Suzanne Saïd
The study of place/topos and commonplaces/topoi was initiated in 1948 by E. Curtius in the chapter “The Ideal Landscape” in his European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, followed by two major German publications, by G. Schönbeck, Der Locus amoenus von Homer bis Horaz (1962) and W. Elliger, Die Darstellung der Landschaft in der griechischen Dichtung (1975), and two influential papers, “Landscape in Greek Poetry” by A. Parry, (1987), and “City Settings in Greek Poetry” by P. E. Easterling, (1989). In the last 20 years many books, colloquia, and collections of papers have been devoted to the representation of space in the ancient world,1 including the volume on Space in Ancient Greek Literature edited by I. J. F. de Jong (2012).
In this chapter I will explore some imaginary presentations of the various kinds of space in poetry and prose: the urban center (πόλις/πτόλις, πτολίεθρον, ἄστυ), its hinterland (agricultural farmland and pastures), and wilderness. I’ll begin with Homeric epic, “an authoritative source of the material for Greek mental map-making” (Easterling 1989, 4). I will move to tragedy, concentrating on the plays set at Troy and Athens, in order to compare them with Homeric Troy and Aristophanic Athens, and conclude with three famous descriptions of the locus amoenus, in Plato’s Phaedrus, Theocritus’s Idylls and Longus’s Daphnis and Chloe.
Let us start with the ecphrasis2 of Achilles’ shield (Il.18.483–607), and its two beautiful cities that juxtapose opposite aspects of the Homeric world, peace and war, town and countryside, “though in inverse proportion to the rest of the Iliad” (Taplin 1980, 12).
The description of the town at peace places side by side the private (a marriage celebration with brides “led from their chambers” and women standing “in their porches,” Il. 18.492; 497) and the public (a settlement of a law case in the agora by elders sitting on smooth stones, Il. 18.497; 503–4); while the description of the city under siege is limited to the rampart on which wives and children stand (Il. 18.514–15).
The countryside receives more attention. The description of the farmland, with scenes of plowing and reaping like those found in similes,3 is complemented by the description of a royal estate “with a thriving vineyard loaded with lovely golden clusters, and the grapes upon it were darkened” (Il. 18.561–2). There are also three scenes depicting herding. In the first a successful ambush is set amid typical bucolic scenery: “in a river where there was a watering place for animals, two shepherds came along with their flocks, playing happily on pipes,” before being killed (Il. 18.520–26). The second pastoral scene associates beauty (the cattle made of gold and tin) with realistic details (they come from the dung of the farmyard), and portrays two marauding lions catching a bull despite the efforts of herdsmen and dogs (Il. 18.573–87) – a favorite topic of lion similes (Lonsdale 1990, 41–2). The third, “a pasture large and in a lovely valley for the glimmering sheep flocks, with dwelling places upon it and covered shelters and sheepfolds” (Il. 18.587–9), is the only one which excludes violence.
But the shield does not reflect every aspect of the Iliadic world. It totally excludes mountains, forests, and woods. In the similes, these places, inhabited by wild beasts and visited by hunters, woodcutters, or by shepherds trying to catch an escaped bull,4 are the site of violent phenomena with rivers in spate, raging torrents, ferocious gales, snowstorms, and fires.5
“The principal narrative of the Iliad is tightly concentrated; … the action takes place in a small part of the Troad” (Buxton 2004, 149) including the “city of Priam,” the Achaean camp, and the plain between them. These settings are usually presented through scattered references; full descriptions are rare and reserved for places of critical narrative significance.
Ilium is first described through epithets emphasizing its sacredness,6 its greatness,7 its wealth (Il. 10.315; 18.289), its beauty (Il.18.512; 21.121), and the number of its inhabitants.8 Its territory, 003A4ροίη, is characterized by its fertile soil9 and its good horses (Il. 5.551; 16.576). As expected in a heroic world larger than life, the Homeric polis par excellence, “is bigger and better and more beautiful than any polis can have been in the late Bronze Age and the so-called Dark Centuries” (Hansen 2005, 16).
The town itself receives only a piecemeal description (Easterling 1989, 6–7). Given the status of the wall as a fundamental marker of the city and the action of the Iliad, pride of place is given to the citadel, which is “steep” (Il. 15. 71: αἰπύ; 9.419, 686; 13.773; 15.215, 257, 558; 17.328: αἰπεινή), “windswept” (Il. 8.499: ἠνεμόεσσαν) and “set on the brow of a hill (Il. 22.411: ὀϕρυόεσσα ), and to its ramparts with their towers and gates.
The acropolis, Pergamon, is occupied by the temples of Athena and Apollo.10 Since the meetings of the Trojans take place before the doors of Priam (Il. 2.788; 7.345–6), it is obvious that the agora is located there. Its most important building, “the beautiful palace of Priam” is given a long description in book 6.242–50, a book which is set entirely within the acropolis.
Close to the Achaean ships, there is the Greek camp, which is “a mirror image of Troy” (Haubold 2005, 35). Here also, the emphasis is on the walls surrounded by a deep ditch and a palisade (Il. 7.436–41). There is also an agora located close to the ships and the barracks of their leader, Agamemnon (Il. 7.382–3). The private space consists in the kings’ lodgings, conspicuous among them the tent of Achilles. Its construction, described in book 24.448–56, sets the scene for the entrance of Priam and the main action of Book 24.
The fights take place in the plain between the walls of Ilion and the Greek camp. Its landmarks, such as graves11 and trees,12 help to locate the action. But there is obviously “an emotional significance” (Griffin 1980, 112) in certain descriptions, such as the mention, during the struggle between Achilles and Hector (Il. 22.147–56), of “the sweet-running well springs of Skamandros” and “the fair washing places of stone where the wives of the Trojans and their fair daughters used to wash their shining garments, in earlier days, in peace, before the sons of the Achaeans came.”
