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Heath, John
2005.
The Talking Greeks.
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Slander's bite: Nemean 7.102-5 and the language of invective
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 February 2012
Abstract
Discussion of the closing lines of Pindar's seventh Nemean has concentrated almost exclusively on the lines' relevance to the larger question that hangs over the poem: does the ode serve as an apologia for the poet's uncomplimentary treatment of Neoptolemus in an earlier Paean, and is Pindar here most plainly gainsaying the vilification in which he supposedly previously engaged. The reading that I offer suggests that a very different concern frames the conclusion to the work. Rather than seeking to exculpate himself, the poet announces instead that in the song that the audience has just heard, the composer has adhered to two prime virtues that the encomiastic genre should embrace: variatio and an ability to counter the language of blame. By reorienting the debate in this way, I aim to elucidate the striking metaphors and other rhetorical devices that fill the final lines, and most particularly to make sense of the canine imagery that seems so recurrent a motif. As my reading seeks to show, the dog is chosen as master trope both for his relation to the practice of invective and for his relevance to that stale act of repetition that the poet here rejects. By giving his audience a sample of the mode of speech that the calumnist practises, and that the praise poet may appropriate when combating the opposite genre, Pindar makes the merits of his own poetry shine the brighter, and invites the cognoscenti to appreciate his sophia. More broadly, the encomiastic singer's brief deployment of the weapons of the abuse poet allows us to understand something of the overlapping and symbiotic relations between the different genres in archaic Greek poetry.
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References
1 Σ ad 70, 94a, 123a, 150a. Heath, M., ‘Ancient interpretations of Pindar's Nemean 7’, PLLS 7 (1993) 169–200Google Scholar traces the process whereby the ancient commentators reached their verdict.
2 For a very balanced discussion, see Lloyd-Jones, H., ‘Modern interpretation of Pindar: the Second Pythian and Seventh Nemean Odes’, JHS 93 (1973) 136CrossRefGoogle Scholar, reprinted in Greek Epic, Lyric and Tragedy. The Academic Papers of Sir Hugh Lloyd-Jones (Oxford 1990) 110–53Google Scholar. Tugendhat, E., ‘Zum Rechtfertigungsproblem in Pindars 7. nemeischen Gedicht’, Hermes 88 (1960) 404Google Scholar, views lines 102-4 as the only unambiguous reference to the earlier version and the difficulties it provoked. Note too Carey, C., A Commentary on Five Odes of Pindar: Pythian 2, Pythian 9, Nemean 1, Nemean 7, Isthmian 8 (New York 1981) 135Google Scholar; Fogelmark, S., Studies in Pindar with Particular Reference to Paean VI and Nemean VII (Lund 1972) 106Google Scholar.
3 Most cogently argued in Most, G., The Measures of Praise: Structure and Function in Pindar's Second Pythian and Seventh Nemean Odes (Hypomnemata 83, Göttingen 1985), esp. 207–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For other discussions of the possible relation between N. 7 and Pae. 6, Thummer, E., Pindar: Die Isthmischen Gedichte (2 vols., Heidelberg 1968-1969) 1.95Google Scholar; Slater, W.J., ‘Futures in Pindar’, CQ 19 (1969) 92–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and ‘Doubts about Pindaric interpretation’, CJ 72 (1977) 203–7Google Scholar; Bundy, E.L., Studia Pindarica (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1986) 28-9Google Scholar; Köhnken, A., Die Funktion des Mythos bei Pindar (Berlin 1971) 80CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ruck, C.A.P., ‘Marginalia Pindarica IV, V, VI’, Hermes 100 (1972) 144Google Scholar.
4 For this, Hubbard, T.K., ‘The subject/object-relation in Pindar's Second Pythian and Seventh Nemean’ QUCC 22 (1986) 53–72Google Scholar. Hubbard's reading, however, contains only very brief references to the concluding portion of N. 7.
5 See Most (n.3) 204-6 with full discussion, and a convincing refutation of other views.
6 Most (n.3) 206.
7 For a particularly close parallel, Soph. Phil.1238; cf. Pl. Phlb. 34b.
8 The t-alliteration is noted in Segal, C., ‘Pindar's Seventh Nemean’, TAPA 98 (1967) 477Google Scholar, but differently interpreted. Contrast the repetition here to the poet's own chosen manner at line 48.
