Nicholas Baechle
αἴνει δὲ παλαιὸν μὲν οἶνον, ἄνθεα δ’ ὕμνων νεωτέρων.
(Praise old wine, but fresh blooms of songs.)
Pind. Ol. 9.48–9
Anyone who reads Greek poetry has been pulled up short by the beauty and richness of striking passages – similes in Homer,1 images in Pindar, metaphors in Aeschylus. But what would count as a successful use of a poetic device for a Greek audience? To begin with, what counts as a device? And how are we, at such a remove historically and culturally, to gauge what success might mean? For the sake of argument: poetic devices call attention to themselves through a deviation from a narrative line – as with ecphrasis or simile – or a perceptible thickening of the poetic quality of the language – as with metaphor or pictorial description – or by both means. And a successful device, as opposed to the inert or merely imitative, is whatever is perceived as such by an audience. This definition of a successful device sounds circular but helps us keep an eye on the complexities of our hermeneutic position. We are more conscious of trying to locate our interpretation within the aesthetic and interpretative horizon of expectation of the original audience, and we are reminded that our own horizon of expectation results from a history of reception (Jauss 1967/1982 and Holub 1989, 57–69). More positively, these definitions focus on the open-ended potential of poetic devices; they allowed the poet the possibility of reorienting his audience’s attention to expressive resources allowed by the tradition and to the skill displayed in their creative appropriation. Greek poets were working within a tradition constantly re-elaborating itself and composing for an audience, or for readers, with a cultivated sense of poetic possibility. And since each use of a device was new, an audience member or reader was alive to further possibility, a realization of a device that was pleasurable, engaging, even surprising or unsettling.
Given the range of devices available and the nature of the tradition, simultaneously so rich and so fragmented, only a sketch can be attempted here. An extensive taxonomy, as in the rhetorical tradition, is not possible. Nor is it possible to do justice to the history of particular devices. Offered instead are heuristically conceived interpretative discussions of three treatments of ecphrasis, and of other devices bound with them in the same poetic contexts.2 Three poets, working within diverse cultural horizons, will be considered – the composer of Hesiod’s Shield, Apollonius Rhodius, and Euripides – and the focus will be on their responses to and uses of the kind of ecphrasis that begins with Homer’s description of Achilles’ shield. The aim is to make use of a particularly fruitful example to illustrate a number of the possibilities opened up through the poet’s reorientation of the audience’s attention. These are both thematic, given that such devices thus become noticeable parts of the poem’s workings, and intertextual, given the poet’s appropriation of the genre he was working in and his relation to other parts of the tradition. But we cannot forget the novelty of a performance or text, and the sheer pleasure an audience or readers took in poetry as an event unfolding in the moment.
The Shield is a short epic narrative of Heracles’ fight with the robber Cycnus, and with his father Ares, and is dated to the late seventh or early sixth century (Janko 1986, 42–3). It has survived in the manuscript tradition because it was attributed to Hesiod and embedded in his Catalogue of Women (Most 2006, lv–lix). As the title indicates, its most prominent feature is an extended ecphrasis describing Heracles’ shield, and it has often been seen as the work of a second- or third-rate poet emulating the ecphrasis of Iliad 18.3 But both the limitations of the poet and his obvious efforts to please his audience are in fact valuable. The text allows us to focus on a basic question easily overlooked by modern readers preoccupied with textual interpretation and historical contextualization: how did poetic devices open up a shared and familiar space for enjoyment of the poet’s skill and inventiveness?
The description of a shield is an iconic generic device, clearly bounded, which by interrupting the narrative calls attention to the unfolding of inventive description.4 Moreover, because this form of ecphrasis was both notional and traditional, it invited elaboration.5 As various critics have noted, in addition to being disproportionately long in relation to the surrounding narrative, this ecphrasis is both longer than Homer’s and has a larger number of scenes. Apparently, the realization of the device seemed to the poet to demand excess and expansion – and he delivered. Visible in flashes, however, is a creative response to what we can assume were many previous ecphrastic descriptions:
Ἐν δ’ ἦν ἠυκόμου Δανάης τέκος, ἱππότα Περσεύς,
οὔτ’ ἄρ’ ἐπιψαύων σάκεος ποσὶν οὔθ’ ἑκὰς αὐτοῦ,
θαῦμα μέγα ϕράσσασθ’, ἐπεὶ οὐδαμῇ ἐστήρικτο
[. . .].
