Epic Lessons

An Introduction to Ancient Didactic Poetry

Peter Toohey

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135035334
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

Didactic Epic was enormously popular in the ancient world. It was used to teach Greeks and Romans technical and scientific subjects, but in verse. Epic Lessons shows how this scientific poetry was intended not just to instruct but also to entertain.Praise for its predecessor, Reading Epic 'Toohey's erudition makes the complexities and the strangeness of these ancient poems appear as clear as daylight and his enthusiasm renders them as attractive as the latest blockbuster.' - JACT Review

1
WHO READS DIDACTIC EPIC?

Didactic poetry was enormously popular in the ancient world. Aratus, a poet rarely read nowadays, illustrates this startling fact. A Greek, he wrote a semi-religious guide to astronomy which was not only extremely popular when he wrote it, but which was repeatedly translated — and translated by such influential individuals as Cicero and by the emperor Augustus' stepgrandson, Germanicus. We still possess sizeable chunks of their versions. That is not all. There were twenty-seven separate commentaries written by ancient scholars on this poem. Yet, despite the ancient popularity of Aratus, his poetry, and indeed the didactic poetry of Greece and Rome of which his poem is an example, is nowadays little read. And this notwithstanding the fact that his poem and large amounts of related didactic verse survive. The most famous exemplars of the tradition, Lucretius' On the Universe and Virgil's Georgics, are typical. Well known, stocked in every respectable private library, they are more praised than read, and, when read, are usually done so in anthologized selections. Ancient popularity has been no guarantor of modern preference.

Such neglect cannot be remedied by a survey like this. But what this book may be able to do is to alert you to the existence of this material. It may also offer you a road map, as it were, with a fairly detailed collection of street names and a detailed set of locations for monuments within this strange, but exciting foreign location. This tour guide, I hope, will show didactic epic up for what it is: an extraordinarily interesting, often riveting genre, and one all the more so for its neglect.

WHAT WAS DIDACTIC EPIC?

If didactic poetry has one defining characteristic, it is that it aims to instruct. From Hesiod (eighth century BCE) to Oppian (second or third century CE) instruction — whether in astronomical lore or in the breeding of dogs — seems to characterize the poetry we now prefer to term didactic. Didactic poetry usually attempts systematic instruction on some concrete topic. Instruction implies an instructor's voice and, especially, some type of an addressee (so Servius' proem to his commentary on Virgil's Georgics; see too Pöhlmann 1973 and Strauss Clay 1994). That there must be a single and recognizable instructor's voice is a crucial point. It is this simple aspect which distinguishes didactic from, say, symposiastic literature (such as Plato's Symposium) which habitually engages several voices. That there is an addressee is just as important. This addressee can be specific or general (Konstan 1994, Sharrock 1994: 1–20 and 5–6 on reader response criticism). Although the specific addressee may be dropped, many didactic poems have one. Usually they will then oscillate in their instructive apostrophe between the specific and the general addressee. It is the implied presence of the student, our addressee, which turns the merely informative into the instructive.

What sort of subjects were treated by this brand of poetry? Hesiod was the ‘father’ of the Greek and Roman genre. He provides us with a neat epitome of what didactic could cover. Hesiod's Works and Days (his only real extant didactic poem — see Chapter 2) aims ostensibly to chastise Hesiod's brother Perses who, after bribing the nobles, has lifted more than his share of their inheritance. Hesiod's particular targets are violence, an unwillingness to work, ignorance of justice, and Zeus' will. His mode for homing in on these topics is an episodic narrative that uses a variety of myths, parables, allegories, and maxims, all examining these problems from different angles. Interspersed with Hesiod's direct moralizing are illustrative panels and set-pieces, on agriculture, sailing, right behaviour, descriptions of winter, the ‘myths’ of Pandora, of Prometheus, and of the World Ages. There is even a type of farmer's almanac — the days of the month and when and how to work.

Were we to generalize from the Works and Days (and test this against later didactic) we might conclude that didactic instruction involves ‘scientific’ theory (especially that related to astronomy or geography), religious and moral teaching, farming techniques, agricultural lore, weather lore, and so forth (for a different list see Hollis 1973a). It is usually serious (though parodic forms naturally exist, such as Archestratus'; Hedypatbeia and Ennius'; Hedyphagetica — see Brandt 1888 and Effe 1977: 234ff.). This may be why its broad range of topics was leavened, as I have already stated, by interesting tales (henceforth termed panels or inserts) on any number of entertaining themes, more or less of illustrative relevance to the didactic narrative. Most of these illustrative panels, as suitable for narrative as for didactic epic, are mythological. They represent, furthermore, almost an ontological part of didactic and of narrative epic (Sharrock 1994: 90). Why? Because the origins of this type of poetry are oral. Oral literature ‘thinks’ and generalizes above all through myth. Oral literature, that is, asserts universality through mythology. Sometimes these panels may be taken from events closer to ‘real life’. Such a tale may be termed an ainos, an explanatory or instructive fable.

