Chapter Eight: Homeric variations on a theme of empire
II 8ⓢ1. Four festivals and four models of empire
II§230 In the account of Herodotus, Miletus figures as the premier city in a federation of twelve cities that comprise the Ionian Dodecapolis. This privileging of Miletus reflects an early model of political dominance that shaped the later model that we know as the Athenian empire. To be contrasted is what we are told by Strabo: in his account, Ephesus figures as the premier city. Such privileging, as we are about to see, reflects an intermediate model. In the case of Miletus, its political dominance in the federation corresponded to its prominence at the festival of the Panionia; in the case of Ephesus, its prominence was manifested at the festival of the Ephesia. These two festivals, as we are about to see, represent two different models of empire, which I will compare with two further models of empire as represented by two other festivals, the Delia in Delos and the Panathenaia in Athens.
II§231 The festival of the Ephesia at Ephesus, as we saw in Chapter 1, was a rival of the festival of the Delia at Delos. I quote again the relevant testimony of Thucydides:
[The island of] Rheneia is so close to Delos that Polycrates, tyrant of the people of [the island-state of] Samos, who had supreme naval power for a period of time and {218|219} who had imperial rule [= arkhein] over the islands, including Rheneia, dedicated Rheneia, having captured it, to the Delian Apollo by binding it to Delos with a chain. After the purification [katharsis], the Athenians at that point made for the first time the quadrennial festival known as the Delia. And, even in the remote past, there had been at Delos a great coming together of Ionians and neighboring islanders [nēsiōtai], and they were celebrating [ἐθεώρουν ‘were making theōria’] along with their wives and children, just as the Ionians in our own times come together [= at Ephesus] for [the festival of] the Ephesia; and a competition [agōn] was held there [= in Delos], both in athletics and inmousikē (tekhnē), and the cities brought choral ensembles. Homer makes it most clear that such was the case in the following verses [epos plural], which come from a prooimion of Apollo. [Quotation follows.]
II§232 As we saw in Chapter 1, the wording prōton ‘for the first time’ in this passage refers to the first time that the festival of the Delia was celebrated on a quadrennial basis, not to the first time that this festival was ever celebrated. The katharsis ‘purification’ of the island of Delos signals the Athenian inauguration of this festival at Delos in its quadrennial form. This particular inauguration, as we saw, can be dated to the winter of 426 BCE. But then Thucydides goes on to say that there had been also an earlier Athenian katharsis of Delos, and that it took place at the initiative of the tyrant Peisistratos of Athens (3.104.1). This earlier katharsis signals an earlier Athenian inauguration of the same festival of the Delia at Delos. Besides Thucydides, Herodotus too refers to this earlier katharsis ‘purification’, and he specifies that it was initiated by Peisistratos (1.64.2). [1]
II§233 Again, as we saw in Chapter 1, Thucydides thinks that the earlier Athenian organization of that festival in the sixth century, in the era of the tyrants, was a precedent for its later Athenian organization in the fifth century, in the new era of democracy. The earlier Athenian organization, which is connected with the initiative of the tyrant Peisistratos, is meant to suggest that the city of Athens “had ‘ruled the waves’ in the sixth century as well as the fifth.” [2] Thucydides also thinks that there were earlier phases of the Delia, including the primal moment when Homer himself attended the festival and performed there. In this context, Thucydides compares the festival of the Delia as he knows it in his own time with the rival festival of the Ephesia: {219|220}
And, even in the remote past, there had been at Delos a great coming together of Ionians and neighboring islanders [nēsiōtai], and they were celebrating [ἐθεώρουν ‘were making theōria’] along with their wives and children, just as the Ionians in our own times come together [= at Ephesus] for [the festival of] the Ephesia; and a competition [agōn] was held there [= in Delos], both in athletics and in mousikē (tekhnē), and the cities brought choral ensembles.
II§234 I note the wording used here by Thucydides in referring to the archetypal agōn …gumnikos kai mousikos ‘competition in athletics and in mousikē [tekhnē]’ (3.104.3–4). Using similar wording, he goes on to speak about an agōn ‘competition’ in mousikē (3.104.5 ὅτι δὲ καὶ μουσικῆς ἀγὼν ἦν) as he continues his historical reconstruction by quoting from the Homeric Hymn to Apollo (verses 165–172). The words he quotes are notionally spoken by Homer himself (3.104.4, 5, 6). So now we have been told not once but twice that there had been a prototypical era of celebrating the festival of the Delia in its prototypical form.
II§235 I note also the wording that Thucydides uses in referring to the celebrants of this prototypical festival: he speaks of ‘Ionians and neighboring islanders [nēsiōtai]’. The significance of the distinction made here by Thucydides between ‘Ionians’ and ‘islanders’ is clarified by what he says after he quotes ‘Homer’ as the speaker of the Homeric Hymnto Apollo (verses 165–172):
So much for the evidence given by Homer concerning the fact that there was even in the remote past a great coming together and festival [heortē] at Delos; later on, the islanders [nēsiōtai] and the Athenians continued to send choral ensembles, along with sacrificial offerings, but various misfortunes evidently caused the discontinuation of the things concerning the competitions [agōnes] and most other things—that is, up to the time in question [= the time of the purification], when the Athenians set up the competition [agōn], including chariot races [hippodromiai], [3] which had not taken place before then.
II§236 When Thucydides says ‘up to the time in question’ here, he is not even distinguishing any more between the older reorganizing of the Delia in the era of Peisi-{220|221} stratos and the newer reorganizing in the era of the early democracy. That is because Thucydides is at this point more concerned about something that is clearly missing in his picture of the contemporary Delia—something he thinks was not missing in the idealized picture of the Delia that he reconstructs from the Homeric Hymn to Apollo. What, then, is this missing piece of the picture in the here and now of Thucydides?
II§237 The first time around, in the previous wording of Thucydides (3.104.3), we saw a reference to ‘Ionians and neighboring islanders [nēsiōtai]’. The second time around, in his later wording (3.104.6), we see a reference to ‘the islanders [nēsiōtai] and the Athenians’. What has been elided in the interim is the involvement of the non-islanders, that is, of the mainlanders—and when I say mainlanders I mean the inhabitants of the Ionian cities situated on the mainland of Asia Minor. One of these cities is Ephesus, the site of the festival of the Ephesia—and the native city of Ion of Ephesus. Here I confront the problem of ascertaining the relevance of Ephesus, home of Ion the rhapsode, to the Ionian ideology of the Panathenaic Homer. [4]
II§238 In the sixth and fifth centuries BCE, the cities of mainland Ionia in Asia Minor, Ephesus included, had come under the political and cultural domination of the Lydian empire and, later, of the Persian empire (which overpowered the Lydian empire in 547 BCE). So now we begin to see that these Ionian cities must have been cut off from the celebration of the Delia in the era of the tyrant Peisistratos in the sixth century and even in the earlier years of the democracy—that is, until the 460s BCE, when political control of coastal Asia Minor shifted from the Persian empire to the Athenian empire. In saying this I am following an incisive formulation that I found in a commentary on Thucydides: “The absence of the Ionians of Asia Minor (implied by hoi nēsiōtai [= ‘the islanders’]) was presumably due to the Lydian and Persian conquests, at least indirectly; hence Peisistratos had not been able to get them back.” [5] Besides the historical figure of Peisistratos, tyrant of Athens, I am now ready to add to this formulation the historical figure of Polycrates, tyrant of Samos.
II§239 Like Peisistratos, Polycrates too had claimed Delos as a center for his own imperial ambitions. The concept of nēsiōtai ‘islanders’ is in fact particularly relevant to the maritime empire of Polycrates, who is mentioned prominently by Thucydides in precisely this context:
[The island of] Rheneia is so close to Delos that Polycrates, tyrant of the people of [the island-state of] Samos, who had supreme naval power for a period of time and {221|222} who had imperial rule [= arkhein] over the islands, including Rheneia, dedicated Rheneia, having captured it, to the Delian Apollo by binding it to Delos with a chain.
II§240 As we will now see, the figure of Homer in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo is a construct that fits the era of the Athenian regime of the Peisistratidai—and of the non-Athenian regime of the tyrant Polycrates of Samos. It is also a construct that fits the earliest recoverable era of the Homēridai of Chios, which coincides with the era of the Peisistratidai—and of Polycrates.
II§241 In the case of Polycrates, we can posit an actual occasion for his commissioning the performance of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo as we have it. The occasion is signaled in the passage I just quoted from Thucydides: it was the time when Polycrates had chained the island of Rheneia to the island of Delos. On that occasion, as we saw in Chapter 1, Polycrates organized an event that resembled a combination of two festivals, the Delia and the Pythia, for an ad hoc celebration on the island of Delos. [6] The Homeric Hymn to Apollo, with its combination of hymnic praise for both the Delian and the Pythian aspects of the god Apollo, fits the occasion. Such an occasion has been dated: as we saw in Chapter 1, it happened in 522 BCE. [7] Soon thereafter, Polycrates was overthrown and killed by agents of the Persian empire. Peisistratos had died in 528/7.
II§242 The rule of the tyrant Polycrates of Samos over the islands of the Aegean is a classic example of a maritime empire or thalassocracy:
Polycrates was the first of Hellenes I know of who conceived the idea of thalassocracy—except for Minos of Knossos and unless there was anyone earlier than Minos who had imperial rule of [arkhein] the sea. But Polycrates was the first among humans with a known lineage [who had such a rule]. He had high hopes of having imperial rule of [arkhein] Ionia and the islands.
Then, in the time of Cyrus the first king of the Persians and of his son Cambyses, the Ionians had an extensive naval power. Waging war with Cyrus, they seized possession of the sea around them and held on to it for some time. And Polycrates, who was tyrant of Samos in the time of Cambyses and who had supreme naval power, subjugated the islands, including Rheneia, and, having captured Rheneia, dedicated it to Delian Apollo.
II§243 The rule of Polycrates over his maritime empire of Ionians needs to be contrasted with the rule of the Persians over the Hellenic cities of Asia Minor in their mainland empire, within a time frame that covers roughly the second half of the sixth century BCE and the first half of the fifth. Later on, I will have more to say about the maritime empire of the tyrant Polycrates. His empire is in some ways a precedent for the empire of the Athenians. As we will see, the proverbial Ring of Polycrates is a symbol of this imperial precedent. As we will also see, there is a related symbol to be found in a myth stemming ultimately from the Bronze Age. In this myth, Theseus of Athens dives into the sea to recover the royal imperial Ring of Minos, king of Knossos in Crete (Bacchylides Song 17).
