The Classical Tragedians, from Athenian Idols to Wandering Poets

The Classical Tragedians, from Athenian Idols to Wandering Poets JotuuN¡. HeNrur ouþut.a while any reappraisal of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides will nec(that is, the essarily op"rãt. *itñin the framework of scholarship on tragedy f-io*.r*l-nytn"orc to ãarüerversions ofthis Suiron, James Diggle ilÑ.ry gratefuliõ P itly a study in recePtion. and commenting upon ofgratitude to Richard Lucia Prauscello' I am wing me to see unpub- 40 Johanna Hanink The Classical Tragedians, from Athenian Idols to Wandering tragic poetry itself), this chapter takes fundamental cues from another area that has lately also seen increased interest and significant advances, namely the study of ancient literary biography.s In fact it is Barbara Graziosi's account of the value of the Homeric biographical traditions that has most strongly informed the approach adopted here. In her book Inventing Homer she argued: Precisely because they are fictional, early speculations about the author ofthe Homeric poems must ultimately derive from ancient audiences. For this reason they co of the Homeric poems at a time in which Poets 4l resent the messy end-products of centuries of ancient and Byzantine textual accretion, abridgment and rewriting, their basic narratives do seem to have begun to coalesce relatively early on in the history of drama's reception, in the same period in which Arnaldo Momigliano first located the concrete beginnings of ancient biography as a literary form.ro We know, for example, that many of the sources cited in these Vitae (e.g. Hieronymus of Rhodes, Hermippus of Smyrna, Ister and Philochorus) were at work in the third century BC. Peter Bing has also demonstrated that there were a number of ways in which the fourth and third centuries BCB witnessed a flourishing of interest in poets'biographies in particular, and he has further linked this interest with a broader 'cultural phenomenon,' an 'intense antiquarian interest in poets who are dead and gone, in the literary greats of the distant past''rr In the pages that follow, then, I will be exploring some of the ways in which this ancient (yet already to some extent antiquarian) biographical interest manifested itself in connection with the three giants ofAttic tragedy, a litertuting the biographies of the tragedians also make for important case-studies in how, again in Graziosi's words, "authors can themselves be objects of creative processes".T consider is that biorepresented by that manuscripts co rved ets and certain two out ofthree cases (those ofAeschylus and Euripides) prove a far cry from democratic Athens. rwhile the wtae that survive from antiquity tend to rep- ary triad effectively canonized at least as early as Aristophanes'Frogs. In order to argue that certain moments and trends in antiquity's reception of tragedy may be illuminated by the evidence for the reception of the tragedians themselves, I begin by looking at the very different ways in which Lycurgus ofAthens and Dionysius I of Syracuse each set a high premium on the inheritance and even "ownership" of the Attic tragedians' legacies' I then investigate the patronage narratives found in the tragedians' htae,where yet a different presentation oftragedy's "politics" serves rather to foreground the positive potential of a tragedian's association with a foreign royal patron. Qn this count the biographical traditions cast each of the members of the Lycurgan canon - Sophocles surprisingly included - as a kind ofpraise poet. By the time (and in the place) that the biographies apparently crystallized, a new ìway of imagining the tragedians' 'geographies' seems to have gained considerable currency, and this was a way that did much to suppress the role ofAthens in these poets' life stories. I 7 8 Modern studies of actors, interpolation and the transmission of tragic texts often invoke and interpret a passage from pseudo-Plutarch's biography of Graziosi 2002,8. Siographies tell us hat "they are worth the Athenian statesman Lycurgus. This passage records how one of the new laws that Lycurgus introduced to Athens dictated 'ål*i;yåå,iTül these biographies also have the potential to 9 texts I will w b andYS tell us something about the cultural con- eveloped and circulated (Hanink 2008). ing abbreviations: VA = Wta Aeschyli, VE : Vìta Euripidis l0 l97t,t2f. t1 t993,620. 42 TheClassicalTragedians,fromAthenianldolstoWanderingPoets43 JohannaHanink that bronze statues ofthe poets Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides be erected and that their tragedies be written down and conserved in a public archive, and that the city's secretary read them out to those acting in them for the purpose ofcomparison' For it was not allowed for these plays to be performed out of accordance with the ofûcial texts. (Decem oratorum vitae 841f)12 The law, probably passed in the late 330s BC, also dates to about the time that A¡istotle would have been compiling the didascaliae (the tragic victory records) on the basis of the results of dramatic competitions kept on stone by the Athenian archons. 13 Both Lycurgus' law and Aristotle's compilations might be viewed as attempts with antiquarian motivation to take stock of, restore, establish and preserve the texts that documented the artistic (and civic) achievement of the prior century's tragedy. But while pseudo-Plutarch's passage has raised many questions about texts and the theater in fourth century Athens (questions regarding e.g. the role of actors, the phenomenon of re-performance, the developing notion of a classical canon,r4 the demos"'policing" of cultural life, etc.), what tends to be overlooked is how it witnesses to a wider fourth-century phenomenon conceming the tragedians themselves, namely the consideration and use of their names and images as sources of cultural capital. Before examining ways in which these poets were remembered and how their legacies were appropriated abroad, it is therefore worth first developing this point of reference for their early reception in Athens. Tragedy played a significant role in rhetorical constructions of civic identity during Lycurgus'own era. For example, the single surviving oration by Lycurgus himself, Against Leocrates (330 BCE)I5 serves as an important testament to discourses that assumed tragedy as a crucial and authoritative piece of the city's cultural patrimony. Inthe Against Leocrates, Lycurgus accuses Leocrates, anAthenian citizen, of violating emergency measures that had been passed in the wake of Athens'defeat by Macedon at the Battle of Chaeronea in September 338. Even though one of these measures effectively forbade citi- 12 13 t4 15 On the text ofthe passage see esp. Prauscello 2006,69-83. Scodel 2007 discusses the "social meaning of establishing a public text". On the notion of literary "archiving" in Athens see Whitmarsh 2004, 106¿1. On visual representations of the tragedians see EAA s. v.'Eschilo','sofocle' and'Euripide'. Pausanias mentions seeing nuripides and Sophocles' statues in the Theater ofDionysus (along with those of IG ll'z 2318 (the dramatic "Fasti") and oked like and how they would have been preserved see Sickinger 1999, 4147; on Aristotle's project of collecting them see Pfeiffer 1968, 82, Pickard-Cambridge 1988, 7l and West 1989. On canons and classicism see especially Easterling 1997 and Porter 2006. See Ober 2006 and Allen 2000 for recent interpretations ofthe oration, with bibliography. deserves our praise", he saYs, because, in addition to his other poetic virtues, h this story believing that their deeds would serve look to and study and thus acquire in their hearts (In Leocratem 100, transl. Hanis) 16 In Leocratem16. 17 In Leocratem 100: 18 In Leocratem99. Kannicht T|GF 5'l F 360' 19 ' Bibliotheca 3.15.4. 20 on variants of the myth and the mythographical influence of Euripides'version see Falappone 2006,6814. 2l Wilson 1996, 315. 