Alcmanica Author(s): M. L. West Reviewed work(s): Source: The Classical Quarterly, New Series, Vol. 15, No. 2 (Nov., 1965), pp. 188-202 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/637912 . Accessed: 26/08/2012 17:23 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . Cambridge University Press and The Classical Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Classical Quarterly. http://www.jstor.org
Transcript
AlcmanicaAuthor(s): M. L. WestReviewed work(s):Source: The Classical Quarterly, New Series, Vol. 15, No. 2 (Nov., 1965), pp. 188-202Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/637912 .Accessed: 26/08/2012 17:23
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
.
Cambridge University Press and The Classical Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserveand extend access to The Classical Quarterly.
'ALCMAN lived sometime in the seventh century.'" 'At some period in the seventh century Sparta was occupied with the Second
Messenian War, but we do not know its date or whether Alcman lived before or during or after it.'z
Between these two utterances, part of a papyrus commentary on Alcman was published,3 from which it appeared that the poet mentioned names known to us from the Spartan king-lists. It might have been expected that this discovery would lead to a more precise dating for Alcman. Some people think that in fact it does, and I am one of them.
We shall have to inquire what persons Alcman mentioned in the poem concerned, what he said about them, and then when they lived. We must also consider the other available evidence on Alcman's date, and see how well it fits the conclusions drawn from the commentary. I shall argue that it fits them satisfactorily, and that both bodies of evidence indicate that Alcman was active well after the Second Messenian War, in the last decades of the seventh century, perhaps still in the early years of the sixth.4
The passage of Alcman that we must try to reconstruct was preceded by one in which he addressed a girl and praised her beauty. According to one ancient reading of the text-we do not know what the alternative was-he said something that meant, 'Even though you stand beside gold, no one will find fault with you'. Then comes an obscure lemma,
ov yap roAvrT-j1tov KJ[Aa]tros- d'Vp Trr83' Jv3p_3v
o0I1S'] a'yptos. I merely note the general similarity to fr. 16 (Page) oVtK
` Jv?7p JypEOsO o833E
UcKa~SO o833 7rp %aoof• ('not even in poetic circles'? Cf. av47p 7rTE' v83p6v) and observe that if
rroAv7•w•ov is not a mistake for rroAvrrdTowv 'wealthy', and if
Kd\crtos- does not represent KActlOo-,s then there may be a pun on the name
I am indebted to Mr. W. G. G. Forrest for reading this section and saving me from several errors.
I D. L. Page, Alcman, The Partheneion, 1951, P. 166.
2 C. M. Bowra, Greek Lyric Poetry, 2nd edition, 1961, p. I9.
3 By E. Lobel in The Oxyrhynchus Papyri xxiv, 1957, no. 2390 fr. 2.
4 A similar conclusion has been reached by P. Janni, Studi Urbinati xxxiii (i959), 162-72, but his argumentation is slack. Cf.
G. L. Huxley, Early Sparta, 1962, pp. 61-62. As I was working on this article in the Ash- molean Library, I discovered that at the next desk Mr. F. D. Harvey was writing one on the same subject. We found on comparing notes that we had independently reached the same conclusions on some points, but that there was sufficient divergence to justify our each proceeding to publication.
s As might be suggested by the name KaAaLOls, mother of a herdsman from Sybaris in Theocr. 5. 15 (codd.).
ALCMANICA 189
A]aKE&L[juov1`]w v flaotAEVs. X&,Aov U
O]vydrqp ' Ttuatjulp3p6ra
viv 38 marks a transition. The chorus apparently said, 'But now we will go to (do something to) the noblest of the children .. .'. The commentator's note on this is, 'Leotychidas was a king of the Lacedaemonians; but it is not clear [whether] Timasimbrota is [his] daughter [or...']. It appears certain that Alcman had named Leotychidas (presumably in the form AarvXt`8as: Page, C.R. N.s. ix [19591, 19); and practically certain that he had named Timasim-
brota.I But the commentator was in some doubt about whose daughter she was. There are three possibilities:
(i) Leotychidas was named in the genitive, but there was more than one way of construing the genitive in the sentence. Against this the following con- sideration may be urged. There is a high probability that wja[85v] aptorayv, 'noblest of the children ...', referred to Timasimbrota. w7ac&7v must have been qualified by a father's name; and if a genitive name was there in the text, any reader must have construed it with 7ract&v, whether or not syntax allowed some other construction.
(ii) Two genitives stood in the text, in such a way that it was not clear which of them qualified 7rrat&v. Against this possibility is the fact that the commentator's a680Aov-sentence ends with the indefinite trvos': it follows that his uncertainty is not about which of two or more specified persons was the father of Timasimbrota, but was of a more general nature.
(iii) Timasimbrota was unambiguously said to be the daughter of Leoty- chidas, and the commentator was only in doubt about whether Leotychidas was the king or someone else of the same name. This third alternative seems far the most likely. I supplement:
a,5Aov U8 [rrdrEpov -rovrov O]vycdr7p T ila- U~lf~ppOd t [~7 ETE~pOV ILELVJ?17TclL T OS.2
If, as now seems certain, Aa-rvXLSa appeared in the sentence, there is at least a fair possibility that r5 8axltovos referred to him. Other ways of fitting the phrase in can of course be imagined, and the uncertainty is tantalizing; for if we could be sure that Leotychidas was characterized as 0' 8atwv, we could also be sure that he was indeed the king, and that he was already dead.3
The next lemma reads: qvadv 8' LKE.v [ ................7T]actt eavO2c Ho AvS- [p]w[. The choir has just said, 'Now we will go to (praise, presumably) Tima- simbrota'. When the following lemma begins vadv 8' EOLKEV, there is a strong presumption that Timasimbrota is the subject of the new proposition. What stood between IOLKEv and
rata&' there is no way of telling,4 but the chances are
It is remotely possible that she was not named in the text, but known to the com- mentator from some other source as a daughter of Leotychidas. On this hypothesis, the text would have referred to 'the daughter of Leotychidas', and the commentator would be saying, 'it is not clear whether the daughter referred to is Timasimbrota'. But this would be an odd comment, oddly ex- pressed; and the fully Doric form in which the name appears (contrast AEcowrvXLas) suggests that it is quoted directly from the text, not taken from history books.
