363b elegen peri Homērou ‘spoke about Homer’).

4§83 Of the five other examples we saw where Hippias makes verbal displays comparable to what we see him doing in Olympia, the most similar is the fourth. It concerns, as we have already seen, a Trojan Dialogue mentioned in the Hippias Minor – a dialogue that supposedly took place between Hippias and his audience in the agora of Athens (364b-c). As we saw, Plato’s Socrates says that he attended that performance but had chosen not to engage in {484|485} dialogue with Hippias (364b). To be contrasted is the fifth example, which is the actual text of Plato’s Hippias Minor and which has no visible public setting. That is, it has no public setting for a live dialogue, because its public is a reading public. The dialogue of Hippias with Socrates in the Hippias Minor closely resembles in format the dialogue of Ion with Socrates in the Ion. Also to be contrasted is the third example, which is the formal Trojan Dialogue that Plato’s Socrates mentions in the passage I quoted earlier from the Hippias Maior: that display is less of a dialogue and more of a set piece composed by the sophist himself, featuring a staged dialogue betweeen Nestor and Neoptolemos (286a-c).

4§84 As we review all six Platonic examples of verbal displays by Hippias, we are left with a question of major importance: can we say that Hippias was performing mainly Homer and engaging in dialogues mainly about Homer on the sacred occasion of the Olympics in Olympia? After all, as we saw from the overview of Philostratus, Hippias used to engage in dialogues not only about Homer but also about practically every other craft. For example, we have read that ‘he performed dialogues also about painting [zōgraphia] and sculpture [agalmatopoiia]’ (Lives of Sophists 1.11.2 διελέγετο δὲ καὶ περὶ ζωγραφίας καὶ περὶ ἀγαλματοποιίας).

4§85 There is an obvious answer to this question. It all depends on how the concept of Homer is understood in the context of saying that Hippias performs Homer or engages in dialogues about Homer. The sophist’s choice of Olympia as the definitive place for his ultimate display of expertise in all tekhnai ‘crafts’ is significant. Also significant is the focusing of Socrates on the ring of Hippias, as we will see later. But the most significant choice made by Hippias of Elis is the definitive time for this display. That time is an ultimately sacred time, when all Hellenes celebrate their ultimate festival, the feast of the Olympics (Plato Hippias Minor 364a). The place too is an ultimately sacred place, where the hieron ‘sacred precinct’ of Zeus himself is situated (363c-d, 364a). In this context, which is an ultimate context, everything can become absolutized. In this context, Hippias absolutizes the first and foremost of all crafts, the craft that mediates epic, that is, the epic of Homer.

4§86 A Homeric display by Hippias at Olympia is designed to show most definitively his absolute claim to mastery of the rhapsodic craft of Homeric performance and dialogue. The absolutism of this claim matches the absoluteness of Homer himself in the age of Pheidias. Just as Homer is seen as the absolute authority in a rhapsode’s performance of Homer or in a rhapsode’s dialogue about Homer, so also the master of the rhapsodic craft becomes the absolute authority on Homer and on everything said by Homer. Just as Homer’s {485|486} craft subsumes all other crafts, so also the rhapsode as the master craftsman of Homeric performance and dialogue subsumes all other craftsmen.

4§87 Here, then, is an essential difference between Hippias and Ion as craftsmen. For Hippias of Elis, his mastery is expressed not in terms of the rhapsodic craft, as it is for Ion of Ephesus, but in terms of a sophistic craft that subsumes even the rhapsodic craft, which in turn subsumes all other crafts. For Hippias, Homeric performance and dialogue are mediated not by the craft of the rhapsode but by the all-subsuming craft of the sophist, as formalized in the all-subsuming sophistic concept of mnēmonikon tekhnēma ‘mnemonic technique’ (Hippias Minor 368d, 369a).

4§88 The sophist’s vaunted expertise in all crafts, headed by the craft of Homeric poetry, is viewed as the perfecting of a new unified sophistikē tekhnē ‘sophistic craft’, animated by that supposedly novel creation of his, the mnēmonikon tekhnēma ‘mnemonic technique’. As I have been arguing all along, this technique that Hippias the sophist uses as part of his sophistikē tekhnē ‘sophistic craft’ is derived from the same rhapsōidikē tekhnē ‘rhapsodic craft’ as practiced by Ion the rhapsode. But the ‘sophistic craft’ of Hippias as activated on the occasion of the feast of the Olympics in Olympia has become a rival to the ‘rhapsodic craft’ of the rhapsode as activated on the occasion of the feast of the Panathenaia in Athens.

4§91 Having noted the signs of a Panathenaic standard in the Homeric performances of Hippias at Olympia, I return to the distinction I made earlier between a private Homer and a Panathenaic Homer. The question that arises is whether the Homer of Hippias is one or the other of these two kinds of Homer. From what we have seen so far, the answer must be two-sided. In its applications, the Homer of Hippias is private – that is, Homer is being privatized by a man whose own agenda transcend the political agenda of imperial Athens. Still, even when Hippias performs Homer in Olympia, which is a sacred and therefore notionally neutral space within the political space controlled by Elis, the Homer he performs is a Panathenaic Homer. That is, the Homer of Hippias still conforms to the Panathenaic standard. The statement that I have just made is supported not only by the evidence presented so far. We will see further evidence when we start to examine additional testimony about Hippias. Before we can get to that testimony, however, I need to look more closely at the actual setting for the Homeric performances of Hippias in Olympia.

4ⓢ5. Pheidias and his Homeric statue of Zeus

4§93 The setting for the Homeric performances of Hippias in Olympia was a building inside the sacred precinct of Zeus in Olympia. The building was a temple of Zeus. Inside the temple was the single most important and prestigious visual attraction of the ancient Greek world. It was a statue of Zeus sculpted by Pheidias of Athens. Retrospectively, I can safely say that this colossal likeness of Zeus, one of the ancient Seven Wonders of the World, was the ultimate center of attention – the metonymic centerpiece – for all Hellenic civilization. As I will argue, the Homeric performances of Hippias in Olympia were linked with this statue made by Pheidias.

4§94 The most vivid description of the statue of Zeus comes from Pausanias. At the very beginning of his self-conscious account, Pausanias conveys most forcefully the foregrounding of the statue against the background of (1) the temple, (2) the sacred precinct of Zeus as a whole, (3) the competition of the Olympics, held within the sacred precinct, and (4) the overall prestige of the Olympics as perceived by all Hellenes:

4ⓣ18 Pausanias 8.10.1-2

πολλὰ μὲν δὴ καὶ ἄλλα ἴδοι τις ἂν ἐν Ἕλλησι, τὰ δὲ καὶ ἀκούσαι θαύματος ἄξια· μάλιστα δὲ τοῖς Ἐλευσῖνι δρωμένοις καὶ ἀγῶνι τῷ ἐν Ὀλυμπίᾳ μέτεστιν ἐκ θεοῦ φροντίδος. τὸ δὲ ἄλσος τὸ ἱερὸν τοῦ Διὸς παραποιήσαντες τὸ ὄνομα Ἄλτιν ἐκ παλαιοῦ καλοῦσι· καὶ δὴ καὶ Πινδάρῳ ποιήσαντι ἐς ἄνδρα ὀλυμπιονίκην ᾆσμα Ἄλτις ἐπωνόμασται {2} τὸ χωρίον. ἐποιήθη δὲ ὁ ναὸς καὶ τὸ ἄγαλμα τῷ Διὶ ἀπὸ λαφύρων, ἡνίκα Πίσαν οἱ Ἠλεῖοι καὶ ὅσον τῶν περιοίκων ἄλλο συναπέστη Πισαίοις πολέμῳ καθεῖλον. <Φειδίαν> δὲ τὸν ἐργασάμενον τὸ ἄγαλμα εἶναι καὶ ἐπίγραμμά ἐστιν ἐς μαρτυρίαν ὑπὸ τοῦ Διὸς γεγραμμένον τοῖς ποσί …

4§95 An essential part of my ongoing argument is that this statue of Zeus in the temple of Zeus at Olympia is a distinctly Homeric Zeus. There are many reasons for me to say this, but they can be summed up in a single anecdote about the making of the statue by the sculptor Pheidias. In this anecdote, the verbal art that went into the making of the Homeric Iliad converges with the visual art that went into the making of the statue of Zeus by Pheidias. At the moment of convergence, we see the supreme god in the act of expressing his divine will:

4ⓣ19 Strabo 8.3.30 C354

πολλὰ δὲ συνέπραξε τῷ Φειδίᾳ Πάναινος ὁ ζωγράφος, ἀδελφιδοῦς ὢν αὐτοῦ καὶ συνεργολάβος, πρὸς τὴν τοῦ ξοάνου διὰ τῶν χρωμάτων κόσμησιν καὶ μάλιστα τῆς ἐσθῆτος. δείκνυνται δὲ καὶ γραφαὶ πολλαί τε καὶ θαυμασταὶ περὶ τὸ ἱερὸν ἐκείνου ἔργα. ἀπομνημονεύουσι δὲ τοῦ Φειδίου, διότι πρὸς τὸν Πάναινον εἶπε πυνθανόμενον πρὸς τί παράδειγμα μέλλοι ποιήσειν τὴν εἰκόνα τοῦ Διός, ὅτι πρὸς τὴν Ὁμήρου δι’ ἐπῶν ἐκτεθεῖσαν τούτων

4§96 According to this anecdote, the creative impulse that led Pheidias to make the statue of Zeus was a distinctly Homeric impulse. The moment captured by the maker of the statue is a Homeric moment. It is the moment when Zeus nods his head and thus signifies his divine will, that is, the Plan of Zeus, which is coextensive with the plot of the Homeric Iliad.

4ⓢ6. Pheidias and his Homeric statue of Athena Parthenos

4§100 Having made the point that the statue of Athena Parthenos made by Pheidias was distinctly Athenian and even Panathenaic in inspiration, I now {491|492} make the further point that it was also Homeric, like the Zeus sculpted by Pheidias. In the case of this statue of Athena Parthenos, we have no surviving anecdote about a Homeric inspiration as we have in the case of the statue of Zeus. But we do have independent evidence that the Parthenos is a Homeric Athena. Just as the statue of Zeus by Pheidias was marked by a Homeric signature, as it were, so too was the statue of Athena by Pheidias. While the statue of Zeus was inspired by the Homeric moment when Zeus nods his head, the statue of Athena was inspired by the moment when Athena goes to war on behalf of the Achaeans. Like the moment of Zeus, the moment of Athena takes place in the Homeric Iliad:

4ⓣ20 Iliad V 733-747

4§101 I note with interest the coextensiveness of the khiton (khitōn) and the aegis, metonymically shared by the almighty father with her mighty daughter: the khiton worn by Athena as she goes to war is explicitly said to belong to Zeus, and the aegis that she wears at verse 738 belongs primarily to her father, as we see from the epithet of Zeus at verse 741, aigiokhos ‘he who has the aegis’. Moreover, the figure of Medusa the Gorgon is explicitly said here to be a teras ‘portent’ that marks Zeus himself.

4§103 The peplos that Athena takes off connects her to her feminine identity as a weaver, while the khiton she puts on for war connects her to her masculine identity as a warrior. Athena Parthenos wears the armor – and the khiton – of her father, Zeus. This male exterior was highlighted by the sculpture of Pheidias. As we see from the eyewitness description of Pausanias, the statue of Athena Parthenos in the Parthenon wears a khiton:

4ⓣ21 Pausanias 1.24.5-7

αὐτὸ δὲ ἔκ τε ἐλέφαντος τὸ ἄγαλμα καὶ χρυσοῦ πεποίηται. μέσῳ μὲν οὖν ἐπίκειταί οἱ τῷ κράνει Σφιγγὸς εἰκών […] καθ’ ἑκάτερον δὲ τοῦ κράνους {6} γρῦπές εἰσιν ἐπειργασμένοι. […] καὶ γρυπῶν {7} μὲν πέρι τοσαῦτα εἰρήσθω· τὸ δὲ ἄγαλμα τῆς Ἀθηνᾶς ὀρθόν ἐστιν ἐν χιτῶνι ποδήρει καί οἱ κατὰ τὸ στέρνον ἡ κεφαλὴ Μεδούσης ἐλέφαντός ἐστιν ἐμπεποιημένη· καὶ Νίκην τε ὅσον τεσσάρων πηχῶν, ἐν δὲ τῇ χειρὶ δόρυ ἔχει, καί οἱ πρὸς τοῖς ποσὶν ἀσπίς τε κεῖται καὶ πλησίον τοῦ δόρατος δράκων ἐστίν· εἴη δ’ ἂν Ἐριχθόνιος οὗτος ὁ δράκων. ἔστι δὲ τῷ βάθρῳ τοῦ ἀγάλματος ἐπειργασμένη Πανδώρας {494|495} γένεσις. πεποίηται δὲ Ἡσιόδῳ τε καὶ ἄλλοις ὡς ἡ Πανδώρα γένοιτο αὕτη γυνὴ πρώτη·

4§104 The wording of Pausanias makes it explicit that Athena Parthenos is wearing not her peplos (peplos) or ‘robe’ but a khiton (khitōn) or ‘tunic’, and over her khiton she wears her armor. This image of Athena wearing her khiton and the armor over it matches what we see in the Homeric description of what the goddess wears when she goes to battle against the Trojans in the Trojan War.

4§105 The khiton of Zeus that Athena wears to war marks the coextensiveness between Zeus the father and Athena the daughter who emerged fully formed and fully armed from the head of Zeus at the moment of her birth, as narrated in the Hesiodic Theogony (verses 886-900, 924-926) and in the Homeric Hymn (28) to Athena (verses 4-6). In the Hymn, Athena herself is described explicitly as Parthenos (verse 3), and the armor she wears is golden (verse 6). As in the Iliad passage I have just quoted, Zeus in this Hymn is described as aigiokhos ‘the one who has the aegis’ (verses 7 and 17). Thus the aegis that the statue of Athena Parthenos wears, along with all the armor, is metonymically centered on Zeus.

4§106 In the visual arts, the coextensiveness between Zeus the father and Athena the daughter is most conventionally expressed by the concept of Nike, who is the divine embodiment of nikē ‘victory’ in war. In the work of Pheidias, {495|496} both the colossal Zeus and the colossal Athena hold a statue of Nike in the palm of the right hand (Pausanias 1.24.7 and 5.11.1 respectively).

4§107 Moreover, as we see even from the pre-Pheidian art that adorns the temple of Zeus in Olympia, the almighty father is recognized by way of his association with Nike and with the figure of Medusa the Gorgon as the centerpiece of the shield that goes with Nike:

4ⓣ22 Pausanias 5.10.4

ἐν δὲ Ὀλυμπίᾳ λέβης ἐπίχρυσος ἐπὶ ἑκάστῳ τοῦ ὀρόφου τῷ πέρατι ἐπίκειται καὶ Νίκη κατὰ μέσον μάλιστα ἕστηκε τὸν ἀετόν, ἐπίχρυσος καὶ αὕτη. ὑπὸ δὲ τῆς Νίκης τὸ ἄγαλμα ἀσπὶς ἀνάκειται χρυσῆ, Μέδουσαν τὴν Γοργόνα ἔχουσα ἐπειργασμένην.

In Olympia a gilded caldron [lebēs] is positioned at each end of the roof [of the temple of Zeus], and a [figure of] Nike, also gilded, stands at the absolute middle of the pediment. Under the statue [agalma] of Nike is a golden shield [aspis], and it has on it Medusa the Gorgon made in relief.

4§108 Pausanias (5.10.4) goes on to describe the inscription on the golden shield of Nike bearing the image of Medusa the Gorgon, which proclaims that this art treasure was made from spoils won ‘from the Argives, Athenians, and Ionians’ (Ἀργείων καὶ Ἀθαναίων καὶ Ἰώνων) as the result of a nikē ‘victory’ of the Spartans over these enemies (νίκας εἵνεκα).

Zeus:

Iliad VII 203: Zeus to give nikē to Ajax in the duel of Ajax with Hector – so prays an unnamed Achaean (or, if there is to be no nikē for Ajax, he prays for at least an even draw for Ajax and Hector)

Iliad VIII 171: Zeus gives a sign [sēma] that he will give nikē to the Trojans and not to the Achaeans

Iliad XIII 347: Zeus expresses his plan to give nikē to the Trojans and not to the Achaeans

Iliad XVI 121: Zeus expresses his plan to give nikē to the Trojans and not to the Achaeans – and Ajax recognizes this

Iliad XVI 362: nikē has been given to the Trojans – and Ajax recognizes this; in the battle over the beached ships, Iakhe [personification of the battle-cry] and Phobos [personification of routing the enemy] are compared in a simile to the effects of a storm sent by Zeus (XVI 364-366)

Iliad XVI 844-845: Zeus has given nikē to Hector and not to Patroklos – so says the dying Patroklos

Iliad XVII 176-177: Zeus can cause even a valiant warrior to turn and run (phobeîn), thus depriving him of nikē – so says Hector

Iliad XVII 331-332: Zeus gives nikē to the Trojans and not to the Achaeans – so says Apollo (in the guise of a herald) to Aeneas

Iliad XVII 627: Zeus gives nikē to the Trojans – and Ajax along with Menelaos recognizes this

Iliad XX 101-102: If the ‘god’ (theos) levels the odds, Achilles will not be able to get nikē in his duel with Aeneas, even if Achilles boasts to be ‘all-bronze’ (pan-khalkeos) – says Aeneas

Athena:

Iliad III 439: Menelaos to get nikē with the help of Athena

Iliad IV 389: Tydeus got nikē with the help of Athena, in an athletic contest with the Thebans {497|498}

Iliad VII 26-27: Athena expresses her plan to give nikē to the Achaeans – says the god Apollo, whose plan is to give nikē to the Trojans (VII 21)

Iliad XXIII 767: Odysseus to get nikē with the help of Athena, in an athletic contest – so he prays to her (768-770)

Iliad XXIII 771: Odysseus gets nikē with the help of Athena – she heeds his prayer

Odyssey viii 520: Odysseus got nikē at Troy with the help of Athena

Odyssey xi 544, 548: Ajax in Hades is angry at Odysseus because he got nikē with the direct help of Athena (and with the indirect help of the paides ‘children’ of the Trojans).

