Tradition also has another meaning for the poet; it is both a witness to ‘history’ in general and a guarantor of the ‘new history’ that the poet is making; his reworking of the poetic word needs the authoritative seal of poetry. The classical poet therefore respects the tradition that confers respect on him and through which he can claim, ‘I too am a poet!’
G. B. Conte (Reference Conte1986) 421
Theocritus’ Idyll 7 describes the encounter on a country road between the first-person narrator Simichidas and a mysterious goatherd called Lycidas.Footnote 1 The former induces the latter to go part of the way together and exchange pastoral songs. Immediately before going off at a turn in the road, Lycidas bestows a stick on Simichidas as ‘a gift of hospitality from the Muses’ (129 ἐκ Μοισᾶν ξεινήιον).Footnote 2 Scholars agree that this conferral is modelled on the famous poetic investiture of Hesiod (Theog. 22–34). In Idyll 7, therefore, we attend a bucolic re-enactment of Hesiod's Dichterweihe,Footnote 3 in which a goatherd replaces the Muses as the donor of the stick, a pastoral λαγωβόλον replaces the laurel branch, and a ‘Spring of the cow’ (6 Βούρινα) replaces the Hesiodic ‘Spring of the horse’ (Theog. 6).Footnote 4
To convince the goatherd to share rural songs with him, Simichidas says (35–43):
‘But come; common is the way and common is the day; let us make bucolic songs. Maybe each of us will benefit the other. For I too am a clear voice of the Muses, and all call me best singer; but I am no gullible person – no, by Earth. For, in my opinion, as yet I am not better in singing than either the great Sicelidas from SamosFootnote 5 or Philetas, but compete with them like a frog against grasshoppers.’ So, designedly, did I say. The goatherd smiled sweetly and answered: ‘I present you with this staff’.
Theocritus' acquaintance with the hymnic tradition was profound.Footnote 6 I believe that in the passage just quoted we have an intertextual reference to the crucial scene in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes when the newborn god appeases wrathful Apollo through music. This episode must have been particularly memorable to ancient readers in general, and to a Hellenistic poet like Theocritus in particular, for at least three reasons. First, it coincides with the narrative climax of the Hymn, when the tension accumulated in the course of about 400 lines is suddenly snapped (see below). Second, it contains self-referential considerations by a poet qua poet; and it is well known that in ancient literature metapoetical utterances were particularly prone to generating allusive metapoetical utterances by later poets.Footnote 7 Third, the lines in question must have seemed especially significant to any ancient poet because in them the god of poetry himself comments on his status as a poet and on his relation to the Muses.
In the Hymn, Apollo describes his reaction at hearing young Hermes’ performance on the lyre as follows (447–55):
What skill is this, what art for incurable sorrows, what track? For surely it is possible to obtain joy, love and sweet sleep, all three together. For I too am a follower of the Olympian Muses who care for dances and the splendid path of song and luxuriant music and the charming sound of auloi. But never yet did I care so much in my mind for anything else, of all the deeds of young men which move to the right at feasts. I marvel, son of Zeus, how charmingly you play these things on the lyre.Footnote 8
The resemblance between line 37 of the Idyll and line 450 of the Hymn is apparent:
Both Simichidas' and Apollo's are poetical self-proclamations: ‘For I too am a clear voice of the Muses’, Simichidas asserts; his assertion echoes Apollo's in the Hymn: ‘For I too am a follower of the Muses’.Footnote 9 These two passages are to my knowledge the only ones in extant Greek literature in which the phrase καὶ γὰρ ἐγώ(ν) is collocated with the term Μοῦσα.Footnote 10 (There are other minor similarities. The two passages are structurally comparable in that in both the clause introduced by καὶ γὰρ ἐγώ is immediately followed by an adversative: ‘For I too am … but I am not credulous, etc.’; ‘For I too am … but never yet did I care so much, etc.’ In both passages the clause introduced by καὶ γὰρ ἐγώ is closely followed by οὔπω – at 39 and 453 respectively; this happens in none of the passages listed in note 10.)
The formal correspondence between these two micro-contexts is emphasised by the striking thematic similarity of their respective larger contexts. Both Idyll 7 and the Hymn to Hermes narrate the conferral of a poetically symbolic object; both are metaliterary pieces dealing with bucolics; both can be defined as ‘foundational’ poems, since the former describes the consecration of a bucolic poet, the latter (as I shall discuss next) the divine creation of the bucolic genre.
2
The Homeric Hymn to Hermes relates the first two days of Hermes’ life. Immediately after his birth he invents the lyre (20–64), then he rushes to Pieria, where the sacred herd of the gods is kept, and steals some of the cattle (64–181). The day after, Apollo discovers the theft and eventually manages to identify the culprit; the case is brought to the arbitration of Zeus (182–396). When Hermes’ responsibility is definitively demonstrated the furious Apollo is about to attack him (409). At this climactic point, Hermes presents his half-brother with a performance on the lyre, the instrument he had invented the day before (416–28). Apollo is so taken by the new kind of music that he forgets all about his anger (436–62). Hermes takes advantage of the situation by proposing a swap, which Apollo eagerly accepts: Hermes gives the lyre to Apollo; in exchange, he will henceforward serve as the herdsman of the cattle he had stolen (490–502).
