Lampas - Volume 52, Issue 1, 2019

This paper offers a narratological close reading of one of Herodotus’ most celebrated stories. Special attention is paid to the recurrent Herodotean themes and story-patterns which shape it and thus can help to interpret it. For once the advice of a warner is heeded, but the return of the ring shows that Polycrates’ fate is already sealed and cannot be averted anymore. His great good fortune has brought Polycrates the envy of the gods, a concept which must be looked at in terms of the contemporary Ionian interest in ‘balance’ (of the bodily humours, of climate, of good fortune): the gods watch over the balance of the kosmos and when mortals threaten to disturb it (because of excessive power, riches or good fortune), these mortals are brought down. Most of the times these ‘excessive’ mortals also ‘earn’ their fate by committing crimes or making grave mistakes, and the quick account of Polycrates’ earlier career showed him killing one of his brothers and abusing the unwritten law of ξεινίη. When he faithfully executes Amasis’ advice and throws away his precious ring it is already too late and, as Amasis concludes, his fate cannot be changed anymore.

The present article is a response to the essay by Irene de Jong in this issue of Lampas. Its main contention is that De Jong misrepresents the motives at work in Herodotus’ representation of Croesus, Xerxes and, especially, the return of Polycrates’ ring. Focusing entirely on the divine aspect of causation (the ‘jealousy of the gods’), De Jong leaves out of consideration altogether the second part of what Lesky called doppelte Motivation: the psychological aspect. I aim to show that in so doing De Jong creates an incomplete picture of causation in Herodotus, especially with regard to the three iconic characters mentioned. The most important element of Herodotus’ monarchs is their ineluctable adherence to power and greatness, which dictates their outlook on life and forces their hand, even when they (like Xerxes and Polycrates) do possess an intellectual grasp of the realities concerned. The working of this powerful force is signalled by the mention of emotions like anger, fear and pleasure.

Soclees of Corinth has just foiled the Spartan move to crush the infant Athenian democracy, and the exiled tyrant Hippias tells the Corinthians that one day they will yearn for the Peisistratids, when they find pain at the hands of the Athenians (5.93.1). Soclees had told how the infant Cypselus escaped death at the hands of those sent to kill him: is the implication that Corinth should have strangled the infant Athens? Is Athens to be the new Cypselus, a ‘tyrant city’ indeed? Herodotus’ moralism is not so simple, and his emphasis usually falls on freedom more than on democracy. Still, democracy offers a test-case to see what happens when freedom is pushed to its limit, rather as Persia exemplifies the opposite extreme, personal power at its most unbridled. On democracy the outcome was still not clear when Herodotus wrote: would Athens suffer the same fate as its imperialistic predecessor Persia? Or would it be different, perhaps because of democracy and freedom? Whatever the outcome turned out to be, future readers would find strands in Herodotus’ narrative that would help them to understand.

The passage about Cambyses’ murder of his sister who is also his wife (Histories 3.32.2) is used by way of example to discuss the possibilities and problems of a narratological commentary on the Histories. Particular attention is paid to the – often neglected – question of how to deal with the tension between the linearity of the text (which means that narratees may only hear about things at a later moment) and the duty of the commentator to inform her narratees at an early point.

Although his canvas is gigantic, Herodotus is essentially a miniaturist. It is at the level of the paragraph, the sentence or even in the choice of a single word that his subtlety is most apparent.

(Flory 1987: 153)

The story of Philemon and Baucis (Metamorphoses 8.626-724) is remarkable, as humans are rewarded for their behaviour rather than punished, as is usually the case in Ovid’s epic world. An important question is therefore how we as readers should interpret this atypical story. In order to answer this question I will first analyze the story as a theoxeny. Next, I explore the narratological embedding of this story. The secondary narrator Lelex tells this story in order to prove the infinite power of the gods. He also implicitly argues that the gods show benevolence towards pious human beings. I argue that these specific goals of the narrator influence the story and how we should read it. Next, I review Ovid’s Greek literary models for this theoxeny, focusing on examples from Homer’s Odyssey and Callimachus’ Hecale. Finally, I compare the story of Philemon and Baucis with other stories in the Metamorphoses and Fasti in which gods visit human beings. This comparison shows that the story of Philemon and Baucis is also in that respect unusual.

Biglietto

lasciato prima di non andar via

Se non dovessi tornare,

sappiate che non sono mai partito.

Il mio viaggiare

è stato tutto un restare

qua, dove non fui mai.

Een briefje alvorens niet weg te gaan

Mocht ik niet terugkomen,

Weet dan dat ik nooit vertrokken ben.

Mijn gereis

Was uitsluitend hier

Blijven, waar ik nooit ben geweest.¹

(Giorgio Caproni. 1975. Il franco cacciatore)

Ovid’s exile to Tomi has appealed to the imagination through the centuries and has even spawned a literary genre. The circumstances of this exile, however, are shrouded in mystery, and scholars have endlessly speculated on the possible reasons, which has everything to do with the fact that Ovid’s own poetry is the only direct evidence for his exile. Since the beginning of the twentieth century some scholars have therefore argued that the exile was a poetic fiction. Due to the growing interest in Ovid’s exile poetry in the last decades, and in particular the analysis of its literary aspects, the fiction theory has become topical again. In this contribution, I would like to study how we should read Ovid’s exile poetry in this fictive scenario, and to see if this way of reading can produce meaningful interpretations.

In the upper grades of Dutch secondary schools pupils who take Greek or Latin are required to read, translate and interpret authentic texts in the original language. As the phase of language acquisition is not completed at this stage, pupils still need to practice the recognition and interpretation of linguistic elements. In addition, they need assignments that invite them to reflect on the use and meaning of specific linguistic elements used in the texts. However, language exercises are not included in commonly used text books. In this article, I propose a way in which teachers can design exercises that meet these goals. I illustrate the design steps by means of one example concerning congruency and stylistics, and a second example concerning verb forms and (non)factuality.