In contrast with the “miserable mortals,” the “blissful gods” live on “radiant Olympus” (Il. 13.243). There, Zeus has a palace with golden floor and shining doors (Il. 4.1–4; 14.168) and Hephaistos has a house “indestructible, bright as stars, conspicuous among the gods, made of bronze” (Il. 18.370–71). When Zeus and Hera made love, “the earth beneath them sent up new growing grass, dewy clover, crocus and hyacinth, so thick and soft it lifted their bodies from the ground” (Il. 14.347–9).
The landscapes of the Odyssey are more diverse since the action is set not only in Ithaca, but also with Telemachus at Pylos and Sparta, and with Odysseus in mythical places such as Calypso’s island and Scheria.
Ithaca, which is defined by its mountain, “the tall, leaf-trembling and conspicuous Neritos” (Od. 9.21–2) differs from Troy. It is not a “sacred city,” and its epithets as well as its descriptions oscillate between negative and positive. It is rocky, rough, craggy, and surrounded by the sea,13 but also sunny.14 According to Telemachus, it is a place only “suited for raising goats,” however “it is lovelier than a place for rearing horses.”15 For Odysseus, it is “rugged but a good nurse of men,” and “sweeter to look at than any other place.”16 He is echoed by Athena who introduces the island to Odysseus by saying:
this is a rugged country and not for the driving of horses, but neither is it so unpleasant, though not widely shaped; for there is abundant grain for bread grown there; it produces wine, and there is always rain and the dew to make it fertile; it is good to feed goats and cattle, and timber is there of all sorts, and watering places good through all seasons
(Od. 13.242–7).
The urban center includes a meeting place which is the setting of various assemblies in books 2, 16, and 24. Its most important building is Odysseus’s palace, which is conspicuous,17 beautiful,18 lofty,19 large,20 and with a high roof.21 However, it is modest compared to Menelaus’s palace, which is praised by Telemachus in superlative terms (Od. 4.71–5).
Much more attention is paid to the farmland, which is the setting of the action in books 14–16 and 24: The farmstead of Eumaeus, located “in the remote part of the countryside” (Od. 24.150), is reached from the harbor by a rough path among forests (Od. 14.1–2). But the house itself is given some kind of epic grandeur. It has a porch (Od. 14.5) and its courtyard, “large and beautiful,” is “surrounded by a stone wall with wood copings” (Od. 14.5–7), a modest adaptation of the copings of the palaces of Alcinous and Odysseus (Od. 7.87: Alcinous and 17.267: Odysseus). Laertes’ farm, located “away in the countryside” (Od. 1.90), but closer to the city, is beautifully cultivated (Od. 24.205–6; 336), with a large number of fruit trees producing pears, apples and figs, and a vineyard with all kinds of grapes (Od. 23.139, 359; 24.336–44).
Two places in the countryside are also given special attention. First the cave of the Nymphs is carefully placed at the junction between the mythical world of Odysseus’s travels and the real world of Ithaca, a status symbolized by its two entrances, one for the men and the other for the gods. It is described twice, by the narrator and by Athena (Od. 13.102–12, 346–50), as a typical locus amoenus with “an olive tree with spreading leaves … nearby a cave that is shaded and pleasant, and sacred to the Nymphs … waters forever flowing.” Second, the fountain where Odysseus and Eumaeus meet Melanthios on their way to the palace:
They arrived at the fountain sweet-running and made of stone, and there the townspeople went for their water. Ithakos had made this, and Neritos and Polyktor, and around it was a grove of black poplars, trees that grow by water, all in a circle, and there was cold water pouring down from the rock above. Over it had been built an altar of the nymphs, and there all the wayfarers made their sacrifice.
(Od. 17.205–11)
But this idyllic setting strongly contrasts with the exchange of insults and curses which follows (Od. 17.212–53).
The ‘real’ world of Ithaca contrasts with mythical places, such as Mount Olympus and the Elysian Fields, where the gods and some heroes lead a pleasant and easy life (Od. 6.42–6; 4.563–8).
The island of Calypso, far from gods and men, is first portrayed as a place of delight: around the wide cave of the goddess is a luxuriant grove with alder, black poplar, and fragrant cypress, teeming with all kinds of birds and a vine that ripened with grape clusters, four fountains and soft meadows with parsley and violets (Od. 5.63–73). But it is also the place where Odysseus is endlessly weeping for a way home.
Similar contrasts exist in some settings of the Apologoi. The place where the Cyclops feeds on human flesh is “overgrown with laurels” (9.182–3) and set in a land reminiscent of golden age with its “crops all growing with no sowing and plowing, wheat, barley and grapes that yield wine from ample clusters swelled by the showers of Zeus” (Od. 9.109–11). And the “flowery meadow” of the Sirens is close to a “beach piled with boneheaps of men now rotted away” (Od. 12.45–6; 159).
The last stop on Odysseus’s journey, Scheria, lovely and fertile (Od. 7.18, 79 and 5.34), “far away from the men who eat bread” (Od. 6.8), functions as a transition between the mythical universe of Odysseus’s adventures and the real world of Ithaca, and combines various aspects of Homeric landscape. Far from the city, there is dense woodland that affords Odysseus a natural shelter (Od. 5.475–81), and washing places with abundant water (Od. 6.40; 85–7). Closer to the town, Odysseus finds “a glorious grove of poplars sacred to Athena near the road, and a spring runs there, and there is a meadow about it, and there is [Alcinous’s] estate and his flowering orchard” (Od. 6.291–6).
