Tithonus in the “New Sappho” and the Narrated Mythical Exemplum in Archaic Greek Poetry

At present, some think that the twelve lines of the “New Sappho” are a complete poem; some think that the poem must have continued, as it appears to do in the Oxford papyrus (P.Oxy. 1787). [2] One way to approach the question of completeness is to focus on the Tithonus exemplum, and to compare it with the typical use of the narrated mythical exemplum in archaic Greek poems. [3] If the “New Sappho” is complete in twelve lines, then it ends with an exemplum. How likely is it that an exemplum will conclude a poem?

The question of such a conclusion has already been addressed apropos of the “New Sappho” by Hans Bernsdorff. [4] He wishes to establish what he calls the “open” conclusion as a stylistic feature of archaic Greek lyric. [5] But, as he has to admit at the outset, in archaic monody there exists only one possible case of a complete poem ending with a mythical narrative. It is Alcaeus fr. 44. [6] Bernsdorff thus has to look elsewhere, and he chooses Pindar and Horace. In Pindar, he finds three “open” endings, two in odes (Olympian 4; Nemean 1) and one in a paean (4). In my opinion, Pindar is the wrong place in which to look. Dionysius of Halicarnassus took Pindar and Sappho to represent opposite kinds of style, and Horace is likely to be reflecting this view in Odes 4.2. [7] Although both Pindar and Sappho are “lyric” poets, they differ in time, place, dialect, meters, and performance venue, thus also, I assume, in the use of the mythical exemplum. In this last respect, some differences are immediately obvious. First, the opening and closing formulas of the Pindaric mythical narrative are strikingly different from those in monody. [8] Second, the myth in Pindar tends to be more allusive and to be complexly related to the historical reality to which it refers. (The mythical exemplum in tragedy, too, tends to stand in a complex relation to the action. [9] ) As for Horace, as one who hoped to play the Lesboum barbiton (Odes 1.1.34), he seems a more likely candidate for comparison with Sappho. It is unclear, however, why his practice in one epode (13) and four odes (1.7; 1.8; 3.11; 3.27) is probative for Aeolic monody. Note that, in each of these poems, Horace concludes not with narrative, as a twelve-line “New Sappho” would conclude, but with quotation of a character in the narrative, whose words directly or indirectly make the point that Horace wishes to make.

My comparanda for the Tithonus exemplum are in archaic poems for solo performance. I will also discuss the narrated mythical exemplum in speeches in Homer, for reasons to be explained later. [10]

First, Sappho and Alcaeus. The former provides at most two exempla. In fr. 16, Helen leaves Menelaus and her daughter and so forth. If J.G. Howie is right, the poem did not end at line 20 but continued to line 33, where there is a coronis. [11] If that was the end of the poem, one can assume that there was a return to the gnome with which the poem begins or to the circumstances which occasioned that gnome. In fr. 17, a prayer or cult hymn [12] to the Hera of Lesbos, [13] Sappho, having evoked Hera’s support of the Atreidae, returns to her petition with νῦν δὲ κ[ἄμοι (11; cf. fr. 1.25 καὶ νῦν). Someone might say that the closing petition is obligatory in a prayer and therefore has no bearing on the question of how the “New Sappho,” which is not a prayer, ended. [14] The formal markers, however, and, one might say, the style of prayer or cult hymn were hardly restricted to ritual occasions but were broadly shared across genres. For example, sixteen of Pindar’s epinicians begin with cult hymns. [15]