22 In the words of Glenn Most, "Athens's decline in political importance [. '.] was comprnrut.¿ Uy un inflationary generalization of the topos of its role as cultural teacher" (2006, 385), 23 Wilson 1996,314' 44 The Classical Tragedians, from Athenian Idols to Wande¡ing JohannaHanink - a New Comedy by Philippides24 as well as this remarkable fragment by Philemon, quoted in the Euripidean Wta: el toTç &þ0eíolorv ol reOvrlróreç oio0qolv eï1ov, övôpeç, éç rpooív tweç, drznly{úpîv öv, d5ot' lôeiv Eùpuríõr1v. (I/t $ 31 fr. ll8 Kassel-Austin) true as some people say, men, That the dead still had feeling, I would have hanged myself so as to see Euripides. ;t;¡;ùùy,s '[my] Poetry did not in a sense LYcurgus' mage of tragedY and its poets remained vividly alive in his city's collective memory' Philemon's lines straightway recall not only the basic premise of Aristophanes' Frogs, but indeed the very spark that sets that celebrated (and firstprize winning) piece of Old Comedy into motion: inthe Frogs Dionysus describes how, while reading Euripides'l ndromeda, he became overwhelmed with a sudden longing (æó0oç) - not to see the play performed but to see its author, Euripides, himself (52-54): "Don't make fun of me", he warns Heracles, "I'm really doing badly, such is the passion that is driving me crazy [roroõroç l¡repóç ¡re ôn?r,u¡"loívetor]" (58-9). Part of the appeal of the Frogs, as James Porter has persuasively shown, is that with this play "going to the theater is like going to a museum."25 Philemon's character, too, seeks fulfillment of this "fantasy of classicism",'6 the kind of fulfillment with which Aristophanes tantalized his own spectators by putting the great tragedians onstage and back into the city's sight. lVhile fragments of comedy attest to a kind of nostalgic adoration of the deceased tragedians themselves,2T the serendipitous survival of evidence for both Lycurgus' forensic and cultural activity allows an idea of how tragedy was not only invoked before the juries of Athens (and longed for on the stages), but was also becoming enshrined by the city both in textual form and bronze:28 as the tragedians'scripts were going into the state archive, their statues were being erected in a culturally significant civic space, right outside the Theater of Dionysus.2eAnd while the tragic texts, now in the form of state- 2 stories of literaIn his studies of Hellenistic poetry Peter Bing has shown how as stories of coded sometimes are ture,s transmission to Ptolemaic Ãlexandria literature'32 that embody or the movement of objects that somehow represent perhaps now is what recounts On" example of sucñ a "transmission nanative" to sequel sort of a scripts, tragic the most fu-ou. incident in the life of the III of Book on commentary his the tale of the Lycurgan editions.33 Galen, in the Epidemics,34 tells of how Ptolemy ordered any books found on ships wei and copied, allowing only the copies t deception of evidence', of ptolemy IIis bibliophilia, Galen goes on, w9s ]ris of Sophobooks "the loaning the Athenians into beiieving that they were only "deposit". fifteen-talent a .f"t urJ Euripides andAeõhylus" by putting down in the It was thus the Alexandrian üúrary, an i not the Athenian archive, which end could boast ofthese texts in its collection' z"rk", lrr5r43-57 shows how each of the three statues would have cast its subject 30 --*;,t'e"'ofan idealAthenian citizen (Sophocles, the "politically-active citizen"; SeeAxionicus F 3-4 and Philippides F 22¿4 Kassel-Austin. Ã.t.fwfit't, the "Athenian everyman"; Euripides, "the wise old man")' pluv, úvn.r.rrvlus were apparentþ re-perfo-rmed already inAristopha¡es'lifetime: S-íz 1*ittt the scholion toiine 10). The Frogs was described in antiq- 2006,302. 2006,302. nrit 3l 24 25 26 27 28 29 45 serve as the cþ's memsanctioned (even state-mandated) 'editions', were to encouraged citizens have words, the Lycurgan statues would toiememúerãnd to revere thé very men who had authored them.3oAeschylus, : If it were really Poets For an account of how Old Comedy itself was largely responsible for generating the celebrity of certain tragedians, especially Euripides, see Rosen 2006. Far more testimonia exist for the reception and popularity of Euripides, antiquity's second most popular author after Homer, than for any other tragedian: see Bing 2006. Lycurgus was also responsible for expanding the Theater ofDionysus and rebuilding it in stone: for the ancient testimony see Pickard-Cambridge 1946, 137; on Lycurgus'building programs more generally Habicht 1997, lÇ18 and22-30. Wlson 2000,26546 in particular points out that the significant ideological motivations behind this part of the Lycurgan building program. ht. dec. or 841î; cf. Zanker 1995,43. "l'lt.i"l,. rìty.t,p*¿l"foç 32 33 34 ("philological"): see-Porter 2006,304 with n'6' InAeschylus' and so U."ätn ne óomptäins ttruT E rtipid.t' poetry however, did die with him in Hades. Rosen Èuripides will have the advantage ôf having it to hand for reciøtion great fun with contemporary arguqs that the passage "showJAristop¡anes having no-tions of classicism ãnd fan-dom" (2006, 4546) For stories relating specifically to Euripides see Bing 2006; s_ee also Bing 2005' l2'l-31 onthe "móvement" of Ation" fure to Alexandria in a Posidippan epigram (on Thi sub 2004,173). e story is regarded by e'g' Pfeiffet.l968, 82' through I voiceá by Prauscello 2006,74-76 in her more detailed consideration of the anecdote's context in Galen's commentary' õomm. tn Hipp. epidem.III (12 a 6A6-7; CMGY 10, 2' I p' 70)' 46 The Classical Tragedians, from Athenian Idols to Wandering Poets Johanna Hanink an anecdote that similarlY to to acquire the Athenian trage is zeal was motivated bY the There are, however, other narratives that illustrate a monarch's less deceptive (though still remarkable) contrivances to acquire the physical artifacts of tragedy. The protagonist of two of these is Dionysius I of Syracuse, the infamous tyrant of Sicily who died in 367 B,C. The ûrst story comes from a fragment ascribed to the third-century BC biographer Hermippus of Smyma,3s and is preserved in the Wta Euripidis.36 Hermippus explains how failures:aa following Euripides' death, Dionysius the tyrant of sicily sent a talent to Euripides' heirs to purchase his lyre and writing-tablet and pen. And he ordered the people who procured them for him to dedicate [ûvoOeîvcn] them in the temple of the Muses, having had them inscribed with both his and Euripides'names. (I/E g 27 = Hermippus fr. 84 Bollansée) For this reason, Hermippus concludes, Euripides was (wogrl,órotoç, "immensely loved by foreigners".3T In his piece on the early reception of Euripides, Bing incisively zeroes in on how this fragment, a vivid illustration of Euripides' celebrity abroad, "goes to the heart of [Euripides'] poet's reception". Below I will return to Euripides'fame and popularity outside Athens as a crucial aspect of his reception, but for the moment I wish to linger on ancient perceptions of Dionysius' own particular and peculiar relationship with hagedy and the Athenian tragedians. A notoriously hostile ancient historiographical tradition38 portrayed Dionysius I of Sicily as a cruel despot and a terrible amateur poet.3e Apart from the historical texts, it is also possible that some of the more humorous stories about Dionysius'behavior derive ultimately, like so much of the material found in biographies of poets,ao from comic portrayals of him on theAthenian stage: a Dionysius, for example, is ascribed to Eubulus, a fourth-century BC poet of Middle Comedy,ar and it may even be the case that Euripides himself featured among the dramotis personae of this play.a2 On the other hand Lucian's lgnorant Book Colleclor (second yeÀorótepal...a5 (Adversus Indoctum 15) liefs (whether held by Dionysius himself or exaggerated by the many authors 43 44 35 36 37 38 39 Called "the Callimachean" inAthenaeus' Deìpnosophistae (at 584 2l3f and 696f), On