There are few fields in classical studies that have flourished as much in the last two decades as the study of Greek choral lyric poetry. The reason why scholars ‘discovered’ this central literary genre of the archaic and classical ages relatively late and why there was a real boom of publications after this ‘discovery’ follows the old Pindaric wisdom that everything has its kairós. For whereas Pindar’s epinician odes have constantly attracted the attention of scholars during the centuries, all the rest of the material — mostly lost until the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century — did not even receive the treatment it deserved when the papyri that emerged from the sands of Egypt opened up a completely new world of literary production: partheneia from Sparta, dithyrambs, paeans and multifarious hymns from all over the Greek world, composed by excellent poets like Alcman, Simonides, Pindar, Bacchylides and many others. It is true that when the papyri were published, the first enthusiasm about the new material stimulated careful studies of the texts and their philological reconstruction. But as soon as the basic philological work was done, scholars lost interest in the poems, and research fell into a kind of hibernation. Literary studies of the poems or even systematic analyses of the different genres are extremely rare before the 1970s.1 Indeed in his unique systematic evaluation of the material of Greek lyric poetry from 1955 A. E. Harvey had to give up his project of drafting the whole system of lyric (sub-)genres (like the paean, the dirge, the dithyramb etc.) with the well-known sentence: “The result of this discussion is, I am aware, depressingly negative”.2 It seems as if the time was just not ripe for the proper appreciation of the new material.
This inactivity changed instantly when Claude Calame’s book on Alcman’s partheneia inaugurated a new chapter of research in Greek lyric poetry in 1977.3 What had happened? New methods of cultural anthropology, a new awareness of the pragmatics of literary texts in ancient Greece, and last but not least the willingness to abandon the purely aesthetic approaches which had dominated Greek literary studies in the second third of the 20th century opened up new horizons. It was not until the middle of the seventies that asking (the right) questions on literary genres that were so deeply rooted in religious and social life like Greek lyric poetry provided sufficient answers. A fruitful discussion of these texts demands a multiple and complex methodology indeed: The single poem as well as the whole genre has to be considered as an act of oral communication in a very elaborated system of literary, linguistic, and social interactions. After Calame had cut the Gordion knot it was merely a natural development that scholars took up the neglected material and a real boom of studies of the lyric genres ensued — on dithyrambs,4 dirges,5 hymns6 and, most of all, paeans. The last genre proved to be by far the most rewarding and so it is somehow natural that R[utherford]’s book is already the third work on paeans in the last 10 years7 and also so to speak the summa of intensive work on the subject insofar as it also sums up R.’s own work, which has been well documented in more than 20 articles in the last 15 years.8
This ‘comprehensiveness’ in many senses of the word is at the same time one of the great merits and one of the (very) minor problems of the book. The great merit of comprehensiveness will be illustrated in the following pages. Let us postpone it for a moment. The little problem, however, is obviously due to the long time it took to finish the book. R. himself rightly says in his introduction that the book was “virtually complete” (p. viii) when my book on the paeans (see note 7) became available to him. That was in 1992, nine years before the publication of R.’s book. In the meantime R. had of course continued working on different chapters (especially on sections on the paean in general, on the arrangement of Pindar’s book of paeans and on Pind. pae. VI). So some of the inconsistencies which I will address later might be due to this long process of writing and re-writing. R. should, however, perhaps rather be thanked than blamed for his patience in withholding the book in the light of his recent findings, which he was thus able to incorporate into the final version.
What, then, is the end result we finally hold in our hands? An erudite book with a vast amount of material, some very important new suggestions on old issues and an altogether state-of-the-art presentation of Pindar’s paeans as representatives of their genre. The central part of the book covering more than 250 pages is a new edition of the fragments of Pindar’s paeans and the scholia one by one, each followed by a detailed critical apparatus, an English translation and an interpretative essay addressing textual problems, difficulties of interpretation in general, place and date of performance, literary structure and relation to other poems (part II: pp. 183-442). This part is preceded by a long, bipartite introduction covering a survey of the genre in general (pp. 3-136) and an introduction to Pindar’s paeans in particular (pp. 137-182). At the end a metrical appendix (pp. 443-458), a list of paeans of poets other than Pindar (pp. 459-466) and the usual concordances (pp. 467-471), bibliography (pp. 472-512) and indices (pp. 513-546) offer valuable help in handling the material incorporated in the book.