Introduced by the narrator in book 6.3–10, the town is described first by Nausicaa in book 6.262–7 and again by the narrator in book 7.43–45, 84–102, 112–33. It has “walls long and lofty fitted with stakes, a wonder to look at” (Od. 7.44–5), a “fair temple of Poseidon in a place of assembly fitted with stones dragged from the quarries” (Od. 6.266–7) and “polished stone seats” (Od. 8.6). Its main building is the “lofty palace of the king.” Like Menelaus’s house, it is “as shining as the sun and the moon” (Od. 7.84 = 4.45) and built with bronze, gold and silver (Od. 7.86–91). Its marvelous orchard (Od. 7.112–32) full of trees and vines bearing fruit throughout the year contrasts with the ‘real’ garden of Laertes, which gives fruit only in season and requires hard work (Od. 24.205–7, 244–7).
There are only two surviving plays set at Troy, both located in the gap between the Iliad and the Odyssey: Sophocles’ Ajax and Euripides’ Trojan Women.
The action of Ajax takes place after the Judgment of the Arms and concentrates exclusively on the Greeks and their camp. The scenic space is defined by Ajax’s barracks, identified with the wooden stage building at the back of the orchestra. It is supposed to be close to the ships, at the last position along the shore (Ajax 3–4; 218; 796: σκηνή; 190–91; 1407: κλισίαι), which is exactly the place assigned to Ajax in the Iliad (Il. 8.223–6). Its interior, first described by Athena and Tecmessa (Ajax 62–5; 218–20; 233–5), is made visible to the audience when Ajax, surrounded by the cattle he had killed, is rolled out on the ekkuklema (Ajax 346–7). The camp also includes, in the extra-scenic space, the barracks of the two commanders with its gates (Ajax 49) and, close to it, an agora where the Achaeans gather to revile Teucer (Ajax 721–2; 749–50).
The plain that extends beyond the camp is the setting of major events. First the meadow (Ajax 143–4; 603) where Ajax slaughtered the cattle before the beginning of the play and, second, “the baths and the meadows by the shore,” “the untrodden place” where the hero plans to go and wash himself (Ajax 654–5; 657) and bury Hector’s sword, and where the chorus and Tecmessa discover his body.
Allusions to precise buildings are exceptional. At 467, the wall which protects the Trojans (ἔρυμα 003A4ρώων), appears once as a possible setting of Ajax’s heroic death, whereas the ditch and the fence surrounding the Greek camp remind Agamemnon of the feat of Ajax who then saved the Greeks (Ajax 1273–9, see also Il. 15.415–18).
The Trojan landscape is usually described with vague and general terms (significantly, the only descriptive epithet attached to Troy is at 1190, τὰν εὐρώδη 003A4ροΐαν, “vast”) and mostly used to convey some information about the feelings of the speaker. Ajax complains that “the surging straits of the sea, the caves by the shore and the pastures of the coast” have long detained him about Troy (Ajax 412–15; cf. 419–20). He opposes the victorious campaign of his father Telamon who came back from the land of Ida having won the first prize for valor and his own status in the same place, deprived of his honor by the Argives (Ajax 434–40) and hated by Troy and by these plains (Ajax 459). His final address to “the streams and rivers of this place here and the plains of Troy” (Ajax 862–3), is but a way of emphasizing his isolation. For Teucer, surrounded by the hostile Greek army, and for the chorus who endured ceaseless torments there, Troy is also “a miserable place” (Ajax 600–603, 1021–2, 1185–90, 1210: λυγρᾶς … 003A4ροίας).
Euripides’ Trojan Women is focused on the fate of the women, whose barracks is represented by the skene (Tro. 32–3 ὑπὸ στέγαις / ταῖσδ’, 871 δόμοις γὰρ τοῖσδ’ ἐν αἰχμαλωτικοῖς). In this play Euripides turns upside down the Homeric image of Troy and uses the Trojan landscape to convey a sense of total disaster (see Poole 1976). What was once a large city (μεγαλόπολις) has become a non city (ἄπολις; Tro. 1292–3; see Croally 1994, 192–4). Right from the beginning, Poseidon describes a city smoldering and sacked (Tro. 8–9) and the final 50 lines are full of references to the disappearance of the city, razed to the ground with fire. Allusions to Troy’s famous rivers, Scamander (Tro. 29; 374–5; 1151–2), and the ‘fair flowing’ Simois (Tro. 810; see Il. 6.34) are all associated with death and mourning. Like the similes of the countryside in the Iliad, the beautiful description of Troy’s surroundings with “the ivy covered glades of Mount Ida, their rivers with melting snow, … the abode which is holy and filled with light” (Tro. 1067–70) conjures up an image of rest and peace which intensifies the horror of the city’s destruction. The splendid walls built by Poseidon and Apollo, “made of polished stones” and “worked by rule” (Tro. 4–6; 46; 814) are always associated with destruction and death: they were already once destroyed by Heracles (Tro. 814–16; 819–21) and are used before their second and complete demolition as a place from which to throw Astyanax (Tro. 725; 783–5; 1120–22; 1134; 1173–4). The sacred groves are desolate and the gods’ shrines are running with blood (Tro. 15–16; 562–3). The altar of Zeus has been the setting of Priam’s murder (Tro. 16–17), the temple of Athena has been outraged by the rape of Cassandra (Tro. 67–70), and Polyxena was slaughtered at the tomb of Achilles (Tro. 39–40; 622–3). The houses, once visited by divine love (Tro. 841–5), where joyful celebrations took place (Tro. 544–50; 602–3; 745–6), are overrun by fire (Tro. 1300). “The fresh bathing places and the racecourses where once Ganymede exercised are gone” (Tro. 833–5).
“The well built city of Athens, realm of high hearted Erechtheus” which was named only once in the Iliad together with the rich shrine of Athena (Il. 2.546–9) is used as a setting for four suppliant plays: Aeschylus’s Eumenides, Euripides’ Heraclidae and Suppliant Women and Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus.