Hermes’ decision to devote himself to tending cows is also a choice in terms of poetics, as becomes clear few lines later. Now that he no longer possesses the lyre, Hermes invents the syrinx, the instrument proper to herdsmen and symbolising their own kind of poetry (507–12):
And Hermes loved Leto's son continuously, as he does even to this day; with a token,Footnote 11 since he handed the delightful lyre to the Far-shooter, and the latter played it expertly on his arm. But Hermes himself in turn devised the art of a second skill: he made for himself the sound of the syrinx, which can be heard from afar.
The invention of the syrinx, albeit only briefly mentioned, casts a completely new light on the preceding narration of the cattle-rustling: if Hermes’ first accomplishment, the construction of the lyre, has an intrinsically poetical character, his second deed, stealing the cattle, takes on no less poetical implications as it ultimately leads to the construction of the syrinx. The Hymn as a whole can thus be read as a foundational poem about two radically different poetic genres, both invented by the ingenious Hermes. He relinquishes ‘lyric’Footnote 12 to Apollo, who ever since has been considered as its legitimate patron, and reserves the bucolic genre (the syrinx and cows) for himself.Footnote 13
3
The Homeric Hymn which hints at the divine invention of bucolics must have been central in the formation of Theocritus, the human founder of bucolics as a literary genre.Footnote 14 From a text-external perspective, therefore, the allusion established in section 1 can be seen as an authorial gesture pointing out to the reader the thematic affinity between Idyll 7 and the Hymn to Hermes: the Idyll presupposes the Hymn. But in order to appreciate fully the meaning and import of the allusion it is necessary also to examine it from the text-internal perspective of the communication between the characters. Both Simichidas and Lycidas are refined poets, who repeatedly make recourse to Alexandrian concepts and themes: they may well be expected to be capable of producing, recognising and appreciating a high degree of literary sophistication. For instance, lines 118–19, uttered by Simichidas in his song, unmistakably allude to an epigram by Asclepiades; that this intertextual operation must be intentional not simply on the part of the text-external author, but also on the part of the character, is certain, because Simichidas, at 40, has indicated Asclepiades as one of his models.Footnote 15
Simichidas tells us explicitly that his short speech at 35–41 should not be taken literally, but requires a complex, ‘between the lines’ reading. Immediately after reporting it, he, as narrator, makes this important clarification: ὣς ἐϕάμαν ἐπίταδες (42), ‘so, designedly, did I say’. Scholars have long wondered about what exactly, in Simichidas’ speech, has been ‘designedly’ uttered, and to what purpose.Footnote 16 There can be little doubt that Lycidas does understand the implied meaning of his interlocutor, as his reaction reveals: he encouragingly smiles and promises he will present Simichidas with his stick, thereby announcing the imminent Dichterweihe (42–3).
I submit that the allusion of line 37 is meant by Simichidas as one element of his coded message: designedly, he speaks to ‘the most eminent syrinx-player’ (28 συρικτὴς μέγ’ ὑπείροχος), Lycidas, with the same words by which the inventor and first performer of the syrinx had been spoken to by Apollo. By intertextually suggesting that he has read the ‘bibliography’ on the subject, Simichidas is soliciting the bucolic consecration that Lycidas, in response, will very soon grant him.Footnote 17
4
Simichidas’ allusion (I believe) is ingeniously crafted so as to draw attention, through its very wording, to its status as allusion. The expression καὶ γὰρ ἐγώ of line 37, in particular, functions as a marker of intertextuality. On the literal level (the analogy operating text-internally), it refers to the fact that Simichidas is a poet like his interlocutor Lycidas; on a deeper level of signification (the analogy operating intertextually), it hints at the fact that Simichidas is a poet like Apollo, whose words ‘he too’ employs.
Such intertextual signposts have been much studied.Footnote 18 A case that is especially relevant for our purposes, in that it involves another self-reflexive and metapoetical ‘I too’, is found in the ‘proemio al mezzo’ of Virgil's Georgics. Here we read (3.3–9):
Other topics, which might have captured void minds, are now all trite: who knows not cruel Eurystheus or the altars of unpraised Busiris? Who has not narrated of young Hylas, Latona's Delos, Hippodame, and Pelops, famous for his ivory shoulder and fierce with his steeds? I have to try a path, through which I too might raise myself from the ground and fly victorious through men's lips.
Virgil claims a place in the poetic tradition by conjuring up several unnamed literary antecedents (3–8). A text-internal interpretation of me quoque (8) consists in connecting it to this group of antecedents: Virgil aspires to produce a new and original work, through which he, ‘like’ his predecessors, might ‘raise himself from the ground’.Footnote 19 But things change if a reader identifies the phrase uictor uirum uolitare per ora as an allusion to Ennius’ epitaph upon himself (var. 17–18 Vahlen = min. 46 Courtney):
Let no one honour me with tears or celebrate my funeral by crying. Why? I am alive, flying through men's lips!