Hermþus'biographies of the tragedians see Bollansée (1999,98-100). H, Q andV; Wta Euripidis=Kannicht TrGF 5.1T I (the'fÉvoç roì píoç'Euprníôoo'). Bing 2006. For a summary and reevaluation of which see Sanders 1987, l+0. This tradition is ascribed largely to the historian Timaeus; on Polybius and Diodorus Siculus' criticisms ofTimaeus see Brown 1958, 9l-108, Though Dionysius did supposedly win a festival victory at the Lenaea of 367 BC with a 'T,rtopoç Aórpo (Ransom of Hector), Diod, Sic. 15.74.1. Dionysius' excessivejoy at his victory was, in one tradition, the cause ofhis death: cf, Pliny N/17.180 = Snell TGF I Dionysius T 8. On Dionysius'activity as a tragedian see esp. Hunter 1983, 40 4l 42 llGlT and Sanders 1987, l-5. This is a central thesis of Lefkowitz 1981. For which see the edition of Hunter 1983. See Hunter 1983, l17: "rcfr.27 [= K.A. fr. 26] is spoken by Euripides [...], then it is tempting to imagine a scenario in which he came back from Hades to protest that 47 such a Àoprlrl¡ç"céptr1ç as Dionysius had enjoyed the dramatic success which he himself had notoriously failed to win." The two anecdotes may represett variant versions of the same story. Bing 2006 cites the Aeschylean story at n.2' On Dionysius' repuaation Qlincompetenci as a poet see esp. Cicero Tusculan Disputations 5'22 (=5n.¡ TIGF I Dionysius T 6). 45 46 Cf. Karavas 2005,217. Cf. e.g. Athenaeus 1.19e, where we hear that the Athenians allowed the marionetteer Pótheinus to use the same stage as that which had been used by Euripides and his contemporaries for their "divinely-inspired plays" (&<p' dç év0or-roícov ol æepl (: Kannicht TIGF 5'lT 224). The idea that poets performed under the influence of the god is articulated by Socrates in Plato's lon (for the "presupposti culturali" of Socrates' argumsnts see velardi 1989, 95-l13; cf. also Plato Apologt 22b - which is even cited inthe scho/iø to Aeschylls' Seven Against Thebes, ad 5934), On Aeschylus and Sophocles' divine ,,initiations" see Palomar Pérez 1998,6G68. For another way in which the tragedians were Muse-like see Lada-Richards2002,7l, who argues that in d¡amatic perfo.mances the Muse's "pivotal mediating fi¡nction has now become amalgamated with the role of the poeta creator himself: the dramatist 'plays Muse' to this stage-actor, the professional performer who will bring his creations into being". Eópmlôr1v) 47 48 The Classical Tragedians, from Athenian Idols to Wandering Johanna Hanink who lampooned him) about what means were available for the transmission and appropriation of literary heritage. In fervently acquiring the personal effects of tragedians, Dionysius is represented as seeking to come into possession on the one hand oftheir artistic talent (or divine inspiration), but on the other of the patrimony for which these physical objects stood and which itself held the power to legitimize his own attempts at tragic composition. His case thus represents another instance illustrating the coìnmodification of the legacies of the tragedians themselves, again an important element in processes of tragedy's reception: while in Lycurgus' Athens the city's bid for this inheritance manifested itself in part through the public display of portrait statues, in Sicily \Me see Dionysius hopefully considering his private ownership of Aeschylus and Euripides'pens, tablets and lyres as the key to following in their poetic footsteps. 3 In the second part ofthe fourth century certain rhetoricians praised the tragedians for having used their art to stage Athenian patriotism. In the first half of the century however, Plato appears to have taken a less idealistic view of the same poets'civic virtues and value when he portrayed Socrates as condemning the tragedians (and explicitly Euripides) for their tendency to gloriff tyrants. ln Republic 8, for example, Glaucon (an older brother of Plato's) agrees with Socrates that tragedy is a wise thing and that tyrants are wise for keeping company with tragedians (568a-b). He observes that Poets 49 At this point, however, I wish to pursue a third interpretation of trag- edy's (or reáUy the tragedians') politics, the evidence for which comes from ¡rô of the ancient biographies. The Vitae of Aeschylus and Euripides foreground naratives of each poet's visit to places far from Athens; both poets ãre said to have worked and died at the court of a magnanimous foreign king monarchs who hosted them than by their fellow countrymen. In fact, the "exiles" of both poets from their common native city are explained in both that they suffered at the hands of the sèe further below), the two biographies et composed in honor of his royal patron: when Hieron was founding the colony of Aetna, Aeschylus - whom Macrobius would later call vir utique Siculusst - produced the Aetnaeae lo 49 esp. see Euripides see sings the praises [èyrccopú(el] of tyranny as something godlike and says many other such things - both Euripides and the other poets do this. Socrates is of the same mind, and responds to Glaucon with a conclusion about the relationship between tragedians and the ideal society that looks wholly contradictory to Lycurgus' appraisal of tragedy's value later in the century: Since, then, they are wise [oo<pol öweç], the poets of tragedy will forgive us and those who have governments similar to ours, for not welcoming them into our state [æol,ræíov], lauding [ópvqráç] tyranny as they do. (8.568b) After all, for the Socrates of the Republic mimehic poetry in general is capable of effecting degradation from the philosophical to the tyrannical soul,as and its poet should be baned from the well-ordered (euvo¡reîoOar) city, since he fosters (tpéger) a part of the soul other than that which is the best (péÀ,trotov, 10.605b). 48 Fenari 1989, 139, comparing in particular ì?epublic 10.606d and 9,578b. 5l Laerttus3.22). Saturnalia 5.19.17 P(adt TrGF 3 T 91. The phrase is usually cited in discussions .,sicilianisms" (cf. Athenaeus 9 .37 6c = Fiadt TrGF 3 T 92a, Herington ofAeschylus' 52 53 : ç p{ov d1u0òv toiç ouvorrcí(ouot ci¡v forthe founding ofAetna, where "AelPythian ll all celebrated the colonial ï*31ffi::;::,ff;:l ee also Taplin 1999,4142. The Classical Tragedians, fiom Athenian ldols to Wandering Poets Johanna Hanink 50 gree of "de-Athenianization": effectively exhacting two of the genre's most important authors from their (and tragedy's) native city, the stories depict the foreign kings and communities who welcomed them as far better judges of their poetry's worth. If fourth-century Athenian orators connected tragedy and the tragedians closely with Athens, and particularly with certain ideals of Athenian citizenship, it is then perhaps surprising that two members of Lycurgus' tragic canon should in their Vitae be so directly and successfully associated with foreign monarchs. In post-classical antiquity, however, both Aeschylus and Euripides were considered to have been paradigmatic participants in what were perceived as the "ancient" systems of literary patronage.5a For example, in the second century CE Pausanias tells of seeing the cenotaph of Euripides and tomb ofMenander among the monuments lining the road that led from Athens to the Peiraeus. When Pausanias explains that the actual tomb of Ewipides is in Macedon because he died there while a guest ofArchelaus, he reflects on how "even back then" (raì tóte) kings played hosts to poets. In a short list of other, earlier examples of poets and patrons, he then also mentions the names ofAeschylus and Hieron:ss Even then poets ìvent to the courts of kings, and still earlier Anacreon went to the court of Polycrates, tyrant of Samos, and Aeschylus and Simonides traveled to Hieron in Syracuse. (Periegesis 1.2.3) Likewise Plutarch inhis De Exilio (anearly second-century essay of consolation to an exiled friend) mentions the travels and patronage of Aeschylus and Euripides in the same breath, although he glosses over any suggestion that problems in Athens were