R.’s approach to the genre takes into account all the results which modern scholarship has achieved during the last two decades: In a first step (section 1) he situates Greek (choral) lyric in the context of a “song-dance culture”, in which the performances function as “symbolic social action(s)”, “reinforcing society’s values”, “reflecting the important role that the sacred played in all aspects of Greek social life” (p. 3). As a consequence of the ubiquitous performances in the fifth century there must have been a vast amount of songs, and the poems/songs were distinguishable as belonging to different ‘groups’, which we nowadays are used to calling ‘genres’. R. speaks about a “fixed canon of genres” (p. 4) already for the fifth century. In order to clarify what he means by ‘genre’ in this context, R. makes the following points: (1) “songs … (of) the same genre … (have) a shared function or shared performance scenario; formal features are much less important.” (2) ‘Genre’ in the fifth century is “a descriptive category … Genres are not yet ideal norms.” (3) “Genres can be described both synchronically … and diachronically”, the first category distinguishing different genres of the same period from each other, the second operating with genre-models and their ‘imitation’ by following generations. In R.’s view this catalogue of features, however, applies only to the classical period. He considers the Hellenistic approach to genre not to be descriptive (see 2) but “normative” and not functional (see 1), but “formal”: “The difference between classical and Hellenistic conceptions of genre can be explained by the hypothesis that in the fifth century BC performance is still closely tied to social and religious contexts, whereas by the Hellenistic period this linkage has been lost …” (p. 5).
This approach is extremely promising indeed, not primarily because I have come to roughly the same conclusions in my book, but because it gives R. the freedom to appreciate each poem/song of the classical period without the obligation of pressing it into a formal scheme into which it will never perfectly fit. That means, he can avoid Harvey’s failure in classifying the lyric genres according to supposed formal features, and he has quite a good and flexible tool to describe the poems in question as ‘members’ of one genre. So consequently R. lays the ground for his survey by listing basic functions: (1) “prayer to avert … evil”, (2) “victory paian” (3) “intermediate” (e.g. symposium paean, cult paean, armies before battle).
On the whole R. observes a strong tendency of “overlapping of function” (p. 8), especially in cult paeans. Yet, if one makes a list of different functions that are supposed to produce a genre, one is still in need of defining its “coherence”. R. sees the problem, too, and he defines the “underlying common elements of performance and function” as (1) “political solidarity among male performers” and (2) a “common ethos of controlled celebration” (p. 9). This is an interesting new attempt to describe the generic nucleus of the paean in general terms, and it should be considered carefully in the future. I personally, however, am not completely convinced, because “political solidarity” and “common ethos” are so general that they apply to many other lyric genres as well, e.g. the dithyramb. I think it is not enough to define the paean by “controlled” celebration (in order to distinguish the paean from the dithyramb?). Perhaps R.’s new description has one advantage: It avoids naming any ‘purposes’ — as I did by putting the appeal or thanksgiving for health, prosperity, or well-being in general into the functional center of the paean. In this way he can perhaps handle the paeans which he calls ‘celebratory’ paeans (see p. 84) in a slightly more efficient way. In fact, there are many other possible issues in a given special paean other than ‘appeal’ or ‘thanksgiving’. Celebration may be in many cases one of them. In R.’s model the element I called the ‘hymnic’ approach to the god (praising and describing him)9 gets a more prominent position in the structural system of the genre than in my concept. Perhaps R. is right, though the performance of paeans in contexts of ‘jubilation’ is not really an argument against my model of reciprocity between ‘song’ and ‘well-being coming from the god’ (as R. strongly maintains on pp. 84 f.). To me it seems not incompatible with my theory if the god (as benefactor) is not only thanked, but also celebrated.
