Sophistic Views of the Epic Past from the Classical to the Imperial Age

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• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781350255807
• eBook ISBN: 9781350255784
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Greek Ancient History
• Index: Literature

This collection of essays sheds new light on the relationship between two of the main drivers of intellectual discourse in ancient Greece: the epic tradition and the Sophists. The contributors show how throughout antiquity the epic tradition proved a flexible instrument to navigate new political, cultural, and philosophical contexts. The Sophists, both in the Classical and the Imperial age, continuously reconfigured the value of epic poetry according to the circumstances: using epic myths allowed the Sophists to present themselves as the heirs of traditional education, but at the same time this tradition was reshaped to encapsulate new questions that were central to the Sophists' intellectual agenda. This volume is structured chronologically, encompassing the ancient world from the Classical Age through the first two centuries AD. The first chapters, on the First Sophistic, discuss pivotal works such as Gorgias' Encomium of Helen and Apology of Palamedes, Alcidamas' Odysseus or Against the Treachery of Palamedes, and Antisthenes' pair of speeches Ajax and Odysseus, as well as a range of passages from Plato and other authors. The volume then moves on to discuss some of the major works of literature from the Second Sophistic dealing with the epic tradition. These include Lucian's Judgement of the Goddesses and Dio Chrysostom's orations 11 and 20, as well as Philostratus' Heroicus and Imagines.

Part One

The First Sophistic

1

Between Homer and Gorgias: Helen’s Bewitching Power

Roberta Ioli

Introduction

Poets and philosophers have often focused on the figure of Helen: as a lively topic in antiquity, she has been considered both the shameless cause of the Trojan war, and a victim of the power of Eros, and eventually a lawful wife at the mercy of male desire. In order to save her name from disrepute, in his lost Palinode Stesichorus revises the Helen myth: not for Helen, but for her εἴδωλον, that is, the fleeting image identical to the real woman, a ten-year bloody war was fought.¹ While archaic poetry, in continuity with the epic tradition, focuses on Helen’s weakness and subjection to love, tragedy introduces extended versions of the myth, and deals with the ethical problem of personal responsibility, as faced in Euripides’ Trojan Women, or in his Helen, where the theme of the double strengthens Helen’s ‘ontological ambiguity’.² The missing link in this evolution from epic to tragedy is Sophistic. With the Sophists, especially with Gorgias, the myth becomes the record of paradigmatic characters, which are not simple models for rhetorical ostentation but can be inhabited by new intellectual and ethical values.³

The aim of this chapter is to investigate whether and how the Homeric Helen influenced Gorgias’ Encomium of Helen and, even earlier, his choice of this mythical subject. On the one hand, despite his controversial relationship with epic tradition and poets (see Hel. 2, below), Gorgias’ Encomium took inspiration from Homer. Of the epic Helen, he seems to echo and to appreciate a sometimes neglected aspect: her relationship not so much with pleasure and guilty desire, as with the charm of narration and the ability to understand the language of likeness. On the other hand, the Sophist was able to go beyond the tradition and to transform it into an admirable balance between poetry and rhetoric. Thus, I would like to argue that one relevant focus of Gorgias’ Encomium is not the mythical Helen anymore, but the power of poetic λόγοι, of which she becomes a kind of embodiment. Helen has been revitalized by Gorgias not only as a fascinating product of poetic invention, but also as inspirer of new possibilities in the art of speeches based on εἰκός.

Helen in Homer: weaver, singer, charmer

The Homeric Helen is often associated with the power of storytelling that takes place both through words and the art of weaving. In the megaron of Priam’s palace, for example, Helen is pictured silently working on a purple robe. Her tapestry, which represents the first occurrence of a portrayed μῦθος, its muteness becoming a resonant story, evokes the narrative vividness of embroidered images.

τὴν δ’ εὗρ’ ἐν μεγάρῳ· ἣ δὲ μέγαν ἱστὸν ὕφαινε

δίπλακα πορφυρέην, πολέας δ’ ἐνέπασσεν ἀέθλους

Τρώων θ’ ἱπποδάμων καὶ Ἀχαιῶν χαλκοχιτώνων,

οὕς ἑθεν εἵνεκ’ ἔπασχον ὑπ’ Ἄρηος παλαμάων.

