Journal of
Ancient Near
Eastern
Religions
Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 12 (2012) 49–77
brill.nl/jane
From (Theogonic) Mythos to (Poetic) Logos:
Reading Pindar’s Genealogical Metaphors
after Freidenberg
Boris Maslov
University of Chicago
[email protected]
Abstract
This paper analyzes the use of kinship categories to refer to personified (hypostasized) concepts
in Ancient Greek literature, with particular emphasis on Pindar. This device serves to include an
abstract concept within a genealogy that is dominated by divinities or quasi-religious entities.
Comparing the use of this device in Hesiod, Plato, and Pindar, I suggest that, before the emergence of properly analytic categories within the philosophical discourse, genealogical metaphor
served as the most important means of concept formation available to Ancient Greeks. In particular, Pindar’s use of genealogical metaphors points to a productive encounter between image
and concept. In this context, I review the neglected work of the Soviet Classicist Olga Freidenberg, who put forward a theory of poetic metaphor as a transitional phenomenon between
mythological image and philosophical concept, and discuss the differences between the method
of historical poetics employed by Freidenberg and the idealist paradigm that informs the better
known work by Hermann Fränkel, Bruno Snell, and Wilhelm Nestle on the shift from “mythos”
to “logos” in early Greek thought and literature.
Keywords
Pindar, personification, concept formation, genealogy, metaphor, theogony, Olga Freidenberg,
Ernst Cassirer, mythical thought
This paper seeks to provide a contribution to the study of a distinctive feature
of ancient religions: making sense of the world in terms of genealogical structures. I approach the use of genealogy both as a conceptual device that
remained fundamental to Ancient Greek religious thought and as an evolving
literary form. This form’s evolution, I will argue, cannot be considered apart
from the development of the analytic mode of concept formation that would,
in particular, prove integral to the practices of philosophia from Plato onward.
Building on the insights of the distinguished Soviet Classicist Olga Freidenberg (1890–1955), I seek to locate this development within the structure of
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2012
DOI: 10.1163/156921212X629464
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B. Maslov / Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 12 (2012) 49–77
the image. In particular, I focus on the evidence of Pindar, whose corpus, with
the exception of Homer, is the largest that survives from the pre-classical
period of Greek literature.
Following brief introductory remarks on method, I begin with a contrastive
analysis of genealogical metaphor in Hesiod, Pindar, and Plato (Section 1). I
then provide some intellectual background to and a summary of Freidenberg’s
largely neglected work on genealogical structures and metaphor in Ancient
Greek literature (Section 2), before presenting a reading of selected passages in
Pindar that illustrate his use of genealogical metaphor, poised (as it were)
between image and concept (Section 3).
There is no single established view on how to read Pindar in relation to or
in the context of Greek religion. Up until the linguistic turn in the humanities, Pindaric scholarship favored a biographical approach and was intent on
uncovering idiosyncratic properties of Pindar’s personal religious views.1 In a
forceful reaction to this paradigm, there followed a period of largely formoriented work—much of it inspired by Elroy Bundy’s Studia Pindarica
(1962)—which emphasized traditional elements in Pindar’s encomiastic diction and, by and large, discounted religion. More recently, Pindaric scholars
have again turned to religion, yet in a way quite opposite to the earlier biographical criticism. The current emphasis is on uncovering the ways in which
Pindar’s poetry is implicated in established Greek religious practices, particularly the operation of local and Panhellenic cults. Accordingly, more attention
is now being accorded to Pindar’s extant fragments in cult-embedded genres
such as paian or partheneion.2 It should be acknowledged, however, that the
For stimulating questions and comments, I am grateful to the members of the audience at the
conference Imagined Beginnings: The Poetics and Politics of Cosmogony, Theogony and Anthropogony in the Ancient World, held at the University of Chicago in April 2011. I also thank German
Dziebel and Christopher Faraone for their comments on a draft of this paper.
The texts of Pindar are quoted from the Teubner edition (ed. H. Maehler post B. Snell, 8th
ed.). Unless noted otherwise, other texts are quoted from standard editions (such as OCT). The
following abbreviations are used to refer to the texts of Pindar and Bacchylides: O. = Olympian,
P. = Pythian, N. = Nemean, I. = Isthmian, Pai. = Paian, Ep. = Epinikion. All translations from
Greek are my own.
1
See, for example, H. Fränkel, “Pindars Religion,” Die Antike 3 (1927) 39–63. Notable
examples of works that foreground Pindar as a historical individual are U. von WilamowitzMoellendorff, Pindaros (Berlin, 1922) and C. M. Bowra, Pindar (Oxford, 1964); the biographical approach also informs much of the older commentarial tradition on Pindar’s epinician odes.
2
Recent work on epinician odes from this perspective includes A. P. Burnett, Pindar’s Songs
for Young Athletes of Aigina (Oxford, 2005), B. Currie, Pindar and the Cult of Heroes (Oxford,
2005), B. Kowalzig, Singing for the Gods: Performances of Myth and Ritual in Archaic and Classical Greece (Oxford, 2007); the foundation for the study of epinikion in the context of local
cult(s) was laid by E. Krummen, Pyrsos Hymnon: Festliche Gegenwart und mythisch-rituelle Tradition als Voraussetzung einer Pindarinterpretation (Isthmie 4, Pythie 5, Olympie 1 und 3) (Berlin,
B. Maslov / Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 12 (2012) 49–77
51
most substantial part of Pindar’s corpus—consisting of epinician (victory)
odes—is only marginally relevant to traditional cults. Nor is its poetics entirely
traditional or conservative. One notable aspect of Pindar’s verbal art that has
drawn attention of both readers and scholars—yet was largely bypassed within
the Bundyist rhetorical framework—is his idiosyncratic use of metaphor,
which often borders on catachresis (jarring combination of different images).3
In this paper, I venture to combine an attention to poetics, religion, and
innovative elements in Pindar, thus contravening established practices of Pindaric interpretation, but I hope not the hermeneutic demands of Pindar’s texts.
My approach, furthermore, raises a more fundamental methodological
issue. The argument I advance may appear to return us to the dichotomy of
the mythical and post-mythical (“logical”) stages in the development of Greek
culture, a generalization that scholars of Greek literature and religion have in
general come to distrust.4 In fact, as I will discuss at the end of Section 2,
1990). Important recent work on non-epinician genres includes I. Rutherford, Pindar’s Paeans:
A Reading of the Fragments with a Survey of the Genre (Oxford, 2001), L. Kurke, “Choral Lyric
as ‘Ritualization’: Poetic Sacrifice and Poetic Ego in Pindar’s Sixth Paian.” CA 24.1 (2005):
81–130, G. D’Alessio, “Defining local identities in Greek lyric poetry” in Wandering Poets in
Ancient Greek Culture: Travel, Locality and Pan-Hellenism, eds. R. Hunter and I. Rutherford
(Cambridge, 2009) 137–167.
3
For a summary of evidence on Pindar as a self-conscious innovator, see Bowra, op. cit.,
193–196. Metaphor and imagery in Pindar is an established topic of research, yet it was never
central to Pindaric interpretation: O. Goram. “Pindari translationes et imagines” Philologus 14
(1859) 241–280; F. Dornseiff, Pindars Stil (Berlin, 1921) 54–75; C. M. Bowra, op. cit., 239–277;
D. Steiner, The Crown of Song: Metaphor in Pindar (London, 1986). My approach, which
emphasizes conceptual and ideological utility of Pindaric metaphor, is close to the one put forward by Leslie Kurke in The Traffic in Praise: Pindar and the Poetics of Social Economy (Ithaca,
1991): rather than viewing imagery as a way to “enhance the emotional charge of the poem,”
Kurke assumes that “the poet incorporated various cultural symbols and thereby transmitted a
coherent message to his audience through his imagery” (11). Kurke’s Coins, Bodies, Games, and
Gold (Princeton 1999) extends this method of reading imagery to all of Archaic Greek culture.
4
The canonical formulation of this doctrine is that of Wilhelm Nestle, Vom Mythos zum
Logos: Die Selbstentfaltung des griechischen Denkens von Homer bis auf die Sophistik und Sokrates
(Stuttgart, 1940). Nestle’s perspective is that of a historian of philosophy. Continued pertinence
of this narrative, especially in discussions of the rise of Greek philosophy, is evident from the
collections: La naissance de la raison en Grèce, ed. J.-F. Mattéi (Paris, 1990) and From Myth to
Reason? Studies in the development of Greek thought, ed. R. Buxton (Oxford, 1999). In the words
of Claude Calame, “it is a persistent paradigm, at its foundation difficult to disprove” (Myth and
History in Ancient Greece: The Symbolic Creation of a Colony [Princeton, 2003] 6). It has been
pointed out that the actual Greek usage of the words mythos and logos goes ill with Nestle’s
teleological account (Calame, Myth and History, 12–27; B. Lincoln, “Gendered Discourses: The
Early Greek History of Mythos and Logos,” History of Religions 36.1 (1996) 1–12); although
intrinsically interesting, these observations are only laterally relevant, inasmuch Nestle’s narrative in fact operates with “emic” categories of myth and logic. In a recent contribution to an
analogous debate in art history, Barbara Borg, building on the opposition between the mythical
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I believe that what is sometimes referred to as the Fränkel-Snell school approach
to Greek literature is in many respects deficient.5 In particular, I offer an account
of the development of mechanisms of concept formation that emphasize a common underlying principle, that of genealogical metaphor, behind Hesiodic,
Pindaric and the philosophical-allegorical usage. On the other hand, it appears
that discussion of paradigm-shifts in the history of Archaic-to-Classical Greek
culture is unavoidable. Comparative evidence from traditional cultures furnishes ample parallels to Greek myths, oral epic, and ritually embedded verbal
genres, but starts failing us as we approach phenomena such as analytic historiography, post-Socratic philosophy, or Attic drama. A priori, so many original developments in various domains of cultural production would imply
large-scale changes in how the Greeks made sense of the world, what kinds or
modes of explanation they privileged, and which tools they constructed or
reused to arrive at explanations that appeared viable to them.
For an inquiry into these changes, Pindaric corpus, inasmuch as it straddles
the border between the Archaic and the Classical period, has unique significance. Both scholars who espoused a biographical approach and modern “ritualists” prefer to see in Pindar a representative of the culture of the
past—whether that past is identified with the aristocratic elites wary of the rise
of the demos, or with traditional cult practices. This view is to a large degree
correct, but it should not make us overlook the ways in which Pindar’s texts
betoken a parting with the archaic past. Most pertinently, Pindaric epinician
odes attest to a destabilization of the traditional structure of the image, which
anticipates future (more abstract or “logical”) uses of images qua concepts.
This transitional moment was also ripe with a unique poetic potential that
Pindar—as well as European poets who made use of Pindaric license in the
later tradition—capitalized on.
