High Style and Low Context in Timotheus Hans Bork · Greek 205 presentation · w , y . The Timotheus papyrus, P. Berl. 9875, contains the only substantial text of Timotheus’ work that we have, as well as our only substantial piece of “New Music” to date, his citharodic nome Persae.1 . . . . . The papyrus itself is notable for its age (perhaps mid-4th century), its unclear archaeological context, its formal presentation of the text, and its state of both very good and very bad preservation: In particular, it is important to note that though the papyrus text is not colometric, it does mark section divisions via paragraphoi, linebreaks, and a coronis (i.e., the bird).2 Such lectional features indicate that the text’s compositor recognized certain thematic and narrative shifts within the poem, and these sections—often also marked by the meter— may provide clues to the musical performance of the piece.3 In addition, the papyrus may date to the mid-4th century, meaning that it could have been produced during Timotheus’ life, or very shortly after his death (which was perhaps in 366).4 Whatever copyist tradition the papyrus came from would not have been terribly old, and was not part of the Hellenistic apparatus that produced the standard editions of other major poets. The text is a unique item in the textual record. Despite this uniqueness, the reception of Timotheus in modern scholarship has been rather fraught, and his editors often unkind.5 Indeed, Pauline LeVen remarks that because Timotheus and the New Music are “accessed more often through the comments of critics than through a reading of its texts...[they are] very much a critics’ construct” (LeVen 2014:72). Much of this criticism originates in the ancient moralizing tradition, and is at odds with modern critical aims to provide a holistic view of ancient culture. LeVen’s study of the New Music offers a more useful model for examining the structural features of Timotheus’ Persae. Images and bibliography for the papyrus are available online at the Berliner Papyrusdatenbank, ww2.smb.museum/berlpap/ 1 Figure 1: A view of the reconstructed P.Berl. 9875, approx. 1.1m x 18.5cm. NB, however, that the cutting of the roll into individual sheets dates to its discovery; see Borchardt 1902 for details and photos. 2 The marks are particularly notable because the scribe was often careless in other matters, e.g. regularity of column width and ordinatio. 3 4 Briefly discussed at Hordern 2002:62ff. See Csapo and Wilson 2009 for a collection of anecdotes, as well as Hordern 2002:33ff and LeVen 2014 passim for discussion of modern reception. The ed. prin. for Timotheus is Wilamowitz-Möllendorff 1903a and Wilamowitz-Möllendorff 1903b. 5 st l an lo · ȚȏȜȝȓȋȘȝ ont t ȚȏȜȝȓȋȘȝ . Modern commentators generally assume that Timotheus’ Persians is intertextual with the Aeschylus play of the same name.6 Certain thematic and compositional features in Timotheus’ poem do seem to echo Aeschylus, e.g., ll.162–196, “the lament of Xerxes”. Nevertheless, Timotheus’ reliance on Aeschylus is perhaps overstated and based more on inference from extant texts than on a consideration of the extant facts. The Aeschylus connection is complicated by the following: . • Timotheus’ Persae was written 60–80 years after Aeschylus’ play.7 As such, we need to consider both how and why Timotheus would have responded to Aeschylus at this time, as well as whether his response was to Aeschylus’ play specifically, or to the narrative pattern that the play established in Greek (i.e., Athenian) culture.8 • The Persian Wars were an incredibly popular literary and artistic topic in the 5th century, and the mythos of the wars would have been quite rich by Timotheus’ time, and considerably more elaborate than it was in Aeschylus’ era.9 • Timotheus worked in an entirely different genre than Aeschylus; the Persae is a citharodic nome, a genre that while agonistic and public was nevertheless quite distinct from tragedy. As such, we must explain why Timothous would have adopted narrative material and language from another genre.10 • Timotheus himself was from Miletus, an island that played a significant role in the Persian Wars, and which no doubt had its own local mythos and historical tradition about the war. E.g. Hordern, “The most obvious influence on Timotheus is Aeschylus’ Persae” (122); and LeVen, “Timotheus plays with the homonymy...to echo even more of the Aeschylyean text” (LeVen 2014:183). 6 Precise dating is, as usual, a problem; see Hordern p.14ff for an overview of the issues. 7 Note too that the Persae was Timotheus’ only poem on a non-mythological theme, which may be evidence that by this time the wars were fully “mythologized” in Greek culture. 8 E.g., Herodotus’ Histories would have been in circulation at this time, as well as Simonides’ war-themed elegies. Both of these texts established war narratives parallel to but still independent from that of Aeschylus. 9 It is also important to remember that much of the nome is missing, and that the extant naval portion does not represent the whole narrative. 10 None of the above points disqualify the Aeschylus connection, but they do caution against taking Timotheus’ poem as a mere calque on the Aeschylean narrative. . · . Perhaps the easiest way to break away from the ‘Aeschylean’ interpre- tive model is by examining elements in Timotheus’ poem which have no clear exemplar in Aeschylus. On such section is the “lament of the Celaenian sailor” (ll.139–161), and in particular, the dialect speech of the captive to his captor (begins on l.150).11 . The “broken Ionian Greek” of this passage is a major textual crux, as it is unclear whether the anacoluthon of this section is due to the “mimetic and dramatic” character of Timotheus’ style (Csapo and Wilson 2009:288), or to corruption in the manuscript.12 Discussed in Hordern ad loc. and in LeVen 2014:213–15. 11 The idea that this is “broken” Greek dates to the earliest commentaries on the text, and is not a new suggestion; in fact, Wackernagel cites several forms from this passage in a discussion of “colloquial” usage. 