2 I have inquired of Mr. Lobel whether the traces are compatible with i4LLv]]-TaL, and
gather from his reply that they are. 3 J. A. Davison, Proceedings of the Ninth
International Congress of Papyrology, 1961, p. 33 ; Xen. Resp. Lac. 15. 9 at 8 r1EAEv7r'aav-rL r7LIai .aaLtAEi 68ov7ra 7~)8 ftoAowraS 870Aofv ot AvKOVpyOU vdOOL 05r O X o davOpcTOUSv dAA' ds gpowa 70;ov
AaKEaqovtocV v flaatAEL-
7TpoTETLL'Kafl~. 4 Presumably not more than a couple of
words; in a lemma abbreviated by means of ws 70-oo, there would have been no need to
190o M. L. WEST
that rra~t was the dative construed with 'OL1KEV. The words TcratL8 avO~cL
HoAv8Copw[ may be taken in any of three ways: (i) 'The son of X, light-haired Polydorus.'
(ii) 'Light-haired son of Polydorus.' (iii) On the easy assumption that the t of eavOw8 was added erroneously
after TaL81, 'child of light-haired Polydorus'. Either of the first two alternatives would seem to involve the comparison of
Timasimbrota with a man. Now it might be possible to say, 'in respect of her build' she is like a man'; but it becomes very odd if she is likened to a parti- cular man-odd if he is a man of normal build, and odd if he is a man of ex- ceptional build. Alcman must have meant something less definite, and this involves the adoption of alternative (iii). I take him to be saying that Tima- simbrota, who was possibly more sturdy than beautiful, is like a child of a hero of the past: the famous Agiad king Polydorus, a man with an unrivalled reputation for his constructive policies and righteous dealings.2 If her actual father Leotychidas was still alive, he cannot have wished for a better com- pliment.3
Page comes to very different conclusions (Poetae Melici Graeci, p. 23). First he says, 'potius (HoAv)-&wpw quam
-&owpwL opinor', and declares his belief that
'ITTroKpa-r&aS is to be supplemented between OLOKEV and mratl. This gives the sense, 'Hippocratidas resembles in stature the fair-haired son of Polydorus'. Then he contradicts himself, and says that Hippocratidas is being compared with Polydorus, who is an otherwise unrecorded son of Eurycrates (the Second). But he has left himself no room in which to accommodate Eurycrates' name in the text; it cannot have come after rrat& %avO8L HoAv&ipwt. Even supposing that these difficulties could be overcome, it is hard to conceive how Alcman, having apparently just proposed to praise Timasimbrota, could proceed, 'And in build, Hippocratidas is very like Polydorus'. It is true that something else might have intervened, of which the commentator has said nothing, and that we cannot expect to recover the poem by simply stringing the lemmata to- gether. But where there is an obvious connexion between one lemma and the next, interpretation must make the most of it if it is to be plausible.
The commentator now says, ['I7ToKpart•asi A3w7Eo-vXl'a v6s EU•
( O• 70 [TpoELP•7-
IAdvov] flaato[rw]g. The restoration of the name of Hippocratidas, the only son of Leotychidas known to us, is virtually certain in view of the following con- siderations.
I. The commentator found in the text a name which he knew as the name of a son of King Leotychidas.
2. The occurrence of such a name close to the name Leotychidas, and in a context actually concerned with children of Leotychidas, would be an
quote more than bvdv S' 'OLKEV (4.,s
ToiO) wrraL& . H., and os 70oO by itself would not fill the space.
The normal meaning of ,v'4
before Pindar is 'height', 'build'; fvdav S' OLKEV re- sembles Homeric expressions like ElodS ,rE kyyEOOdS -E 9Ov77V 7' P YXLeta EWIKEL, aaVa7cTL
0vflV Ka e'o0s dcpolo7. Occasionally the word seems to have a more general meaning in connexion with female beauty, 'form': Hes. Th. 259 E3dipvrl TE -
v4v dpa-4T Kal ?'o0'
a•kwtkos-, similarly 355; Alc. 130. 32 drrwat
AcapaS ES•
KpLVVL EVatL tav IT'AIEVT' AKEc- 7rrTEroL. But if Timasimbrota is compared to a man, only the more usual meaning comes into question.
2 On this reputation see W. G. G. Forrest, Phoenix xvii (1963), 170- .
3 I know of no evidence that a Eurypontid would be likely to be offended at being com- pared with an Agiad.
ALCMANICA 191
incredible coincidence if the Leotychidas in question were not the king of that name. We shall proceed on the assumption that he was.
3. The noblest of his children was indisputably his successor Hippocratidas (unless Hippocratidas had an elder brother who died before his father; if Leotychidas is dead at the time of the ode, this need not bother us). Therefore Timasimbrota can only have been called 'the noblest of Leotychidas' children apart from Hippocratidas', VE3' 'I7UToOKpapr5aYv.I That accounts for Hippo- cratidas' presence in the text; the commentator's note explains who he is.
The next question is, why is the commentator in such doubt about whether Leotychidas is the king or not? Is he merely being cautious, or is there some special reason for his uncertainty ? I believe the explanation to be as follows. Alcman had said, 'We now praise Timasimbrota, noblest of Leotychidas' children after Hippocratidas; and in stature she is like vat& vavO63 HoAv53Wpw. The commentator took this to mean that she was like her father. An under- standable error, and one that accounts for his puzzlement. Here was a Leoty- chidas, with a son of the right name for the king, but the wrong father. His note runs, 'Hippocratidas was the son of Leotychidas the king; but it was Eurycrates whose father was Polydorus'.
to -cav~-p on grounds of space. But the writing is irregular, as W. S. Barrett points out (Gnomon xxxiii [196I], 688 n. 2), and it is difficult to say that there is room for thirteen letters but not for fourteen, apart from the possibility of abbreviation of -rovs or rrac-4p. The decisive consideration is that unless we are wrong in reading HoAv&o*pw as a genitive, the issue was evidently whose father Polydorus was, not whose son he was. This is confirmed by the naming of Eurycrates, who was indeed the son of the one Polydorus known to history.2 The words Kac TLtzaatqflpd'ra Ovycdryprp seem to have no place here; in face of the commentator's previous uncertainty about her father's identity, where the king Leotychidas was the main candidate, he cannot now declare that she was daughter of Eurycrates. I take the addition to be a mere stupidity, or else a survival from a longer remark to the effect that if Timasimbrota's father was really the son of Poly- dorus, that would make her the daughter of Eurycrates and not (as Alcman said) of Leotychidas.3
To sum up so far: Alcman certainly named a Leotychidas, and everything points to his being the Eurypontid king. He very probably named two of Leotychidas' children, Hippocratidas and Timasimbrota. There is a fair possibility that he referred to Leotychidas as '
8alwlov, that is, already dead and enjoying heroic honours. We have now to consider the implications of this for Alcman's date.