(symbolic) and rational (allegorical), seeks to inquire into “visual representations with regard to
their semantic structure in the context of ancient modes of thought and expression” (B. Borg,
Der Logos des Mythos: Allegorien und Personifikationen in der frühen griechischen Kunst [Munich,
2002] 34).
5
For a rare example of explicit polemical engagement with this school, see R. L. Fowler, The
Nature of Early Greek Lyric: Three Preliminary Studies (Toronto, 1987) 3–13. See also C. Calame,
“The Rhetoric of Mythos and Logos: Forms of Figurative Discourse” in From Myth to Reason?,
119–143, a study which points to one fruitful way of revising the “Fränkel-Snell” approach to
Greek literary history. Much more usual is a tacit assumption that grand narratives of literary
history that are grounded in idealist philosophy are outdated (or out of fashion), combined with
a preference for the methodological paradigms of positivism or historical contextualism. As a
corrective to what may appear as the final triumph of the British (vs. Germanic) model for doing
classical philology, one may point out that some of the aspects of the widely respected work of
Marcel Detienne and Jean-Pierre Vernant, which hearken back to the work of Émile Durkheim
in particular, can be seen as a continuation of the German idealist tradition, cloaked in the garb
of French structuralism.
B. Maslov / Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 12 (2012) 49–77
53
I approach Pindar’s corpus from the position of historical poetics—an
approach associated with the Russian critical tradition and scholars such as
Alexander Veselovsky, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Olga Freidenberg. In other
words, I view the history of poetic style not as a series of accomplishments of
particular authors, but as a phenomenon that is correlated with, and in part
expressive of, cultural and social history. To use a familiar Saussurean opposition, historically constituted style is a “grammar” (langue) in which an individual poetic utterance (parole) becomes possible. According to this view, the
achievement of great poets—such as Pindar—consists not in manifesting
poetry’s unchanging nature as a trans-historical mode of engaging with the
world, but in the forcefulness and inventiveness with which they conveyed the
significance and the potentiality of their own historical moment.6
1. Genealogy and Concept Formation: Hesiod, Pindar, Plato
My focus is on a particular trope, which I refer to as genealogical metaphor, and
which I illustrate in this section with three examples that are not only distinct
in their genre attribution, but also suggestive of a certain historical pattern.
The first two—from Hesiod’s Theogony and Plato’s Symposium—are much
more familiar than the third one, which comes from Pindar’s Olympian 13
and at least chronologically provides a bridge between them. It is Pindar’s
distinctive use of genealogical metaphor that I would like to highlight, by putting it against the background of and in relation to the Hesiodic (theogonic)
and the Platonic (philosophical) use.
Hesiod, Theogony, lines 211–2257
Νὺξ δ’ ἔτεκε στυγερόν τε Μόρον καὶ Κῆρα μέλαιναν
καὶ Θάνατον, τέκε δ’ Ὕπνον, ἔτικτε δὲ φῦλον Ὀνείρων.
δεύτερον αὖ Μῶμον καὶ Ὀιζὺν ἀλγινόεσσαν
οὔ τινι κοιμηθεῖσα θεῶν τέκε Νὺξ ἐρεβεννή,
Ἑσπερίδας θ’, αἷς μῆλα πέρην κλυτοῦ Ὡκεανοῖο
χρύσεα καλὰ μέλουσι φέροντά τε δένδρεα καρπόν·
6
Cf. the words Alexander Veselovsky used in 1870, formulating a recent paradigm-shift in
the discipline of history which he proposed to extend to literary history: “Great personalities
now appeared to be reflections of one or another movement generated by the masses, reflections
which are more or less brilliant depending on the degree of consciousness with which these men
related themselves to the movement, or the degree of energy with which they helped the movement to express itself” (“On the Methods and Aims of Literary History as a Science” Yearbook of
Comparative and General Literature 16 (1967) 33–42; translation by Harry Weber; quotation on
p. 35).
7
Text follows Hesiod, Theogony, ed. M. L. West (Oxford, 1966), but I omit brackets around
lines 218–9.
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B. Maslov / Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 12 (2012) 49–77
καὶ Μοίρας καὶ Κῆρας ἐγείνατο νηλεοποίνους,
Κλωθώ τε Λάχεσίν τε καὶ Ἄτροπον, αἵ τε βροτοῖσι
γεινομένοισι διδοῦσιν ἔχειν ἀγαθόν τε κακόν τε,
αἵ τ’ ἀνδρῶν τε θεῶν τε παραιβασίας ἐφέπουσιν,
οὐδέ ποτε λήγουσι θεαὶ δεινοῖο χόλοιο,
πρίν γ’ ἀπὸ τῷ δώωσι κακὴν ὄπιν, ὅστις ἁμάρτῃ.
τίκτε δὲ καὶ Νέμεσιν, πῆμα θνητοῖσι βροτοῖσι
Νὺξ ὀλοή· μετὰ τὴν δ’ Ἀπάτην τέκε καὶ Φιλότητα
Γῆράς τ’ οὐλόμενον, καὶ Ἔριν τέκε καρτερόθυμον.
Night gave birth to the hateful Doom and black Fate and Death, she also bore Sleep
and she bore the race of Dreams. Then again, not having lain with anyone, murky
Night, a goddess, bore Reproach and painful Distress, and [she bore] the Hesperidai
who guard the golden beautiful apples and fruit-bearing trees beyond glorious Ocean.
And [she bore] the Fates and ruthlessly punishing Destinies: Clôthô, Lachesis and
Atropos, who give mortals when they are born both good and bad, and who attend to
transgressions of both men and gods. Nor do the goddesses ever cease from terrible
anger, until they give an evil vengeance to whoever commits a sin. And deadly Night
also bore Nemesis, a sorrow to the mortals, and after that, Deceit and Friendship, and
baneful Old Age, and strongly-minded Strife.
In the catalog of Night’s progeny, occupying 14 lines in the Theogony, alongside characters who are familiar as divinities, such as the Moirai “Fates” or
Nemesis “Divine Wrath”, we encounter abstract nouns of whose cult or
mythic correlates we are ignorant, such as Philotês “Friendship” and Gêras
“Old Age”. Moreover, the order in which Night’s children are listed is more
enigmatic than usual in Hesiod. Nor is it immediately obvious why Philotês
or the Hesperidae receive this particular genealogical treatment.
Clearly, genealogy here is used as a conceptual tool: the relationship of
parentage is meant to signal an association between concepts or ideas; the
relevance of these ideas to religious practice is a secondary issue. Indeed, in
some cases, the very personification of a concept appears to be contingent on
the image of natural birth projected by the metaphor of parenthood. Without
implying a clear divide between religious belief and a worldview resting on
concepts—a divide which would arguably be anachronistic in Hesiod’s case—
one may nevertheless note that, in this case, the theogonic catalog of Night’s
progeny puts forward not a systematic doctrine, but a mishmash of concepts
interlinked by genealogical metaphors.
I define genealogical metaphor as the use of an image of lineage or kinship
to represent a different kind of relation—one that today we would describe in
terms of association, conjunction, production, or causality.8 Crucially, I do
8
Cf. Bowra’s discussion of personification (hypostatization) in Pindar: “Abstract notions are
treated as if they are persons, especially in the special form by which one thing is said to be the
B. Maslov / Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 12 (2012) 49–77
55
not mean to imply that these specific abstract operations were expressed by
metaphorical means; it appears, on the contrary, that the image of kinship
contains the associative and would-be logical relations within it. For the rhapsodes performing Hesiod and very likely for many other speakers of Greek in
the Archaic period, this image was a common way of signaling ties between
abstract concepts.9
We may point to several aspects in which Hesiod modifies the basic structure of the genealogical metaphor in order that it may most effectively convey
the kind of conceptual link intended. For example, the vehicle of the metaphor is at once asserted and called into question when Night is said to be a
single parent; this suggests flexibility in the construction of metaphor that
allows the poet to stress Night’s primordial nature.10 Furthermore, the “siblings” who appear within one segment of discourse are clearly meant to belong
together. Whereas in other contexts, these conceptual groupings are separated
by a change of a spouse, in the case of Night, who is a sole parent, these divisions depend exclusively on syntactic arrangement.
In other words, proximate (“sibling”) concepts are associated not just with
their “parent”, but also with each other. No such association, it appears, is to
be posited for siblings who come from different segments of the genealogy.
For example, in the catalog of the progeny of the Night, Philotês “Friendship”
goes closely with Apatê “Deceit”, but is apparently not linked to the Moirai
“Fates”, who are listed several lines above. The nature of this inter-sibling
association also varies: Thanatos “Death” is linked to Hypnos “Sleep” apparently due to the similarity of their outward effects (this particular genealogical
metaphor—Death and Sleep as brothers—will have a long history in the
Western world). Quite differently, the relationship between Apatê “Deceit”
and Philotês “Friendship”, which are listed in the immediate proximity to
Gêras “Old Age” and Eris “Strife”, suggests a distinctly Hesiodic account of
child of another. This is a very ancient instrument of thought, used in pre-scientific times to
convey through an easily understandable means intimate relations between one thing and
another” (op. cit., 198). Pindar’s special fondness for “family figures” is noted by Basil Gildersleeve in Pindar. The Olympian and Pythian Odes (New York, 1885) 193, ad O. 8.1.
9
An instance of genealogical metaphor in early Greek philosophy is Heraclitus, fr. 53 Diels:
Πόλεμος πάντων μὲν πατήρ ἐστι “War is the father of all” (to which Dornseiff [op. cit., 52]
compares Pindar’s fr. 169). Cf. the same figure in Greek proverbs and quasi-proverbial wisdom:
Γαστὴρ παχεῖα λεπτὸν οὐ τίκτει νόον “A fat belly does not engender a slender mind” (Arsenius,
Apophthegmata 5.22a), Ὕβριν τε τίκτει πλοῦτος, οὐ φειδὼ βίου “It is wealth that engenders
violence, not sparing way of life” (Stob. 4.31c.55; cf. Eur. fr. 438 Nauck = Arsenius, Apophthegmata 17.47a); Βραχεῖα τέρψις ἡδονῆς τίκτει λύπην “A short enjoyment of pleasure engenders
pain” (Mantissa proverbiorum 1.38).
10
In a different context, Night bears Aithêr and Day from a union with Erebus (Theog.
123–5).
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B. Maslov / Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 12 (2012) 49–77
the human condition. In this case, the poet is able to employ a genealogical
metaphor to indicate a specific thematic nexus.11
After this cursory reading of an illustrative passage from Hesiod’s Theogony,
let us turn to a similarly non-exhaustive analysis of a familiar Platonic locus.
