Theocritus and the Archaeology of Greek Poetry by Richard Hunter

Review by: Thomas K. Hubbard and Stephanie Larson

International Journal of the Classical Tradition, Vol. 6, No. 2 (Fall, 1999), pp. 274-276
Published by: Springer
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274 International / Fall1999
Journalof theClassicalTradition

Richard Hunter, Theocritusand theArchaeologyof GreekPoetry(Cambridge:Cambridge

University Press, 1996),XII+ 207 pp.

Hunter's "archaeology"aims at recuperatingthe archaicsubstrateto Theocritus'

poetry. For Hunter (hereafterH.), Theocritusis the poet most actively engaged with
imitating and adapting the varied traditions of archaic lyric until the Roman Horace.
In H.'s view of literary history, the dominance of Athenian poetry and its favored
genre of drama in the fifth century sounded the death knell for the rich tapestry of
poetic genres which flourished in the archaicperiod. However, the variety of places,
sources of patronage, festivals, and competitions in archaicGreece came much closer
to the conditions of poetic production in the Hellenistic Age, whence H. sees a revival
of interest in imitatingand incorporatingarchaicforms.
H. chooses to focus his study on the non-bucolic poems of Theocritus partly
because these texts have been less exhaustively studied, but especially because they
more fully reflect the generic experimentationand polyeideiathat he sees as so charac-
teristic of both the archaicand Hellenistic periods. The intertextualbackground of the
bucolics has been treated elsewhere (including a recent book by one of the present
reviewers); H. wishes to restore balance to our appreciationof Theocritusby treating
the more neglected poems.
The mission of this book is thereforeappealing, given the recent proliferationof
studies both on the Hellenistic Age and in literary intertextuality.Difficulties arise,
however, from the lack of a clear theoreticalframeworkdefining Hunter's concepts of
"allusion," "imitation,"and "intertextuality."Much of the best recent scholarship on
these questions has been in Latin studies, but H. shows little familiaritywith it: the
names of Pasquali, Conte, Barchiesi,and Hinds nowhere appear in his bibliography,
and RichardThomas is cited only for one articlespecifically on Theocritus.Where this
lack of theoreticalrigorbecomes problematicis in the frequentblurringof distinctions
between overt allusion to a specific archaicsubtext and the more general, often uncon-
scious phenomenon that Conte has chosen to label "poeticmemory."
A corollary problem is presented when we rememberthat our extant remains of
the archaic authors whom H. is interested in presenting as models (e.g., Alcman,
Sappho, Alcaeus, Anacreon, Simonides, even Pindar) may be less than one tenth of
their work as it was known by the Alexandrians:in such circumstances,it is difficult to
be sure that the text H. cites as a model for Theocritusreally was the closest analogue
available to the poet. When we recognize that time has dealt even more harshly with
important intermediaryauthors such as Corinna,Erinna,Philoxenus of Cythera (all of
whom H. acknowledges to be importantto the Alexandrians),or Antimachus of Colo-
phon (whose centrality A. Cameron has recently argued), the whole notion of the
archaicperiod as a privileged imitative focus is called into question.
Despite these methodologicalcaveats, H.'s book is rich in insights and individual
observations. At times it may be too abundant,and the organizationof materialis not
always a paradigm of clarity. Readers are expected to have a copy of Gow open on
their desk at all times:the Theocriteanpassages which H. compares to a given subtext
are not always quoted (and sometimes not even identified by clear line references).
When one looks the passage up, the similarity often turns out to be fairly remote (see
infra, p. 274, on Idyll 16.82-97). Individual chapters sometimes run off in too many
directions at once, not all of them mutually consistent:for instance, the discussion of
Idylls 16 and 17 first posits allusion to Hesiod's Just City and later notes that the same

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BookReviews 275

topoi are parallelled in contemporaryEgyptian hieroglyphic texts. The discussion of