what lay behind their departure.só He also claims that few of the wisest and most sensible men are buried in their native countries, and that most of those who died abroad left their homelands "forced by no one" (pnôevòç ôvayrú(ovtoç, 604d). Quoting nine verses by Euripides in praise of Athens (from two different passages, one of which is from the Erechtheus and contains lines also quoted by Lycurgustt), h" asks who else has ever produced such an encomium of his native land (fiç éautoõ norpíôoç é1róprov) yet reminds us that Euripides left that land to live at the court of Archelaus.s8 Like Pausanias, Plutarch presses on with Herodoother examples of poets who did the same: Aeschylus, simonides, tus and Homer.se what may then be even more surprising about the biographies than the very promineice of the foreign nanatives is how favorably the royal patrons üace are characterized within those narratives - here for example we find no for had, of the tyrannical ruler with a penchant, as Dionysius I notoriousþ was banishing court poets to the quarries.60 Rather we hear that Aeschylus "exceediigly honored" by Hieron and the Geloans6r and that Euripides was ,1éry ,rpc6sful" at Archelaus' court (so much_so that he-was put likewise in charge of ihe royal finances).62 And yet it seems unlikely that the AtheleastAthénians of Lycurgus'(and Demosthenes') political leanings nians been well-disposed toward seeing any Macedonian king in the have - would flattering light cast onArchelaus, not just in Euripides' Wta,butlhroughout his biogiapñical tradition.63 It had be r the Macedonians, led by King Philip, who sñ"ghtered the Athenian and Theban forces at chaeronea in 338, and thus it wãs the threat of Macedonian invasion that triggered the emergency part by inmeasnres Lycurgus sought to uphold inhis Against Leocrates, in voking Euripide-s'namð and poetry. The two years following Philip's death in 3¡6 had th.n s..n ¡vo Athénian rebellions against expanding Macedonian power,6a and, the decade came to a close with Demosthenes impassionedly iepri.ing, in his speech On the Crown,the rhetorical banage against Macedon that haõmarked-his Olythiacs and Phitippics in more or less the previous middecade.65 The existence of a vigorous antlMacedonian discourse in the -ã 59 60 succeeded) (1 1.67 .4-5). 6l 62 63 54 For an overview of these see Hunter-Rutherford 2009, 9-1 3 and Bremer 99 L 55 For a survey ofroyal patronage ofpoets from archaic to Hellenistic times see Hunter 1 2003,2445; on patronage and the poetics of praise in the archaic period Goldhill (1991, I l6-28). 56 see esp. This idea contradicts Plutarch's account inthe Life of Cimon of how Aeschylus left for Sicily out ofanger (ôr'òpflv) after being defeated by Sophocles (483f). 57 Kannicht 58 604e. T\GF 5.1 360.7-1 0 (Erechtheus) and 5.2 981 (adespoton). 5l ç l0 (cf. $ l1): o<póôpa , . .tqr1Oe(. f f ,i61¡ä."ütÉnporr"nop'0,ürqr[i.e,Archelaus]óoteroìðæìtõv_õtotrioecov see [Euripides] lni1tp S' {evero. bn details ofÅ,rchelaus'supposedgenerosþ VA l¿ð pe.ception ofa good, close relationship between Euripidcg and_Archelaus reã..tËi in Sutyror rr.-O tr. 39 XVIIL Aulus Gellius N.A. 15.20.9 (/s [sc- Euripides] ¡" Uor"âonia apud Archelaum regem esset uterelurque eo rex familiariter, ' ' .), Plutarch Regam et impet Apothegm. 177a, [Euripides] Epistles, in ¡¡0, whËn the Mãcedoiian army proclaimed Alexander King (see Bosworth iSSï, íSAl - Alexander had promised-to continue_ his father's policies: Diod'- Sic. ll.l.7-10 and in 335 BC, when false reports of Alexander's death and Thebes (see Habicht 1997, 14-15)' Athens reached out.o.. of the trial reþresented a political triumph for Demosthenes; it also ihe ìi^ iZ:,'l*ti" l'lt. - a) The Classical Tragedians, from Athenian Idols to Wandering Johanna Hanink fourth century, coupled with the orators'habit of invoking classical tragedy to illustrate Athenian democratic ideals, makes it difficult to accept that a vision of fuchelaus' cultured magnanimity belonged to contemporary Athenian lore. Likewise, it is doubtful that the representation of Aeschylus'warm Sicilian welcome at the court of Hieron (contrasted with the maltreatment by his counûrymen) represented a popularAthenian version of events: inbothAeschylus' and Euripides' cases we should be highly wary of assuming that these narratives took their essential, final shape in democraticAthens. Instead, it is more plausible that the stories sunounding Aeschylus and Euripides'patronage reflect one of the mechanisms by which tragedy's spread through the Greek world achieved a cert¿in discursive justification: namely through the molding of the tragedians'biographies.66 Elsewhere I have argued that, regardless of the real truth of the story Euripides' stay in Macedon became so emphasized in his biography because the tradition for it was largely a product of a time and place (third-century BC Alexandria) whose rulers (the Ptolemies) wanted to present themselves as the legitimate heirs to the legacy of Euripides' - and by extension tragedy's - patronage.6T And while it is impossible to pinpoint the chronological or geographical provenances of the testimonia for these biographical traditions, their overriding dissonance with our idea of Athens' ov/n sense of its cultu¡al primacy and patrimony, at least in the fourth century BC, makes it reasonable to suspect that they are products of a different context. It is also worth noting that Aeschylus' and Euripides' pahonage nanatives are effectively distributed between the two places in the Greek world outside ofAthens, namely Magna Graecia and Macedon, where evidence for tragedy's early popularity is most abundant. The primary speaker in Satyrus' biography of Euripides (late third or early second cenhry BC68) even remarks that the Athenians only ever leamed to love Euripides because of the example set for them by precisely these two groups of foreigners: 53 4 Pieria.73 It is not worthwhile to mention [the taste] of the Athenians, since they at any rate learned later what a great poet [Euripides] was, from the Macedonians and Sicilians.6e (Fr. 6 fr. 39 XIX Schorn) indicated clearly that popular opposition to Macedonia was still widespread, and that Macedonia was indeed the prime target of Athenian national sentimenf' (Habicht 1997,28). The study of Kowalzig 2008, however, historicizes the evidence forAeschylus'time in Sicily and makes an important case for the political and economic importance and implications oftragedy's early arrival on the island. 67 Hanink 2008. 68 The standard edition ofSatyrus is Schom 2004, thoughArrighetti 1964, an edition only of the píoç of Euripides, remains useful for its introduction and notes. On the dates of Satyrus see West 1974, who argues he was a peripatetic ofAristotle's school in Athens - not an Alexandrian scholar, 69 Euripides seems to have been sympathetic to others in the same situation: he suppos- Poets Mvñpo ¡rÈv'ElÀùç yfl Mo.rceôóv, 70 { úæo,o' EÓpmlõou' ôotéo ô' Toler yùP ôé(aro téPPo Ploo. edly consoled and encouraged Timotheus when he was criticized by the Greeks for his-musical innovation (rcoivotopíc): satyrus Fr. ó fr. 39 XXII Schom, Plttatch An seni 795d. Antipater XIII Gow-Page = AP 7.39 7l on to bewail the rp0óvoç that Aeschylus supposedly com,5; cf.hta Aesclryli $ 11) see 72 Sommerstein 1995-96. 73 o5ç öv ö ?"útpq I llepíôcov voí¡ç fu1ó0t llæplqç (lines 5-6; cf. AP7.43 - also ascribed to Ion ofchios - lines l-2). Theattribution òfthe epigrams to Ion is considered spurious (see most recently Leurini 2000, 84). Ion of Chios 8 Diehl -- AP 7.44: 54 Johanna Hanink norpìç õ"EÀIúôoç'Eì,Laç, A0frvor. ¡oÀ1,ù ôè poúoolç répycç érc æolJ,õv rcol ròv Ë¡¡owov ëyet. (YE ç 14: AP 7.45) All Hellas is the fi¡neral monument of Euripides; yet the Macedonian ground holds his bones, since there he met with the end of his life, But his fatherland was the Hellas of Hellas, Athens. Since he often delighted others with the Muses, he has the praise of many. The phrase "all Hellas" (öæooo'EXr.