The Works and Days allow us to specify the metre favoured by didactic verse. This was normally that of narrative epic, the hexameter. This custom was occasionally varied. Ovid, for reasons which I will outline in Chapters 5 and 6, chose elegiac couplets. It may be argued, however, that the hexameter is the most flexible metre for argument in classical verse. The elegiac couplet, enforcing closure (logical and syntactical) at the end of its shorter second member, the pentameter, makes extended explanation difficult. This is certainly one of the features of Ovid's didactic verse.

We ought finally to consider the length of a didactic poem. I suspect that didactic poetry was originally written in single books, and that it was of a length comparable to that of the Works and Days, of about 800 lines. It may help to strengthen the validity of this assertion, if we compare other didactic epics. Here are some of the better known ancient didactic poems (their actual or assumed length follows in brackets): Hesiod, Works and Days (828w.); Parmenides' poem (500vv.); Empedocles' (2,000vv.); Aratus, Phaenomena (l,154vv.); Nicander, Theriaca (959vv.), Alexipharmaca (630vv.); Cicero; Germanicus; and Avienus' ‘Aratea’ (all originally the approximate length of Aratus' poem); Ovid, Medicamina Faciei Femineae (100vv., but incomplete), Remedia Amoris (814vv.), and Halieutica (134vv., but incomplete); Columella (436vv.); Grattian (541vv., but incomplete); Nemesianus (325vv, but incomplete); the anonymous Aetna (646vv.). The dates of composition of these poems vary from the eight century BCE to the second or third century CE. It is striking that they all preserve the single-book format and that their lengths are generally in the 500–1000vv. range. This is hardly conclusive evidence. But it goes some way to suggesting that in Hesiod's poem we have the traditional format for a didactic poem and that, further, this format had some influence over later productions.

Length is of considerable significance when one comes to the less common multi-book didactic poems. That such a format is unusual we cannot say with any confidence, for the extant didactic poetry must represent only a small subset of what originally existed. Nonetheless, the relative paucity of multi-book epics is noticeable, and their late appearance (beginning with Lucretius in Rome in the 50s BCE) is also striking. It is my opinion — and I admit that this is speculative — that multi-book didactic poems were a deliberate innovation. Lucretius may have been the first didactic poet to adopt this format. The length of Lucretius' epic and of those of his followers is a reflection of their ambition, their self-regard, and their desire to adjudicate the totality of human experience. Here, at any rate, are the main multi-book poems (the number of books they contain follows in brackets; the length of most of the books contained in these poems is approximately 800vv.): Lucretius, On the Universe (six), Virgil, Georgics (four), Ovid, Ars Amatoria (three) and Fasti (six), Manilius, Astronomica (five), Oppian, Cynegetica (four) and Halieutica (five).

Perhaps now, for the sake of clarity, I ought to summarize what I see as the key characteristics of Greek and Roman didactic poetry. A didactic epic speaks with a single authorial voice and this is directed explicitly to an addressee, who may or may not be named. It is usually a serious literary form. Its subject matter is instructional, rather than merely hortatory. It may be, and often is, quite technical and detailed. Included within the narrative are normally a number of illustrative panels. These are often based upon mythological themes. The metre of didactic poetry is that of narrative epic, the hexameter. Traditionally such poems comprised one book of about 800 lines (but at least 400 lines), although this changed as the form developed.

It should be borne in mind, however, that in making this prescriptive list I am committing the transgression of attributing to didactic epic an ideal form. It is obvious that not all of these traits are present in all poems, and that didactic poetry, as a type, evolved, spread into other genres, and easily lost its generic identity. We will see, furthermore, that didactic poetry increasingly came to be seen as a medium which could be bent away from instruction towards one's own meditative purposes. (Virgil, for example, provides an alarmingly impressionistic set of instructions on farming; his aims lie elsewhere.) Yet, I think you may find, my prescriptions are helpful, especially for the initial process of gaining familiarity with this most challenging of poetic forms.

DIDACTIC EPIC AND NARRATIVE EPIC

Next we need to consider the generic status of didactic verse. To what genre did the ancients assign this poetic type? The best evidence comes from the early Roman empire. Later discussion (surveyed by Pöhlmann 1973) is unduly influenced by speculation and over-schematization.