Herodotus 8. 131 gives the following genealogy: Theopompus-Anaxan- dridas-Archidamus-Anaxilaus-Leotychidas-Hippocratidas. Theopompus was the hero of the First Messenian War (Tyrt. fr. 4. I D.), which is fairly
IaL&-Jv d'plarav cannot mean 'best of his female children'.
2 One might have expected the commenta- tor to say rather troO-rov 8E (sc. -r'v AEcWrv- XLtav) oi3 HoAv3pov vltv laropovaLv &AAa
Ava~lAEw 70o ApXL8aov, 7rv 8E HoAv'Swpov E0pvKpc'rov-S -awrpa. But perhaps we are
dealing with a boiled-down version of this. 3 That Ovya[ belongs to this note and not
to the following lemma, as Ov'ya[rEp AOLs M65]aa or the like, is shown by the position of the coronis and diple below the line, indicat- ing that the new poem began in the middle of the line.
192 M. L. WEST
firmly dated in the latter part of the eighth century. The Second Messenian War, with which Tyrtaeus was contemporary, took place two generations later.' The kings reigning at the time were, according to Pausanias (3- 3- 4, 3- 7. 6, 4. 15- 3), Anaxander, the second Agiad after Polydorus, and Anaxidamus, the third Eurypontid after Theopompus. Pausanias' account is suspect, above all because he makes the Eurypontid throne descend from Theopompus to De- maratus in a direct line of succession which bypasses Leotychidas I; this con- tradicts Herodotus and our commentator, and if we could only be sure about
^•- 8allovos, it would be finally refuted by Alcman. If we accept Herodotus'
account of the succession, we can only guess which Eurypontid was reigning at the time of the second war. It would be natural to guess that it was the second king after Theopompus, Archidamus, or the third, Anaxilaus, the father of Leotychidas.
Pausanias tells us further that according to Rhianus, Leotychidas was king at the time of the war. But compelling arguments have been adduced to show that the conflict described by Rhianus was not the revolt in the time of Tyr- taeus, but a real or mythical war in the early fifth century, and that his Leo- tychidas was the younger one.2 Leotychidas I can hardly have been king in Tyrtaeus' time, even if his predecessors had short reigns: it is not likely that a great-great-grandson of Theopompus ruled over the grandsons of Theo- pompus' contemporaries.
Hippocratidas, therefore, the prince whose stalwart sister's praises Alcman loyally sang, must have been the second or third Eurypontid king after the Second Messenian War, which was fought by the grandfathers of Alcman's contemporaries, if not their great-grandfathers. No precise absolute date for the rising can be established. Ancient datings are 685 (Paus. 4.- 15. I; but he may have meant 681), and perhaps 660 (Apollodorus ?) and 644 (Sosibius ?).3 It might have been prompted by the Spartan defeat at Hysiae,4 which Pau- sanias (2. 24. 7) and others date to 669; but any date in the period 680-640 would be possible. Timasimbrota's charms may have reached their zenith at any time between about 620 and 570. The limits cannot unfortunately be narrowed by reckoning backwards from later history. The only fixed datum is that Ariston, who was the second Eurypontid king after Hippocratidas, was on the throne at the time of Croesus' embassy, about 560-550 (Hdt. I. 67. I). His predecessor Agesicles reigned long enough for Herodotus to link his name with a period of military aggression that was directed in several directions
(I. 65. I). But an active ten-year reign would be enough to justify this;
and if Hippocratidas died young, our ode could still be fitted in as late as 570.
At least one of Alcman's poems, then, was composed not earlier than about 620. We can safely say that the Louvre Partheneion too was composed well after the middle of the seventh century. The girls who sang it appeared in Lydian 5Irpac, which they refer to as a great ornament together with their purple and their gold bangles: t'rpa AvIla, vEav5wov
lavoyAE••pwov dyaA/,a.
We know from a poem of Sappho, apparently composed in exile, that this was
r Provided that Tyrtaeus' Tardwpovj 7/rLETipwv r7ardpES (fr. 4. 6) is to be taken
literally, as I am sure it is. 2 These arguments have not been univer-
sally accepted, but they seem to me cogent.
See F. Kiechle, Messenische Studien, 1959, pp. 9go ff.
3 Jacoby, Apollodors Chronik, pp. 130 ff. 4 So Huxley, op. cit., p. 57-
ALCMANICA 193
a comparatively recent fashion. When Sappho's mother grew up, even a red ribbon was considered a more than ordinary adornment:
(fr. 98). It is unlikely that the fashion raged earlier in Lacedaemon than in Lesbos.
The remarkably cosmopolitan condition of the Greek racing stable at the date of the poem also favours as late a date as possible. It contains horses from Lydia, from Scythia, and probably from the northern Adriatic.z
Other fragments of Alcman, especially 148 ff., show his interest in geography and ethnography. Of particular importance is the fact that he referred, perhaps in an exuberant catalogue of the peoples his fame had reached (fr. 148), to the Balearic islands (fr. 157), which are unlikely to have been known to the Greeks before Colaeus' voyage in about 640 (Hdt. 4. 152), and which show no Greek remains datable before 6oo.3 He also referred to the 'Eaa78dvEg or Ala-
UrO8dVEg (fr. I56).4 This was the remote tribe that Aristeas claimed to have
visited, and there is much to be said for the view that before the composition of the Arimaspea they had never been heard of.s The influence of this poem on Alcman has also been found in his Rhipaean Mountain (fr. 90o), and in the adjective KoAacatuog (fr. I. 59).6 It has been denied, necessarily, by those who
Sappho's mother is said to have had the same name as the daughter whom Sappho addresses in this poem. The assumption that she was named here, 'the other Kleis, the one who bore me', will explain why Sappho says 'she who bore me' instead of 'my mother'. The division
/' ~yE'vvaro is doubtful;
Alcaeus has yE'vvaro thrice without augment (43. 13, 308. 3, 327. 2), but all in mythical genealogies.