óç) also appears in Thucydides'.Flis tories,la and in other respects the epigram echoes ideology expressed in the Thucydidean account ofPericles' funeral oration - regardless ofthe truth ofthe attribution to Thucydides, the epigram would seem to engage with his work. For example, while the author of the epitaph calls Athens the "Hellas of Hellas", in the second book of the.F/istoriesPencles claims that the whole ofAthens is "the school of Hellas": Àeyr¡ qv re æõoov ruól,rv fiç'El"l,úôoç æaíôeuow elvor (2.41.l).1s Even more striking are the ideological points of contact with Pericles' identification of the epitaphios logos itself as a kind of sepulcher (rúqoç). The Athenian dead, he says, have won unaging praise (ùyr1pcov ëæowov; cf. line 4 of AP 7.45 above) and the most distinguished of all tombs (tòv túgov éntor1 ¡"1ótarov), which is not the one in which they lie, but the one in which their glory survives in everlasting remembrance, celebrated on every occasion which gives rise to word ofeulogy or deed of emulation. (2.41.2, transl, Smith) Thucydides'Pericles goes on to explain: For the whole world is the sepulcher [túgoç] of famous men, and it is not the epitaph upon monuments set up in their own land that alone commemorates them, but also in lands not their own there abides in each breast an unwritten memorial [üypogoç pvrlpq] of them, planted in the heart rather than graven on stone. (2.41.3, transl. Smith) The author of the epitaph of Euripides however adjusts the "Periclean" model of memory to discount the signiûcance of the presence of Euripides'grave in a foreign land, just as Pericles suggests that logos (púpÐ has the power to surmount the geographical restriction of a fixed ergon (the túgoç itself).76 Many praise Euripides, just as many will always praise the Athenian dead. 74 76 Hist. 1.123,1.143,2.8,6.92. Note that in one ofthe.Epr'stles of [Euripides] Euripides writes a letter of condolence to Sophocles for a shipwreck on the way to Chios. Apparently some of Sophocles' plays were lost, and 'Euripides' calls this misfortune a loss precisely to all Greece, 'iÍæooo'EÀåúç': Tiv tfç oò$ rowl¡v ðmúo4ç'EIî,áõoç vo¡.doewv üu (2.1), A comparison recognized also by Gomme 1956 ad loc,, who paraphnases Hþias of Elis' claim in Protagoras 337d: "all men of science and learning are by nature akin and fellow citizens, and here in Athens they were ouvel,rl)'u0óraç rflç'EiJ,úôoq e( oótò rò npuraveiov rfiç ooglaç." On the topos ofAthens as the "school of Greece" see Most 2006. Cf. Loraux 1986, 78: "afterproclaiming the superiority ofergon over logos, [Peri- The Classical Tragedians, from Athenian Idols to Wandering Poets 55 This conceptual slippage, between túgoç as "tomb" and tú9oç as the "repository of memory", also appears in another sepulchral epigram for Euripides, supposedly by Adaeus of Mytilene.TT Although conceding that Euripides'body lies in Macedon (where it is "honored by the companionship of Archelaus", êtarpeí¡ dproç Ap2¿él.eco), Adaeus rhetorically dispels the idea that this is the site of his true rúgoç: ool õ'or) roõtov éyò rí0epot rôgov, pri¡roto rol &1,1,ò tù púr1oo orcr¡vùç éppúõt oelo¡révcç.?8 (3.15-16 G-P = AP 7.51.s-6) Howéver, I do not consider this your tomb, but rather the stages ofand scene-paintings ofBacchus that quake with the step ofbuskins. Yet while what remains of a ftadition of sepulchral epigram for Euripides attempts to disassociate him from the land ofhis body's final resting place, an anecdote fromAulus Gellius'l¡¡¡c Nights intimates that the Macedonians themselves held very dear the fact that the location of his grave was in their country: not only did they firmly deny a request from an Athenian delegation to send Euripides' remains back toAthens,'n they also eagerþ and faithfully tended the tomb: The Macedonians regarded his tomb and his memory with such honor that as a kind ofboast they would declare "never, Euripides, shall your tomb perish" [oöæote oòv pvflpc, Eùpra,lôqç, ölottó noul, because an exceptional poet had died and was buried in their land. (,M1. 15.20.10) Here the pvflpo that the Macedonians declare will never be destroyed does the double work, just as the word túgoç does in Thucydides and Adaeus, of signiffing not only the grave monument itself but also the community's memory of the poet, who was now apparently honored by the Macedoniarrs as a deþcto "local" one.8o 5 The manuscript-transmittedlØtae ofAeschylus and Euripides, in addition to other testimonia found elsewhere (e.g. in Pausanias and Plutarch), serve to normalize the travels of the two poets as well as to portray them as having been best appreciated outside of Athens, in foreign lands' Yet we have now cles'speech] reverses the order ofvalues by substituting for the soldiers'real grave, initially exalted as ergon, a purely symbolic monument (taphos)." 77 Adaeus 3 G-P = AP 7.51. 78 Hartung: æeúo¡révoç codd. 79 N.A. 15,20.9: maximo consensu Macedones in ea re deneganda perstiterunt' Cf. Hanink 2008 on the Macedonian appropriation of Euripides' 80 The Suda rcports that Euripides died when he was 75, whereupon Archelaus "moved his bones to Pella", 56 57 Johanlra Hanink The Classical Tragedians, from Athenian Idols to Vy'andering Poets also seen that in certain sepulchral epigrams it is possible to trace an argument that seeks to "repatriate" to Athens the memory of Euripides (since attempts at recuperating his remains evidently proved unsuccessful), or to locate his memory in "all Hellas" and on every stage. In these epigrams, the battle for a tragedian becomes a battle for ownership of the literary past: thus while some people may have desired to possess images and artifacts (and even physical remains!) of these poets, the authors of the epigrams rely rather on the power of their epitaphic rhetoric so as to construct certain "sites" of literary memory. But what of the near-wholesale absence of Sophocles from this sketch the tragedians'celebrity and "internationalization'l? In stark contrast with of Aeschylus and Euripides,the Wta of Sophocles suggests that this tragedian closely resembled Socrates in his preference to remain at home in Athens.st Because Sophocles loved his city so much, apart from his military service he never left it: complished, devout and loyal cihizen, chosen to serve as both hellenotamias andproboulos; he is also said to have led the paean at the sacrifices celebrating the Athenian victory at the Battle of Salamis (ZS $ 3) and to have been elected general during the Samian War (440439 BC) (ZS $ 9). Euripides, on the other hand, lived a life antithetical to what we now think of as the Such a lover ofAthens (grl.a0qvorótatoç) was he that, even with many kings sending for him, he never wanted to leave his fatherland (rdv narpíôa) behind. (r¡S $ 10) This part of Sophocles' story reflects one aspect ofthe difference that sets his biographical tradition apart from the other two canonical tragedians: wherever Aeschylus and Euripides failed personally and professionally, Sophocles seems to have succeeded and so to have exemplifred what has been described as "the Pindaric line of development in poetic vitae,Thepositive life".82 Whereas, for example, the characters and plots of Euripides' plays earned him a notorious reputation for impiety,s3 Sophocles'biography quotes the historian Hieronymus of Rhodessa (fr.43aV/hite) in claiming that Sophocles loved the gods as no one else.ss He was remembered as an ac- 8l Cf. Plato Crito 52b, where Socrates, speaking to himself as the "Laws", says: "Socrates, we have great proofs of these things, namely that both we [i.e. the laws] and the cþ have pleased you. For you would have never stayed home in [the city] more than all otherAthenians unless it pleased you more than them." It was also a popular story that Menander rejected invitations from Ptolemy I Soter to work at his court in Alexandria: cf.AlciphronEpßtles78 and 19Avezzù-LongoandPlinyN.IL T.30.31. Compton 2006, 130. Sophocles' Irîlø ($ 1 l) sàys he held the priesthood of Halon (rl roõ'AÀrovoç teprooriv¡) According to Satyrus (F 6 fr. 39 X Schom) Euripides was accused of dloepeio by Cleon. P Oxy 2400 (3'd c. AD) contains a list of subjects for rhetorical exercises; in one the orator must address the charge of Euripides' impiety: Er)pemlôqç [sic] 'HpoxLéo porvó¡revov êv Àrowoíorç eroqooç év ôpú,potr rplvetor doepeloç. 