In Eumenides, from line 235, when the action moves from Delphi to Athens, the scenic space is “the city of Pallas” (Eum. 19; 772; 1017), successively assimilated to the Acropolis and the temple of Athena with its ancient statue of the goddess (Eum. 80; 242; 259), and to the Areopagus. This hill served, in the time of Theseus, as a campsite for the Amazons when they invaded Attica (Eum. 685–7), and is used as an indirect way of reminding the audience of one of most celebrated exploits of mythical Athens. In Eumenides it becomes the setting of the law court established by Athena to decide the case opposing Orestes and the Erinyes. At the end of the play, the Erinyes are offered by Athena “a place to settle in the recesses of this just land, sitting on gleaming thrones hard by the hearths” (Eum. 805–7). This place, which was in fact on the Areopagus (Paus. 1.28.6) is said to be close to the house of Erechtheus that is the temple of Athena Polias (Eum. 854–5). This is a slight liberty with topography, but a significant way of translating in geographical terms the reconciliation between the Olympians and the chthonian gods and the close association of the Areopagus with the Semnai.
The action of the Heraclidae takes place in the Tetrapolis of Marathon (Hcld. 32–4; 80–81),22 at the border of Attica (Hcld. 37–8). The scenic space includes an altar of Zeus, as demonstrated by the deictics (Hcld. 121; 243–4; 249) and, in the background, a temple represented by the skene (Hcld. 42). But Marathon is consistently blurred with Athens in such a way that the play seems to take place not in Marathon but in Athens. If the location of the palace of Demophon (Hcld. 340; 343; 347) is left unclear, there are many reasons to think, with V. J. Rosivach (1978), that the altar of Zeus Agoraios is here purposely confused with the altar of Zeus Eleutherios in the Athenian agora. Offstage, the only place of interest is the temple of Athena at Pallene which Eurystheus passes in his chariot in retreat (Hcld. 849–50) and which will become the place of his tomb (Hcld. 1030–31).
The Suppliant Women is set at Eleusis (Suppl. 1–2),23 in the precinct of the temple and the holy hearths of Kore and Demeter (Suppl. 30; 33–4; 63–4; 271; 290; 938). The scenic space also includes the cliff hanging over the sanctuary where Evadne appears at the end of the play before leaping into the funeral pyre of her husband (Suppl. 1016). The extra-scenic space comprises the funeral pyre of Capaneus and his tomb (Suppl. 937–8; 980–83); further away the sacred well of Callichoros (Suppl. 359; see Paus. 1.38.6); and, close by, the place where the knife of the sacrifice associated with the oath sworn by Adrastus is to be buried, “near the seven pyres” of the Argive leaders and “beside the triple crossroads of the goddess, hard by the turning to the Isthmus” (Suppl. 1205–7; 1211–12; cf. Paus. 1.39.1). There is also, in Athens, the royal palace of Aethra, Aegeus and Theseus (Suppl. 29; 360; 1197). Altogether, “local allusions … in the Supplices are virtually limited to the prologue and Athena’s final speech” (Krummen 1993, 203).
In Oedipus at Colonus, “the details of the Athenian landscape strategically transformed and transferred onto stage” (Rodighiero 2012, 57), are given much attention, as demonstrated recently by many scholars.24
The scenic space is described in the prologue by Antigone at lines 16–18: “this place is sacred, one can easily guess, with the laurel, the olive and the vine growing everywhere, and inside it many feathered nightingales make their music.” It is also untouched by civilization: the rock where Oedipus sits is “unhewn” and “ignores the axe” (O.C. 19; 101). An anonymous inhabitant of Colonus complements this description by stressing that this ground “cannot be trodden without pollution […]. [It is] inviolable and uninhabited. For it belongs to the dread goddesses, daughters of Earth and Darkness […]. August Poseidon holds it and the fire-bearing god, the Titan Prometheus, is also here, and the spot where you are treading is called the Brazen-footed threshold of this land, the bulwark of Athens” (O.C. 37; 39–40; 54–8). This is a “localist reworking of the established literary motif ” (Rodighiero 2012, 61) that made Athens into “the bulwark of Hellas.”25 The chorus of Colonan elders echoes these themes in the parodos (O.C. 124–8).
The first stasimon, with its famous praise of “the choicest rural dwelling, white Colonus” (O.C. 669–70) enriches the description of the grove and transforms it into an ideal locus amoenus with a fine climate (like Olympus, Colonus is “never vexed by the sun or by the wind of many winters,” O.C. 678–9, see Od. 6.43–4), lush vegetation and abundant waters (O.C. 672–5; 681–91), and is inhabited by Dionysus, the Chorus of the Muses and Aphrodite of the golden reins (O.C. 678–80; 691–4).
Major events of the play are also set offstage: the altar of Poseidon, where Theseus performed a sacrifice (888–9) and Polyneices sat as suppliant (1156–9), is “located among the high rocks” (O.C. 1493); Oedipus’s daughters were kidnapped by Creon and rescued by Theseus at “the pasture west of Oea’s snow white rock” (O.C. 1059–61); and the messenger describes the place of Oedipus’s passing at Colonus (1590–1603) with a mixture of mythical allusions (its bronze threshold, recalling the bronze-footed threshold of the prologue, explicitly associated with Theseus and Peirithous’s descent into the underworld) and geographical precision (“the Thorician rock” and “the hill of verdant Demeter that was in view” 26).
The prominence given to Colonus at the expense of Athens is made possible by a series of geographical displacements. In the prologue Colonus annexes the Areopagus with the sanctuary of the Semnai, and the Academy with Prometheus’s altar.27 The first stasimon includes both the Academy, through allusions to the gods who had a temple or an altar there28 and to the waters of the Cephisus, which was flowing nearby (O.C. 685–91; see Wycherly 1978, 222), and also the Acropolis with its “unconquerable and self-renewing olive tree, a terror to the spears of enemies” (O.C. 698–9). This latter is an obvious allusion to the miraculous rebirth of the sacred tree after the burning of the Acropolis by Xerxes but also to Archidamus’s sparing of the sacred olives when he invaded Attica.29 The location at Colonus of the disappearance of Oedipus and the pact between Theseus and Peirithous may be Sophoclean innovations as well, as a comparison with Pausanias suggests.30
To conclude, in Greek tragedy, imaginary Athens is not “a representation of a particular historical setting or cult,” but “a complex association of the myths, institutions and places of Attica … which demands interpretation in its own terms” (Easterling 2007, 134).