But theory is not the main focus of the book. Its aim is to provide the reader with all the material on the paean that exists. So R. takes us back to the ancient accounts of the origin of the genre, the relation between song and god (Paian), the etymology (ancient and modern) and the Cretan connection (Section 2: pp. 10-17). All this is very learned and convincing. There is only one point I have serious doubts about: R. argues that the battle paean must be something very old, because the god ‘Paiawon’ is mentioned together with Enyalios (= Ares) on the Linear-B tablet from Knossos KN V 52. R. infers from this coincidence “that Paiawon was a military deity at Knossos, and the use of the paian in battle was very ancient” (p. 15). I cannot agree with this interpretation. First of all Athena and Poseidon are mentioned as well, and it would be methodically improper to infer that they were military deities too, just because Enyalios is on the tablet as well.
Interesting is the chapter on “typology of paeanic text and performance” (Section 3). R. works through the whole spectrum of ‘paeanic utterances’ from the single cry (ié) to the highly artistic song and checks the features off that are involved. It is striking that the ‘appeal to paian’ is always present (see table 1 on p. 23), with an expansion of features from one step to the next: ‘supporting text’ is added in ‘paeanic speech’, ‘artistic form’ is an additional feature of a ‘paian-poem’ and eventually an ‘artistic paian-song’ has all these features plus ‘elaborate structure’, ‘song’ and ‘(usually) dance’.
The next two paragraphs trace the different functions of paeans within their respective performance contexts. The most important occasions are certainly the Apolline festivals in Delphi, Delos, Sparta and other sanctuaries (Section 5: pp: 23-36). Other functions include apotropaic prayers, healing in the cult of Asclepius, military contexts before and after battle, symposium, special ritual occasions, when ‘euphemia’ is requested, celebrations and weddings, commemoration of dead heroes, and praising of potentates like Lysander and Hellenistic rulers (Section 6: pp. 36-58). R. gives a kaleidoscope of the ancient evidence for all the occasions. This includes a long discussion of the ancient views on the origin and aetiology of the paean (Crete, Pythoctonia in Delphi) and a great number of presentations of attested and/or transmitted texts of the genre.
The paragraph called “Performance” (Section 6: pp. 58-68) presents a mixture of formal and functional issues. According to R. the performers were mostly males. That this means that the paean is closely connected with ‘initiation’, as R. thinks (p. 62), is a very doubtful generalization drawn from the paeans at the Hyacinthia in Sparta. I cannot see any initiation context e. g. in Pindar’s paeans or in the many ‘medical’ paeans. As ‘modes of performance’ R. notes processions, circular motions round an altar, antiphonal structures with an éxarchos and a choir joining in with the refrain (pp. 63-68).
From here R. reaches his chapter on formal features of the genre (Section 7: pp. 68-83): invocation of ‘Paian’, refrain, other generic ‘signatures’, structures and themes, metre, music; and from there he goes on to an overall definition of “the significance of the paian in its generic and social context” (Section 8: pp. 83-90), with a kind of ‘appendix’ on problematic cases of generic distinctions (Section 9: pp. 90-108). R.’s new solution for the description of a sort of “essence” of the paean is — as I said earlier — a ‘social’ one: “Key ideas … include collective male strength, social cohesion, the assertion of the strength of the community … the world of the living as opposed to the world of the dead, and finally celebration” (p. 86). For R. the paean is “defined by its correlation with support of the polis, political and social order, life and healing, and finally the male” (p. 89). Of course all of these are important features of many of the poems which belong to the genre of paeans, and I would by no means criticize that we do not find each of them in all poems. R. rightly concedes that the ‘members’ of a genre are only “interrelated by family resemblances”.10 What is unconvincing in R.’s concept, however, is that he totally refrains from building up a systematic concept integrating formal and functional features into one system in the true sense of the word. The chapter on formal features (Section 7) stands for itself, being completely isolated from the rest both from R.’s typology (Section 3) and from the ‘significance’ (Section 8) of the paean. On p. 23 we are told that the ‘appeal to paian’ occurs in every paean (cf. pp. 68 f.), on pp. 69 ff. the paean-cry is called a ‘distinctive formal feature’, on p. 86 R. lists the ‘key ideas’ mentioned above. How are these different features (belonging to different categories) related to each other? In my view the different dimensions of a literary text (form, performance, function) generally belong together very closely. They very often mirror each other and form patterns of structural representations of each other. For R. form, performance and function seem to have nothing to do with each other. He does not even attempt to draw any line from one category or dimension to another. How is R.’s ‘social significance’ of the paean mirrored in the formal shape of the genre (or, at least, which features correspond to each other)? One may well ask why the ‘appeal to paian’ (p. 23) is so prominent in R.’s typology while a corresponding function plays no role in the intrinsic significance of the paean (pp. 86 ff.), and why vice versa ‘social cohesion’ etc. have no formal expression whatsoever (as a feature or at least structure).
