!"#$%&'"()'$%#*+"#+)' %,+"-&.*/0$1(&2(&($3,4"#*$5-67#& 8-,&'#0$!"#$%9#&)'(:$;-,&:(7$-0$The Johns Hopkins University Press 8+(27#$MNO0$http://www.jstor.org/stable/294871 %''#**#L0$BIPBFPFCBC$BD0ICYour use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=jhup. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

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AMERICAN

JOURNAL

OF PHILOLOGY

THE ARCHAIC AESTHETICGlory be to Godfor dappled things ...

passion, one might in fact say, was for xta CotKiXa.2

Denys Page insists that Sappho's reputation must still depend on 7otiKtI6Opov'&Oavar' 'A9ppo68raand (paiverai tuolKflvoq;ioo OS ototv, for "it is questionable whether there is anything among the new fragments which reaches or even approaches the level of the old. We discern in both old and new the same narrow limitations of interest, the same simplicity of thought, the same delicacy in expression, the same talent for self-detachment and self-criticism. But whereas the two great poems are aglow in the reflection of intensely ardent emotions, the longer of the new fragments appear comparatively dispassionate and colorless. The language is not less elegant; the spirit is much less impassioned."' One might ask, first, whether expression of passion is the sole criterion by which to judge poetry and, then, whether passion is necessarily romantic or erotic feeling. Is Page not looking, in part at least, for quite the wrong qualities in Sappho? Might he not rather have thought that the delicacy of expression, which she shares with other of the early lyricists, establishes her in all her work as the most elegant practitioner of the archaic aesthetic? For these poets were not so much interested in the expression of passion as they were intent upon describing the phenomena of their world as they saw, heard, touched, and smelled it. They were fascinated by the variegated nature of the objects of their senses: the sound, color, and movement of birds, insects, fishes, and animals; the subtle variations of pitch in music; the color, texture, and fall of clothing and other dyed stuffs; the touch, color, and scent of flowers; and, above all, the play of light on surfaces of all kinds. Their

'D. L. Page, Sappho and Alcaeus (Oxford 1955) 110. 2The texts cited in the following pages are D. L. Page, Poetae Melici Graeci (Oxford 1962); E. Lobel and D. L. Page, Poetarum Lesbiorum Fragmenta (Oxford 1955); D. L. Page, Supplementum Lyricis Graecis (Oxford 1974); H. Maehler after B. Snell,American Journal of Philology 105 (1984) 119 49 ? 1984 by The Johns Hopkins University Press