“Comedy […] celebrates its local, Athenian nature more concretely and pervasively than the most patriotic surviving tragedies” (Crane 1997, 201).31 Most of the surviving Aristophanic comedies are indeed located in Athens and the exceptions either start from Athens (Birds) or return to it at the end (Frogs).
The Aristophanic stage is characterized by its fluidity and its interlacing of various spaces: in Acharnians, the action is located first at the theater, then at the Pnyx; it moves to the countryside with the house of Dikaiopolis, before returning to the city with the house of Euripides and the parabasis which addresses the audience; and the conclusion is again set in the countryside with the houses of Dikaiopolis and Lamachos (Lanza 2000).
Comic Athens is a multifaceted reality. It oscillates between praise and parody, countryside and town, private and public, reality and myth.
In Clouds (300–310), Athens is celebrated as “the rich land of Pallas and a place of valiant men,” famous for its mysteries and its festivals. At the end of Knights (1323) ancient Athens is portrayed again as “the splendid place, the violet-wreathed, the much envied.” But in Acharnians Aristophanes makes fun of these inflated Pindaric praises.32
From Acharnians (425 BCE) to Peace (421 BCE), we are offered two opposite views of countryside, a familiar reality for fifth-century Athenians, as demonstrated by the numerous agricultural metaphors and similes.33 On the one hand, the farmland is devastated by war, emptied of its inhabitants, with its vines trampled (Ach. 183; 232; 512; 986–7), its fig-trees cut, its wheat and wine jars broken, and its cattle raided (Pax 628–31; 703; 1022–3). On the other, with the return of Peace and her companions, Opora (Harvest) and Theoria (Festival), a land of Cockaigne, where one enjoys “the life of the farmer, unwashed, unswept, litter-jumbled, bursting with honeybees, bloated with sheep and olives” (Nub. 43–5; cf. Equ. 805–7), with its smells (Pax 525–6; 530–32, Nub. 50–52), tastes (e.g. Pax 1127–70)34 and simple pleasures. But in Birds (414 BCE) or in Frogs (405 BCE), the attractive life in the country becomes an escapist dream enjoyed only by flying birds, or frogs and initiates in the flowery marshes or meadows of the underworld.35
In the city, public spaces are perverted. The Prytaneum was the place where ambassadors, public benefactors and victors of major athletic contests were honored and entertained at public expense. But it is only in the Underworld that this privilege is granted to the best artist (Ran. 762–70). In Aristophanes’ Athens it is usually conferred to swindlers, demagogues or oracle- mongers,36 and denied to the comic poet Cratinus despite his many victories (Equ. 535–6). The same goes for the Pnyx, where the people’s meetings always go wrong. In Acharnians the assembly, at first unattended, is finally adjourned without any result. In Knights, Demos, the People, when sitting on the Pnyx is said to behave like an idiot (Equ. 751–5). In Wasps (31–6) this point is made graphically in a dream portraying the assembly as a meeting of sheep harangued by a voracious whale.
The fundamental distinction between private and public spaces is often blurred (Auger 1997, 362–9). In Acharnians and Wasps a private space is transformed before our eyes into a public and civic space: the public market is moved in front of Dikaiopolis’s house (Ach. 719–29) and Bdelycleon’s home is changed into a law court with the help of various domestic implements (Vesp. 853–5; 857–9). Conversely, in Women at the Assembly the law courts and the porticoes are transformed into men’s quarters where public meals will be served, the speaker’s platform is used to store mixing bowls and water jugs, and the agora is made into a kitchen by the utensils brought onstage (Eccl. 675–8; 728–45).
Real and mythical realms are amalgamated in the Frogs. The road from Athens to Hades is supposed to have, like any ordinary road, bakeries, whorehouses, rest areas, and inns (Ran. 109–14). It has even been suggested that in depicting the journey of Dionysus, Aristophanes kept close to facts of Athenian topography with the Herakleion at Kynosarges and the sanctuary of Dionysus in the marshes at Agrai.37
Phaedrus, a dialogue between Socrates and Phaedrus, is unusual for the choice and presentation of its scenery. It is the only Platonic dialogue in which Socrates is “out of place”:38 the man who never set a foot beyond the city walls39 goes to the countryside in order to engage in philosophical conversation. In contrast with other Platonic dialogues where elaborate settings are usually described by a narrator, “Our only access to the background against which Socrates and Phaedrus walk and speak is through their comments on it” (Ferrari 1990, 2–3). The spatial indications sprinkled over the text are meant to reveal the characters of the speakers and orient the reader to the dialogue’s major philosophical concerns.40
Phaedrus, who comes from listening to Lysias and is going for a walk outside the city walls for the sake of health (Phaedr. 227a), is looking for a place where he can recite Lysias’s speech in comfort. Since he is barefoot, he chooses to walk right in the stream –which is “easiest and pleasant especially at this hour and season” (Phaedr. 229a) – toward “a very tall plane tree” since “it is shady with a light breeze, there is grass on which to sit or better to lie down” and a stream with “lovely, pure and clear water” (Phaedr. 229a–b). It is fitting scenery, therefore, for Nymphs and a likely spot for the rape of Oreithuia by Boreas. But Socrates quickly dismisses the mythical aspects of the setting, since he is interested only in the question of the truth and refuses to endorse any clever interpretation of myths.