4§110 So the Homeric moment of Zeus as sculpted by Pheidias is primary, since the Plan of Zeus is what ultimately achieves victory for the Achaeans over the Trojans in the Trojan War. By contrast, the Homeric moment of Athena Parthenos as sculpted by Pheidias is secondary, since she is only an accessory to the overall Plan of Zeus when she enters the war in her own right.

4§111 As for the pre-Pheidian temple of Zeus at Olympia, it too already bears the markings of a Homeric signature. All the same, the colossal Pheidian statue of Zeus, which holds a statue of Nike in the palm of his hand – and has an aegis – represents the newest and most definitive Homeric signature. And it is a distinctly Athenian version of a Homeric signature, since the colossal Pheidian statue of Athena Parthenos in Athens likewise holds a statue of Nike in the palm of her hand – and has an aegis.

4§112 So, paradoxically, the newer statue of Zeus in Olympia has seniority, as it were, over the older statue of Athena Parthenos in Athens when it comes to the father’s authority over Nike as victory personified. From the standpoint of Homeric poetry, Athena is generally involved in the fluctuations of nikē in war, but Zeus is specifically involved in the ultimate struggle between the Trojan and the Achaean warriors in their quest for nikē in the Trojan War. I repeat, his plan for the Trojan War is in effect the plot of the Homeric Iliad. So the newer statue of Zeus is even more Homeric and more definitive than the older statue of Athena Parthenos. The Homeric signature of the statue of Zeus is even more pronounced than the Homeric signature of the statue of Athena.

4§113 In the light of the parallelism we see between the statue of Zeus in the temple of Zeus at Olympia and the statue of Athena Parthenos in the Parthenon at Athens, I am ready to shift the focus of attention from the later {498|499} to the earlier work of Pheidias. What I said a moment ago about the Zeus of Pheidias in Olympia can now become a restatement of what I can say here about the Athena Parthenos of Pheidias in the Parthenon: this colossal statue of Athena was an ultimate center of attention – a metonymic centerpiece – not only for the entire sacred space of Athena in Athens but also for all Hellenic civilization. Unlike the making of the Zeus of Pheidias, however, which required the remaking of the temple that housed it, the making of the Athena of Pheidias was organically integrated from the start with the making of the temple that housed it, the Parthenon. In other words, the artistic program of the sculptor set the standard for the artistic program of the architects of the temple.

4§114 The synergism of Pheidias with the architects of the temple of Athena Parthenos is narrated in Plutarch’s Pericles. As we will see, this synergism extends into a larger synergism linking the master sculptor with everyone involved in what modern historians call the Periclean building program. In other words, the artistic program of the architects of the new buildings, as represented by Pheidias, is linked with the political program of the architects of the Athenian empire, as represented by Pericles. As we will also see, Plutarch’s narrative is not some anachronistic exercise in restating an imperial ideology current in Plutarch’s own day. Rather, the main themes of the narrative go all the way back to the age of Pheidias himself.

4§115 In what follows I offer a close reading of the relevant narrative of Plutarch, concentrating on his description of the relationship between Pheidias as the premier artist and Pericles as the premier statesman of the Athenian empire. In this narrative, Pheidias is portrayed as the grand ‘overseer’ or episkopos who was put in charge of the notional totality of the Periclean building program:

4ⓣ23 Plutarch Pericles 13.6-15 (abridged)

Πάντα δὲ διεῖπε καὶ πάντων ἐπίσκοπος ἦν αὐτῷ Φειδίας, καίτοι μεγάλους ἀρχιτέκτονας ἐχόντων καὶ τεχνίτας {7} τῶν ἔργων. τὸν μὲν γὰρ ἑκατόμπεδον Παρθενῶνα Καλλικράτης εἰργάζετο καὶ Ἰκτῖνος, τὸ δ’ ἐν Ἐλευσῖνι Τελεστήριον ἤρξατο μὲν Κόροιβος οἰκοδομεῖν, καὶ τοὺς ἐπ’ ἐδάφους κίονας ἔθηκεν οὗτος καὶ τοῖς ἐπιστυλίοις ἐπέζευξεν· ἀποθανόντος δὲ τούτου Μεταγένης ὁ Ξυπεταιὼν τὸ διάζωσμα καὶ τοὺς ἄνω κίονας ἐπέστησε, τὸ δ’ ὀπαῖον ἐπὶ τοῦ ἀνακτόρου Ξενοκλῆς ὁ Χολαργεὺς ἐκορύφωσε· τὸ δὲ μακρὸν τεῖχος, περὶ οὗ Σωκράτης ἀκοῦσαί φησιν αὐτὸς εἰσηγουμένου γνώμην Περικλέους, {8} {499|500} ἠργολάβησε Καλλικράτης. … {9} τὸ δ’ ᾿Ωιδεῖον, τῇ μὲν ἐντὸς διαθέσει πολύεδρον καὶ πολύστυλον, τῇ δ’ ἐρέψει περικλινὲς καὶ κάταντες ἐκ μιᾶς κορυφῆς πεποιημένον, εἰκόνα λέγουσι γενέσθαι καὶ μίμημα τῆς βασιλέως σκηνῆς, ἐπιστατοῦντος καὶ τούτῳ {10} Περικλέους. […] {11} φιλοτιμούμενος δ’ ὁ Περικλῆς τότε πρῶτον ἐψηφίσατο μουσικῆςἀγῶνα τοῖς Παναθηναίοις ἄγεσθαι, καὶ διέταξεν αὐτὸς ἀθλοθέτης αἱρεθείς, καθότι χρὴ τοὺς ἀγωνιζομένους αὐλεῖν ἢ ᾄδειν ἢ κιθαρίζειν. ἐθεῶντο δὲ καὶ τότε καὶ τὸν ἄλλον χρόνον ἐν ᾿Ωιδείῳ τοὺς μουσικοὺς ἀγῶνας. {12} Τὰ δὲ Προπύλαια τῆς ἀκροπόλεως ἐξειργάσθη μὲν ἐν πενταετίᾳ Μνησικλέους ἀρχιτεκτονοῦντος, τύχη δὲ θαυμαστὴ συμβᾶσα περὶ τὴν οἰκοδομίαν ἐμήνυσε τὴν θεὸν οὐκ ἀποστατοῦσαν, ἀλλὰ συνεφαπτομένην τοῦ ἔργου καὶ {13} συνεπιτελοῦσαν. … {14} Ὁ δὲ Φειδίας εἰργάζετο μὲν τῆς θεοῦ τὸ χρυσοῦν ἕδος, καὶ τούτου δημιουργὸς ἐν τῇ στήλῃ [εἶναι] γέγραπται· πάντα δ’ ἦν σχεδὸν ἐπ’ αὐτῷ, καὶ πᾶσιν ὡς εἰρήκαμεν {15} ἐπεστάτει τοῖς τεχνίταις διὰ φιλίαν Περικλέους. καὶ τοῦτο τῷ μὲν φθόνον, τῷ δὲ βλασφημίαν ἤνεγκεν, ὡς …

4§118 In the narrative of the passage I just quoted from Plutarch’s Pericles, there is an inner logic of totality in the sequence of transitions from one highlight to another. Here again are the three phases of the sequence:

(1) the naming of various building projects executed by craftsmen other than Pheidias

(2) the naming of Athena as an active participant and an integrating force in the work to be done {502|503}

(3) the climactic naming of Pheidas as the author of the pièce de résistance, the project of final integration, which is the statue of Athena Parthenos in the Parthenon on the acropolis.

4§120 One way to test the historical value of the Life of Pheidias traditions is to look at the negative stories concerning the sculptor, alongside the positive stories concerning his colossal prestige. It turns out that even the negative stories concern that same prestige, and that this colossal prestige is directly connected to the colossal prestige of the Athenian empire. There is a metonymy built into all the stories, positive or negative, that connects the monumental art of Pheidias with the wealth, power, and prestige of the Athenian empire as represented primarily by Pericles. In the stories about Pheidias, he not only shares with Pericles the credit for the glories of the Athenian empire: he also has his own share in the dangers that come with empire. We saw this negative side already in the passage I quoted from Plutarch’s Pericles, where we read of the phthonos ‘envy’ attracted by Pheidias, matching the blasphēmia ‘slander’ attracted by Pericles (13.9). As Plutarch delves into the grim details of the many instances of ‘slander’, it becomes clear that both the sculptor and the statesman are plagued by it, though Pericles regularly gets the greater share of the blame (13.9-12). Although the statesman gets the negative privilege of a greater share of blame than the sculptor, the negative privilege of causing the greatest political scandal for Pericles goes to {503|504} Pheidias. Not only that, this particular scandal is directly linked to a pièce de résistance that stands out as the supreme achievement of Pheidias in Athens, that is, his colossal statue of Athena Parthenos:

4ⓣ24 Plutarch Pericles 31.2-3

Ἡ δὲ χειρίστη μὲν αἰτία πασῶν, ἔχουσα δὲ πλείστους μάρτυρας, οὕτω πως λέγεται. Φειδίας ὁ πλάστης ἐργολάβος μὲν ἦν τοῦ ἀγάλματος ὥσπερ εἴρηται, φίλος δὲ τῷ Περικλεῖ γενόμενος καὶ μέγιστον παρ’ αὐτῷ δυνηθείς, τοὺς μὲν δι’ αὑτὸν ἔσχεν ἐχθροὺς φθονούμενος, οἱ δὲ τοῦ δήμου ποιούμενοι πεῖραν ἐν ἐκείνῳ ποῖός τις ἔσοιτο τῷ Περικλεῖ κριτής, Μένωνά τινα τῶν Φειδίου συνεργῶν πείσαντες ἱκέτην ἐν ἀγορᾷ καθίζουσιν, αἰτούμενον ἄδειαν ἐπὶ μηνύσει {3} καὶ κατηγορίᾳ τοῦ Φειδίου. προσδεξαμένου δὲ τοῦ δήμου τὸν ἄνθρωπον καὶ γενομένης ἐν ἐκκλησίᾳ διώξεως, κλοπαὶ μὲν οὐκ ἠλέγχοντο· τὸ γὰρ χρυσίον οὕτως εὐθὺς ἐξ ἀρχῆς τῷ ἀγάλματι προσειργάσατο καὶ περιέθηκεν ὁ Φειδίας γνώμῃ τοῦ Περικλέους, ὥστε πᾶν δυνατὸν εἶναι περιελοῦσιν ἀποδεῖξαι τὸν σταθμόν, ὃ καὶ τότε τοὺς κατηγόρους ἐκέλευσε ποιεῖν ὁ Περικλῆς·

But the worst accusation of them all [against Pericles], and yet the one that had the most witnesses backing it up, is told in a story that goes something like this. Pheidias the sculptor got the contract, as I said earlier, concerning the statue [agalma = of Athena]. Since he had become a friend of Pericles and had the greatest power in his relations with him, he was envied for this and made enemies for himself. Meanwhile, others were using him [= Pheidias] as a test case to see how the people would judge Pericles. So they persuaded someone called Menon, who worked with Pheidias, and they got him to take a seat as a suppliant in the agora. He was asking for immunity in return for reporting on Pheidias {3} and making charges against him. The people accepted the man’s plea, and a formal prosecution took place in the assembly. But the charge of theft could not be proved. From the very start, the gold of the Statue had been worked in and around in such a way by Pheidias, at the suggestion of Pericles, that it could all be detached and publicly weighed. And that was exactly what Pericles at that moment told the accusers to do.

4§123 With the added perspective of Thucydides in place, I press on with my exploration of the imperial mentality inherent in the making of the statue of Athena Parthenos in Athens. Comparable to what I just said about the gold that was used to make this statue is what can be said about the ivory. Like gold, the ivory that adorned the statues of gods was proverbially priceless (Pliny the Elder Natural History 8.30-31). And ivory, like gold, was associated with royalty and empire. A case in point is an anecdote reported by Herodotus about the Ethiopians’ tribute of twenty elephant tusks offered to the Great King of Persia (3.97.3).

4ⓢ7. The imperial Homer of Pheidias of Athens

4§125 The prestige inherent in the colossal chryselephantine statues of Zeus and Athena by Pheidias is the prestige of the Athenian empire. To that extent, as I will now argue, the craft of Pheidias himself is imperial. A most revealing point of comparison is the craft of a contemporary, Hippias of Elis. I begin the comparison by considering the Platonic Hippias Maior. In the relevant passage I am about to quote, we will see a dramatized description of the chryselephantine art of Pheidias, and the person featured as describing this art will be none other than Hippias himself. We will see Hippias in the act of measuring the greatness of Pheidias in terms of gold and ivory, which he applies as a standard for measuring not just greatness, but absolute greatness. From a historical point of view, Hippias is a most appropriate speaker about the artistry of Pheidias, since the statue of Zeus by Pheidias was the single most important piece of art in his native region of Elis. Contrary to our expectations, however, Hippias will be speaking not about the Zeus of Pheidias in Olympia. Rather, the speaker’s focus of attention is on the sculptor’s Athena Parthenos in Athens.

4§126 Before I quote the relevant passage, I offer a brief outline of the philosophical context in which it is nested. As we join the dialogue of the Hippias Maior in progress, we find three voices in play, as represented by Hippias, Socrates, and a hypothetical third voice, quoted by Socrates, who is questioning or second-guessing Socrates by intruding into the two-voice dialogue between Hippias and Socrates. The three voices are engaged in a freewheeling dialogue about ‘the ideally Beautiful’, to kalon, and how the ‘adding’ (prosgignesthai) of this absolute beauty to something that is imperfect will transform that imperfect something into perfection on its own terms. The three examples that are being adduced are a beautiful girl, a beautiful horse, and a beautiful lyre. In the everyday world, each of the three will be imperfect. But when ‘the ideally Beautiful’ is added to each of them, then each of them will become perfect – whether it is a girl or a horse or a lyre. In the case of the ‘girl’ – the Greek word for which is parthenos, conventionally translated as ‘maiden’ or ‘virgin’ – the ‘adding’ (prosgignesthai) of ‘the ideally Beautiful’ transforms her into an ideal parthenos who is the perfect beauty. The embodiment of this ideal beauty in the dialogue of the three voices turns out to be the Parthenos par excellence, Athena herself – as sculpted by Pheidias. At least, {507|508} that is how Hippias imagines this ideal: when Pheidias applies his technique of chryselephantine sculpture by adding gold or ivory to the form of his sculpted Athena Parthenos, what the sculptor achieves is the perfect Form of the real Athena, the perfect and absolute Parthenos. I hasten to add that this idea of perfection is a far cry from Plato’s own idea of the perfect Form, but it represents here the understanding of Hippias the sophist at this particular point in the three-way dialogue as Plato has staged it. Having given this brief outline of the philosophical context, I proceed to quote the passage:

4ⓣ25 Plato Hippias Maior 289a-290d

ΣΩ. Ἄκουε δή. μετὰ τοῦτο γὰρ εὖ οἶδ’ ὅτι φήσει· “Τί δέ, ὦ Σώκρατες; τὸ τῶν παρθένων γένος θεῶν γένει ἄν τις {b} συμβάλλῃ, οὐ ταὐτὸν πείσεται ὅπερ τὸ τῶν χυτρῶν τῷ τῶν παρθένων συμβαλλόμενον; οὐχ ἡ καλλίστη παρθένος αἰσχρὰ φανεῖται; ἢ οὐ καὶ Ἡράκλειτος αὐτὸ τοῦτο λέγει, ὃν σὺ ἐπάγῃ, ὅτι ‘Ἀνθρώπων ὁ σοφώτατος πρὸς θεὸν πίθηκος φανεῖται καὶ σοφίᾳ καὶ κάλλει καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις πᾶσιν;’ ὁμολογήσωμεν, Ἱππία, τὴν καλλίστην παρθένον πρὸς θεῶν γένος αἰσχρὰν εἶναι;”

ΙΠ. Τίς γὰρ ἂν ἀντείποι τούτῳ γε, ὦ Σώκρατες; {c}

ΣΩ. Ἂν τοίνυν ταῦτα ὁμολογήσωμεν, γελάσεταί τε καὶ ἐρεῖ· “Ὦ Σώκρατες, μέμνησαι οὖν ὅτι ἠρωτήθης;” Ἔγωγε, φήσω, ὅτι αὐτὸ τὸ καλὸν ὅτι ποτέ ἐστιν. “Ἔπειτα,” φήσει, “ἐρωτηθεὶς τὸ καλὸν ἀποκρίνῃ ὃ τυγχάνει ὄν, ὡς αὐτὸς φῄς, οὐδὲν μᾶλλον καλὸν ἢ αἰσχρόν;” Ἔοικε, φήσω· ἢ τί μοι συμβουλεύεις, ὦ φίλε, φάναι;

ΙΠ. Τοῦτο ἔγωγε· καὶ γὰρ δὴ πρός γε θεοὺς ὅτι οὐ καλὸν τὸ ἀνθρώπειον γένος, ἀληθῆ ἐρεῖ.

