Stesichorus at Lille

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Stesichorus at Lille

Author(s): M. L. WestSource: Zeitschrift fr Papyrologie und Epigraphik, Bd. 29 (1978), pp. 1-4Published by: Dr. Rudolf Habelt GmbH, Bonn (Germany)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20181538.

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STESICHORUS AT LILLE

Peter Parsons's excellent article on the new Lille papyrus of Stesichorus leaves littlefor others to add. But I think it isworth saying a few words about the ascription to Stesichorus,about which Mr Parsons expresses reservations. 'Theme, manner, metre and dialect suit Stesichorus' , he writes. 'But there are other considerations both objective and subjective - theHomeric cliches and especially the Homeric prosody; the drab repetitious flaccidity of thecomposition - which discourage a hasty attribution. '

The 'drab repetitious flaccidity' is no doubt one of the 'subjective' considerations. Thejudgment is presumably based on lines 201-34, the only reasonably well preserved passagein the piece, almost all of it belonging to a single speech - perhaps no more than a fiftieth

part of the poem. My own verdict would not be so stern; but in any case, what is the basisof comparison? What private treasury of sparkling, sinewy Stesichorean verse lies at MrParsons's disposal? Redundat atque effunditur, says Quintilian (10. 1. 62), and we shouldnot expect otherwise.

As for the Homeric cliches, there is no need to quote 'Longinus' on Stesichorus' being'OjjqpiH?TaToc. They are a feature apparent in all his more extended fragments. Formulaic

elements in a poet's language are notoriously difficult to quantify meaningfully, but Iamunable to see why, after listing thirteen noun-epithet formulae from the new text, Parsonssays 'all this goes well beyond what might have been expected from his other fragments'(p. 14). In the fragments of the Geryoneis, for instance, I find aX?c ?aOeac, apr|t(piXov

Xpuc?opa, 0EUV jian?pwv, u,aK?[pe]cci OeCoKLci, yXauvduiuc 'A9?va, irinpov oXeSpov,Lfnr?HO|joc Tpu(p?Xeia, anpoT?Tav Hopu


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of combination before which a syllable is less readily allowed to remain short than beforemute + X/p.

The facts about the treatment of mute + liquid in the other fragments of Stesichorus are3)as follows. Where the consonants are initial, the preceding syllable normally remains

short (12 instances). The only exception is S 171. 2 eirC 9p?vac (preposition +noun).Where the consonants are within the word, the preceding syllable is long in 25 instancesand short in 11. If the eight new examples of internal mute + liquid had divided themselvesin exactly this ratio, we should have had two with a short syllable preceding. That thesetwo fail to appear in such a small sample is of no statistical significance. But we can gofurther. Ifwe set the fragments of the Geryoneis apart from the rest, the figures are:

(long) (short)Geryoneis 7 7the rest 18P.Lille 8 0

It is the Geryoneis, not the Lille poem, that is the odd one out. This is probably connectedwith the fact that its metre iswholly dactylic with no admixture of cretic elements, so thatthere was a greater need of short syllables. Perhaps too Stesichorus' metrical techniquealtered with the passage of time, as did Euripides' in the use of resolution. At any rate noone will wish to argue on this evidence that the Geryoneis was the work of a different author.

The subject matter of the Lille papyrus, the style, the dialect, the metre, the prosody,are all entirely consistent with the ascription to Stesichorus. They are more than consistentwith it: they impose it. Whatever other poets may have composed in this fashion in Stesichorus' time, only Stesichorus was current in later times. There is simply nothing else thatthis text can be. And how perfectly it fits the Stesichorus we have learned to know since1967. T.Gargiulo has already pointed out the similarity between Jocasta's speech in 201 ff.4)and Geryon's in S 11. 5ff. The metre of the new piece, besides being a simple form of

dactylo-epitrite of a type known only from Stesichorus, has a particular similarity (thoughit is not identical) with that of the Eriphyle fragments in P.Oxy. 2618 (S 148-50): the epodesin the two poems end

: - yx -u--l-uu-uu-uu-uu-vu-I-u-IIX-u-- l-uu-uu-uu-uu-uu-uu-- I - - - w - - II

3) I include the fragments of P.Oxy. 2735, which Page gives to Ibycus.4) Boll, del Comitato 24,1976,56.

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Stesichorus at Lille 3

The only difference is an extra dactyl in Eriphyle. The final colon -v? - - wasunparalleled before the Lille papyrus appeared, and had caused some astonishment.

The Suda records that Stesichorus' poetry filled 26 books. We know thirteen poems byname, not counting the spurious Calyce, Rhadine and Daphnis. We do not know how manyof them exceeded the limits of a single book, as the Oresteia did. None of the titles weknow fits the new poem, but it had already been accepted as likely that there wereseveral titles we did not know. Itmay be conjectured that the Lille poem was calledThebais or Seven against Thebes; it must have told of Polynices' attack on his city. It iscurious that it is not used in the scholia to the Phoenissae, since the Euripides scholiacite other poems of Stesichorus in this play and elsewhere. It is not significant, however,that in the argument ascribed to Aristophanes we find merely f\ (juSoirotta neiTai Trap'

Atcx?Xoi ?v fEinrd lirC Gfj?ac irXr^vt?jc 'lonacTqc, for these arguments record onlytreatments of the story by other dramatists.

9)The papyrus is the earliest to show colometry in lyric verse and the system of paragraphiand cor?nides marking out triads. Its date is important for the chronology of Aristophanes,who is credited with these innovations. Mr Parsons tells me that he does not sustain thedating to the early second century B.C. which he gives in his article, and that the papyrusis to be put in the second half of the third century. This is in accord with the conclusions ofB.Boyaval in CRI PEL 4. 342, based on the script of the list of names on the verso, and withthe age of other documents from the same cartonnage (ib. 257). Iunderstand that ProfessorTurner is to confirm it from palaeographical considerations in a forthcoming issue of CRI PEL.Recent scholarship inclines to take seriously the tradition that Aristophanes as a irate heard

5) Different colometry in P.Oxy. In S 148 ii 5 read oirwc airnvav ?eu[?au,?vaCivuw]v?6' e?a (or Cen-. ?e?C?ac' eic C. Barrett).

6) Page, PCPS 197, 1971,96; M.W.Haslam, QUCC 17,1974,37.7) Eriphyle might have been considered if the metrically different poem in P.Oxy.2618 did not have a stronger claim to that name.8) The latter title was used for a poem of Corinna's.9) D.Jourdan-Hemmerdinger, CRAI 1973,293, wrongly asserts that it is found in three

third-century papyri of Euripides (P.Hib. 24, 25 and the Leyden papyrus about which sheiswriting).10) Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship, i. 185-8.



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Zenodotus, and to allow that he might have been born as early as 270. The Stesichoruspapyrus, if it was written say c. 230-220, does not prove this chronology correct, becauseit remains possible that Aristophanes was not in fact the first to introduce colometry and thetriadic symbols, but it lends some support to it.

London M.L.West

11) Pfeiffer, p.172; K.Nickau, RE XA 26.


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Stesichorus at Lille