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Cambridge Companions Online Cambridge Companions Online http://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/companions/ The Cambridge Companion to Greek Lyric Edited by Felix Budelmann Book DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CCOL9780521849449 Online ISBN: 9781139002479 Hardback ISBN: 9780521849449 Paperback ISBN: 9780521614764 Chapter 15 - Timotheus the New Musician pp. 277-294 Chapter DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CCOL9780521849449.016 Cambridge University Press 15 ERIC CSAPO AND PETER WILSON Timotheus the New Musician Timotheus was born in Miletus about 450 and died about 360 BCE. His professional activity can be traced from about 415 BCE into the fourth century. Timotheus is said to have written nineteen kitharodic nomoi, eigh- teen dithyrambs, twenty-one hymns, an unknown number of enkômia, 1 thirty-six preludes (prooimia) ‘and some other pieces’. Of the kitharodic nomoi there survive: about a third of the Persians; a single line of Artemis (unless this is a hymn), and nothing more than the titles of Nauplius and 2 Niobe. Certainly dithyrambs and known by title only are Mad Ajax, Elpenor, 3 Birthpangs of Semele and Skylla. Possibly dithyrambic is Cyclops, of which six lines survive. We also know the titles Laertes and Sons of Phineus,bothof unknown genre. Though little verse and no music remains, there is plentiful evidence to show how the ancients reacted to Timotheus. From antiquity to modernity these reactions have been extreme. Indeed the history of Timotheus is the story of his reception – and at the heart of the story is the controversial ‘New Music’. Timotheus’ activity spans the most volatile and most creative period in the history of Greek music. He overlaps with other innovators, conspic- uous for their efforts to develop the musical potential of song: Melanippides (c. 475–415 BCE), Euripides (c. 480–406 BCE), Phrynis (c. 460–400 BCE), Agathon (c. 450–399 BCE), Cinesias (c. 450–390 BCE), Telestes (c. 450–390 BCE), Crexus (c. 440–380 BCE) and Philoxenus (c. 435–380 BCE). Of all these poets the ancients considered Timotheus the most innovative. He soon came to symbolise the innovations of New Music generally. 1 Suda τ 620; cf. Steph. Byz. s.v. ‘Miletos’. 2 If Anth. Pal. 9.429 (Crinagoras) and 11.185 (Lucillius), and Suet. Nero 21.2, 39.3 are evidence that Niobe and Nauplius were nomoi. 3 Unless the ascription of P.Berol. 6870 to Timotheus’ Mad Ajax (Del Grande 1947, 89–90 and Bélis 1998) and P.Hibeh 693 + P.Heidelb. 178 to Elpenor or Skylla (Gerhard 1938, 26–38 and Del Grande 1947, 92–9) are correct. 277 DownloadedCambridge from Cambridge Collections Companions Online Online © by Cambridge IP 128.103.149.52 University on Thu Oct Press, 23 18:57:08 2010 BST 2014. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CCOL9780521849449.016 Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2014 The Cambridge Companion to Greek Lyric The term ‘New Music’ is a modern one, however, and it is misleading in that it suggests a coherent movement with an articulated aesthetic or artistic agenda. For this there is no evidence. Though we do hear of active collabora- tion between Timotheus and Euripides, and have proof of conscious imitation 4 by one poet of the other, the evidence for relations between this group generally suggest rivalry rather than collaboration. Reception Modern The magnitude of Timotheus’ innovations has been compared to ‘the transi- tion from eighteenth-century Classicism to nineteenth-century Romanticism’; more specifically, for sheer violence, West compares the criticism levelled at 5 Timotheus with that aimed at Beethoven. Beethoven at least had the last laugh. Literary histories still continue to give Timotheus bad press and short shrift. In 1902 a papyrus was found containing the last 240 lines of Timotheus’ Persians, the largest continuous chunk of ancient Greek lyric poetry, with the exception only of Pindar’s odes. Scholarship showed little pleasure in this stroke of fortune. Kenyon, after denouncing Timotheus as ‘a curiosity, a monstrosity’ who ‘contradicts in every respect the ideals of Hellenic art and taste’, expressed the fervent hope that such an addition to our knowledge of Greek literature ‘for the credit of Greek literature, will not 6 be repeated’. This was only the beginning of an orgy of vituperation not seen since Timotheus’ lifetime. Pickard-Cambridge complained that Timotheus ‘did not know where to stop’, his expressions were ‘simply grotesque and 7 ridiculous’, and his ‘libretto vapid and silly’. Rose condemned him as ‘a most degenerate poet’ whose language ‘exhibits every possible type of bad taste, including wanton obscurity’, and whose metre was ‘restless and undignified, 8 suggesting the modern horrors of “jazz”’. Levi cried ‘ghastly’, ‘awful’, and 9 ‘sad proof’ of ‘the decline of lyric poetry’. Schmid and Stählin extended their disapproval of Timotheus to all other New Music as a ‘mere fashion- mongering without permanence’, anticipating Segal’s curiously Platonic 10 ‘taste formed by the mob’. Many historians of Greek literature felt it the 11 better part of discretion to ignore Timotheus and New Music altogether. 