Plato, Symposium, 203b–c
ἡ οὖν Πενία ἐπιβουλεύουσα διὰ τὴν αὑτῆς ἀπορίαν παιδίον ποιήσασθαι ἐκ τοῦ
Πόρου, κατακλίνεταί τε παρ’ αὐτῷ καὶ ἐκύησε τὸν Ἔρωτα. διὸ δὴ καὶ τῆς Ἀφροδίτης
ἀκόλουθος καὶ θεράπων γέγονεν ὁ Ἔρως, γεννηθεὶς ἐν τοῖς ἐκείνης γενεθλίοις, καὶ
ἅμα φύσει ἐραστὴς ὢν περὶ τὸ καλὸν καὶ τῆς Ἀφροδίτης καλῆς οὔσης. ἅτε οὖν
Πόρου καὶ Πενίας ὑὸς ὢν ὁ Ἔρως ἐν τοιαύτῃ τύχῃ καθέστηκεν.
Penia/Poverty, scheming to make a child for herself from Poros/Resource due to her
own resourcelessness, lies down next to him and she begot Eros/Love. On account of
this Eros was born as a follower and servant of Aphrodite, having been conceived during the celebration of her birth, and in his nature he is a lover of the beautiful (since
Aphrodite is also beautiful). So, being a son of Poros and Penia, Eros was established
in such a fortune.
The story of the birth of Eros in Plato’s Symposium is doubly framed as Diotima’s discourse recounted by Socrates to the symposiasts (leaving aside the
multiple narrative framings of the story of the symposium itself). The use of
Eros’s genealogy as a conceptual instrument is quite overt; indeed, it borders
on allegory, which—as we will see in Section 2—presupposes analytic thought.
Plato is interested not merely in a diffuse, “metonymic” linkage, but in a wellarticulated combination of attributes and abstract notions: Aphrodite’s attribute (beauty) is abstracted into an object pursued by her son (a link that could
be left implicit in a poetic theogony, but is foregrounded in a philosophical
exposition); poverty as an attribute of the hungry Penia is hypostasized to
“resourcelessness” as a more general, abstract notion; etc.
The passage is also interesting in that it illustrates the process whereby a
genealogical metaphor is converted into a theogonic myth, a fictitious narrative whose purpose is, in this case, not cosmological or aitiological—it does
11
M. L. West disregards this syntagmatic mechanism in his list of “the different kinds of
logic” present in the account of Night’s progeny: “Day follows Night, comes out from her”;
Death and Night “are of like nature”; “Sleep is the brother of Death . . . and is practised at night”;
Dreams “come at night”; “Cavil, Pain, Nemesis, Age, Strife . . . are dark and dreadful”; “the Hesperides live in the far west” where Night lives; Moirai and Keres have an “affinity with Death”;
“Deceit and Sex are practised at night” (Hesiod. Theogony, ed. M. L. West [Oxford, 1966]
35–6). I am inclined to take Philotês to refer to “Friendship”, both in light of the thematic nexus
of which it is part, and because otherwise Philotês would duplicate Eros (note that philia “friendship” is a late word, which does not occur in Homer, Hesiod or Pindar). Accordingly, I would
resist restricting the meaning of Apatê as West does in his commentary on line 224.
B. Maslov / Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 12 (2012) 49–77
57
not seek to explain the origin of things—but instead, one might say, simply
logical; it seeks to place a concept in relation to other concepts, define it, by
substituting images for logical operators. In the case of the myth of the birth
of Eros, the task of conceptualization involves not only the question of who
the parents of Eros are, but also the time and place, and other circumstances
of his conception: for example, it took place at the celebration of the birth of
Aphrodite, without consent of one of the parents, as a result of crafting, etc.
All these details are intended to contribute to the definition of the concept
being “born” in and through the myth. Whereas the construction of a myth
based on genealogical metaphor is a self-conscious intellectual exercise in
Plato, a similar mechanism may be posited for the spontaneous (but more
occluded) process of generation of cosmogonic/theogonic myths.
As it is being acknowledged with increasing readiness in recent scholarship,
myths form an irreducible part of the exposition of Plato’s philosophy.12 Plato’s use of myths is a clear token of the philosophy’s origins in more primitive
(i.e. more anthropologically widespread) epistemic mechanisms.13 Compared
to other Platonic myths, which trade in the esoteric, Diotima’s genealogy of
Eros is in fact unusual in how easily myth translates into concept. This easy
transfer of a philosophical idea into a narrative appears to be due to the prominence of the underlying genealogical metaphor. In light of the foregoing
analysis of Hesiod, we may conclude that genealogical metaphor, in Ancient
Greece, was a tool well adapted for concept formation.
In contrast to both Hesiod and Plato (in the myth of the birth of Eros),
Pindar displays no interest in narrative expansion of genealogical metaphors;
31 instances of this trope occur in Pindar’s corpus, and none of them is integral to the myths Pindar includes in his texts (see Table 1). In this respect,
Pindar’s corpus demands that we examine genealogical metaphor independently of mythic narrative, the form theogonies usually assume. Indeed, Pindar’s usage demonstrates how genealogical metaphor, employed in a
self-conscious fashion, can become a means of sense-making (semeiosis) that
does not partake of narration. It points forward to bare conceptuality. In this
12
See, e.g., K. Morgan, Myth and Philosophy from the pre-Socratics to Plato (Cambridge,
2000), R. G. Edmonds, Myths of the underworld journey: Plato, Aristophanes, and the “Orphic”
gold tablets (Cambridge, 2004), esp. 161–170; and the relevant contributions in Plato and Hesiod
(Oxford, 2010), eds. G. R. Boys-Stones and J. H. Haubold. Plato’s use of genealogy for concept
formation is discussed by Lambros Couloubaritsis in “De la généalogie a la genèséologie” in La
naissance, ed. J.-F. Mattéi, 83–96 and “Transfigurations du paradigme de la parenté” in Le
Paradigme de la Filiation (Paris, 1995) 169–186.
13
Cf. Leslie Kurke’s recent paraphrase of Wordsworth, “philosophy is born trailing clouds of
glory from the uncanny or otherworldly realm of prephilosophical sophia.” (“Plato, Aesop, and
the Beginnings of Mimetic Prose,” Representations 94 [2006] 6–52; quote on p. 22.)
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sense, Pindar outstrips pre-Socratic and some strands of post-Socratic philosophy, with their preference for cosmogonic narratives.
In other respects, Pindar’s usage is analogous to Hesiod’s and Plato’s. First,
like Plato, Pindar is not constructing a coherent theogonic system. When it is
possible to speak of such a system being operative in Pindar, it is the one
familiar from Hesiod. This can be observed in the following passage:
Pindar, Olympian 13.6–10
τὰν ὀλβίαν Κόρινθον . . . ἐν τᾷ γὰρ Εὐνομία ναίει κασιγνήτα τε, βάθρον πολίων ἀσφαλές,
Δίκα καὶ ὁμότροφος Εἰρήνα, τάμι’ ἀνδράσι πλούτου,
χρύσεαι παῖδες εὐβούλου Θέμιτος·
ἐθέλοντι δ’ ἀλέξειν
Ὕβριν, Κόρου ματέρα θρασύμυθον
[I will give recognition] to rich Corinth . . . in which Eunomia resides and her sister
Dika, the steadfast foundation of cities, and Eirêna, reared alongside with them, the
stewardess of wealth for men—the golden children of well-counseling Themis. They
are willing to ward off Hybris, the daringly-speaking mother of Koros.
In this passage, which I consider in more detail in Section 3.1, the three
daughters of Themis “Divine Right” that are said to reside in Korinth—
Eunomia “Good Order”, Dika “Justice”, and Eirêna “Peace”—are the three
Horai “Seasons”, who are listed in the same order as children of Themis in
Hesiod’s Theogony 901–2.
While freely drawing on the Hesiodic system, Pindar uses genealogical
metaphors to convey the intended meaning locally, within a particular context, and this meaning is not extendable to other contexts. For example,
Hamêra “Day” is described as “Sun’s child” in Olympian 2.32 (ἡσύχιμον
ἁμέραν . . . παῖδ’ ἀελίου), but this genealogy is not meant to inform the other
passage in this poem where Day and Sun are mentioned (line 62), not to speak
of their mentions in other epinician odes. Furthermore, in partial contrast to
Hesiod’s yet similarly to Plato’s usage, genealogical metaphors in Pindar, especially those that are his original creations, do not presuppose any religious
practice. This quality suggests that we need to seek for a motivation behind
Pindar’s penchant for this trope within his own poetics. Indeed, Pindar uses
genealogical metaphors for a set of well-defined tasks that reveal deep-seated
elements in the ideology of the victory ode—the genre that is best represented
in Pindar’s surviving corpus.
Too little survives of earlier Archaic lyric to permit a comparative assessment, but it is important to note that genealogical metaphors occur in the
extant fragments of Alcman (7th c. BCE), suggesting that Pindar inherited a
B. Maslov / Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 12 (2012) 49–77
59
device well-established in choral lyric.14 In what follows I will focus on the
self-conscious and often covertly ideological uses to which this device is put in
Pindar’s poetry, which privilege conceptual (re)definition and foregrounding,
rather than ad-hoc imagistic description.15
Yet, before taking a closer look at the Pindaric evidence, I would like to
consider the methodological underpinnings and cultural-historical relevance
that this inquiry into the intricacies of literary form could have.
2. Herder, Cassirer, and Freidenberg on Myth and Metaphor
As I indicated in the preceding section, while genealogical metaphor is an
important generative mechanism of (particularly theogonic and cosmogonic)
myth, in Pindar it is disjoined from myth, and put to service of the formation of
abstract concepts. How do we conceive of myth and metaphor as historically
14
Fr. 57: Dew as the daughter of Zeus and Moon; fr. 64: Tykha as “the sister of Good Order
and Persuasion and the daughter of Forethought.” Note also a genealogical metaphor of Litai
“Supplications” as children of Zeus in Hom. Il. 9.502.