2 Fr. I. 51, 59. Venetian horses were celebrated at least as early as the fifth cen- tury, and Euripides has no qualms about giving them to Hippolytus, though perhaps he is not the poet most likely to be worried by an anachronism. It is not very probable that in this one passage of Alcman the reference is to the Paphlagonian Eneti, who are not known as horse-breeders to us and were apparently not known to Strabo (212) either. Cf. Beaumont, J.H.S. lvi (1936), 19I. Another Adriatic tribe appeared in Alcman, fr. I5'. On Greek penetration of the Adriatic see in general J. Boardman, The Greeks
Ovwrseas, 1964, pp. 232-5.
3 Boardman, op. cit., p. 2 19. * The manuscripts of Stephanus of Byzan-
tium are at variance between 'Ecao7q- and
Aa(a)ES-. The -7 in the second syllable is guaranteed by the following words E plaKETaL
) q SEv-rEpaI rap' cAAotLS aL 70o0 E. In the first syllable, the vowel is elsewhere 'I- in Greek, except for an alternative in A- recorded in P. Oxy. I6II fr. I I. 7, but E- in Latin. If Alcman wrote A-, he may have associated the name with the Mysian town of Assos, which he also may have mentioned (fr. 153)-
s Cf. J. D. P. Bolton, Aristeas of Procon- nesus, 1962, pp. 5 and 40; on the other side, Schmid-Stahlin, Gr. Lit. i. I. 303 n. 7, K. Meuli, Hermes lxx (1935), 154 n. 2, and W. Burkert, Gnomon xxxv (1963), 235f., arguing from the different form used by Alcman.
6 A. A. Blakeway ap. Bowra, op. cit., Ist ed., p. 66; Bolton, op. cit., pp. 40, 43, 187 n. 4, 188 n. 9. Bolton suggests that KoAaeatog was coined by Alcman from Kohad4'ns (Colaxes Val. Fl. 6. 48), the Scythian king known to Herodotus as KoAd&a's, and meant no more than ?KUOLKOS. It is perhaps more likely that he had heard (from Aristeas or elsewhere) of a tribe KoAdeat, whose eponymous ancestor the king was, and formed his adjective from that. The scholia to the Partheneion in P. Oxy. 2389
O
194 M. L. WEST
have dated Alcman early and Aristeas late. Personally, I cannot see any valid reason for doubting that the Arimaspea was composed in the seventh century, or that the verses quoted by 'Longinus' and Tzetzes are genuine fragments of it.' It is not certain that Alcman knew it, but if he was a contemporary of Sappho and Alcaeus, there is no reason why he should not have done.
These considerations, based on the fragments, are our best evidence for Alcman's lifetime. Compared with them, the statements of Eusebius and the Suda are such stuff as dreams are made on. Of the three dates they offer, 672/68, 659/8, and 611i/o, the last, which has generally been thought unworthy of serious discussion, now seems nearest to the truth. The two higher dates, as Rohde pointed out, have it in common that they both represent the seventh year of the reign of Ardys in Lydia, on different systems of chronology; and it has been thought that Alcman may have referred to some event in the seventh year of Ardys (really 646/5). This remains possible. He might have referred to such an event at the time of its occurrence, and still have been writing poetry in 6oo.2 Or the relationship between the two dates may be fortuitous.3
II. THE LOUVRE PARTHENEION
39 Eyiov ase' lWc Ayt36Ysri-% oa osr3 Jpa
Fc Vr' A ov, rTEp altw AyL~to tLaprvpE7aL,
0alvtvqv. i- ~C6S picks up &,L'pav (&ai7VIKEL) in 38, which probably means man's brief span of life, not a single day.4 It is then itself picked up by Oalv,
v (a derivative of dacos), and the idea of shining is continued in dK~rpE7rTi in 46. alvatv must be taken with dpao "FE, not with iap-rvdpErat. pap-rvpolpal a-va
means 'I appeal to someone to act as a tLiprvS,' that is, either to take note of what is happening now, or to declare what he has seen on some previous occasion. It cannot mean 'I appeal to someone' for any other purpose, such as to shine; shining is no part of a witness's function. It has been objected that dpo wd Vt-c rTOLEtL is not a normal construction. But this is not a normal type of statement: normally a man is doing something, and we observe him at it, opWiLEv awrov
7osotvvra. Here, Agido is not being spied on in the act of shining like the sun,
fr. 6. i do not give the impression that Colaxaean horses were known from any other source.
Pace Bolton, pp. 7-19. Cf. D. A. Russell, 'Longinus' On The Sublime, 1964, p. 103. 'Longinus' 's fragment is surely not 'the sur- prised comment of innocent continentals on the first ship they have heard of' (Russell)- they seem to know all about navigation by the stars, seasickness, and the danger of drowning -but the comment of a man who only sails from necessity, probably Aristeas himself, upon men who go to sea for weeks at a time: perhaps long-range Greek traders who con- veyed Aristeas as far as the north shore of the Black Sea, and whose way of life was
not generally known in Aegean Greece. Hesiod's comments would have been similar in tone.
2 He represents himself as an old man in fr. 26.
3 Page calls archaeology to witness that the bright Sparta of Alcman is that of the seventh century, and does not correspond to conditions in the sixth. The argument is weakly grounded: see H. T. Wade-Gery, J.H.S. lxxvii (1957), 324-
4 Death is 'night' as early as Homer. Pind. N. 7. 98 florov ... . a7rAEmKoLS and other parallels quoted by Page (op. cit., p. 84) support the equation d'ipa- = pflos. Cf. Antiphon the sophist, B 5o.