In my view the deficit of R.’s concept is also the reason why he gets into trouble so deeply in the next chapter on ‘distinctiveness’ (Section 9: pp. 90-108). R. lists the well-known problematic cases, where ancient sources are in doubt whether a poem is a paean or belongs to some other genre (skolion, dithyramb, prosodion, hyporchema). In the majority of cases R. convincingly explains the confusion by a deficit of knowledge of the (later) sources about the original performance scenarios. For the hyporchema and the prosodion, however, he comes to the opposite conclusion, that in these cases the confusion is due to the lack of distinctiveness of these genres already in the classical period itself: “the line of demarcation … may have been … blurred” (p. 107). In the light of this statement R.’s assertion at the end, however, that “the paian was a reasonably distinctive category in the fifth century BC” (p. 108), emerges somewhat surprisingly.
What, then, is the problem here? In my view R.’s results point at two crucial shortcomings in his own concept. I begin with the second: For R. it is beyond all doubt that the genres which the Hellenistic eidographers called ‘hyporchema’ and ‘prosodion’ actually existed as genres beside the paean, the dithyramb etc. from the beginning.11 It is striking that the words are not attested before the end of the fifth or the fourth century BC respectively.12 This is strong support for the hypothesis that in the generic system of the archaic and the main part of the classical period these genres did not exist as opposed to the paean at all.13 R. takes these genres as existent, but he cannot quote a single instance from the classical period in which a poem is called a hyporchema or a prosodion. His whole discussion of ‘lines of demarcation’ is a backward projection from the perspective of a later generic system, which develops genres with formal features like ‘form of presentation’ etc. That the use of a changed system with different categories for the description of an older system must lead to inconsistencies in classification is inevitable, and this has nothing to do with a lack of distinctness of the classical genres themselves. The first and main reason for R.’s spongy picture of the overall generic system, however, is his loose description of the generic features of the paean itself. A closer look at the reciprocal relationship between form, performance and function would have produced a more district picture of the paean, and this would have increased the possibility of distinguishing it from other genres.
The next two chapters present a discussion of the significance of the paean in tragedy (Section 10: pp. 108-115) and an extremely interesting essay on “Paeanic ambiguity” (Section 11: pp. 115-126).14 In the latter R. demonstrates convincingly how often the light and happy paean is used in highly ambiguous contexts reflecting or foreshadowing the dark and unhappy side of life.
The last introductory chapter gives a short outline of the post-classical development of the genre (Section 12: pp. 126-136). R. describes it as a “decline” (p. 126), stressing the loss of the classical performance contexts and the overall extension of possible addressees. A short discussion of the paean to Dionysos by Philodamos on pp. 131-135 closes the general introduction.
The greatest achievement of the book, however, is the edition of Pindar’s paeans. Here R. confronts the reader with radical changes both in the general presentation of the poems and their interpretation in particular. The first radical change is that he altered the sequence of poems we are used to reading as paeans in Snell-Maehler’s edition.
The editores principes of the most important papyrus (POxy 841), Grenfell and Hunt, distinguished four different sections of the papyrus, which they put into the order we now read e. g. in Bowra’s and Snell-Maehler’s editions (first group: Pind. pae.
R.’s chapters on the history of the text and the organization of the ancient edition (Sections 14-17: pp. 144-165) are learned and very informative. Especially interesting is his suggestion for the organization of the Hellenistic edition: It may very well be true that the poems with a clear reference to Apollo came earlier, and the poems which have been transmitted and which only have a very general reference to Apollo were put in the second part of book (p. 160).
Finally R. gives an overall view of Pindar’s paeans, going through performance scenarios, formal features, generic specialties, religious issues and Pindar’s relation to Delphi (Sections 18-21: pp. 166-182). This is all very well documented and convincingly argued. The only doubt I have is about R.’s explanation of the long passages of self-description in the poems. I don’t think that they are included with regard to later “secondary performances and display or circulation in written form” (p. 177). Why doesn’t R. interpret them as generic just in the sense he outlined earlier? Isn’t an ample self-definition a perfect (formal) poetic means to produce collective coherence for the present moment by assuring oneself as a singer and dancer? To a later reader these passages may seem odd for the performers in their musical trance they were certainly not.