84 Hieronymus was a member of Aristotle's school, active in the first half of the third c. BC. He wrote a flepì æou¡rôv in four or more books: see T 40 in Matelli 2006, fifth-centuryAthenian civic ideal ofpolitical engagement,s6 since he supposedly passed his days thinking and writing in a cave on Salamis, "shunning the crowd" (VE 5 zl).The Vïta Euripidis offers this grim general appraisal ofhis character: he came off as sullen and anxious and severe, a hater of laughter and a hater women (VE 522)E7 And while Aeschylus' I1ta gives few indications as to his personal qualities, Sophocles'biography sketches a portrait of an all-around affable individual, whose personality was entirely the opposite of Euripides': Put simply, [Sophocles] had such a charming disposition (toooóq toõ ii0ooç oÓtQ 1flove 1ôpÇ that everyone everywhere loved him.88 (Z^t $ 7) The contrast between Sophocles and Euripides' character emerges even more explicitly if we consider the use of the adjective grÀo0r'¡vatótctoç for Sophocles (I/,S $ 10, quoted above) in the light of the epithet that Hermippus of Smyrna had ólaimed was often used of Euripides. Earlier I mentioned that Hermippus cites the story about Dionysius of Syracuse's purchase of Euripides'harp, tablet and stylus as an illustration of why Euripides was said to be extremely beloved by foreigners ((evogr"Xríltotoç): And so they say he was (wogrkôrotoç, since he was so loved by foreigners, for he was victim of the Athenians' jealousy. (VE S 27 Hermippus fr. 84 Bollansée) : Hermippus claims this was a word used particularly of Euripides (it is attested nowhere else in the superlative), and gr^},c0r1vorótatoç8e is also extremely rare and elsewhere applied with sincerity only to Socrates (Demosthenes are elaborated by Connolly 1998. Sophocles'piety was proverbial, cf. Libanius Ep. 390.9. The most extensive recent treatment of the supposed (private) cult of Sopho- 82 83 289-314. 85 Oeo<prl,l¡ç ô Eo<porlfiç rbç oùr ö?u2"oç, I/^S $ 12, On Sophocles and Asclepius see Radt TrGF 4 T 67-:73 þages 57-58), For skepticism that Sophocles was heroized as Dexion, the "receiver" of Asclepius, see first Lefkowiø 1981,84, whose doubts of 86 cles-Dexion is Clay 2004,78-79. Cf. for example the passage in Thucydides where, during the ñ¡neral oration, Pericles remarks that Athenians do not consider the politically disengaged man to be unengaged, but useless (oúrc óøpúy¡rova, tt'\,)u' &ytúov,2.40). Cf. Satytus Fr. 6 fr. 39 IX Schorn: 'everyone hated him'(üznil0ow'ot)tör æúvteç), men because of his anti-socialness (ôoooprl,lo), women because of how he portrayed them in his plays. 88 See Pelling 1990,23544, on the "integtated personalities" presented in Plutarch, for an account ofthe relatively simplistic descriptions ofindividual character generally found in ancient biography. Libanius Declamation2.l.33;Libanius also uses it of an undefined'someone'(tr6) in Declamalion 14.1.14. 58 rüandering Poets The Classical Tragedians, from Athenian Idols to Johanna Hanink 59 it sarcastically of King Philip II of Macedoneo).In both cases, then, an extraordinary word describes an extraordinary trait: if Euripides was a poet exceptionally loved by foreigners, Sophocles was a poet who loved Athens to an exceptional extent.er It has been argued that the ancient biographers concocted the "tradition of an embittered Euripides abandoning the Athens that treated him with contempt" precisely in order to create a contrast with portrayals of Sophocles in his "standard role as model of happy success and patriotism, beloved of his people".e2 The biographers would, then, have been able to invent Euripides' Macedonian 'exile' on the basis of the existence of the Archelaus, whích traced the line of Macedonian kings back to Heracles and which the Vita Euripidis says he wrote as a favor to his patron.e3 Yet there is no way of knowing that one of the two biographies developed first, nor even whether the charucterizations of the poets had some roots in reality or simply reflected the fantasies and exaggerations of oral and anecdotal traditions, comedy, and the biographers themselves. What is demonstrable, however, is that the recrrrïence of certain themes and keywords in each of the tragedians' Wtae implies that at some point the three biographical traditions were read, interpreted and elaborated upon in relation to each other'ea Furthermore, it is possible, if we look carefully at these texts and other sources of ancient scholarship, to recognize that the story of Sophocles the "lover ofAthens" is itself crafted according to the same template that shapes the patronage narratives found in the biographies of his two counterparts' uses ourse of my wretched life bringing advantages will bythefactwhoreceiveme,butruintotheoneswhohad t. (Lines 9l-3) sent me a\4, there I 90 9l Demosthenes De falsa legatione 308.2. See crucially Bing 2006: the word (evogrkôrotoç "is a pointed and witty inver- sion of the convention virtually embodied in the more common philoxeinos. For while philoxeínos reflects the idealized attitude ofa host toward any given stranger, xenophilos regards the anomalous quality of a stranger beloved abroad by every imaginable host - even as he is unappreciated in his native land." 92 Scullion 2003, 39. 93 Scullion 2003,39. 94 Here for the sake of comparison we might mention the two editions (1550 and 1568) of Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Artrsfs. Maginnis 1993 onstrates thatthe prima parte ofYasati's work (which include thirteenth-century artists Cimabue, Giotto, Simone Martini, went the most extensive revision for the second edition. For example, in the later edition the theme of a "fraternity of art" linking various pairs of master artists and apprentices is much more developed and has clearly been embellished' In the cases ofboth the ancient Vitae oftragedians and Part I ofVasari, it seems that once in an initial form the process oflater revision the biographies draw out or to "infer" (or even to dream up) was marked by the lives of (roughly) contemporary authors/ connections and ha th p artists. In two of the manuscripts, a scholion to line 92 explains: the poet says this to please the Athenians [Xopr'6óFsvoç A0nvoíoq]' For it appears (LM) that at that lime the Boeotians and the Athenians were at odds with each othet' 9s 96 cf, also vA $ 10: when Aeschylus died, they honored him greatly (êtl¡^ttloov 1952. s s 8,7 ext. 12 Marco ean scholia 97 Plutarch, Apuleius, [Lucian], and Pausanias). al issues ,34-35. tesimum 60 The Classical Tragedians, from Athenian Idols to Wandering Poets Johanna Hanink 6l The scholia offer a similar exegesis of line 457, when Oedipus is promising the chorus that, if they receive him, he will prove a savior of the city and a bane to their enemiese8 because an oracle once prophesied that if his tomb were in Athenian soil it would protect the city from Theban siege. Again the scholia see the lines as an attempt at gloriffingAthens:ee rsûro ôè eiròç æou1urórepov ónò roõ Eogorléouç ereæIóo0ot ènì Oeponeíg rôv A0r¡voí<rw' (ZìRl1) It is likely that these things are a poetic inventionrm of Sophocles', for the sake of showing favor to the Athenians.ror When the chorus sings a hymn to Poseidon praising the god's invention in Colonus of the horse-bridle, the scholia again explain that Sophocles included this passage, too, as a kind of homage to his native land (éæì Oepaæeíq... oireíoç).ro2In fact, the first of the hypotheses transmitted with the Oedipus at Colonus indicates that it was not merely single passages that were regarded as Sophocles'"favors" to the Athenians and his deme, but rather the play as a whole which was understood as having been composed with encomiastic intent: I trust in the ¡enìa of Thotax,who labouring lor charis {ç Yoked this, my fow-wheeled chariot of the Pierian Muses, Loving on, *iro loves him, leading one who gladly leads' (Pythian 10'6+66) Tò õè ôp&po röv Oou¡raoröv' ö rcoì dôq leyrlparòç ô Eo<porcl.