For Sappho, then, there are perhaps two examples, in one of which Sappho returns from the myth to the present. In Alcaeus, four relevant examples appear. In the sequence of Voigt numbers, the first is fr. 38A, in which Alcaeus exhorts Melanippus to get drunk with him. He uses Sisyphus as an example of the futility of human attempts to escape death and returns to his exhortation with ἀλλ’ ἄγι (10). Fr. 42 is the curious twelve-line (four Sapphic strophes) synkrisis of Helen and Thetis. It begins ὠς λόγος and it ends by rounding off the synkrisis without an application of the myths. If this poem, with its “open” conclusion, is complete, then it is a parallel to the “New Sappho” understood as a complete poem, which happens also to be twelve lines long. But, from the time of its publication, opinions have differed about the completeness of Alcaeus fr. 42, and one would have to say that it is a parallel not to a twelve-line “New Sappho” but to the problem of a twelve-line “New Sappho.” [16] Even if Alcaeus fr. 42 is complete, it is possible that it could function as a complete poem only within a sympotic context, in which it was part of a chain, attempting to cap the preceding symposiast’s effort. [17] Another fragment of Alcaeus which some have considered complete is 44. [18] The myth here is modeled on the episode in the Iliad in which Achilles asks his mother to intercede with Zeus on his behalf (1.348–427; 493–516). Though sense can be made of the poem only in line 6, and the beginning of the poem is thus uncertain, a coronis at line 8 shows where the poem ended. It ended with the myth. Fr. 44 is thus a secure example of what Bernsdorff calls the “open” conclusion, and the only secure example in Sappho and Alcaeus he can point to. [19] The fourth and last example from Alcaeus is fr. 298 with the myth of Cassandra and Ajax’s impiety, apparently preceded and followed by reference to the impiety of Pittacus, betrayer of his companions. [20] Pittacus is referred to in line 47. For Alcaeus, then, we have one example of a myth concluding a poem (fr. 44), two examples of a return from the myth to the present situation (frs. 38A, 298), and one non liquet (fr. 42).

Elegy contains many mythical exempla but only a few that are narrated and thus relevant to the present question. Mimnermus’ lines on the sun are a description and not a narrative (fr. 12). They are from Nanno and thus presumably had some particular contextual frame. The two fragments on Jason and the Golden Fleece are from a narrative (frr. 11–11A), and it sounds as if the narrative is being used as an argument for something, but context is completely lacking. [21] In the priamel in Theognis 699–718, the foils—heroes and mythical figures—are concise and unnarrated, with one exception, Sisyphus. His story is amplified to the length of five couplets (703–12). [22] The priamel as a whole is framed by a gnome (men consider wealth the greatest aretê, 699–700, 717–718). [23] Another narrated mythical exemplum in Theognis, this time two couplets long, occurs in a pederastic poem (1341–1350). [24] The myth, which is about Ganymede, is part of an argumentum ex Iove. [25] Zeus did it. Why shouldn’t I? Theognis introduces the myth with ἐπεί ποτε καί and ends by addressing someone named Simonides: οὕτω μὴ θαύμαζε. In another poem, Theognis compares his sufferings to those of Odysseus (1123–1128). It is not clear that this poem, which ends with talk of vengeance on the suitors, is complete. [26] I suggest that what we have points to a missing conclusion in which Theognis returned to one of his favorite themes, namely, vengeance on his enemies. [27]

The only example in Theognis—the only example in all of elegy—of an “open” ending is the poem in which Theognis, addressing a boy, compares his pursuit of him to Atalanta’s suitors’ pursuit of her (1283–1294). He introduces the exemplum with ὥς ποτέ φασιν. He concludes: she came to know Aphrodite in spite of her refusal. In a sympotic context, the point of the exemplum is so clear that it is perhaps more effective if left unexpressed: as even Atalanta yielded, so you will yield to me. This poem, too, however, is surrounded by controversy. There are those, like West, who say that it is an amalgam of two poems; there are those who say that it is a single, complete poem. [28]

To conclude on elegy, there is now the remarkable mythical narrative concerning Telephus which constitutes the “new Archilochus” (P.Oxy. 4708). Dirk Obbink in his publication of the fragment suggests that the story may be an exemplum and shows how it could have functioned as such. [29]

The largest and I would say most useful set of narrated mythical exempla is found in the speeches in Homer. But what justifies using these speeches as comparanda for Sappho? There are three reasons. In the first place, mythical exempla have the same introductory elements in these speeches as are found in monody and elegy. Second, the speeches belong to a set of rhetorical genres, and some of these genres, for example, prayer, lament, and supplication, are shared with poetry. [30] Third, as rhetorical utterances, the speeches in Homer are, like poems or songs, performance genres. [31]