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Animals In Alcman's Partheneion (1.47-49), the chorus leader is like a well-built steed, a bringer of prizes with pounding hooves (se0oq(p6pov Kava%adnoSa), a creature of dreams with wings. She, or another, is a Venetian courser beside an Ibenaean steed.3 The girls are compared to horses, perhaps because a part of the ritual in which they now sing and dance was a foot race or even an actual horse race.4 Speed and beauty of movement is then the point here. The Homeric adjective Kavaxt6IoSa was chosen for onomatopoeic effect. It attempts to imitate the sound of galloping steeds. Stesichorus (178) in a fragment from the Funeral Games for Pelias names five horses: 4X6oysov, "Apctayov, HroS6pyaq, davOov, and KuXAll the names refer the to color or of the creatures. flo,apov. speed and refer to both. 8dpyaq OX6ysov may Etymologicum Magnum, which cites the passage, says that Ku6,apog comes from KXXEtv and means "swift" (TaaXl)). The etymology is improbable, but the meaning may be right.5 Again, Stesichorus (235) called Poseidon "prince of theBacchylides Carmina cum Fragmentis (Leipzig 1970). I have in general confined my study to the melic poets, but I have, when his use of an adjective seemed particularly enlightening, cited Bacchylides as well. Pindar, whom I almost never mention, is obviously worthy of a separate study. (See B. H. Fowler, "The Centaur's Smile: Pindar and the Archaic Aesthetic," in W. G. Moon, ed., Ancient Greek Art and Iconography (Madison 1983) 159-70.) My citations are selective; word indices in the above editions will supplement points I make. 3D. L. Page, Partheneion (Oxford 1951) 51. 4T. G. Rosenmeyer, "Alcman's Partheneion I Reconsidered," GRBS 7 (1966) 321-59, n. 1, provides an excellent bibliography to that date on this poem. He himself suggests that the ritual described may have included an actual horse race. For important contributions since Rosenmeyer to the identification of the girls, see C. O. Pavese, "Alcmano, il Partenio del Louvre," QUCC 4 (1967) 113-33; P. Janni, "Nuovi studi alcmanei," QUCC 4 (1967) 188-93; Q. Cataudella, "Sugli scoli A, B al Partenio di Alcmane," in Intorno ai lirici greci (Rome 1972) 21-41; F. J. Cuartero, "El partenio del Louvre (Fr. 1 Page)," BIEH6, no. 2 (1972) 23-76; A. Griffiths, "Alcman's Partheneion: the morning after the night before," QUCC 14 (1972) 7-30; J. W. Halporn, "Agido, Hagesichora, and the Chorus (Alcman 1.37 ff. PMG)," in Antidosis, Festschrift fur Walter Kraus zum 70 Geburtstag (Vienna 1972) 124-38; F. R. Adrados, "Alcman, el Partenio del Louvre: Estructura e interpretaci6n," Emerita 41 (1973) 323-44. which both Boisacq and Pokorny 5The word is more likely to be related to KUl,X6q, is the give as "crooked," "bent," or "lame." Aristotle (HA 530a. 12) tells us that K6XX,apog Hermit-crab, and Edmonds, Lyra Graeca II (Cambridge and London 1963) 31, translates the word in Stesichorus as "Bow-legs," a strange name for a horse which was Hera's gift. Other adjectives describing color or movement of horses occur at Stesichorus 250, Ibycus 285, Simonides 515, and Alcaeus 34 and 42.

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hollow-hooved [KotxovuXovv]horses." The adjective, like Kavaxdato8a in Alcman (1.48), though not truly onomatopoeic, refers to and even suggests the sound of galloping steeds. The near alliteration in K and x and the spaced o's and v's produce this effect. Ibycus (287), like Alcman, uses the horse metaphorically. He is himself, trembling at Aphrodite's approach, like an old yoke-bearing, prize-winning horse, who goes, all unwilling, with the swift car to the fray. Anacreon tells of Aphrodite tethering her horses in fields of hyacinths (346.7-9), and the eroticism suggested by this factual or symbolic action and setting is still more explicit in the sustained metaphor of his Thracian filly (417).6 The coltishness, and therefore the flirtatious mantotle uses it specifically of the amorous play of mares (HA 572a.30), and Alcman (58) uses it of Eros walking upon blossoms of galingale.7 In a fragment without context, Anacreon calls colts fpa8tvq; (456). The comment of the scholiast here is significant. He is commenting on Apollonius Rhodius' line Tilq 8' "Hpqi piatvfi;q r7t?dooato X%tI6p(3.106) and says that pa6itvfi means "soft" or "tender" (rp)(pepi;q)but that Anacreon uses it for "swift"(rdaoug). Ibycus is reported by the same scholiast to have used the adjective of columns supporting heaven (336); surely the meaning there is "slender." Hera's hand is in some way delicate- soft perhaps - and the colts are in some respect also delicate-slender and swift. Anacreon and other lyric poets use the adjective in ways that comprise these several meanings. Alcman (91) uses it to refer to parts of a necklace which look like the petals of a flower having the color derived from the murex or "purple-fish." The word must refer then to the quality of petals, which may be both "slight" and "soft." Stesichorus (243) uses the word to refer to javelins: the idea may be "slender" and "swift" as in the case of the colts of Anacreon (456). Anacreon himself (407) uses it to refer to thighs (both soft and slender?) in a context which can only be erotic: "Pledge, my friends, your tender thighs." The sense of "delicacy," probably as both "softness" and "slenderness," appears in Sappho's description of Aphrodite herself as 3pa8ivav (102). Sappho (115) uses the same adjective to describe the sapling to which she compares the bridegroom. The context is erotic, and the sapling is both tender and slender and, like Aphrodite, like the6C. M. Bowra, Greek Lyric Poetry, 2nd rev. ed. (Oxford 1961) 288, 272. 7Cf. P. E. Easterling, "Alcman 58 and Simonides 37," PCPhS 200 (1974) 37-43, who sees Eros as a mischievous boy "at play."