αὐτὸς δὲ σπεύδοντι καὶ ἐρρίγοντι ἐοικὼς
Περσεὺς Δαναïδης ἐτιταίνετο· ταὶ δὲ μετ’ αὐτὸν
Γοργόνες ἄπλητοί τε καὶ οὐ ϕαταὶ ἐρρώοντο
ἱέμεναι μαπέειν· ἐπὶ δὲ χλωροῦ ἀδάμαντος
βαινουσέων ἰάχεσκε σάκος μεγάλῳ ὀρυμαγδῷ
ὀξέα καὶ λιγέως· ἐπὶ δὲ ζώνῃσι δράκοντε
δοιὼ ἀπῃωρεῦντ’ ἐπικυρτώοντε κάρηνα·
λίχμαζον δ’ ἄρα τώ γε, μένει δ’ ἐχάρασσον ὀδόντας
ἄγρια δερκομένω· ἐπὶ δὲ δεινοῖσι καρήνοις
Γοργείοις ἐδονεῖτο μέγας ϕόβος …(Aspis 216–18 and 228–37)
Upon it was fine-haired Danae’s son, the horseman Perseus, neither touching the shield with his feet nor far from it – a great wonder to observe, since nowhere was he attached to it ….
Perseus himself, Danae’s son, was outstretched, and he looked as though he were hastening and shuddering. The Gorgons, dreadful and unspeakable, were rushing after him, eager to catch him; as they ran on the pallid adamant, the shield resounded sharply and piercingly with a loud noise. At their girdles, two serpents hung down, their heads arching forward; both of them were licking with their tongues, and they ground their teeth with strength, glaring savagely. Upon the terrible heads of the Gorgons rioted great Fear.
(trans. Most 2007)
Whatever our judgments as to the success of the intended effects, the poet is clearly composing for an acculturated audience experienced in the oral performance of epic. Ecphrasis lends itself to vivid narrative description, made all the more so by an emphasis on the artfulness that seems to convert the pictorial image into life and movement. This description intensifies such effects to the point of wonder: the pictures jump out of, and even off, a flat visual field, as the first image does. And there is noise as well; the grinding of teeth is heard repeatedly, and here the shield rings with the running of the Gorgons, who have also popped up into a third dimension (cf. Vernant 1997, 391–2).
This must have been fun. How we understand the audience’s taste is another matter. Martin ( 2005 ) has argued that the poem is a piece of pulp epic, evidence of a trash aesthetic. His interpretation emphasizes its preoccupation with death, gore, and the macabre. (See, especially, lines 144–60 and 248–69.) Others have started from these emphases and interpreted the ecphrasis in relation to the surrounding narrative. The horrors of war are vividly represented on the shield of a hero who defeats not only a violent robber but also War himself. Hence, the value of Heracles’ victory can be magnified (Fränkel 1975) or, since it is achieved through warfare, both valorized and subverted (Thalmann 1984). Such thematic reading of ecphrasis seems natural to us; there is a productive tension created by an interplay between the contextual ground and a description that calls attention to itself (Fowler, 1991, 25–28 and 33–35).
This same tension must have been evident to its original audience, in part because the ecphrasis could not but be heard against Homer’s. His picture of cosmic order is one in which warfare has a place, but which embraces a much fuller, and ultimately more reassuring, evocation of human life (Elsner 2002, 3–6). As Conte has argued, ancient poetry functioned as and through a repertoire of traditional generic means, including poetic devices like ecphrasis, which opens up the possibility of allusion. However we deal with the theoretical problem of authorial intent,6 then, the texts assume, and can demonstrate for us, diverse cultural competencies.7 Even in listening to an unsubtle poet, an ancient audience must have responded in several ways, conceptually distinguishable but experientially implicated with one another.
This becomes more evident when we look at the ecphrasis on Jason’s cloak in the Lemnian episode of the Argonautika.8 The epic tradition has advanced more than 300 years and become thoroughly textualized, for want of a better word. Poetry, even epic, is usually divorced from public performance. Apollonius is writing for an audience of Hellenistic readers, some of them scholars, steeped in the Homeric text and its conventions; his text will assume similar responses but play in a sophisticated way with generic norms and allusion.9
Lemnos is the first stop on the Argonauts’ journey, and Jason first finds adventure there. After a recounting of the unfortunate erotic history of the Lemnian women and a description of their initial fear and consternation, the story moves on, by means of messages and deliberation, to an invitation to come to Hypsipyle. Jason puts on his cloak to go:
Aὐτὰρ ὅγ’ ἀμϕ’ ὤμοισι, θεᾶς Ἰτωνίδος ἔργον,
δίπλακα πορϕυρέην περονήσατο, τήν οἱ ὄπασσε
Παλλάς, ὅτε πρῶτον δρυόχους ἐπεβάλλετο νηòς
Ἀργοῦς, καὶ κανόνεσσι δάε ζυγὰ μετρήσασθαι.
