CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

ION’S HYMN TO KAIROS

Victoria Jennings

Ion of Chios wrote a hymn to Kairos. Nothing survives but this ‘title’, attested six hundred years on by the periegete Pausanias. Writing of the Altis at Olympia, Pausanias reports that,

,  a. V` .   I a  I  a .. Quite close to the entrance to the stadium are two altars; one they call the altar of Hermes of the Games, the other the altar of Kairos. I know that a hymn to Kairos was created by Ion of Chios; in the hymn Kairos is made out to be the youngest child of Zeus. (87 Leurini = 742 PMG = Paus. 5.14.9).1 Pausanias’ detailed account of the almost seventy altars at Olympia frustrates:

1 Translations of Pausanias are taken from Jones and Ormerod (1926) (with minor adaptations). oida, “I know”, is used elsewhere with this sense: 3.26.2 (I know that Alcman says in a song . . .); cf. 1.43.1; 2.35.1; 3.26.10; 4.2.1; 4.30.4; 4.35.11; 9.27.2; 10.26.1; 10.31.3; 10.32.8. Note Pausanias’ neutral reference to “Ion of Chios”. In the infamous passage where Pausanias discovers that Ion’s genealogy of the Chians does not answer his question about their Ionianism, Ion is “the tragedian” (7.4.8); cf. Dusanic (1999) 11. See Blanshard and Olding in this volume. The slippage is telling: Pausanias disliked tragedians and was irked by poets like Sappho who “made many inconsistent references to Eros in her poems” (9.27.3 = fr. 198, tr. Campbell). See Pelling in this volume on the nuances of Plutarch’s labellings of Ion, notably in 109* Leurini = FGrH 392 F15 = Per. 5.3–4 where Ion is brushed off as someone with a tragedian’s expectations of people. Pausanias favours genealogies (Musti in Chamoux 1996: 76; Bowie 1996: 229) and epic material (“. . . I read the poem called the Eoeae and the epic called the Naupactia, and, moreover, all the genealogies composed by Cinaethon and Asius”: 4.2.1; note too his praise of the Orphic Hymns as next to Homer in rank: 9.30.12—see Habicht 1985: 133) over more blatantly artistic mythography: he ignores Euripides’ Ion in his account of Ionia—see Chamoux (1996) 60; Bingen in Moggi (1996) 107; cf. Habicht (1985) 133; Veyne (1988) 45. What are we to make here of his use of ? 332 victoria jennings

The reader must remember that the altars have not been enumerated in the order in which they stand, but the order followed by my narrative is that followed by the Eleans in their sacri ces. (5.14.10) My narrative (logos) will follow in dealing with them the order in which the Eleans are wont to sacri ce on the altars. (5.14.4)2 Each month the Eleans sacri ce once on all the altars I have enumer- ated. (5.15.10) The traditional words spoken by them in the Town Hall at the liba- tions, and the hymns (hymnoi ) which they sing, it were not right for me to introduce into my narrative. (5.15.11) Inscriptions attest to the cult personnel of these sacri ces in “an ancient manner” (5.15.10), as Pausanias’ guide makes us aware.3 Nevertheless, Pausanias’ liturgical, ritual, phenomenological topography has made locating these altars very challenging4—a challenge exacerbated by the cluttered physical topography of these pre-eminent sites.5 Supposedly, there was an altar to Kairos near the entrance to the stadium that was used by of cials and competitors: it was on the north east of the precinct, between the rows of treasuries and statues of Zanes to the north, and the Echo Stoa to the south. No identi able trace remains.6 Why—and when—was there an altar to Kairos at Olympia? Ion’s hymn is the earliest extant literary reference to this abstract personi -

2 See Elsner (2001a); cf. Morgan (1990) 55–6. 3 Etienne (1992) attempts a reconstruction of the procession. Jones (2001) 35–7 dis- cusses cult personnel on inscriptions from the 30s BC to the late third century AD; cf. Gardiner (1925) 199 –203. On Pausanias’ “exegete”, our only named guide (5.20.4), see Jones (2001) 35–7; Chamoux (1996) 59; Habicht (1985) 145–6; cf. Veyne (1988) 76. 4 As Morgan (1990) 42 notes, we also cannot securely date these cults; but Pausanias’ accuracy can most likely be assumed: Habicht (1984) 55–6, (1985) 32ff., 77n48; Arafat (1992) 389; Rubinstein (1995) 211. “Phenomenological”: Elsner (2001a) 5, (2000) 53–6, (1995) 135–7 ( p. 136: “a more important, more meaningful arrangement of space than mere juncture”); cf. Alcock (1996) 245. Pausanias’ “topographical” narrative juxtaposes “events or monuments of quite different periods, giving the impression that they never- theless belong closely together”: Bowie (1996) 213. Even Wilamowitz-Moellendorff was stumped by Pausanias’ extraordinary Olympian geography—and consequently black- listed him from scholarly appreciation for a century: Habicht (1985) Appendix I. 5 A “wearisome” profusion: Wycherley (1962) 96. Cf. Millett (1998) 213 on the Athenian agora: “hundreds (if not thousands) of inscribed stelai standing in front of the monuments and buildings”. Moreover, Pausanias notes excavations at Olympia in his own time: 5.20.8–9. 6 Mallwitz (1988) 91–3 discusses how few altars can be located: an altar to Artemis is located by (non-speci c) debris and identi ed by inscription on a later Roman altar; the site of the ash Great Altar of Zeus, to which Pausanias frequently returns in his criss-crossings of the site, is only approximate ( pp. 92–3 and n58). See Herrmann (1992) for the (dubious) identi cation of Treasury VIII as an altar.