ner of the girl, is particularly evoked by the line: KoU(pa T? GKIpTXQoa 7raiet; (5). The word tzaico frequently has erotic connotations. Aris-

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young man's thighs, like the petals of a flower, "supple." The "suppleness" may apply too to Anacreon's colts and be but another element in their "swiftness." The figure of the horse is implicit in Anacreon's charming poem (360) to his boy love, whom he describes as the charioteer of his soul. Here the alliteration is 7 in the first line, the circumflex accents on co all add to the wit and the erotically suggestive tone of the poem.8 In another mood entirely, Sappho in a fragment (104), possibly of a wedding song, tells of evening bringing back to their mothers the kid and the lamb. The comparison implicit is that of the bride whom evening will not bring back to her mother--or to Sappho.9 The creatures are chosen for tender effect. Elsewhere (40) Sappho speaks of a white goat. The color of creatures seems to matter. Another creature chosen for tenderness' sake and appearing in what one suspects is a romantic context is the fawn. Anacreon (408) says, "gently as a new-budding, suckling fawn, abandoned by its horned mother in a wood, trembles." The adverb ayavCS; sets the tone.'0 Sappho (96.15) uses the adjective of Atthis. The suckling creature is veoOiXLca. This may refer specifically to its horns, or it may refer just to its infancy in general, but the adjective in either case suggests that which is thriving, swelling, blossoming--in short, newly alive. Finally, the verb ?xtToi0I means literally "flutter," "cower." The trembling motion of the fawn is the characteristic that completes the simile, whatever it was. Sappho (58.16) apparently uses the fawn too in a simile: 'ioa veppiototv. Elegance of gait may here have been the point: the line above reads yova c ' [o]uiqppouoi. Elsewhere (16.17) she refers to Anactoria's lovely walk (ipat6veT 3l[ a).

and ctal, the rhyme of KLUSIt with TVIOxs?Ustg, as well as the polyptoton

Birds In Alcman's Partheneion (1) the rival chorus appears to be called the Peleiades, that is, the Doves. " Twice in the same poem Alcman uses8J. Labarbe, "Anacreon, contemplateur de Cleobule?" RBPh 38 (1960) 45-58, sees the polyptoton as marking ascending passion. 9Cf. M. Treu, "Die Structur von Sappho Fr. 48,3 und 120D," RhM 107 (1964) 289-94. l0J. Labarbe, "Agan6s. Anacreon fr. 28, I Gentili," LEC 37 (1969) 229-35, eliminates d&yavcxfrom this fragment. "This is the view of D. Page (note 3 above) 57. Cf. Bowra (note 6 above). For other views see particularly A. P. Burnett, "The Race with the Peleiades," CP 59 (1964)

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birds in similes. The singer says that she has "shrieked" (.eXaKa) like an owl from the beams (1.86), and another "sings" ((p0eyyerat) upon the streams of Xanthus like a swan (1.100). In both passages the verbs may be onomatopoeic. AadoKo is used of the shrieking of birds (II. 22.141; Hes. Op. 207) and the barking of dogs (of Scylla: Od. 12.85) and may be an attempt to reproduce these sounds. 406yy6Tat almost certainly tries to sound like human utterance, for which it is often used (II. 11.603; Hdt. 2.57; Pi. 0. 6.14), and also like the plucking of a lyre, for which it is also sometimes used (Thgn. 761; cf. Arist. Metaph. 1019b.15). In Alcman's Halcyon Song (26) the totally dactylic rhythm recreates in its regularity both the motion of the waves and the winging of the birds which it describes. It also gives the same wistful tone that Yeats creates in his anapestic line, "I would that we were, my beloved, white birds on the foam of the sea."12 The repetition of iad 81 Si p6a?-the very words of wishing -combines with the meter to enhance this effect. The birds are defined not only by flight but by their sounds (uetXtydpuecq iap6(povot) and perhaps by their color (a&tnt6pq(ppo0).13 Alcman (39) declares that he has learned music and song from chattering partridges (yFycooaao gevav KaKKai3i8cv). He enunciates here a notion that was common in antiquity: men learned music from the birds.14 The name for partridges is foreign but almost certainly ono-