12 Otherwise he could be dismissed with two or three sentences, a single 4 5 Porter 1994, 199–207. Romanticism: West 1992a, 371; Ieranò 1997, 316–17. 6 7 8 Kenyon 1919, 5. Pickard-Cambridge 1962, 51. Rose 1951, 316. 9 10 Levi 1985, 266, 382, 396. Schmid and Stählin 1946, 516; Segal 1985b, 243. 11 Most prominently: Norwood 1925; Campbell 1983; Romilly 1985; Gerber 1997a. 12 Hadas 1950, 64; Levi 1985, 382; Dihle 1994, 129. 278 DownloadedCambridge from Cambridge Collections Companions Online Online © by Cambridge IP 128.103.149.52 University on Thu Oct Press, 23 18:57:08 2010 BST 2014. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CCOL9780521849449.016 Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2014 Timotheus the New Musician 13 14 sentence or a footnote. Peremptory mention might even take the form of 15 brief comment on a fragment of the minor comic poet Pherecrates. Popularity in antiquity One might have thought that Greece’s most innovative poet would arouse more interest. But what of the most popular lyric poet in antiquity? Extant sources attest to as many as fifteen revivals (one annual) of Timotheus’ music 16 in public theatres, stretching from the fourth BCE to the third century CE. No lyric poet has anything approaching this record of ancient reperformance: 17 we hear next to nothing of the public reperformance of Pindar’s songs. By the fourth century BCE Timotheus’ songs were not only performed but widely cited and read. Maxims from Timotheus’ poetry came readily to the lips of 18 Greeks living in Asia as early as the beginning of the fourth century. The earliest Greek papyrus found in Egypt (c. 350–325 BCE) is a text of Timotheus’ Persians. Fourth-century comedy regularly quoted and para- phrased Timotheus. Aristotle refers to his poetry six times to exemplify his arguments in the Poetics and Rhetoric, only once feeling it necessary to identify the author by name. In Metaphysics Aristotle cites Timotheus as an example of one who set the modern standard of lyric poetry. By Aristoxenus’ day mainstream professional kitharodes emulated Timotheus’ style at a time 19 when musicians generally dismissed Pindar and Simonides as ‘archaic’. In Hellenistic times Timotheus was a classic commanding stintless venera- tion in even the most conservative backwaters of Greece. Polybius boasts that from childhood his compatriots learned Timotheus’ songs by heart; and in c. 170 BCE Cretan cities honoured a foreign ambassador who charmed his hosts by performing Timotheus in the theatre, ‘as befits an educated/culti- 20 vated man’. No literary canon of dithyrambic poets, however short, 21 excludes him. At the famous library of Pergamon a statue (or bust) of Timotheus appeared alongside such Ionian greats as Homer, Alcaeus and Herodotus (but also with the obscure Balakros and Apollonios who provided 13 14 Baldry 1951, 114; Kirkwood 1974. Kranz 1960, 241 n.1. 15 16 Murray 1937, 278; Kranz 1960, 241–2. Collected by Hordern 2002. 17 Currie 2004. Unlike the work of earlier lyric poets, Timotheus’ lyrics may normally have been reperformed in their original musical setting. 18 Plut. Ages. 14.603d. 19 Anaxandrides fr. 6 K-A; Antiphanes fr. 110 K-A; Menander fr. 167 K-A; Aristot. Poet. 1448a15 (by name), 1454a30, 1457b22, 1461b31–2, Rhet. 1407a17–18, 1415a (but see Hordern 2002, 250–1), 1412b36, Metaph. A 993b15; Ps.-Plut. De mus. 20–1. 20 Polyb. 4.20.8–12; I.Cret.I66, no. 11, lines 10–11. 21 Diod. Sic. 14.46.6; Dion. Hal. Comp. 6.19.8; Ps-Plut. De mus. 1135d. 279 DownloadedCambridge from Cambridge Collections Companions Online Online © by Cambridge IP 128.103.149.52 University on Thu Oct Press, 23 18:57:08 2010 BST 2014. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CCOL9780521849449.016 Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2014 The Cambridge Companion to Greek Lyric 22 mandatory Macedonian content). ‘Timotheus’ kithara’ was a tourist attrac- tion in the centre of second-century CE Sparta (and possibly identified by a curious document, forged and inscribed(?) at about the same time and pur- 23 porting to be the ancient decree ordering its confiscation). In Timotheus’ home town of Miletus, we hear of musicians called ‘Timotheasts’, presumably dedicated to the spirit or substance of Timotheus’ music, like Homeridae for 24 Homer, as late as the third century CE. Modern scholarship’s protestations of Timotheus’ ephemerality are belied by over six hundred years of ancient history. In antiquity he outshone and outperformed all the ancient lyric poets to whose credit modern scholars compare him. We learn, at any rate, from Timotheus’ own words (802 PMG) of an early victory, probably c. 415 BCE, over Phrynis, the then most famous kitharode 25 in Greece.
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