Much research has been devoted to narrated mythical exempla in Homer, which are customarily referred to as “paradeigmata.” [32] Scholars have classified them in various ways, discussed their functions, and the distortions or inventions which appear in the myths themselves. My question is a simple, formal one: do speakers return from a narrated myth to the situation which prompted the telling? The answer is yes. M. M. Willcock made the relevant point in an article in 1964: paradeigmatic speeches in Homer have a ring-compositional structure, with the myth in the middle. [33] The same is true of the few paradeigmata in the Homeric Hymns, one of which happens to be about Tithonus. [34] The same is true also of the ainos, of which we have fifteen examples in archaic and classical poetry which survive in their entirety. [35]

Earlier, I mentioned introductory elements as a shared feature of exempla in monody and epic speeches. The same is true of the elements by which the speaker rounds off the exemplum and returns to the present. Here are a few instances: In Iliad 20, Aeneas concludes his genealogical discourse to Achilles: ἀλλ’ ἄγε μηκέτι ταῦτα … (244). In Iliad 24, Achilles concludes the Niobe exemplum: ἀλλ’ ἄγε δὴ καὶ νῶϊ … (618). Compare the way Alcaeus turns from the Sisphyus exemplum to his exhortation to Melanippus: ἀλλ’ ἄγι … (fr. 38A.10). Achilles’ concluding formula in the speech to Priam is really a combination of two formulae which can occur separately. With καὶ νῶϊ one can compare νῦν δὲ κ[ἄμοι in Sappho fr. 17.11 (cf. fr. 1.25 καὶ νῦν). A favorite way to round off a paradeigma in Homer is with a phrase introduced by ὥς, e.g ὣς καὶ ἔγω, and one can compare in Theognis the phrase οὕτω μὴ θαύμαζε which I have already cited. [36]

To move toward a conclusion, a survey of the evidence for the narrated mythical exemplum in archaic monody and elegy shows only a single indubitable case of an “open” conclusion, against a few cases of an A-B-A structure, where A is the present situation and B is the myth. Alcaeus fr. 42 has the “open” conclusion, which may be owing to its place in a sympotic chain. As for the Theognidea, lines 1287–1294 (on Atalanta) would also be an example of an “open” ending if it were certain that these lines constitute a single poem. Another exemplum in Theognis is followed by an explicit return to the situation which prompted the myth. In Homer, the speaker who uses a paradeigma will regularly apply it to the present situation. In Alfred Heubeck’s formulation, the argument of the paradeigma in Homer is either “Thus someone acted then, thus you should act now” or “Thus it happened once before, take warning.” [37]

The preponderance of the evidence, such as it is, especially if one admits speeches in Homer, as I think that one can, leads one to expect a return from the myth to the present, an A-B-A structure. One would expect Sappho, then, to return from Tithonus to her present situation, and one notes in lines 23–24 of the Oxyrhynchus papyrus present tenses which would indicate a return to the present time of the enunciation. Further, one notes καί μοι, which resembles a rounding-off formula. I cited an example of this formula from Sappho fr. 17.11. Penelope, too, uses it at Odyssey 19.524 to round off the story of Pandareus’ daughter, the nightingale, and return to her own situation.

Penelope’s myth illustrates something else. As I said in the abstract of the presentation from which this paper has emerged, “The narrator finds a particular point of contact between the myth and the situation to which he or she applies it.” The tertium comparationis is never in doubt or left as allusion or riddle. [38] In the “New Sappho,” Tithonus clearly illustrates the gnome that mortals inevitably grow old. If this exemplum has some further, different meaning, this idea will be found not in the myth itself but in Sappho’s perspective on the myth. The peculiar imperfect ἔφαντο suggests that Sappho’s perspective has indeed changed, presumably because of self-understanding that post-dates the perspective of the subjects of ἔφαντο. She knows something that they didn’t know.