While Socrates is initially concerned only with the quietness (ἐν ἡσυχίᾳ) provided by such a setting (Phaedr. 229a), he surprisingly bursts into extravagant praise of the scenery:
By Hera it really is a beautiful resting place (καλή γε ἡ καταγωγή). The plane tree is tall and very broad; the chaste tree lofty and wonderfully shady (τὸ σύσκιον πάγκαλον), and since it is in full bloom, the whole place is filled with its fragrance. From under the plane tree the loveliest (χαριεστάτη) spring runs with very cool water, as our feet can testify. The place appears to be dedicated to Achelous and some of the Nymphs, if we can judge from the statues and votive offerings. Feel the freshness of the air and how pretty and pleasant it is (ὡς ἀγαπητὸν καὶ σϕόδρα ἡδύ); how it echoes with the summery, clear song of the cicadas’ chorus! The most exquisite thing of all (πάντων δὲ κομψότατον), of course, is the grassy slope: it rises so gently that you can rest your head perfectly (παγκάλως) when you lie down on it. You’ve really been the most marvelous guide, my dear Phaedrus”
(Phaedr. 230b–c).
As pointed out by Ferrari (1990, 16), ancient commentators such as Hermias already noted how “Socrates’ description of the bower has the air of a formal rhetorical panegyric. Socrates’ language is marked not only with elements of a generally sophisticated and elevated style, but by those typical features of rhetorical praise: exhaustiveness and exaggeration.” Is this a mere caricature of sophistic panegyrics? In some way it is. But I would like to point out some significant differences. The mention of the symbolic chaste tree, the appeal to smell (the fragrance of the chaste tree) and sounds (the sweet song of the cicadas) instead of sight, and the emphasis on the sacred character of the place (the statues and votive offerings to Achelous and some of the Nymphs) suggest that the enthusiasm inspired by the material beauty of the landscape is, for the philosopher, only a reminder of the true beauty that the souls once perceived when they saw “the plain where truth stands” and “the pasture [which] has the grass that is the right food for the best part of the soul” (Phaedr. 248b–c).
Also orienting our interpretation in the same direction is the reappearance of the setting at the transitional point of the dialogue, when the subject shifts from eros to rhetoric. Socrates describes the origin of the cicadas (Phaedr. 258e–259d) in order to keep the interlocutors talking, instead of nodding off in the midday heat.
To conclude, Plato’s displacement of Socrates in a locus amoenus close to a spring sacred to the Nymphs is not “un décor occasionnel” (Motte 1963, 465), but a way to introduce us to a different Socrates, a man possessed by the Nymphs, inspired by divine madness and reminded of a transcendent reality by what he sees here (Phaedr. 249e–250a).
Theocritus’s bucolic Idylls are not read today as “a plain image of the way of life amongst the peasants of his country,” as Lady Montagu read them, but as “a representation of the poet’s literary imagination”41 and a combination of reality and myth.42 The hexameter, which had been regularly associated with high topics and heroic or divine characters, is used by Theocritus to create an alternative to Homeric poetry while drawing heavily on it and the literary tradition it inaugurated.43
Indeed, the Idylls provide an impressive number of references to fauna, geographic particulars and, “in the small compass of about 1,200 lines Theocritus mentions nearly twice as many plants as Homer does in the whole of Iliad and Odyssey” (Lindsell 1937, 78). The inhabitants of the Idylls are humble characters, such as shepherds, herdsmen or reapers, whose rusticity and coarseness are especially emphasized in Idyll 5.
But some details are clearly contrary to real facts, as in several examples from Idyll 7: cicadas, that sing only in the sun, sing in the shade (Id. 7.138–9); the final concert includes birds that, according to ornithologists, never sing during this period (Id. 7.140–41; cf. Arnott 1984, 335–6); and trees that grow only in woods are put together with pear, apple, and plum trees that are found only in orchards (Id. 7.135–6; 144–6). In the same Idyll “the main function of the place names… is not topographical but literary: they create a map of past poetry by associating locations with authors who lived in them or wrote about them” (Krevans 1983, 20).
In the ‘mythical’ Idylls 11, 13, and 22, heroes are set out of place, in a bucolic surrounding. In Idyll 11 the realistic description of the ugliness of the Cyclops (Id. 11.30–33) contrasts with an alluring evocation of his environment. The Homeric description of his cave (cf. Od. 9.182–3) combines with an ironical echo of the Homeric Cyclops’ praise of Odysseus’s wine as comparable to ambrosia and nectar (cf. Od. 9.359):
“Here there are bays, and here slender cypresses, here is somber ivy, and here the vine’s sweet fruit. Here there is ice-cold water which dense-wooded Etna sends from its white snow – a drink fit for the gods (ποτὸν ἀμβρόσιον).”
(Id. 11.45–8).
In Idyll 13, the Argonauts are set “in a meadow with mighty store of litter for their couches, where they cut sharp sedges and thick galingale “ (Id. 13.34–5); Hylas meets the dreadful Nymphs in “a spring in a hollow” surrounded with “abundant reeds, fresh green maidenhair and dark blue celandine, carpets of wild celery and creeping dogstooth grass” (Id. 13.39–42); and Heracles rampages “through untrodden thorn brakes” (Id. 13.64). In Idyll 12 the Dioscuri find the awesome spectacle of the giant Amycus in a place similar to Calypso’s cave in the Odyssey, with an “ever flowing spring brimming with pure water,” tall trees and “fragrant flowers” (Id. 22.32–43).
The scenery is presented in various ways: scattered details about the actual setting given in dialogues or monologues; full descriptions made by fictional characters or set into songs within the poems; ecphraseis or similes.