The edition and commentary of Pindar’s paeans follows the sequence of poems which R. has fixed in his reconstruction of POxy 841. Certainly a lot of additional papyri come in for the edition of the single poems. R. has reexamined all the original papyri. Of course, the result is not an overall revision of the text we are used to reading in our traditional editions. There are very few substantial new readings. The great improvement of R.’s new edition is rather the scrupulous listing of all the marginal notes, critical signs, stichometric symbols etc., that were neglected by the editores principes and later editors. And this work was really worth the while. I have already mentioned the establishment of the new sequence of poems by the consequent consideration of the stichometric signs. Another improvement is the full reproduction of asterisks, paragraphoi, marginal titles, chi(ázetai), etc. in the text, so that the modern reader is much closer to the original papyrus and is better able to understand the ancient presentation of the text. It is impossible to go through the texts in detail. I was unable to find any serious objections to R.’s editions. The commentaries are all extremely learned and exhaustive. The interpretations are generally plausible, although R. too seldom refers them to the generic outline of the paean he has given in his introduction. The material that is included will be valuable for future readers even beyond the purposes of the explanation of the Pindaric text.
Of the many excellent discussions of paeans I can only present a small selection. R.’s presentation of Pae. VIII is in my view one of the highlights of the book (p. 210-232). He collects all the material of the myth of the four early temples in Delphi and gives a sensitive and convincing interpretation of the special treatment of the story in this paean. The chapter will be the standard reference on the subject in the future.
The second highlight is doubtlessly R.’s treatment of Pae. VI (pp. 298-338). R.’s innovations already begin with his new papyrological findings: In the margin at the beginning of the third stanza he identified a second (sub-) title. Whereas the whole poem carries the title “For the Delphians to Pytho” the last triad obviously had the marginal title “For the Aeginetans in honour of Aiakos a prosodion”. A scholion on l. 124 adds: “It circulates in book I of the Prosodia.” These new readings, which R. had published already,16 offer a new key to many of the old problems of interpretation. The first of these problems is the relation between Nemean 7 and Pae. 6. Is Pindar apologizing in Nem. 7 for an unfavourable presentation of the death of Neoptolemos in Delphi as a punishment for the attempt to steal meat from the sacrifice and for the murder of Priam at the altar of Zeus in Troy in Pae. 6? R. does not rule out this apology hypothesis but rather concentrates on Pae. 6. There he thinks Neoptolemos is in the center of the narrative because he has an important ritual role as an overseer at the sacrifice that takes place at the Theoxenia, the Delphic festival at which Pae. 6 was performed. So what we have is an aetiological narrative for the role of Neoptolemos (and his Aeginetan descendants) at the Theoxenia. On the other hand the narrative also gives a moral ‘exemplum’: Neoptolemos is punished for impieties, i. e. Apollo takes care of his place at Delphi and removes all forms of injustice. Then there is an abrupt break between the second and the third triad, and a strong praise of Aegina starts. This triad also stood (separately) in the first book of prosodia and was written (as such) “for the Aeginetans.” Who performed the song, Delphians or Aeginetans? R. tentatively favours the Aeginetans, being members of the ‘Theoria’ from Aegina visiting Delphi, where their ‘ancestor’ Neoptolemos played an important role. But at this point the two titles, especially the newly discovered marginal title of the third triad (plus scholion) come into consideration. R. points out three possibilities for an explanation: (1) the song was “a coherent three-triadic composition, but … the third triad was detached by later critics and came to circulate independently (p. 336)”; or (2) it “was a supplement” or a “semi-independent supplement” produced for Aeginetan consumption, a kind of apologetic appendix in the sense of Nem. 7 (p. 337); or (3) the full poem was split “between two groups, Delphian hosts and Aeginetan visitors … After the performance, the Aeginetan theoroi perhaps returned to Aegina and took only ‘their’ part of the song (i. e. the third triad)” with them (p. 337). The last possibility would indeed very well explain the (original) formal unity of the poem (metre), the harsh break before the third triad, the two titles (for the Delphians — for the Aeginetans) and the strange manner of transmission: the whole poem was transmitted in the book of paeans (perhaps from Delphic sources?) and the ‘Aeginetan’ bit came into circulation from Aeginetan sources and entered the line of transmission as a prosodion (possibly its use in Aegina itself). R. does not openly favor any of the possibilities, but it is clear that he sympathizes with the second and the third. I would prefer the third, because it would better explain the inner tension within the (whole) poem. The second possibility seems not so likely because there is nothing apologetic about the third triad.