τῆς μὲν ῥηίτερόν κεν ἐς ἠέλιον ἀνιόντα
ὄσσε βάλοις ἢ κεῖνο μεταβλέψειας ἔρευθος·
δὴ γάρ τοι μέσση μὲν ἐρευθήεσσα τέτυκτο·
ἄκρα δὲ πορϕυρέη πάντη πέλεν, ἐν δ’ ἄρ’ ἑκάστῳ
τέρματι δαίδαλα πολλὰ διακριδὸν εὖ ἐπέπαστο …(Apoll. Rhod. Argon. 1.721–29)
Around his shoulders Jason pinned a double cloak of purple, the work of the Itonian goddess, which Pallas had given to him when first she set up the stocks for the building the Argo and issued instructions for measuring the cross-beams with the rule. You could cast your eyes more easily towards the rising sun than gaze upon the brilliant redness of the cloak. Its centre was bright red, the border all the way round purple, and along the full length of the edge had been woven many cunning designs in sequence.
(trans. Hunter 1993a )
The panels on the cloak represent diverse mythological scenes. Though modern readers seem agreed that the collection is programmatic and/or thematically proleptic, there is much disagreement about its interpretation.10 For the Hellenistic reader, encountering this passage for the first time, the startling presentation and contextualization of the ecphrasis would have been a more immediate interpretative provocation. As has often been argued, the choice of object, an overwhelmingly beautiful cloak, calls deliberate attention to the poet’s deviation from the obvious model, the ecphrasis of Iliad 18, and to the nature of the subsequent interlude with Hypsipyle as a kind of erotic aristeia (e.g., Hunter 1993b , 48). This interpretation is based in part on Apollonius’ exploitation of conventional elements from arming scenes. The clearest signal, for the kind of reader assumed, would have been the light coming off the cloak. The motif of the gleam of armor and weapons is a sign of heroic strength and of coming success in battle.11
That motif is often realized, and foregrounded, through similes invoking fire, stars, etc., both during arming scenes and the hero’s aristeia. It is most developed during Achilles’ arming and long aristeia in Iliad 19–22.12 The opening line of the simile concluding this scene, as Jason sets off to meet Hypsipyle, would have been doubly significant:
Bῆ δ’ ἴμεναι προτὶ ἄστυ, ϕαεινῷ ἀστέρι ἶσος,
ὅν ῥά τε νηγατέῃσιν ἐεργόμεναι καλύβῃσιν
νύμϕαι θηήσαντο δόμων ὕπερ ἀντέλλοντα,
καί σϕισι κυανέοιο δι’ αἰθέρος ὄμματα θέλγει
καλὸν ἐρευθόμενος, γάνυται δέ τε ἠιθέοιο
παρθένος ἱμείρουσα μετ’ ἀλλοδαποῖσιν ἐόντος
ἀνδράσιν, ᾧ κέν μιν μνηστὴν κομέωσι τοκῆες –
τῷ ἴκελος προπόλοιο κατὰ στίβον ἤιεν ἥρως·(Apoll. Rhod. Argon. 1.774–81)
He went towards the city like the bright star whose rising is admired by young brides, shut up in their new-built chambers. Its red brilliance through the dark air bewitches their eyes, and the virgin, too, rejoices in her desire for the young man who lives in a distant city, the future husband for whom her parents are keeping her. Like that star did the hero follow behind the messenger.
