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Aesopic Conversations Leslie Kurke Aesopic Conversations Leslie Kurke Published by Princeton University Press Kurke, L.. Aesopic Conversations: Popular Tradition, Cultural Dialogue, and the Invention of Greek Prose. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010. Project MUSE., https://muse.jhu.edu/. For additional information about this book https://muse.jhu.edu/book/31163 Access provided by University of Washington @ Seattle (28 Feb 2018 21:07 GMT) Chapter 1 AESOP AND THE CONTESTATION OF DELPHIC AUTHORITY ET ME BEGIN WITH AESOP at Delphi. Th e strange, fi ssured, and uneven texts of the Life of Aesop and the open and permeable tradition that L generated them necessitate the assumption of oral circulation of stories about Aesop, taking shape, traveling, and mutating over hundreds of years be- fore the texts were set down in written form. At the same time, it is my conten- tion that Aesop, like other folkloric trickster fi gures in other cultural traditions, enabled or gave voice to critiques of power and inequitable power relations from below. In these terms, Aesop was a mobile fi gure within the common or “little” cultural tradition in which nonelite and elite participated together, but a fi gure generally banned or excluded from elite high culture.1 As such, stories about Aesop should give us unique access to the rift s and tensions within Greek culture—divergent views, counterideologies, and resistances to all kinds of he- gemonic positions, encoded in narrative form. Based on these assumptions, I’d like to try to reconstruct the elements of an ideological critique that may go back to the fi ft h century BCE, embedded in the story of Aesop at Delphi. For, as we know from Herodotus (2.134–35), tradi- tions on the Life of Aesop were already current in the fi ft h century BCE—espe- cially the story of his victimization and death at the hands of the Delphians. And Aristophanes (Wasps 1446–48) shows that certain fables already had a fi xed place in the tradition of the Life, since he cites the fable of the “eagle and the dung beetle” in the context of Aesop’s fatal adventures at Delphi (where it still appears in Perry’s Vita G, dated to the fi rst or second century CE). Th us, as scholars have long recognized, the Delphic episode that ends the Life has the oldest secure pedigree and must go back to oral traditions about Aesop already current in the fi ft h century BCE. I would therefore like to try the experiment of reading the Delphic portion of the Life as a coherent narrative, many of whose elements go back to the classical era. It is my contention that already by the fi ft h century, Aesop had become “good to think with”—a fi gure who gave voice to a common civic or popular critique of inequitable and exclusionary institutional practices at Delphi. Th is critique is not simply a form of “anticlericalism” (the anachronistic and ultimately unhelpful term oft en used to “explain” critiques of 1 For the terms of these formulations, see Burke 1978 and Scott 1990 (as discussed in the introduction). 54 CHAPTER 1 the Delphic priesthood); it is rather a symptom of ongoing tension between the egalitarian ideology that prevailed within most Greek cities and the exceptional privileges and practices exercised by the Delphians who controlled Apollo’s Panhellenic oracle.2 In order to clarify the terms of the critique of Delphi en- coded in various Aesop traditions, I will fi rst review the evidence we have for Delphi’s distinctive status and practices going back to the archaic and classical periods but continuing for centuries. I. Ideological Tensions at Delphi As far back as the early archaic period, Delphi represented an anomalous site, and one that played a signifi cant role in the development and autonomy of the Greek cities. As Catherine Morgan has argued for this period, the Delphic ora- cle was importantly instrumental in Greek state formation. In the eighth cen- tury, it appears that the oracle participated actively in the negotiation and adju- dication of “community problems which . lay outside the collective experience of the elite of emerging states.”3 Delphi’s marginal status, outside the boundar- ies of the consulting states, made it ideal for this role—as Morgan puts it, con- sulting the oracle represented “a step outside the spatial context of daily life to the fringes of the social world in order to obtain sanction for action on unusual problems.”4 Morgan concludes: Oracular divination at Delphi was instituted towards the end of the eighth century as a tool to help the authorities of emerging states to deal with unprecedented problems; divination thus served as a means of legitimising the gradual introduction of social change whilst apparently maintaining basic community values. the real signifi - cance of an oracle at Delphi is that it constitutes the fi rst move towards state domina- tion of activity at a sanctuary which otherwise served the personal interests of the elite.5 2 For the notion of “anticlericalism,” cf. La Penna 1962.277–79; Delcourt 1965.39–40; Nagy 1979.126 (rejecting the term); Jedrkiewicz 1989.43–44, 83–88; and Ferrari 1997.13 (rejecting the term). 