15
Franz Dornseiff (op. cit., 50–54) provides the best discussion of the transitional quality of
Pindar’s genealogical image, which “often already fades toward allegory. It is this shimmering
quality that makes for the charm of much Greek poetry” (“manchmal ist . . . auch bereits nach
der Allegorie hin verblaßt. Eben dieses Schillernde macht einen Reiz vieler griechischer Dichtungen aus” [51]). Pindar’s post-archaic placement is emphasized by a dismissive—and certainly
exaggerated—take on the opening of O. 13 as “almost heraldry and emblem-composition of the
17th c.” (“fast Heraldik und Emblematik des 17. Jahrhunderts” [ibid]). Dornseiff ’s discussion
of Pindar’s “shimmering” usage, which does not permit of a differentiation between a thing and
a god, is firmly within the Herder-Cassirer tradition discussed in Section 2. Along the same lines,
Wilhelm Nestle (op. cit., 163–5) points out that some of Pindar’s hypostasized concepts (Khronos, Nomos, Theia) are paralleled in the Orphic cosmology, but not in Hesiod. These and other
parallels with early Greek philosophy suggest that Pindar stands “auf der Grenze zweier Zeiten”
(165; see also n. 55). Wilamowitz acknowledges that Pindar’s genealogical images only imply
“Zusammengehorigkeit” (and not “mythische Zeugung”) and points to later parallels, but
regards them as tokens of a distinctively Greek view of divinity; in Pindar, it is “keine poetische
Figur” (Der Glaube der Hellenen, vol. 2 [Berlin 1932] 131; see also his “Pindars siebentes nemeisches Gedicht,” SB Berlin 1908, 328–52, esp. 329–332). Hans Strohm (Tyche [Stuttgart,
1944], 40–45) points to the artistic advantages of Pindar’s “plastic” concepts. Following Hermann Fränkel (op. cit. 59–63), Charles Segal puts an emphasis on the concrete, non-conceptual
nature of Pindar’s poetry, in which abstract nouns “verge toward, though not quite reach” personification; cf.: “In Pindar’s mythopoeic mind, almost nothing is entirely abstract. The boundaries between the personal and the non-personal are extremely fluid” (Segal 1967.438). Thomas
Hubbard’s study The Pindaric Mind: A Study of Logical Structure in Early Greek Poetry (Leiden,
1985) sets out to explore, with reference to Pindar, “the significance of polarity and analogy for
archaic Greek thought” (“as opposed to the syllogistic structures and subordination of Aristotelian and post-Aristotelian logic” [5]), but largely jettisons historical and poetic categories in favor
of structural analysis in terms of basic binary oppositions.
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interrelated phenomena, and what kind of formal evolution may legitimately
be regarded as a link between them?
Myth and metaphor are notions that are as a rule kept apart in scholarship
on classical literatures. Myth belongs, first and foremost, to the study of
ancient religions; joined in an uneasy union with cult, myth is believed to supply the foundation, the ideological backbone, of traditional society. Admittedly, myths may be creatively reworked by poets, but their very ubiquity in
poetic texts is seen as a token of the myths’ overall cultural significance. Metaphor, on the other hand, belongs to the province of literary scholars; it is an
affectation, as well as (it would appear) a universal property, of poetic language; as such it has little, if anything, to tell us about the history of culture.
These formulations may come across as crude simplifications, but I believe
that they reflect a real intellectual rift between two sub-fields within Classics—
the study of religion and literary criticism.
Several important 20th c. theoretical and intellectual developments have
contributed to this rift. For example, the differentiation between the syntagmatic and the paradigmatic, propagated in literary theory by Roman Jakobson, supports a view of myth and metaphor as fundamentally different
phenomena: whereas myth, in accord with its etymology, is regarded as a
quintessentially narrative form, metaphor, whose effect is that of a vivid,
momentary conceptual leap, becomes the prerogative of non-narrative genres,
such as lyric. More generally, the autonomy that literary studies have achieved
in the 20th century led to a break with the study of religion and mythology,
previously linked to poetry as kindred phenomena of the human Geist. Furthermore, the current prevalent position, deriving from Malinowskian functionalism, regards myths not as cognitive mechanisms, results of (mytho)
poetic activity, or components of a religious system, but as serviceable stories,
subject to variation and ideological contestation. Finally, although the emphasis on metaphor as the crucial element of language and cognition has brought
about some broadly-minded theoretical approaches, these rarely succeed in
effecting a non-trivial link to society or history.16 As a result, the boundaries
separating the study of cognition, literature, and society today are drawn
16
Best-known approach to metaphor and cognition is that of George Lakoff (beginning with
Women, Fire, and dangerous things: what categories reveal about the mind [Chicago, 1987]). The
resurrection of rhetorical analysis of tropes within certain kinds of deconstructionism has made
it legitimate to speak of metaphors in relation to non-artistic texts; in particular, Hayden White’s
work has emphasized the prevalence of literary structures in historiography. Perhaps most productively, Hans Blumenberg has pointed to the persistence of metaphors in the history of ideas
(for a recent fruitful application of Blumenberg’s paradigm, see P. Hadot, The Veil of Isis: An
Essay on the History of the Idea of Nature [Cambridge, Mass., 2006]).
B. Maslov / Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 12 (2012) 49–77
61
sharper than ever before, segregating myth and metaphor into different fields
of knowledge.
Casting a retrospective glance at classical philology of the 19th and early 20th
c., one obtains a very different perspective on this nexus of problems. Indeed, we
find myth and metaphor closely intertwined within a variety of approaches,
which assumed a unity of what was called pre-conceptual thought.
The most influential formulation of an opposition between “mythos” and
“logos”, which pits imagination, storytelling, poetry, and religion against reason, use of abstract ideas, prose, and science, belongs to the German intellectual tradition.17 And it is primarily as a result of the (pre-)Romantic response
to Enlightenment that the “mythical” came to fascinate Germany’s best
minds. Herder wrote that mythology has a lot to teach us about the “clever
and lazy way of substituting images for those things it does not want to capture or hold on to as ideas.”18 Once the transition from image to idea is
accepted as a fact of human history, the question arises: how did it happen? In
his Treatise on the Origin of Language (1772), Herder posited personification
as the mechanism behind the rise of religious ideas and the emergence of
nouns in language, effectively identifying these two processes. Humanity at
first had at its disposal only verbs/predicates, which arose as imitations of
natural sounds; the noun was invented as a name for the supernatural:
Since the whole of nature resounds, there is nothing more natural for a sensuous
human being than that it lives, it speaks, it acts. That savage saw the high tree with its
splendid crown and admired. The crown rustled! That is the work of divinity! The
savage falls down and prays to it! Behold there the history of the sensuous human
being, the obscure link, how nouns arise from the verbs—and the easiest step to abstraction! [italics in the original]19
In particular, it is the grammatical category of gender that, for Herder, attests
to a primitive stage of language when “everything became human, personified
17
What follows is necessarily a very selective and fragmentary account. I am only interested
in one particular intellectual strand, one of those that lead to Olga Fredeinberg’s ideas. Other
figures who made important contributions to theorization of myth as a distinct mode of thought
are Giambattista Vico, Christian Heyne, Lucien Lévy-Bruhl and Claude Lévi-Strauss. For other
accounts of the development of a notion of myth in the 19th and early 20th c., see M. Detienne,
L’invention de la mythologie (Paris 1981) and G. W. Most, “From Logos to Mythos”, in From
Myth to Reason?, 25–50.
18
“Fragment of an Essay on Mythology”; quotation from J. G. von Herder, Against Pure
Reason: Writings on Religion, Language, and History, trans. and ed. by Marcia Bunge [Minneapolis, 1993], 80.
19
“Treatise on the Origin of Language”, section 3; quotation from J. G. von Herder, Philosophical Writings, trans. and ed. by M. N. Forster (Cambridge UP 2002) 101.
62
B. Maslov / Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 12 (2012) 49–77
into woman or man—everywhere gods.”20 At that time, language and mythology
were one: “a resounding pantheon, a meeting hall of both genders” (101).
Poetry was thus the midwife of language. In Herder’s striking formulation,
“the poetry and the gender-creation of language are hence humanity’s interest,
and the genitals of speech, so to speak, the means of its reproduction” (102).
The priority of verbs over nouns, inasmuch as it indicated a sensuous rather
than a rational agent, was meant to buttress Herder’s main polemical point on
the human, rather than divine origin of language. This thesis finds further
confirmation in Herder’s observation that abstract notions—which should
have been basic to language, had God been its author—evolve through metaphorical transposition (118–121).21 As the prevalence of metaphors in the
lexicon of more “ancient”, “Oriental” languages indicates, it is through
improper, transposed nomination that abstract concepts arise: assuming that
the primitive humans only had referential nouns at their disposal, a nonreferential object could only be denoted through extended, expressive usage.
Metaphor is revealed as a crucial stepping-stone to concept.
Continuing Herder’s line of thought, Max Müller sought for the origins of
myth. He asserted that mythological notions arise from misused metaphors,
which were much more common at the earliest stage in the development of
human language: words were in deficit, so the same referential nouns were
used in more than one meaning (Müller’s Paradebeispiel is the Greek word
daphnê). It is the search for a semantic motivation behind homonyms that
elicited aitiological myths. Müller’s theory has long been an object of ridicule,
yet the view of metaphor as a kind of productive confusion in language has a
lot to recommend it. In this context, we may recall a passing remark made by
the distinguished Indo-Europeanist Manu Leumann, suggesting that, counterintuitively, poetic metaphor originates in the observation of how everyday
language changes: coexistence of different meanings of one word (diachronically emergent polysemy) becomes a model for self-willed semantic transfer
(poetic metaphor).22
A figure central to the formulation of a more positive and productive view
of mythical thought was Ernst Cassirer. Regarding mythic thinking as a form
of ideation distinct from logical thought, Cassirer proposed a view on the
20
As a token of the far-reaching impact of the idealist tradition on German scholarship, it
may be interesting to note that this argument implicitly underlies Wilamowitz’s linkage of
grammatical gender and poetic personification (“Pindars siebentes nemeisches Gedicht”, 332).
21
Cf. “Was God so poor in ideas and words that he had to resort to such confusing word
usage? Or was he such a lover of hyperboles, of outlandish metaphors, that he imprinted this
spirit into the very basic-roots of his language?” (114).
22
“Zum Mechanismus des Bedeutungswandels” (1927) in Kleine Schriften (Zurich, 1959),
286–296, esp. 294.
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63
relation of naming and myth which in some ways hearkens back to Herder in
its evocation of the time before the divide between expression and denotation.
Building more directly on Usener, Cassirer argued that nomination and myth
both derive from “intensive compression”, whereby the thought “is captivated
and enthralled by the intuition which suddenly confronts it”; this “focusing of
all forces on a single point is the prerequisite of all mythical thinking and
mythical formulation.”23
In contrast to the Malinowskian view of myth as an ad hoc story created “to
fulfill a certain sociological function”,24 Usener and Cassirer regarded myth,
generated from an imagistic core, as the principal means of making sense of
the world available to the “primitive mind.” True to the German idealist tradition, which preferred to relate religion to individual consciousness rather
than to social utility, Usener believed that the basic form of religious concept
is that of a “momentary god” that is prompted by an impression, which is also
an intimation of a different, non-everyday realm. In this sense, Cassirer places
metaphor at the origin of “the simplest mythical form,” which “can arise only
by virtue of a transformation which removes a certain impression from the
realm of the ordinary, the everyday and profane, and lifts it to the level of the
‘holy,’ the sphere of mythico-religious ‘significance’.”25
I would stress that we do not need to delve into the murky land of the Ur
and commit ourselves to any conclusions on the origins of language or religion, to appreciate the link between the naming and definition of religious
entities, and thus the formation of elementary myths, and the role that metaphor plays as a cognitive—pre- or perhaps proto-conceptual—device.