II§244 At a later point, I will return to the myth of King Minos and his maritime empire or thalassocracy, which is for both Herodotus and Thucydides a Bronze Age precedent for the thalassocracy of the Athenian empire. It suffices here to confine myself to the relevant formulation I quoted earlier, concerning the reference made by Thucydides to the Ionian festival of the Delia at Delos: according to this formulation, the Ionians on the mainland of Asia Minor were distinct from the Ionians on the islands in the Aegean in that they could not participate in the Delia as once reorganized by Peisistratos—and, I must now add, as reorganized after Peisistratos by Polycrates of Samos.
II§245 Here I quote another incisive formulation—this one concerning the reorganization of the Delia by the Athenians almost a century later, in 426 BCE: “The Athenians now restored everything, and enlarged the festival with chariot racing.” [8] In terms of this formulation, Thucydides (3.104.2–3) is equating the reorganization or restoration of the Delia in the era of the democracy at Athens with a restored participation in the Delia by the Ionians of the cities on the mainland of Asia Minor. In terms of my reconstruction, the participation of the Ionian mainlanders in the Delia was an old tradition that predated the era of the Peisistratidai.
II§246 If the Ionian mainlanders did not participate in the festival of the Delia in the era of the Persian domination of Asia Minor, did they have access to an alternative festival? The answer is that there was in fact an alternative, and Thucydides knew it. It was the festival of the Ephesia in Ephesus, situated in the mainland of Asia Minor. [9] Here I quote again the precise wording of Thucydides about the Ephesia: {223|224}
And, even in the remote past, there had been at Delos a great coming together of Ionians and neighboring islanders, and they were celebrating [ἐθεώρουν ‘were making theōria’] along with their wives and children, just as the Ionians in our own times come together [= at Ephesus] for [the festival of] the Ephesia; and a competition [agōn] was held there [= in Delos], both in athletics and in mousikē, and the cities brought choral ensembles.
II§247 This time I am highlighting not only the first mention of the Ionians in this formulation of Thucydides but also the second. We see here that the Ionian mainlanders are still celebrating the Ephesia in the fifth century BCE, in the new era of Athenian democracy. [10]
II§248 In this light, I propose to reassess the politics and poetics of the Athenian empire, as an ideological construct, in terms of the earlier construct known as the Delian League. An essential piece of evidence is the parallelism that Thucydides sets up between the archetypal festival of the Delia at Delos, as extrapolated from the Homeric Hymn to Apollo—and the contemporaneous festival of the Ephesia at Ephesus, as extrapolated from the political realities of Thucydides’ own day. It has been argued that “the Ephesia here mentioned by Th[ucydides] is none other than the Panionian festival or Panionia, the Festival of All the Ionians, which was celebrated in very early times, and again in the Roman imperial period, at a different site, one near Priene [on Cape Mycale].” [11] In terms of this argument, “the festival was originally celebrated at the [Panionion] on Cape Mycale, moved to Ephesus before the late fifth century, and moved back to the [Panionion] in 373.” [12]
II§249 I propose an alternative formulation. To start, I stress the all-importance of the history of the Panionian festival of the Panionia, celebrated in a place known as the Panionion at Cape Mycale, near the city of Miletus, on the coast of Asia Minor. This festival of the Panionia defines the political dominance of Miletus as the premier city of the federation known as the Ionian Dodecapolis. An earlier phase of this festival of the Panionia was decisive in defining the cultural and political identity of {224|225} Ionians in Asia Minor and the Aegean islands. This earlier phase can be dated back to the eighth and the seventh centuries BCE—when this federation of the Ionian Dodecapolis was in its heyday. In the sixth century, however, this phase came to an end. Now both the Panionia and the Ionian Dodecapolis went into a precipitous decline inversely proportional to the rapid ascendancy of the Persian empire, which became the dominant power in all Asia Minor. The collapse of the Panionia in the early fifth century can be linked directly with the collapse of the political power once represented by the Ionian Dodecapolis in general and by the city of Miletus in particular. The decisive cause of the collapse was the defeat of the Ionian Revolt by the Persian empire in the 490s BCE.
II§250 Instead of saying that the festival of the Panionia was transformed into the Ephesia sometime after the failure of the Ionian Revolt, I propose this alternative formulation: the festival of the Panionia was discontinued by the Persians after the Ionian Revolt failed, whereas the festival of the Ephesia was allowed to continue. Later on, in 373 BCE, the festival of the Panionia was at long last restored in its ancestral setting, the Panionion at Cape Mycale. [13]
II§251 As the oldest and most prestigious of all Ionian festivals, the Feast of the Panionia must have figured most prominently in the evolution of the Homeric tradition. And, as we have seen, there is a convincing argument to be made that a prototype of the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey was an epic tradition performed at the Panionia. [14] For the moment, however, I simply emphasize the priority of this festival of the Panionia in comparison with the other Ionian festivals we have been considering so far, that is, the Delia and the Ephesia.
II§252 Reconstructing forward in time as we track the history of the Panionia from the eighth century all the way to its discontinuation after the first decade of the fifth, we reach a moment in world history when a most decisive parting of ways takes place. After the defeat of the Ionian Revolt in the 490s, the festival of the Panionia was discontinued, and the pathway of Ionian identity reached a crossroads. Heading in one direction after the 490s was a festival like the Ephesia, celebrated by the Ionian mainlanders of Asia Minor and dominated by the mainland empire of the Persians until the 460s BCE, when political control of coastal Asia Minor shifted from the Persian empire to the Athenian. Heading in another direction was the festival of the Delia, celebrated by the Ionian islanders of the Aegean and dominated for a short time in the 520s by the island empire of the tyrant Polycrates of Samos. After Polycrates was overthrown and killed in 522 by agents of the Persian empire, control of the Delia reverted from the thalassocracy of Polycrates back to the evolving thalassocracy of Athens, initially in the era of the Peisistratidai and subsequently in the era of the new democracy. {225|226}
II§253 For a few decades after the 490s, when the Ionian cities of coastal Asia Minor were still being controlled by the Persian empire, the festivals of the Delia and the Ephesia could be seen as rival institutions. Representing the new Ionia of the Delian League was the festival of the Delia, evolving in the political sphere of the Athenian empire and connecting the Ionian islanders under the control of the Athenians. Representing the old Ionia, at least nominally, was the festival of the Ephesia, evolving in the political sphere of the Persian empire and connecting the Ionian mainlanders under the control of the Persians. Things changed in the 460s, as control over the Ionian cities of Asia Minor shifted from the Persian to the Athenian empire. Starting in the 460s, the prestige of both the Delia and the Ephesia could give way to the ultimate prestige of the Panathenaia in Athens. Just as the Delia and the Ephesia had eclipsed the Panionia, the Panathenaia could now eclipse these older festivals claiming Panionian status. The festival of the Panathenaia was evolving into the newest and the biggest of all Ionian festivals.
II§254 The separation of the mainland Ionians of Asia Minor from the island Ionians after the failure of the Ionian Revolt in the 490s is thought to have caused their cultural stagnation. Mainland Ionia during the period of the Persian domination—especially after the Ionian Revolt—has been described as an “intellectual backwater.” [15] By comparison, the island Ionians evidently flourished. In fact, they were flourishing already in the sixth century under the regime of Polycrates and, later, under the new regime that replaced it, namely, the Athenian empire of the sons of Peisistratos. After the fall of Polycrates, as I already noted a moment ago, the festival of the Delia had reverted to the control of the Peisistratidai. This festival, which had been of great importance in defining the cultural identity of the Ionians in the era of Polycrates, became even more important in the era of the sons of Peisistratos. In this new era, the Delia redefined Athens as the metropolis or ‘mother city’ of the Ionians. The performance of Homer at the Delia, as dramatized in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, could now become an integral part of this redefinition. This Homer was of a new kind, representing the Athenian empire of the Peisistratidai.
II§255 This new sixth-century Homer in the era of the tyrants—and by Homer here I mean both the poet and the poetry—is an earlier form of the fifth-century Homer in the new era of democracy that followed. In other words, it is an earlier form of what I have been calling up to now the Panathenaic Homer, which is a form of the Iliad and Odyssey that resembles most closely what we still recognize today as the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey.
II§256 Identified as the poet who speaks at the festival of the Delia in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, this new sixth-century Panathenaic Homer represents an epic tradition that tends to highlight the island Ionians and to shade over the mainland Ionians {226|227} of Asia Minor. This is not to say that the mainland Ionians of older times are not present in Homeric poetry. They are still very much there. But these older Ionians are shaded over, by way of epic distancing.
II§257 The epic distancing of the new Homer from the old Ionians of mainland Asia Minor is so effective that that these mainlanders are simply not featured in the Panathenaic Homer that we know as the Iliad and Odyssey. Moreover, the actual concept of Ionians occurs only once in the Panathenaic Homer, in Iliad XIII (685). Even in that unique context, the Ionians are deprived of any autonomous existence: they are closely bound to the Athenians, who are mentioned explicitly in that context (XIII 689). [16]
II§258 This epic distancing from the Ionians is to be expected in Homeric poetry, since the Trojan War is imagined as taking place well before the Ionian Migration. So it comes as no surprise that the names of the mainland cities of the Ionian Dodecapolis that once participated in the Feast of the Panionia are omitted in the Panathenaic Iliad and Odyssey. The only overt exception is a single mention of the most prominent of the twelve cities, Miletus. It happens in Iliad II, in the context of a catalogue of combatants who fight on the Trojan side in the Trojan War. Miletus is being featured on the wrong side, as it were. And, to accentuate the epic distancing, the population of Miletus is described here as non-Hellenic. In Iliad II (867), we hear that a hero called Nastes came to Troy as an ally of the Trojans, and he is described as the leader of the Carians, who are in turn described as barbarophōnoi ‘non-Greek-speakers’. Immediately thereafter in Iliad II (868), the one city that is mentioned as inhabited by these Carians is Miletus; next (869), there is mention of one of the main landmarks of Miletus, Cape Mycale, with its ‘steep headlands’. In sum, the Panathenaic Homer shades over not only the Ionians but also their cities in the Ionian Dodecapolis. [17]
II§259 There is comparatively less shading over when it comes to the island Ionians. The Panathenaic Homer makes incidental mention of the Ionian islands of Chios and Euboea in Odyssey iii (170–174) and of Euboea alone in vii (321). Also, there is a most conspicuous highlighting of the island of Delos in Odyssey vi (160).
II§260 Here I need to qualify a point made earlier, that the prestige of mainland Ionia was elided by the Persian empire during the sixth century and the first half of the fifth. Despite the historical reality of this elision, I will now argue that the cultural legacy of mainland Ionians was probably not quite as impoverished as we might {227|228} imagine from descriptions of Ionia in the fifth century BCE as an “intellectual backwater.” [18] I return to the Ephesia as a case in point. In its heyday, as we will see, this festival was a rival of the Delia.