She found Helen in the hall, where she was weaving a great purple web of double fold on which she was embroidering many battles of the horse-taming Trojans and the bronze-clad Achaeans, which for her sake they had endured at the hands of Ares.

Iliad 3.125–8⁴

The verb ἐνέπασσεν (126) stands for the art of embroidering, with a focus on the images that, in this case, are a metaphorical model for the words, not vice versa. As Linda Clader pointed out, Helen is ‘both author and subject of her work’.⁵ Perhaps she is weaving not only κλέα ἀνδρῶν, that is the deeds of heroes, but also events of her own life connected with her direct responsibility in the war. She seems to anticipate, as a weaver/singer, what is going to happen in front of the Trojan walls.

Furthermore, while conversing with Hector she shows her meta-literary awareness of being, together with Paris, both cause of the tragic war and character in future narrations of it:

οἷσιν ἐπὶ Ζεὺς θῆκε κακὸν μόρον, ὡς καὶ ὀπίσσω

ἀνθρώποισι πελώμεθ’ ἀοίδιμοι ἐσσομένοισι.

on us Zeus hath brought an evil doom, so that even in days to come we may be a song for men that are yet to be.

Iliad 6.357–8

Here there is a reference to the object of art (the evil destiny of men and women of the past), its recipient (men that are yet to be), and the means which are used (poetry, source of a memory which is a consolation as well). The episode where we see Helen as a self-referential weaver, besides combining poetry with the art of embroidering, multiplies, as in a hall of mirrors, the relationship between the narrator and the story, and represents an admirable example of ekphrasis, where the narrative matter ends up coinciding with the poetic construction itself.⁶

Helen’s explicit consecration as a poet takes place in the Odyssey, when the Trojan war is over, and she is home again. Telemachus sails to Sparta looking for news concerning his father and meets the queen with her husband Menelaus. Here Helen is presented as an enchanting and attractive figure, not simply because of her beauty, but also, perhaps more importantly, due to her magical and narrative skills. She is like a healer, who can drop the right medication for a blessed amnesia into the wine. Her Egyptian φάρμακα have the power of giving a temporary oblivion from sufferings (Od. 4.219 ff.), just as poetry does.⁷ Her tale shows many traditional features of epic poetry: first, it opens with an invocation to Zeus; then it follows the theme of τέρψις, ‘pleasure’ (239: τέρπεσθε), that is the invitation to enjoy that story described as ἐοικότα (239).⁸ Finally, the praise that Menelaus addresses to Helen’s tale as being κατὰ μοῖραν, ‘harmonious’ (266) – essential feature of an aedic performance – contributes to portray the woman as an expert singer.⁹ As a poet, Helen recognizes her own limit: ‘All the labors of steadfast Odysseus I cannot tell or recount’ (Od. 4.240–1). While memory is the singer’s primary virtue, omniscience is reserved for the gods, as mentioned at the beginning of the Catalogue of the Ships: ‘For you are goddesses and are present and know all things, but we hear only a rumour (κλέος) and know nothing’ (Il. 2.485–6).¹⁰ Similarly, starting from the infinite repertoire of adventures affecting Odysseus, Helen is going to select deeds which are particularly suitable for her singing. The chosen story glorifies Odysseus’ skill, and, at the same time, is an indirect praise for her behaviour in favour of the Greek hero.

The meaning of εἰκός/ἐοικώς has been widely discussed. In our passage in Od. 4 it probably has two different but interwoven meanings. On the one hand, εἰκός i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction
• Part One The First Sophistic
• 1 Between Homer and Gorgias: Helen’s Bewitching Power
• 2 Palamedes, The Sophistic Hero
• 3 Ajax versus Odysseus
• 4 Mythological Role-Playing among the Sophists
• Part Two The Second Sophistic
• 5 Homeric Exegesis and Athetesis in Lucian’s Versions of the Judgement of Paris
• 6 Helen Was Never Abducted, Paris Abducted Her Because He Was Bored: Two Ways of Rewriting Homer in Dio Chrysostom (Orr. 11 and 20)
• 7 Homer’s Lies and Dio’s Truth? Subverting the Epic Past in Dio Chrysostom’s Trojan Oration
• 8 A Rhetorical Trojan War: Philostratus’ Heroicus, the Power of Language and the Construction of the Truth
• 9 Reading Homer and the Epic Cycle through Ekphrasis: Philostratus’ Epic Imagines
• Index
• Copyright