On Coming After (eBook)

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Richard Hunter, University of Cambridge, U.K.

Contents 5
Preface 9
Introduction 11
On Coming After 18
1. Apollo and the Argonauts:Two notes on Ap. Rhod. 2, 669 –719 39
2. Medea’s flight: the fourth Book of the Argonautica 52
3. ‘Short on heroics’: Jason in the Argonautica 69
4. Winged Callimachus 96
5. Bulls and Boxers in Apollonius and Vergil 99
6. Greek and Non-Greek in the Argonautica of Apollonius 105
7. Callimachus and Heraclitus 125
8. Writing the God: Form and Meaning in Callimachus, Hymn to Athena 137
9. Written in the Stars: Poetry and Philosophy in the Phainomena of Aratus 163
10. The Presentation of Herodas’ Mimiamboi 199
11. Callimachean Echoes in Catullus 65 216
12. Plautus and Herodas 222
13. Bion and Theocritus: a note on Lament for Adonisv. 55 239
14. Mime and mimesis: Theocritus, Idyll 15 243
15. The Divine and Human Map of the Argonautica 267
16. Callimachus swings (frr. 178 and 43 Pf.) 288
17. Before and after epic: Theocritus (?), Idyll 25 300
18. (B)ionic man: Callimachus’ iambic programme 321
19. The Poet Unleaved. Simonides and Callimachus 336
20. The Poetics of Narrative in the Argonautica 353
21. Virgil and Theocritus: A Note on the Reception of the Encomium to Ptolemy Philadelphus 388
22. The Sense of an Author: Theocritus and [Theocritus] 394
23. Imaginary Gods? Poetic theology in the Hymns of Callimachus 415
24. Theocritus and the Style of Cultural Change 444
25. Notes on the Lithika of Poseidippos 467
26. The Hesiodic Catalogue and Hellenistic Poetry 480
27. The prologue of the Periodos to Nicomedes (‘Pseudo-Scymnus’) 513
28. Sweet nothings – Callimachus fr. 1.9 –12 revisited 533
29. The Reputation of Callimachus 547
30. Hesiod, Callimachus, and the invention of morality 569
Frontmatter 585
Contents 589
31. The Comic Chorus in the fourth century 595
32. Philemon, Plautus and the Trinummus 613
33. The Aulularia of Plautus and its Greek original 632
34. Middle Comedy and the Amphitruo of Plautus 647
35. ‘Acting down’: the ideology of Hellenistic performance 663
36. Showing and telling: notes from the boundary 683
37. Generic consciousness in the Orphic Argonautica? 701
38. Aspects of technique and style in the Periegesis of Dionysius 720
39. The Periegesis of Dionysius and the traditions of Hellenistic poetry 738
40. History and Historicity in the Romance of Chariton 757
41. Longus and Plato 795
42. Growing up in the ancient novels: a response 810
43. The Aithiopika of Heliodorus: beyond interpretation? 824
44. ‘Philip the Philosopher’ on the Aithiopika of Heliodorus 849
45. Plato’s Symposium and the traditions of ancient fiction 865
46. Isis and the Language of Aesop 887
47. The curious incident …: polypragmosyne and the ancient novel 904
General Index 917

12. Plautus and Herodas (S. 212-213)

The history of the reception of Herodas’ mimiambs1 has run the full gamut from enthusiasm for ‘the ancient realist’ to a rather weary dismissal in The Cambridge History of Classical Literature, “aesthetic mannerism, not ‘realism’ […] the invitation to prurience and social snobbery which they convey makes them tedious”.2 What kind of ‘realist’ mode informs the mimiambs has always been a (perhaps the) central critical question, particularly for those who have tried to offer a general appreciation of the qualities of these intriguing texts. R. Ussher, for example, asserts: “Herodas’ characters […] are real people, captured in real moments of existence, and drawn with psychological perceptiveness. They are not realistic, inasmuch as they use language which no Greek of their day (or ever) spoke […] what is real is the society within which they live their sometimes unattractive lives […]”,3 and W.G. Arnott similarly seeks to distinguish between what he sees as Herodas’ exact “observation of the small, realistic details of low life”, his “observation of real-life conversations”, and the foolishness of any attempt to label his poems as ‘realistic’. Thus, he notes of Bitinna’s relenting at the end of Poem 5, “this is the way petty pride operates in petty human beings, Herodas’ observation of human behaviour is again exact”.

A denial of any simple concept of the poems as ‘realist’, based upon language, metre and literary texture, may be accepted without further discussion,5 rather, these features overtly proclaim the mimetic, representational sta tus of the mimiambs, and are a constant reminder to the audience6 that they are not being offered unmediated access to ‘slices of life’. As to the second part of the dichotomy offered by Ussher and Arnott, the appeal to Herodas’ ‘exact observation’ and ‘psychological perceptiveness’ there is perhaps little that can be said. Everyone forms their own notions of what is ‘true to life’ on the basis of their own experiences (including their experience of art), and such things can hardly be the subject of argument. On the other hand, we may hope to find in the poems themselves a guide to approaching these problems.

In this paper I wish to raise some general problems of ‘character’ and ‘voice’ in the mimiambs, as the background to a consideration of the speech of Battaros in Poem 2. My two strategies will be an examination of passages in the poems themselves which seem to be pointing us in a particular interpretative direction, and secondly a comparison with certain aspects of Plautine dramaturgy, suggestive points of contact between the Greek mimiambist and the Roman comic dramatist will, I hope, emerge. In Poem 4 two women visit a shrine of Asklepios to offer thanks for a cure from sickness. While their offering is being presented to the god by the sacristan, they admire the works of art in the shrine, the two sections of ‘art admiration’ are separated by some typically Herodan abuse of a slave (41 –56). and uneducated, and some critics have indeed wished to see here reflections of Herodas’ own ar tistic program.9 How we should react to what the women say remains, however, to be investigated.