II§261 Between the 490s and the 460s, the festival of the Delia had served the purpose of providing an alternative to the festival of the Ephesia. After the 460s, especially in the 420s, it also served the purpose of providing an alternative to the festival of the Olympia: that is, to the Olympics. Conversely, the Ephesia had served its own purpose so long as Hellenes could view this festival as an alternative to the ideology of the Athenian empire—an alternative initiated by the Persian empire. But Ephesus and the rest of the Ionian cities of coastal Asia Minor swung over to the Athenian empire and away from the Persian empire in the 460s and thereafter, and thus the festival of the Delia was no longer necessitated as a counterweight to the Ephesia. Even more than before, cultural dominance could gravitate toward the Panathenaia, the prestige of which could by now occlude the prestige of any other Ionian festival. Just as the Delia would by now be viewed as less important than before, so too the Ephesia. For a figure like Ion, his status as a rhapsode from Ephesus would therefore be viewed as less important than his status as a rhapsode who performed at the Panathenaia of Athens.
II 8ⓢ2. A Homeric glimpse of an Ionian festival
II§262 Here I take another look at the old Ionian festival of the Panionia, celebrated at a site that is notionally common to all Ionians, the Panionion of the Ionian Dodecapolis in Asia Minor:
The Panionion is a sacred space of Mycale, facing north, which was set aside for PoseidonHelikōnios by the Ionians, in a decision made in common [koinēi] by all of them; Mycale is a promontory of the mainland, facing west toward Samos; it was here [= in Mycale] that the Ionians gathered together from their respective cities and celebrated a festival [heortē] that they named the Panionia.
II§263 I highlight the wording that refers to the primal decision that is notionally being made here by all the Ionians: the founding of the Panionia is said to be an action taken koinēi ‘in common’. In Chapter 7, we saw comparable wording in a context where Strabo (14.1.3 C633) refers to the founding of the Ionian Dodecapolis {228|229} by the Ionians: there too the action is taken koinēi ‘in common’. In that case, however, the action is said to be taken not only by the Ionians but also by the Athenians along with the Ionians. As I will argue, the wording in the text of Strabo marks the beginnings of the Athenian empire. As I will also argue, the linking of the Ionian Dodecapolis with the idea of this empire goes back to the Bronze Age.
II§264 Strabo gives a most vivid picture of the sight that travelers will see as they approach the promontory of Mycale by sea. It is a stunning view of the Panionion, site of the festival of the Panionia celebrated by the twelve cities of the Ionian Dodecapolis:
First to be seen on the seacoast is the Panionion, situated three stadia above the sea, where the Panionia, a festival [panēguris] that is common [koinē] to the Ionians, is enacted for PoseidonHelikōnios, and sacrifice [thusia] is made to him; the people of Priene control the priestly duties [connected with the sacrifice].
II§265 Earlier, Strabo (8.7.2 C384) says more explicitly that the Panionion, this notional center of the Ionian Dodecapolis, was actually located in the environs of Priene, and that this location near Priene is linked with the fact that the city controlled the priestly duties of performing the sacrifice (thusia) to PoseidonHelikōnios at the festival of the Panionia (τῆς Πανιωνικῆςθυσίας ἣν ἐν τῇ Πριηνέων χώρᾳ συντελοῦσιν Ἴωνες τῷ ῾Ελικωνίῳ Ποσειδῶνι); Strabo goes on to say that the primacy of Priene as the place of sacrifice to Poseidon Helikōnios—and even as the agent of this sacrifice—was motivated by the fact that the people of Priene claimed as their place of origin the city of Helikē in the region of Achaea in the Peloponnese (8.7.2 C384 ἐπεὶ καὶ αὐτοὶ οἱ Πριηνεῖς ἐξ Ἑλίκης εἶναι λέγονται).
II§266 In the same context of considering the sacrificial duties of these priests of Priene, Strabo (8.7.2 C384) makes it explicit that the Ionians even in his own time worshipped Poseidon Helikōnios and celebrated (thuein) the festival of the Panionia at the Panionion (ὃν καὶ νῦν ἔτι τιμῶσιν Ἴωνες, καὶ θύουσιν ἐκεῖ τὰ Πανιώνια), and he proceeds to describe this festival as a thusia in the context of arguing that Homer actually mentions it in Iliad XX 404–405 (μέμνηται δ’, ὡς ὑπονοοῦσί τινες, ταύτης τῆς θυσίας Ὅμηρος ὅταν φῇ … [the quotation from Homer follows]). I draw special attention to Strabo’s metonymic use of thusia ‘sacrifice’ here to designate the whole festival of the Panionia. The geographer now proceeds to quote the verses of the Iliad (XX 404–405) that concern the sacrifice of a bellowing bull to Poseidon Helikōnios (ὡς ὅτε ταῦρος | ἤρυγεν ἑλκόμενος Ἑλικώνιον ἀμφὶ ἄνακτα). As he observes (again, 8.7.2 C384), the climax of the festival of the Panionia at the Panionion is the sacrifice of a bull to Poseidon Helikōnios—I note the word thusia, used here in the specific sense of ‘sacrifice’—and special care must be taken by the sacrificers to in-{229|230} duce the bull to bellow before it is sacrificed. Accordingly, Strabo continues, the reference in Iliad XX 404–405 to the sacrifice of a bellowing bull to Poseidon Helikōnios can be used to argue that the birth of Homer ‘the Poet’ par excellence is to be dated after the Ionianapoikia ‘colonization’, on the grounds that he actually mentions the Panioniansacrifice of the Ionians to PoseidonHelikōnios in the environs of Priene (τεκμαίρονταί τε νεώτερον εἶναι τῆς Ἰωνικῆς ἀποικίας τὸν ποιητήν, μεμνημένον γε τῆς Πανιωνικῆς θυσίας ἣν ἐν τῇ Πριηνέων χώρᾳ συντελοῦσιν ῎Ιωνες τῷ ῾Ελικωνίῳ Ποσειδῶνι).
II§267 As we see from Strabo, then, this Homeric passage may well refer to the special way of sacrificing bulls at the festival of the Panionia at the Panionion in Priene. The testimony of Strabo is in fact corroborated by the Homeric scholia (bT for Iliad XX 404). [19]
II§268 Other than the mention of Poseidon Helikōnios, this passage in the Iliad contains no specific reference to Priene. In general, the Panathenaic Homer shades over its references to the Ionian Dodecapolis. But the references, as I noted earlier, are very much there. [20]
II§269 Strabo (8.7.2 C384) goes on to offer an alternative explanation: the description of the sacrifice of the bellowing bull in Iliad XX (404–405) stems from customs of worshipping Poseidon Helikōnios elsewhere—not in the environs of the Ionian Dodecapolis in Asia Minor but in the city of Helikē in the region of Achaea in the Peloponnese. (This city had been destroyed by a tsunami in 373 BCE.) As I have already noted, Strabo himself here recognizes Helikē as the place of origin for the people of Priene (8.7.2 C384 καὶ αὐτοὶ οἱ Πριηνεῖς ἐξ Ἑλίκης εἶναι λέγονται).
II§270 This alternative explanation offered by Strabo (8.7.2 C384) is a post-Athenocentric way of accounting for a pre-Athenocentric detail of Homeric poetry surviving from the Ionian traditions of the Panionia. Strabo’s thinking here can be summarized this way: if this detail about the bellowing sacrificial bull in Iliad XX is Ionian by origin, then Homer must be dated after the Ionian apoikia ‘colonization’. If Homer was to be dated before such an event, however, then the Poet supposedly saw this detail at a sacrifice that took place in a proto-Ionian setting, that is, in the Peloponnesus, which was the notional homeland of the Ionians in the era that preceded the Ionian Migration—an era that links Homer with the Bronze Age.
II§271 So even this rare glimpse of Homeric poetry as performed at the festival of the {230|231} Panionia in the sacred space of the Panionion in Ionian Asia Minor is eclipsed by an ideology that rejects as post-Homeric anything that seems overtly Ionian in Homeric poetry. Such an ideology is basically Athenocentric in orientation. What results is that Ionian elements are removed from their setting in Asia Minor and relocated in a supposedly proto-Ionian setting in the Peloponnese. From there these proto-Ionian elements are then supposedly channeled to Asia Minor by way of Athens as the metropolis or ‘mother city’ of the Ionians. The Homer of the Panionia is thus eclipsed by the Homer of a rival festival, the Delia, which is the point of definition for the Athenian empire in its earlier phases. The Delia then gives way to yet another rival festival, the Panathenaia, which becomes the ultimate point of definition for the later phases of the Athenian empire.
II§272 The eclipsing of the Panionian Homer by the Panathenaic Homer is not unprecedented. Earlier, the Panionian Homer of the Ionian Dodecapolis had eclipsed what I call the Panaeolian Homer of the Aeolian Dodecapolis. The “big bang” in this case was the transformation of Aeolian Smyrna, native city of Homer, into Ionian Smyrna. The great significance attributed to this transformation is evident from all the concentrated attention devoted to it in the narratives I cited earlier from Herodotus (1.143.3, 1.149.1–1.151.2) and Strabo (14.1.4 C633).
II§273 As we trace the succession from a Panaeolian to a Panionian to a Panathenaic Homer, we can see signs of continuity in the ideology of the festivals held by the federations represented by these three different phases of Homer. This continuity has to do with the idea of commonality as expressed by the word koinos ‘common, standard’. In the case of the Delian League, a conglomeration of Ionian cities headed by Athens as their notional metropolis or ‘mother city’, we saw that Homer himself is described as koinos in his dual role as (1) premier performer at the festival of the Delia and as (2) premier spokesman of the Delian League (Vita 2.319–320). In the case of the Ionian Dodecapolis, evidently headed by Miletus, we saw that Herodotus applies this same word koinos to the centralized sacred space called the Panionion, which served as the setting for the centralized festival of the Ionian Dodecapolis, the Panionia (1.148.1 τὸ δὲ Πανιώνιόν ἐστι τῆς Μυκάλης χῶρος ἱρός, πρὸς ἄρκτον τετραμμένος, κοινῇ ἐξαραιρημένος ὑπὸ Ἰώνων Ποσειδέωνι Ἑλικωνίῳ ‘the Panionion is a sacred space of Mycale, facing north, which was set aside for Poseidon Helikōnios by the Ionians, in a decision made in common [koinēi] by all of them’). [21] In the case of the Aeolian confederations, as we are about to see, there is indirect evidence in the relevant use of xunos ‘common’, synonym of the word koinos ‘common’ as used here by Herodotus. {231|232}
II§274 Just as Homer figured as a spokesman for Ionian federations like the Ionian Dodecapolis, he could also speak for Aeolian federations. We have already considered one such federation, the Aeolian Dodecapolis as described by Herodotus (1.149.1). As we saw, this league of twelve Aeolian cities was once the major rival of the league of twelve Ionian cities in claiming the strongest of ties to Homer. In fact, one of these Aeolian cities, Smyrna, was recognized by most other cities as the most likely to deserve the honor of being the birthplace of Homer. Another rival in claiming the strongest of ties to Homer was a league of Aeolian cities headed by the city of Mytilene on the island of Lesbos. This particular league, as we also saw earlier, once possessed the prime poetic real estate of the Homeric Iliad—ancient Troy and its environs in the Troad. As we are about to see, the identity of Homer as a spokesman for Aeolians was shaped primarily by the politics of this Aeolian league.