(trans. Hunter 1993a )
First, because of the audience’s experience with the use of such similes in two recurrent narrative contexts, their adaptation to an erotic narrative would have been surprising, entertaining, and thought provoking.13 Second, the simile alludes to Achilles’ aristeia and in particular to its climax, in Iliad 22. When Priam sees Achilles approaching the city (cf. προτὶ ἄστυ, Il. 22.21), Achilles is compared to Orion, the Dog Star, a sign of disease and destruction (Il. 22.25–31). On the wall, Priam laments, beats his head in grief, and pleads with Hector, stationed at the gates below, to avoid a fatal duel with Achilles. And at the climax of the narrative sequence following, after Hector has run away and then turned to stand his ground, Achilles’ spear, which will soon pass through Hector’s neck, is described with another star simile (Il. 22.317–20), and this time the comparison is to Hesperos, the evening star, as in Apollonius’ simile.14
Making the connection between Jason and Achilles, then, depends on the reader’s assimilation of epic conventions, on perceiving multiple allusions – both indirect, to the shield ecphrasis, and direct, to the star similes – and on a response to the interactions among poetic devices and allusions. How the reader conceives of that connection is an open question. Many modern readers have assumed a contrastive relationship, between a new kind of Apollonian hero, defined by erotic power, persuasion, and diplomacy, and a conventional epic heroism represented by Achilles, defined by strength, courage, and the seemingly less ambiguous problem of facing death in battle.15 However, this reduces the possibilities opened up here for reading heroism or, better, heroic agency. Barchiesi ( 2001 , 146–47) argues that allusion means two open interpretative fields are brought into relation; comparing A to B demands interpreting the intertext in relation to B, as well as the alluding text in relation to A. Neither Apollonius’s version of heroism nor Homer’s can be so easily pinned down, even if thinking about Jason means thinking about Achilles’ actions and heroism as a field of reference.16
Moreover, making sense of the content of the simile, its connection with the ecphrasis, and the choice of a cloak as its subject demands a further intertextual field of reference, Odysseus’ dealings with women. The simile hinges on the evening star, associated with love and marriage (Fränkel 1968, 105; Vian 1974, 86). And the women watching the star include both young brides waiting for their husbands and a lone virgin, waiting to be married to a fiancé, when he returns from a foreign land. These are easily connected to the Lemnian women and Hypsipyle. And the simile, taking on an implicit narrative function, conveys their feelings, sentimental and perhaps self-deluding.17 However, the idea of the virgin waiting for her fiancé to return is puzzling. Jason is coming from foreign parts and will become a possible fiancé (in her eyes), but the reference only makes complete sense if Odysseus is brought in via a doubled allusion. As an unmarried daughter of a king receiving a charismatic stranger, whom she will want to marry, Hypsipyle can be likened to Nausicaa. But because of the reference to the cloak, and the particular circumstances of the virgin in the simile, Hypsipyle’s emotional vulnerability can also be compared to Penelope’s, in the scene in which Odysseus, in disguise, describes the cloak, pin, and tunic that she had given him at parting. He wore a thick, doubled, purple cloak, like Jason’s; the artistry of the pin was so lifelike it evoked wonder, which recalls some of the effects in Apollonius’s description (esp. Argon. 1.763–67); and his tunic was so fine that “many women gazed at it [or him?]” (Od. 19.225–35).18 Odysseus’ story praises Penelope’s gifts and skill in weaving, but also, implicitly, his effect on women. Further, it demonstrates his abilities in the direction of persuasion and manipulation. All this Penelope confirms, when she bursts into tears of longing and grief. Thus, the simile and the Odyssean templates taken together seem to imply that Hypsipyle will be doubly helpless before Jason, both because of her inexperience and because of his “heroic” amatory powers. But questions are raised both as to the nature of Odysseus’ powers and as to the uses that Jason will make of his own.
Thinking about Jason’s version of heroic agency, and about what kind of poem we find ourselves in, demands triangulating Apollonius’ text with versions of heroism and heroic action from both the Odyssey and the Iliad. However these questions are considered, it is clear that conspicuous poetic devices, manipulation of epic convention, and complex forms of allusion must have pulled the reader in; the text assumed and provoked several forms of response. And it demonstrates brilliantly the kind of open-ended textual play made possible through skillful generic positioning and appropriation of multiple means provided by the tradition. This is one of the most important aims of the passage as a whole, and the combination of ecphrasis and simile in particular; the readerly possibilities offered by the poem are demonstrated, as are Apollonius’ abilities as a poet.
Modern scholars take to this kind of reading like ducks to water. What may be harder to appreciate fully are the analogous forms of communication in the performance culture in which Euripides composed. The audience of Athenian tragedy was intimately acquainted with a repertoire of poetic means, and “intertextual” reference was always possible, even if the culture was still largely oral; the current performance was measured against and connected to a continuing history of experience, and to the larger poetic tradition as well.19 Simultaneously, everyone concerned was familiar with the methods, technique, and talents of the poet’s rivals; in a competitive context, succeeding as a playwright meant calling attention to creative appropriation.20 In the immediacy of performance, engagement and taking pleasure in the poet’s skill and inventiveness went hand in hand. Further, a tragedian was very much aware of operating within a system of distinctive and evolving forms of performance; in the same festival context, the audience could be responding to comedy, satyr play, and dithyramb, each with its own poetic resources and version, or versions, of Kunstsprache(n). In sum, there was a hothouse atmosphere for the exploitation and development of poetic devices of all kinds.