{ç énoír¡oe, ral rQ èouroõ ôrifr<p' ñv 1ùp Kolcovfl0ev' lopr(ó¡revoç où póvov rfr æorpíôr, ôlÂò (lines l2-13) (LARM The drama is one of the admired ones. Sophocles wrote it when he was already old, to delight not only his own fatherland, but even his own deme - for he was from Colonus. For both Sophocles and Euripides, then, ancient scholars used the verb 1opí(eo0ar (here "to delight" or "to do as favor to"), to describe the motivations for the praise of a specific locale in one particular play: while for Euripides this play was the Archelaus, for Sophocles it was his celebrated Oedipus at Colonus.In Sophocles'case, however, the recipient of the 1úptç is not a foreign king, but rather his homeland (natpíç), the Athenians, and receive gra one number of poets who did indeed proxenia,exèmption from tax, or land memorating thát city's history.ro7 In a hisvery owndeme. 103 2\nNemean 98 99 oc 459-60. Easterling 2006,32{6 surveys the scholia on the OC and observes that the similarly skeptical author ofat least the note on line 388 "seems to reflect concem for the existence ofan attested source" for the oracle (32). 100 On the use of the word æIúopa ('fiction, invention') in the scholia see Papadopoulou 1998-1999; Easterling nicely renders æoqrlrótepov as "with a degree of licence" 2006,33. 101 This scholion goes on to say that "Tragedians often write words of praise like this about their homelands" (no?")'o2¿oõ ôè of tpapxol 1op(owor toiç notpíow Ëwa). Is the "scholiast" here thinking along the lines ofthe Eurpidean praise ofAthens cited by Lycurgus et al,, or does he have later tragedians in mind, too? 102 x in OC 712 (LRI4). l0 49b. ãcity (such as sing and com, for example, 62 rüandering Poets The Classical T¡agedians, from Athenian ldols to Iohanna Hanink the Delians honorAmphiklos of Chios for writing poems that "made illustrious" (rceróopqKw) both themselves and a Delian temple. [t therefore may be the result of this more typically Hellenistic practice that, for example, the Vita Euripidis informs us that Euripides was awarded precisely proxenia (in addition to ateleia) when he moved to Magnesia ($ 9) - could this be because the biographers believed (or presumed) that, while there, he wrote plays that brought luster to the Magnesians?ro8 Finally, according to the hta each of the three tragedians was elevated after his death to "cult" status in precisely the land praised by the particularly encomiastic play (i.e. Aeschylus'l etnaeae, Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus, Euripides' Archelaus).t0e Sophocles alone was honored by the Athenians; not with anything like proxenia, but rather with annual sacrifices. Quoting the fourth-century Atthidographer Ister, his Wta tells us that Because of the man's arele,the Athenians voted to make sacrifices to him [outQ Ouewl each year (VS $ l7 = FGr Hist 334 F 38) It is then Gellius who informs us that the Macedonians dutifully honored Euripides'tomb (N.1. 15.20.10, quoted above), while the hta Aeschyli records that, after Aeschylus' death, everyone who worked in the business of tragedy frequented his tomb (tò pvñpq) and performed their dramas there. ($ 1l) Thus whileAeschylus and Euripides'Wtae may fumish much more clearly cut cases of "patronage narratives", the evidence of the scholia imply that Sophocles'story too, was absorbed by ancient scholars and biographers into the model. His narrative does, howeveç remain an exceptional one, given that the site of his work as a "court poet" was his own democratic polis, with his "patron" configured as the entire body of theAthenian citizenry. 63 poets' and the Hermesianax recounts the loves, requited or not, of famous Here infatuations' their of account on poets undertook travels which these led who bee" iopnoctes appears u, th. "Atti" otr' tragic in Colonus (57) to sing of his loves wandered choruses' himself was "even Euripides", that misanthropist, o\il and so roamed the streets of Aegáe (the Macedonian capital) by night, tortured by his love for one of the king's servants (61-68). In this Hellenistic ,,Catalogue", then, these two tragedians are quite naturally fitted into the perhaps more arsame paîadigm within which Hermesianax inscribes otheç r .tt"typi."f ú,wandering" poets such as Homer, Sappho and Archilochus. " in ttt.ii introduction tõ the volume Wandering Poets in Ancient Greek Culture,Richard Hunter and Ian Rutherford describe how, in Greek antiq,,TLe itineracy, both real and imagined, of poets is intimately-tied to the uity, u.bitiottr of and for their poetry to mjoy fame and reception all over the world".rr2 Here as a kind of corollary to this statement I have argued that the ,,international" fame of cert¿in poetry -Athenian tragedy - might have also in discourses which emphasized the precisely found a degree ofjustification Ceccarelli points out-in the next Paola itineracy o-f itr Urit-toved poeis. As adjusted itself to specifrc Athens of chapter of this volume, tragedy outside also left palpable "adjustment" this locäl contexts, and as we hãve now seen of the truth of regardless traditions: traces in the tragedians' biographical these Macedon, in Euripides and Sicily the testimonia piãcing Aeschylus in their after centuries for imagination popular stories certainþ captr.üed the deaths:rr3 what is more, the malleabi of hagedy,ila then already in antiqui rruttiu.i ôr geographies that were crucial to the story (and imagination) of the Athenian geffe Par excellence' u Conclusion fantasy of the tragedians as traveling poets of 1ocal praise that Hermesianax captures in (the very textually comrpt) "Catalogue of Loves", from his lost elegiac workthe Leontion.ttoIn this fragment, It is perhaps a similar lll o" th. bi"g."phical the poem sãe and literary allusions in sophocles and Eurþides'portions of ôurp.r, 2116,2g-j5,on Euripides in Hermesianax fr. 6 see Matthews 2003. scriptions that witness to these (648-57); cf, also Hunter-Rutherford 2009, 3-6. See Martin 2009, esp. 84, for the importance of praising place to what he calls "planetic poetics". 108 On this episode inthe VE see esp. Easterling 1994,76, also Taplin 1999,42. 109 On ancient cults of poets see Clay 2004; on the "divinify" that the biographical stories seem to athibute to the tragedians (divinity nevertheless mitigated by certain defects of theirs) see Palomar Pérez 1998,8Ç94. ll0 Hermesianax fr. 7 Powell. r12 2009,7. examples: the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki hosts an exhibit that ii3 A while the focuses on E'uripides'time as coirt poet in Macedon (Hanink 2008, l_31), i.i ,Y,:î.,'"rïiJÍï#:ffi :Í'J'å'"',:T"1ä? arded by the Istituto Nazionale del drama Antico (INDA) at Syracuqe during the institute's summer festival" (2008, 128). tragedy's disemf f + iowatzìg has âescribed eeschylui' anival in Sicily as "Athenian barkation on the island" (2008' 142)' 64 The Classical Tragedians, from Athenian Idols to Wandering Poets JohannaHanink 65 Bibliography Allan, William (2001), "Euripides in Megale Hellas: Some Aspects of the Early Reception of Tragedy", in: G&R 48, 67 -86. Allen, Danielle (2000), "Changing the Authoritative Voice: Lycutgus' Against Leocrates", in: ClAnt 1 9. 