II 8ⓢ3. An Aeolic phase of Homer
II§275 The claims of the Aeolians on Homer can be correlated with an Aeolic phase in the prehistory of the language of Homeric poetry. This phase is evident in the linguistic evidence of the Iliad and Odyssey. I have assembled some of this evidence in previous work and, in what follows, I offer a summary. [22]
II§276 On the basis of his research on the language of Homeric poetry, Milman Parry worked out a diachronic definition of this language. [23] It is a system composed of three dialectal phases, which can be described as Ionic, Aeolic, and Mycenaean. [24] I have listed these dialectal phases in chronological succession, moving backward in time to the oldest recoverable phase, Mycenaean. I use here the term Mycenaean instead of Arcado-Cypriote in the light of the decipherment of the Linear B tablets found at the palaces of Pylos and Knossos and elsewhere. [25] As this term Mycenaean {232|233} indicates, the earliest dialectal components of Homeric language can be reconstructed all the way back to the Bronze Age.
II§277 For the moment, I highlight the middle dialectal phase of the Homeric language, Aeolic. In the traditional phraseology of Homeric poetry, we see embedded a variety of forms that can be explained as Aeolic in provenience. In some cases, the forms can be further specified as stemming from the island of Lesbos. [26]
II§278 Going beyond this diachronic definition of the language of Homeric poetry, I now offer a redefinition that combines the diachronic perspective with the synchronic. The language of Homeric poetry is a system that integrates and thus preserves the following phases of dialects: dominant Ionic integrated with recessive Aeolic integrated with residual Mycenaean. [27] I emphasize the integration of dominant / recessive / residual dialectal components because, following Parry, I view Homeric language synchronically as a working system, not as an inert layering of dialectal components matching the Ionic / Aeolic / Mycenaean dialects. [28]
II 8ⓢ4. An Attic phase of Homer
II§279 Besides Ionic and Aeolic and Mycenaean as respectively dominant and recessive and residual dialectal components of the language of Homeric poetry, there is also a fourth dialectal component. It is Attic, the dialect of the Athenians, which needs to be observed in the context of epic performances at the festival of the Panathenaia in Athens. Without the hindsight of history, Attic can be viewed as merely one of many dialects belonging to the general category of Ionic. When we add the hindsight of history, however, Attic can be viewed as something more than a subcategory of Ionic. Once Attic became the official language of the Athenian empire, it subsumed all the Ionic dialects spoken within the context of that empire. This new Attic, as an imperial language, had a lasting effect on the language of Homeric poetry. That is because this new language of Attic became the linguistic frame for the old language of Homer. In other words, the old language of Homer was now being spoken and heard primarily within the new Attic-speaking context of the Panathenaia in Athens. [29]
II§280 In the twin book Homer the Classic, I interpret the status of this new Attic as an imperial language to be contrasted with the status of old Attic as the local dialect of Athens. The new Attic is a regularized language, in that the idiosyncrasies of the old Attic dialect were leveled out by the generalities of the Ionic dialects taken all {233|234} together. This new Attic was a regularized Attic, as it were, and it became a frame dialect for all Ionic dialects. As a regularized dialect, this new Attic was an Ionic Koine. As the name Koine indicates, the new Attic was a federal language, even an imperial language. [30] It was the lingua franca of the Athenian empire. Such a regularized Attic, as I argue in Homer the Classic, was the essence of the Homeric Koine as defined by Aristarchus. And this Attic Koine was not only a federal language: it was also the linguistic basis of Homeric poetry. But the basis of that basis remained the Ionic dialect.
II 8ⓢ5. Ionic Koine and Aeolic Koine
II§281 Around 600 BCE, the language of the Homeric Koine would have been perceived simply as Ionic from the synchronic standpoint of native speakers of Ionic. It is only from the diachronic standpoint of historical linguistics that this language can be analyzed as a blending of the Ionic dialect with other dialects—a blending that takes place within the frame dialect of Attic. Around the same time, however, there were other forms of poetic language that competed with this dominantly Ionic Koine of Homer. A prime example is a dominantly Aeolic Koine of the island of Lesbos. This Koine is represented by the poetry of Sappho and Alcaeus, who flourished on the island of Lesbos around 600 BCE. I now offer a definition of this poetic language by combining the diachronic perspective with the synchronic. The poetic language of Sappho and Alcaeus is a system that integrates and thus preserves the following phases of dialects: dominant Aeolic integrated with recessive Ionic integrated with residual Mycenaean. As in the case of the language of Homeric poetry, I am following Parry in viewing the language of the poetry of Sappho and Alcaeus synchronically as a working system, not as an inert layering of dialectal components matching the Aeolic / Ionic / Mycenaean dialects. [31]
II§282 The published work of Parry on the poetic language of Sappho and Alcaeus shows that he was looking for signs of oral traditions underlying not only the epic of Homeric poetry but also other ancient Greek genres, especially those genres that are classified under the general heading of lyric. [32] Parry’s research on the lyric traditions of Sappho and Alcaeus was cut short, however, by his premature death. In a book containing his collected papers, edited by his son Adam Parry (1971), Milman Parry’s overall work is presented in a scholarly context that confines the question of oral traditions to Homer, virtually excluding the rest of archaic Greek poetry. [33] In the introduction that Adam Parry wrote for his father’s book, we see that genres {234|235} other than epic are not actively considered. Moreover, we see a pronounced aversion to any engagement with the comparative evidence of oral poetics. [34] By contrast with the discontinuities inherent in this posthumous publication, the work of Albert Lord continued systematically the comparative methodology of Milman Parry, with applications to lyric as well as epic. [35] In terms of this methodology, to draw a line between Homer and the rest of ancient Greek poetry is to risk creating a false dichotomy. There is a similar risk in making rigid distinctions between “oral” and “written” in studying the earliest attested forms of Greek poetry in general. [36]
II§283 It is beyond the scope of my present inquiry to delve here into the poetic language of Sappho and Alcaeus. I already did that in previous work, where I assembled linguistic evidence to show that this poetic language, as it evolved on the island of Lesbos, is an independent witness to the continuity of poetry from the Bronze Age through the Dark Age. [37] Here I confine myself to concentrating on the Aeolian federation that was represented by this poetic language.
II§284 As we saw in Chapter 6, the Aeolian cities of the island of Lesbos once belonged to a federation dominated by the city of Mytilene. As we also saw, this Aeolian city was engaged in an ongoing struggle with the nominally Ionian city of Athens over the possession of Sigeion and its environs in the Troad during the late seventh and early sixth centuries BCE. At stake was the possession of vitally important territory—important not only because of its strategic location on the Hellespont but also because of its prestige as a space made sacred by the heroes who fought in the Trojan War. The deeds of these heroes were memorialized by living poetic traditions that represented the conflicting claims of the rival federations headed by Athens and Mytilene. A primary focus of the conflict, as I have already emphasized, was the tumulus of Achilles.
II§285 The spiritual center, as it were, of this Aeolian federation was a temenos ‘sacred precinct’ mentioned in the poetry of Alcaeus (F 129.2, 130b.13). This precinct is described in the language of the poet as a grand federal sacred space common to the entire population of the island of Lesbos. [38] Louis Robert has succeeded in identifying the name of this precinct: it is Messon, mentioned in two inscriptions dated to the second century BCE, which Robert successfully connects with the present-day name Mesa (neuter plural). [39] The meaning of the name for this space, in both ancient and Modern Greek, is the ‘Middleground’, which corresponds to its central location on the island. It also corresponds to the description of this precinct, in the words of Alcaeus, as the xunon or ‘common possession’ of the people of Lesbos {235|236} (F 129.3). [40] This Aeolic word is the equivalent of Attic koinon, and the Attic form is actually attested in the epigraphical references to Messon. [41] In general, koinon is a word used for designating any possession that is communalized and standardized so as to belong to a federation.
II§286 Reinforcing the arguments of Robert, Marcel Detienne connects the name Messon in Lesbos with the political expression es meson ‘aiming for the center’, which conveys the agonistic convergence of divergent interests at the center of a symmetrically visualized civic space. [42] For comparison, he adduces the description given by Herodotus of a meeting of the general assembly of the federation of the Ionian Dodecapolis held at the Panionion (1.170.2): on this occasion, according to Herodotus, Thales of Miletus proposed the establishment of a single council that would represent all Ionian cities, to be located centrally in Teos as the meson ‘middleground’ of the Ionian world (1.170.3). [43]
II§287 As we have just seen, the combining of archaeological and epigraphical evidence makes it possible to locate the precinct mentioned in the poetry of Alcaeus. [44] Also relevant is the historical evidence, which sheds light on the political and religious reasons for the centralized location of this precinct on the island of Lesbos. [45] And here I will add the evidence provided by the poetry of Alcaeus as a traditional system of reference. His poetry helps explain why Alcaeus speaks of this precinct.
II§288 It has generally been assumed that the reference to the precinct of Messon in the poetry of Alcaeus is incidental, in other words, that Alcaeus refers to this precinct because he happens to be there as an exile from his native city of Mytilene. I have argued, however, that this setting of a centralized sacred space, figured as a no-man’s-land in the wording of Alcaeus, is intrinsic to the message that is actually being delivered by the poetry. [46] Here I will focus on only one aspect of my argument: that this place, imagined as a politically neutral sacred space, was the {236|237} setting for the seasonally recurring festival of the federation of Aeolian cities headed by Mytilene.
II§289 As we see from the wording of Alcaeus, there is a ritual event taking place in this precinct. I highlight the word ololugē (130b.20 [ὀ]λολύγας) designating the ‘ululation’ of the women of Lesbos; this ululation is described as hierē ‘sacred’ (ἴρα[ς]). [47] This ritual event has been identified with the native Lesbian tradition of a women’s ‘beauty contest’ in the context of a festival, as mentioned for example by Theophrastus (F 112 ed. Wehrli, by way of Athenaeus 13.610a; cf. Hesychius s.v. Πυλαιίδες). We find further relevant details in the Homeric scholia, where we see that the name of this festival is the Kallisteia.
Among the people of Lesbos there is a contest [agōn] in beauty held in the sacred precinct [temenos] of Hera, called the Kallisteia. Lesbos is an island in the Aegean Sea, and it has five cities: Antissa, Eressos, Methymna, Pyrrha, and Mytilene.
II§290 Besides the epithet hierē ‘sacred’ describing the ululation of the women of Lesbos at the event of this festival (Alcaeus F 130b.20 ἴρα[ς]), a second epithet is also applied: eniausia ‘seasonally recurring’ (130b.20 ἐνιαυσίας), indicating that the festival of the Kallisteia takes place on a seasonally recurring basis. The detail about a competition in beauty is reflected in the wording of the song of Alcaeus, where we read κριννόμεναι φύαν ‘outstanding in beauty’ (130b.17). [48] The event in question is more than a beauty contest, however: it is a choral event, that is, an event featuring competitions among khoroi ‘choruses’ composed of singing and dancing women and girls. The ritual act of ululation is typical of choral performances involving women and girls. [49] There is an important piece of supporting evidence in the Greek Anthology (9.189), where the same festival of the Kallisteia, which is said to be taking place in the temenos ‘sacred precinct’ of Hera, is described explicitly in choral terms of song and dance, with Sappho herself pictured as the leader of the khoros ‘chorus’. [50]
II§291 As we see from the wording of Alcaeus in describing this precinct, it is sacred to Zeus (129.5), to Dionysus (129.8–9), and to the ‘Aeolian goddess’ (F 129.6 Αἰολήιαν … θέον). This goddess is evidently Hera. [51] This same precinct, I propose, {237|238} is sacred to Alcaeus himself as a cult hero: in my previous work, I have argued that the self-dramatization of Alcaeus in this context (F 129 and 130) is a function of his status as a cult hero who is imagined here as speaking from the dead to future generations of women and girls who are singing and dancing in khoroi ‘choruses’ that compete in the sacred precinct at Messon in Lesbos. [52]
II§292 I will not go into further details here concerning my earlier research on the self-dramatization of Alcaeus at Messon. Instead, I return to the central argument of Robert, which converges with my own central argument. Basically, this sacred precinct at Messon in Lesbos was the festive setting for the choral performances of women and girls as pictured in the poetry of Sappho.
II§293 All this is not to say that the poetic medium of Sappho was choral. My point is simply that the poetry of Sappho is cognate with choral lyric poetry—not only in form but also in content. [53] Technically, Sappho’s poetry can be described as monodic—provided we understand this term not as an antithesis but as a complement to the term choral:
I understand the monodic form [of Sappho] to be not antithetical to the choral but rather predicated on it. A figure like Sappho speaks as a choral personality, even though the elements of dancing and the very presence of the choral group are evidently missing from her compositions. Still, these compositions presuppose or represent an interaction offstage, as it were, with a choral aggregate. [54]
II 8ⓢ6. Homer the Aeolian revisited
II§294 The language of Sappho and Alcaeus is cognate not only with the language of choral lyric poetry: it is cognate also with the poetic language of epic as represented by Homer. [55] Or, to say it more precisely, the Aeolic Koine as represented by the poetry of Sappho and Alcaeus is cognate with the Aeolic phase of Homeric poetry as we know it. This Aeolic phase of Homer is what I mean when I say Homer the Aeolian.
II§295 A prime example of the Aeolic Koine is Song 44 of Sappho, known as “The Wedding of Hector and Andromache” (F 44), which is replete with phraseology demonstrably cognate with the phraseology we find both in choral lyric poetry and in epic poetry as represented by Homer. [56]
II§296 I draw attention to two details in Sappho’s “Wedding of Hector and Andromache.” First, we see references to the choral performances of women and girls, including {238|239} an explicit reference to choral ululation: γύναικες δ’ ἐλέλυσδον ‘and the women cried out elelu!’ (F 44.31). Second, we see references to masterpieces of pattern-weaving: κἄμματα | πορφύρ[α] … ποίκιλ’ ἀθύρματα ‘purple fabrics, … pattern-woven [poikila] delights’ (F 44.8–10). In both cases, the wording of Sappho is cognate with the wording that describes in Iliad VI a ritual scene where the women of Troy present Athena with a choice ‘robe’ or peplos. [57] In the first case, I focus on the moment when the chief priestess of the Trojans places this peplos on the knees of the statue of the goddess (VI 302–303). At that moment, the women of Troy ululate as they extend their hands in a choreographed ritual gesture to Athena: αἳ δ’ ὀλολυγῇ πᾶσαι Ἀθήνῃ χεῖρας ἀνέσχον ‘with a cry of ololu! all of them lifted up their hands to Athena’ (VI 301). In the second case, I focus on the description of this choice peplos as a masterpiece of pattern-weaving: ὃς κάλλιστος ἔην ποικίλμασιν ἠδὲ μέγιστος ‘the one [peplos] that was the most beautiful in pattern-weavings [poikilmata] and the biggest’ (VI 294). The excellence of this pattern-woven fabric is highlighted by comparing it with all the other competing peploi that could have been chosen instead: ἔνθ’ ἔσάν οἱ πέπλοι παμποίκιλοι ‘there [in the storechamber] it was that she kept her peploi, and they were completely pattern-woven [pan-poikiloi]’ (VI 289). At a later point in my argumentation, I will return to these convergences of detail in Iliad VI and in Sappho’s Song 44.
II§297 Going beyond the details, let us consider the overall scene depicted in Sappho’s Song 44, “The Wedding of Hector and Andromache.” The atmosphere of the song is festive on the surface but ominous underneath. At the happy moment of their wedding, both the bridegroom and the bride are already doomed, victims of the epic fate of Troy. We see a sign of this doom in the epithet applied to both Hector and Andromache at the end of Sappho’s song, theoeikeloi ‘equal to the gods’ (F 44.34). The meaning of this epithet is generically appropriate to Hector and Andromache at the moment of their wedding, since bridegrooms and brides are conventionally identified with gods and goddesses within the ritual time frame of a wedding. [58] But the application of this epithet in the context of the overall scene is ominous underneath the surface. In the Homeric Iliad, which narrates the later misfortunes of both Hector and Andromache, the epithet theoeikelos ‘equal to the gods’ is applied only to Achilles (I 131, XIX 155). [59] In the Iliad, Achilles is the hero directly responsible for the death of Hector and for the sorrows of Andromache. Achilles is pictured as singing the klea andrōn ‘glories of heroes’ (IX 189) while accompanying himself on the lyre that had once belonged to Eëtion, father of Andromache (IX 186–189), whom Achilles had killed when he captured the Aeolian city of Thebe (VI 414–416). In effect, Achilles sings his klea andrōn ‘glories of heroes’ (IX 189) to the mournful tune of {239|240} the sorrows of Andromache. The lyre here is a metonym for the transfer of these sorrows to Achilles. The irony we see here in the Iliad is comparable to what we see in Song 44 of Sappho, “The Wedding of Hector and Andromache.” There too we find the same kind of irony, which depends on the poetic heritage that her lyric poetry has in common with the epic poetry of Homer. [60]
II§298 We can see a comparable irony in the scene depicted in Iliad VI, which is likewise festive on the surface but ominous underneath. The depiction of the offering of a peplos to the goddess Athena by the women of Troy evokes the joyous moment of the offering of the Panathenaic Peplos in Athens, but the ensuing narration of Troy’s destruction dooms to failure a ritual act that could succeed only in Athens—at the festival of the Panathenaia. And the occasion of this festival in Athens is precisely the venue for the actual narration of Troy’s destruction – a narration that takes place through the Panathenaic performance of the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey.
II§299 Just as the festive but ominous narration of the failed ritual of the peplos was performed on the occasion of a festival, that is, at the Panathenaia in Athens, I propose that the festive but ominous narration of the wedding of Hector and Andromache was traditionally performed on a comparable occasion. That occasion was the grand festival held seasonally at the sanctuary of Messon on the island of Lesbos, bringing together representatives of a grand federation of Aeolian cities headed by Mytilene, the city that rivaled Athens in the struggle for possession of the poetic real estate of the Troad in the late seventh and early sixth centuries BCE.
II§300 At such a federal festival, we may expect a variety of performances in both poetry and song. The poetry could be epic as well as lyric, and the singing of lyric could be non-choral as well as choral. In the case of a composition like Sappho’s “Wedding of Hector and Andromache,” its stichic or line-by-line format indicates a form that is neither choral lyric nor even simply lyric but something closer to what we know as epic. [61] As I have argued in previous work, the meter and the phraseology of this particular composition are cognate with the meter and phraseology of epic as represented by the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey. [62] In other words, the lyric medium of Sappho is referring to a coexisting epic medium that is cognate with what we see in Homer. And this epic medium represents not the predominantly Ionic phase of Homer known to us from the Iliad and Odyssey but an Aeolic phase. I repeat, this Aeolic phase of Homer is what I mean when I say Homer the Aeolian. {240|241}
II 8ⓢ7. A Homeric glimpse of an Aeolian festival
II§301 By arguing that the poetic form of Sappho’s “Wedding of Hector and Andromache” is cognate with the poetic form of epics attributed to Homer, I am in effect saying that these two poetic forms stem respectively from Aeolic and Ionic poetic traditions that evolved independently of each other. In the course of history, however, these independent traditions became interdependent as a result of cultural contact. In previous work, I have argued that the dominantly Aeolic tradition as represented by the poetry of Sappho and Alcaeus shows signs of influence from a dominantly Ionic tradition as represented by Homeric poetry. [63] In this work I argue that the converse holds true as well, in other words, that the dominantly Ionic tradition as represented by Homeric poetry shows signs of influence from a dominantly Aeolic tradition that we find still attested in the poetry of Sappho and Alcaeus. We see a glimpse of this influence in the following three Homeric passages:
And I [= Agamemnon] will give seven women, skilled in flawless handiwork [erga], women from Lesbos. These women, when Lesbos with all its beautiful settlements was captured by him [= Achilles] all by himself, were chosen by me as my own share [of the war prizes], and in beauty they were winners over all other rival groups of women.{241|242} These are the women I will give him. And there will be among them the woman whom I took away back then, the daughter of Briseus [= Briseis].
And he [= Agamemnon] will give seven women, skilled in flawless handiwork [erga], women from Lesbos. These women, when Lesbos with all its beautiful settlements was captured by you [= Achilles] all by yourself, were chosen by him as his own share [of the war prizes], and in beauty they were winners, back then, over all other rival groups of women. These are the women that he will give you. And there will be among them the woman whom he took away back then, the daughter of Briseus [= Briseis].
And they led forth right away the women, skilled in flawless handiwork, seven of them, and the eighth was Briseis of the fair cheeks.
We see here three references to an ensemble of women who were captured by Achilles when he captured their cities on the island of Lesbos. Foregrounded is Briseis, a woman who was one of these women captured by Achilles and who was then awarded as a war prize to the hero by his fellow Achaeans. As for the other seven women, they were awarded as war prizes to Agamemnon. [64]
II§302 In the Homeric scholia D (at Iliad IX 130), the first of these three references to the women from Lesbos is linked with a historically attested custom that was native to Lesbos, a seasonally recurring beauty contest known the Kallisteia. This contest, as we saw earlier, was the defining event of a Panaeolian festival seasonally celebrated at the federal sanctuary of Messon in Lesbos. According to the Homeric scholia, the mention of the women of Lesbos in the Iliad is a poetic reference to this festival. Such an interpretation, as I will now argue, is borne out by the internal evidence of the Iliad.
II§303 In examining this evidence, I start with the distancing word tote ‘once upon a time’, pointedly referring to those glory days in the past when these Aeolian women from Lesbos were prominent celebrities. Back then, according to the Iliad, these women were superior κάλλει ‘in beauty’ to all other women from all other places in the whole world. Foregrounded in this ensemble of beautiful Aeolian women is Briseis herself, who is characterized in the Iliad as an Aeolian woman in her own right. She too, like the other Aeolian women, was captured—and captivated—by none other than Achilles.
II§304 As Casey Dué has demonstrated in her book about Briseis, this character is portrayed in the Iliad as distinctly Aeolian in her cultural formation. [65] Briseis is closely linked with places controlled by the Aeolian federation of Lesbos in the sixth century BCE. According to one tradition, the native city of Briseis was the old settlement of Brisa on the island of Lesbos. [66] According to another tradition, Briseis was the daughter of Brisēs, king of the city of Pedasos. [67] This city was located on the {242|243} mainland facing the island of Lesbos, and it was controlled by this island in the sixth century. [68] In the epic of the Cypria, Achilles captured Briseis when he captured the city of Pedasos (scholia T for Iliad XVI 57). In the epic of the Iliad, by contrast, Achilles captured Briseis when he captured the city of Lyrnessos (II 689–691). Like Pedasos, Lyrnessos was a city located on the mainland facing the island of Lesbos, and it too, like Pedasos, was controlled by Lesbos in the sixth century. [69]
II§305 I draw attention to an essential parallel to the capturing of Lyrnessos by Achilles in the Iliad: the capturing of the city of Thebe by the same hero (II 690–691). This parallelism between Lyrnessos and Thebe, as we are about to see, highlights a connection between Briseis and Andromache. Relevant is another captive woman, Chryseis, who was awarded as a prize to Agamemnon just as the captive woman Briseis was awarded as a prize to Achilles. Just as Briseis was from Brisa in Lesbos according to one tradition, so also Chryseis was from Chrysa or Chrysē in Lesbos. [70] And just as Briseis when she was married moved to Lyrnessos and was later captured by Achilles there (Iliad II 688–693), so also Chryseis when she was married moved to Thebe and was later captured by Achilles there (Iliad I 366–369). [71] Here is where we see the connection between Briseis and Andromache. A native of the city of Thebe is Andromache herself, but she moved to Troy when she was married to Hector. Unlike the fate of Chryseis, the fate of Andromache as a captive woman is thus postponed, since she was already married to Hector and living in Troy, not in Thebe, when Achilles captured Thebe. [72] If Andromache had not already moved to Troy, her fate would have matched the fate of Chryseis, who had moved to Thebe, or the fate of Briseis, who had moved to Lyrnessos. That is because Achilles captured both Thebe and Lyrnessos. And the fact is that Thebe, like Lyrnessos, was an Aeolian city. Like Lyrnessos, the Thebe of Andromache was yet another city located on the mainland facing the island of Lesbos, and it, too, like Lyrnessos, was controlled by Lesbos in the sixth century. [73] Like Chryseis and Briseis, then, Andromache is an Aeolian personality.
II§306 These three women are not simply Aeolian personalities. They are Aeolian choral personalities. This characterization is most evident in the case of Briseis, as we see from the words spoken by this character when she laments the death of Patroklos:
But then Briseis, looking like golden Aphrodite, saw Patroklos all cut apart by the sharp bronze, and when she saw him, she poured herself [kheîn] all over him [in tears] and wailed with a voice most shrill, and with her hands she tore at 285 her breasts and her tender neck and her beautiful face. And then she spoke, weeping, this woman who looked like the goddesses: “O Patroklos, you have been most gracious [via participle of kharizesthai] to me in my terrible state and most gratifying [again, via participle of kharizesthai] to my heart. You were alive when I last saw you on my way out from the shelter, and now I come back to find you dead, you, the protector of your people; 290 that is what I come back to find. Oh, how I have one misfortune after the next to welcome me. The man to whom I was given away by my father and by my mother the queen, I saw that man lying there in front of the city, all cut apart by the sharp bronze, and lying near him were my three brothers—all of us were born of one mother. They are all a cause for my sorrow, since they have all met up with their time of destruction. 295 No, you did not let me—back when my husband was killed by swift Achilles, killed by him, and when the city of my godlike Mynes [= my husband] was destroyed by him —you did not let me weep, back then, but you told me that godlike Achilles would have me as a properly courted wife, that you would make that happen, and that you would take me on board the ships, taking me all the way to Phthia, and that you would arrange for a wedding feast among the Myrmidons. {244|245} 300 So now I cannot stop crying for you, now that you are dead, you who were always so sweet and gentle.” So she [= Briseis] spoke, weeping, and the women mourned in response. They mourned for Patroklos, that was their pretext, but they were all mourning, each and every one of them, for what they really cared for in their own sorrow.
II§307 As she performs her lament in this passage, Briseis comports herself as the lead singer of a choral ensemble of women. The ensemble is shown in the act of responding to her lament by continuing it. The continuation is an antiphonal performance, in the form of various different kinds of stylized weeping and gesturing, or even singing and dancing. [74] I use the term antiphonal to indicate that this performance is an overt response to the initial lament of the lead singer [75] —a response conveyed by the preverb epi- ‘in response’: ἐπὶ δὲ στενάχοντο γυναῖκες ‘and the women mourned in response [epi-]’. [76]
II§308 In the logic of the ongoing narrative, this ensemble of women responding to the lament of Briseis is the same as the ensemble of captive women from Lesbos mentioned in Iliad IX. In performing her lament in conjunction with the antiphonal laments of these women, Briseis is linked with the predetermined choral role of these women, who were ‘once upon a time’ celebrated as the most beautiful girls in the whole world—back in those happier times before the Trojan War. In the lament of Briseis, her identity merges with the identity of these captive women of Lesbos. Once upon a time, they were the world’s most marriageable girls, living the charmed life of renowned choral celebrities and groomed to become the wives of their region’s most powerful rulers. Now they are miserable slaves, doomed to become the concubines of their captors.
II§309 Despite their pitiful degradation in social status, these women of Lesbos retain their aristocratic charisma. An outward sign is the highlighting of their erga ‘handiwork’ (IX 128, 270). The most prestigious form of such handiwork, as we will see later, is these women’s skill in pattern-weaving, a mark of excellence viewed as a parallel to their universally acknowledged excellence in choral singing and dancing.
II§310 The aristocratic charisma of these women of Lesbos is foregrounded in the figure of their lead singer Briseis. As she begins to perform her lament, she is equated with the goddess Aphrodite herself (XIX 282). We see later on in the Iliad an important parallel to this eroticized image of Briseis in the act of singing a lament. It {245|246} happens when Andromache sees the sight of Hector’s corpse dragged by the chariot of Achilles. At that moment of overwhelming sorrow, the image of Andromache is simultaneously eroticized. While she is falling into a swoon (XXII 466–467), she tears off all the bindings that control and adorn her hair, the last and most important of which is her overall krēdemnon ‘headdress’ (XXII 468–470). Pointedly, this krēdemnon had been given by Aphrodite herself to Andromache on her wedding day (Iliad XXII 470–471). Such a personalized connection with the goddess marks the eroticism of the precise moment when Andromache’s luxuriant hair comes undone with the loss of her headdress. [77]
II§311 This erotic moment is extended. Once Andromache revives from her swoon (XXII 473–476), her consciousness modulates instantaneously into a lament as sensual as it is sorrowful (XXII 477–514). This sensuality bears the mark of Aphrodite.
II§312 Here I adduce a passage from tragedy that echoes the sensuality of Andromache’s lament in the Iliad. The passage is a set of verses introducing an aria of lamentation sung as a monody by the actor who plays the title role in the Andromache of Euripides. These verses touch on Andromache’s mixed feelings of sorrow and sensuality:
But I, involved as I am all the time in laments [thrēnoi] and wailings [gooi] and outbursts of tears, will make them reach far away, as far as the aether. For it is natural for women, when misfortunes attend them, to take pleasure [terpsis] in giving voice to it all, voicing it again and again, maintaining the voice from one mouth to the next, from one tongue to the next.
In these verses, the actor who represents Andromache is speaking in a rhythm that we know as the iambic trimeter. In the verses that will follow, he will be singing in a rhythm that we know as elegiac, consisting of elegiac couplets (101–116). And the sung elegiac verses will show that the actor who sings them must be more than an actor: he is also a singing virtuoso. What the actor will sing is a monody, which is a solo song requiring special virtuosity in singing—the kind of virtuosity that transcends the singing skills of the chorus. It is the sung verses of this monody (101–116) that are being introduced by the spoken verses of the passage we are now considering (91–95). But the wording of these spoken verses anticipates not only the solo singing of Andromache. It anticipates also the antiphonal singing of a chorus {246|247} of women who will continue to sing where the solo singing of Andromache leaves off. This chorus of women will share the sorrows of Andromache and will be ‘maintaining the voice from one mouth to the next, from one tongue to the next’ (95). This wording of Andromache, which merely imagines the antiphonal lament of a chorus of women, anticipates what will actually happen when the monody of Andromache leaves off: the solo lament performed by Andromache (101–116) will now be taken up by an antiphonal lament that is no longer imagined but actually performed (117–146). And the performers of this antiphonal lament are no longer an imaginary chorus but the tragic chorus that sings and dances in the Andromache of Euripides.
II§313 We find in the Iliad a striking parallel to this choral response sung and danced by an ensemble of women who share the sorrows of Andromache as she sings her solo lament. It happens at the closure of the lament performed by Andromache after she sees the corpse of her husband dragged behind the chariot of Achilles. After the quotation of her solo song of lament (XXII 477–514), what follows is a lamentation by Trojan women who continue where the soloist left off:
IIⓣ42 Iliad XXII 515
Ὣς ἔφατο κλαίουσ’, ἐπὶ δὲ στενάχοντο γυναῖκες
So she [= Andromache] spoke, weeping, and the women mourned in response.
II§314 The solo song of lament performed by Andromache is matched by the antiphonal lamenting of the stylized chorus of Trojan women who respond to her. [78] The same can be said about the solo song of lament performed by Briseis, which is likewise matched by the antiphonal lamenting of a stylized chorus of women. These women, unlike the Trojan women who respond to Andromache, are already the captives of the Achaeans. The chorus of women who respond to Briseis are the women of Lesbos who had been captured by Achilles:
So she [= Briseis] spoke, weeping, and the women mourned in response. They mourned for Patroklos, that was their pretext [prophasis], but they were all mourning, each and every one of them, for what they really cared for in their own sorrow. {247|248}
II§315 The narrative of the Iliad leaves unvoiced the antiphonal singing performed by the women of Lesbos in response to the lament of Briseis, but, as we have just seen, the description makes clear nevertheless the nature of their performance. It is choral. This Iliadic reference to a choral performance by the women of Lesbos evokes those happier days when these women were singing—and dancing—as choral celebrities back home at their local festival. Those happy days of celebration are gone forever, and all they have left now is an occasion to lament their sorrowful fate, but their song of lament is still a choral song. In the Iliad, this theme extends from the women of Lesbos in particular to the women of Troy in general. [79]
II§316 The narrative of the Iliad actually comments on its omission of the choral wording voiced by the captive women of Lesbos. While they sing antiphonally a song of lament for Patroklos, these women are really lamenting their own misfortunes. The wording of the Iliad draws attention to the prophasis ‘pretext’ of the sorrow of the women of Lesbos over the death of Patroklos (XIX 302). That sorrow is for them secondary to their sorrow about their own fate. For the Iliad, however, the sorrow occasioned by the death of Patroklos must remain the primary epic concern, and so the choral lyric concerns of the captive women cannot be voiced by them.
II§317 But these choral lyric concerns are in fact voiced by Briseis, who has a share in these concerns by virtue of being the lead singer of the captive women of Lesbos. The poetics of prophasis ‘pretext’ apply not only to the captive women but also to their lead singer. Briseis too has her own choral lyric concerns, which transcend the epic concern of sorrow over the death of Patroklos. True, the wording of the lament voiced by Briseis expresses her sorrowful reaction at the sight of the corpse of Patroklos, ‘cut apart by the sharp bronze’ of Hector (Iliad XIX 283 δεδαϊγμένον ὀξέϊ χαλκῷ), but this image is prefigured by something that she saw at an earlier time in her life: it was the gruesome sight of the corpse of her own beloved husband, ‘cut apart by the sharp bronze’ of Achilles (XIX 292 δεδαϊγμένον ὀξέϊ χαλκῷ). [80] And the sorrowful reaction of Briseis at this sight will later be matched by the sorrowful reaction of Andromache at the sight of the corpse of her own beloved Hector, who will also be killed by Achilles. There is even more to it. Retrospectively, the sorrowful reaction of Briseis is matched by the equally sorrowful reaction of the unnamed captive woman in the simile that interrupts the third song of Demodokos. Here I quote the verses that describe the sorrowful reaction of this captive woman at the sight of her dear husband’s corpse:
Thus sang the singer [aoidos], the one whose glory is supreme. And Odysseus dissolved [tēkesthai] into tears. He made wet his cheeks with the tears flowing from his eyelids, just as a woman cries, falling down and embracing her dear husband, who fell in front of the city and people he was defending, 525 trying to ward off the pitiless day of doom hanging over the city and its children. She sees him dying, gasping for his last breath, and she pours herself all over him as she wails with a piercing cry. But there are men behind her, prodding her with their spears, hurting her back and shoulders, and they bring for her a life of bondage, which will give her pain and sorrow. 530 Her cheeks are wasting away with a sorrow [akhos] that is most pitiful [eleeinon].
II§318 Just as this unnamed captive woman laments as she embraces the corpse of her husband (Odyssey viii 527 ἀμφ’ αὐτῷ χυμένη λίγα κωκύει), so also Briseis laments as she embraces the corpse of Patroklos (Iliad XIX 284 ἀμφ’ αὐτῷ χυμένη λίγ’ ἐκώκυε), evoking her earlier lament over the corpse of her own dear husband.
II§319 The figure of Briseis, in the act of singing her lament, is a stand-in for the choral ensemble of lamenting women from Lesbos. The choral antiphony performed by these women of Lesbos foregrounds the choral personality of the woman who figures as their prima donna, Briseis. And she looks the part of a choral prima donna. It is relevant that Briseis is likened to Aphrodite herself in the context of singing her own sorrows (Iliad XIX 282), just as Andromache is linked to Aphrodite in the context of her singing her own sorrows (XXII 470–471: as we saw, Andromache wears for her wedding a veil given to her by the goddess herself). The association of these two figures with Aphrodite in these sorrowful contexts is comparable to what we find in the first song of the ancient collection attributed to Sappho (F 1). In this erotic song about unrequited love, in the context of singing her own sorrows, Sappho likens herself to Aphrodite by speaking with the voice of the goddess. This poetic effect is achieved by way of directly quoting what Aphrodite is saying to Sap-{249|250} pho (Sappho F 1.18–24). [81] This point of comparison linking Sappho with Briseis and Andromache is essential for my argumentation, since Sappho represents herself as a choral lyric prima donna when she assumes the role of Aphrodite by speaking with the voice of the goddess. [82] And this self-representation is parallel not only to the representations of Briseis and Andromache in the Iliad but also to the representation of Andromache in Sappho’s own poetry, as we see in “The Wedding of Hector and Andromache.” In the lyric poetry of Sappho, the figure of Andromache was not a borrowing from Homeric poetry. Rather, Andromache was native to the lyric tradition of the Aeolic Koine. Andromache was part of this lyric tradition well before the time of Sappho—and well before this lyric tradition was ever appropriated by the epic tradition of the Ionic Koine represented by Homer.
II§320 What I just said about Andromache applies also to Briseis. She too was native to the lyric traditions of the Aeolic Koine. In the case of Briseis, moreover, her status as an Aeolian prima donna is more overt, since the Iliad associates Briseis directly with the women of Lesbos, whereas it associates Andromache only with the women of Troy. Briseis is an explicitly Aeolian prima donna by virtue of performing as the lead singer of the women of Lesbos in the Homeric Iliad.
II 8ⓢ8. The festive poetics of federal politics
II§321 So far, on the basis of examining Iliadic passages referring to the women of Lesbos, I have been arguing that Homeric poetry shows an awareness of what became the Aeolian federation that celebrated its seasonally recurring festival at Messon, the ‘Middleground’ of that Aeolian island. This argument connects with another, which is that Homeric poetry was secondarily shaped by the federal politics of the Ionian federation that celebrated the seasonally recurring festival of the Panathenaia at Athens. In referring to the women of Lesbos, Homeric poetry shows its partiality to that Ionian federation, at the expense of this rival Aeolian federation. It pictures these Aeolian women as captives of Achilles, who is said to have captured single-handedly all the cities of Lesbos (IX 129, 271). So the Aeolians of Lesbos are represented as a defeated and degraded population. Such partiality is not at the expense of all Aeolians, however, since Achilles himself is acknowledged in Homeric poetry as an Aeolian hero. He is after all a native of Thessaly, which is the European homeland of the Aeolians. Though he belongs to the Aeolian people of Europe, Achilles is nevertheless an enemy of the Aeolian people on the other side of the Aegean in Asia Minor and its outlying islands. To repeat, he captures the cities of the main island of the Aeolians, Lesbos, and enslaves their women. Such a portrayal suits the political interests of the Athenians, who were engaged in a struggle with {250|251} the cities of Lesbos, especially with Mytilene, over the possession of a vital part of the Asiatic mainland: that is, the city of Sigeion and its environs in the Troad. As we saw earlier, the Athenian encroachment on the Troad did not necessarily undercut the identity of the Aeolian population who lived there, since Athens at the time of this conflict with the Aeolians in Asia Minor was an ally of the Aeolians in Europe: that is, with the Thessalians. And the Thessalians had their own claim on the Troad, as we know from a ritual described by Philostratus, which I quoted in Chapter 7. In the era of the Peisistratidai and even earlier, the Athenians were allies of these European Aeolians of Thessaly and enemies of the Asiatic Aeolians of Lesbos, especially of the Mytilenaeans.
II§322 In the context of the conflict between the Athenians and the Aeolians of Lesbos over the Troad, the Athenians took the initiative of appropriating the poetic heritage of these Aeolians. Such appropriation took the form of actually displaying for public consumption the poetry of Lesbos at the festival of the Panathenaia in Athens. When the Homeric Iliad features Briseis singing her lament for Patroklos and, implicitly, for her husband, what is actually being heard by the audience at the Panathenaia in Athens is the lament of an Aeolian woman originating from the federation of Lesbos. So also when the Homeric Iliad features Andromache singing her lament for her husband, Hector, what is being heard by the Panathenaic audience is the lament of another Aeolian woman originating from the same federation.
II§323 The performance of such laments is adapted to the medium of the rhapsodes who perform Homeric poetry at the Panathenaia. So the laments of Briseis and of Andromache are performed as if they were monodic, not choral, though the Homeric narrative goes on to represent the performances of antiphonal responses by choral ensembles composed of women from Lesbos and from Troy respectively. In both cases the prima donna of the choral ensemble is an Aeolian woman. So, by extension, the overall performance is imagined as an Aeolian choral lyric song. In other words, Homeric poetry represents Aeolian women in the act of performing choral lyric poetry.
II§324 At the Panathenaia in Athens, the performance of epic poetry by rhapsodes was not the only medium for representing Aeolian women in the act of performing choral lyric poetry. Another medium of representation was the performance of non-choral lyric poetry. In this case, the performers were not rhapsodes. To make this point, I show a picture of Sappho and Alcaeus in a vase painting:
Figures 3a–b. Attic red-figure kalathoid vase: (a) obverse, Sappho (labeled as “ΣΑΦΟ”) and Alcaeus(labeled as “ΑΛΚΑΙΟΣ”); (b) reverse, Dionysus and maenad. Attributed to the Brygos Painter. Munich, Antikensammlungen, 2416. Drawing by Valerie Woelfel.