For tragedy, this thesis is hard to substantiate in detail; so much of the production of so many poets has been lost. Moreover, tragedy very seldom makes its competitive dynamics evident. The problem of evidence, of points of reference for assessing the distinctiveness or conventionality of a piece of tragic poetry, always remains. But Old Comedy is vocal about competition and innovation.21 There is self-assertive and ongoing play with the poet’s persona, as well as critical back and forth with rivals. This is easiest to follow in the rivalry staged by Aristophanes and an older competitor, Cratinus. Cratinus was one of the greatest poets of Old Comedy but is presented in Aristophanes’ Knights as a drunk and a has-been (Equ. 526–36) and, by implication, as no longer intimate with the personified – and female – Comedy, whose lover was now Aristophanes (Equ. 515–16). Cratinus responded the next year with Wineflask (Pytine), in part by one-upping Aristophanes’ sexual metaphor. A scholion to Knights (∑ Aristoph. Equ. 400a = Cratinus, Pytine test. ii, PCG Vol. IV) tells us that Cratinus was the protagonist and married to Comedy; he is a husband, not just a newly successful lover. But the metaphor is extended. She wants to divorce Cratinus for κάκωσις, maltreatment; seemingly, she is an ἐπίκληρος, an “heiress,” and her husband is not doing his legally prescribed sexual duty because he is a drunk and/or old and impotent.22
Using this extended metaphor as a premise, Cratinus has constructed a play that makes clearer the comic poet’s relation to his audience and the function of comic personae. No longer “performing” for Comedy means not succeeding with comedy’s audience. Only in performance, as he engages and gratifies his audience by demonstrating his capabilities as a comedian, can he be successful. Accordingly, Cratinus takes what might be seen as damaging abuse, his drunkenness and/or impotence, and integrates it into an inventive plot that leads, presumably, to his vindication, if not his reformation. And he won, defeating the first version of Aristophanes’ Clouds. The play was thus an ironic demonstration of comedic virility. Moreover, even though he is constructing what might be read at some points as externally referential biography, his comic persona is a function of the ongoing game he is playing with his younger rival, and not easily disentangled from the construction of the play.23
The same use of poetic personae bound up with the internal workings of the comedy and of sexual metaphors for poetic inventiveness is evident in Frogs. Clearly, the presentation of Euripides’ persona has been shaped by a system of oppositions to Aeschylus’.24 Dionysus has been overcome with longing for Euripides, a “γόνιμον ποιητὴν [. . .] ὅστις ῥῆμα γενναῖον λάκοι” (Ran. 96–7), “a potent poet who can utter forth a noble phrase.” All the tragedians left in Athens after his death are only capable of “piddling on tragedy” (Ran. 95: προσουρήσαντα τῇ τραγωδίᾳ). Like Cratinus, Euripides is, it seems, a virile poet, which should mean he is capable of inventive diction in a traditional sense, of startling metaphor, striking compounds, etc. Still, Dionysus’s samples of Euripidean phrases, like his taste and judgment, are presented as ridiculous.25 An opposition to the strength and impetus of Aeschylean language is anticipated (esp., Ran. 836–39, 853–55, 924–29, 1056–61). But Dionysus’ original motivation, his longing for renewed and exciting verbal performance, made intuitive sense to an Athenian audience. And Euripides was capable of giving his audience this kind of pleasure; he is not poetically impotent, though the play forces a contrast between his verbal qualities – especially in sophistically flavored argument, which implies trimeter dialogue – and those of Aeschylus (esp., Ran. 771–6, 814–29, 937–43, 1491–8). When the comic focus is on lyric, Euripides is presented as all too capable of pleasing his audience. Aeschylus is now presented as a different kind of contrastive foil; his lyrics are beautiful (Ran. 1252–6), but monotonous (1261 ff.). Euripides’, on the other hand, are exciting but meretricious. Aeschylus brings on Euripides’ Muse to provide a vulgar musical accompaniment to his first sample of Euripidean lyric, and on seeing her Dionysus says: αὕτη ποθ’ ἡ 0039Cοῦσ’ οὐκ ἐλεσβίαζεν, οὔ. “This Muse wasn’t a whore in her previous life. Oh, no.” (1308).26 The joke follows up on a reference to the vulgarity of Euripides’ musical sources (1301–3), some with erotic associations.27 And it is extended by Aeschylus at the end of the parody, when he talks about Euripides, “ἀνὰ τὸ δωδεκαμήχανον Κυρήνης μελοποιῶν,” “composing lyrics with tricks by the dozen, like Cyrene” (1327–8). Cyrene was a famously versatile prostitute; Euripides is pandering to the taste of the audience, and his lyric is pleasuring them like an inventive sexual performer.
The jokes help in developing a picture of Euripides’ performative relationship with his audience, and make up to some extent for our not being able to make comparisons with run-of-the-mill competitors. Euripides must have succeeded as a composer of lyric, with at least a significant part of his audience, partly through creative use of innovations associated with the so-called New Music.28 He proved himself as a performer, and one capable of conspicuous innovation, which is what allows Aristophanes to skewer him. As usual, Aristophanes seems fascinated, not at all repelled, by Euripides’ experimentation with the limits and resources of generic means (Silk 2000, 50–52 and 415–17).