What ought to be in concluding lines is some kind of self-consolation, as the first editors of the “New Sappho” thought. [39] Alex Hardie has put together, from other fragments of Sappho (including, obviously, the one in the Cologne papyrus) and from a vast array of related material, the elements that one would expect to find in the conclusion, even though Hardie appears to believe, in spite of himself, that the twelve lines are a complete poem. These elements are devotion to the Muses in the form of song and dance, with related eschatological hopes, all as part of the choric education with which the poem begins. [40]

My reading is a historicizing one. It aims at establishing the outline of the poem that Sappho’s audience might have expected. There is another kind of reading, equally important, which I would call a possible reading. For example, when Richard Janko in an article in the Times Literary Supplement explains the Tithonus exemplum as in itself consolatory he gives a reading which might have become possible at some point in antiquity and is possible for us. [41] Likewise, when Bernsdorff cites Horace for the practice of Sappho, I think that he is really talking about a way of reading Sappho which he learned from Horatian innovation in the use of the mythical exemplum. The later poet enables new ways of reading the earlier poet. [42]

This distinction I have made between the way or ways we can read the “New Sappho” and the way the twelve lines would have appeared to Sappho’s audience needs further discussion, as an anonymous reader’s reaction to this paper shows. He or she states: “We moderns have no trouble making sense of the twelve-line poem and its final mythical exemplar. Sappho’s audience would have been more equipped to do so as well.” In this way, he or she collapses the distinction between reception contemporary with Sappho and later reception such as Janko’s. The deductive form of his or her argument, of the modus ponens type, is not the usual one in discussion amongst classicists, but it happens to be convenient for illustrating what I consider a mistaken point of view. It can be restated thus:

• If we moderns can make sense of the twelve-line “New Sappho,” then Sappho’s audience could make sense of it, too.
• We can make sense of it.
• Therefore Sappho’s audience could make sense of it.

In this kind of argument, as everyone knows, everything depends on the truth of the premises. The first premise here is, I submit, untenable. It assumes that the mind will always, across millennia, respond to the same poetic work in the same fundamental way. A counter-argument from common sense suffices. The workaday classicist constantly discovers not the fundamental similarity of the ancient to the modern mind but its alterity. One could also point to the current vogue of reception studies, which is showing how the meaning of ancient texts has differed in different times and places. A stronger counter-argument against the idealist, transhistorical pretension of the syllogism I have analyzed can be found in Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Truth and Method. On his account, the understanding of an ancient text comes about not in spite of but because of and within our historical distance from that text.

Postscript

Several speakers besides me at the two Sappho panels held in San Diego in 2007 addressed the question of the completeness of the “New Sappho.” Dee Clayman described the Cologne papyrus as the remains of a Hellenistic florilegium on old age, mortality and song, comparing the roughly contemporary “New Posidippus” (P.Mil.Vogl. VIII 309) with its thematic arrangements under nine headings. The “New Sappho” might be a truncated edition of the poem, she said, enough for the compiler’s purposes. André Lardinois, too, compared the “New Posidippus,” and said that, in the unstable conditions of archaic poetry, two different versions might have been transmitted. Both he and Clayman were thinking materialistically, so to speak, i.e. of transmission in writing. Gregory Nagy, thinking in terms of performance, spoke of the ending of the archaic poem as always already fungible. Deborah Boedeker, too, argued for the possibility of different versions in performance. The position I have taken in this paper can be reconciled with the positions of Clayman and Lardinois, I believe. As for Nagy’s and Boedeker’s view, one would have to imagine, for the twelve-line “New Sappho,” a performance context in which the audience, if I am right about the precise point of contact between performer and his or her situation, is content with Tithonus as an exemplum illustrating the old saw about the inevitability of aging. The only way around this conclusion, or to counter this conclusion, is to argue that the Tithonus myth, as in the twelve-line “New Sappho,” contains a latent, positive, consolatory idea. So Richard Janko argued in his TLS article, [43] and so, but finding a different idea, did Joel Lidov, though Lidov stopped short of saying that the “New Sappho” is a complete poem, preferring “complete poetic statement.” To repeat, I myself do not expect a mythical exemplum in such a context to be a riddle or to be allusive. (The myth in Pindar is another story.)

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Footnotes