ΣΩ. “Εἰ δέ σε ἠρόμην,” φήσει, “ἐξ ἀρχῆς τί ἐστι {d} καλόν τε καὶ αἰσχρόν, εἴ μοι ἅπερ νῦν ἀπεκρίνω, ἆρ’ οὐκ ἂν ὀρθῶς ἀπεκέκρισο; ἔτι δὲ καὶ δοκεῖ σοι αὐτὸ τὸ καλόν, ᾧ καὶ τἆλλα πάντα κοσμεῖται καὶ καλὰ φαίνεται, ἐπειδὰν προσγένηται ἐκεῖνο τὸ εἶδος, τοῦτ’ εἶναι παρθένος ἢ ἵππος ἢ λύρα;”

ΙΠ. Ἀλλὰ μέντοι, ὦ Σώκρατες, εἰ τοῦτό γε ζητεῖ, πάντων ῥᾷστον ἀποκρίνασθαι αὐτῷ τί ἐστι τὸ καλὸν ᾧ καὶ τὰ ἄλλα πάντα κοσμεῖται καὶ προσγενομένου αὐτοῦ καλὰ φαίνεται. {e} εὐηθέστατος οὖν ἐστιν ὁ ἄνθρωπος καὶ οὐδὲν ἐπαΐει περὶ καλῶν κτημάτων. ἐὰν γὰρ αὐτῷ ἀποκρίνῃ ὅτι τοῦτ’ ἐστὶν ὃ ἐρωτᾷ τὸ καλὸν οὐδὲν ἄλλο ἢ χρυσός, {508|509} ἀπορήσει καὶ οὐκ ἐπιχειρήσει σε ἐλέγχειν. ἴσμεν γάρ που πάντες ὅτι ὅπου ἂν τοῦτο προσγένηται, κἂν πρότερον αἰσχρὸν φαίνηται, καλὸν φανεῖται χρυσῷ γε κοσμηθέν.

ΣΩ. Ἄπειρος εἶ τοῦ ἀνδρός, ὦ Ἱππία, ὡς σχέτλιός ἐστι καὶ οὐδὲν ῥᾳδίως ἀποδεχόμενος.

ΙΠ. Τί οὖν τοῦτο, ὦ Σώκρατες; τὸ γὰρ ὀρθῶς λεγόμενον {290a} ἀνάγκη αὐτῷ ἀποδέχεσθαι, ἢ μὴ ἀποδεχομένῳ καταγελάστῳ εἶναι.

ΣΩ. Καὶ μὲν δὴ ταύτην γε τὴν ἀπόκρισιν, ὦ ἄριστε, οὐ μόνον οὐκ ἀποδέξεται, ἀλλὰ πάνυ με καὶ τωθάσεται, καὶ ἐρεῖ·

“Ὦ τετυφωμένε σύ, Φειδίαν οἴει κακὸν εἶναι δημιουργόν;” καὶ ἐγὼ οἶμαι ἐρῶ ὅτι “Οὐδ’ ὁπωστιοῦν.”

ΙΠ. Καὶ ὀρθῶς γ’ ἐρεῖς, ὦ Σώκρατες.

ΣΩ. Ὀρθῶς μέντοι. τοιγάρτοι ἐκεῖνος, ἐπειδὰν ἐγὼ ὁμολογῶ ἀγαθὸν εἶναι δημιουργὸν τὸν Φειδίαν, “Εἶτα,” {b} φήσει, “οἴει τοῦτο τὸ καλὸν ὃ σὺ λέγεις ἠγνόει Φειδίας;” Καὶ ἐγώ· Τί μάλιστα; φήσω. “῞Οτι,” ἐρεῖ, “τῆς Ἀθηνᾶς τοὺς ὀφθαλμοὺς οὐ χρυσοῦς ἐποίησεν, οὐδὲ τὸ ἄλλο πρόσωπον οὐδὲ τοὺς πόδας οὐδὲ τὰς χεῖρας, εἴπερ χρυσοῦν γε δὴ ὂν κάλλιστον ἔμελλε φαίνεσθαι, ἀλλ’ ἐλεφάντινον· δῆλον ὅτι τοῦτο ὑπὸ ἀμαθίας ἐξήμαρτεν, ἀγνοῶν ὅτι χρυσὸς ἄρ’ ἐστὶν ὁ πάντα καλὰ ποιῶν, ὅπου ἂν προσγένηται.” ταῦτα οὖν λέγοντι τί ἀποκρινώμεθα, ὦ Ἱππία; {c}

ΙΠ. Οὐδὲν χαλεπόν· ἐροῦμεν γὰρ ὅτι ὀρθῶς ἐποίησε. καὶ γὰρ τὸ ἐλεφάντινον οἶμαι καλόν ἐστιν.

ΣΩ. “Τοῦ οὖν ἕνεκα,” φήσει, “οὐ καὶ τὰ μέσα τῶν ὀφθαλμῶν ἐλεφάντινα ἠργάσατο, ἀλλὰ λίθινα, ὡς οἷόν τ’ ἦν ὁμοιότητα τοῦ λίθου τῷ ἐλέφαντι ἐξευρών; ἢ καὶ ὁ λίθος ὁ καλὸς καλόν ἐστι;” φήσομεν, ὦ Ἱππία;

ΙΠ. Φήσομεν μέντοι, ὅταν γε πρέπων ᾖ.

ΣΩ. “Ὅταν δὲ μὴ πρέπων, αἰσχρόν;” ὁμολογῶ ἢ μή;

ΙΠ. Ὁμολόγει, ὅταν γε μὴ πρέπῃ. {d}

ΣΩ. “Τί δὲ δή; ὁ ἐλέφας καὶ ὁ χρυσός,” φήσει, “ὦ σοφὲ σύ, οὐχ ὅταν μὲν πρέπῃ, καλὰ ποιεῖ φαίνεσθαι, ὅταν δὲ μή, αἰσχρά;” ἔξαρνοι ἐσόμεθα ἢ ὁμολογήσομεν αὐτῷ ὀρθῶς λέγειν αὐτόν; {509|510}

ΙΠ. Ὁμολογήσομεν τοῦτό γε, ὅτι ὃ ἂν πρέπῃ ἑκάστῳ, τοῦτο καλὸν ποιεῖ ἕκαστον.

SOCRATES: Listen then. For I know well that he [= the hypothetical third voice who is questioning the voice of Socrates] will next say: “But what about this, Socrates? Suppose someone compares the category of ‘girls’ [parthenoi] with the category of ‘gods’. Won’t the same thing happen to the category of ‘girls’ [parthenoi] that happened to the category of ‘pots’ when it was compared with the category of ‘girls’ [parthenoi]? Won’t the most beautiful girl [parthenos] appear repulsive? Or doesn’t even Heraclitus [B 82 DK], whom you cite, say exactly this, that the most wise [sophos] of men, when compared to a god, will appear to be a monkey, both in wisdom [sophia] and in beauty and in all other things? Shall we agree, Hippias, that the most beautiful girl [parthenos] is repulsive when compared with the category of ‘gods’?”

SOCRATES: If, then, we agree with regard to these things, he [= the third voice] will laugh and say: “so, Socrates, do you remember the question you were asked?” “I do,” I will say, “the question was: what on earth is ‘the ideally Beautiful’ [to kalon]?” “Then,” he will say, “the moment you are asked about ‘the ideally Beautiful’ [to kalon], what do you say? Do you give a response that goes like this: it is what happens to be, as you yourself say, no more beautiful than repulsive?” “It seems to be the case,” I will say; or what do you [= Hippias], my friend, advise me to say?

SOCRATES: “But if I had asked you,” he will say, “from the very start what is beautiful and what is repulsive, if you had given in {510|511} response to me the kind of things you are saying now, would you not have responded correctly? But do you still think that ‘the ideally Beautiful’ [auto to kalon], by means of which all other things are adorned [kosmeîn] and appear to be beautiful, when that Form [eidos = ‘the ideally Beautiful’] is added [prosgignesthai] [to the things I mentioned], that this thing [= this thing that results from the addition of ‘the ideally beautiful’] is the same thing as a girl [parthenos] or a horse or a lyre?”

HIPPIAS: But, Socrates, if this is what he [= the third voice] is seeking, then it is the most easy thing in the world to give a response about what is ‘the ideally Beautiful’, by means of which all other things are adorned [kosmeîn] and by the addition [prosgignesthai] of which all other things look beautiful. So I now see that the man is very simple-minded and understands nothing about beautiful possessions. For if you reply to him that “this thing you are asking about, the Beautiful, is nothing other than gold,” he will find himself in perplexity [aporia] and will not attempt to refute you. For we all know, I think, that wherever this thing is added [prosgignesthai], even if earlier it appeared to be repulsive, now it will appear to be beautiful – that is, once it is adorned [kosmeîn] with gold.

SOCRATES: You just have no experience with this man, Hippias, and so you do not know how wretched he is, and how he is not about to accept anything easily.

HIPPIAS: What is this, Socrates? Surely it is a necessity for him to accept what is said correctly, or, if he does not accept, be worthy of ridicule.

HIPPIAS: And you will be speaking correctly, Socrates. {511|512}

SOCRATES: Yes, correctly. So when I agree that Pheidias is a good craftsman [dēmiourgos], “well then,” he will say, “do you think that Pheidias did not know this thing, ‘the ideally Beautiful’ [to kalon] that you speak of?” And I will say: “Why do you say that in particular”? “Because,” he will say, “he did not make the eyes of Athena from gold, nor the rest of her face, nor her feet and hands – if it was really supposed to look most beautiful only if it [= the face] was made of gold, but he made it of ivory; it is clear that he made this mistake through ignorance, not knowing that it is gold which makes all things beautiful, wherever it is added [prosgignesthai].” When he says that, what response shall we give him, Hippias?

HIPPIAS: That is not hard at all. For we will say that he [= Pheidias] did it correctly; for ivory, I think, is an absolutely beautiful thing.

SOCRATES: “Why, then,” he will say, “did he make the middle parts [= pupils] of the eyes not out of ivory as well, but of [precious] stone, devising as great a similarity as possible between the stone and the ivory? Or is even the beautiful stone a thing of beauty? Shall we say that it is, Hippias?

HIPPIAS: Yes, we shall say so, that is, whenever it [= the (precious) stone] is appropriate.

SOCRATES: And when it is not appropriate, then it is repulsive, right? Shall I agree [with him] or not?

HIPPIAS: Yes, go ahead and agree with him: it is repulsive when it is not appropriate.

SOCRATES: “In that case,” he will say, “what about this, you wise [sophos] man: do not gold and ivory, when they are appropriate, make things look beautiful, and, when they are not, make them look repulsive?” Shall we deny this or shall we agree with him [= the third voice] that he is speaking correctly?

HIPPIAS: We will agree to this extent: that whatever is appropriate for each thing makes each thing beautiful.

4§127 In summing up what we have just read, I will adopt the standpoint not of Socrates but of Hippias himself as represented here in the Platonic Hippias Maior: when Pheidias applies his technique of chryselephantine sculpture by adding gold and ivory to the basic form of his sculpted Athena {512|513} Parthenos, what the sculptor achieves is the perfect Form of the real Athena, the perfect and absolute Parthenos. For Hippias, portrayed here as a leading intellectual of his day, such an idea is evidently acceptable and even reasonable, as we see from the line of thinking attributed to him in the Hippias Maior.

4§129 The chryselephantine exterior of the goddess, with all the wealth, power, and prestige that it projects, is the essence of empire, the Athenian empire. For an imperial mentality, the Athena Parthenos of Pheidias is the embodiment of absolute beauty – and absolute greatness. The notionally absolute beauty and absolute greatness of Athena Parthenos go together with the notionally absolute power of empire.

4§130 The Athena Parthenos of Pheidias is the classical example of art as a demonstration of imperial power and absolutism. A most striking earlier example of a statue made by Pheidias was a colossal bronze Athena Promakhos standing in the open air near the entrance to the Acropolis – so overpowering in her height that the tip of her spear and the crest of her helmet could be seen from ships coming to and from Athens as they rounded Cape Sounion (Pausanias 1.28.2). The historical context for the making of this statue is most revealing, since it shows a synergism between the making of the Athenian democracy and the making of the Athenian empire: {513|514}

4ⓢ8. Hippias and the staging of a perfect Homeric moment

4§132 We would expect Hippias the sophist, native of Elis, to be capable of recognizing a standard of absolute greatness and beauty in the statue of Zeus made in Olympia by Pheidias of Athens. After all, Hippias is represented in the Platonic Hippias Maior as someone who is capable of recognizing such a standard of absoluteness in the statue of Athena Parthenos made in Athens by Pheidias. As we will now see, there are two reasons for thinking that Hippias {514|515} actually had in mind the statue of Zeus by Pheidias whenever he performed and interpreted Homer in the sacred precinct of Zeus at Olympia. One of these two reasons can be found in a passage I quoted earlier, which captures the classical moment of such a Homeric performance by Hippias:

4ⓣ26 Plato Hippias Minor 363c-364a (requoted)

… ἐπειδὴ καὶ ἄλλα πολλὰ καὶ παντοδαπὰ ἡμῖν ἐπιδέδεικται καὶ περὶ ποιητῶν τε ἄλλων καὶ περὶ Ὁμήρου.

ΕΥ. Ἀλλὰ δῆλον ὅτι οὐ φθονήσει Ἱππίας, ἐάν τι αὐτὸν ἐρωτᾷς, ἀποκρίνεσθαι. ἦ γάρ, ὦ Ἱππία, ἐάν τι ἐρωτᾷ σε Σωκράτης, ἀποκρινῇ; ἢ πῶς ποιήσεις;

ΙΠ. Καὶ γὰρ ἂν δεινὰ ποιοίην, ὦ Εὔδικε, εἰ Ὀλυμπίαζε μὲν εἰς τὴν τῶν Ἑλλήνων πανήγυριν, ὅταν τὰ Ὀλύμπια ᾖ, {d} ἀεὶ ἐπανιὼν οἴκοθεν ἐξ Ἤλιδος εἰς τὸ ἱερὸν παρέχω ἐμαυτὸν καὶ λέγοντα ὅτι ἄν τις βούληται ὧν ἄν μοι εἰς ἐπίδειξιν παρεσκευασμένον ᾖ, καὶ ἀποκρινόμενον τῷ βουλομένῳ ὅτι ἄν τις ἐρωτᾷ, νῦν δὲ τὴν Σωκράτους ἐρώτησιν φύγοιμι. {364 a}

ΣΩ. Μακάριόν γε, ὦ Ἱππία, πάθος πέπονθας, εἰ ἑκάστης Ὀλυμπιάδος οὕτως εὔελπις ὢν περὶ τῆς ψυχῆς εἰς σοφίαν ἀφικνῇ εἰς τὸ ἱερόν· καὶ θαυμάσαιμ’ ἂν εἴ τις τῶν περὶ τὸ σῶμα ἀθλητῶν οὕτως ἀφόβως τε καὶ πιστευτικῶς ἔχων τῷ σώματι ἔρχεται αὐτόσε ἀγωνιούμενος, ὥσπερ σὺ φῂς τῇ διανοίᾳ.

ΙΠ. Εἰκότως, ὦ Σώκρατες, ἐγὼ τοῦτο πέπονθα· ἐξ οὗ γὰρ ἦργμαι Ὀλυμπίασιν ἀγωνίζεσθαι, οὐδενὶ πώποτε κρείττονι εἰς οὐδὲν ἐμαυτοῦ ἐνέτυχον.

SOCRATES: … since he [= Hippias] has displayed [epideiknusthai] so many things about so many poets [poiētai] – and especially about Homer.

EUDIKOS: But it is clear that Hippias will not be ungenerous, if you ask him a question, about giving a response. Isn’t that right, Hippias? If Socrates asks you a question, you will give a response? You will do it, won’t you?

HIPPIAS: I would be doing strange things, Eudikos, if I – as one who always goes to Olympia to the general gathering [panēguris] of all Hellenes when the Olympics take place, and, coming from my house {515|516} in Elis I go into the sacred precinct [hieron] and I present myself in person, ready to perform [= literally ‘speak’, legein] whatever anyone wishes to choose from among all the things that I have prepared for display [epideixis], and ready to give response to any question that anyone wishes to ask – I would be doing strange things indeed if I now avoided the questioning of Socrates.

SOCRATES: Blessed [makarion], I would say, is the experience [pathos] that you have experienced, Hippias, if on the occasion of each Olympic festival you go into the sacred precinct [hieron] with such good expectations in regard to the skillfulness of your mind [psukhē]. And I would be dazzled if any one of those who engage in contests [= athlētai] in regard to the body [sōma] is so fearless and confident about his own body [sōma] when he goes to the same place in order to compete [agōnizesthai] as you say you are fearless and confident about your thinking [dianoia].