The significance of Cassirer’s ideas for the study of Archaic and Classical
Greece, which has long been regarded in the German tradition as the paradigmatic case for the shift from mythos to logos, was most productively pursued
by Olga Freidenberg. Her opus magnum Image and Concept uses Cassirer’s
insights to investigate the history of Greek literature and philosophy.26 In
23
E. Cassirer, Language and Myth (New York, 1953 [1925]) 33.
B. Malinowski, “Myth in Primitive Psychology” (1948) in Magic, Science, and Religion,
and other Essays (Long Grove, Illinois, 1992) 93–148; quotation on p. 125. Note the way in
which the Enlightenment rhetoric that opposed religious fancy on the ground of rationality,
reversed by the Romantics and the ensuing German intellectual tradition, returns, in functionalism, to claim that religious fancy itself is but a disguise for a form of rationality.
25
E. Cassirer, op. cit., 87–88.
26
See Olga Freidenberg, Image and Concept: Mythopoetic Roots of Literature, ed. N. Braginskaya, trans. K. Moss (Amsterdam, 1997); a corrected translation of the chapter on “Metaphor”
can be accessed online at http://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/historicalpoetics/files/2010/09/
Freidenberg_Metafora_Eng.pdf. The original work was completed in 1954, and published posthumously in 1978. An excellent introduction to Freidenberg’s intellectual background (including Cassirer’s influence) can be found in Nina Perlina, Ol’ga Freidenberg’s Works and Days
24
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particular, Freidenberg drew attention to several aspects of Greek literature
that make it typologically unique. First, it is the inordinate significance of
mythical—that is, folklore-based—material in texts that have very little to do
with folklore as it is usually understood; this, Freidenberg argues, suggests that
types of linguistic usage which we call literary, uniquely in Ancient Greece,
evolve spontaneously out of mythical and pre-literary structures. Second, Freidenberg regarded literature as a midwife of “philosophy,” in that forms of
ideation proper to literature—such as metaphor—prepared the way for the
logical, concept-oriented system that would emerge as the paragon of rationality. Thus, the journey still takes us from mythos to logos, yet it does so via
poetic metaphor, that is via artistically licensed forms of figuration.
More directly pertinent to the discussion of genealogical metaphor are Freidenberg’s Lectures on the Introduction to a Theory of Ancient Folklore (1939–
1943), in which she formulated a proto-structuralist approach, which she
termed semantics or semantic paleontology, to penetrate the mythopoeic foundations of Greek culture. Much in this book is outdated, almost everything is
disputable, yet many of the insights that it contains have retained their freshness and vigor. Since this work has not been translated into any major European language, in what follows I provide a detailed exposition of those aspects
of Freidenberg’s theory that are most relevant to this study.27
Taking her cue from Cassirer, Freidenberg believed that the mythopoeic
stage is marked by an inability to differentiate between subject and object and
by an absolute lack of conceptual operations. This radical presumption entails
a fundamental uncertainty: how to conceive of the task of scholarship, inasmuch as it is of necessity reliant on a conceptual apparatus?
Mythological images are the form in which the surrounding world is perceived, a form
that historically antecedes conceptual consciousness. Then and now, we find two different planes of perceiving the world. We are not looking for allegories in that [mythological] plane. We only translate the language of mythological images into our
(Bloomington 2002). Richard Martin, in a forthcoming article, employs the insights of Olga
Freidenberg to argue, with particular reference to Pindar, against a rhetoric-inflected notion of
imagery: “Against Ornament: O. M. Freidenberg’s Concept of Metaphor in Ancient and Modern Contexts” in Persistent Forms: Explorations in Historical Poetics, eds. I. Kliger and B. Maslov.
The synchrony of Martin’s and my work on Pindar and Freidenberg’s theory of metaphor is
both incidental and suggestive of the relevance of Freidenberg’s ideas, up to now almost entirely
neglected in the Western academy, to the historically informed study of poetic form in Ancient
Greece.
27
The following translations are my own. The page numbers refer to the most recent Russian
edition of this work: Ol’ga Freidenberg, Mif i literatura drevnosti, 3rd ed. (Ekaterinburg, 2008).
There exists a Serbian translation of the entire Lectures, by Radmila Mečanin, in Mit i antička
književnost (Beograd 1987) and a Polish translation of Lectures 11 and 12, by T. BrzostowskaTereszkiewicz and A. Pomorski, in Semantyka kultury (Kraków, 2005).
B. Maslov / Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 12 (2012) 49–77
65
language, the language of concepts. Our “common sense” is, of course, quite inapplicable here. It is sheer nonsense when one says that semantic analysis resurrects Max
Müller. Mythological schools held that myths are allegories [. . .] ‘Table’ is not an
allegory of the sky, but the sky itself—herein lies the distinctiveness of the mythopoeic
thought. In church symbolism, a ‘table’ (‘communion-table’) is an allegory of heaven.
One must pause to appreciate the difference between the two eras of thought: in order
to become an allegory of heaven, the table must no longer be a [synthetic] object-andnature; nature and objects must have already become differentiated and opposed to
each other. Only then could the reverse process of their semantic unification in the
form of an allegory occur. Put briefly, an allegory is a product of conceptual thought,
which is capable of abstracting attributes of phenomena and subjecting them to analytic-synthetic consideration. (67–68)
The mythical consciousness “is concrete, unarticulated [or unified—BM], and
imagistic” (27). Causality is conceived differently from the modern formallogical notion of cause-and-effect. It is best made sense of as metonymy.28
Striving to conceive of a formal analogue of “the merging of subject and
object” within the primitive consciousness, which resulted in potential identity of each and every thing, Freidenberg argued that the “multiplicity” of the
objective world was nevertheless reflected in the “complex content of archaic
ritual”, which combined different sub-images that all referred to the central
mythical image—an argument that would explain the recursive, agglomerated
structure of ancient mythical narratives. These sub-images Freidenberg referred
to as “mythological metaphors”, because in them she saw the origin of the
later literary metaphor:
It is only when primitive thought became extinct that metaphors become imagistic
“transfers”, and still later—poetic tropes. Here, in primitive thought, metaphors are
varieties of an image that carry equal rights, equal in meaning to each other and to the
image itself. Metaphors of the mythical image are specified, narrowed-down images. (29)
Myths result spontaneously from concatenations of several mythological metaphors that constitute a single central image (40); such metaphors constitute
its “parts” or “motifs” (73). This hypothesis brings Freidenberg to a radical
view that “[p]rimitive myth has just one kind of content—a cosmogony,
inextricably linked to eschatology.” In the story of the creation and destruction
28
“For the primitive thought, the cause of one phenomenon lay in a contiguous phenomenon. As a result, there emerged a chain of causes and effects in the shape of a circle, a continuous,
locked line, in which each member was both a cause and an effect. This notion of causality
evoked a conception of the surrounding world as permanence in flux: for the primitive humans,
all that exists appeared to be static, but this stasis had for them its phases” (28). Characteristically, Freidenberg is much more radical than Nestle in the roughly contemporary Vom Mythos
zum Logos, who believed that mythical thought has a concept of causality, but applies it “noch
rein willkürlich und unkritisch” (op. cit., 2).
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B. Maslov / Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 12 (2012) 49–77
of the world, the actors are diffuse entities, which are regarded as the community’s ancestors (Freidenberg identifies them with “totems”) and which could
take different shapes. In Archaic Greece, this prehistorical phenomenon
appears to be reflected in the ubiquitous importance of local heroes, whose
cults thus diachronically antecede a divine pantheon: “This cosmology always
is formulated by metaphors, which in myriad of different ways convey the
image of dying and resurrected (in death) totems, that is, heroes who are
incarnations of the entire nature, all animate and inanimate entities” (79). The
basic metaphors for creation/destruction are: struggle and combat, movement
(travel) to the end of the world (the otherworld), tearing apart and consumption, and birth and death (79).
This theory could be illustrated with Freidenberg’s analysis of the myth
of the house of Atreus, which presages Levi-Strauss’s structural analysis of
myth.29 The myth contains three “structurally equivalent versions, arranged
genealogically”:
In the first, Agamemnon is killed when eating; in the second, Thyestes’s children are
killed and made into food; in the third, the son of Tantalus is killed and eaten. In all
three versions, children kill fathers, or fathers kill children, or children kill as revenge
for their fathers, or children are killed on account of their fathers. But this “on account
of ” is a more recent motivation, both due to its causal logic and its morality. Myth
lucidly conveys the image of destruction and eating. The old is destroyed by the new;
the new, by the old; both are eaten [. . .] Immutable alteration and immutability that
is subject to alteration—such are the mechanics of the primitive thought. (77)
Freidenberg offers similar interpretations of other Greek myths (the Heracles
cycle, the myths surrounding the Trojan war, the expedition of the Argonauts,
and others); a cosmogonic principle—as yet devoid of a genealogical
component!—thus becomes the chief, indeed the only, mechanism of generating mythological narratives (76–85).
Freidenberg held that myths about heroes are a more primitive (and a much
more occluded) form of cosmogonic myth than a systematic theogony. Within
the evolution of forms, Hesiod is placed between Homer and philosophical
genealogies:
29
A fuller illustration of Freidenberg’s theory of Greek myth in English can be found in her
“The Oresteia in the Odyssey” (1946), forthcoming as an appendix in Persistent Forms: Explorations in Historical Poetics, eds. I. Kliger and B. Maslov. On Freidenberg as a precursor to structuralism and semiotics, see Yu. M. Lotman, “O. M. Freidenberg as a Student of Culture” (1973)
in Semiotics and Structuralism: Readings from the Soviet Union, ed. and trans. by H. Baran (White
Plains, NY, 1974), 257–68.
B. Maslov / Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 12 (2012) 49–77
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This image of sons who kill the father and fathers killing a son or a daughter (thus
Agamemnon, in a contiguous myth, kills Iphigeneia), that image of alternating kosmoi, their destruction and births, is later liberated from heroic metaphors and enters
epic as a system of genealogies and theogonies. Thus we observe the three lines of the
future epic formulations of one and the same myth: in the heroic epic of Homer and
the authors of the Epic Cycle, it consists in the memorializing, posthumous glorification of heroes; in Hesiod, in the form of Theogony, where a cosmogony and an eschatology encompasses not only heroes, but also gods and cosmic elements; in Greek
philosophy, in purely cosmogonic systems, in which cosmic powers alone participate.
(81–82)
The view of Hesiod as a figure marking a transition from archaic myth to
rationalizing explanation of the cosmos is substantiated by another observation. The Homeric world reflects an early stage in the notion of divinity, in
which divine characters mingle and coexist with non-divine (and can even be
overpowered by them); it includes fantastical, polymorphic figures that arise
as a result of the merging of receding mythologism and emergent realism
(154–159). By contrast, Hesiod is preoccupied with drawing boundaries
between the divine, heroic, and mortal conditions; he is comfortable with
abstract cosmic principles and personifications of concepts; and he is adept,
we may add, in his employment of genealogical metaphor.
Freidenberg’s daring insights are marred by her use of largely arbitrary linguistic evidence,30 as well as her reliance on certain anthropological generalizations that did not stand the test of time. One such generalization is the view
that there existed a primitive period of sexual promiscuity when blood ties
were not recognized (e.g. 36, 44; and passim). This putative stage antedating
kinship became an orthodox Marxist view following Engels’s The Origin of the
Family, Private Property and the State (1884).31 Freidenberg correlated this
stage with a non-differentiating stage in the history of consciousness, as well as
30
Freidenberg’s often irresponsible etymologies were licensed by a “Marxist” approach to
language put forward by Nikolai Marr, which enjoyed Stalin’s patronage until 1950; that
approach defied traditional comparative linguistics (see, e.g., Perlina, op. cit., 69–115).
31
Engels’ work is largely built on L. H. Morgan’s Systems of Consanguity and Affinity of the
Human Family (1871). For an assessment of the current state of the field see Bernard Chapais,
Primeval Kinship: How Pair-Bonding Gave Birth to Human Society (Cambridge, Mass., 2008). It
is striking that Freidenberg does not permit the recognition of blood relations in archaic society
even on the basis of uterine kinship. Her unwillingness to privilege maternal descent was probably a reaction to the (by then already debunked) theory of primeval matriarchy: allowing the
physical act of birth to translate into a socially consequential fact would be tantamount to subscribing to a version of the Mutterrecht theory. Interestingly, Chapais confirms Morgan’s insight
that clans/gens (rod in Russian) could only emerge following the systematic recognition of paternity by children, made possible by pair-bonding. Yet, since the latter is a property of all human
societies, this momentous transition has now been pushed back into evolutionary prehistory of
humanity.
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with a type of culture in which the identity of the community was guaranteed
by a natural object, a totem. The mythical identity-carrier (not yet a “progenitor”) is thus united to the community in a way that does not admit of
genealogy; the latter only emerges when the logic of causation—whose principal manifestation is procreation—comes into existence (58).
In light of the recognition that kinship relations—often so complex in their
structure as to have escaped the attention of early ethnographers—are a universal property of human societies, we must give much greater weight to genealogy as a conceptual instrument than Freidenberg did. Yet Freidenberg’s
analysis helps us to see it as a paradigmatic proto-logical operator, and her
method may in fact be applied to the evolution of genealogical metaphor
within the attested corpus of Greek literature. Here the main argument of
Image and Concept assumes its significance: literary uses of image as metaphor
prepare the way for the emergence of abstract concepts. While Hesiod’s Theogony is notably adroit in its uses of genealogy, these are still part of an overarching mythic-aitiological narrative. In Pindar, this function is no longer present;
the genealogy is operating as a tool for concept formation. Yet Pindar is also
not using extended allegories, as these (as Freidenberg shows) presuppose a
more advanced stage in the development of analytic thought.32
Finally, it is worth stressing how Freidenberg differs from German classical
scholarship in the Mythos-zum-Logos tradition. In spite of the relevance of
Cassirer’s work, Freidenberg parts company with his idealism, embracing
instead a materialist approach that, while shunning vulgar sociology, foregrounds the mutual dependence of form (ideology) and social history. Freidenberg regards literary forms as emergent phenomena that evolve in a
dialectic with social conditioning and with the history of consciousness—a
view that distinguishes her work from that of her German contemporaries,
whose work is much better known internationally. For Hermann Fränkel, the
intellectual distinctiveness of Archaic Greece is reflected in individual authorial style. Bruno Snell, whose Entdeckung des Geistes is the best known application of Hegelian teleology to Ancient Greek literary history, directly related
the invention of “rationality” to the discovery of the individual, while also
following closely on the tradition of identifying epic, lyric, and drama with
three stages in the evolution of Greek consciousness: from objectivity to
32
Perhaps the closest analogue to allegory in Pindar is the extended description of Hesykhia
holding the keys in Pythian 8.1–12, his last datable poem, but even here no one-to-one correspondence between attributes and concepts obtains. Note that in the history of Archaic and
Classical Greek art the debate has focused on the transition from the symbolic to the allegorical
representation. The former involves the compression of meaning and expression, whereas the
latter artificially segregates the two; thus, allegory is widely seen as an invention of the philosophical age or a result of the degradation of the mythopoeic faculty (see Borg, op. cit., 13–35).
B. Maslov / Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 12 (2012) 49–77
69
subjectivity to their triumphant synthesis.33 These tendentious moves, which
did a lot to discredit the German “philosophical” approach to literary history,
are alien to Freidenberg, whose version of historical poetics shares with Veselovsky’s a resistance to universalizing humanistic assumptions, as well as to a
simplistic view of genres as essentially expressive of a worldview.
One example will suffice to show what distance separates an idealist
approach to literary form from one that is historically and culturally grounded.
As we saw, Cassirer ascribes to metaphor a heightening effect: for him, metaphor lifts the everyday object to the sphere of what he terms “mythico-religious
significance.”34 I would detect in this thought, in addition to a certain NeoPlatonic tinge, the rhetorical view of metaphor as an amplifying device; both
are at home in post-Renaissance lyric, yet they have little to do with figuration
in Archaic Greek poetry. As is well known, in Homer similes serve to link the
heroic age to the world of the everyday; in this sense, the figure operates as a
lowering, rather than as a heightening device. Similarly, Pindar’s metaphors
strive not for elegance, but for conceptual clarification, aided by imagistic
vividness. We only need to recall the comparison of the poetic speaker to a
cork floating over the surface of the water with one part of it laboring under
water, and the other part remaining unsoaked (P. 2.79–80). Both the realist
elaboration and the lowly register of this metaphor’s vehicle are foreign to
33
Bruno Snell, Discovery of the Mind in Greek Philosophy and Literature (1946), trans. by
T. G. Rosenmeyer. New York. Snell canonized the version of genre sequence preferred by A. W.
Schlegel and Hegel (epic > lyric > drama), not the one favored by Schelling (lyric > epic >
drama); see G. Genette. The Architext: An Introduction (1979), trans. by J. E. Lewin (Berkeley,
1992). The association of science and prose was also taken for granted in the grand Mythos-zumLogos narrative. Wilhelm von Humboldt aligns prose with conceptual (rather than imaginative)
type of intellectuality; scientific discourse, whose purpose lies “in the precision in the separating
and fixing of concepts”, demands prose (On Language: On the Diversity of Human Language
Construction and its Influence on the Mental Development of the Human Species, ed. M. Losonsky
[Cambridge 1999] 173).
34
Deborah Steiner, in what is currently the standard study of metaphor in Pindar, includes a
discussion of myth, citing analogies between the two; cf. “[m]yth, like metaphor, contributes to
the construction of the particular world in which Pindar sets his victors, where poet and athlete
mix freely with gods and heroes, and cross the everyday boundaries of space and time” (137).
Indeed, inasmuch as Pindaric epinikion seeks to appropriate the mythical world for encomiastic
tasks, it appears to allude to the earliest kind of mythology, as Freidenberg saw it, where the
boundaries between gods and mortals are moot. Yet we must be aware that this is most likely a
pseudo-archaic gesture, not a survival of a primitive worldview. Elsewhere in her discussion of
metaphor in Pindar, Steiner uses idealist language, referring to the poetry’s participation in “a
Platonic world of fundamental being” (151), metaphor’s creation of “a special ground where
poets encounter their divine counterparts” and “a ladder which the poet and his subjects may
travel” (154), and citing Heidegger’s notion of poetry as evocation of full being.
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European lyric of Cassirer’s time. Yet this image is not due to Pindar’s eccentricity; it recurs in Aeschylus (Choe. 505–7).
3. Pindar’s Genealogies
Based on their function within Pindar’s own poetics as well as on their relation to the history of the device, I would distinguish three kinds of genealogical metaphor in Pindar: (1) those that recast traditional genealogical ties, often
introducing a new emphasis that integrates the image into the texture of the
poem; (2) isolated genealogical metaphors that are not attested before Pindar;
(3) genealogical metaphors serving to promote and flesh out abstract concepts
that constitute epinician Grundbegriffe. Space limitations do not permit an
exhaustive treatment of the evidence (summarized in Table 1), so I will restrict
the discussion to a few illustrative examples.
3.1. Traditional Genealogies Revisited
Rather than serving the task of ornamentation, metaphor in Pindar has, fundamentally, a cognitive role: the image is used to convey conceptually relevant
information. To approach Pindar’s metaphors merely as artifacts of his imaginative genius35 is to miss the fact that Pindar’s poetics antedates the emergence
of a non-poetic language of abstract thought. Before Aristotle, there could be no
poetic figure that was conceptually or ideologically non-compromised. This
applies a fortiori to the period of such intensive sociopolitical contestation as
the late Archaic period.
To illustrate this point, let me return to the passage from Olympian 13
(lines 6–10) quoted at the end of Section 1:
[I will give recognition] to rich Corinth . . . in which Eunomia resides and her sister
Dika, the steadfast foundation of cities, and Eirêna, reared alongside with them, the
stewardess of wealth for men—the golden children of well-counseling Themis. They
are willing to ward off Hybris, the daringly-speaking mother of Koros.
In my tripartite typology of Pindar’s genealogical metaphors, I assign this passage to the category of “traditional genealogy revisited”. What motivates the
modification of the received genealogy in this particular instance?
To begin with, it is notable that Pindar chooses not to designate the three
divinities as Horai in lines 6–8 that describe the political constitution of
35
This point is strongly made in Richard Martin’s forthcoming article “Against Ornament:
O. M. Freidenberg’s Concept of Metaphor in Ancient and Modern Contexts” (cited above).
B. Maslov / Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 12 (2012) 49–77
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Table 1: Three types of genealogical metaphor in Pindar
Traditional genealogies
revisited
Hesiodic: O. 13.6–8, O. 9.14–16, O. 14.13–16,
N. 6.1–4, N. 7.1–4, N. 11.1;
non-Hesiodic: O. 13.10, fr. 122.4
Occasional genealogical production/causation: O. 2.32, O. 7.70, O. 11.2,
metaphors
P. 5.27–29, N. 9.52;
metonymy: fr. 73.1, fr. 33c.3, N. 1.4;
“attributive”: O. 2.17, fr. 222.1;
ego as child of a locale: P. 8.98, I. 1.1, Pai. 6.12
Fundamental epinician Aggelia O. 8.81; Alatheia O. 10.3–6; Hesykhia
concepts
P. 8.1–4; Tykha O. 12.2, fr. 4; mousike-related:
Mnamosyna (Hesiodic gen. = daughter of Ouranos)
Pai 7b.15; aoidai (P. 4.176, N. 4.3); Moisa (N. 3.1;
cf. N. 3.10)
Corinth; instead, their generic name is withheld until line 17, where it is used
to underscore an association with the benign cyclical operation of the world
under the sponsorship of Zeus, who elsewhere in Pindar is the father of the
Horai (cf. O. 4.1). Instead, in lines 6–8, Eunomia “Good Order”, Dika “Justice”, and Eirêna “Peace” are supplied with epithets that serve to draw attention to their political role in maintaining Corinth’s conservative oligarchic
governance: Dika “Justice” stands as the “unshakeable foundation” (βάθρον
ἀσφαλές) of the status quo, whereas wealth is “distributed” by Eirêna “Peace”
(τάμι’ ἀνδράσι πλούτου), that is in a way that keeps social protest at bay. The
epithet “golden”, somewhat unusual in reference to persons,36 serves to link all
three with the highest value-metal, conventionally aligned with the aristocratic in Archaic Greece.37 The beginning of Olympian 13 thus skillfully adapts
a traditional genealogical relationship to encode a particular sociopolitical
content.38
36
Among the animates, Pindar applies the adjective to the horses of the gods (O. 1.41,
O.8.51, fr. 30.2), the eagles of Zeus (P. 4.4), the mythical statue-like Kêlêdones (Pai. 8.70);
half-personified Nika I. 2.26, as well as the Nereiads (N. 5.7) and the Muse (I. 8.5).
37
L. Kurke, Coins, Bodies, Games, and Gold, 50.
38
Interestingly, the same genealogical nexus is used in praise of the oligarchic constitution of
the Lokrian Opus κλεινᾶς ἐξ Ὀπόεντος . . . ἃν Θέμις θυγάτηρ τέ οἱ σώτειρα λέλογχεν /
μεγαλόδοξος Εὐνομία (O. 9.14–16). A fragment from Pindar’s hymns (30) shows that Pindar
could give a very different treatment to the same theogonic nexus: in that fragment, the Horai
carry the epithets aglaokarpoi, alatheiai, and khrusamrukes, which more traditionally link them
to the Olympian order.
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In lines 9–10, these three divine agents are said to “be willing to ward off
Hybris ‘Violence’, the daringly-spoken mother of Koros ‘Surfeit’” (ἐθέλοντι δ’
ἀλέξειν / Ὕβριν, Κόρου ματέρα θρασύμυθον). This particular genealogical
metaphor, although unparalleled in Hesiod, is nevertheless rooted in the preceding tradition. Curiously, Pindar reverses the parentage recorded in an elegiac couplet attested twice, in slightly different form, in Solon and in the
Theognidea. The context in Solon, quoted in Ath. Pol. 11, is more extensive:
the demos should follow the leaders, for “Koros engenders Hybris when great
prosperity attends on those whose mind is not properly fitted” (τίκτει τοι
κόρος ὕβριν, ὅταν κακῷ ὄλβος ἕπηται / ἀνθρώπῳ καὶ ὅτῳ μὴ νόος ἄρτιος ᾖ). In
the Theognidea, the intended sociopolitical correlate of the conceptual move is
also unmistakable, as the ill-wittedness of the recipient of olbos is paralleled by
his low birth (kakia).39 Aristotle quotes a proverb that includes two genealogical metaphors: “Koros engenders Hybris, Lack of Paideia joined with Power
bear Folly” (fr. 57 R.: τίκτει γάρ, ὥσπερ φησὶν ἡ παροιμία, κόρος μὲν ὕβριν,
ἀπαιδευσία δὲ μετ’ ἐξουσίας ἄνοιαν).40
Pindar’s rearrangement of the two concepts, Koros and Hybris, into the
opposite genealogical relationship is licensed by an ideological difference
between the genres of Archaic Greek elegy and epinikion.41 The epinikion is
less concerned than the Theognidea with defending the rule of the aristocracy
against an onslaught of the demos; according to the epinician ideology, such
a rule is validated by nature and needs no supplementary conceptual buttressing. Instead, Pindar’s concern is with the risks intrinsic to the sociopolitical
status quo. Koros is one of Pindar’s preferred terms for describing an anomalous condition that in individual cases devalues, or at worst cancels out, the
aristocratic olbos “prosperity”. Perhaps the best-known example of such a
dynamic occurs in the myth of Olympian 1, where Tantalus, “was unable to
digest his great olbos and received a monstrous ruin (atê) because of koros”
(55–56). Synaesthetically represented as having a blunting (P. 1.50) or possibly a “pricking” effect (P. 8.32), the detrimental work of koros is also grounded
in Pindaric psychology: “even honey and sweet flowers of Aphrodite have
koros” (N. 7.52). On the metapoetic level, koros represents an excess of praise,
again a risk endemic to the encomiastic task (O. 2.95, P. 8.21). Koros can be
39
Theognis 153–4 West: δῆμος δ’ ὧδ’ ἂν ἄριστα σὺν ἡγεμόνεσσιν ἕποιτο / μήτε λίην
ἀνεθεὶς μήτε βιαζόμενος· / τίκτει γὰρ κόρος ὕβριν, ὅταν πολὺς ὄλβος ἕπηται / ἀνθρώποις
ὁπόσοις μὴ νόος ἄρτιος ᾖ.
40
Cf. Macarius Chrysokephalus, Paroemiae 8.27; Michael Apostolius, Collectio paroemiarum
16.65.
41
This rearrangement is paralleled once, in an oracle quoted in Herodotus 8.77, but was
unusual enough for a Pindar scholiast (O.13.12d–e) to designate it as wrong (οὐκ ὀρθῶς . . . λέγει),
to which a different (?) scholiast added a quotation from “Homer” (in fact, Theog. 153).
B. Maslov / Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 12 (2012) 49–77
73
described as olbos mismanaged; Pindaric logic thus regards it as a resulting
condition; by contrast, hybris is an action or individual disposition that triggers that condition. It seems fair to conclude that this inversion of the traditional genealogical metaphor, whereby the tedium of excess is engendered by
improper speech or behavior, rather than vice versa, is logical within Pindar’s
conceptual world.42
3.2. Occasional Genealogical Metaphors
Let us now survey the corpus of Pindar’s genealogical metaphors that are likely
to represent his own innovations. It is this category of genealogical metaphors
that best illustrates their use as a tool for concept formation. In Pindar, it is
used for a variety of conceptual relations that range from metonymic association to a concrete notion of production. For example, the notion of production predominates in the image of “heavenly waters, children of the rainy
clouds” (οὐρανίων ὑδάτων, ὀμβρίων παίδων νεφέλας O.11.2). A similar, yet
perhaps less definite relationship obtains in the kenning-like paraphrase “vine’s
child” referring to wine (νωμάτω φιάλαισι βιατὰν ἀμπέλου παιδ’ N. 9.52).43
In other cases, one encounters more loose connections, which may be described
as metonymic, as in the synecdoche “Alala, the daughter of War” (κλῦθ’
Ἀλαλὰ πολέμου θύγατερ fr. 73.1).44 In the case of fragment 222, which
describes gold as “the child of Zeus” (Διὸς παῖς ὁ χρυσός fr.222.1), even the
42
Cf. the conclusion reached by Thomas Hubbard (“Pegasus’ Bridle and the Poetics of Pindar’s Thirteenth Olympian” HSCP 90 [1986] 27–48): “Hybris and Koros are to be seen as the
personified consequences of originally legitimate appetites which have not been properly
restrained [. . .] unrestrained pursuit of any goal may result in surfeit and disgust. Pindar appropriately modifies the economic determinism implied by Koros as mother of Hybris into a more
sophisticated moral calculus” (36–37). Further discussion of related Archaic Greek genealogical
metaphors, see Robert Schmiel, “The ΟΛΒΟΣ, ΚΟΡΟΣ, ΥΒΡΙΣ, ΑΤΗ Sequence”, Traditio 45
(1989–1990) 343–346 (with bibliography).
43
Vine is described as wine’s mother in Aesch. Pers. 614–615.
44
Here also belong the metonymic linkages involving locales, including a reference to Delos
as “the daughter of the sea” (πόντου θύγατερ fr.33c.3) or to Ortygia as “the sister of Delos”
(Ὀρτυγία, δέμνιον Ἀρτέμιδος, Δάλου κασιγνήτα N.1.4). In general, in his genealogical metaphors Pindar uses feminine kinship terms much more often than male ones: thugatêr “daughter”
(10), adelfea “sister” (1), kasignêta “sister” (1) matêr “mother” (11); among the male analogues,
only patêr “father” (4) is used metaphorically; pais “child” is applied 6 times to feminine entities,
and 3 times to masculine and neuter entities. The reason behind this remarkable distribution is
the preponderance of feminine-gendered abstract nouns in Greek; in the long run, that also
explains why in the later Western tradition allegorical figures tend to be female. Note also a
preference for “matrilinear” genealogies in Hesiod (West, op. cit., 34–5), which intriguingly suggests an influence of the grammar of the language on the actual content of the theogony.
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notion of metonymy seems too precise; here the genealogical image operates
almost like an epithet-like superlative attribute.
The following pair of examples point to Pindar’s own sensitivity to the
degree of metaphoricity implied by the genealogical image. In Olympian 2.32,
“peaceful day” is described as the child of Sun “Helios” (ἡσύχιμον
ἁμέραν . . . παῖδ’ ἀελίου). In Olympian 7, by contrast, Pindar makes a special
effort to foreground the meaning of production that the genealogical metaphor is intended to carry when he describes Sun ‘Helios’ as “the birth-giving
father of sharp rays” (ὀξειᾶν ὁ γενέθλιος ἀκτίνων πατήρ O.7.70). At the other,
most metaphorical, end of the spectrum, the paternal status stands for little
more than the highest form of authority, as in “Time, the father of all” (Χρόνος
ὁ πάντων πατήρ O.2.17).45
Perhaps the single most baroque genealogical metaphor in Pindar occurs in
Pythian 5, where Prophasis “Excuse” is introduced as “the daughter of the
late-thinking Epimatheus”: Κάρρωτον . . . ὃς οὐ τὰν Ἐπιμαθέος ἄγων / ὀψινόου
θυγατέρα Πρόφασιν βαττιδᾶν / ἀφίκετο δόμους θεμισκρεόντων (P. 5.27–29).
This personification is related to the encomiastic task of the text, as it forms
part of an elaborate litotes praising Karrotos for joining the celebration on
time. This image, which may on the surface appear to be excessively ornamental, attests to Pindar’s persistent interest in this kind of concept-oriented imagery. It is noteworthy that this genealogical metaphor is carefully justified with
the redundant epithet ὀψινόου “late thinking”, which refreshes in the minds
of his audience the etymology of the name Epimatheos “the one who thinks
after”; its strategic, hyperbatic placement next to the daughter Prophasis contributes to the effectiveness of this imagistic concept.
