Miscellanea the Bird That Became a Cleonymus-Tree: Pindar’S Olympian 12.13-6 and Aristophanes’ Birds 1473-81*)

Mnemosyne 65 (2012) 279-285 brill.nl/mnem

Miscellanea The Bird that Became a Cleonymus-Tree: Pindar’s Olympian 12.13-6 and Aristophanes’ Birds 1473-81*)

In 414 BC Aristophanes was perusing his Pindar—or walking over it, as he himself would say (Av. 471, cf. Pl. Phdr. 273a)—looking for snatches of verse to bestow on the Pindaric (cf. Av. 939) poet whom he intended to create for his work-in-progress, Birds, as one of fĳive visitors to Nephelococcugia who would petition Peisetaerus for access to the new city (lines 903-1057).1) One of Pindar’s poems Aristophanes likely read, for Birds 908-10 echoes its metre (Dunbar 1995, 524; Parker 1997, 328), is Olym- pian 12 of 466 for Ergoteles, son of Diphilus of Himera, victor several times in the δόλιχος (‘long race’).2) I will argue in this paper that the image of the Cleonymus- tree in Ar. Av. 1473-81 was inspired by Pindar O. 12.13-6. We may assume that Aristophanes was, as so often, on the qui vive for new mud to sling at the ‘hapless’ (Dover 1968, 148 ad Nu. 353) Cleonymus, the gluttonous (Eq. 956-8, 1290-9), fat (Ach. 88, V. 592), efffeminate Nu.( 673-80) and blustering politician (Ach. 844, Nu. 400, Pax 675), protégé of the detested Cleon,3) who, prob- ably by pulling strings to dodge military service,4) left himself open to a seemingly

*) Many thanks to Ian C. Storey and an anonymous referee for Mnemosyne for helpful com- ments on an earlier draft of this paper. 1) Cf. the scholion to Av. 941-3, cited as Pi. fr. 105(b) Maehler. 2) Aristophanes, in fact, often draws on Pindar’s poetry; see Hubbard 2004, 71 n. 2. 3) This is at least a possible inference from the fact that in 426 Cleonymus carried proposals regulating the collection of Athenian tribute (IG 13.61, 68 = Meiggs and Lewis 1988, 65, 68, and see Dunbar 1995, 238 ad 289-90). Note too that Aristophanes compares both Cleonymus (Eq. 951-8) and Cleon (Nu. 591) to a λάρος. 4) As Storey (1989, passim) argues. Degani suggests that Cleonymus failed to prosecute Aris- tophanes for libel, as Cleon had (unsuccessfully) done in 426, either because he considered it impractical or imprudent, or because he really was guilty of ῥιψασπία (see Degani’s remarks p. 43 after his 1993 Entretiens Hardt paper). Dunbar (1995, 238 ad Ar. Av. 289-90) feels either that Storey is correct, or that a real act of ῥιψασπία by Cleonymus was unprovable in court. Olson (1998, 167 ad Ar. Pax 446), however, defends the traditional view that “Kleonymos took part in the chaotic Athenian retreat from Delion that year [i.e. 424] (Th. iv. 96. 6-9; Pl. Smp. 220e-1b) and . . . his abandonment of his shield then . . . was twisted into a comic

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2012 DOI: 10.1163/156852512X585205 280 Miscellanea / R.D. Grifffĳith / Mnemosyne 65( 2012) 279-285 endless string of jokes by Aristophanes (Eq. 1369-72, Nu. 353, V. 15-27, 592, 823, Pax 444-6, 670-8, 1295-304)—and one by Eupolis (fr. 352 PCG = Austin, CGFP 100)—about throwing away his shield in battle. Whatever the inspiration for this slander, the comic poet must have been struck when Pindar evoked the fate Ergoteles narrowly missed. Had he not gone into exile in Sicily to avoid civil war in his native Cnossos, Crete, and so not competed in the Panhellenic games,5) says Pindar, no-one would ever have heard of him (a senti- ment Euripides was to put into the mouth of Jason in his Medea of 431),6) for he would have squandered his energy in civil strife (Borthwick 1976, 199): ἐνδομάχας ἅτ’ ἀλέκτωρ . . . ἀκλεὴς τιμὰ . . ., ‘like a rooster bold at home, your honour [would have perished] inglorious(ly)’ (Pi. O. 12.14-5).7) Three things suggest this would have leapt offf the page for Aristophanes as describing, not a possible Ergoteles, who was of scant concern for him, but how Cleonymus actually was. First, while Pindar’s ἐνδομάχας describes a cock ‘fĳighting within its home’ (Slater 1969, 175 s.v.), its owner never having taken it to public tournaments, if applied in the context of human warfare in which ῥιψασπία is an option, the word perfectly complements the ἀστράτευτος, who has, likely by under- handed means, gained exemption from military service—for a soldier who fĳights indoors is no soldier at all. Second, by comparing Ergoteles to a rooster, Pindar will have put Aristophanes in mind of Cleonymus, since, for reasons we cannot now recover, the poet had compared Cleonymus to birds three times before. He is a φέναξ, ‘impostor’, with a pun on the mythical Phoenix (Thompson 1936, 306-9) in Acharnians 88-90; at Knights 951-8 he is a λάρος, ‘seagull’, making public speeches on a rock, which is to say, the speaker’s platform (βῆμα) in the Pnyx (Rogers 1910, 133 ad Eq. 956), which echoes the dunghill implied in Pindar’s ἐνδομάχας . . . ἀλέκτωρ;8) and he is an αἰετός, ‘eagle’ at Wasps 15-27. Aristophanes will again compare him to the imaginary κατωφαγᾶς, ‘gobbler’, in the current play (Av. 288-90). This avian-link will, if any- charge of desertion from the ranks and general cravenness”. For the present paper it does not matter whether Cleonymus was a ῥίψασπις in fact or, as I think more likely, only in comic exaggeration. 5) For the historical context, see Barrett 1973 = 2007, 78-97. That Cretans could compete in Panhellenic games, given the leisure to do so, see Gerber 1970, 386. 6) Lines 540-1: εἰ δὲ γῆς ἐπ’ ἐσχάτοις / ὅροισιν ᾤκεις οὐκ ἂν ἦν λόγος σέθεν, ‘Had you stayed at the ends of the earth, we would have had no news of you’. 7) Dunbar (1995, 330) quotes line 14, ἐνδομάχας ἅτ’ ἀλέκτωρ re Av. 483-4, τὸν ἀλεκτρύον’ . . . Περσῶν. 8) So LSJ s.v. ἐνδομάχας, “epith. of a dunghill-cock”. Cf. Sen. Ap. 7.3, gallum in suo sterquilino plurimum posse, ‘a cock is master on his own dunghill’. Ar. Nu. 1430-1 speaks of cocks eating dung, presumably from a midden (κοπρία).