HIPPIAS: It is likely, Socrates, that I for one have indeed experienced this. For ever since I have begun to compete [agōnizesthai] at the Olympics, I have never yet met anyone better than myself in anything.

4§133 By now we can better appreciate why Plato’s Socrates uses sacral terminology when he says makarion pathos ‘blessed experience’ in referring to the Olympic performance staged by Hippias in the hieron ‘sacred space’ of Zeus in Olympia. The exhilarating experience of Hippias in these perfect classical moments of Olympic performances is all-encompassing. He feels he is on top of the world: ‘I have never yet met anyone better than myself in anything’.

4§134 Such a perfect classical moment, as staged by Hippias in Olympia, is restaged by Plato in Athens. Plato transfers the performance of Hippias from Olympia to Athens – all for the sake of Plato’s Socrates, who gets to be a member of the audience when Hippias performs in the agora of Athens (Hippias Minor 368b).

4§135 Now I come to the second of my two reasons for thinking that Hippias actually had in mind the statue of Zeus by Pheidias whenever he performed and interpreted Homer in the sacred precinct of Zeus at Olympia. It has to do with another passage where Socrates gets to see with his own eyes an equivalent of the spectacle of Hippias in the act of Olympic performance. I have quoted the passage before, in Chapter 3, while making another argument, but now I quote it again for the sake of the present argument: {516|517}

4ⓣ27 Plato Protagoras 315b-c

τὸν δὲ μετ’ εἰσενόησα, ἔφη ῞Ομηρος, Ἱππίαν τὸν {c} Ἠλεῖον, καθήμενον ἐν τῷ κατ’ ἀντικρὺ προστῴῳ ἐν θρόνῳ· περὶ αὐτὸν δ’ ἐκάθηντο ἐπὶ βάθρων Ἐρυξίμαχός τε ὁ Ἀκουμενοῦ καὶ Φαῖδρος ὁ Μυρρινούσιος καὶ Ἄνδρων ὁ Ἀνδροτίωνος καὶ τῶν ξένων πολῖταί τε αὐτοῦ καὶ ἄλλοι τινές. ἐφαίνοντο δὲ περὶ φύσεώς τε καὶ τῶν μετεώρων ἀστρονομικὰ ἄττα διερωτᾶν τὸν Ἱππίαν, ὁ δ’ ἐν θρόνῳ καθήμενος ἑκάστοις αὐτῶν διέκρινεν καὶ διεξῄει τὰ ἐρωτώμενα.

After him [= Protagoras], the next one I [= Socrates] noted [eis-noeîn], as Homer says, was Hippias of Elis, seated at the portico across [from the portico of Protagoras] on a throne; and seated around him on benches were Eryximachus son of Akoumenos and Phaedrus of Myrrhinous and Andron son of Androtion as well as some non-Athenians. Among them [= the non-Athenians] were some fellow-citizens [of Hippias of Elis] as well as others. It appeared that they were making a systematic inquiry [di-erōtân] in asking Hippias various astronomical questions concerning the nature [phusis] of heavenly bodies while he, seated on his throne, made critical judgments [dia-krinein] for each one of them as he systematically went through the things about which they had just made inquiries.

4§136 What Plato’s Socrates sees here is not only a perfect classical moment: it is a perfect Homeric moment. As I noted in Chapter 3, Plato’s staging here of Hippias in Athens matches the Homeric staging of Minos son of Zeus. I recall once again the Homeric vision of Minos in the Odyssey, where we see the son of Zeus seated in his place of honor, evoking a vision of the god himself as he goes through the motions of acting like Zeus.

4ⓣ28 Odyssey xi 568-571

4§137 The description in the first three lines of this Homeric passage shows a Minos who matches in appearance the image of a seated Zeus holding a scepter. As I said before, the hero Minos is not only the son of Zeus but also the underworldly surrogate of the god. Like Minos, Zeus himself is conventionally pictured as sitting on a thronos ‘throne’ (Iliad I 536, etc.), and, as the ultimate king, he is the ultimate source of authority for the holding of a skēptron ‘scepter’ (I 234) by kings who uphold themistes ‘judgments’ (I 238-239 οἵ τε θέμιστας | πρὸς Διὸς εἰρύαται). As I also said before, the plural noun themistes designates ‘judgments’ as instantiations of ‘justice’ as designated by the singular noun themis.

4§139 Plato’s wording suggests that Hippias aspires to an understanding of the cosmos that rivals that of Zeus himself. More than that, Hippias seems to rival Zeus even in his appearance – that is, he rivals the Homeric Zeus of Pheidias. Plato’s wording makes it seem as if Hippias himself were seated on the throne in the temple of Zeus in Olympia. Just as Minos the son of Zeus is {518|519} going through the motions of Zeus, so also Hippias himself is acting like Zeus. His model is not only the Zeus of Homer but also the Zeus of Pheidias.

4ⓢ9. Protagoras as a point of comparison for Pheidias and Homer

4§141 So far, I have reconstructed in the works of Plato an implicit link between Homer and Pheidias as masters of the art of picturing Zeus. But Plato himself also makes an explicit link between these two paradigms of artistry. He does it by identifying Homer and Pheidias as craftsmen – professionals who are paid to use the sophia ‘skill’ that makes them experts in whatever tekhnē ‘craft’ they practice. As professionals, Homer and Pheidias are comparable to the most successful of all professionals in the age of Pheidias – to a man who is even more successful than Pheidias himself. That man is Protagoras the sophist. In the passage that follows, I draw special attention to the relevant use of the word sophistēs ‘sophist’: {519|520}

4ⓣ29 Plato Protagoras 311a-e

Μετὰ ταῦτα ἀναστάντες εἰς τὴν αὐλὴν περιῇμεν· καὶ ἐγὼ {b} ἀποπειρώμενος τοῦ Ἱπποκράτους τῆς ῥώμης διεσκόπουν αὐτὸν καὶ ἠρώτων, Εἰπέ μοι, ἔφην ἐγώ, ὦ Ἱππόκρατες, παρὰ Πρωταγόραν νῦν ἐπιχειρεῖς ἰέναι, ἀργύριον τελῶν ἐκείνῳ μισθὸν ὑπὲρ σεαυτοῦ, ὡς παρὰ τίνα ἀφιξόμενος καὶ τίς γενησόμενος; ὥσπερ ἂν εἰ ἐπενόεις παρὰ τὸν σαυτοῦ ὁμώνυμον ἐλθὼν Ἱπποκράτη τὸν Κῷον, τὸν τῶν Ἀσκληπιαδῶν, ἀργύριον τελεῖν ὑπὲρ σαυτοῦ μισθὸν ἐκείνῳ, εἴ τίς σε ἤρετο· “Εἰπέ μοι, μέλλεις τελεῖν, ὦ Ἱππόκρατες, Ἱπποκράτει {c} μισθὸν ὡς τίνι ὄντι;” τί ἂν ἀπεκρίνω; Εἶπον ἄν, ἔφη, ὅτι ὡς ἰατρῷ. “Ὡς τίς γενησόμενος;” Ὡς ἰατρός, ἔφη. Εἰ δὲ παρὰ Πολύκλειτον τὸν Ἀργεῖον ἢ Φειδίαν τὸν ᾿Αθηναῖον ἐπενόεις ἀφικόμενος μισθὸν ὑπὲρ σαυτοῦ τελεῖν ἐκείνοις, εἴ τίς σε ἤρετο· “Τελεῖν τοῦτο τὸ ἀργύριον ὡς τίνι ὄντι ἐν νῷ ἔχεις Πολυκλείτῳ τε καὶ Φειδίᾳ;” τί ἂν ἀπεκρίνω; Εἶπον ἂν ὡς ἀγαλματοποιοῖς. “῾Ως τίς δὲ γενησόμενος αὐτός;” Δῆλον ὅτι ἀγαλματοποιός. Εἶεν, ἦν δ’ ἐγώ· {d} παρὰ δὲ δὴ Πρωταγόραν νῦν ἀφικόμενοι ἐγώ τε καὶ σὺ ἀργύριον ἐκείνῳ μισθὸν ἕτοιμοι ἐσόμεθα τελεῖν ὑπὲρ σοῦ, ἂν μὲν ἐξικνῆται τὰ ἡμέτερα χρήματα καὶ τούτοις πείθωμεν αὐτόν, εἰ δὲ μή, καὶ τὰ τῶν φίλων προσαναλίσκοντες. εἰ οὖν τις ἡμᾶς περὶ ταῦτα οὕτω σφόδρα σπουδάζοντας ἔροιτο· “Εἰπέ μοι, ὦ Σώκρατές τε καὶ Ἱππόκρατες, ὡς τίνι ὄντι τῷ Πρωταγόρᾳ ἐν νῷ ἔχετε χρήματα τελεῖν;” τί ἂν αὐτῷ {e} ἀποκριναίμεθα; τί ὄνομα ἄλλο γε λεγόμενον περὶ Πρωταγόρου ἀκούομεν; ὥσπερ περὶ Φειδίουἀγαλματοποιὸν καὶ περὶ ῾Ομήρου ποιητήν, τί τοιοῦτον περὶ Πρωταγόρου ἀκούομεν; – Σοφιστὴν δή τοι ὀνομάζουσί γε, ὦ Σώκρατες, τὸν ἄνδρα εἶναι, ἔφη. – Ὡς σοφιστῇ ἄρα ἐρχόμεθα τελοῦντες τὰ χρήματα; – Μάλιστα.

4§142 Here we see Pheidias and Homer being drawn into a single unified category: they are both professionals, like Protagoras. But the profession of Protagoras as sophistēs ‘sophist’ still needs further clarification. First, Socrates establishes that the profession of the sophistēs is a tekhnē ‘craft’. Second, in pursuit of his philosophical agenda, Socrates appeals to the prejudices of his aristocratic listeners. Such aristocrats are repelled by the professionalism of artisans while at the same time feeling attracted to the “gentlemanly” amateurism of a “liberal” education derived from these same artisans: {521|522}

4ⓣ30 Plato Protagoras 311e-312c (this passage immediately follows the passage previously quoted)

Εἰ οὖν καὶ τοῦτό τίς σε προσέροιτο· {312a} “Αὐτὸς δὲ δὴ ὡς τίς γενησόμενος ἔρχῃ παρὰ τὸν Πρωταγόραν;” Καὶ ὃς εἶπεν ἐρυθριάσας – ἤδη γὰρ ὑπέφαινέν τι ἡμέρας, ὥστε καταφανῆ αὐτὸν γενέσθαι – Εἰ μέν τι τοῖς ἔμπροσθεν ἔοικεν, δῆλον ὅτι σοφιστὴς γενησόμενος. Σὺ δέ, ἦν δ’ ἐγώ, πρὸς θεῶν, οὐκ ἂν αἰσχύνοιο εἰς τοὺς Ἕλληνας σαυτὸν σοφιστὴν παρέχων; Νὴ τὸν Δία, ὦ Σώκρατες, εἴπερ γε ἃ διανοοῦμαι χρὴ λέγειν. Ἀλλ’ ἄρα, ὦ Ἱππόκρατες, μὴ οὐ τοιαύτην ὑπολαμβάνεις σου τὴν παρὰ Πρωταγόρου {b} μάθησιν ἔσεσθαι, ἀλλ’ οἵαπερ ἡ παρὰ τοῦ γραμματιστοῦ ἐγένετο καὶ κιθαριστοῦ καὶ παιδοτρίβου; τούτων γὰρ σὺ ἑκάστην οὐκ ἐπὶ τέχνῃ ἔμαθες, ὡς δημιουργὸς ἐσόμενος, ἀλλ’ ἐπὶ παιδείᾳ, ὡς τὸν ἰδιώτην καὶ τὸν ἐλεύθερον πρέπει. Πάνυ μὲν οὖν μοι δοκεῖ, ἔφη, τοιαύτη μᾶλλον εἶναι ἡ παρὰ Πρωταγόρου μάθησις. Οἶσθα οὖν ὃ μέλλεις νῦν πράττειν, ἤ σε λανθάνει; ἦν δ’ ἐγώ. Τοῦ πέρι; Ὅτι μέλλεις τὴν ψυχὴν τὴν σαυτοῦ {c} παρασχεῖν θεραπεῦσαι ἀνδρί, ὡς φῄς, σοφιστῇ· ὅτι δέ ποτε ὁ σοφιστής ἐστιν, θαυμάζοιμ’ ἂν εἰ οἶσθα. καίτοι εἰ τοῦτ’ ἀγνοεῖς, οὐδὲ ὅτῳ παραδίδως τὴν ψυχὴν οἶσθα, οὔτ’ εἰ ἀγαθῷ οὔτ’ εἰ κακῷ πράγματι. Οἶμαί γ’, ἔφη, εἰδέναι.

4§143 Why is Protagoras, as a sophistēs ‘sophist’, such a threat to the philosophical agenda of Socrates? It is at least partly because the things he professes rival the things Socrates professes. Protagoras as a professional sophistēs professes a sophia ‘skill’ that transcends the skills of all other professionals and can best be defined in transcendent terms. To translate the sophia of Protagoras as ‘wisdom’ rather than ‘skill’ is apt. But the problem is, this model of sophia ‘wisdom’ rivals the Socratic model of sophia, which we translate also as ‘wisdom’. In terms of the Socratic model, sophia is the transcendent ‘wisdom’ of philosophia or philosophy as attained through the Socratic method. For Plato, the sophia professed by Socrates transcends all other crafts, and the philosopher rejects the professionalism of these crafts, including the craft of the sophistēs. As for the sophia professed by a sophistēs like Protagoras, it too transcends all other crafts, but Protagoras does not reject professionalism. The wealth, power, and prestige of a professional like Protagoras are all invested in the title of his profession, sophistēs, which for Protagoras designates an expert in the transcendent skill that he calls sophia. The objective of Plato’s Socrates is to discredit this transcendent sophia of the sophistēs. By historical hindsight, we may say that the negative connotations of our modern translation, ‘sophist’, are living proof of Plato’s success in achieving such an objective.

4§144 The discrediting of the sophia professed by Protagoras as sophistēs ‘sophist’ is pursued further by Socrates in the next passage I am about to quote. We are about to see Socrates undermine the usage of the word sopha (neuter plural) in the transcendent ‘sophistic’ sense of ‘things having to do {523|524} with wisdom’, showing that it really means ‘things having to do with technical skill’ when it is used by experts in a specific craft (tekhnē), that is, by craftsmen (tekhnitai) such as zōgraphoi ‘painters’, tektones ‘builders’, and kitharistai ‘kithara-players’:

4ⓣ31 Plato Protagoras 312c-e (this passage immediately follows the passage previously quoted)

Λέγε δή, τί ἡγῇ εἶναι τὸν σοφιστήν; Ἐγὼ μέν, ἦ δ’ ὅς, ὥσπερ τοὔνομα λέγει, τοῦτον εἶναι τὸν τῶν σοφῶν ἐπιστήμονα. Οὐκοῦν, ἦν δ’ ἐγώ, τοῦτο μὲν ἔξεστι λέγειν καὶ περὶ ζωγράφων καὶ περὶ τεκτόνων, ὅτι οὗτοί εἰσιν οἱ τῶν σοφῶν ἐπιστήμονες· ἀλλ’ {d} εἴ τις ἔροιτο ἡμᾶς, “Τῶν τί σοφῶν εἰσιν οἱ ζωγράφοι ἐπιστήμονες,” εἴποιμεν ἄν που αὐτῷ ὅτι τῶν πρὸς τὴν ἀπεργασίαν τὴν τῶν εἰκόνων, καὶ τἆλλα οὕτως. εἰ δέ τις ἐκεῖνο ἔροιτο, “Ὁ δὲ σοφιστὴς τῶν τί σοφῶν ἐστιν;” τί ἂν ἀποκρινοίμεθα αὐτῷ; ποίας ἐργασίας ἐπιστάτης; Τί ἂν εἴποιμεν αὐτὸν εἶναι, ὦ Σώκρατες, ἢ ἐπιστάτην τοῦ ποιῆσαι δεινὸν λέγειν; Ἴσως ἄν, ἦν δ’ ἐγώ, ἀληθῆ λέγοιμεν, οὐ μέντοι ἱκανῶς γε· ἐρωτήσεως γὰρ ἔτι ἡ ἀπόκρισις ἡμῖν δεῖται, περὶ ὅτου ὁ σοφιστὴς δεινὸν ποιεῖ λέγειν· ὥσπερ ὁ {e} κιθαριστὴς δεινὸν δήπου ποιεῖ λέγειν περὶ οὗπερ καὶ ἐπιστήμονα, περὶ κιθαρίσεως· ἦ γάρ; Ναί. Εἶεν· ὁ δὲ δὴ σοφιστὴς περὶ τίνος δεινὸν ποιεῖ λέγειν; Δῆλον ὅτι περὶ οὗπερ καὶ ἐπίστασθαι; Εἰκός γε. τί δή ἐστιν τοῦτο περὶ οὗ αὐτός τε ἐπιστήμων ἐστὶν ὁ σοφιστὴς καὶ τὸν μαθητὴν ποιεῖ; Μὰ Δί’, ἔφη, οὐκέτι ἔχω σοι λέγειν.