In terms of its discernible poetic flavor, as opposed to its hypothetical musical effect, Aeschylus’s pastiche is aimed at the pictorial and picturesque style associated with dithyramb and utilized by Euripides in the later stages of his career.29 Lyrics like this must have given his audience pleasure. Otherwise, the jokes in Frogs are not as funny as they could be, and it is hard to account fully, in a competitive context, for the developments in dithyramb or for its influence on tragic lyric. In fact, we have explicit ancient testimony (Plut. Lys. 15.2–3 and Nic. 29) as to the popularity of Euripidean lyric in the late fifth century.
This is the kind of lyric we get in the first stasimon of the Electra,30 in which Euripides’ ecphrasis on Achilles’ shield occurs. Particularly in the first strophe and antistrophe, the ode is built up through a series of striking images, often expanded internally by the paratactic accretion of pictorial detail, and making frequent use of descriptive adjectives, some of them novel compounds:31
κλειναὶ νᾶες, αἵ ποτ’ ἔβατε 003A4ροίαν τοῖς ἀμετρήτοις ἐρετμοῖς πέμπουσαι χορεύματα Nηρήιδων, ἵν’ ὁ ϕίλαυλος ἔπαλλε δελ- 435 ϕὶς πρώιραις κυανεμβόλοι- σιν εἱλισσόμενος, πορεύων τὸν τᾶς Θέτιδος κοῦϕον ἅλμα ποδῶν Ἀχιλῆ σὺν Ἀγαμέμνονι 003A4ρωίας 440 ἐπὶ ∑ιμουντίδας ἀκτάς. Nηρῆιδες δ’ 00395ὐβοῖδας ἄκρας λιποῦσαι μόχθους ἀσπιστὰς ἀκμόνων Ἡϕαίστου χρυσέων ἔϕερον τευχέων, ἀνά τε Πήλιον ἀνά τ’ ἐρυ- 445 μνᾶς Ὄσσας ἱερὰς νάπας Nυμϕαίας σκοπιὰς †κόρας μάτευσ’† ἔνθα πατὴρ ἱππότας τρέϕεν Ἑλλάδι ϕῶς Θέτιδος εἰναλίας γόνον 450 ταχύπορον πόδ’ Ἀτρείδαις. (Eur. El. 432–51)
Glorious ships, which once went Troyward on those countless oars, convoying the Nereids’ dances, as the aulos-loving dolphin leaped and whirled at dark-nosed prows and brought the son of Thetis, Achilles light-springing in his step, with Agamemnon to the shores of Simois by Troy. Nereids coming from Euboean capes bore armourer’s labours from Hephaestus’ anvil, a golden equipage, up along Pelion, along sheer Ossa’s sacred woodland slopes, eyries of the Nymphs, †seeking the maidens† where the old horse-man was nurturing a bright light for Hellas, sea-dwelling Thetis’ child, swift runner for the Atreidae.
(trans. Cropp 1988)
As the episode ended, the audience’s attention shifted to dance and song, and they expected not only greater poetic elevation but also a demonstration of the poet’s skill. As with epic ecphrasis, an audience familiar with Euripidean lyric could be pulled in by the unfolding of the pleasures inherent in an expansive description. For modern readers, it has been hard to resist dismissing the description as ornate and simply decorative. It seems elevated but not “heightened” as Silk ( 2010 , 436–37) puts it, that is, noticeably dense in potential meaning, as with metaphor. As Barlow (1971/2008) has argued, Euripides often exploits the possibilities of visual imagery; he has an unusual visual imagination and a talent for building significant pictorial sequences. Nevertheless, he has suffered through comparison with Aeschylus, who has been judged, since the time of the Frogs, as more forceful and inventive, especially in regard to metaphor.32
Another problem, hard to separate from the first, is the ode’s relevance. It has been seen, particularly in the first strophe and antistrophe, as lacking an organic connection to the dramatic context.33 Even Barlow ( 1971/2008 , 20) takes this view: “The classic case of pictorial irrelevance is in the Electra where the chorus describe in highly colourful language the Nereids with Achilles’ armour.” Panagl ( 1971 , 88–9) provides a nuanced reading that illustrates these problems and their interconnection. The glorification of Achilles in these initial pictures magnifies the stature of Agamemnon by association. (Note El. 440 and 451.) But there is an “obvious contradiction, inherent in this ripe expression of choral lyric, the discrepancy between sense and enjoyment, a disproportion between what is understood as essential and proper to content and the attractive details, which pull eye and ear away from dramatic action and unfold in imagination.”
His conclusion suggests an interpretative point of departure: we can start from the taste and acculturation of the audience and assume Euripides has calibrated this imagery accordingly, to produce a calculated series of effects. The audience is seduced by sensuous detail. But because of that immediate pleasure, they must be all the more aware of an odd transposition; an epic narrative is being developed in a dithyrambic mode.34 The listener is carried along through a series of pictures. At times there are holes in the narrative line, as in the antistrophe when the ode moves backwards in time and the Nereids are encountered in mid-progress from Lemnos, where, presumably, they got the arms from Hephaestus, and Thetis (El. 442–44), and on their way to Pelion.35 On the other hand, there are sustained emotional and aesthetic effects, an oddly festive tone and a quasi-processional sense of movement. This suits focalization through the Chorus; they begin the play on their way to participate in a festival procession, as a part of the Argive Heraea.36 But as the ode moves beyond the ornate and satisfying language of the strophe, the audience may be uncertain as to the narrative’s ultimate point, its destination; where is this series of pictures carrying them, as well as Achilles?
The answer is not at all clear. What seems clearer is that the Chorus is, implicitly, embarking on a wishful analogy between an idealized young Achilles and the young Orestes; they have just heard of his possible arrival (El. 391–403, esp. 401–3), and they hope he will succeed, even triumph. Just as the tone and feeling of the narrative so far follow from their collective identity, so too the picture of Achilles is colored idiosyncratically, so as to give more substance to that analogy. In the Heraea procession, young men supposed to be of exceptional purity, on the verge of manhood and ready to bear arms, carried a sacred golden shield to the shrine of Hera.37 Innovations in the narrative make it easier for the analogy to work. The youth of Achilles is emphasized by the connection with Cheiron, “the old horse-man”; Achilles is just leaving his tutelage and will leave from his cave for Troy, not from Phthia. And his status as an ephebe is brought out by bringing him his armor at this point in his story.
Obviously, this means Achilles will not be taking the armor given his father by the gods when he married Thetis (Il. 17.194–97 and 18.82–85). This further departure from the Iliad’s story would not necessarily have struck the audience as surprising. The introduction to the following ecphrasis is surprising, however:
Ἰλιόθεν δ’ ἔκλυόν τινος ἐν λιμέσιν Nαυπλίοις βεβῶτος τᾶς σᾶς, ὦ Θέτιδος παῖ, κλεινᾶς ἀσπίδος ἐν κύκλωι 455 τοιάδε σήματα †δείματα Φρύγια† τετύχθαι· (Eur. El. 452–57)
From a man of Troy sojourning at Nauplia harbour I heard, O son of Thetis, that on the circle of your famous shield were wrought these emblems, †terrors for the Phrygians† …
(trans. Cropp 1988)
The shield is famous, but in what sense? The famous shield of Achilles is the shield of the Iliad, brought to Achilles after the loss of Peleus’ armor. The innovative retelling calls attention to the intertext it supplants (Lowenstam 1993, 209). The audience does not have to disbelieve in the premise that for this play this is Achilles’ story, but they may feel more strongly that the chorus is presenting an epic story in an oddly un-epic mode.
The substance of the ecphrasis provokes a similar reaction, if the poetic qualities of Homer’s ecphrasis are called to mind:
περιδρόμωι μὲν ἴτυος ἕδραι Περσέα λαιμοτόμαν ὑπὲρ ἁλὸς ποτανοῖσι πεδίλοις κορυϕὰν Γοργόνος ἴσχειν, 460 Διὸς ἀγγέλωι σὺν Ἑρμᾶι, τῶι 0039Cαίας ἀγροτῆρι κούρωι ἐν δὲ μέσωι κατέλαμπε σάκει ϕαέθων κύκλος ἁλίοιο 465 ἵπποις ἂμ πτεροέσσαις ἄστρων τ’ αἰθέριοι χοροί, Πλειάδες Ὑάδες, †Ἕκτορος ὄμμασι† τροπαῖοι· (Eur. El. 458–69)
On the rim’s encircling field was Perseus over the sea with flying sandals, holding, throat severed, the Gorgon’s head, in company with Zeus’s herald Hermes, the rustic child of Maia. On the buckler’s centre radiant shone down the circle of the sun on winged horses and constellations dancing in the heavens, Pleiads and Hyads, to turn back †the eyes of Hector† …
(trans. Cropp 1988)
There is no movement into extended narrative through a description of figural representation. Instead the ecphrasis tends towards the emblematic, as if it were restricted by its notional objects, figurative images like archaic shield blazons.38 The description of Perseus shows him at a familiar moment in the story. But there are no Gorgons, as often in art (Cropp 1988, on 459–62), and no pursuit, as we saw in vivid and extravagant form in the Shield, only a frozen moment. In fact, this is the general effect of all the images in this section of the ode (on the helmet and sword, as well as shield); instead of marked expansion and poetic inventiveness, there is a series of compact, conventionally heroic images, the Sphinx, the Chimaera, and an image of horses on the battlefield (El. 470–78).