30-33; Rosenmeyer, Griffiths, Cataudella, Halporn (note 4 above); also, M. L. West, "Melica," CQ 20 (1970) 205-15. 2'"The White Birds," from The Rose (1893), in The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats (New York 1959) 41. 13On the reading iap6;, see M. Benavente, "Similia II," E Clds 9 (1965) 235-39, and G. Giangrande, "Interpretationen Griechischen Meliker," RhM 114 (1971) 97-131, who defend seapoq, and 0. Musso, "Hiaros ornis (Alcm. fr. 26 Page, v. 4)," SIFC 45 (1973) 134-35, who defends Hecker's emendation. Cf. J. K. Bos, "Een fragment van Alkman," Hermeneus 39 (1967-68) 107-9. 14B. Gentili, "I frr. 39 e 40 P. di Alcmane e la poetica della mimesi nella cultura greca arcaica," in Studifilologici e storici in onore di Vittorio de Falco (Naples 1971) 5967, has some provocative things to say about the role of mimesis in the archaic oral tradition. He takes the fragment to mean that Alcman found both melody and words by verbalizing the sounds of partridges. C. Gallavotto, "Le pernici di Alcmane," QUCC 14 (1972) 31-36, on the other hand, accepts Page's reading yey? oooactvav as a genitive plural but reads 61id for Athenaeus' 6vopa and takes the fragment to mean that then Alcman discovered music as well by composing in unison with chattering partridges. F. G. Sirna, "Alcmane heuretes ton er6ticon melon," Aegyptus 53 (1973) 28-70, reads yecyXooaacavov (with Ikoq4) and takes the expression to mean "in maniera vistosa alle note consuetudini delle tribabi."

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matopoeic: it imitates the bird's call.I5 The participle y?Y;(oooatanvav is suggestive too of their "clucking." In his Night Song (89), Alcman ends by describing the sleep of the long-winged birds. The dactyls of (p6Xa TavuxTepuycov again suggest the winging of those birds, which sleep so peacefully in the succession of long, slow syllables at the beginning of the line: e68ouot 8' oicovEcv. In Stesichorus (209.1.9) a "cawing crow" (X,aKepua KOpcova) appears, perhaps as an omen.16 The two words together appear to be onomatopoeic, just as our translation "cawing crows" seems to imitate the raucous call of the bird itself. Stesichorus uses another onomatopoeic line to describe the babbling of the swallow in spring: OT?e ipoqS cpal I XEtSo(v (211). The verb K?a6?0o (KeCda8() is probably itself KEaSfLt mimetic. It is used elsewhere of the flow of water (r/. 18.576), of the cry of a newborn baby (Aesch. Ch. 609), of the cock (Theoc. 18.57), and of bells (Eur. Rh. 384). The name of the swallow may attempt to imitate its song. The near alliteration of K and X and the repetition of X's and 8's in the two words do, in any case, yield a sound suggestive of a bird's warbling song.17 Ibycus describes several kinds of birds sitting among the topmost leaves:V 71~' TO0 4A?V &KpOTdTOtS 7TsTdXOlto i{dvoitot IoKi(al aioL6Eltpol n7av?Xo0cS Xa6t7op(pupi6S; Kai Tavuoi;Tepot. (317a) a&XKUovsq

The XaOtop(cpupi6SSc are unidentified but apparently the same as the 7op(pupic mentioned in the following fragment (b) and presumably a15G. R. Cardona,"Unnom grec de la 'perdix': kakkabe,"Orbis16 (1967) 161-64, is not onomatopoeicbut a loan wordfrom the Near East. I myself arguesthat KcaKKcaic; in the Near East. fail to see whythe wordcould not have been formedonomatopoeically D'Arcy Thompson, A Glossary of Greek Birds (Oxford 1936) 129, identifies the KaKKa-