R. has produced the standard edition and commentary on Pindar’s paeans. It combines traditional methods like papyrology, textual criticism, philology, history of religion etc. with modern approaches like genre theory and linguistic pragmatics. R. even compares considerable Near Eastern and Egyptian material (pp. 10f., 214, 217, 226f., 257 etc.) and thereby brings in a comparative element. On every page R. displays learnedness and a stunning command of the material. His new findings and interpretations will have to be considered by every student of paeans in the future. That different parts of the book are not always related to each other as much as they could have been is surely due to the long process of re-writing certain chapters in order to include new findings and ideas. So R.’s book has become the compendium on the paean. That it still leaves room for discussion on one or the other issue is, however, not its smallest merit.17
Notes
1. The most prominent exception that should be quoted is: S. L. Radt, Pindars zweiter und sechster Paian, Amsterdam 1958.
2. A. E. Harvey, “The Classification of Greek Lyric Poetry”. CQ. 5 (1955) 157-175, quotation at 175.
3. C. Calame, Les Choeurs de jeunes filles en Grèce archaique, 2 vols., Rome 1977.
4. See especially D. F. Sutton, Dithyrambographi Graeci, Hildesheim 1989; M. J. H. van der Weiden, The Dithyrambs of Pindar, Amsterdam 1991; B. Zimmermann, Dithyrambos, Geschichte einer Gattung, Göttingen 1992; G. Ieranó, Il Ditirambo di Dioniso, Pisa-Rome 1997.
5. M. Cannatà Fera, Pindarus. Threnorum Fragmenta, Rome 1990.
6. W. D. Furley, J. M. Bremer, Greek Hymns, 2 vols., Tübingen 2001.
7. The first two were: L. Käppel, Paian. Studien zur Geschichte einer Gattung, Berlin-New York 1992; St. Schröder, Geschichte und Theorie der Gattung Paian, Stuttgart Leipzig 1999.
8. The two protagonists of scholarship on paeans in general and on Pindaric paeans in particular have been G. B. D’Alessio and R. himself. R. lists 12 articles on the subject for the former, 26 for himself. The whole material is now incorporated in R.’s book.
9. Paian, p. 83 f.
10. See my discussion of the concept of ‘Familienähnlichkeit’ and its application on the paean in Paian, pp. 10-13 and 84 f. R. should have at least quoted the authors of the concept, Wittgenstein and Jauss.
11. R. p. 107 … “limited generic indeterminacy and possibility of describing the same song in alternative ways … goes back to the fifth century BC.”
12. Prosodion: Aristoph. Birds 853; hyporchema: Plat. Ion 543c 4.
13. See L. Käppel, Bakchylides und das System der chorlyrischen Gattungen im 5. Jh. v. Chr., in: Bakchylides. 100 Jahre nach seiner Wiederentdeckung, ed. A. Bagordo and B. Zimmermann, Zetemata 106, München 2000, 11-27; cf. Käppel, Paian, p. 82.
14. An earlier version is I. Rutherford, Paeanic Ambiguity: A study of Representation of the paian in Greek Literature, QUCC 73 (NS 44) (1993) 77-92.
15. This chapter goes back to R.’s ‘Et hominum et deorum … laudes (?): The Organization of Pindar’s Paean-book’, ZPE 107 (1995) 44-45.
16. I. Rutherford, For the Aeginetans for Aiakos a Prosodion: An Unnoticed Title to Pindar, Paean 6, 123 and its Significance for the Poem, ZPE 118 (1997) 1-21.
17. I owe thanks to G. Wulff-Doebber for producing the computer-script of this review and to D. Hodgson-Moeckel for correcting my English.