12 st l an lo The first line of the Celaenian’s speech is particularly difficult,13 and the text of the papyrus, though intact, is little help: . The speech as a whole exemplifies why traditional philological and interpretive approaches are often inadequate for this poem: the “mimetic” quality of Timotheus’ language and his linguistic inventiveness frustrate exempli gratia emendation, and the narrowness of the textual tradition mostly precludes external reference.14 . The speech is also difficult to square with the overall style of the Persae: . • It does not contain any of the “vivid periphrases” or descriptive compounds found in the rest of the poem.15 • There is no other [extant] section of the poem that is mimetic to a similar degree, and other speeches (e.g., the “Islander’s speech”, ll.72–81.) are much more stylized and ornate. • The speech immediately precedes the poem’s apparent narrative and structural climax, the “lament of Xerxes” and his subsequent flight from the battle. Why would such an important section of the poem be preceded by something so marked as the Celaenian’s lament?16 The “barbarian” Greek of the Celaenian sailor presents an additional formal problem: “burlesque” dialects of this kind never occur in extant Greek tragedy, but are common in Old Comedy.17 This breaks the largely tragic, Aeschylean frame that is assumed to underly the poem. . Moreover, in Old Comedy, “mimetic” depictions of non-Attic or “barbarian” dialects tend to be objects of ridicule or humor.18 Is the Celaenian’s speech meant to be humorous? If not, then why does Timotheus use a descriptive technique that evokes Comedy and Comic characters? . · - - ont t In Hordern’s text this looks like dittography to line 157, but in the papyrus the sequences are not aligned. 13 Figure 2: The first line of the Celainian sailor’s speech in P. Berl. 9875. This isn’t to say that many have not tried to amend away the problems of the speech, as the app. crit. attests; see 150 ad loc. for an extreme example. 14 15 For taxonomies of this language in Timotheus, see LeVen 2014 Ch. 4 and Hordern 33ff. The position is especially troublesome given the apparent gravity of the “Persian lament” that immediately preceds the Celaenian section, ll.98–138. 16 See LeVen 2014:213-114 and Hordern 197ff for discussion. 17 Quite a bit of recent work has been done in this area. See for example Colvin 2000. 18 y . LeVen’s model for interpreting the language used by the New Music poets provides a possible solution to the structural problems of the Celaenian passage. . In her analysis of “dithyrambic compounds,” she suggests that such constructions “allow the combining of familiar morphemes in unfamiliar ways to refer to a new thing or concept...[they] offer a way to describe the world in an unfamiliar way that gives listeners fresh access to things” (162).19 LeVen compares this technique to the concept of “defamiliarization” promoted by the Russion Formalists, and it is convenient to use this term when describing it in action. 19 st l an lo . If we generalize LeVen’s observation and apply it to Timotheus’ poetic technique as a whole (and the Celaenian episode in particular) then the juxtaposition of tone and narrative that ends the play begins to make more sense. . Consider that the Celaenian passage and the Xerxes passage are fairly similar in overall structure, as both describe the panicked reaction of an “Eastern barbarian” to the Salamis defeat, both strongly evoke Athenian performative genres (comedy and tragedy, respectively),20 and both speeches end with an abjuration of Greece and a vow to return home.21 . A crucial formal difference, however, is the disparity in tone: despite being a Persian king, Xerxes does not speak with the Ἀ ά ω ᾷ (147) that the Celaenian does. In fact, Xerxes’ speech is fairly sophisticated, using obscure terms ( ί α , 179), poetic compounds (ὀπ οπ ο , 182), and elevated tragic formulae ( ο α...ἄ , 185). . The juxtaposition of these two structurally similar but tonally different scenes is stylistically equivalent to the “defamiliarizing” dithyrambic compounds that LeVen identifies. The placement of the Celaenian’s speech immediately before that of Xerxes presents a strong contrast to the latter scene, and the two clash in language, tone, and their intertextual callbacks. . I would go so far as to suggest that it is exactly this juxtaposition which “heightens” the depiction of Xerxes, a figure who—by the late 5th century—would no doubt have been a bit overexposed in Greek popular culture.22 Timotheus’ presentation of Xerxes in apposition to the pathetic Celaenian sailor both evokes and renews the Xerxes character template established in Aeschylus. ont t The Xerxes passage provides some of the strongest evidence for an intertextual relationship with Aeschylus’ Persians; see LeVen 2014:215ff. 20 Celaenian, 156–57: ἐ ο ὴ ῦ ’, ἐ ὼ/ ῖ πα ὰ Σά ; Xerxes, 190– 93: ὲ άο ο ἵπ-/πω ὄ ’...πί π α ὲ ά ... 21 For discussion of “elevated” vs “heightened” language in the New Music, see LeVen 2014:157ff. 22 Borchardt, L. (1902). Ausgrabungen der deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft bei Abusir im Winter 1901/2. Mitt. d. Deut. Orient-Gesellschaft 14, 1–59. Colvin, S. (2000). The language of non-Athenians in Old Comedy. In D. Harvey and J. Wilkins (Eds.), The rivals of Aristophanes: Studies in Athenian Old Comedy, Chapter 18, pp. 285–298. London: Duckworth and the Classical Press of Wales. Csapo, E. and P. Wilson (2009). Timotheus the New Musician. In F. Budelmann (Ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Greek Lyric, pp. 277–293. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. Hordern, J. (2002). The Fragments of Timotheus of Miletus. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. LeVen, P. A. (2014). The Many-headed Muse: Tradition and Innovation in Late Classical Greek Lyric Poetry. Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press. Wilamowitz-Möllendorff, U. v. (1903a). Der Timotheos-Papyrus (Lichtdruck-Ausgabe). Ausgrabungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft. Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs. Wilamowitz-Möllendorff, U. v. (1903b). Timotheos, Die Perser. Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs.