Listening
to the Spider: reading Hesiod’s Works and Days
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CHAPTER 7.
CELEBRATION vv.
564-614a |
{Note: Substantially the material of this
chapter written in 2003 appeared subsequently in a form more oriented toward
the specialist reader, in the article in Transactions of the American
Philological Association listed in the writings page for 2005. That article is more up to date in terms of
scholarship.}
The just finished
“winter” discussion resulted in a victory more substantial than defeating a
mere epic warrior -- who may be the son of a god as is Boreas, but unlike him
cannot singly make the earth “groan” (only as one of large numbers of Achaeans
marching on it in one case). Indeed, the
third agricultural “movement” will turn out to be celebratory in tone. It consists of five generally light-hearted
episodes or vignettes -- one is tempted to say “bagatelles” -- which, however,
are organized into an overall ring form, spanning vv. 564-614a. (The segment 614b-17 refers to the
agricultural section as a whole, although, together with 618, it constitutes a
transition segment which it is convenient to treat in the next chapter.)[1]
April fool!
The opening vignette
at first looks like a lyrical expression of relief that winter is over, but
closer attention reveals points which are curious to say the least:
Sixty
(days) after the sun’s turnings (sic), when
Zeus
finishes up winter days, well right then the star
Arcturus,
abandoning the lively stream of Oceanus,
rises at
twilight and first shines;
and after
him the wailing-before-dawn (or: rightly-wailing) daughter of Pandion, the
swallow,
rises
to light
for humans, just at the onset of spring.
Prune your
vines ahead of her, for this is better.[2]
(vv. 564-70)
(The “sun’s turning” is the solstice as at 479, although here the
plural is used illogically, because the poet is enamored of a parallel with
“sun’s turnings” -- meaning something else -- in the Odyssey, and the
singular will not fit the meter either here or in the expression’s recurrence
at 663. “When” is eute, not the
cyclical ēmos
found at 414, discussed in Chapter 5 above.)
From the “almanac” perspective, vv. 564-9 amount to a signal of a
season, i.e., a bird call, if embellished by mythical references, but 570
presents a problem. The segment specifically
alludes to a belief that stars bathed in the earth-surrounding stream Oceanus
during the day, and to the myth of the daughters of Pandion. Namely, these personages killed the son of
one them (Procne) as revenge against her husband for raping the other (Philomela)
and cutting her tongue out. They became
birds while fleeing his wrath: Philomela, the swallow; Procne, the
nightingale, although the Roman version (the one followed in modern European
poetry) for some reason reverses these roles.
Homer also cites the myth, even using the phrase “just at the onset of
spring.” In this connection, there may
be a nuance in “rises to light,” i.e., an indication that the
swallow/Philomela comes back from the dead.
But then the supposed problem: This is followed by citing only one
task for the season, vine-pruning. What
could this be about?[3]
I submit that after the
cuckoo bespeaks the uncertainty of the world in v. 486, no further voiced
creature in an integrated work is going to be straightforward. And the cited myth is incongruous as such,
since the actual swallow’s call bears no resemblance to “wailing,” a point
noted by critics from Plato (who has Socrates deny that any bird sings at a
time of deprivation of it qua bird) to Arrighetti (who is surprised that
a keen nature observer like Hesiod would involve himself in such a
matter). Moreover, the personifications
of Arcturus and Philomela are exaggerated:
Apart from the “substantial” epic expressions the poet employs to render
them (“stream of Oceanus,” etc.), the sequences of particles “well right then”
and “and after him/her” often set off the actions of epic characters.[4]
In fact, the intent in
the swallow’s personification is to evoke its mythical corpus as such, not to
seriously portray the avatar of a wronged woman in one example thereof. Once again (after Pandora going beyond myth’s
typical First Woman, and after the hawk giving the point of view of the nobles)
the poet indulges his penchant for meta-myth.
And at least here his tongue is firmly in his cheek, for the corpus
which is thereby referenced amounts to the April Fools joke D’Arcy Thompson
notes for one particular example of it, a person stealing food while people
were distracted by watching swallows.
As the next in the series of bird poets our poet translates, it warns of
deception (or if one insists, deception is what it symbolizes). The point of working “ahead of her” at v. 570
(cf. “ahead of him,” i.e., Boreas, 554) is to finish whatever must be done
before something happens to beguile you.
No more tasks are cited because the segment is not set in cyclic time (eute
at 564), the poem’s tasks are only scaffolding in the first place, and the
point has been made.[5]
That is to say, if the
swallow “wails” (either before dawn or rightly), it is for human folly.
If a snail can work, so can you.
The second vignette’s
wit is more obvious. Pruning vines is
better for a time (v. 570);
but when
(meaning: until) “carry-house” climbs up plants from the ground,
fleeing
the Pleiades; right then (let there be) no more hoeing of vines;
rather,
the sickles sharpen and the servants arouse;
(you too)
“flee” (i.e., avoid) shady seats and (staying) in bed at dawn
in the
harvest season, when the sun dries out (karphei) the skin;
push on
then and bring the fruit (karpos) home,
getting up before daybreak, so that
your livelihood is enough.[6]
(571-7)
(West observes that the hoeing of 572 and pruning at 570 go together,
as Athanassakis verifies for modern
Nelson thinks that
here “Hesiod is scolding us for wasting too much time on (the vines),” but to
me the poetry is fun. As such, it
matches the fact that the work involved, while strenuous, is enjoyable: Its
benefit is clearly in sight, unlike in the case of the plowing covered in the
first movement. (Thus as John
Petropoulos observes, the arduous harvest in modern
But for a coda, the
poet takes the occasion to offer something more profound, which also removes
any residual sense that the work involved is drudgery. By way of association of ideas from the
thought of getting up before dawn, we hear:
For Dawn
yes claims a third portion of the work;
Dawn see
furthers the way and also furthers the work;
Dawn, she
whose appearing sets on the path many a
human, and
puts the yoke on many an ox.[9]
(vv. 578-81)
(A third because dawn governs a third of the day; see West). This priamel-like structure, one of the more
effective epanaphorae in Homer and Hesiod, is like a ritual paean to a deity,
or at least a hero. Indeed, the details,
especially the relative clause beginning in the third line, are sufficiently
similar to the Nireus example in the Catalogue of Ships that allusion is quite
possible:[10]
Nireus for
his part, from Syme, led three trim ships;
Nireus,
the son of Aglaea and King Charopus;
Nireus,
who was the fairest man to come under
among the
other Achaeans after faultless Achilles.
(Il. 2.671-4)
This is a peculiar segment in that (Kirk) Nireus is a minor figure but
is decribed impressively. Our poet at
least considers the form worthy. Apart
from that, as West notes, the “way” which Dawn furthers has broad connotations;
especially (as he does not), it acquires resonance from an allusion: In a repeated passage, Menelaus (later
Odysseus) says he was told to seek out Proteus (Tiresias), “who can tell you(?)
the way and the lengths of the passage,” where “of the passage” (kelethou)
is the same as our “on the path” in the next line. The result is that our poet treats Dawn
rather more reverently than does Homer, for all the “rosy-fingered” nature the
latter sees in her. True, the talk of
work for humans and oxen underscores the need for effort (and as such sets up a
contrast with the segment to follow, aside from recalling the juxtaposition of
livestock and humans at 558-9 as West notes).
But this effort is assimilated to praise of a quasi-deity: In effect there is a celebration which
invokes Dawn as a stand-in for the harvest god.[11]
Recovering from a false note.
The third vignette is
virtually unaminously misunderstood. It
is in two parts, first:
At-the-point-that
(ēmos) the
thistle blooms and the shrill cicada,
“sitting
on its tree,” showers down its “clear song,”
in fast
beats from under its wings in the season of exhausting summer,
then
“goats are plumpest” and wine is best,
and
lustiest women but see weakest men
are, since
Sirius parches their head and knees,
and yes
the skin is dried out under the heat. ...
(vv. 582-8)
What this passage “showers down” is irony. To be sure, during the course of a seminal
work treating Hesiod’s later description of sailing as a figure for poetry,
Ralph Rosen sees the cicada here as a metaphor for a poet, noting that our own
poet assigns “clear song” to himself later in the work. However, following the common view that this
passage is idyllic, Rosen says the insect is the poet of relaxation and of the
time “to turn to esthetic pleasures.”
Actually, it is a noxious presence:
What is really significant about “clear song” is that the Sirens give it
in luring men to their doom. “Sitting on
a tree” is a clear allusion to the “lily-voiced” cicadas with whom a Trojan
council is compared, but instead of the lily we get the coarse thistle. (For good measure the poet throws in a play
on “plump goats,” attested six times in Homer.)
Then, pace those who approve the citation of women in the mood,
the point is just as negative as is discussion of women elsewhere in the
poem, since men are too tired to respond.
The enjambed “are” in v. 587 breaks down what had started out as a nice
“when .. then .. ” symmetric form, and we finally learn that men are miserable
due to Sirius. All this is presented in
a metrically sing-song fashion: Three
of the six lines of 582-7 consist of dactyls for all of the first five
feet. Thus, although one may think that
something pleasant will result from whatever the cicada is enticing humans to
do with its so-called song, that communication is issued “from under its
wings,” i.e., surreptitiously. The
commentators project the later Greeks’ love of the cicada back onto Hesiod, to
make the entire passage 582-96 idyllic, but he demurs: To him the insect is a false poet.[12]
More precisely, if we
may take a clue from other treatments of it down through the years, the
cicada’s actual symbolic value is intensity or desperation. Although there are certainly treatments of
it is pleasant and mild, it can symbolize intensity to the point of death, as
with Bashō:
Very soon to die:
No indication showing.
The cicada’s voice!
(transl. Keith Kevan)
In Lorca’s 1918 poem ¡Cigarra! (“Cicada!”), he says to the
insect, e.g., derramando son te mueres, “you die pouring out
sound.” As for the Greeks, as West
notes, the “shrill cicada” (ēcheta
tettix) in v. 582 itself parallels the “loud-voiced herald” (ēputa kērux) who gives the Achaeans a frantic
message from the Trojans. And although
in one place Plato has Socrates praise cicadas, in another he explains the
popular belief that the creature subsists only on dew, by saying that it is so
involved in singing that it is anorexic.
The idea that it is intense is also revealed if we combine the myth
that Dawn’s lover Tithonus was transformed into a cicada with another which
says that when he grew old she locked him away in a closet, where his voice was
heard endlessly. Thus to our poet, the
insect is really inviting us to join it in dying in the sun’s heat.[13]
Among recent Hesiod
authorities I have only found Robert Lamberton recognizing that the second part
of the vignette is not within the cicada’s regime, but rather is a means of
escape therefrom. Form follows content
when the poet says, in an example of “violent” enjambement,[14]
... But then at once
let there
be shade in the rocks and “wine of Biblos”
and cake
made-by-milking(?) and milk from ceasing-to-lactate goats
and meat
of a feeding-in-the-woods cow not yet calved
and (meat)
of firstborn kids; and afterwards drink shining wine,
sitting in
the shade, your heart satisfied from eating,
your face
turned toward fresh-blowing Zephyr:
from a
spring ever-flowing and free-running, and yes unmuddied,
pour out
three (parts) of water, and throw (in) a fourth of wine.[15]
(vv. 588-96)
Although pairing of wine with kids at 592 recalls that with goats at
585 in the first part of the vignette (to retain a certain unity in spite of
the disjunction), here celebration is definitely the order of the day. The gourmet appeal of the items of 589-92a
for Hesiod’s audience is clear in spite of uncertainties in their
identification, and is detailed by West (although I read the heifer of 591, not
just as a domestic animal turned out to graze as he says, but as feral, to give
its meat an even gamier taste in spite of being tender). Instead of Boreas we get his brother Zephyr
(not called “fresh-blowing” in the Theogony, but at least there he is
“cleansing”). However, it is the wine
that makes a difference, especially since 592b-96 are enhanced by several
parallels to citations of epic celebrants:
“Drink wine” is common at verse end, and “and afterwards drink shining
wine” (epi d’ aithopa pinemen oinon) in our context recalls “and
(they/he poured) shining wine over” meat (epi d’ aithopa (w)oinon)
in two places, as well as the Cyclops “afterwards drinking undiluted milk” (ep’
akrēton gala pinōn,
i.e., after eating human “flesh,” krea, same as our “meat” a verse
earlier). “Heart satisfied from eating”
(kekorēmenon ētor edōdēs)
is an analog of “sated (from wine) and from eating” (koressamenos kai edōdēs). For “pour out three of water” (tris hudatos
procheein); cf. “but washing (off blood) with water” while “pouring” tears
(all’ hudati nizontes ... / ... cheontes), and as Edwards notes,
“three times, then the fourth” is the standard pattern whereby a character
attempts something three times, and succeeds in the fourth (already pointed
out above for the four past races of 109-73).
Indeed, direct allusion is possible:
Our verb “throw,” hiēmi,
here used with the “fourth,” is related to the verb used with the “three” in
one (repeated) case: three times a character tried something but “released”
his effort (methēke,
from methiēmi = meta
+ hiēmi), then
succeeded on the fourth. In any case,
the convention surely puts an exclamation point on the passage.[16]
That is to say, at
this pivotal point of the movement (the third and central vignette), the
celebration after defeating the monster Boreas is in full swing.
Make good use of helpers.
The fourth episode is
a disaster for the almanac construal.
Its principal activity occurs in time before the nominal time of the
last segment, and is not just something mentioned in a way some might call
tangential (as perhaps spring and summer plowing in v. 462). The question of its actual role is difficult,
but Wilamowitz’s rearrangement of the text solves some of its problems:[17]
Urge on
your servants Demeter’s sacred grain
to thresh,
when (eute) first the strength of Orion appears,
in a well
aired place and on a well rolled threshing-floor;
carefully-bear
it well into bins with a measure; then right after you store all your
livelihood tightly
inside your house,
(597-601)
convey
fodder and the chaff, so that it is for your
“oxen and
mules” abundant. Thereupon afterwards
(let) your
servants rest their own knees and unyoke the oxen-pair.
(606-8)
A
hired-man(?) (who is) homeless get and
a (female) laborer (who is) childless
seek, I
bid you: a laborer with-calf-under is difficult;
and care
for your “jagged-toothed dog” -- don’t spare (true imperative) its food --
lest at
some point a day-sleeping man take away your property.[18]
(602-5)
(The caesura of 602 is bridged by poieisthai, “get,” but without
making a threefold line.) “With calf
under” of course refers to a nursing mother as if a cow; “day-sleeping man,” to
a burglar.
Although the
transposition cannot be proven, if it is correct this fourth vignette is in two
parts, as were the second and the third.
In this one the first part consists of eight verses forming a closed
structure, its first and last lines beginning with “servants” in the
Greek. Apart from literal content, again
(as at v. 558-9 on the effects of winter and rations) it conveys a similarity
with contrast between humans, on the one hand, and “oxen and mules” (a standard
epic expression), on the other: Both
are part of the universe, and in particular must be fed (600-1 with 606-7) as
well as rested (608), but “after” in 600
conveys the point that securing food for humans takes priority over that for
livestock. It seems possible that an
important reason for including the passage is to provide a contrast of its
labor with the idleness of the preceding summer, in turn contrasting with the
labor of the harvest before that (West and Nelson), thus fulfilling Riedinger’s
“inner ring” surrounding a “moment of repose.”
In terms of epic apart from “oxen and mules,” 598-9 seem to allude to
the fight of Paris and Menelaus: “First”
Odysseus “measured” out a “place” for the battle, and after several verses of
preliminaries they fought “in the measured place.” “Then right after” with “all” (600-1)
recalls, first, Odysseus telling Telemachus to have the disloyal maids clean up
the gore from the dead suitors, and “then right after” that to kill “all” of
them too, followed by, second, Telemachus doing so.[19]
But that segment leads
to more on the subject: the second part of the passage in the reconstructed
order. Just as was the “Dawn” addendum
in the second vignette, the fourth vignette’s counterpart in the overall ring
structure, the addition is in four lines.
The poetry is impressive, again featuring a priamel-like sequence: a
fraction of a line (through the arsis of the fourth foot) on the hired man; the
rest of that line and all of the next on the female worker; and then two full
lines on the “jagged-toothed dog” (a standard phrase, where the primary
reference is protecting a flock from a lion).
“And care for the jagged-toothed dog” is another alliteration on
unvoiced velar stops (as at vv. 25, 486): kai kuna karcharodonta komein,
to assist the emphasis. Evidently the
thrust of the quatrain is: hire servants who are most useful to you, and
service your security equipment properly as well. (To be sure, as part of the protagonist’s
organization it perhaps would have been more logically put in the first
movement, 414-503.) Of course all this
is atemporal: Get workers with such
features whenever you hire, and always feed your dog.[20]
Celebration indeed.
After vignettes two through
four, of which two and three, as well as four if the reconstruction is correct,
had two parts, the poet returns in vignette five to the single-part structure
of vignette one. At the same time, as
Riedinger says, he returns to its vines:
When (eute)
“Orion” and Sirius come to mid
sky, and
“rosy-fingered Dawn beholds” Arcturus,
hey
Perses, then pick (true imperative) all your grapes (to bring) home;
show (deixai)
them the sun for ten (deka) days and ten (deka) nights,
shade them
over for five, and on the sixth draw to the jars
the
gift(s?) of Dionysus the much-cheering.[21]
...
(vv. 609-14)
This passage is filled with epic recollections: There is an apparent allusion to the
statement that “rosy-fingered Dawn took Orion” as a lover. Although West cavils that the sun is only
operative half the time, “ten ... ten” is a convention whose most notable use
is Homer saying that without the Muses he could not recite the Catalogue of
Ships even with ten tongues and ten mouths (albeit our poet makes it more
noticeable by adding the alliteration with “show”). “Gifts of much-cheering (polugētheos) Dionysus” recalls
“gifts from great-hearted (megalētoros)
Aeolus.” In this way, the end of the
movement reminds us that we are to be contrasted with the people of epic.[22]
Considering the
movement as a whole, at least if the reconstructed order for the fourth episode
is correct one can see that the ring structure Riedinger proposes is even more
intricate than what he uncovers: The first
and fifth vignette (his “exterior circle”), are in a single part; the second
and fourth (“interior circle”), in two, with the second part of each containing
the same number of lines and a priamel-like structure. Moreover, Riedinger fails to connect the wine
of the middle episode with the outer ones, and thus thinks the principal
concern is grain: “This (concern) is for wheat, and on wheat alone depends the
bios.” For her part, Nelson says
the concern with vines was a distraction already in the first episode, just as
in her view the Edgar/Edmund subplot in Lear distracts from the main
plot. But whatever one might say about
Shakespeare, in fact it is not only the central vignette of our piece which
constitutes the “festival,” as Riedinger has it, but the entire section (which
after all concludes with “gifts of Dionysus”).
Our poet’s implication is that the allegorized protagonist needs both
bread and wine to be a complete human being.[23]
To be sure, the formal
structure should not blind us to forward movement. In particular, looking back on the entire
“agricultural” portion, the mention of “Perses” at v. 611 for the first time
since 397 in the overture does not just stress a need to get back to work after
the picnic as Jenny Strauss Clay holds:
It is to be seen in the context of the portion as a whole. The citation’s emphasis is marked, since the
true imperative for the line’s verb deviates from the overall form. Thus West thinks the citation “gives ... a
final reminder of the addressee’s identity” before the discussion ends. Even better, one can say that the virtual
protagonist is fully a person now that his story has been told, and so his name
can be emphasized.[24]
And although given in
the context of a ring structure with “autumn” at beginning and end, that story
develops linearly: It tells of someone
who wrests organization from clutter (vv. 414-503), at least battles a monster
to a draw (504-63), and enjoys his modest success thereafter (564-614). Of course it does so along with a continual
juxtaposition with epic, the overall result of which is to create a basically
ironic effect whereby the true meaning of the key “virtue” concept aretē is not a matter of
warriors winning battles and eventually dying in supposed glory, but is
embodied in our protagonist’s life.[25] (to Chap. 8)
NOTES:
[1] Earth groaning: Il.
2.95. Our section’s five-fold structure
is pointed out by Kumaniecki (88-9); most recently, as noted in the
Introduction above, Riedinger (137-8) detects a ring pattern whereby the first
and fifth segments are concerned with vines; the second and fourth, grain, with
the third a “moment of repose.” (These
writers extend the fifth vignette through v. 617, but it will become clear that
this requires correction.) In music,
sets of precisely five of the occasional pieces called bagatelles include,
e.g., Gerald Finzi’s for clarinet and piano (Op. 23). (To be sure, in spite of the supposed lack of
structure probably no Western composer writes without a sense of overall form,
and at least to my ear Finzi’s first and fifth pieces are similar, if the ring
is not as rigorous as in, say, Bartók’s five-movement String Quartet No.
4.)