3 Morgan 1990.159. 4 Morgan 1990.183. 5 Morgan 1990.184–85; cf. Morgan 1993.29. Note also Morgan’s observation that “Almost all of the early consultor states were poleis, and moreover they were the poleis most likely to have been suff ering from a conjunction of a crisis of authority and the appearance of new community prob- lems” (Morgan 1990.185). Cf. Malkin 1989, esp. 131, 151–53: “Whereas Delphoi was evidently conservative in matters of religion and cult (and hence the ‘conservative image’), the contrary was true in regard with its role in society and politics, where the oracle seems to have been rather con- sistent in its support of the leading forces of change and innovation. Moreover, it was precisely the openness and adaptability in its involvement in social and political changes which helps to explain the growing success, infl uence, and reputation of the Delphic oracle during the archaic period” (quotation from p. 131). CONTESTATION OF DELPHIC AUTHORITY 55 Th e intimate connection Morgan perceives between the rise of the Delphic or- acle and Greek state formation is further borne out by the oracle’s special prom- inence in the Greek colonization movement. For, as Carol Dougherty and oth- ers have well observed, the Delphic oracle was an essential element both in the reality and in the cultural representation of the colonial foundation of new po- leis throughout the archaic and classical periods.6 But this same spatial marginality simultaneously made Delphi an ideal site for the expression of individual elite power and display that tended to be cur- tailed within the participants’ home cities. Archaeologists have noted a signifi - cant shift in the use of scarce metal resources already in the second half of the eighth century, from lavish grave goods to dedication. Ian Morris has argued that this shift was the result of egalitarian pressure on burial practices; elites then turned to dedication outside polis boundaries as a new venue for con- spicuous display and as a means of maintaining a monopoly on precious metal. Such highly visible dedications continued at Panhellenic sites like Olympia and Delphi throughout the archaic and classical periods.7 In like manner, with the foundation of the Pythian Games in the early sixth century, Delphi became a Panhellenic center for elite athletic competition and display. Both these forms of elite display—dedications and athletics—were fraught with ideological ten- sion in the archaic period, and we see a lot of cultural work being done to rec- oncile elite interests with civic ideology.8 As a marginal site risen to Panhellenic prominence, Delphi is by no means unique in playing this role; Olympia shows very similar developments. But what is unique at Delphi is the pronounced ten- sion between the important state functions of its oracle coexisting with its sta- tus as a highly visible venue for elite display. We might imagine these two ten- dencies straining against each other at the sanctuary. Furthermore, it would be far too simplistic neatly to separate Delphi’s oracu- lar function (as serving state interests) from its sanctuary functions of athletics and dedication (as serving extrapolis elite interests). For individuals as well as states regularly consulted the Delphic oracle. More to the point, access to the oracle was itself inextricably implicated in what we might call an elite economy of dedication and sacrifi ce. In the fi rst place, it was expensive to consult the oracle; hence the proverb, “Without bronze, Phoebus doesn’t prophesy” (ἄνευ 6 Forrest 1957; Malkin 1987, 1989.132–36; Dougherty 1993. 7 See Snodgrass 1980; Morris 1986a, 1989, 2000.273–80; Morgan 1990.194–205. Th us Morgan 1990.204: “one fi nds that as cult institutions were established as expressions of civic identity within state boundaries, so the more personal dedications of local aristocracies began to spill over to sanc- tuaries further afi eld as a consequence of the increasingly intense competition for status and power which was developing within the new emerging states.” 8 For dedications, see Neer 2001, 2003. For athletics, we might see this as the whole ideological burden of epinician and other victor monuments; see Kurke 1991, 1998; Nicholson 2003, 2005. For an example of this tension preserved in a literary text, cf. Th ucydides’ account of the Spartan king Pausanias’s dedication of an inscribed tripod at Delphi aft er the Battle of Plataea and the Spartan reaction thereto (Th uc.
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