ALCMANICA 195
her shining is dependent upon the poet's vision, and Jdp6 is parallel not to
y•yv•arKcw (a3i-rjv Oalvovav) but to 3oKCo or bOxptl (ai37)rv a'vEtv).
She shines like the sun, the very sun which she is calling upon. The emphasis perhaps justifies JvrEp, but I notice that J&wrp is not used elsewhere in the lyric poets except in the adverbs Cd;orp, CdrTEp, &arEp, and it is possible that we should read rrEp' Jwv, 'on our behalf'.' The sense is the same in either case: Agido invites the sun to take note of the proceedings. It follows that the sun is in the sky, blazing down on Hagesichora's auburn tresses and the gold and purple finery of the choir.2
49 Toyv
V ro7rpETLOWY ov ELpwOv.
The equation 67ro7r-plSpto = V dr7rEpos is linguistically impossible. To talk of 'metathesis', or to conjure with a hypothetical intermediate ITro7rEpstosr, is to return to the philology of past ages. 7rerp- means rock; and -18tos is charac- teristic of adjectives specifying a locality, as dwrtrvIfl8tors, E2XELp08tor, Trapa-
Oaaaaud•os, riOl018tos, etc. Dreams lurk under shady rocks, because that, in the heat of midday, is where people sleep.3
50 1q OV;X op-,qi; d t11E KEA;•q FEV•r-TLK6OS, d
' Xara
7'ia E/l-agS avEoaS
Ay-rqortQpas ETavOEC
Xpvaou cs gaKcparoS" 55 r 7d
- apyvptov 7poawrov
38abdc3av rt rot Ao'YW;
The Xopayok, that is Hagesichora, has just been compared to a racehorse. To say that
KAdIA•, coming immediately afterwards, is not Hagesichora but Agido,
is nothing short of perverse. It is distinguished from Hagesichora-fair enough, she is not really a horse, she belongs to the visible world, the horse to the imaginary world-it is not contrasted with her. Having said that the horse is a Venetian, Alcman must give some clue as to what he means by it. Evidently it is a Venetian because of the splendour of Hagesichora's hair, which is like gold here, and 6avOdc in 101 (assuming that Hagesichora is there referred to).4
x Elision of rrEpt
is found in Sappho, Alcaeus, and Pindar; in Laconian inscrip- tions the short form rrEp is attested before consonants, in several other dialects before vowels too.
2 So Wilamowitz, Hermes xxxii (1897), 255. The idea that the proceedings take place by moonlight becomes absurd. The idea that the sun is about to rise seems to me no more tenable. The Greeks were long past the stage of praying for the sun to rise. They knew he could be relied on to do that, and they would certainly wait till he did so before attempting to communicate with him. This is another argument against
tzaprTpE-rac alvrlv.
3 The dream is, as always, thought of as coming from outside. When Epimenides took his historic siesta in a Cretan cave, he en- joyed an instructive dream in which he
conversed with A4AAOELa and lK77 (Max. Tyr. Io. I p. III H.): not because he was specially favoured of the gods, but because of where he was sleeping, in a holy cave.
I suppose Alcman suggests that you might dream of your horse on a hot day, rather than at night, because it is a hot day. There is nothing to indicate that the AEvKdS- 7rE-rp-q of Od. 24. 1I has anything to do with the dreams in the following line.
4 Of course not only Venetian horses were chestnuts: II. 9. 407 7'rrrTov eav6d Kadp'va, i. 680 to'rrovr favOds. Horses called EdvOos- belonged to Achilles and Hector in the Iliad (Achilles is ecfvOav
E''ar7[pa T•C(OAwv in Alc. 42. 14), and to the Dioscuri in Alcm. 25, Stes. i. Hiero's famous horse Pherenicus, which won at the Olympic Games in 476, is described as eavO'rptXa by Bacchylides (5- 37), and cannot have been a Venetian
196 M. L. WEST
K, 'AE is not just any horse, but specifically a horse for riding. The implication
will neither have escaped the audience' nor offended them; the girl is on show, like a May Queen, and forthright public approbation is licensed. It is too im- personal to be genuinely erotic.
Xal•a too, whether of horse or of girl, has sportive connotations. Semonides
7. 57 ff. describes the kind of woman whom ~"o os dfl3p7 XarE'Eora' yElva-ro: she abhors housework, and washes herself twice a day, or even thrice, applies perfume,
Pliny, H.N. 8. 164, assures us that equarum libido exstinguitur iuba tonsa. It has been inferred from ira i E.a3s avE?0a^ that the girls of the choir are all
cousins. One wonders. Must all ten have been related for the expression to be possible-not just nine, say, or six ? For all we know, 'cousin' could be used at Sparta as a general term of affection, like 'sister' in both Greek and Latin. We might readily believe that Hagesichora and Klesithera and Damareta all came from the same aristocratic family; but we might doubt whether girls with names like Nanno or Philullaz came from the same stable.
58 a' 3E v-'r'pa ITES' Ay•c~b FE0o ogs o 'I/qvC^ KoAaeatos 3patjq-aL.
It is not certain whether the two breeds of horse are compared in respect of speed, as is usually assumed, or in looks. 3patv-rat does not settle the question: it is used because horses compete together in races, not in beauty contests, but it is perfectly possible, when two horses are seen on a racecourse, to com- ment on other differences between them than their difference in speed.
What is clear is that the Scythian horse3 is inferior to the Lydian. Probably not just slightly inferior, but much inferior: for one thing, Alcman likes his contrasts to be violent (cf. below on 60-63); for another, we cannot really suppose that the characteristics of the different breeds were so constant that an unspecified Lydian could be predicted to outrun an unspecified Scythian 'by a short head',4 or to be marginally more handsome; for another, Alcman is not likely to be saying that a girl whose appearance has dazzled him 17 lines earlier is after all only slightly more beautiful than anyone else. So it looks as if the Colaxaean horse was notoriously of poor appearance or racing performance or both-this would fit the usual Scythian horse, a small, hardy type-while the Lydian was outstanding. If the contrast is in looks, it is relevant to note that Greece at this time was captivated by all things Lydian: in particular, -7ra Adv•wv apIuara were a fine sight (Sappho 16. 19), and the horses and their trappings must have been an important part of the spectacle. Even so if sch. E. Hipp. 231 is right in saying that the first Olympic victory with Venetians was that of the Spartan Leon in 440. As far as I can discover, nothing is recorded about the appearance of Venetic horses; they were no longer bred in Strabo's time (212), and our information about ancient horses comes mainly from later writers.
