From dlupher@ups.edu Sun Sep 24 14:11:22 2000 Received: from mxu1.u.washington.edu (mxu1.u.washington.edu [140.142.32.8]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.05/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id OAA29632 for ; Sun, 24 Sep 2000 14:11:22 -0700 Received: from mail.ups.edu (main.ups.edu [192.124.98.219]) by mxu1.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.02/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id OAA15717 for ; Sun, 24 Sep 2000 14:11:21 -0700 Received: from [207.207.116.71] (wyatt1dhcp71.ups.edu [207.207.116.71]) by mail.ups.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) with ESMTP id OAA25864 for ; Sun, 24 Sep 2000 14:11:16 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <5.0.0.25.0.20000923195818.01e27400@postoffice.idirect.com> References: <39CA2593.7649DC9C@umail.umd.edu> <90.9e9cacb.26fb5adf@aol.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Sun, 24 Sep 2000 14:10:59 -0700 To: classics@u.washington.edu From: David Lupher Subject: Re: Theocritus as Parodist? (and introduction) David Meadows wrote: >While my opinion doesn't probably count for much, I would say that this >*is* a bit of a snobby group, even if such snobbery might be unintentional. >I am currently catching up on email and I find it absolutely consistent >with the 'list psyche' of late that an 'outsider' or 'lurker' might ask a >question -- an interesting one at that -- and near as I can tell, no one >has answered it. Granted, not everyone (including myself) is well-versed >(tee hee) enough in Theocritus to engage the question, but surely *someone* >can give it a shot such that a conversation might develop??? I don't think it's a matter of snobbery. Perhaps if Jonathan Rose's question had been foolish or inappropriate, our collective silence might have had a bit of snootiness in it. But it was a good question. I think it just happened to be one about which the members of the list simply did not have an informed opinion readily to hand. Ours was, in other words, a *modest* silence, not a condescending or frosty one. Though perhaps not famously modest myself, I too refrained from replying, even though ca. 1971 I wrote a seminar paper on the "mini-epic" poems of Theocritus for T.B.L. Webster. But in a recent office move, I recycled that paper, and I didn't trust my memory of its specific points. Just to refresh memories (and perhaps, as dm hopes, to get discussion going), AJR's question concerned the miniature "epic" poems of Theocritus---he specifically mentioned #22 (the hymn to the Dioskouroi), but he could just as well have been thinking of the "Herakliskos" (#24) and perhaps also the Hylas poem (#13). (The "Herakles the Lion-Slayer," #25, the longest of the lot, i.e. 281 lines, is generally regarded as spurious.) He asked about the striking "disparity" between #22 and most of the other idylls. Was this because #22 is: - earlier or later than the other idylls? - a different genre, hence in a different style? - a parody of epic? It is my impression that the usual opinion these days is still that of A.S.F. Gow: viz, that "in Id. 13 and in the second part of Id. 22 [i.e. lines 27-34, Polydeces' bout with Amycus] he took episdoes from the first and second books of the Argonautica and rehandled them in accordance with the principles of Callimachus" (Gow's "Theocritus," vol. 1, xxiii). But it's not absolutely certain which versions came first. In his notes on 13 (the Hylas poem) Gow offered "the inferiority of the story in Apollonius" as the strongest argument for following Wilamowitz in positing the priority of the Argonautica version. As for #22 (the hymn to the Dioskouroi), Gow argued that "T. is writing second, for Apollonius, if he had had T.'s much superior narrative before him, must either have written better, or, if he could not, have taken pains to avoid provoking comparison." I don't know how persuasive other list-members may find these arguments. As for the possibility that Theocritus was engaging in "parody" in his mini-epics, David Halperin deals with the "comic strategies" of the Hylas idyll (13) and proceeds to write about "the subversion of epic themes in Idyll 24" (the "Herakliskos"), and he adds, "Similar features can be found in Idyll 22, the Hymn to the Dioscuri, and they have been glimpsed in Idylls 18 and 26 as well" ("Before Pastoral," Yale Univ. Press, 1983), pp. 234-6. For what it is worth, I recall claiming back in 1971 or so that Theocritus' intent in 13, 22, and 24 was epic parody (esp. parody of Apollonian epic). But I'm rusty on the details now. If this is true, Theocritus was not, of course, the first to attempt epic parody. Think of the "Margites" and the "Batrachomyomachia." David Lupher Classics Dept. Univ. of Puget Sound .