the opening of Idyll 16 draws on the traditional image of Homer as a wandering
beggar, but later focuses on Simonides 6 4tno1i~pSiqas model; the two paradigms do
not seem compatible. Chapter 5 begins with a long discussion of Apollonius' treat-
ment of choral song as an image within the Argonautica;its relevance for the ensuing
analysis of Idyll18 is left obscure.
The introductorychapter, "Locatingthe Site," opens a particularlywide field of
concerns. Here H. treats the structuralorganization of the Theocriteancorpus, ques-
tions of dialect and meter, performance,and distinctions between "high" and "low"
genres; he includes a substantial discussion of some generic issues in Idyll 7. H. be-
lieves that Hellenistic poetry was meant to be recited, not performed;in his view, the
lyric meters fell out of favor once the poet no longer controlled the conditions of
performance, whence the prevalence of stichic forms in Hellenistic verse. H. enters
more treacherousterritorywhen charting the distinction between "high"and "popu-
lar" poetry: at times he seems willing to debunk the distinction for Hellenistic culture
(see pp. 7, 48-49, 110-11), whereas at other points (e.g. pp. 2-3, 36, 39-40) he attempts
to maintain it, without ever clearly addressing the question of the readership/audi-
ence presumed in such distinctions. His comparison of the FragmentumGrenfellianum
to Theocritus'Idylls2 and 3 does more to confuse than clarifythe distinction:while the
Fragmentumshows more prosaic diction (equivalent to everyday speech), Theocritus
uses more realistic dialect, and while Theocritusshows greaternarrativecomplexity,
the Fragmentumshows greater metrical complexity. Can we securely declare on this
basis that Theocritusis more self-consciously "literary"and therefore"higher"?Or is
it just that Theocritus is a better poet? Particularlyhazardous is the notion that an
abundance of specific intertextualechoes makes a text more "literary."By this prin-
ciple, much fifth-century Attic comedy could be considered more literary than the
tragic drama of the same period.
The division between "high"/"elite"/"literary"and "low"/"popular"/"non-lit-
erary" becomes especially problematic when mapped onto the Theocriteancorpus
itself. On pp. 39-40, H. notes that the bucolics and mimes feature realisticdialect and
employ the definite articlemore (as in ordinary speech), whereas the more epicizing
poems feature Ionic dialect and less use of the article (as in Homer).Idyll7, although a
bucolic, employs the articleless and is therefore"higher"than the other bucolics. And
although the Doric dialect marks the bucolics and mimes as lower in style than the
epicizing poems, H. had earlierused it as a featuremarkingIdylls2 and 3 as more self-
consciously "literary"than the unmarked dialect of the FragmentumGrenfellianum (p.
9). On p. 30, H. notes that the bucolics are more Callimacheanin metricsthan the non-
bucolics, which are closer to Homer's hexameter practice. Is Callimacheanismsup-
posed to be a mark of "lower,"more "popular"style? Readers cannot help but come
away from this discussion more confused than when they began it.
The book is strongerwhen it moves into the treatmentof individual texts. Chap-
ter 2 gives a fine reading of Idyll22 against the backgroundof its literarysources (the
Homeric epics, the Hymn to the Dioscuri,Pindar's Nemean10, Apollonius). H. is par-
ticularly enlightening on the internal contest between the Polydeuces-narrativeand
the Castor-narrativewithin the poem, which parallels both the martial contests de-
scribed and the intertextualagon between Theocritusand his precursors.
Chapter 3 treats Idyll16 (and parts of 17), but is less convincing on some points
than on others. While the parallelto Pindar'sinvocation of the Charitesin Olympian14

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276 Journalof theClassicalTradition
International / Fall1999

is certainly valid, the resemblancebetween Pythian1.67-75 and Idyll 16.82-97is not so

close: the theme of not hoarding one's wealth, but using it to acquire fame, is a com-
mon Pindaric topos. Similarly,the idea of the poet coming to Hieron's gate may rely
more on the topos of the wandering rhapsode (or even Pindar's topos of the poet as
xenos) than on any specific allusion to Vita traditions about Homer as a wandering
beggar. H. is on more solid ground in thinking that Simonides' Vitamay be a model,
since Simonides is explicitly invoked in Id. 16.44.
Chapter 4 examines the urban mime of Idyll 15. The chapter has some good
observations on the characters'language and rightly argues against the view that the
Adonis song is a parody of the "distasteful"display of Ptolemaicfestivals.
Chapter5 discusses the debts of Idyll18 to Stesichorus,Sappho,and Alcman, and
sees specific referenceto the history and geography of Spartawithin the poem. At the
same time, H. effectively brings the poem into the socio-historicalcontext of the Ptole-
maic world by setting against the Spartan Helen the Egyptian Helen-a chaste and
devoted wife who never went to Troy, a paradigmfor Arsinoe's commitment to Phila-
delphus.
Chapter 6 looks at some of Theocritus'pederastic poems (particularlyIdylls 12,
29, and 30). This chapteris convincing and effective precisely because it avoids trying
to establish specific intertextuallinks, and instead shows that these poems evoke a
general mood establishedby the traditionsof archaicpederastic verse, as well as being
influenced by 4th-centuryprose literature and contemporaryepigram. H. is particu-
larly good in showing how Idyll 29 juxtaposes Uranian and Pandemic forms of ped-
erastic love.
If our review has focussed on the places where we may disagree with Hunter's
approach, no one should take it as a sign that we dismiss his work. This book is a
serious and insight-laden piece of scholarshipthat will reward careful study by any-
one interested in Hellenistic poetry. It also has much to teach general scholars of
Rezeptionsgeschichte about the way genres of one period can be recuperatedby a later
age in a different generic context. History of reception scholarship has not always
accorded due recognition to the importanceof genre-crossingand generic innovation.
The Hellenistic Age was a period of enormous creativityin both respects,and Hunter's
book provides a useful case study for the interaction of literary appropriation and
generic experimentationin one of that period's best preserved poets.

ThomasK. Hubbard
Departmentof Classics
University of Texas,Austin
StephanieLarson
Departmentof Classics
University of Texas,Austin

Anthony Corbeill, ControllingLaughter.Political Humor in the Late RomanRepublic

(Princeton,NJ:PrincetonUniversityPress, 1996),X + 251 pp.

Vom Umschlag des Buchesblickt uns "TheRoman Legislator"an, trocken,ernst,

priifend, entschlossen. Dieses Bild und der Titel des Buches sind insofem treffend
gewihlt, als es darin umndas Lacheninnerhalbdes hochpolitischenMachtdiskursesin

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