' Anacr. 72 rrT1AE Op&pKl'q, Ip "/
E' X Ao~V 4q.tawL /3AE'7rova v77AE(WA g VYELS;. .. E LeoV
yap L7Trr7o•7ELp77v
oVK EXEL5 E7TrrE/flBc yv. LSJ s.v.
KEr77S III,
KEA• rr o II.
2 So her friends called her, not Philylla. 3 On the adjective KoAaea'osg cf. above,
P. 193- 4 Davison, Hermes lxxiii (1938), 446.
ALCMANICA 197
captivating is Agido. The choice of simile does not of course imply that she and some rival are due to run a race: one could as well infer from 86 that the whole choir is sitting on a rafter.
Much ink has been wasted on the question whether Agido or Hagesichora is supposed to be the more beautiful. Wasted, because Alcman studiously avoids comparing the two. Agido shines like the sun, when we look at her; but let's not talk of her now, for Hagesichora is as splendid as the finest race- horse you can imagine. She has golden hair and a fair complexion. But Agido, as far as beauty is concerned, is a winner. Each is pre-eminent and without a rival for as long as we look at her: we never look at both together. Alcman tactfully preserves the balance between the two. He celebrates Agido in 39-44; then we turn aside to admire Hagesichora, from 44 to 57; now in 58-59 we are briefly reminded of Agido's beauty, and the two girls stand firmly before us, equal in looks and importance, as we pass on to consider the rest of the choir.
The Pleiades are the star-cluster. With Z4pLov dl-rpov in the same sentence, any other view is unlikely from the start; and once we see what Alcman is getting at, every word fits into place.
The Pleiades are fighting us, aL .. . ?.LtaXodvrat.
'Fight' must mean 'compete with': satisfactory parallels appear to be lacking, but in a lyric poet we cannot expect a parallel for every metaphor, and no alternative meaning seems possible. The Pleiades therefore stand for a rival choir, either an actual one or a theoretical one, any choir that might try to challenge us. They are rising up the sky, dFVpop~vaL.'i SK7Sa & ' d'fpoolav is probably to be taken with ?Epol- cats, with which it is immediately adjacent, and not with aFV7po[PvaL. And since there is no sense, astronomical or otherwise, in saying that the Pleiades rise up the sky like Sirius, it appears that JrIE 7Z?ptov 'orrpov also belongs with
9EpolcoLs. We bear our bcdpos like Sirius through the ambrosial night. In fact, as we have seen, the action takes place in broad daylight: the night is part of the metaphor.2
Of all the stars or star-groups that Alcman could have named, the Pleiades are the faintest.3 The six principal stars in the cluster are of magnitudes 3-0, 3-8, 3-8,
4"0, 4-2, and 4'4. It is only because of their concentration that they
I Hp. Air. 6 J yap 'ALos 7rptv vw dp6o4vat oUK TL7AdL/TEL, Arat. 326 rogds o0 ('QplwOv) Ka'L bpovpoa a EtcLoLEpVp lTO
V•rc fI alvIErat, 405 CdrTrTrEp'7V yap dElpErat ApKTrovpOLO. Cf. 558; Eur. Alc. 450. dvariAAwX means 'rise' in the sense of 'appear about the horizon',
al'poltaL means 'climb up the sky'. 2 For comparison of a thing seen by day-
light to something else seen at night, cf., e.g., II. 22. 3i7 if. ofos 8' &dcrr0p
LC•L tEEr'
darpdao vVKTo~S a OAyo Iy "EawEpoS, 03 K3dA- Atr-rog dv 0ovpavc LGTraatL darcp, (
alXtpis d•r a•alr' Ea1gKEOS, Ibyc. 33 ,AEyEOWV
q7TEp 35& V C Kaca iiKpdv
aEtpta ralioavwv-ra,
Pind. O. I. I d 85 Xpvos adgOLEvov rop aTE
LcaTrpE~WEL VVKTI, Xen. Symp. I. 9 cdorrTEp oTray E/Yyyo3 TL EV VVKTC avk 7T, fT(LvTwv 7poadyeratc
Env Ah3 v1'. 3 There are of course fainter stars and con-
stellations; but it is uncertain to what extent they had been named by Alcman's time, and even when they had they were too obscure for a lyric poet and his public.
198 M. L. WEST
arrest the attention and are specially named. Sirius is the brightest of all the fixed stars, magnitude --I-58, that is some 70 times more brilliant than the brightest Pleiad and some 23 times as bright as the six combined. From among the fixed stars Alcman could not have drawn a greater contrast. But not con- tent with the natural difference in brilliance between Sirius and the Pleiades, he makes the contest still more uneven by setting Sirius in the ambrosial night against the Pleiades in morning twilight, dpOpl••:
not only in twilight, but low in the sky as well,
aFvypoo~vwa. That there actually was a rival choir called the Pleiades remains distinctly possible.I If so, Alcman outbids them: they call themselves the Pleiades, but we shine bright as Sirius. ydp in 60o is now intelligible. The radiant beauty of Agido and Hagesichora has been described, and the connexion of thought is, '(we are able to put on display such lovely girls as these,) for we are out- standingly radiant as a group'.Z
One problem survives: the meaning of dapos. Since antiquity it has been debated whether it means a robe or a plough. But it is hard to see why, even supposing the choir to be carrying one or the other, they should refer to it here, in the middle of a sentence about their dazzling beauty. The other choir, if it is competing on the same occasion, should presumably be carrying a similar offering, so that it cannot give our choir any advantage. Nor is it clear how either a robe or a plough can be carried like Sirius sparkling in the night. These real difficulties can be overcome, and the sense greatly improved, by reading OdaFos. What we bear like Sirius is light. QOowa~bdpos heralds the approach of day. But any source of light can be said to qdos E'pEv. The Dioscuri appear Ev vKCT& OS do dpoVgES Vi"r tEAalva, Alc. 34. I I ; torches are bac0cbdpot, A. Ag. 489; Iacchus is v-K-rpov TE•,•9S
q OwdpOS sJrr4p, Ar. Ra. 342. The corruption of F to p is found in 41 opoap' (perhaps, but the reading is disputed, cf. Page, p. 7), and in Hesychius p-rpo crE and
3O3pOCKoS (Weir Smyth). That Alcman has the
contracted form 06sg in 40 is no objection to the conjecture: he had AA2K~ iV (I7- 4, 39. I) beside A4AKUL(F)W v (95(b)) in his own name, KAEvvds (I. 44) and apparently KA-qvd• (4 fr. I. I I) and
KAEL•Vt (13 (d) 4) beside KAE(F)EYVJS (io (b) 12), KA•qcgfl[pdra (4 fr. I. 9) beside KAc(F)1ncrelOpa (I. 72), and in the 4aF- root wrroAvdavos (56. 2) beside Oa(F)dvva (62). It may be that 0dFos at some stage was written ac0os :3 this would account for the un-Doric accent 0 pos in the papyrus, and possibly for the intelligible bcavos attested for Alcman by sch. (A) II. 12. 137.4
The contrasts now emerge clearly. I set the sentence out once more, not changing the order of words, but dividing them according to sense instead of musical phrases:
Cal HEAc3S (Yap) i
He~ga'Seg (y
Like the Pleiad of Alexandrian tra- gedians.
