“I am One”: The Fragile/Assertive Self and Thematic Unity in the Theocritean Oeuvre A thesis submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Cincinnati in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the department of Classics of the College of Arts and Sciences by Stephen N. Self A.B. University of Georgia June 2011 Committee Chair: K. Gutzwiller, Ph.D. Abstract Since antiquity, critical reception of Theocritus has focused on bucolic as the poet‘s quintessential domain, whether in the belief that the term designates a small, separable portion of his total corpus or more generally applies to many, most, or all of his hexameter works. As a result, many of Theocritus‘ non-herding poems have received, on the whole, less critical attention than the herding ones. The book-length studies of Griffiths (1979b), Burton (1995), and Hunter (1996) attempt to redress this imbalance in treatment by dividing the non-herding works into various sub-genres, such as patronage poetry, mimes, hymns, and pederastic poetry, and dealing with each in relative isolation from the rest of the corpus. While this approach may finally give less scrutinized poems their due, it results in the same kind of tunnel vision vis-à-vis the figure of the poet as bucolic-centered studies. A more unitary view of Theocritus is called for. Analysis of the Idylls as a whole from the standpoint of themes and imagery, as opposed to genre, may hold the key to that view. ii © 2011 Stephen N. Self All Rights Reserved iii Acknowledgements This work has been a long time coming. I wish to extend my sincere gratitude to my committee chair, Dr. Kathryn Gutzwiller, for her encouragement, commentary and suggestions. She never stopped hoping I would return to finish this project, and her willingness to assist in bringing it to fruition was invaluable. Thanks, too, to my second reader, Dr. Holt Parker, for his time and consideration. A special thank you goes to my wife, Melissa Self, who likewise never stopped believing I could and should complete this degree, as well as to my mother and father, Sharon and Ronald Self, who instilled in me a sense of intellectual curiosity in the first place. iv Contents ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................... ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .............................................................................................iv INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................. 6 CHAPTER ONE: THE SOCIAL AND POLITICAL BACKGROUND FOR THEOCRITUS’ CONSTRUCTION OF CHARACTER .................................... 13 CHAPTER TWO: HELLENISTIC SOCIETY IN HELLENISTIC LITERATURE .. 25 CHAPTER THREE: A FIRST CASE-STUDY OF THE FRAGILE/ASSERTIVE SELF: IDYLL 2’S SIMAETHA .......................................................................... 45 CHAPTER FOUR: A SECOND CASE-STUDY OF THE FRAGILE/ASSERTIVE SELF: IDYLL 13’S HERACLES ........................................................................ 86 CHAPTER FIVE: THE FRAGILE/ASSERTIVE SELF IN PROPRIAE PERSONAE: THEOCRITUS IN IDYLLS 16 AND 28 .................................... 134 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................. 212 BIBLIOGRAPHY ......................................................................................................... 221 v Introduction Tho Theocritus passes in common Esteem for no more than a Pastoral Poet, yet he is manifestly robb‘d of a great part of his Fame if his other Pieces have not their Laurels. For (not to speak of the few little Epigrams) as the larger share of his Idylliums, cannot properly be call‘d Songs of Shepherds, so they are in too great repute, to be banished from the character of their Author.1 This statement by Basil Kennet, author of the first English life of Theocritus in Lives and Characters of the Ancient Grecian Poets from 1697 embodies two central ironies at the heart of Theocritus‘ critical reception since antiquity. The first, of which Kennet shows conscious awareness, lies in the fact that the Theocritus‘ enduring poetic fame, even judgments about his poetic essence,2 rest on just one-third of his total corpus under traditional reckoning: on the so-called ―bucolic‖ Idylls.3 The second, more encompassing irony, which escapes Kennet‘s critical awareness only because its full implications have not been grasped until the twentieth century, stems from the fact that the exact definition and scope of the designation ―bucolic‖ was rather fluid in antiquity and remains unclear for Theocritus‘ own day.4 The poet‘s earliest imitators, the authors of the spurious Idylls 8 and 9, most likely dated to his own century, must have understood 1 Kennet, 146; the first sentence is quoted in Walker, 85. 2 Cf. Hutchinson, 143: ―The poems which deal with cowherds, goatherds, and shepherds have generally been seen as the essential part of Theocritus‘ oeuvre; they are most commonly treated in isolation from the rest.‖ 3 For reasons soon to be seen, the precise listing of these differs slightly from author to author. Six are undisputed: Idd. 