1iiqas P. saxatilis "whosecall-note is kakabi or kakabetvaried by cok, cok, cokrre." RogerTory Peterson,A Field Guide to the Birds of Britainand Europe(London 1954; reprinted 1974) 105, gives the call of the chukar, a bird very similar to the rockpartridge,as a "chuckingor cacklingvoice, like barnyardfowl";its name too is apparhe says, has a stacattosong "tchertsi-ritt-chi." ently onomatopoeic.The rock-partridge, and the chukarare found in Greecetoday. Both the rock-partridge 16Bowra (note 6 above) 78 denies the literal existenceof this crow. 17 The swallowwas known in antiquity for its babbling or twitteringsong. See Thompson(note 15 above) 315, "Epithetsand Phrases,"and 320, "Their Barbarous Twitter."Peterson(note 15 above) 210 describesthe song of the swallow(hirundorustica) as "a pleasant, weak mixtureof rapid twitteringand warblingnotes."

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bird of a blue-purple color: 7cop(pupiovis the purple gallinule, which Aristotle (fr. 272; ap. Ath. 388c, D) describes as Kuaveoq and which we should probably agree is of a purplish hue.18 Less puzzling is the deand aiooe68tpoi. These are words scription of the ducks as 7otioiKiXa which apply certainly to many species of ducks. They are often "pied" or "parti-colored," and the play of light on the plumage, often of a contrasting color, on their perhaps preening necks is a conspicuous feature of these birds. It is commonly acknowledged that the adjective ai6Xo;o contains the notions of both movement and light.19 Like nottKiXoq it means "variegated," in one or more senses at a time. Alcaeus (345) describes pied ducks of Ocean, come from the boundaries of Earth, which are both tavuoaicspot and ntOtKIXO68ipot.The former adjective suggests flight, the latter the visual result of that flight. Stesichorus (SLG 15) calls the hydra aioo68s[ip]ou: the adjective here embraces both the movement of the necks and the resulting play of light on them. Anacreon, like Stesichorus, speaks of a swallow in a line which is alliteratively suggestive of the "sweet-voiced" bird he is actually describ(394a). The distribution of liquids (k ing: l8uLXE;q XapiEaoa tXi61oi and p) and x's and 8's contribute to the musically chattering effect of the line. He also mentions a cuckoo (437). K6KKu4, like the English name for the same bird, is mimetic. Anacreon (443) may refer to a bird "swinging" or "quivering" in the dark-leaved laurel and the green olive tree.20 The verb tavtrakitt suggests something else, in addition to sound, color, and flight, about birds which fascinates. The color or quality of the setting is also significant. Both trees have leaves which we should call green; those of the bay are darker and shiny; those of the olive are remarkable for their silver-gray color. Certainly we should not and if we did so, we ordinarily call laurel black-leaved (E?Xapt(pi)L3Uo), should be doing what Anacreon surely is doing: describing the play of light on a moving surface rather than what we call color as such. Anacreon (452: K6pova paivov) may describe a bird "walking with arched neck." One thinks of Aratus' description of birds before a storm (Phaen. 950). In any case, whether or not the fragment refers to a bird, it is the gait of the creature which appears to be at issue. In AnalSOn the meaning of Kuav80o see below, "Color." On Aristotle's use here, see especially note 46. '9E.g., E. Irwin, Colour Terms in Greek Poetry (Toronto 1974) 214-15. 20W. B. Stanford, "Marginalia," Hermathena 97 (1963) 107-9, suggests, however, that the subject of tavtaXiCst is a mountain, or possibly Samos.

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creon 453 we come upon another "babbling swallow," again in an alliterative and onomatopoeic expression: KCOTi)rTl %EXtISOv. Simonides (508) may be speaking of a half-mythical halcyon, but he does describe the bird as nrolKifoq. He refers presumably to its variegated coloring. Aristotle describes the European kingfisher, that is the halcyon, as follows: .. .6TO 8t XpCoa Kai Kuavo6V ?XEt Kai Xkopbv Ka(i uTeotopcpupovIOTOV TO oc011a 7av K ai ait7tTpuyEsq Kai Ta 7T1piTOV TO Es1tYtLVOg vc 06 V X%p1oMaTWovTO 6e pyXoqS O7t6%X(opov Tpd%X7TOV, Xopiq ?FKaToV TOVli?V, za