The allusion activates the referential ambiguity of the expression me quoque: it may have its ‘antecedent’ either in the poetical predecessors (explicitly mentioned), or in Ennius (only implicitly evoked through the intertextual reference).Footnote 20
Simichidas himself employs a similar technique when, after Lycidas ends his song, he introduces his own performance as follows (91–5):
Dear Lycidas, many other songs the Nymphs have taught me too as I was tending my herd on the hills: excellent songs, which fame, maybe, has brought even to the throne of Zeus; but this is by far the most prominent of all, with which I will begin to honour you. Listen, since you are dear to the Muses.
Simichidas affirms that ‘he too’ (κἠμέ) has been taught by the Muses on the hills. Only two lines before, in the closure of his song, Lycidas had expressed his unattainable wish that he might pasture Comatas’ goats ‘on the hills’ while listening to Comatas’ own singing (87 ὥς τοι ἐγὼν ἐνόμευον ἀν’ ὤρεα τὰς καλὰς αἶγας); moreover, in introducing the same song, Lycidas had remarked that he had composed it ‘on the hill’ (50–1 ὅρη, ϕίλος, εἴ τοι ἀρέσκει | τοῦθ’ ὅτι πρᾶν ἐν ὄρει τὸ μελύδριον ἐξεπόνασα). There can be no doubt that one antecedent of the κἠμέ of line 92 is Lycidas. However, Simichidas is alluding, at the same time, to one of his literary forebears. Line 92 alludes to Hesiod, Theog. 22–3:
They [= the Muses] once taught Hesiod beautiful song, as he was tending lambs under holy Helicon.
Simichidas compares himself, not simply (text-internally) to Lycidas, but also (intertextually) to Hesiod, who had been initiated to poetry by the Muses on Mount Helicon.Footnote 21 Recognising this allusion is crucial for understanding the erudite exchange of Simichidas and Lycidas: as mentioned above, Lycidas’ gift of a staff is characterised as a ‘pastoral’ replica of Hesiod's poetic consecration. Line 92 demonstrates that Simichidas is fully aware of the literary implications inherent in Lycidas’ offer: his allusion is an act of intertextual approval, through which he elegantly accepts the role of a second Hesiod.
Both the κἠμέ of line 92 and the καὶ γὰρ ἐγώ of line 37 serve a fundamental function in Simichidas’ self-representation as a poet: in both cases the expression ‘I too’ establishes a connection between him and an illustrious literary ancestor, whose evocation is highly significant in the context of a bucolic Dichterweihe.
5
With a certain humility, Simichidas rejects the title of ‘best poet’ (38) in favour of Asclepiades and Philitas (40–1). That he admires the two famous poets is indeed plausible: in his song he pays homage to Asclepiades through an allusion (see above); his mention of Coan Philitas in a poem set in Cos is surely meant to be complimentary;Footnote 22 both Asclepiades and Philitas represent the kind of non-Homerising poet of whom Lycidas too would approve (cf. 45–8). However, many scholars have doubted the sincerity of Simichidas’ modesty, for a range of good reasons. The playful banter characterising the initial phases of the encounter is full of innuendos (21–51).Footnote 23 οὔπω (39) implies that, although he is not Asclepiades’ and Philitas’ equal ‘yet’, some day he may be (Simichidas the character is younger than Simichidas the narrator, probably considerably so: cf. line 1). The ensuing ἐπίταδες (42), as we have seen, instils the sense that Simichidas’ words conceal some deeper layer of meaning. The speech as a whole fits the pattern of excusatio–recusatio; as is well known, in a recusatio the poet pretends to be humble simply as a way of positioning himself in the literary tradition, not because he really sees himself as a poet of low quality.Footnote 24
How does the allusion I have identified contribute to the interpretation of Simichidas’ irony? The allusive gesture of line 37, which self-reflexively signals its presence, demonstrates that Simichidas is in fact a poeta doctus able to rework materials from an illustrious predecessor in a personal, refined and meaningful fashion. He has created a synergy between the content and form of his claim: in the very act of stating ‘I am a poet’ he presents us with a concrete, self-legitimising demonstration of his poetic skills. Possibly most significant of all, he has carefully chosen whose words to quote at this decisive moment. In this respect, he could not have been more ambitious. While ostensibly professing his inferiority to two contemporary poets, he allusively impersonates none other than the god of poetry. The insecure novice of lines 38–41 reveals himself, to those who can understand him, as a consummate, and supremely self-confident, master.
6
The great majority of both ancient and modern scholars, myself included, agree that Simichidas (whether as a pseudonym or as a merely partial projection) is a literary alter ego of Theocritus.Footnote 25 If so, the early part of Idyll 7 is Theocritus’ most elaborate piece of poetical self-presentation: he emulates Asclepiades and Philitas, reincarnates Hesiod for the bucolic genre, suggests a line of filiation between his poetry and the creation of the syrinx by Hermes, and appropriates the poetic prestige of Apollo's self-representation in the Hymn. This pedigree fully entitled Theocritus to proclaim: ‘I too am a poet!’Footnote 26