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7; Idd. 2, 10, and 11 variously make and miss the lists. On bucolic as the source of Theocritus‘ fame in antiquity, see the statement of the ancient (Gow 1952: I, xv B): ; cf. Gutzwiller, (1996: 135): ―Abundant evidence from antiquity indicates that from the second century BC Theocritus was thought first and primarily as a bucolic poet;‖ and eadem (1991: 3): ―[F]rom ancient times his position as the first pastoralist has haunted critical assessments made of him.‖ For a good, quick survey of the history of those assessments, see ibidem, (1991: 175-200). Against the separability of bucolics from the rest of Theocritus‘ poetry, see Bulloch, 579-80; Effe (1978), 48-9; Hutchinson 143-45, 200. 4 Of chief importance here are: Wilamowitz (1905; 1906), Gow (1952: I lix-lxii), Van Groningen (1958), Van Sickle (1975; 1976), Halperin (1983), and Gutzwiller (1991; 1996). 6 ―bucolic‖ to refer to poetry about a cowherd, often in connection with the mythic figure Daphnis.5 Second-century poets Moschus and Bion, on the other hand, took as the chief definitive element equation of the poet with cowherd. In Bion in particular, this changed understanding of bucolic relaxes restraints on subject matter, such that poetry so designated need not deal explicitly with herders at all, only with aspects of the perceived pleasurable life of herders such as music and eroticism.6 Thus, when the Suda-life recognizes solely ―bucolic‖ poems as certainly genuine,7 and Artemidorus, editor of the first documented edition of such poetry in the first century BC, appends to his collection an epigram evincing his gathering of the formerly scattered ―Bucolic Muses,‖8 we cannot necessarily assume that only herding poems are meant.9 The fact that a scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius 1.1236 reckons Idyll 13 on Hylas among Theocritus‘ bucolic works () and Aelian (NA 15.19) refers to Theocritus‘ ―iynx poem,‖ Idyll 2, as one of the ―pastoral trifles‖ (), seems evidence that the ancient designation was wider, or vaguer, in reference than its modern translation would suggest.10 That Pliny the Elder alleges Catullus to have imitated Idyll 2,11 and 5 Rossi, passim, esp. 25, on dating; Van Sickle (1975: 64-5; 1976:25-7); Gutzwiller (1991: 176 and nn. 2, 4). 6 Van Sickle (1975: 64-6; 1976: 25-7); Gutzwiller (1991: 176-8). 7 ; Gow (1952) I lxi, n. 1. 8 (AP 9.205). On Artemidorus‘ edition, see Wilamowitz (1905: iii; 1906: 14, 127); Gow (1952: I lx-lxi); Van Sickle (1976: 27-31); Gutzwiller (1996: passim, esp. 123-124). 9 Gutzwiller (1996), 123-24; pace Gow (1952), I lxi. 10 Gow (1952) I lxi, n. 2; Gutzwiller (1996), 124. 11 N.H. 28.19; see Gow (1952), I lx, n. 4. Gow (1952: I lx, n. 4; II 292, n. 100f.) also thinks Cat. 64.96 (quaeque regis Golgos quaeque Idalium frondosum) betrays knowledge of Id. 15.100 ( ). 7 Vergil in Eclogues, possibly working from Artemidorus‘ bucolic collection,12 extensively imitates Idylls 2 and 11, might argue for a similar conclusion.13 In light of these facts, scholars who attempt to ascertain Theocritus‘ own understanding of the term bucolic have championed wildly differing reconstructions of its meaning: Van Sickle contends that bucolic designates the herding poems plus Idyll 2,14 while Halperin argues that the term applies more broadly still to ―the great majority of the hexameter Idylls,‖ signaling their opposition to traditional epos in matters of theme, form, and language.15 Gutzwiller, who repudiates the arguments and methodology of both of these attempts,16 maintains that the term serves to denote simply Theocritus‘ hexameter poems as a whole, irrespective of subject matter, over and against his Aeolic works which were labeled 17 whether pederastic in content or not. Complicating matters is the fact that the most general ancient designation of Theocritus‘ non-epigrammatic verse, and the chief label by which it is known today, or ―little type,‖ appears attached in the scholia to all of the author‘s poems: bucolic and non-bucolic, hexameter and Aeolic alike.18 Thus, the critical attention focused on a separable notion of pastoral as the 12 Gow (1952) I lx-lxi; Van Sickle (1976), 36-7; Gutzwiller (1996), 125. 13 Gutzwiller (1996), 124. Even when Servius writes that, whereas Vergil composed seven ―purely rustic‖ poems for Eclogues, Theocritus had ten (Comm. in Verg. Buc., Prooem, p. 3, 20-1 Thilo: sane sciendum, VII, eclogas esse meras rusticae, quas Theocritus X. habet), we cannot be sure, as Irigoin (27) was, that a collection of only ten Theocritean herding poems was meant; so Gutzwiller (1996: 120 and n. 5). 14 Van Sickle (1976), 24-5 and n. 81; he writes (24): ―The critics invoke the simple conception of bucolic as a mimetic genre even here where it now appears that the generic idea would separate in theory what Theocritus in poetic practice joined ... Perhaps his criteria for similarity and difference – his conception of the parameters of a poetic group – was more complex, versatile than the critics‘ simple mimetic scheme.‖ 15 Halperin, 254.