2 Rather similar is Hes. Th. 154 (after description of the fearsome Cyclopes and Hundred-Handers): JaaoU yap FaL77S TE Kat
O3pavo i EeeyvoVro, Ij sEdwo-aro ralSoWv. 3 As avapo'dvaet in 63, a late Laconian
spelling. The Alexandrian text of Alcman seem to have been based on a copy written
in Sparta (Wilamowitz, art. cit., p. 255 n. i ; differently in his Textgeschichte der griechischen Lyriker, p. 56), though he was certainly famous throughout Greece by the fifth century: Eupolis fr. 139, Pindar (?) P. Oxy. 2389 fr. 9. i. 9.
4 Fr. 147; a00s cj. Garzya, Alcmane: I Frammenti, I954, p. I65.
The choir now explain the nature of their splendour. While they pretend to be- little their own appearance and finery in comparison with Hagesichora, in fact they are drawing attention to it: the purple, the gold, Nanno's hair, the beauty of Areta, and so on. They do not rely on these assets, but on Hagesichora. adtLvac continues the metaphor of taXdvraL, and it is further continued in Iprva (9 1).
Eight girls are here named; the choir consists of ten girls (99). It has been thought that the other two are Agido and Hagesichora. Hagesichora may very well be one of the ten. But Agido can hardly be; it is clear in 42, and again in 80, that she is not singing with the choir, but attending to other matters, and it is significant that for all her beauty she is not mentioned in this strophe. Wilamo- witz's argument (Hermes xxxii [18971, 259) that there is no point in such a list unless it is complete, is not compelling: it would not be surprising if the choir contained one or two girls too plain to be mentioned in this context without absurdity, and there is no reason to assume that 70 ff. is meant as a complete Aufzdhlung, any more than that 64 ff. is a complete account of their apparel.'
73 oVE' E~ Alvqrqa~flpd7raS avOo ca bcaacUts
C??A
Sb TE tLOt YEVOtyoo
Kalt oryoAEOt 0,,AvAAa" ZauapcE-a r Epara r FtavOEctLS,
AA' MyIqatXopa 4LtE cTELpE
You will fall in love, not with Astaphis, Philulla, Damareta, or Wianthemis, but with Hagesichora.-The erotic sense of these imagined wishes is indis- putable; 7rroTyAETrot in particular is unequivocal,z and so is rEIpEL.3 The feminine participle JvOoraa does not necessarily mean that the audience is composed en- tirely of women, but is used, I would suggest, because it was more natural for girls to discuss each other's charms among themselves, or with other female friends, than with men.
Who is Ainesimbrota? What is she? 'She is... one to whose house you would go to find choir-girls; a dancing-mistress.'4 Most scholars have taken
I Presumably they were not barefoot. 2 e.g. 3. 62 TaKEp• &7-pa S' VtrTVW KaL OavCda•
TorTLSpKETaL, Theocr. 3. 39 Kal KE L ' T'aos oSr0t OL, ETrEL o'K dcapLavrlva E•arv.
by P. Oxy. 2389 fr. 7. i (b) i i. 4 Page, p. 46 n. i, cf. p. 65.
200 M. L. WEST
this view, or something like it, and other answers that have been proposed are certainly absurd. So Ainesimbrota has come to be regarded as the principal of an 'academy', a residential choir school. I believe this to be quite wrong. The idea that you can, or ever could, knock at the door of a dancing-school and say 'Please may Philulla fall in love with me?' is ludicrous. Even a dancing- mistress prepared to lend out her pupils for the asking could not be represented as a steward of their affections.
No, Ainesimbrota is not a woman to whose house you would go to find choir- girls, or, I hasten to add, girls of any other sort. She is a woman to whose house you would go if you were in love and not loved in return; to whom you would say 'I long for Astaphis, or Philulla, or Hagesichora, to look on me with favour'. And she would help you, with potions, incantations, iynx, or whatever she knew. Love-magic is attested from the sixth century on,' and must have existed from the earliest times.
96 a ' 8 rav p~plqvISwv Co~Sor1'pa /[E'V
a•d"o Oca yap, av-r[t '" EvSKa 7TrLatSJv SEK[CaS a8' a'EIS]EL.