4§145 Plato’s Socrates is here seeking to disallow the usage of sopha (neuter plural) in the transcendent sense of ‘wisdom’ – but only to the extent that the word is used by ‘sophists’ like Protagoras. For Socrates, the word sopha is allowed to be transcendent – but only when used in the discourse of true philosophy or philosophia as he understands it. Otherwise, the word is not allowed by Socrates to extend beyond the technical sense of ‘skill’. Correspondingly, Socrates seeks to discredit the sophistēs as an expert in sopha – if the word sopha is allowed to be taken in a transcendent sense. For Socrates, the sopha of the sophist must be non-transcendent. In other words, the ‘wisdom’ of the sophist is not good enough for Socrates. For Socrates, the sophist is a professional who works for pay like other professionals, whether they be painters, builders, or kithara-players. Unlike these professionals, however, who are true craftsmen because they are at least acknowledged experts in their clearly defined crafts, the sophist is not even a true craftsman because his ‘craft’ eludes any clear definition.

4§146 But the word sophistēs ‘sophist’ as applied by a thinker like Protagoras must have been meant in a transcendent sense corresponding to what we mean by ‘wisdom’. Even Plato’s own wording in his dramatization of Protagoras bears out this point. I quote again here the passage in Plato’s Protagoras where the sophistēs himself is describing his sophistikē tekhnē, the craft of the sophistēs: {525|526}

4ⓣ32 Plato Protagoras 316d

ἐγὼ δὲ τὴν σοφιστικὴν τέχνην φημὶ μὲν εἶναι παλαιάν, τοὺς δὲ μεταχειριζομένους αὐτὴν τῶν παλαιῶν ἀνδρῶν, φοβουμένους τὸ ἐπαχθὲς αὐτῆς, πρόσχημα ποιεῖσθαι καὶ προκαλύπτεσθαι, τοὺς μὲν ποίησιν, οἷον ῞Ομηρόν τε καὶ ῾Ησίοδον καὶ Σιμωνίδην, τοὺς δὲ αὖ τελετάς τε καὶ χρησμῳδίας, τοὺς ἀμφί τε ᾿Ορφέα καὶ Μουσαῖον·

4§147 In the Hellenic world of the fifth century, the prestige of Protagoras as a sophistēs ‘sophist’ was still so dominant that he could freely describe his craft as the prototype of Homer and other classics as he knew them. According to the world view of Protagoras as recreated here by Plato, the sophistēs in the age of poets like Homer had to conceal his true profession in life, but the value of his skill was already in place, just waiting to be confirmed by the later age of Protagoras in the fifth century BCE. In the old days, a poet like Homer would have been a prototypical sophistēs in disguise. In the days of Protagoras, by contrast, the sophistēs could finally reveal himself and claim his full value as the highest-paid professional in the world.

4§148 The prestige of Protagoras as a professional is comparable to the prestige of that prototype of all professionals, Homer himself. So says Plato’s Socrates in a statement I am about to quote. What I find remarkable about this statement is the mention of Pheidias the sculptor as a second point of comparison to Homer – second only to Protagoras:

4ⓣ33 Plato Meno 91b-92b

ἢ δῆλον δὴ κατὰ τὸν ἄρτι λόγον ὅτι παρὰ τούτους τοὺς ὑπισχνουμένους ἀρετῆς διδασκάλους εἶναι καὶ ἀποφήναντας αὑτοὺς κοινοὺς τῶν Ἑλλήνων τῷ βουλομένῳ μανθάνειν, μισθὸν τούτου ταξαμένους τε καὶ πραττομένους;

ΑΝ. Καὶ τίνας λέγεις τούτους, ὦ Σώκρατες; {526|527}

ΣΩ. Οἶσθα δήπου καὶ σὺ ὅτι οὗτοί εἰσιν οὓς οἱ ἄνθρωποι καλοῦσι σοφιστάς. {c}

ΑΝ. Ἡράκλεις, εὐφήμει, ὦ Σώκρατες. μηδένα τῶν γ’ ἐμῶν μήτε οἰκείων μήτε φίλων, μήτε ἀστὸν μήτε ξένον, τοιαύτη μανία λάβοι, ὥστε παρὰ τούτους ἐλθόντα λωβηθῆναι, ἐπεὶ οὗτοί γε φανερά ἐστι λώβη τε καὶ διαφθορὰ τῶν συγγιγνομένων.

ΣΩ. Πῶς λέγεις, ὦ Ἄνυτε; οὗτοι ἄρα μόνοι τῶν ἀντιποιουμένων τι ἐπίστασθαι εὐεργετεῖν τοσοῦτον τῶν ἄλλων διαφέρουσιν, ὅσον οὐ μόνον οὐκ ὠφελοῦσιν, ὥσπερ οἱ ἄλλοι, ὅτι ἄν τις αὐτοῖς παραδῷ, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸ ἐναντίον {d} διαφθείρουσιν; καὶ τούτων φανερῶς χρήματα ἀξιοῦσι πράττεσθαι; ἐγὼ μὲν οὖν οὐκ ἔχω ὅπως σοι πιστεύσω· οἶδα γὰρ ἄνδρα ἕνα Πρωταγόραν πλείω χρήματα κτησάμενον ἀπὸ ταύτης τῆς σοφίας ἢ Φειδίαν τε, ὃς οὕτω περιφανῶς καλὰ ἔργα ἠργάζετο, καὶ ἄλλους δέκα τῶν ἀνδριαντοποιῶν. καίτοι τέρας λέγεις εἰ οἱ μὲν τὰ ὑποδήματα ἐργαζόμενοι τὰ παλαιὰ καὶ τὰ ἱμάτια ἐξακούμενοι οὐκ ἂν δύναιντο λαθεῖν τριάκονθ’ {e} ἡμέρας μοχθηρότερα ἀποδιδόντες ἢ παρέλαβον τὰ ἱμάτιά τε καὶ ὑποδήματα, ἀλλ’ εἰ τοιαῦτα ποιοῖεν, ταχὺ ἂν τῷ λιμῷ ἀποθάνοιεν, Πρωταγόρας δὲ ἄρα ὅλην τὴν Ἑλλάδα ἐλάνθανεν διαφθείρων τοὺς συγγιγνομένους καὶ μοχθηροτέρους ἀποπέμπων ἢ παρελάμβανεν πλέον ἢ τετταράκοντα ἔτη – οἶμαι γὰρ αὐτὸν ἀποθανεῖν ἐγγὺς καὶ ἑβδομήκοντα ἔτη γεγονότα, τετταράκοντα δὲ ἐν τῇ τέχνῃ ὄντα – καὶ ἐν ἅπαντι τῷ χρόνῳ τούτῳ ἔτι εἰς τὴν ἡμέραν ταυτηνὶ εὐδοκιμῶν οὐδὲν πέπαυται, καὶ οὐ μόνον Πρωταγόρας, ἀλλὰ καὶ {92 a} ἄλλοι πάμπολλοι, οἱ μὲν πρότερον γεγονότες ἐκείνου, οἱ δὲ καὶ νῦν ἔτι ὄντες. πότερον δὴ οὖν φῶμεν κατὰ τὸν σὸν λόγον εἰδότας αὐτοὺς ἐξαπατᾶν καὶ λωβᾶσθαι τοὺς νέους, ἢ λεληθέναι καὶ ἑαυτούς; καὶ οὕτω μαίνεσθαι ἀξιώσομεν τούτους, οὓς ἔνιοί φασι σοφωτάτους ἀνθρώπων εἶναι;

ΑΝ. Πολλοῦ γε δέουσι μαίνεσθαι, ὦ Σώκρατες, ἀλλὰ πολὺ μᾶλλον οἱ τούτοις διδόντες ἀργύριον τῶν νέων, τούτων {b} δ’ ἔτι μᾶλλον οἱ τούτοις ἐπιτρέποντες, οἱ προσήκοντες, πολὺ δὲ μάλιστα πάντων αἱ πόλεις, ἐῶσαι αὐτοὺς εἰσαφικνεῖσθαι καὶ οὐκ ἐξελαύνουσαι, εἴτε τις ξένος ἐπιχειρεῖ τοιοῦτόν τι ποιεῖν εἴτε ἀστός.

SOCRATES: Or is it clear, then, on the basis of what has just been said: [that we should send Meno] to these men who profess to {527|528} be teachers of virtue [aretē] and who proclaim themselves to be [teachers] common [koinoi] to all Hellenes, available to any [Hellene] who wishes to learn from them – that is, available after they set a fee for this and collect the fee?

ANYTUS: And who are these people you are talking about, Socrates?

SOCRATES: Surely you too, like others, are aware that these are the men whom people call sophists [sophist].

ANYTUS: I swear by Herakles! Watch your language, Socrates. I hereby make a solemn wish that none of my relatives or friends, nor any citizen nor even any non-citizen, should experience being seized by such dementia that they should go off to these people and get utterly ruined [lōbân], since these people are the utter ruin [lōbē] and corruption [diaphthora] of those who make contact with them.

ANYTUS: Far from it. They are not the ones who are demented. It is much more the case that those of the young who give money are demented and, even more so, those who are responsible for instructing these young people, that is, their families, and, most of all, the cities [poleis] that allow them [= people like Protagoras] to come in and don’t drive them out, whether it is a non-citizen who tries to do such a thing or a citizen.

4§149 The prominent mention of Pheidias here is most telling. Practicing his craft, he makes more money than any other professional – except for the professional sophistēs ‘sophist’ par excellence, Protagoras. Not only is the wealth of Pheidias comparable to the wealth of Protagoras. The sculptor’s sophia is also comparable. Plato’s contextualization here forces us to understand sophia here as a ‘skill’ in a given craft. We can see that Plato’s Socrates seeks to discredit Protagoras and his sophia ‘wisdom’ by attacking him for being a professional.

4§150 The idea is that professionals like Protagoras are both corrupt and corrupting precisely because they are professionals. Although Protagoras as a sophistēs ‘sophist’ is in theory a man of sophia or ‘wisdom’ par excellence, he is in real life a man of sophia ‘craft’, just like the sculptor Pheidias. From a historical point of view, it is not a question of whether these professionals {529|530} were or were not corrupt. It is enough to say that their status as professionals led to suspicions and accusations of corruption. We have already noted the anecdotes about the corruption of Pheidias as the master sculptor (Plutarch Pericles 31.2-3, Philochorus FGH 328 F 121), and there are comparable anecdotes about other prominent professionals like Simonides in his role as master poet (Aristophanes Peace 698, Callimachus F 222). Despite all the potential for suspicions and accusations, however, even Socrates is forced to acknowledge the outstanding reputation of a professionals like Protagoras and Pheidias in their own time. So the fact remains that a celebrity like Protagoras, or like Pheidias, had an overwhelmingly good reputation as a professional, and everybody knew it.

4§151 Plato’s Socrates makes the sophia ‘wisdom’ of the sophistēs equivalent to the kind of sophia ‘skill’ that comes with the mastery of any and all of the tekhnai ‘crafts’ practiced by professional artisans. The sophia ‘skill’ of these artisans ranges from the most exalted, like the skill of Pheidias the master sculptor, which is rated at the highest level of compensation, to the most humble, like the skill of a leatherworker or shoemaker, which is rated at the correspondingly lowest level of compensation. As we have just seen, Plato’s points of comparison for the professional sophistēs range all the way from sculptor to shoemaker.

4§152 The prestige of a sculptor like Pheidias, as measured by his wealth, is near-supreme. In other contexts, in fact, we have already seen that his prestige is imperial in its dimensions. It follows, then, that the even greater wealth of a sophist like Protagoras makes his prestige seem even more imperial. Here it is relevant to recall the wording of the claim about Protagoras that I have just quoted from Plato’s Meno (91b): it is said that sophists of exalted status like Protagoras are teachers who are koinoi ‘common’ to all Hellenes. Such wording evokes a direct comparison between the craft of Protagoras and the craft of a figure acknowledged as the ultimate teacher of all Hellenes. That teacher is Homer himself, in his evolving role as spokesman of the Athenian empire. As we saw earlier, this idea of an imperial Homer who is koinos ‘common’ to all Hellenes – at least, to all Hellenes in the Athenian empire and beyond – is attested in an amalgamated Life of Homer story, mediated in part through an Athenian phase of transmission, known as the Contest of Homer and Hesiod. Here I highlight again the wording used in the story to describe the reception of Homer: when Homer goes to the island of Delos to participate in a festival celebrated by all Ionians, he is acclaimed by them as the koinos politēs ‘common citizen’ of all their cities (Contest of Homer and Hesiod [Vita 2] 319-320 οἱ μὲν Ἴωνες πολίτην αὐτὸν κοινὸν ἐποιήσαντο). As we noted earlier, this designation {530|531} ideologizes Homer as the spokesman of the Delian League and, by extension, of the Athenian empire.

4§153 Returning to the argument at hand, I focus on the wording of the passage I quoted from Plato’s Meno, where Protagoras and other master sophists are acclaimed as teachers of all Hellenes (91b) by virtue of their tekhnē ‘craft’ as sophists (91d). This idea, I submit, mirrors a more basic idea: Homer himself is such a teacher – because of his own tekhnē. In the passage that I quoted earlier from Plato’s Protagoras (311e), Homer is described as a poiētēs ‘poet’: as such, he is a professional, since he is compared in his professionalism to Pheidias as an agalmatopoios ‘sculptor’ and to Protagoras as a sophistēs ‘sophist’. The professionalism of all three, as we saw in the same context, is a matter of tekhnē (312b).

4ⓢ10. The imperial craft of Homer

4§154 The tekhnē of Homer is highlighted in a most revealing passage I quoted earlier from the Panegyricus of Isocrates (159). Here the speaker is referring to the tekhnē ‘craft’ of Homeric poetry as a tradition designed for two primary applications: (1) Homeric performances by rhapsodes in athloi ‘contests’, implicitly at the Panathenaia, and (2) Homeric paideusis ‘education’ of the young. The second of these two applications of the tekhnē of Homeric poetry concerns the private education provided by the elites for their young while the first application concerns the public education provided by the Athenian state for its citizens – in the form of rhapsodic performances at the Panathenaia. The speaker adds that the art of war is the most important lesson to be learned from Homer. The public and the private functions of Homer as universal educator are indicated in other passages as well (Aristophanes Frogs 1034-1036; Plato Republic 2.376e-398b; 10.599c-d, 606e).

4§155 As we see from this passage in the Panegyricus of Isocrates (159), the tekhnē of Homer is the tekhnē of rhapsodes who perform in competition at the Panathenaia. Thus the tekhnē of Homer is continued metonymically by the rhapsōidikē tekhnē of Panathenaic performers. A case in point is Ion of Ephesus. By virtue of his skill as a specialist in Homer, he is a metonymic continuator of Homer, a teacher shared by all Hellenes. Continuing the role of Homer as universal educator, Ion the rhapsode is parallel to Protagoras the sophist, practitioner of the sophistikē tekhnē. As such a practitioner, Protagoras is a teacher who is koinos ‘common’ to all Hellenes (Plato Meno 91b).

4§157 In his effort to discredit Ion, Plato’s Socrates has in effect disconnected the prestige of Ion as the performer of Homeric poetry from the prestige of Homer as the notional composer of Homeric poetry. Thus the prestige of Homer himself is not directly challenged, just as the prestige of Homeric poetry as the premier poetic event of the Panathenaia cannot be challenged. The idea of Homer as the all-sufficient and all-encompassing poet is a given. It is already a historical reality. Even in the works of Plato, as we saw, Homer is recognized as the master teacher of all Hellenes (Plato Republic 2.376e-398b; 10.599c-d, 606e).

4§158 As I also argued in Chapter 3, the dominant status of Homeric poetry is not the only historical reality relevant to the argument in Plato’s Ion. Another reality is the dominant status of the rhapsōidikē tekhnē ‘rhapsodic craft’ of performing – and interpreting – Homeric poetry at the Panathenaia. Plato’s Socrates makes it look like a deficiency that Ion the rhapsode performs – {532|533} and interprets – only Homer. Historically, however, the Homeric specialization of Ion is a clear indication of the dominant prestige of performing and interpreting Homer.

4ⓢ11. Dangerous thoughts about the craft of Homer

4§159 So the prestige of the craft represented by Ion the rhapsode is imperial in scope, as is the prestige of the crafts represented by Pheidias the sculptor and Protagoras the sophist. Such prestige can be undermined, however, by juxtaposing the crafts of rhapsodes, sculptors, and sophists with the craft of, say, a shoemaker. Whereas a sophistēs ‘sophist’ like Protagoras is an artisan of the highest imaginable status, the low social status of professional artisans like shoemakers is enough to make an aristocrat like Hippocrates blush at the very idea of becoming a professional sophistēs, as we saw in the passage I quoted earlier from Plato’s Protagoras (312a). Here is where the difference between a sophistēs like Protagoras and a sophistēs like Hippias is most telling. Whereas Protagoras considers his craft of sophistēs transcendent and even mystical by comparison with the practical crafts of artisans, Hippias demystifies his craft of sophistēs by engaging directly in all other crafts. In Plato’s catalogue of skills mastered by Hippias, as I quoted it in Chapter 3, Hippias is an expert not only in the sublime crafts, such as poetry (Hippias Minor 368c-d). He is also an expert in the everyday crafts: pointedly, Hippias says he is is a master of leatherwork – skutotomeîn – in his own right, having hand-made his own shoes (368c). For Plato’s Socrates, either way of thinking about the craft of the sophistēs – the way of Protagoras or the way of Hippias – is dangerous. And, as we are about to see, both ways of thinking can be applied to the craft of Homer as well.