II§325 In Figure 3 we see Sappho and Alcaeus pictured in the act of non-choral lyric performance. The performers are to sing while accompanying themselves on stringed instruments. This picture was produced in Athens, sometime in the early fifth century BCE. Why, we may ask, were Sappho and Alcaeus appropriated in this way by the Athenian media of visual arts? To give the briefest possible answer: because the lyric poetry of Sappho and Alcaeus was likewise appropriated by the Athenian media of verbal arts. The songs that had once been the lyric repertoire of the Ae-{251|252} olic Koine representing the federation of Lesbos were now part of the lyric repertoire of kitharōidoi ‘citharodes’ who competed at the Panathenaia, matching the epic repertoire of rhapsōidoi ‘rhapsodes’ who competed at the same festival. [83] Just as the rhapsodic traditions of performing epic poetry at the Panathenaia in Athens were shaped prehistorically by this Aeolic Koine, so too were the citharodic traditions of performing lyric poetry.
II§326 From what we have seen so far, I conclude that poetry was a currency used by federations of cities as a self-expression of their federalism. The self-expression took the form of poetic performances at festivals celebrated in common by the cities belonging to these federations, dominated by master cities like Mytilene on the island of Lesbos and Athens on the Helladic mainland. Another prominent example, as we saw in Chapter 7, was Miletus on the Asiatic mainland. In the case of Mytilene, the federation of Aeolian cities it dominated was notionally a Panaeolian society. Similarly in the case of Miletus, the federation of Ionian cities it dominated was notionally a Panionian society. Much the same can be said in the case of Athens, though the composition of the federation it dominated was more complicated. Back when {252|253} the nexus of Ionian cities that eventually became the Delian League started to be dominated by Athens, this federation did not yet have the prestige of the Ionian Dodecapolis dominated by Miletus. Thus any claim to the effect that Athens was the leader of a Panionian society would have been weaker than the rival claim of Miletus. Later on, as the Delian League evolved into the Athenian empire, its claim to represent a Panionian society became so strong as to eclipse all other rival claims. But by then the Athenian empire had outgrown the necessity for claiming to represent such a Panionian society, since it could now claim to represent something much broader—something that was notionally all-encompassing. That something was a notionally Panhellenic society.
Footnotes
[ back ] 1. See again Hornblower 1991:527. Athenian involvement in the Delia can be dated even farther back to the era of Solon: Aloni 1989:44–45.
[ back ] 2. Hornblower 1991:520. In the sixth century, however, the Persian empire still controlled most of the coast of Asia Minor; in that respect, then, there is a major difference with the fifth century, when that control was taken over by the Athenian empire. For more on the sixth century, see also Hornblower p. 519, who comments on the “vigorous Aegean foreign policy” of the Peisistratidai. I refer again to his pp. 519–520 for comments on the survival of various ideologies from the era of the Peisistratidai to the era of the democracy, such as various Panhellenic features of the Eleusinian Mysteries.
[ back ] 10. For more on the Ephesia, see Kowalzig 2007:103–104, 108–110.
[ back ] 11. Hornblower 1991:527, with further citations.
[ back ] 12. Rhodes 1994:259. In the fifth and fourth centuries BCE, as Hornblower 1991:522 observes, the shaping of the festival of the Ephesia at Ephesus was taking place in Asia Minor, which was under the overall political domination of the Persian empire: the Ephesia “continued to be celebrated on Persian soil throughout the fifth and fourth centuries.” Still, Ephesus was notionally a member of the Delian League. To sum up the politics and poetics of Homer in Ephesus and in other Ionian cities of Asia Minor during the fifth and fourth centuries BCE, I offer this formulation: the imperial Homer straddled two empires, the Persian and the Athenian.
[ back ] 13. Here I follow the reasoning of Frame 2009 endnote 4.2.
[ back ] 14. Again, I follow the reasoning of Frame 2009.
[ back ] 16. At Iliad XIII 700, there is also a mention of Boiōtoi ‘Boeotians’, which picks up the mention of Boiōtoi at XIII 685, where they are correlated with the Ionians. See Page 1959 on the Boiōtoi in the Catalogue of Iliad II and Giovannini 1969 on the Delphic orientation of the Catalogue.
[ back ] 17. As we have seen, the twelve cities of the Ionian Dodecapolis are listed by Herodotus (1.142.3); also the twelve cities of the Aeolian Dodecapolis (1.149.1).
[ back ] 19. As we see from the context of the Iliadic passage here, the mode of inflicting the mortal blow in sacrificing the bull highlights the vitality of the bull, who is “pumped up” with fear and rage. In the exegetical scholia bT for Iliad XX 406a (see also bT for 404b), the commentator takes great care in noting the explosion of arterial blood at the climactic moment when the sacrificial blow severs the carotid artery of the “pumped up” animal. It appears that this mode of sacrificing the bull intensifies the rush of arterial blood spurting from the sacrificial blow.
[ back ] 20. A case in point is the Catalogue of Heroines in Odyssey xi, as studied by Frame 2009 ch. 7.
[ back ] 21. Εlsewhere too, Herodotus uses koinos ‘common’ in comparable contexts of commonality (as at 1.151.3, 1.166.1, 1.170.2, 2.178.2, and so on). And there are two instances where he uses the synonym xunos ‘common’ (4.12.3, 7.53.1).
[ back ] 23. Parry 1932. Summarized in Nagy 1972:59.
[ back ] 24. In the online version of Nagy 1972:59 (2008b), I offer an updating of my views, which I repeat here. I distance myself from speaking of successive dialectal “layers” in epic. In general, I am persuaded by the argumentation of Horrocks in criticizing various current “layer theories” (see especially Horrocks 1997:214). Instead of speaking of earlier and later dialectal “layers” in Homeric poetry, I now prefer to speak of earlier and later dialectal “phases,” since the term phases allows for an overlap and even a coexistence of relatively earlier and later dialectal forms at any given time in the evolution of epic. To the extent that the term layer may not allow for such overlap or coexistence, it now seems to me preferable not to use it. In general, my current thinking about the dialectal mix of epic is closest to that of Wachter 2000, especially p. 64n4. In the case of coexisting Aeolic and Ionic forms in epic, I should add, it is essential to distinguish between optional and obligatory Aeolic forms. Provided that we keep this distinction in mind, I can agree with Wachter’s formulation concerning “optional” Aeolic forms such as αἰ vs. Ionic εἰ, ἔμμεν vs. Ionic εἶναι, and so on. Aeolic forms are obligatory where no corresponding Ionic forms fit the meter, but they are only optional where existing Ionic forms can be substituted.
[ back ] 37. Nagy 1974; PH Appendix (= pp. 439–464).
[ back ] 38. Nagy 1993. In what follows, I repeat some of the argumentation that I published there.
[ back ] 39. Robert 1960. He also demonstrates the connectedness of Alcaeus F 129 with F 130.
[ back ] 40. Nagy 1993:221, where I add that the use of the word sunodoi ‘assemblies’ in Alcaeus F 130b.15, in a fragmentary context, may be pertinent.
[ back ] 42. Detienne 1973:97. I add the qualification “agonistic” in light of the discussion of Loraux 1987:108–112.
[ back ] 43. Another example of such symmetrical visualization is the Spartan term for their civic space, khoros: see Pausanias (3.11.9), who adds that this space was the setting for the Spartan festival of the Gymnopaidiai. See PH 12§17 (= pp. 344–345), with further citations. The designation of this festive space as the khoros is relevant to a detail in the narrative of Herodotus (6.67.2) about an incident involving a king of Sparta who presided over the festival of the Gymnopaidiai after being deposed from his kingship by a rival king: the former king’s official title as president of this festival was arkhōn ‘leader’, and Herodotus plays on the ominous political significance of the use of this word in the context of the explosive incident that he narrates. See PH 12§23n56 (= pp. 348–349).
[ back ] 54. PH 12§62 (= p. 371). As we can see from the work of Power 2010:261–263, some of Sappho’s compositions are not only monodic but also citharodic.
[ back ] 55. PH 14§§6–9 (= pp. 416–418); PH Appendix §§2–19, 27, 33–37 (= pp. 439–451, 455–456, 459–464).
[ back ] 56. PH Appendix §37 (= p. 464), summarizing the essentials of what I present in Nagy 1974. As Power 2010:258–263 shows, Song 44 of Sappho reflects a citharodic medium of performance.
[ back ] 57. From here on, I will write simply “peplos,” except where I analyze the etymology of the word.
[ back ] 59. On the theme of Achilles as the “eternal bridegroom,” see Dué 2006:82–83.
[ back ] 60. Nagy 1974:118–139. It is relevant to note again the work of Power 2010:258–263, who shows that the form of this lyric poetry of Sappho reflects a citharodic medium of performance.
[ back ] 61. As Power 2010:257–273 shows, the medium for performing such a form of epic may be more citharodic than rhapsodic.
[ back ] 74. In traditional lament, the physiology of weeping and gesturing is integrated with the art of singing and dancing (I note the relevant remarks of Dué 2006:46).
[ back ] 75. On antiphonal tsakismata in Modern Greek traditions of lamentation, see Dué 2006:159, with citations.
[ back ] 76. Dué 2002:70–71, 81; and Dué 2006:43–44.
[ back ] 77. Detailed analysis by Dué 2006:4, 78, with citations.
[ back ] 78. In the case of the final lament that we see in the Iliad, performed by Helen, the antiphonal response is performed not by a stylized chorus of women (as in VI 499, XIX 301, XXII 515, XXIV 746) but by the entire community or dēmos of the Trojans (XXIV 776). See Dué 2006:44. On the khoros ‘chorus’ as a stylization of the entire community, see PH 5§11 (= p. 142), 12§2 (= p. 339), 12§17 (= pp. 334–345), 12§29 (= pp. 350–351), 12§55 (= pp. 367–368), 12§75 (= pp. 377–378).
[ back ] 79. This theme is evident also in the tragedies of Euripides: see Dué 2006:12 on Trojan Women 582–586; also p. 141 on Trojan Women 474–497; also p. 15 on Hecuba 349–357.
[ back ] 83. On the transmission of the lyric poetry of Sappho and Alcaeus in the context of citharodic performances at the Panathenaia in Athens, see Nagy 2004b; also Nagy 2007b. For a thorough investigation of the citharodic medium of performing monodic songs of Sappho and Alcaeus, see Power 2010.
