Contents of JHS 126 (2006)
Articles
William
Allan, ‘Divine
justice and cosmic order in early Greek epic’
Christopher
G. Brown, ‘Pindar
on Archilochus and the gluttony of blame (Pyth. 2.52-6)’
Paul
Christesen,
‘Xenophon’s Cyropaedia and military reform in Sparta’
Charles H.
Cosgrove and Mary C. Meyer, ‘Melody and word accent relationships in ancient Greek musical
documents: the Pitch Height Rule’
J.E. Lendon, ‘Xenophon and the alternative to realist
foreign policy: Cyropaedia 3.1.14-31’
Martin
Revermann, ‘The
competence of theatre audiences in fifth- and fourth-century Athens’
Laura Swift, ‘Mixed choruses and marriage songs: a new
interpretation of the third stasimon of the Hippolytos’
Abstracts
William
Allan: Divine justice
and cosmic order in early Greek epic
This article examines the ethical
and theological universe of the Homeric epics, and shows that the patterns of
human and divine justice which they deploy are also to be found throughout the
wider corpus of early Greek hexameter poetry. Although most scholars
continue to stress the differences between the Iliad and Odyssey with
regard to divine justice, these come not (as is often alleged) from any change
in the gods themselves but from the Odyssey’s peculiar narrative
structure, with its focus on one hero and his main divine patron and foe.
Indeed, the action of the Iliad embodies a system of norms and
punishments that is no different from that of the Odyssey.
Values such as justice are shown to be socially constituted in each epic on
both the divine and human planes, and each level, it is argued, displays not
only a hierarchy of power (and the resulting tensions), but also a structure of
authority. In addition, the presentation of the gods in the wider
hexameter corpus of Hesiod, the Epic Cycle and the Homeric Hymns is analysed,
revealing a remarkably coherent tradition in which the possibility of divine
conflict is combined with an underlying cosmic order. Finally,
consideration of Near Eastern myths relating cosmic order to justice brings out
the distinctiveness of the Greek system as a whole and, in particular, of the
way it uses the divine society under Zeus’s authority as a comprehensive
explanatory model of the world.
Christopher G. Brown: Pindar on Archilochus
and the gluttony of blame (Pyth. 2.52-6)
In Pyth. 2.52-5 Pindar describes Archilochus as
‘growing fat on dire words of hatred’. This article argues that Pindar
portrays Archilochus as a glutton in the manner of iambic invective. A
glutton is seen as a person who grows fat at the expense of others, and so
fails in the matter of xãriw. In this light, Archilochus, the poet of
blame, stands with Ixion in the poem as a negative paradigm, serving as a foil
to Pindar’s praise of Hieron. Praise is thus placed in a setting that recognizes
its opposite: praise is only meaningful when seen in
relation to blame. Pindar’s poetry is not the product of gluttony; it is
a return that offers a necessary recognition of excellence.
Paul Christesen: Xenophon’s Cyropaedia and
military reform in Sparta
Xenophon’s Cyropaedia can
be read as a proto-novel, a biography, or as an essay on leadership or
constitutional theory. This article argues that the Cyropaedia can
and should also be read as a pamphlet on practical military reform with special
relevance to the Spartan state.
The inclusion of a series of proposals for the reform of the Spartan army in
the Cyropaedia has not heretofore been recognized because Xenophon
presented those proposals in the guise of a reform of the Persian army
undertaken by Cyrus. There was no historical basis for this part of the Cyropaedia,
and there is no trace of a major military reform in either the Greek or the
Persian tradition about Cyrus as it existed before Xenophon. Cyrus’
military reform was thus an authorial invention that presumably served some
important narrative purpose.
Xenophon inserted a military reform into the Cyropaedia as a way of
presenting a proposal for the restructuring of the Spartan army. When
Xenophon wrote the Cyropaedia, the Spartans were struggling
desperately to maintain their position in the face of a powerful Boeotian
army. The Boeotians could put many more hoplites into the field and had a
large cavalry force that they were using to excellent effect. The obvious
response on the part of the Spartans was to take whatever measures were
necessary to increase the number of men in their phalanx and to assemble a
sizeable, highly trained group of horsemen. The programme of military
reform enacted by Cyrus in the Cyropaedia produces just this result.
If implemented in Sparta, this programme would have involved the wholesale
addition of non-Spartiates to the Spartan phalanx and the conversion of the
Spartan homoioi into an all-cavalry force.