4§160 We already saw in another Platonic passage that the husteroi or ‘later’ thinkers who are experts in supposedly later poets like Homer – rather than earlier poets like Orpheus – tended to demystify the secrets of mysteries, so that even leatherworkers – skutotomoi – may understand these secrets (Plato Theaetetus 180d), to be contrasted with palaioteroi or ‘earlier’ thinkers specializing in supposedly earlier poets like Orpheus, whose mysteries continued to mystify the outsiders (Plato Theaetetus 179e-180d). A most valuable independent confirmation comes from Xenophon’s Memorabilia (4.4.5), where Hippias of Elis is represented as debating with Socrates about the possibilities of teaching even the skuteus ‘leatherworker’ and other specialists (εἰ μέν τις βούλοιτο σκυτέα διδάξασθαί τινα ἢ τέκτονα ἢ χαλκέα ἢ ἱππέα …).

4§161 Here I focus again on Hippias of Elis. In particular, I focus on his role as a practical sophistēs ‘sophist’. Hippias makes a point of mastering each tekhnē {533|534} ‘craft’ – not just transcending them all like Protagoras. With this focal point in mind, I quote again the relevant passage that I quoted already in Chapter 3. There I described this passage, taken from the Hippias Minor (368a-e), as Plato’s catalogue of tekhnai ‘crafts’ mastered by Hippias. Here I draw special attention to Plato’s usage of the words sophos and sophia. We have just seen Plato use these words in the transcendent sense of ‘wise’ and ‘wisdom’, which he associates with Protagoras as a mystical sophistēs ‘sophist’. This time, I note Plato’s usage of these same words sophos and sophia in the practical sense of ‘skilled’ and ‘skill’, which he associates with Hippias as a practical sophistēs ‘sophist’:

4ⓣ34 Plato Hippias Minor 368a-e

ΣΩ. Ἴθι δή, ὦ Ἱππία, ἀνέδην οὑτωσὶ ἐπίσκεψαι κατὰ {b} πασῶν τῶν ἐπιστημῶν, εἴ που ἔστιν ἄλλως ἔχον ἢ οὕτως. πάντως δὲ πλείστας τέχνας πάντων σοφώτατος εἶ ἀνθρώπων, ὡς ἐγώ ποτέ σου ἤκουον μεγαλαυχουμένου, πολλὴν σοφίαν καὶ ζηλωτὴν σαυτοῦ διεξιόντος ἐν ἀγορᾷ ἐπὶ ταῖς τραπέζαις. ἔφησθα δὲ ἀφικέσθαι ποτὲ εἰς Ὀλυμπίαν ἃ εἶχες περὶ τὸ σῶμα ἅπαντα σαυτοῦ ἔργα ἔχων· πρῶτον μὲν δακτύλιον – ἐντεῦθεν γὰρ ἤρχου – ὃν εἶχες σαυτοῦ ἔχειν {c} ἔργον, ὡς ἐπιστάμενος δακτυλίους γλύφειν, καὶ ἄλλην σφραγῖδα σὸν ἔργον, καὶ στλεγγίδα καὶ λήκυθον ἃ αὐτὸς ἠργάσω· ἔπειτα ὑποδήματα ἃ εἶχες ἔφησθα αὐτὸς σκυτοτομῆσαι, καὶ τὸ ἱμάτιον ὑφῆναι καὶ τὸν χιτωνίσκον· καὶ ὅ γε πᾶσιν ἔδοξεν ἀτοπώτατον καὶ σοφίας πλείστης ἐπίδειγμα, ἐπειδὴ τὴν ζώνην ἔφησθα τοῦ χιτωνίσκου, ἣν εἶχες, εἶναι μὲν οἷαι αἱ Περσικαὶ τῶν πολυτελῶν, ταύτην δὲ αὐτὸς πλέξαι· πρὸς δὲ τούτοις ποιήματα ἔχων ἐλθεῖν, καὶ ἔπη καὶ τραγῳδίας {d} καὶ διθυράμβους, καὶ καταλογάδην πολλοὺς λόγους καὶ παντοδαποὺς συγκειμένους· καὶ περὶ τῶν τεχνῶν δὴ ὧν ἄρτι ἐγὼ ἔλεγον ἐπιστήμων ἀφικέσθαι διαφερόντως τῶν ἄλλων, καὶ περὶ ῥυθμῶν καὶ ἁρμονιῶν καὶ γραμμάτων ὀρθότητος, καὶ ἄλλα ἔτι πρὸς τούτοις πάνυ πολλά, ὡς ἐγὼ δοκῶ μνημονεύειν· καίτοι τό γε μνημονικὸν ἐπελαθόμην σου, ὡς ἔοικε, τέχνημα, ἐν ᾧ σὺ οἴει λαμπρότατος εἶναι· οἶμαι δὲ καὶ {e} ἄλλα πάμπολλα ἐπιλελῆσθαι. ἀλλ’ ὅπερ ἐγὼ λέγω, καὶ εἰς τὰς σαυτοῦ τέχνας βλέψας – ἱκαναὶ δέ – καὶ εἰς τὰς τῶν ἄλλων εἰπέ μοι, ἐάν που εὕρῃς ἐκ τῶν ὡμολογημένων ἐμοί τε καὶ σοί, ὅπου ἐστὶν ὁ μὲν ἀληθής, ὁ δὲ ψευδής, χωρὶς καὶ οὐχ ὁ αὐτός; ἐν ᾗτινι βούλει σοφίᾳ τοῦτο σκέψαι ἢ πανουργίᾳ {369a} ἢ ὁτιοῦν χαίρεις ὀνομάζων· ἀλλ’ οὐχ εὑρήσεις, ὦ ἑταῖρε – οὐ γὰρ ἔστιν – ἐπεὶ σὺ εἰπέ. {534|535}

4§162 Not only does Hippias master each tekhnē ‘craft’ that is being catalogued here. For him such mastery is a matter of being sophos in the sense of ‘skilled’ and having sophia in the sense of ‘skill’. Plato’s Socrates ridicules this connectedness with the practical aspect of arts as crafts when he playfully uses the word panourgia with reference to the sophia of Hippias. This word panourgia is derived from the concept of ‘the capacity to do any kind of work [ergon]’. In terms of this derivation, the word would be appropriate to Hippias. But in actual usage, panourgia had developed the morally negative sense of ‘the capacity to commit any kind of deed’. Thus Hippias is being implicitly ridiculed as a jack of all trades who supposedly compromises his morals because of his willingness to do just about anything for money. It is the professionalism of Hippias that renders him morally suspect for Plato’s Socrates.

4§163 Even the setting that Plato chooses for the use of this word panourgia is suggestive. Plato’s catalogue of the skills claimed by Hippias is nested in the context of Socratic memories of a most memorable visit by Hippias to Athens. Hippias was speaking in a public space, in the agora of Athens (368b); Socrates was there and heard him speak, and he says that Hippias was telling about an earlier time when he was speaking in a sacred space, in the hieron ‘sacred precinct’ of Zeus in Olympia (363c-d, 364a). As I noted earlier, the impression given by Plato is that the performance of Hippias in the agora of Athens was a “replay” of the performance of Hippias in the sacred precinct of Zeus in Olympia. In Athens, as the phrasing of Socrates pointedly makes clear, Hippias is performing in a public space where the trapezai are located, that is, the tables of the money-changers. The venue of Hippias oscillates between the most sacral and the most blatantly commercial {536|537} settings. In both settings, the primary visual attraction is the ring that Hippias wears on his finger: ‘you started with that’, says Socrates (368b). That ring is the first thing Hippias says he talked about in the sacred precinct of Zeus in Olympia and again in the “replay,” in the agora of Athens, near the tables of the money-changers. That ring is the first thing that catches the Socratic eye, sparking dangerous thoughts of those all-attractive First Rings magnetically drawing performers and audiences closer and closer to the ultimate beauty of Homeric poetry in Plato’s Ion (536b).

4§164 Beyond the cultural context of Plato’s own world, such dangerous thoughts of magnetic beauty evoke for me personally the image of the enchanted diamond ring of Dapertutto in Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffmann:

4ⓢ12. Sophists, sculptors, and rhapsodes as imperial craftsmen

4§166 Having considered the theme of the daktulios ‘ring’ as a link between Plato’s Hippias Minor and his Ion, I proceed to explore another theme that links these two Platonic dialogues. This theme concerns the craft of the rhapsode, the rhapsōidikē tekhnē, which is explicit in the Ion but only implicit in the Hippias Minor. In Chapter 3, I have already examined what is implied in the Hippias Minor when Socrates enumerates the many skills mastered by Hippias the sophist. In the enumeration of these skills, the climax is reached with the skill of performing and interpreting poetry in general and Homeric poetry in particular. This skill is evidently derived from the tekhnē ‘craft’ of performing and interpreting Homeric poetry as it evolved in the context of rhapsodic competitions at the festival of the Panathenaia. And yet, the tekhnē professed by Hippias in practicing this skill is not rhapsōidikē but sophistikē.

4§167 Although I have already elaborated on this point in Chapter 3, I need to return to it here in order to stress the link between the sophist’s expertise in using the Homeric art of rhapsodes and his expertise in using another art, the art of the master sculptor Pheidias. As I have argued here in Chapter 4, the craft of sculpting as represented by Pheidias is another most highly valued skill to be used by Hippias, rivaling in value the rhapsodic craft {538|539} of Homeric poetry. Besides his celebrated dialogues about Homer, Hippias produced comparable dialogues about painting and sculpting. I quote again the wording of Philostratus: ‘he [Hippias] performed dialogues also about painting [zōgraphia] and sculpture [agalmatopoiia]’ (Lives of Sophists 1.11.2 διελέγετο δὲ καὶ περὶ ζωγραφίας καὶ περὶ ἀγαλματοποιίας). The specially high value of Pheidian sculpture for Hippias is reflected in the Platonic Hippias Maior, which as we saw shows the sophist in the act of equating the statue of Athena Parthenos by Pheidias with the absolute Form of absolute beauty – with the idea of a perfect artistic totality.

4§168 The art of Pheidias has a value that is absolute for Hippias in the Platonic Hippias Maior because it mediates another art that has absolute value for him, the art of Homer. The colossal sculpture of Pheidias the Athenian craftsman, which is featured as the centerpiece of the sacred precinct of Zeus in Olympia, adds a decisively Homeric touch to the performances there by Hippias, the Elean craftsman of all craftsmen. The absolutism of what I have just called the Homeric touch is best conveyed by two crafts that are rivaled by the craft of Hippias the sophist: they are the imperial craft of a sculptor like Pheidias of Athens and the imperial craft of a rhapsode like Ion of Ephesus.

4§169 For the first time, I have described the rhapsōidikē tekhnē or ‘rhapsodic craft’ of Ion of Ephesus as an imperial craft. To justify this description, I start by observing that the term imperial, as I have been using it to describe the craft of Pheidias the sculptor, applies even more to the craft of Ion the rhapsode. An ideal point of comparison for these two traditional crafts is a rival new craft, the sophistikē tekhnē or ‘sophistic craft’ of sophists like Protagoras of Abdera and Hippias of Elis. As we saw, these two sophists typify two different visualizations of their craft: whereas the craft of Protagoras is transcendent, the craft of Hippias is practical. Here I will concentrate, however, on what these visualizations have in common. I will argue that the craft of Protagoras and Hippias as sophists is comparable to the craft of Pheidias as sculptor – and to the craft of Ion as rhapsode.

4§170 In the case of Protagoras, I need to turn back to a passage I already quoted from Plato’s Meno, where the prestige of Protagoras as sophist is being directly compared to the prestige of Pheidias as an imperial craftsman. As we will see, this comparison involves also the prestige of Homer. As we will also see, the prestige of Homer drives the prestige of Ion the rhapsode as an imperial craftsman in his own right.

4§171 In Plato’s comparison of Protagoras and Pheidias, the relative prestige of all craftsmen is being measured in terms of the amount of wealth they have amassed, and only the prodigious wealth of the imperial craftsman {539|540} Pheidias is said to be worthy of comparison to the supreme amount credited to Protagoras (Plato Meno 91d). The prestige of Protagoras in Plato’s Meno is also being compared, albeit indirectly, with the prestige of Homer. The claim of Protagoras is that sophists of his status are teachers who are koinoi ‘common’ to all Hellenes (Plato Meno 91b). This status evokes a comparison between the craft of Protagoras and the craft of a figure acknowledged as the ultimate teacher of all Hellenes. That teacher is Homer himself, in his evolving role as spokesman of the Athenian empire.

4§172 I had started this phase of the argumentation by saying that the craft of Protagoras and Hippias as sophists is comparable to the craft of Pheidias as sculptor – and to the craft of Ion as rhapsode. In the case of Hippias, I should add, his actual performances of Homer in Olympia are directly comparable to the performances of Homer by the rhapsode Ion in Athens. The Homeric art of Pheidias the sculptor enhances metonymically the setting for the performances of Homer by Hippias in Olympia, conferring on these performances an imperial aura. The metonymy of such enhancement is what I have been calling the Homeric touch.

4ⓢ13. Making an imperial space for performing Homer in Athens

4§ Now we are about to see that the rhapsodic performances of Homer at the Panathenaia in Athens are likewise marked by an imperial aura, and again it is the Homeric art of Pheidias that confers this aura.

4§174 Here I return to Plutarch’s Pericles. In that work, we saw the idea of a perfect artistic totality, that is, the colossal statue of Athena by Pheidias, extended metonymically into an overall idea, that is, the entire building program of Pericles. Now we are about to see that this metonymic extension – from the singularity of the colossal statue to the totality of the buildings all told – involves not only the highlights of the magnificent Athenian building program of Pericles but also some of the major Athenian institutions enhanced by this program. I draw special attention to the details about the building of the new Odeum, which are relevant to the details about the organization of an agōn ‘competition’ at the Panathenaia in the context of the new Odeum as the setting for this competition:

4ⓣ36 Plutarch Pericles 13.6-15 (abridged)

Πάντα δὲ διεῖπε καὶ πάντων ἐπίσκοπος ἦν αὐτῷ Φειδίας, καίτοι {540|541} μεγάλους ἀρχιτέκτονας ἐχόντων καὶ τεχνίτας {7} τῶν ἔργων. τὸν μὲν γὰρ ἑκατόμπεδον Παρθενῶνα Καλλικράτης εἰργάζετο καὶ Ἰκτῖνος, τὸ δ’ ἐν Ἐλευσῖνι Τελεστήριον ἤρξατο μὲν Κόροιβος οἰκοδομεῖν, καὶ τοὺς ἐπ’ ἐδάφους κίονας ἔθηκεν οὗτος καὶ τοῖς ἐπιστυλίοις ἐπέζευξεν· ἀποθανόντος δὲ τούτου Μεταγένης ὁ Ξυπεταιὼν τὸ διάζωσμα καὶ τοὺς ἄνω κίονας ἐπέστησε, τὸ δ’ ὀπαῖον ἐπὶ τοῦ ἀνακτόρου Ξενοκλῆς ὁ Χολαργεὺς ἐκορύφωσε· τὸ δὲ μακρὸν τεῖχος, περὶ οὗ Σωκράτης ἀκοῦσαί φησιν αὐτὸς εἰσηγουμένου γνώμην Περικλέους, {8} ἠργολάβησε Καλλικράτης. … {9} τὸ δ’ ᾿Ωιδεῖον, τῇ μὲν ἐντὸς διαθέσει πολύεδρον καὶ πολύστυλον, τῇ δ’ ἐρέψει περικλινὲς καὶ κάταντες ἐκ μιᾶς κορυφῆς πεποιημένον, εἰκόνα λέγουσι γενέσθαι καὶ μίμημα τῆς βασιλέως σκηνῆς, ἐπιστατοῦντος καὶ τούτῳ {10} Περικλέους. διὸ καὶ πάλιν Κρατῖνος ἐν Θρᾴτταις παίζει πρὸς αὐτόν·

{11} φιλοτιμούμενος δ’ ὁ Περικλῆς τότε πρῶτον ἐψηφίσατο μουσικῆς ἀγῶνα τοῖς Παναθηναίοις ἄγεσθαι, καὶ διέταξεν αὐτὸς ἀθλοθέτης αἱρεθείς, καθότι χρὴ τοὺς ἀγωνιζομένους αὐλεῖν ἢ ᾄδειν ἢ κιθαρίζειν. ἐθεῶντο δὲ καὶ τότε καὶ τὸν ἄλλον χρόνον ἐν ᾿Ωιδείῳ τοὺς μουσικοὺς ἀγῶνας. Τὰ δὲ Προπύλαια τῆς ἀκροπόλεως ἐξειργάσθη μὲν ἐν πενταετίᾳ Μνησικλέους ἀρχιτεκτονοῦντος, τύχη δὲ θαυμαστὴ συμβᾶσα περὶ τὴν οἰκοδομίαν ἐμήνυσε τὴν θεὸν οὐκ ἀποστατοῦσαν, ἀλλὰ συνεφαπτομένην τοῦ ἔργου καὶ {13} συνεπιτελοῦσαν. … {14} Ὁ δὲ Φειδίας εἰργάζετο μὲν τῆς θεοῦ τὸ χρυσοῦν ἕδος, καὶ τούτου δημιουργὸς ἐν τῇ στήλῃ [εἶναι] γέγραπται· πάντα δ’ ἦν σχεδὸν ἐπ’ αὐτῷ, καὶ πᾶσιν ὡς εἰρήκαμεν {15} ἐπεστάτει τοῖς τεχνίταις διὰ φιλίαν Περικλέους. καὶ τοῦτο τῷ μὲν φθόνον, τῷ δὲ βλασφημίαν ἤνεγκεν, ὡς …

4§176 As we saw in Chapter 3, the festival of the Panathenaia was the occasion for ‘musical’ competitions, that is, competitions in the craft of mousikē, subdivided into separate events featuring rhapsōidoi ‘rhapsodes’, of kitharōidoi ‘citharodes’ (= kithara-singers), of aulōidoi ‘aulodes’ (= aulos-singers), of kitharistai ‘citharists’ (= kithara-players), and of aulētai ‘auletes’ (aulos-players). As I argued on the basis of references dated to the age of Plato, the premier event among these Panathenaic ‘musical’ competitions was an agōn ‘competition’ among rhapsodes who competed with each other in performing the Iliad and the Odyssey in their entirety. In Chapter 3, I connected the exclusivity of Ion’s Homeric repertoire to the wording at the beginning of Plato’s Ion, which makes it clear that Ion the rhapsode was set to perform Homeric poetry in the agōn ‘competition’ of mousikē at the Panathenaia (Ion 530a-b). With this review of the basic facts as a background, I return to the passage I just quoted from Plutarch’s Pericles. The first time I had quoted this passage, I emphasized the initiative undertaken by the statesman Pericles in reshaping the premier sacred space of Athens, the acropolis, by way of instituting a new building program showcased by the sculpture of Pheidias as the master craftsman of Athens. Now I emphasize the fact that there was a parallel initiative undertaken by Pericles. It was the reshaping of the premier festival of Athens, the Panathenaia, by way of reforming the program of ‘musical’ competitions showcasing the poetry of Homer as master craftsman of all Hellas. {544|545}

4§177 So we have here a most precious piece of evidence about the Athenian standard of performing the Panathenaic Homer as it existed before the age of Plato, in the age of Pericles – which is seen as coextensive with the age of Pheidias. Further, this piece of evidence indicates that the Panathenaic version of Homer achieved its standard form as a result of the reforms instituted by Pericles concerning the ‘musical’ competitions at the festival of the Panathenaia. Even further, these Panathenaic reforms are connected with the building program of Pericles and, by extension, of Pheidias. In this metonymic sense, even the Panathenaic Homer can be seen as part of the building program of Pericles and Pheidias, in that the building of the Odeum is coextensive with the Panathenaic agōn ‘competition’ that included Homeric performances by rhapsodes.