An illustration of these various presentations is to be found in Idyll 1. The dialogue between Thyrsis and an anonymous goatherd first sets the scene of their encounter with a range of deictics, leaving open the choice between two possibilities, the one offered by Thyrsis: “There is sweet music in that pine tree’s whisper, goatherd, there by the spring… Come and sit here …where tamarisks grow and the land slopes away from this mound” (Id. 1.1–2; 12–13); and the other by his interlocutor: “Let’s sit here under this elm, facing Priapus’s image and the spring, there by the oaks and that shepherds’ seat” (Id. 1.21–3). Thyrsis complements this geographical precision when he introduces himself as “Thyrsis of Etna” (Id. 1.65). The landscape appears also through a simile: “Shepherd, your song is sweeter than the water tumbling there from the rock above” (Id. 1.7–8). Following that is the bucolic ecphrasis of a κισσύβιον (1.27, cf. Od. 9.346), a wooden bowl, which replaces the epic ecphrasis of Achilles’ shield. Its three scenes are framed not by a cosmic vision of the world encircled by Ocean but by a floral motif more adapted to the genre: “at his lips winds an ivy pattern, ivy dotted with golden clusters” (Id. 1.29–30). In the first scene, a woman is standing between two men without any indication of location (Id. 1.32–8). “Next to them an old fisherman standing on a jagged rock” (Id. 1.39–40) and “not far from this sea-beaten old man there is a vineyard heavily laden with dark ripe grape-clusters” with a boy “perched on a dry stone wall” (Id. 1.45–7). The song of Thyrsis also alludes to places familiar to the Nymphs: “the lovely valleys of Peneus or Pindus” (Id. 1.66–7; 69; 72; 77), the mountains and the woods inhabited by wild beasts (Id. 1.71–2; 115), and the thickets, woods and groves once haunted by Daphnis, as well as the rivers where he watered his herds (Id. 1.116–18). In this song, Hermes is coming “from the mountain” (Id. 1.77), Cypris is dismissed to Anchises and Mount Ida where “oaks and galingale grow and the bees hum melodiously about their hives” (Id. 105–7). Pan is set far away in Arcadia “in the high mountains of Lycaeus” or in “great Maenalus and the peak of Helice, and that lofty tomb of the son of Lycaon a wonder even to the gods” (Id. 1.123–6).
As in Homeric similes, mountains where “thorns and brambles grow everywhere” (Id. 4.57), “wild forest” (Id. 22.36) and woods, remain a dangerous space. But real shepherds also visit them, pasturing their sheep (Id. 3.1–2) or bringing down an escaped bull (Id. 4.35–6; cf. Il. 13.571–72). There the goatherd Lycidas composed his poems and his fellow poet Simichidas was taught by the Nymphs (Id. 7.51, 91–2).
In the Idylls the countryside is not only a landscape, but an environment where characters enjoy sensuous pleasures, as demonstrated by the frequency of adjectives such as pleasant (ἁδύς), tender (μαλακός), soft (ἀπαλός), and sweet (γλυκύς). Except for Idyll 4 and its caricatured realism, unpleasant elements such as thorns and brambles or painful work are eliminated or set in a distance.
Sometimes the description is reduced to a single detail, a spring or a pine (Id. 3). In contrast, in Idyll 5, it is doubled when Lacon first invites Comatas to sit with him: “Come and sit here in this grove, under this olive tree…; here water drips cool, there is grass for our couch and grasshoppers sing” (31–4); and Comatas then proposes a far more pleasant setting: “Over here galingale grows, and oaks, and here bees hum with sweet music about their hives. Here two springs give chill water, and birds chirp on trees. The shade too is deeper, and cone-showers drop from the pine overhead” (45–9).
Idyll 7, which recaps all the major themes of the bucolic poems (Payne 2006, 116), transforms a real place set on the island of Cos into a bucolic fiction echoing the cave of Calypso or the garden of Alcinous. It emphasizes the happy satisfaction of the characters who “sank down with pleasure on deep-piled couches of sweet rushes and vine leaves freshly stripped from the bush” (132–4), their enjoyment of the breeze (“many poplars and elms were swaying over our heads,” 135–6) and the shade (139), and above all the music of the landscape with the murmur of the water, the chatter of the cicadas, the muttering of the tree-frogs, the song of larks and finches, the moaning of the dove and the humming of the bees (136–42). There is also an appeal to smell: “everything was very fragrant of the rich harvest, fragrant of the fruit” (143). Following this is a picture of an ideal world of plenty: “Pears rolled in abundance by our feet and apples by our sides/young trees hung down to the ground, laden with plums” (144–6) – a paradoxical echo of the description, in the Odyssey, of Tantalus’s punishment: “at his feet black earth which a god dried away” and “above his head, trees with lofty branches pouring fruits, pears, pomegranates and apples with shining fruits, sweet figs and abundant olives” he could not reach (Od. 11.588–90). In the conclusion of Idyll 7, taste is not forgotten, with the mention of the wine: “and the four-year seal was removed from the top of their wine jars” (147). But this wine is sublimated through a comparison with its mythical predecessors, the wine that “the old man Chiron set before Heracles in the rocky cave of Pholos” and “the nectar which persuaded the shepherd by the Anapus, Polyphemus to dance about the sheepfold with his feet” (148–53).
Longus’s pastoral romance (cf. Elliger 1975, 402–16; Tilg, ch. 16, p. 258, in this volume), probably to be dated to the second half of the second century (Morgan 2004, 2), has been justly defined as a “hybrid between the conventional novel (albeit eccentrically modified) and a setting derived substantially from Theocritean pastoral” (Morgan and Harrison 2008, 220). The prologue gives us some guidance for the interpretation of the novel. It is not a direct representation of reality, but an ecphrasis of a painting admired in Lesbos by the narrator, explained to him by an exegete, with a response to it in writing.44 It is informed by the perspective of the narrator, a visitor from the city (he came there for hunting) whose rhetoric and learnedness contrasts with the naivety of the heroes. The prologue introduces the central themes of the novel: city and countryside, nature and art (τέχνη), eros and mimesis. It also suggests the superiority of art over nature. Indeed, the setting of the paintings, “a grove (ἄλσος) with many trees and flowers irrigated by running waters” was beautiful (καλόν). But the picture (γραϕὴ) was more delightful (τερπνοτέρα) still, combining outstanding technique with amorous adventure” (Prologue 1.1). The reader will discover only at the end of the novel that these paintings were dedicated to the Nymphs by the two heroes (4.39.2).