At the same time, the images largely displace their narrative ground. The sole exception is the reference at the end of the shield ecphrasis to the flight and fear of Hector.39 Because of the images of sun and stars, we are reminded of the epic motif of gleaming weapons, especially as it is used in Book 22, where Hector flees in panic from Achilles (Il. 22.131–7). Yet how are we to think about Hector’s fear and flight without thinking of Patroclus, which means Achilles’ role in his death, his overwhelming grief, his passion for revenge, and its tragic consequences, both for the Trojans and himself?
In sum, Euripides’ ecphrasis seems to call attention to its displacement of narrative context through conventional imagery. Yet it calls attention, again, to the Iliad’s narrative, which the ode seemed to be setting out to replace. The audience may end up feeling that the ode presents a trite and reductive vision of heroic action, one divorced from the kind of narrative we find in the Iliad, where Achilles’ triumph comes at a cost, and his choices have tragic consequences. Therefore, when the Chorus, comes back to the dramatic here and now, pointing the moral it seems, the audience may be unsure as to whether they can follow them to this conclusion:
τοιῶνδ’ ἄνακτα δοριπόνων ἔκανεν ἀνδρῶν, 003A4υνδαρί, 480 σὰ λέχεα, κακόϕρον κόρα. τοιγάρ σοί ποτ’ οὐρανίδαι πέμψουσιν θανάτου δίκαν. ἔτ’ ἔτι ϕόνιον ὑπὸ δέραν 485 ὄψομαι αἷμα χυθὲν σιδάρωι. (Eur. El. 479–86)
Such were those spear-toiling men whose lord your union killed, thou evil-minded child of Tyndareus. For that shall the gods in heaven one day send death upon you in retribution. Still, still shall I see beneath your throat the murderous gush of iron-spilled blood.
(trans. Cropp 1988)
Exactly what kind of “spear-toiling” men are these? Are they all golden ephebes untouched by everything that happened afterwards at Troy? Do such heroes exist?
The problem underlying both the Chorus’ wishful analogy and their reductive vision of heroism is, of course, matricide. Of all the kinds of revenge possible, none is more certain of producing a narrative of less-than-heroic action, tragic consequence, and regret. That is the realization the play will produce for not only Electra and Orestes (El. 1177–1231) but for the Chorus as well (1172-6). This interpretation of the ode’s contextual significance is not surprising.40 But the innovative means by which Euripides plays with his audience’s predispositions and perceptions are, especially since he is competing for their attention and approval. In the first strophe and antistrophe, he seems to be setting them up to react on the basis of, and also against, the pleasure they take in a generic form of poetic expression. And in the shield ecphrasis he plays with the tension between their expectations and a challenging and perhaps unsatisfying realization, in a subtly allusive mode and a reduced and restricted poetic form. He was clearly willing to take risks in exploring the possibilities of his poetic resources.
That makes him typical, or at least exemplary. He allows us to see better the challenge facing any tragic writer in innovative appropriation of those resources. He also reminds us that the Greek poetry remaining to us offers few obvious and unsophisticated performances. The Shield is atypical, and therefore a valuable reference point. Mostly, we are stuck with very skillful performers, like Euripides and Apollonius, which means that the use of a poetic device is rarely a matter of simple imitation and emulation; it is inseparable from the interplay of multiple devices, and from the possibilities opened up by the audience’s expectations and acculturation.
Work relevant to these questions is extremely varied and in principle inexhaustible. Conte and Jauss, whose thinking provided essential orientation for this discussion, point the way toward further reading in, respectively, the tradition of structuralist poetics (e.g., Genette 1982) and Russian Formalism (e.g., Tynyanov, 1924/2000 and 1929/1978). Their approaches intersect with other forms of theoretical discussion as well, like genre theory. (For classicists, Depew and Obbink 2000 is a good place to start.) But the theoretical framing of a literary-historical approach is only one dimension. Philological work on particular poetic devices, for example the history of discussion of epic simile (e.g., Scott 2009) or of generic styles of poetic language (e.g., Panagl 1971) is indispensable. And inseparable from the philological tradition is the tradition of interpretation of any given text, almost always voluminous, which leads to the history of reception, by now an education in itself. (See, as an illustration, Most 2000 and Michelini 1987, 3–51, on Euripides.)