The supplement in 97 is that of P. Von der Mtihll (Mus. Helv. xv [1958], 83). The Sirens are not the remote Lorelei-figures of Argonautic and Odyssean legend; 6Oal implies forces active in the world of here and now, and fr. 30
SMiCua KEKAcay' c Aly'qa 2Eqp'/v shows that for Alcman they are alternatives to the Muses. Being half-bird in form, they make good Muses for a poet who thinks of himself as an imitator of bird-music.2 His ideas about the Muses are anything but fixed; they are now plural (fr. 3. I, 8. 9, 46, 59(b)), now singular (5 fr. 2. i. 22, 14(a), 27, 28, 30, 31, 43), now the children of Zeus and
Mnemosyne(8. 9, 27, 28, 43), now of Earth and Heaven (67, cf. 5 fr. 2. i. 28). SV3EKa in 98 appears to refer to the Sirens, though not known as their number
elsewhere. There is a double contrast: they are goddesses, we are children; they are eleven, we are ten. Nevertheless, the choir is suggesting a comparison; as in 64 ff., the self-depreciation is a boast in disguise. The announcement 'we are not goddesses but children', coming near the end of the poem, recalls the end of the song of the Rhodian
This may be found significant by those who think, on the strength of HEATcdES, yAaa?, etc., that Alcman's choir and its rivals may have been dressed as birds.3 But the Partheneion is obviously not a children's begging-song like the swallow- song and its cognates.4 What it is, is perhaps destined to remain obscure.
100 B0Eyyr . ()w()[KUKOvO w p'oa KVKVOS.
[Hes.] P. Oxy. 2481 fr. 5. ii. 14 (Deia- neira), Pind. P. 4. 213, E. Hipp. 509 ff., etc.
2 Fr. 39 FAAKL rasE KaL p 'os AAKLdV Eipe
y•yAwaaaadvav I
KaKK•aG•33v r7Ta avv•tELEVOS,
40 FoE3a 3' pvixwv vows wgrrav-rav, in this poem 87 yAai6, Io1 KVKVOS; Leonidas A.P. 7. 19 Ig7 v XaplE?vr' AAKLZdva, T7• v vrl-rp'
vzLEvalwv I K1KVOv might suggest that Alcman somewhere spoke of himself as a swan, as the choir does here.
3 Cf. Bowra, op. cit., ed. 2, p. 56. 4 The Samian EpEaL;rLV (Hom. epigr. i5),
the Attic ELpEaLJ•'v7
(Plu. Thes. 22), Phoenix' Kopwvtn-ra (Ath. 359 e). The custom has a
ALCMANICA 201
Against Blass's 8' ap' it has been urged that ipa does not occur elsewhere in the fragments of Alcman.' What is more to the point, the combination 8' pa is restricted in lyric poetry (excluding Tragedy) to (a) narrative: Sappho 44. 25, 141- 5, Stes. 42, Ibyc. I. 41, 2 (dub.), Pind. O. 10. 43, P. 3. 27, 57, 4. 121, 6. 37, 11. 34, N. I. 48, 9. 21, 10. 69; (b) enlightenment: Pind. N. 8. 32, fr. 123. I3.2 I have no alternative supplement, but suggest that JrE is not obligatory (cf. 85). I end with an attempt to reproduce, partly in translation and partly in paraphrase, the sense of lines 30-101:
'In one way or another, they all met violent death, and suffered severely for their sins. The vengeance of the gods is real; blessed is the wise man3 who weaves his daylight to its close without suffering. My song is of the light of Agido: I see her shine like the sun that she is now calling to witness on our behalf. But the renowned choir-leader forbids me to talk of her merits and defects; she herself shines out so, as if one set among the herds a strong galloping horse, a champion from among the dreams that lurk in the shade of rocks. See! The steed is a Venetian: the mane of my cousin Hagesichora blossoms like virgin gold; and her silvery face-why need I tell you ? There you have Hagesichora; while the nearest rival to Agido's beauty will be found a Scy- thian horse on the same racecourse as a Lydian.
'Yes, the Pleiades our challengers rise up a lightening sky to challenge ones who bear light like Sirius through the ambrosial night. For we do not rely only on our abundance of purple, or our serpent-bangles of solid gold, or our Lydian caps, fine adornment for dark-eyed girls, or Nanno's tresses, nor yet on Areta divinely fair, or Thulakis and Klesithera; nor will you go to Ainesim- brota's and say "I long for Astaphis", and "I wish Philulla would look my way", or Damareta, or lovely Wianthemis-no, you will say, "Hagesichora is my torment".
'We rely on her, Hagesichora with the pretty ankles; for though she is not here beside us, she waits with Agido and commends our sacrifice to the gods. O gods, accept their prayer! For to the gods belongs the accomplishing and the fulfilment. Choir-leader, I would express my feelings so: by myself, I am a girl screeching to no purpose like an owl on a rafter; and it is Aotis above all (rather than the goddess of singers?) that I long to please, for she is the healer of our troubles; but through Hagesichora girls set foot on the path of harmony. For the team must follow the trace-horse, and the rowers must obey
striking modern parallel in Ireland, where boys go begging from house to house on Boxing Day, with blackened faces, carrying a holly bush decorated with ribbon (edpeaLjvrl) and singing or reciting the following verse or a variant:
The wren, the wren, the king of all birds, St. Stephen's Day got caught in the furze. Though he is small, his family is great, So rise up, your honours, and give us a treat. I have an old canister under my arm. Three or four pence would do no harm.
( The Guardian, 27 December 1963, 6 January 1964. Cf. Frazer, The Golden Bough, ed. 3, viii. 317 ff.; Nilsson, Gesch. d. gr. Religion i2.
124, with literature.) The custom is said to have started in the famine of 1846-8; the Athenians believed that their wool- branch song was instituted in a famine in the time of Theseus (Plu., loc. cit., sch. Ar. Eq. 72o, etc.). Every Englishman is familiar with another children's chant of similar nature: 'Please to remember the fifth of November, Gunpowder, treason and plot.'
Davison, Hermes lxxiii (1938), 453. 2 Exceptions in Tragedy, e.g. A. Pers.
568, S. Tr. 962, E. Ba. i66. 3
CeVpOaLvv seems an inappropriate idea here: I prefer to take Eg'Opwv as the opposite of afOpwv; JatS Et IPWV = oartS E~ cpOVfl Kal.
202 M. L. WEST
the pilot. The voice of the Sirens is indeed more songful--they are goddesses, and instead of their eleven, we are but ten, and children, that here do sing. But our tune is like the swan's on the waters of Xanthos, and she with her marvellous auburn locks, Hagesichora...'.