4§179 The macrocosm of the Odeum is metonymically – and comically – evoked by the microcosm sitting on top of the head of Pericles. On top of his comically pointy head is a perfect fit, which is a pointy ‘hat’. That pointy ‘hat’ is the magnificent Odeum, culiminating in its magnificent peak. As the most public of all public figures in Athens, Pericles the monumental statesman is wearing his ‘hat’ as the primary organizer of the Panathenaia, primarily featuring the Panathenaic performances of Homer. Pheidias the monumental sculptor is the secondary organizer, as the metonymic ‘hatmaker’ of the ultimate venue for the monumental performances of Homeric poetry. {545|546}

4§180 So Pheidias was the notional architect of the setting for Homeric performance at the festival of the Panathenaia. And just as Pheidias was the craftsman primarily responsible for the setting of such performance, Homer was the craftsman primarily responsible for the performance itself.

4ⓢ14. Pheidias and the Peplos of Athena

4§181 So the prestige of Athens and of its premier festival, the Panathenaia, was linked to the prestige of two premier crafts in the age of Pheidias. These crafts were (1) the making of statues by Pheidias himself and (2) the making of poetry by Homer. The prestige of these two crafts was defined by an absolute standard, which was the work of Athena herself as the goddess of all crafts. For Athenians in the age of Pheidias, Athena was the goddess of all work in all crafts. All crafts were notionally derived from her work. As we will see, the work of Athena was primarily visualized as the weaving of her sacred peplos or ‘robe’, and the primary occasion for this weaving was the festival of the Panathenaia in Athens. In this section, I will show how the Panathenaic craft of weaving the peplos of Athena was linked to the craft of Pheidias. Then, in the next section, I will show how this same Panathenaic craft was linked to the craft of Homer.

4§182 Most relevant to the link between the work of Athena and the work of Pheidias is a story in the passage I quoted from Plutarch’s Pericles (13.13). This story, as we have seen, shows how the work done by the goddess Athena was imagined as the ultimate model for all craftsmen working on the building program directed by Pericles and supervised by Pheidias. According to the story, Athena showed her involvement in the overall program by miraculously ‘lending a hand’ (sun-haptesthai) in the building of the Propylaea, thus ‘keeping in touch’ (-haptesthai) with the craftsmen in their work and making it possible to bring this work to its completion (sun-epi-teleîn). The overall building program of Pericles, as we have also seen, featured as its highest achievement the making of the statue of Athena by Pheidias. There is a synergism linking the work of Athena with the work of the master craftsman Pheidias, standing in for all the craftsmen he supervised.

4§183 Viewed of and by itself, the work done by Athena was represented by the peplos she wears when she is not at war – a peplos she made with her own hands. As we will see in what immediately follows, the metaphorical world of making this peplos was a frame of reference for visualizing the work of Pheidias as a sculptor. And, as we will see at a later point, it was also a frame of reference for visualizing the work of Homer as a poet. {546|547}

4§184 I have already quoted the Homeric passage referring to the peplos made by Athena and worn by her when she is not engaged in warfare. In quoting this passage the last time, however, I highlighted not the peplos of the goddess but rather the khiton of Zeus that is worn by his daughter when she goes to war. This time, I highlight the peplos:

4ⓣ37 Iliad V 733-747

4§185 At the moment when the goddess begins arming herself for war, she is shown literally slipping out of her peplos, which she is said to have woven with her own hands. The ostentatious reference here to the idea that Athena wove her own peplos with her own divine hands is full of ritual significance. No human handiwork can match the divine handiwork of the goddess. This mentality is comparable to the Greek Christian Orthodox concept of ἀχειροποίητος ‘not-made-by-hand’. This word applies to sacred objects of veneration that are believed to be heaven-sent, not made by human hands. The difference is, the goddess Athena was explicitly visualized as setting the absolute standard herself by weaving her own peplos with her own divine hands.

4§186 A word vitally relevant to the work of Athena is poikilos, an epithet describing the peplos made by the goddess in the passage I just quoted from Iliad V 735. I interpret this epithet as ‘pattern-woven’ for reasons I will explain as my argumentation proceeds.

4§188 This complementarity of the peplos and the khiton worn by Athena from one moment to the next is matched by the complementarity of the two primary statues of Athena on the acropolis of Athens in the age of Pheidias. On the one hand, there is the archaic Athena Polias. She is housed in the old temple of the goddess. On the other hand, there is the classical Athena Parthenos sculpted by Pheidias. She is housed in her new temple, that is, in the Parthenon. As we have already seen from the eyewitness description of Pausanias, the statue of Athena Parthenos wears not a peplos but a khiton, and this khiton is sculpted into the statue. It does not follow, however, that Athena should wear a peplos that is likewise sculpted into her own statue. As we are about to see, the peplos to be worn by Athena was not sculpted but woven for her.

4§190 Here I concentrate on the city of Athens and the Athenian ritual of weaving a peplos for Athena, to be presented to the goddess on the occasion of the Panathenaic Procession. From here on, I will distinguish this Panathenaic peplos from other peploi by treating it as a proper noun, Peplos.

4§194 How are we to visualize the woven Peplos that was presented to Athena Polias at the ritual climax of the Panathenaic Procession? The following description is most telling:

4ⓣ38 Scholia for Aristophanes Birds 827

Τῇ Ἀθηνᾷ πολιάδι οὔσῃ πέπλος ἐγίνετο παμποίκιλος, ὃν ἀνέφερον ἐν τῇ
πομπῇ τῶν Παναθηναίων.

For Athena in the aspect of Polias there was a peplos made. It was completely pattern-woven [pan-poikilos]. And it was ritually carried and presented to her in the procession [pompē] of the Panathenaia.

4§197 As I said earlier, the peplos that Athena takes off in Iliad V connects her to her feminine identity as a weaver, while the khiton she puts on for war connects her to her masculine identity as a warrior. But there is more to it. As we are about to see, the identity of Athena as a weaver of the peplos is not only feminine. It is also masculine.

4§198 Just as weaving was not an exclusively female activity, the identity of Athena as a prototypical weaver was not an exclusively feminine identity. As we will see, Athena was a prototypical weaver for professional male weavers, not only for non-professional female weavers.

4§200 The poikiltai are central to my argument not only because their art as ‘pattern-weavers’ was linked to the art of sculptors in the age of Pheidias. There is an even more important reason for their centrality, which has to do with an all-important ritual in the calendar of the Athenian state – a ritual I highlighted at the start of this argumentation. That ritual is the pattern-weaving of the Peplos of the goddess Athena in her older aspect as Athena Polias, to be contrasted with her newer aspect as Athena Parthenos. As we saw a moment ago, this Peplos was presented to Athena Polias on the occasion of the Panathenaia. As we also saw, this Peplos was pan-poikilos ‘completely pattern-woven’.

4ⓣ39 Plato Euthyphro 6b-c (Socrates is speaking to Euthyphro)

Καὶ πόλεμον ἆρα ἡγῇ σὺ εἶναι τῷ ὄντι ἐν τοῖς θεοῖς πρὸς ἀλλήλους, καὶ ἔχθρας γε δεινὰς καὶ μάχας καὶ ἄλλα τοιαῦτα πολλά, οἷα λέγεταί τε ὑπὸ τῶν ποιητῶν, καὶ ὑπὸ τῶν {c} ἀγαθῶν γραφέων τά τε ἄλλα ἱερὰ ἡμῖν καταπεποίκιλται, καὶ δὴ καὶ τοῖς μεγάλοις Παναθηναίοις ὁ πέπλος μεστὸς τῶν τοιούτων ποικιλμάτων ἀνάγεται εἰς τὴν ἀκρόπολιν; ταῦτα ἀληθῆ φῶμεν εἶναι, ὦ Εὐθύφρων; {553|554}

So do you think that there was really a war among the gods with each other, and that there were terrible hostilities and battles and many other such things as are narrated by poets – sacred things that have been patterned [kata-poikillein] for us by noble masters of visual arts [= grapheus plural], in particular the Peplos at the Great [= quadrennial] Panathenaia, which is paraded up to the acropolis, and which is full of such pattern-weavings [ poikilmata]? Shall we say that these things are true?

4§204 As we also see from Plato’s wording, the more general way of narrating the Gigantomachy was to make use of secondary forms of visual arts – secondary, that is, in comparison to the notionally primary form, which was pattern-weaving. In the same passage I just quoted, the verb poikillein (in a compounded form, kata-poikillein) is used also in the general sense of ‘make a patterned picture’, and the subject of the verb here is grapheus (in the plural, grapheis), to be interpreted in the general sense of ‘master of the visual arts’, not in the specific sense of ‘painter’ (as in Plato Phaedo 110b). There is a relevant {554|555} attestation of (en-)graphein referring to the weaving of patterns into the fabric (scholia for Aristophanes Knights 556). The basic idea of graphein (verb) / graphē (noun) is to fill in a preexisting outline.

4ⓢ15. The Peplos of Athena and the sculptures of the Parthenon

4§211 What is narrated by the Peplos of Athena is linked with what is narrated by the various sculptures of the Parthenon. I start with the pièce de résistance, the statue of Athena Parthenos sculpted by Pheidias. Here I need to adjust an observation I made earlier about the passage where Pausanias gives his own eyewitness description of this statue (1.24.5-7). I observed that the Peplos of Athena is missing in the description, since Athena Parthenos is said to be wearing a khiton, not a peplos. But now we will see that the Peplos of Athena was not really missing in the sculptural ensemble of the Athena Parthenos viewed overall.

4§212 Let us take a second look at the armor of the goddess. I said earlier that the male exterior of the goddess is highlighted by her armor. But there is more to it. The female interior of the goddess is likewise highlighted by her armor – specifically, by the interior of her shield. Athena has her shield by her side. The Shield of Athena, like the goddess herself, was made by Pheidias, and the interior of this Shield had something essential to say about the Peplos of Athena. {557|558}

4§215 The exterior narrative of the Shield, about the Amazonomachy, celebrates the dominance of male over female, which corresponds to the dominance of Athena’s male exterior over her female interior. As for the interior narrative, it celebrates the dominance of the Olympian over the earthbound or “chthonic,” which corresponds to the dominance of Athena’s affinities with the Olympians gods over her affinities with the goddess Earth. Besides the mythological text, as it were, of these two narratives, there was also a political subtext: narratives that were worked into the Shield evoked indirectly the prestige of Pericles and even of Pheidias himself (Pericles 31.3-4). Here I concentrate not on that subtext, nor on the narrative of the Amazonomachy, but rather on the myth of the Gigantomachy.

4§216 This myth, as we see from a vase painting I showed already in Chapter 1, narrates the establishment of cosmic order after the defeat of the giants by the gods. I start by showing once more a picture of this vase painting, with its remarkable panorama of the Gigantomachy. The painting has been explained as a copy, as it were, of the masterpiece of metalwork situated inside the concave interior surface of the gigantic Shield of Athena Parthenos in the Parthenon of Athens (Figure 13, as Figure 7 above, Chapter 1).

Figure 13 (as Figure 7 above, Chapter 1). Gigantomachy krater by the Pronomos Painter.

4§218 Besides the Shield of Athena made by Pheidias, there is another most telling link with the Peplos of Athena in the Parthenon. If we imagine ourselves standing in the interior of the temple, we see porch colonnades featuring not the expected metopes but instead a continuous frieze of relief sculpture extending along the entire length of the outer walls of the cella. {559|560} What we are seeing is the Panathenaic Frieze, a visual representation of the Panathenaic Procession sculpted into the interior of the Parthenon under the supervision of Pheidias.

4§219 In my earlier work, I offered this general observation about the Frieze:

Figure 14. Relief sculpture: presentation of the peplos of Athena. Slab 5, East Frieze of the Parthenon, Athens. British Museum, Elgin Collection.

4§222 The positioning of this ritual moment as sculpted into the Parthenon Frieze is comparable to the narrative of the Gigantomachy as metalworked into the concave interior of the Shield of Athena:

It is at this point of convergence in the narrative of the Panathenaic Frieze that the presentation of the Peplos takes place.

4§223 By now we have seen two links to the Peplos of Athena in the sculptures of the Parthenon. In one case, the pictorial narrative that is sculpted into the Panathenaic Frieze on the interior of the Parthenon refers to the form of the woven Peplos. In the other case, the pictorial narrative that is metalworked into the interior of the Shield of Athena is a myth that matches the pictorial narrative that is woven into the Peplos of Athena, that is, the myth of the Gigantomachy.

Figure 15. Attic red-figure calyx krater: the Birth of Pandora. Attributed to the Niobid Painter, ca. 475-425 BCE. London, British Museum, GR 1856.12-13.1 (Vase E 467).

Figure 16. Attic red-figure cup: the Creation of Pandora. Attributed to the Tarquinia Painter, ca. 475-425 B. C. London, British Museum, 1885.1-28.1.

4§230 Earlier, I argued for a link between the work of Athena, who practices the craft of weaving her own peplos, and the work of Hephaistos, who practices the craft of metalwork in bronze. On the basis of the additional details we have seen since then concerning the myth of Pandora, I now also argue for a link between the work of the weavers who produced the Peplos of Athena and the work of the metalworkers who produced artifacts made of bronze in the sacred space of Athena. The fact that Athena presides over the craft of weaving the Peplos in conjunction with the craft of bronze metalwork is relevant to the fact that the relief work of the Pandora Frieze, which shows Pandora being dressed in a prototypical peplos given to her by Athena, {566|567} is an artifact of metalwork in bronze. It is also relevant to the fact that the metalworker who sculpted the narrative about Pandora and her peplos was none other than Pheidias himself, who also metalworked the narrative of the Gigantomachy into the concave interior of the Shield of Athena – matching the narrative of the Gigantomachy woven into the Peplos of Athena.

4§231 By now we have seen four links to the Peplos of Athena in the sculptures of the Parthenon. Taken together, all four show that the Peplos was relevant to Athena Parthenos, the occupant of the Parthenon, not only to Athena Polias, who was the official recipient of the Peplos by virtue of being the occupant of the older temple of the goddess on the acropolis. Moreover, these links show that the making of the Peplos of Athena influenced the making of the sculptures of the Parthenon itself.

4§232 Here I stop to note a basic difference. The metalwork of the Gigantomachy on the concave interior of the Shield of Athena, as performed by Pheidas, was of course a singular historic event. To be contrasted is the weaving of the Gigantomachy, which was a seasonally recurring event. There was the weaving of the annual Peplos, as performed by female weavers, and there was the weaving of the quadrennial Peplos, as performed by professional male weavers called poikiltai. Each time the Peplos was woven – or, better, rewoven – it was notionally the same but historically different. So the woven version of the Gigantomachy can be seen as an ongoing classical process in contrast to the metalworked version, which is a single classical moment created by Pheidias.