[2] On “lively” as opposed to “holy”
for hieros in v. 566, I follow the term’s original sense; cf. Russo ad
Od. 18.60. The long standing debate
over orthrogoē
versus orthogoē
in 568 is reviewed most recently by Mary Blomberg, OA, 19 (1992),
50-1. If the first, although translators
still tend to construe “at” dawn, see Renehan; if the second (as Blomberg
favors), it is not “shrill-voiced” or the like.
Against her (49-57) construal of chelidōn not as the actual
bird, but as a celestial object like Arcturus merely named “Swallow,” see Beall
(2001, 162-3).
[3] On the “turnings” parallel with Od.
15.404, see Beall (2001, 164 n. 28).
Oceanus: West ad loc., ad Th. 133, Verdenius ad v.
171. For a synopsis of the myth of the
birds (detailed in Apollodorus, 3.14.8; Ovid, Meta. 6.426-74), see
Athanassakis. Homer’s Procne: Od.
19.518-23 (against a certain interpretation still followed by Lutwack, 1-2,
that another myth is meant, see Russo).
On “rises to light” (ōrto es
phaos), the related epic phrase pro phoōsde
indicates emergence from beneath the earth (see West ad Th. 157),
and es phōs refers to a shade returning from the underworld in
Aeschylus (Pers. 630). The single
task of v. 570 surprises, e.g., West.
[4] Plato, Phaedrus 85a. “Stream of Oceanus” also ends Il.
16.151, 18.402, Od. 11.21 and especially 12.1 (Odysseus’s ship “left”
it), and “lively stream” is at our position in Il. 11.726. Athena stirred Dawn to “bring light to
humans,” and Odysseus “arose,” Od. 23.348 (cf. 5.2 = Il. 11.2 =
19.2). “Well right then” (dē rha tot’): seven times
in Homer (e.g., Il. 12.162, Od. 6.217); especially, “and after
him/her” (ton/tēn
de met’) Odysseus saw some ghost (Od. 11.260, 266, 305, 572, 601;
Plato, Prot. 315c, famously alludes to this when Socrates compares some
sophists with underground figures).
Hainsworth (1993, 3-4; cf. above, Introduction, n. 6) includes such
particle sequences as examples of “formulae.”
Cf. West: in our context the poet uses ton de met’ “perhaps with
a suggestion of more than a merely temporal relationship.”
[5] D’A. Thompson (324-5). Stealing food: Aristophanes, Eq.
419. To cite one modern poem, in “My
Swallows,” Gerald Stern begins with “For hours I sit here facting the white
wall/ and the dirty swallows ... ,” going on to say he will spend years thus
staring (i.e., as if life will pass him by), anthologized in Shared
Sightings, ed. S. G. Johnson (Santa Barbara, CA, 1995), 69-70,
[6] On “but when” (all’ hopot’ )
for “(carry on as previously) until,” see Il. 16.62 (cf. Janko), 21.340,
and perhaps Od. 10.508. (This
counters West’s claim that it is like the beginning of an oracle; cf. Beall,
2001, 160 n. 18. And here again the
sense of an entirely new thought is misleading, so that the metaphysical
construct of sharply divided sections fails.)
Orthros at v. 577 means before dawn (cf. above, n. 2), pace
(most recently) Tandy and Neale, Arrighetti.
(The point is to be fully ready for work when dawn arrives.)
[7] Hesiod would have appreciated
Leclerc’s (1983, 285) alliteration: The
occasion is “quand la moisson exige que l’on quite sa maison.” V. 573 is all’ harpas te charassemenai kai dmōas
egeirein: Although te is
normally enclitic, it can be proclitic when it splits a noun-epithet phrase in
a ... te kai ... construction.
(E.g., at Il. 1.179, if te were construed with the
previous word the verse’s caesura would fall at the end of the third foot,
which is absolutely forbidden.) On the
alternative ordering alla charassemenai t’ harpas kai dmōas egeirein, cf. above, Introduction, n.
16. On the comparison with winter, cf.
Riedinger (124-5).
[8] Nelson (1998, 56). Petropoulos (19-25).
[9] I read t’ (“yes”) in v. 578
with West and Arrighetti, although Solmsen brackets it.
[10] On epanophorae, see above, Chap. 3,
n. 75; on Nireus, there and Chap. 5, n. 30.
[11] Proteus/Tiresias: Od. 4.389 = 10.539
(toi is definitely the particle in our case, not “you,” and could be in
the epic line as well). Although ēōs begins the day,
it infrequently begins the verse in Homer (I count nine times out of over a
hundred occurrences of the word).