3.3. Fundamental Epinician Concepts
The genealogical metaphors discussed in Section 3.2 may be viewed as occasional innovations that, perhaps with the exception of the images involving
the speaker, do not belong to the deep syntax of the epinician genre. The third
category of Pindar’s genealogical metaphors comprises concepts that constitute the focal points of the work of conceptualization in Pindar’s epinician
odes. These include Aggelia “[Victory] Announcement”, Alatheia “Truth,”
Hesykhia “Peace” and metapoetic notions like the song and the Muse.46
45
Another god with a claim to parenthood who is not Zeus O. 2 is Kronos: πάτηρ
[μέγας] . . . πόσις ὁ . . . Ῥέας (O. 2.76). There is a possibility that Khronos and Kronos are identified in this text, as they are, in fact, in Orphic philosophy (Nestle, op. cit., 163).
46
Hesykhia and Aggelia in Pindar are subjects of two important Ph.D. theses: E. L. Bundy,
Hesykhia in Pindar (UC Berkeley, 1954) and L. L. Nash, The Aggelia in Pindar. (Harvard University, 1976; publ.: New York, 1990). Interestingly, genealogical metaphors that serve to
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Here I focus on one such concept, Tykha “(Good) Fortune”.47 According
to earlier treatments, she is but a minor nymph, one of the many daughters of
Tethys and Okeanos (Hes. Th. 360), or one of the Nereids (Hom. Hymn
Dem. 420). By contrast, Pindar elevates Fortune to a remarkably high standing within the epinician conceptual “pantheon.” The word is attested 19 times
in Pindar, and, overall, it expresses the ultimate dependence of human aspirations on divine goodwill.48 In addition to Pindar’s own evidence for the
importance of this concept, Pausanias asserts that Pindar regarded “Tykha as
one of the Moirai, and the strongest one.”49 It is this alternative genealogy that
may underlie the image that opens Olympian 12:
Λίσσομαι, παῖ Ζηνὸς Ἐλευθερίου,
Ἱμέραν εὐρυσθενέ’ ἀμφιπόλει, σώτειρα Τύχα.
τὶν γὰρ ἐν πόντῳ κυβερνῶνται θοαί
νᾶες, ἐν χέρσῳ τε λαιψηροὶ πόλεμοι
κἀγοραὶ βουλαφόροι.
I beseech you, child of Zeus Eleutherios,
guard Himera, render her mighty, saviour Fortune (Tykha),
for it is by you that in the sea swift ships are steered, and on land
rapid wars and council-bearing assemblies.
This short poem, unusually for Pindar, focuses on the elaboration of a single
thought, the significance of Tykha to human affairs. Bundy describes this type
of concept formation in Pindar as a “hypostatization of aspects of success,”
which may assume a unifying function in particular poems (Hora in N. 8,
foreground important epinician concepts are also prominent in Bacchylides: the Day (on which
the Olympic contest was held) is “the daughter of Khronos and Night” in Bacch. Ep. 7.1–2,
Nika is the daughter of Kronos (based on supplement) and of Styx in Ep. 11.1–9 (this hypostasized Nika also appears in Ep. 12.5 and 13.59).
47
This noun has an unusually broad meaning in Greek; note the basic definition given in LSJ
(s.v.): “an act [of a god]”. Cf. on Pindaric usage: “The evidence indicates that Pindar’s teleological vision did not entertain the notion of mere chance; for him τύχα is the particular manifestation of divine workings” (W. H. Race, “Elements of the Plot and the Formal Presentation in
Pindar’s Olympian 12” CJ 99.4 [2004] 373–94; quotation on p. 377). For a classic discussion of
this concept, see Strohm, Tyche, who describes it as a “Situation-begriff” or a modal concept
representing an “Aktionsart” of divine power (34–35).
48
Hypostasized: O.12.2, fr. 38, 39, 40, 41; also frequent in adverbial phrases, which indicate
the presence of “luck”: sun . . . tykha (P. 2.56, N. 4.7, N. 5.48, N. 6.24, I. 8.67); epi tykha (O.
14.16); tykha (dat.) (N. 10.25, P. 8.53). It may be instructive to compare the frequency of Pindar’s other favorite abstract nouns: Alatheia (9 times; of which 2 hypost.), Hesykhia (9 times; of
which 2 hypost.) Kleos (18 times), Tima (32), Areta (76); the last three, interestingly, are never
hypostasized. A special case is presented by Kharis (35 times; of which 4 hypost.), given the reality of the goddesses Kharites “Graces” (30 times).
49
Paus. 7.26.8 = Pind. fr. 41; cf. Arch. fr. 16, where Tykha and Moira are already aligned.
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Theia in I. 5, Eleithuia in N. 7).50 Olympian 12 was commissioned on the
occasion of a Pythian victory of Ergoteles, a political exile from Knossos who
appeared to have prospered in his new homeland, Himera.51 The poem lacks
a mythical inset narrative, so it is the story of the laudandus (honoree) that,
unusually, becomes an exemplum illustrating the gnomic wisdom about the
centrality and inscrutability of Tykha. An odd rhetorical effect of this is that
maxims on Fortune—which fall within the expected range of epinician wisdom—
are addressed to the laudandus not as precepts, but as observations. As a result,
the tone of quasi-metaphysical reflection on the operation and/or interaction of
the human and the divine realm, which elsewhere in Pindar is limited to prooimia (cf. P. 1, N. 4, N. 6, N. 8), dominates the whole of the poem, making it
one of the most unitary pieces among Pindar’s epinician odes.52
Pindar often ascribes athletic success to a particular divinity (cf. P. 2.7–8,
P. 10.11, I. 3.4–5). By contrast, personification of an abstract concept, such
as Fortune, appears to have constituted an innovative poetic strategy. An
abstract concept, admittedly, cannot receive prayers or be placated; it is not
meant to be an object of cult or belief. In Olympian 12, the inherited form of
the hymn, nevertheless, dictates that it become the recipient of the opening
prayer.53 However pious Pindar may appear, especially in his treatment of
“improper” myths (O. 1.28–53, N. 7.20–30), it is important to acknowledge
50
E. L. Bundy, Studia Pindarica (Berkeley, 1962) 36 (= 2006 digital edition at UC eScholarship, p. 49).
51
On the historical context of this poem, see W. S. Barrett, “Pindar’s Twelfth Olympian and
the Fall of the Deinomenidai” JHS 93 (1973) 23–35.
52
For a somewhat different take on the lack of myth in O. 12, see O. Becker, “Pindars
Olympische Ode vom Glück” Die Antike 16 (1940) 38–50, esp. 49.
53
Contrast: “All man can do is pray to Tyche” (R. Hamilton, “Olympian 2 and the coins of
Himera” Phoenix 38.3 [1984] 261–4; quotation on p. 264). Similarly, Bowra accounts for the
prevalence of personifications in Pindar’s by his religious beliefs “he felt that the traditional
myths did not account for everything that he thought divine, and that behind or above or around
the gods were abstract powers which had almost the strength and the appeal of actual divinity”
(84–5; italics added): although exceedingly difficult to localize in the divine realm, a personification of an abstract concept cannot be conceived of in any way except as a divinity. On personification in Greek religion, see W. Burkert, Greek Religion (Oxford, 1990) 184–7, who in
particular discusses O. 12 as an anticipation of the rise of importance of Tykhê in the classical
and Hellenistic periods.
Interestingly, Pindar also attests to a converse pattern of the generic or metonymic use of
names of the gods whose personality is well established (e.g.: Haphaistos “fire” in P. 1.25,
P. 3.40, Ares “violence” in P. 11.36, etc., Aphrodite “love” O.6.35); this kind of usage is particularly prominent in Attic tragedy (W. Pötscher, “Das Person-Bereichdenken in der frühgriechischen Periode” Wiener Studien 72 [1959] 5–25). Both patterns may be seen as symptoms
of the destabilization of the conceptual domain that (traditionally) was dominated by personal
divinities: actual divinities become abstract nouns, and abstract nouns that are not divinities are
personified.
B. Maslov / Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 12 (2012) 49–77
77
the ways in which his epinician poetics moves beyond cult-embedded religion.54 In place of religious interaction and its hermeneutic possibilities, Pindar often puts forward a set of conceptual (and heavily ideologized) schemata
that explain the world in a way that appeared compelling to his audience. Olympian 12 illustrates the conceptual efficacy of Pindaric personifications, as Fortune can “explain” not only the athletic successes of the laudandus, but also his
peregrinations from Crete to Sicily, the general unpredictability of human
fortune, and—most importantly—recent history: the liberation of Himera
from the rule of the Deinomenidai.55 The latter link is buttressed by Zeus’s
epithet Eleutherios “Of Freedom”, whose daughter Fortune becomes, as well
as the guardian-role that she is called upon to assume with respect to Himera.56
The figure of Fortune in Olympian 12 attests to the immense poetic and cognitive utility of a genealogical image on the verge of becoming a concept. It is in
particular the remarkable polyvalence, made possible by its diachronically transitional nature, that permits it to serve at once all the principal functions of
Pindaric epinikion: hymnic, gnomic, “metaphysical”, encomiastic, and (socio)
political. To use a phrase of Franz Dornseiff, in Pindar “[d]er Ausdruck schillert” (“the expressive form shimmers”), caught between the concrete and the
abstract, the mythical and the conceptual, the inanimate and the personified.57
54
In fact, Pindar’s consistently “moralizing” treatment of inherited mythology, what Wilhelm Nestle termed “Ethisierung des Mythos” (op. cit., 157–162), is itself a token of modernized
religiosity, which can be paralleled in early Greek philosophy. I would emphasize that what is at
issue is not (or not primarily) Pindar’s own views, but the ways the (relatively recent) genre of
epinikion allows for the expression of more “modern” views than other choral genres. This difference, I believe, can help us explain one of the most challenging cruces in Pindaric interpretation: Pindar’s apparently apologetic stance in his account of the death of Neoptolemos in
Nemean 7 (as contrasted with the account given in Paean 6). Whereas the cult-embedded genre
of paian contains the traditional form of the myth accepted at Delphi (without moralization),
Nemean 7, consistently with the epinician rejection of ethically questionable myths, presents a
modernized (moralized) version.
55
For a recent reading of the poem that stresses the structuring role of Tykha, see W. H.
Race, op. cit.
56
This epithet may reflect an actual cult of Zeus of Freedom established in Himera for this
political occasion, as argued based on the evidence for other similar cults by Barrett, op. cit.,
although he acknowledges that “we cannot infer a cult from the invocation” (34). Curiously, the
use of this epithet, an unorthodox genealogy of Fortune, and Pindaric syntax conspired to generate a faulty inference, preserved by one of the scholiasts (O.12.1b), that the implied child of Zeus
is Eirêna (one of the Horai).
57
Dornseiff, op. cit., 52.