4§234 Here I return one last time to the fact that Athena Parthenos in the Parthenon is not wearing her peplos. If the statue of the goddess is viewed as the goddess herself in arrested motion, then Athena herself becomes an appropriate recipient of the Peplos that is forever being ritually rewoven for her. The ritual reweaving is what makes the weaving permanent. So long as the reweaving goes on forever, which is the ideology of ritual, the Peplos is just as permanent as the statue is notionally permanent. The eternity of reweaving makes the rewoven Peplos the same thing, ritually speaking, as the Peplos that Athena had originally woven. She can receive for eternity that same Peplos she once wove because it is rewoven for her by successive generations of weavers weaving into eternity.

4§236 In the age of Pheidias, as we have seen, the reweaving of the Peplos of Athena was no longer restricted to women, so that any idea of Pandora as the first weaver by virtue of being the first woman was neutralized. Still, the craft of weaving the Peplos continued to be associated primarily with the nonprofessional work of women.

4ⓢ16. Reweaving the peplos, retelling the epic

4ⓣ40 Pindar Nemean 2.1-3

῞Οθεν περ καὶ Ὁμηρίδαι | ῥαπτῶν ἐπέων τὰ πόλλ᾿ ἀοιδοί | ἄρχονται, Διὸς ἐκ προοιμίου.

[starting] from the point where [hothen] the Homēridai, singers, most of the time begin [arkhesthai] their stitched-together [rhaptein] words, from the prooimion of Zeus …

4§240 In Pindar’s Nemean 2, Zeus is not only positioned at the starting point of epic: the god is also the starting point himself. That is because Zeus is being celebrated in a notional prooimion that is said to invoke him first and foremost. In classical terms, such a prooimion is tantamount to a Hymn to Zeus. We may compare the wording of Thucydides (3.104.4-5), who uses the word prooimion in referring to what we know in classical terms as the Homeric Hymn (3) to Apollo. To paraphrase in terms of the analogous Latin word prīmordia, Zeus is ‘primordial’ by virtue of being the initial phase of the weaving. With Zeus as the perfect beginning, a humnos to Zeus becomes a perfect web.

4§242 As we saw in Chapter 2, the overt metaphor of rhapta epea ‘stitched-together words’ in Pindar’s Nemean 2 (line 2) is connected with a latent {570|571} metaphor embedded in the etymology of the word rhapsōidos ‘rhapsode’, a compound formation composed of the morphological elements rhaptein ‘stitch together’ and aoidē ‘song’. As Pindar’s wording indicates, the rhapsōidoi ‘rhapsodes’ who perform the epic of Homer by ‘stitching together the words’ are comparable to the male fabric workers who create the Peplos of Athena at the quadrennial Great Panathenaia.

4§244 The artistry of weaving the quadrennial Peplos is comparable to the spectacular artistry of the woven tapestries of medieval Europe. But the difference is, the Peplos was a self-renewing and self-updating masterpiece, seasonally rewoven. And the occasion for the reweaving was also the occasion for the grandest celebration of the Athenian state, that is, for the quadrennial Great Panathenaia. This festival, rich in lavish prizes, was a most potent new rival to the Olympics and the other grand old festivals of the Peloponnese. And the occasion for the quadrennial reweaving was also the occasion for the quadrennial retelling of the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey.

4ⓢ17. The imperial poetics of terror and pity

4§247 Here I focus on the narrative about the battle of the Achaeans and Trojans sculpted into the north metopes of the Parthenon. The central theme of this sculpted narrative is of course parallel to a central theme shared by the spoken narratives of the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey, that is, the Trojan War. And the parallelism involves not only the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey but also the epic Cycle. Among the epics of the Cycle, one stands out. It is the epic known as ‘The Destruction of Troy’ or Iliou Persis, attributed to Arctinus of Miletus, the narrative of which focuses on the destruction of Troy. When we compare the ancient plot summary of this epic narrative with what little remains of the sculpted narrative on the north metopes of the Parthenon, we find striking parallels.

4§248 In order to make a comparison with the visual evidence that survives from the reliefs sculpted into the north metopes of the Parthenon, I quote from the work of Gloria Ferrari a summary of this evidence:

4§249 Now I repeat here from Chapter 2 my translation of the ancient plot-summary of the Iliou Persis attributed to Arctinus of Miletus. This time, I highlight with asterisks those details in the summary that correspond or at least seem to correspond to details in the narrative of the north metopes of the Parthenon:

4ⓣ41 Arctinus of Miletus Iliou Persis plot summary by Proclus pp. 107-108 ed. Allen

4§251 In the age of Virgil, by contrast, we find evidence that the epic of the Aeneid was directly influenced by the epic of the Iliou Persis attributed to Arctinus of Miletus. As we saw in Chapter 1, Virgil’s Aeneid makes pointed references to this epic Iliou Persis. And, as we are about to see, Virgil’s Aeneid also makes pointed reference to relief sculptures such as the ones we find adorning the north metopes of the Parthenon. It happens when Aeneas, while waiting for an audience with the queen Dido at the temple of Juno in Carthage, looks up and sees the artwork adorning the face of the temple. I propose that this artwork is meant to be understood as relief sculpture. More precisely, it {575|576} is meant to be understood as a poetic allusion to the relief sculptures of the Parthenon, especially to those sculptures that adorn the north face of the building. Aeneas recognizes his own picture inside the picture of the Trojan War as it is narrated on the face of the temple of Juno. There he is, pictured in the midst of the battle of the Achaeans and Trojans:

4ⓣ42 Virgil Aeneid 1.488

4§252 Similarly, as we saw in the description of the north face of the Parthenon, Aeneas is pictured inside the picture of the Trojan War as it is narrated there. Captured by the picture is a moment when Aeneas himself and his son Ascanius (/ Iulus) are still in Troy, about to escape from the city before its ultimate destruction.

4§253 The emotions evoked by this picture narrating the destruction of Troy on the face of the temple of Juno are terror and pity:

4ⓣ43 Virgil Aeneid 1.462

4ⓣ44 Virgil Aeneid 1.463

4§254 As I argued in Chapter 1, the emotions of terror and pity in this scene from Virgil’s Aeneid are being experienced by Aeneas as the heroic prototype of the Roman Empire. The picture of the terror and the pity seen by Aeneas is just a picture, but this picture becomes a reality because there are real emotions that correspond to it – the emotions of terror and pity as experienced by Aeneas himself in the war of the Achaeans and Trojans. The terror and the pity are viewed and projected through the lens of epic – not only the epic of the Aeneid but also the entire epic tradition about the destruction of Troy. {576|577}

4§256 Obviously, there are significant differences in the imperial poetics of Athens and Rome, conditioned by the many historical differences between the Athenian and the Roman empires. But there is one most significant similarity that stands out. Like the imperial poetics of Rome, which favored the Trojans over the Achaeans in its retrospective on the Trojan War, the imperial poetics of Athens was likewise partial to the Trojans. This partiality is evident in the Iliou Persis narrative sculpted into the north metopes of the Parthenon, as Gloria Ferrari has argued:

4§258 So the poetics of terror and pity, centering on the sufferings of the Trojans, suits the cultural and political agenda of both the Roman empire in the age of Virgil and the Athenian empire in the age of Pheidias. I find it striking that this poetics can serve as an expression of imperial power. But I find it even more striking that Homeric poetry can be appropriated by the Athenian empire as a primary form of its own self-expression.

4ⓢ18. The sorrows of Andromache

4§259 In this poetics of terror and pity, two victims of the Trojan War stand out: Hector and Andromache. To make this point, I start by returning to a most revealing passage I already quoted in Chapter 3:

4ⓣ45 Plato Ion 535b-c

ΣΩ. Ἔχε δή μοι τόδε εἰπέ, ὦ Ἴων, καὶ μὴ ἀποκρύψῃ ὅτι ἄν σε ἔρωμαι· ὅταν εὖ εἴπῃς ἔπη καὶ ἐκπλήξῃς μάλιστα τοὺς θεωμένους, ἢ τὸν Ὀδυσσέα ὅταν ἐπὶ τὸν οὐδὸν ἐφαλλόμενον ᾄδῃς, ἐκφανῆ γιγνόμενον τοῖς μνηστῆρσι καὶ ἐκχέοντα τοὺς ὀιστοὺς πρὸ τῶν ποδῶν, ἢ Ἀχιλλέα ἐπὶ τὸν Ἕκτορα ὁρμῶντα, ἢ καὶ τῶν περὶ Ἀνδρομάχην ἐλεινῶν τι ἢ περὶ Ἑκάβην ἢ περὶ Πρίαμον, τότε πότερον ἔμφρων εἶ ἢ ἔξω {c} σαυτοῦ γίγνῃ καὶ παρὰ τοῖς πράγμασιν οἴεταί σου εἶναι ἡ ψυχὴ οἷς λέγεις ἐνθουσιάζουσα, ἢ ἐν Ἰθάκῃ οὖσιν ἢ ἐν Τροίᾳ ἢ ὅπως ἂν καὶ τὰ ἔπη ἔχῃ;

SOCRATES: Hold it right there. Tell me this, Ion – respond to what I ask without concealment. When you recite well the epic verses [epos plural] and induce a feeling of bedazzlement [ekplēxis] for the spectators [theōmenoi] – when you sing of [1] Odysseus leaping onto the threshold and revealing himself to the suitors and pouring out the arrows at his feet, or of [2] Achilles rushing at [2->3a] Hector, or [3] {578|579} something connected to the pitiful things about [3b] Andromache or [3c] Hecuba or [3d] Priam – are you then in your right mind, or outside yourself? Does your psukhē, possessed by the god [enthousiazein], suppose that you are in the midst of the actions you describe in Ithaca or Troy, or wherever the epic verses [epos plural] have it?

4§260 In this passage, Socrates is enumerating some highlights of Homeric poetry as performed by rhapsodes like Ion at the Panathenaia. As we saw in Chapter 3, the enumeration takes the form of a set of accusatives of the rhapsodic subject following the verb āidein ‘sing’ (ᾄδῃς): [1] Odysseus at the epic moment when he leaps upon the threshold, ready to shoot arrows at the suitors; [2] Achilles at the epic moment when he lunges at Hector; or [3] some other highlighted thing, here unspecified (ti, accusative), from epic moments involving Andromache, Hecuba, or Priam.

4§261 As I noted in Chapter 3, there are five epic moments recounted here in ever-increasing compression and non-specificity. The first two moments have to do primarily with the emotion of terror, and they feature the main heroes of the Odyssey and the Iliad respectively, [1] Odysseus and [2] Achilles. The next three moments have to do primarily with the emotion of pity, and they feature the main heroes on the other side of the Trojan War: [3b] Andromache, [3c] Hecuba, and [3d] Priam. The link between the two moments of terror and the three moments of pity is [3a] Hector, who exemplifies the emotion of terror when he is about to be killed by the one who hates him most of all, his enemy Achilles, but who also exemplifies the emotion of pity when he says his last farewell to the one who loves him most of all, that is, [3b] his wife Andromache. In the wording of Plato’s Ion, the pairing of [3a] Hector and [3b] Andromache creates a thematic link for the transition from terror to pity.

4§263 So Plato’s understanding of Andromache as the primary example of the poetics of pity in the Homeric performances of rhapsodes corresponds to an understanding already built into Homeric poetry itself. This poetry actively expresses the emotion of pity by highlighting the lamentations of Andromache. More than that, it highlights the sorrowful occasions that induce these lamentations. To review the three occasions, they are, first, the scene in Iliad VI when Andromache says her final farewell to Hector; second, the scene in Iliad XXII when Andromache is told the news of Hector’s death; and, third, the scene in Iliad XXIV when Andromache sings her formal lament over the dead body of Hector. I refer to these three sorrowful occasions as scenes because all of them are theatrical – virtually operatic, as I noted in Chapter 2. In {580|581} the age of Pheidias, the theatrical power of Andromache’s laments in epic is reflected in corresponding laments staged in theater. As an example, I quoted in Chapter 2 an aria of lamentation composed in elegiac couplets and sung as a monody by the actor who plays Andromache in a tragedy of Euripides called the Andromache. Here I quote from the lines that introduce the aria:

4ⓣ46 Euripides Andromache 91-95

Figure 17a. Attic red-figure neck-amphora: Hector parting with Priam and Hecuba. Attributed to the Peleus Painter, ca. 475-425 BCE. Vatican Museums, Museo Gregoriano Etrusco Vaticano, 16570.

Figure 17b. Amphora, Departure of Hector, detail: Priam in tears.

Figure 17c. Amphora, Departure of Hector, detail: Hector, juxtaposed with the inscribed erotic reaction: ΚΑΛΟΣ.

4§265 In the foreground is a profile view of Hector and his mother Hecuba facing each other for the last time, and, next to the figure of Hector, we see an inscription that eroticizes him in this saddest of moments. The inscription reads simply ΚΑΛΟΣ (kalos), meaning ‘beautiful’. In the conventions of vase painting, such an inscription indicates the subjective reaction of the intended {582|583} viewer of the picture. That reaction is meant to be erotic as well as esthetic. Hector is a beautiful object of desire in this sorrowful moment, and that desire is the force of the inscribed word ΚΑΛΟΣ ‘beautiful’. In the background, off to the side, is a frontal view of Priam wiping away a tear. In the conventions of vase painting, a frontal view of a figure evokes the subjective reaction of the viewer, since the viewed figure is notionally making eye contact with the viewer. Whereas a profile view is the equivalent of a narrative in the third person, a frontal view is the equivalent of an eye contact between the viewer and the viewed, whose exchange of looks corresponds to an exchange of words between a first person and a second person. The overt theme of the painting, then, is the sorrow and the pity of the story of Hector. And the latent theme is the pleasure that the story brings to the viewer. That pleasure is both esthetic and erotic.

4§268 This foregrounding of Hector in the Iliad as we know it is a matter of politics as well as esthetics. The beautiful death of Hector, his belle mort, is for Athenians an expression of their empire. The Athenian statesman Lycurgus says it best when he refers to the willingness of Athenian citizens to die in war not only for their own patris ‘fatherland’ but also for all of Hellas as a patris ‘fatherland’ that is koinē ‘common’ to all Hellenes (Against Leokrates 104 οὐ μόνον ὑπὲρ τῆς αὑτῶν πατρίδος, ἀλλὰ καὶ πάσης <τῆς> Ἑλλάδος ὡς κοινῆς <πατρίδος> ἤθελον). Lycurgus invokes as his prime example the belle mort of the Athenian citizen-warriors who fought at Marathon and who thereby won for Hellas a freedom from terror, an adeia ‘security’ that is koinē ‘common’ to all Hellenes (104 κοινὴν ἄδειαν ἅπασι τοῖς Ἕλλησι κτώμενοι). The Athenian statesman is making this reference to the imperial interests of Athens in the context of actually quoting the words of Hector in the Iliad, who says that he is willing to die for his fatherland in order to protect it against the Achaeans (Lycurgus Against Leokrates 103 lines 4-9, corresponding to Iliad XV 494-499), and Lycurgus quotes these heroic words in the larger context of saying that the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey, as performed at the quadrennial Panathenaia, are the ancestral heritage of the Athenians and the primary source of their education as citizen-warriors (Against Leokrates 102). In this invocation of Homeric poetry as the most sublime expression of the Athenian empire, the statesman is quoting the words of a Trojan, not the words of an Achaean. It is the belle mort of Hector that motivates the Athenians to live up to the heroic legacy they learn from Homer.

4§269 This Homeric belle mort of Hector, estheticized and eroticized through the laments of Andromache, was understood by the master artisan Pheidias when he sculpted the statue of Zeus in the temple of Zeus at Olympia. I started this chapter by highlighting Strabo’s anecdote about the creative impulse that led Pheidias to sculpt this statue (8.3.30 C354). According to this anecdote, the creative impulse was a distinctly Homeric impulse. The moment captured by the sculptor is a Homeric moment. It is the moment in Iliad I (528-530) when Zeus nods his head and thus signifies the Plan of Zeus, which is coextensive with the plot of the Homeric Iliad. When I quoted this Iliadic passage, I held off saying that there is also another Iliadic passage where the god nods his head and thus signifies his Plan. This time, the Plan of Zeus is expressed not in terms of the overall plot, as in Iliad I, but in terms of one specific theme that pervades the plot. That theme is a picture of Hector that is animated by the sorrows of Andromache. It is a picture of Hector as a beau mort who takes the place of Achilles as the ultimate beau mort of the Iliad. Like some director of a grand theatrical production, Zeus pictures Andromache waiting {584|585} for Hector to return to her from battle. It is the Plan of Zeus that Andromache will be kept waiting, because Hector will never return to Andromache:

4ⓣ47 Iliad XVII 195-214

4§270 So the sorrows of Andromache are willed by Zeus. The Plan of Zeus prioritizes these sorrows in the plot of the Homeric Iliad, which foregrounds the terrible and pitiful fate of Hector and Andromache. The poetry of terror and pity, brought to life in the lamentations of Andromache over the fate of her husband and over her own fate, is distinctly Homeric. More than that, this poetry is distinctly imperial in the age of Pheidias, an age of Athenian imperial power. For an Athenian master craftsman like Pheidias, this imperial poetry of terror and pity comes to life in the moment when Zeus nods his head to signify what will happen to Hector and Andromache in the Homeric Iliad. It is this Homeric moment that must be captured by the imperial sculptor, to be preserved forever in all its rigid beauty. {587|588}

Footnotes