9 See Hubbard (n.4) 61, 67.
10 As Most (n.3) 206 argues, Pindar is not saying here that he is not going to repeat his denial, but is rather explaining why he faults the use of unchanging words.
11 Hom. Od. 1.352; Ar. Nub. 545-59; Vesp. 62-3.
12 As Kurke, L., The Traffic in Praise. Pindar and the Poetics of Social Economy (Cornell 1991) 228Google Scholar, notes in reference to other Pindaric passages, κέρδος, as literal profit, is always condemned and only appears in a positive light when it is used in a metaphoric sense. So too here, the calumnist who seeks remuneration in the actual sense finds himself in the both literal and metaphoric dire straits of ἀκέρδεια.
13 Cf. P. 8.34; P. 9.92; N. 7.22; Pae. 7b. 17. The opening of I. 4 lends weight to the suggestion that we understand the expressions ἄπορα and ἀφίσταμαι coupled together at O. 1.52 as an instance of Pindar's common use of the metaphor of the path of words. For discussion of this reading, Gerber, D.E., Pindar's Olympian 1. A Commentary (Toronto 1982) ad 52Google Scholar. Also apposite is N. 4.70-2 where, again using a metaphor of travel, Pindar advises himself to ‘turn back the ship's tackle to the mainland of Europe; for it is ἄπορα for me to go through the entire story of the descendants of Aiakos'. In this instance the very abundance of subject matter would prompt a too lengthy digression.
14 Miller, A., ‘Pindar, Archilochus, and Hieron’, TAPA 111 (1981) 140Google Scholar.
15 Σ ad 150a. Homeric precedents include Il. 22.336; 17.557-8. Cf. Eur. HF 568; Hdt. 1.140; Pl. Rep. 539b. For dissent and different interpretations of the meaning of the verb, Slater 1969 (n.3) 93 and Slater 1977 (n.3) 205; Köhnken (n.3) 81.
16 Graver, M., ‘Dog-Helen and Homeric insult’, CA 14 (1995) 53Google Scholar.
17 The poet follows a very similar procedure in O. 6.89-90 where he again simultaneously quotes and refutes the charge of those who would deny the merits of his song, calling him ‘Boiotian pig’.
18 Garver (n. 16) 52-3. For a later instance of the dog-insult, and intemperate and inopportune speech, Aesch. Ag. 1228-9.
19 As does her husband's attempt to silence her by knocking out her teeth (17-18); as we shall see, the practice of abuse is described as the action of the dog biting. Again, Aeschylus' Agamemnon echoes the motif when, in the context of an exchange of insults, Aegisthus charges the chorus leader with provoking him with ‘foolish barkings’ (νηπίοις ὐλάγμασιν) (1631).
20 It is striking that the poet uses the verb ἕλκω, here applied to the dogs worrying the corpse, to describe Achilles' dragging of the body of Hector elsewhere (Il. 22.401, 24.52; cf. 24.21).
21 Nagy, G., The Best of the Achaeans. Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry (2nd edn, Baltimore 1999) 226Google Scholar, observes that the verb used of Archilochus' feeding, πιαίνω, appears in Iliadic diction in reference to dogs devouring the fat of bodies left uncremated.
22 Nagy (n.21) 226. Nagy (225-6 and n.3) also proposes that we construe the phrase rather differently than the standard interpretations which imagine φθόνος as the agent here. Instead he reads Odysseus, the one who has φθόνος, as the subject of the two verbs, and suggests that the meal eaten by the man of φθόνος turns out to be the victim of his calumny.
23 Nagy (n.21)226.
24 Norwood, G., Pindar (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1945)Google Scholar comments, ‘Most surprisingly of all, the massive Seventh Nemean dwindles down to a brisk conversational remark about poverty of thought and senseless babble’ (79); Peuch, A., Pindare, III: Néméennes (Paris 1923)Google Scholar, wonders at Pindar's use here of an expression whose ‘familiarité peut étonner’ (91).
25 See particularly 17 and 23-4.
26 For a very close parallel, P. 2.72-3 where the expression that pleases children betrays exactly the repetition that Pindar here condemns.
27 Here I mention only one of the several ways in which the ending coheres with what has come before; for fuller treatment, see particularly Segal (n.8) and Most (n.3).
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