[12] Rosen (107-8). Sirens: Od. 12.44, 183. Trojan cicadas: Il. 3.152. (The allusion is proven by the extreme
contraction of -eōi in dendreōi ephezomenos, “sitting
on a tree,” to a single short syllable.)
Bader, Le narcisse, les cigales et les sirènes (Pisa,
1993), 51, notes that our cicada is juxtaposed to a plant, as with the lily in
Homer and the narcissus elsewhere whose symbolisms she discusses, but does not
pursue the point of the thistle. West
complains that “under its wings” is more appropriate to crickets, but poets
generally conflate the two insects; see D. K. McE. Kevan, The Land of the
Grasshoppers (Ste. Anne-de-Bellevue, Que., 1974), 2. Hesiod’s saying an insect does not “sing” in
its throat is probably inseparable in his mind from a belief that, unlike a
bird, it is not a true poet. For a
detailed discussion of the cicada in Greek literature, see Malcolm Davies and
Jeyaraney Kathirithamby, Greek Insects (New York and Oxford, 1986),
113-33 (also taking the insect to be positive, 116-19). The standard view that the passage is idyllic
is most recently embraced by Petra Hass, Der locus amoenus in der antiken
Literatur (Bamberg, 1998), 25, who considers it an example of a type scene
used several times in Homer (e.g., Alcinous’s garden, Od. 7.112-32),
with reflections in classical period literature.
[13] Bashō:
see Kevan (previous note, 300). For the
text of Lorca’s poem, a translation, and discussion, see R. C. Allen, The
Symbolic World of Federico García Lorca (Albuquerque, 1972),
34-44. Trojan herald: Il.
7.384. Plato, Phaedrus 230c and
259b-c, respectively. Tithonus: schol.
Il. 3.152, h. Aph. 233-8 (see Davies and Kathirithamby, previous
note, 126-7).
[14] Lamberton (127-8). According to Higbie (1990, 28-65, espec. 29),
enjambement is violent when, among other possibilities, particles of the
clause but not its subject, object, or verb, fall into the first of the two
verses, as with vv. 588-9 here.
[15] The optative eiē in v. 589 is in fact a
mild form of imperative: “let there be,” not a wish; see Hays ad 28 (KG,
I 229, gives Homeric examples).
According to Athanassakis, “wine of Biblos” is simply an idiom for
“your choicest wine.” For the cake in
590 I give West’s construal that the animal is milked directly onto the flour,
as against others he discusses. Again,
it is conceivable, though doubtful, that “firstborn” is, rather, simply
“newborn” (cf. above, Chap. 6, n. 18). I
render the verb hiemen in 596 more strongly than do most, because in
fact it is properly “throw.”
[16] Feral heifer: Beall (2001,
163). Boreas and Zephyr: Th. 379
(see West there for discussion), 870 (although at Il. 11.306, 21.334 it
is the south wind Notus who is “cleansing”).
Wine over meat: Il. 1.462 = Od. 3.459. Cyclops: Od. 9.297. Sated from wine and food: Il. 19.167
(but also note “satisfied our heart” with food and music, Od. 8.98; cf.
14.456, and “(provided) his heart with food,” 5.95 = 14.111). Blood and tears: Il. 7.425-6. G. Edwards (79-80); cf. above, Chap. 3, n.
26. On these issues, Hoekstra (1965, 27)
notes that “drink” in v. 592 and “throw” in 596 are one foot later in the
verse than is typical for infinitives of their type (cf. Krafft, 136-7). But the reason in the first case is that
“drink/and drank wine” with a finite verb, pinete(pine te) (w)oinon,
ends the line at Od. 10.460 (= 12.23), 14.109, and 15.391; our poet
simply makes it into an infinitive pinemen oinon. In the second, the late placement of hiemen
would follow from Il. 21.177, Od. 21.126, if indeed for that the
poet alludes to them. Actually, the
“three then fourth” pattern is a special case of a structure in epic where a
cardinal number is followed by the next highest ordinal, e.g., a snake ate
eight baby sparrows, and their mother was the ninth (Il. 2.313 = 327);
four men, and I was the fifth, would blind the Cyclops, Od. 9.335; with
examples in our poem noted below.
[17] To