The contrast between town and countryside, mostly implicit in Theocritus’s Idylls, is made explicit right from the beginning by Longus, who opens his novel with a panoramic view of “a city on Lesbos called Mytilene, of great size and beauty” (1.1.1) followed by a presentation of “the country estate (ἀγρός) of a wealthy man, a most beautiful possession” including “a mountain where wild animals lived, plains where corn grew, slopes planted with vineyards and pastures where flocks grazed and the sea lapped on the soft sand of an expanse of beach.” These several aspects of the estate, which is the setting of nearly all the novel, are not given equal attention. The farmland, fields and vineyards appear only occasionally in books 1, 2 and 445 with the description of the summer (1.23.1) and in book 4 when the owner Dionysophanes comes to visit his estate (4.13.4). The focus is on the uncultivated space, the pastures where Daphnis and Chloe graze their flocks and the hill (ὄρος), forest (ὕλη) and woods (δρυμός) nearby.
In the novel, forests are usually a place for hunting (2.13.4), inhabited by wolves (1.11.1), and by a wood dove whose singing gives Daphnis an opportunity to recount an etiological myth, maybe inspired by the story of the origin of the cicadas in Phaedrus.46 They are also, as in some Homeric similes, visited by shepherds herding their cows or cutting foliage to feed their kids.47 In book 3.15–20 they become the setting of Lykainion and Daphnis’s love affair. The scenery of the two most important events set there – the discovery of the two heroes by Lamon and Dryas and the attempt of Dorcon to rape Chloe – is given a detailed presentation. The place where Daphnis is found is a mixture of wilderness, “an oak-spinney, a bramble thicket and ivy creeping” and locus amoenus: “there was soft grass where the baby lay” (1.1.2). The cave of the Nymphs, referred to often48 and the setting of some major episodes later on – the dream of Lamon and Dryas, the bath of Daphnis, the oath of Chloe, the pastoral feast offered by Dionysophanes to the villagers49 – is more fully described, with an emphasis on its size and shape, the water bubbling and “the velvety meadow of lush soft grass” (1.4.1–3). It looks back to book 13 of the Odyssey, but significantly introduces art into a natural landscape by replacing the stone-looms of the Nymphs with their statues. In contrast, the description of the place where Dorcon, attempting to rape Chloe, conceals himself in the guise of a wolf – a disguise inspired by the passage of Plato’s Phaedrus where Socrates compares the sexual appetite to that of wolves for lambs (Morgan 2004, 168) – is a reflection of the wilderness of his character: “the spring was in a deep hollow and the whole area around it was covered with fierce thorns, stunted juniper bushes and thistles” (1.20.3).
The pastures (νομή) where the two heroes graze their flocks are often named, but never described. They are marked only by two trees, the usual oak (δρῦς or ϕηγός) where they sit50 and the pine (πίτυς) close to the statue of Pan.51
The description of the landscape is usually replaced in the novel by a description of the seasons, a “theme privileged by rhetoricians,”52 that “articulates the seasonal progression of the narrative … and proleptically mirrors the affective development of the heroes” (Morgan 2012, 547). I quote only the first one: “It was the start of the spring. The flowers were all abloom in hedgerow, meadow, and mountain. Now there was buzzing of bees, music of songbirds, skipping of newborn sheep. The lambs skipped on the mountains, the bees buzzed in the meadows, the birds filled the thickets with their song” (1.9.1). Morgan’s commentary accurately points out its rhetorical character: “the arrangement is elaborately artificial and based on rhetorical principles: the landscape is divided into three elements, each associated with a different species of local fauna,… every motif of this description has its original in literary pastoral” (Morgan 2012, 541).
The two major descriptions of landscape are devoted to a garden (κῆπος) of Philetas and a park (παράδεισος) of Dionysophanes. This choice is in itself significant. Whereas the bucolic poet proposes an idealized portrait of the countryside at large, Longus privileges two spaces that combine nature and art in various proportions. With the garden of Philetas, a creation of human labor (2.3.3), the emphasis is put on the fertilization by nature (Zeitlin 1990, 444–7). If its flowers and trees are so beautiful it is because, as Eros, the powerful principle that underlies all creation, says, “they are watered with the water I have washed in” (2.3.3–5.5). In contrast, the park of Dionysophanes is tended by Lamon who “cleaned the springs so that the water in them would be clean, and removed the dung from the yard so its smell would not offend, and tidied the park so it would look beautiful” (4.1.2). This demonstrates the primacy of art, even if the park includes wild trees and, next to flowers made by art, some which the earth bore. It is protected by a wall and organized according to a precise pattern. The wild trees are planted in such a way that “their natural growth seemed the product of art.” Occupying an elevated situation, it offers to its owners “a fine view over the plain… and a fine view over the sea” like the pleasing prospects enjoyed by eighteenth-century English lords53 and was made to give pleasure all the year round: “There was shade in summer, in spring flowers, in autumn grapes to pick, and fruit in every season” (4.2.6). Like the cave of the prologue, it has at its very center a temple with paintings on Dionysiac themes. It perfectly encapsulates the specificity of a novel where the real harvest of the grapes is replaced by its image, with only the prime bunches left on the stem for the pleasure of the visitors from the city.54
Chalkia 1986 is a thorough study of space in Euripides’ tragedies. De Jong 2012 is a useful but uneven collection of papers on space in Greek literature. Elliger 1975 is a good survey of landscape in Greek poetry. In Hansen 2005 see in particular the papers of Johannes Haubold, “ The Homeric Polis,” pp. 25–48; and Patricia E. Easterling, “The image of the polis in Greek tragedy,“ pp.49–72. Krevans 1983 is a landmark paper on Theocritus’s Idylls. Schönbeck 1962 presents a good survey of the locus amoenus in Greek and Latin literature.