Rome's Quintilian (c.30–100 CE) and Manilius (fl. c.14 CE) provide us with generous, working classifications which include didactic alongside mythological epic, pastoral poetry, and even the miniature epic. Quintilian (Institutio Oratoria 10.1.46ff., 10.1.85ff.; text and translation: Butler 1953), classes as epic the work of Greek poets such as Homer, Hesiod, Apollonius, Aratus, Theocritus, Nicander, and Euphorion. These poets represent, in turn, mythological, didactic, pastoral poetry, and, in the case of Euphorion, the miniature epic. For Quintilian the Roman poets Virgil, Ovid, Lucretius, and Germanicus, exhibiting a comparable blend, all write epic. We ought to note especially the presence in these lists of the didactic poets Aratus, Lucretius, and Germanicus. Manilius makes somewhat the same point. At the beginning of the second book of his Astronomica (text and translation: Goold 1977) he is even more open-handed. His epic poets are Homer, pastoral poets such as Theocritus, didactic poets such as Hesiod, Aratus, or Nicander, and poets writing about Hades (exemplified by Odyssey 11 or Aeneid 6); finally Manilius includes his own astronomical treatise within this ambit. Didactic poetry is once again a collateral form of narrative epic.

How should we think of didactic epic? The ancients, even at the high points of their literary self-consciousness and achievement, had no clear conceptualization of its separate life. We ought to follow them and try to describe ancient epic in such a way as to allow within it the partnership of didactic poetry (compare Gale 1994a: 100–4). Such a description might go like this. Within the culture of classical antiquity there were a variety of elastic, ill-defined, but nonetheless recognizable subspecies or subgenres (on which notion see Fowler 1982, cf. Hinds 1987, Miller 1992, and Conte 1994a) of epic: mythological or narrative epic is one; but so too was the small-scale epic practised by the Alexandrian writers in the third century BCE (which could include pastoral); there was even a comic or parodic epic; alongside these stands didactic epic which can deal with subjects as varied as science, philosophy, religion, and agriculture. Some (Hardie 1986: 22ff. and Pöhlmann 1973: 820ff.) have argued that to distinguish didactic, for example, from mythological epic is misleading (cf. Brioso Sánchez 1994). In the encyclopaedic Homer, for example, the technical and the seemingly instructive (such as descriptions of raft building, sacrifices, martial contingents) are imperceptibly blended with an heroic, mythological narrative (note Havelock 1963: 61–86). Didactic, or ‘teaching’ epic, in so far as it was credited with a separate existence, was considered to be part and parcel of the genre of epic (Newman 1986; surveys of didactic epic: Kroll 1924,1925, Cox 1969, Pöhlmann 1973, Effe 1977, Quinn 1979: 120–48, Strauss Clay 1994).

It may be worth playing a litde further with this notion of the elasticity of didactic epic. Hesiod has already illustrated the thematic catholicity of didactic epic. Subsequent poetry confirms this. Thus we see the development of a literature such as that of Empedocles, the Presocratic philosopher, who composed a poem, On Nature (text: Inwood 1992). Although fragmentary, this work aims to put forward a view of the universe where the four ‘roots’, fire, air, water, and earth, mingle under the controls of Love and Strife to create the visible world. This poem is'scientific’ and, beyond its cosmogonical elements, offers astronomical, physiological, and even epistemological instruction. The poem also is religious and offers a mystical, theological reading of the cosmos based upon Pythagorean or Orphic theories of transmigration. We could compare the themes of other poets. There was scientific epic (so Lucretius or Manilius), philosophical epic (so Parmenides), technical epic based on a variety of agricultural or hunting themes (such as Virgil's Georgics, or Oppian's Cynegetica). Even some religious writing may be considered as part of the didactic subgenre: there is, for example, a considerable body of doctrinal material surviving from the fifth century CE from the Christian poet Prudentius.

Didactic epic, perhaps reflecting its family ties, exhibited a remarkably elastic capacity to fit within other forms, or to absorb them within its own ambit. Ovid's Metamorphoses, a treasure trove of traditional epic elements, begins with a remarkable account of the creation of the universe, and finishes with an equally remarkable sermon on transmigration, modelled perhaps on Empedocles' On Nature (see Chapter 9). Conversely narrative epic elements may stand within a larger didactic context. Thus, for example, there is the story of Orpheus and Eurydice within Virgil's Georgics 4. Didactic panels may also be found within Apollonius' Argonautica, Virgil's Aeneid, Lucan's Civil War, and within the works of such ancient novelists as Apuleius and Achilles Tatius.

One final point on this matter of elasticity: the generic variety of didactic poetry is matched by a variety of levels of intent. This ought to be obvious from the juxtaposition of Hesiod, Aratus, and Ovid. These writers aim at different levels of ‘profundity’. Hesiod is ‘deep’, Aratus can be playful, Ovid is parodic. Didactic poetry, put simply, is as varied in its aims as is narrative epic.

THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE DIDACTIC AESTHETIC

A renewed interest in the relationship between literature and society has led to a salutary historicism on the part of many literary critics. This is an historicism which might well be described as offering an archaeology of the text. By archaeology of the text, I mean a reasoned sequence of the different historical modes by which literary texts have been read. To offer an archaeology of didactic epic is one of the purposes of this survey. The changing status within a society of didactic epic can tell us quite a lot about its leisure habits and the overall function of literacy and reading within ...