1, 5-33. Anighetti, Graziano (1974), Satiro: Wta di Euripide,Pisa. Avezzù, Elisa and Longo, Oddone (1985), Alciphron: Lettere di parassiti e di Cambridge. Gomme, Arno-ld W. (195ó), I Historical Commentary on Thucydides: VoL 2' cortigiane, Venice. Bing, Peter (2006), "Image and Hypothesis in the Hellenistic Reception of Euripides", þaper delivered at the conference "Euripides: The first Hellenistic poet? Problems in periodization, poetics and reception", University of Chicago, November ll-12,2006). (2005), "The Politics and Poetics of Geography in the Milan Posidippus, Section One: On Stone (P.Mil.Vogl, VIII 309, Col, I-IV 6)", in: Kathryn Gutzwiller (ed.), The New Posidíppus: A Hellenistíc Poetry Book, Oxford, I 19-140. (1993), "The Bios-Tradition and Poets'Lives in Hellenistic poetry", in: Ralplt Rosen and Joseph Farrell (eds.), Nomodeiktes. Greek Studies ín Honor of Marlin Ostwald, Awt Arbor, 619-63 L Bollansée, Jan (1999), Hermippos of Smyrna and his Biographical Writings: A Reappraisal, Leuven. Bosworth, Albert Brian (1988), Conquesl and Empire: The Reign of Alexander the Great, Cambridge. Breme¡ Jan (1991), "Poets and their Patrons", in: Annette Harder and Heinz Hoffman (eds.), Fragmenta Dramalica, Göttingen, 39-60. Brown, Truesdell S. (1958), Timaeus of Tauromeniurz, Berkeley, Calif. Carter, David (2004), "Was Attic Tragedy Democratic?", in:. Polis 2l.l-2, l-25, Caspers, Ch¡istiaan L. (2006), "The Loves of the Poets: Allusions in Hermesianax fr. 7 Powell", in: Annette Harder / R.F. Regtuit / G.C. Wakker (eds.), Beyond the Canon : Hellenistica Groningana I I, Lewen, 2142. Cataudella, Quintino (1963), "Eschilo in Sicilia", i¡: Dioniso 37,5-24. Clay, Diskin (2004), Archilochus Heros: The Cult of Poets in the Greek Polis, - Cambridge, Mass. Compton, Todd (2006), Wctim of the Muses: Poet as Scapegoot, Watior and Hero in Greco-Roman and Indo-European Myth and History, Washington, DC. Connolly, Andrew (1998), "Was Sophocles Heroised as Dexion?", in: JIIS 118' l-21. Dearden, Chris (1999), "Plays for Export", ín: Phoenix 53,22248. de Marco, Vittorio (1952), Scholia in Sophoclß Oedipum Coloneum, Rome. Dickey, Eleanor (2007), Ancient Greek Scholarship, Qxfotd' Dougherty, Carol (1993), The Poetics of Colonization: From Cíty to Text in Archaic Greece,New York. Easterling, Patricia E. (2006), "Notes on Notes: The Ancient Scholia on Sophocles", in: Sten Eklund (ed.),\oy1¡tippam: Studies in Honour of Jan Fredrik Kíndstrand, Reception: Studies in Honour of Oliver Taplin, Oxford, 128-157 ' LËsüe (1991), The Trafrc in Praise: Pindar and the Poetics ofSocial Economy, furte, Uppsala,2l-36. (1997), "From Repertoire to Canon", in: Patricia E. Easterling (ed.), - The Cambridge Companion to GreekTragedy, Cambridge, 2ll-27. (1994), "Euripides outside Athens", in: lCS 19, 73-80, -Edmunds, Lowell (1996), Theatrical Space and Historical Place in Sophocles'Oedipus at Colonus, Lanham, MD. Fainreather, Janet (1974), "Fiction in the Biographies ofAncient Vy'riters", i¡: AncSoc 5,231-:75. in: ÙMCR2007.02'09. - (1981), Lives olthe Greek Poets, Baltimore' Md' 66 The Classical Tragedians, from Athenian Idols to Wandering Johanna Hanink Loraux, Nicole (1986), The Invention ofAthens: The Funeral Oration in lhe Classical Cíty,trans. Alan Sheridan; originally published as,ú ¡r¡vention d'Athènes: histoire de l'oraisonfunèbre dans la 'cité classiqze'(Paris, l98l), London. Maginnis, H.B.J. (1993), "Giotto's World through Vasari's Eyes", in: ZeitschriftJùr Kuns tges chichte 56, 385-408. Martin, Richard (2009), "Read on Arrival", in: Richard Hunter / Ian Rutherford (eds.), Wanderíng Poets in Ancient Greek Culture: Travel, Locality and Pan-Hellenism, Oxford, 80-104. Matelli, Elisabetta (2006), "Hieronymus inAthens and Rhodes", in: William Fortenbaugh / Stephen White (eds.), Lyco of Troas and Hieronymus of Rhodes, New Brunswick, NJ, 289-314, Matthews, Victor J. (2003), "Interpreting the Euripides Nanative of Hermesianax", in: Des gëanls à Diorrysos. Mëlanges de mythologie et de poësie grecques olferts à Francis han, ed. Domenico Accorinti and Piene Chuvin, Alessandria, 281-6. Maclachlan, Bonnie (1993), The Age of Grace: Charis in Early GreekPoetry,Princeton. Momigliano, Arnaldo (1971), The Development of Greek Biography, Cambridge, Mass. Most, Glenn W. (2006), "Athens as the School of Greece", in: James I. Porter (ed.): Classical Pasts, Princeton, 377-88. Ober, Josiah (2006), "From Epistemic Diversity to Common Knowledge: Rational Rituals and Cooperation in Democratic Athens" , Epßteme 3,214-33, Palomar Pérez, Natalia (1998), "La figure du poète tragique dans la Grèce ancienne", in: Nicole Loreaux / Carol Miralles (eds.), Figures de l'intellectuel en Grèce ancienne, Berlin 65-l 06. Papadopoulou, Thalia (1998-1999), "Literary Theory and Terminology in the Greek Scholia: The Case of Plasma",in: BICS 43,203-10. Pelling, Christopher (1990), "Childhood and Personality in Greek Biography", in: Christopher Pelling (ed.), Characterisation and Indíviduality in Greek Literature, Oxford, 213 44. Pfeiffer, Rudolf (1968), History of Classical Scholarshipfrom the Begínníngs to the End of the Hellenistic Age, Oxford. Pickard-Cambridge, SirArthur Wallace (1988), The Dramatic Festivals of Athens (2"d ed.), London. (1946), The Theatre ofDionysus in Athens, Oxford. Porter, James I. (2006), "Feeling Classical: Classicism and Ancient Litenry Criticism", in: James I. Porter (ed.), Classical Pasts, Princeton, 301-52. Powell, John U, (1925), Collectanea Alexandrina: Reliquiae minores poetarum Graecorum aetalis P tolemaicae 3 2 3-I 461. C., Oxford. Prauscello, Lucia (2006), Singing Alexandria: Musíc between Practice and Tþxtual Transmission, Leiden, Revermann, Martin (1999-2000), "Tragedy and Macedon: Some Conditions of Reception", in: Martin Cropp / Kevin Lee / David Sansone (eds.), Euripides and Tragic Theatre in the Late Fiflh Century, ICS 24125, 45147 . Rhodes, Peter J. (2003), "Nothing to Do with Democracy? Athenian Drama and the Polis", in JHS 123, I 0,t-19. Rosen, Ralph (2006), "Aristophanes, Fandom and the Classicizing ofGreek Tragedy", in Lynn Kozak / John Rich (eds.), Playing Around Aristophanes: Essays in Celebration of the Completion of the Editíon of Comedies of Arßtophanes by Alan Sommers lein, Oxford, 27 47 . Sanders, Lionel Jehuda (1987), Dionysius I ofSyracuse and Greekþranny, Lonilon. Schom, Stefan (2004), Satyros aus Kallatis: Sammlung der Fragmente mit Kommentar, - Basel. th Li and Sco Scu Poets 67 in: Çraig Cooper (ed'), "Lycurgus and ty (Orality and ), "Euripides Vol. 6),Leiden,129-54. ofthe Frogs", in: CQ 53,389-400. Sickinger, James P, (1999), Publíc Records and Archives in Classical Athens, Chapel Hill. Somr,nerstein, Alan, (1995-1996) "Aeschylus' Epitaph", II in Museum Críticum 30-31, l-17. Stephens, Susan (2003) "For You, Arsinoe", in: Benjamin Acosta-Hughes / Elizabeth Kosmetatou / Manuel Baumbach (eds'), Labored in Papyrus Leaves: Perspeclives on an Epigram Colleclion Attributed to Posidippus (P.Mil.Vogl. I/III 309), Washington, DC, 16116. Stevens, P.T. (l 956), "Euripides and the Athenians", in: JHS 7 6, 87 -94. Taplin, Oliver (1999), "spreading the Word th¡ough Performance", in: Simon Goldhill Robin Osborne (eds.), Perþrmance Culture and Alhenian Democracy' Cambridge, 33-57. (1993), Comic Angels and Other Approaches to Greek Drama through Vase Paintings, Oxford. Velardi, Roberto (1939), Enthousiasmòs: Possessione rituale e teoria della - c West, West, tica in Platone,Rome. "The Early Chronology ofAttic Tragedy", in: CQ39,2514' "Satyrus: Peripatetic orAlexandrian?", in: GRB,S 15,279-87. Whitmarsh, Tim (2004), Ancient Greek Literature, Cambridge. Wilson, Peter J. (1996), "Tragic Rhetoric: The Use of Tragedy and the Tragic in the Fourth Century", in: Michael Silk (ed.) Trageþ and the Tragic: Greek Theatre and Beyond, Oxford, 310-31. (2000), The Athenian Institution of the Khorqgia: The Chorus, the City and the - Stàge, Cambridge. (2007), "Sicilian Choruses", in: Peter Wilson (ed.), The Greek Theatre and Festivals : Documentary Studies, Oxford, 351-377 . Zanker,Paul (1995), The Mask of Socrates: the Image of the Intellectual in Antiquity, trans. A. Shapiro; originally publishedas Die Maske des Sokrates: das Bild des Intellekluellen ín der antíken Kunsl (Munich, 1995), Berkeley' /