Xenophon thus used Cyrus’ army in the Cyropaedia to show what a
revamped Spartan military might look like. The use of fictional narrative
to explore ideas with immediate application to the real world has long been
recognized as an integral part of the Cyropaedia. This aspect of
the Cyropaedia has in the past been explored largely in regard to
Xenophon’s thinking about leadership and ethics, but it can and should be
extended to include military reform in Sparta.
Charles H. Cosgrove and Mary C. Meyer: Melody
and word accent relationships in ancient Greek musical documents: the Pitch
Height Rule
It has long been known from the
extant ancient Greek musical documents that some composers correlated melodic
contour with word accents. Up to now, the evidence of this compositional
technique has been judged impressionistically. In this article a
statistical method of interpretation through computer simulation is set forth
and applied to the musical texts, focusing on the convention of correlating a
word’s accent with the highest pitch level in the melody for that word: the
Pitch Height Rule. The results provide a sounder basis for judging
evidence for the operation of this convention in specific pieces and a sharper
delineation of its use in the history of ancient Greek music. The ‘rule’
was used by at least some composers from the late second century BC through the
second century AD, but there is no certainty that it was used before or after
this period. In some cases where previous scholars have discovered the
rule’s operation, statistical analysis casts doubt. Of special interest
is the showing that one piece long judged as offering no evidence of the use of
the rule probably displays an inversion or parody of the rule for
rhetorical-musical effect.
J.E.
Lendon: Xenophon and
the alternative to realist foreign policy: Cyropaedia 3.1.14-31
The dialogue Xenophon stages at Cyropaedia
3.1.14-31 constitutes a sophisticated theoretical treatment of Greek
foreign-policy motivations and methods, and offers an implicit rebuttal to
Thucydides’ realist theses about foreign relations. Comparison of this
passage to the historians and Attic orators suggests that Xenophon was
attempting to systematize conventional Greek conceptions: the resulting
theoretical system, in which hybris is regarded as the main obstacle
to interstate quiet, and control of other states depends not only upon fear but
upon superior excellence and the management of reciprocity, is likely to
approach closer than Thucydides’ theses to mainstream classical Greek thinking
about foreign relations.
Martin Revermann: The competence of theatre
audiences in fifth- and fourth-century Athens
After dismissing various possible
approaches to the question of audience competence in fifth- and fourth-century
Athens, this article proposes to tackle this important and notorious problem
with a novel strategy that is not ‘top–down’ but ‘bottom–up’, starting with
spectators rather than plays and focusing on the bottom-line of expertise which
can be taken to be shared by the majority of audience members. An
umbrella-notion of ‘theatrical competence’ is established before two central
characteristics of drama performed in Athens are exploited: the participation
of spectators in the citizen-chorus at the Great Dionysia, and the implications
for the competence issue of frequent exposure to an art form which is as
formally conservative as preserved Attic drama. What emerges is a model
of stratified decoding by spectators (élite and non-élite) who share a
considerable level of theatrical competence. In a final step, this model
is applied to a number of case studies taken from fifth-century comedy.
Laura Swift: Mixed choruses and marriage
songs: a new interpretation of the third stasimon ofthe Hippolytos
This
article uses evidence drawn from hymenaios and wedding ritual to reach
a new interpretation of the third stasimon of the Hippolytos, and its
rôle in the play. There is longstanding contention about whether a second
(male) chorus participates in the ode, singing in antiphony with the existing
tragic chorus. Even scholars who accept that a second chorus is present
have tended to regard it as an aberration which needs to be explained away,
rather than a deliberate choice with poetic significance. I discuss the
cultural implications of such a chorus, examining our evidence for real-life
mixed choruses, and then applying this to the ode itself. The evidence
for mixed choruses suggests they are strongly associated with marriage.
Looking more closely at the language and imagery of the ode, there are
allusions to the topoi of wedding songs and ritual running through
it. The ode can use these as a device to trigger deep-rooted responses
and associations from the audience, as these motifs are drawn from the cultural
tradition which the audience shares. The topoi tie in with the
theme of marriage and sexuality within the Hippolytos as a
whole. But while their usual purpose is to set up conventional models and
ways of thinking, the way they are deployed in the ode in fact serves to
undermine these models, and to put a darker spin on the norms of sexual
behaviour. This strand of imagery therefore also provides a filter for
interpreting Hippolytos’ own attitude towards sexuality, and a guide to how we
are meant to respond to it.