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CHAPTER FIVE

T HE WISDOM AND WIT OF M ANY: T HE ORAL IT Y OFGREEK PROVERBIAL EXPRESSIONS

Andr Lardinois

T he analysis of prov erbial expressions has figured prom inen tly inrecent ethno- and sociolinguistic studies of both oral and literate societies,1 bu t classical studies have been slow to follow suit. Althoughclassicists showed considerable interest in ancient Greek proverbialexpressions before the Second World W ar,2 no detailed studies haveapp eare d since then.3 O ne result of the recent ethnolinguistic studies of proverbial expressions is the realization that such expressionscan take many different forms. Focusing on the way Greek prover

bial expressions were composed, I will examine in this chapter the

forms that these expressions took in ancient Greece.

A Description of Greek Proverbial Expressions

There are many different terms for proverbial expressions in ancientGreek. For instance, Homer and the other archaic Greek poets refer

1 For detailed bibliographies, see W. M ieder, International Proverb Scholarship: AnAnnotated Bibliography (New York, 1982); W. Mieder, International Proverb Scholarship:An Annotated Bibliography, Supplement (New York, 1990); the journal Proverbium, and,most recently, the on-line journal De Proverbio (h t tp : / / in fo .u tas .edu .au /docs / f lon ta /).

2 Mos t impor tan tly H . Koch, Quaestiones de proverbiis apud Aeschylum, Sophoclem,Euripidem, vol. 1 (Knig sberg, 1887) an d vol. 2 (Bartenstein, 1892); F. Hofing er,Euripides und seine Sentenzen, vol. 1 (Erlang en, 1895) an d vol. 2 (Lan dau i.d. Pfalz,1899); P. Martin, Studien auf dem Gebiete des griechischen Sprichwortes (Plauen, 1889);T. Stickney, Les sentences dans la posie grecque dHomre Euripide (Paris, 1903);E. Wolf, Sentenz und Reflexion bei Sophokles (Leipzig, 1910); P. Friedlnder, YflOGHKAI,

Hermes 48 (1913): 558-616; E. Ahrens, Gnomen in griechischer Dichtung (Halle, 1937);H. Bischoff, Gnomen Pindars (Wrzburg, 1938); K. Bielohlawek, Hypotheke und Gnome:Untersuchungen ber die griechische Weisheitsdichtung der vorhellenistischen eit, PhilologusSupplementband 32, Heft 3 (Leipzig, 1940).

3 Some notable exceptions are J. F. Kind strand, Th e G reek Concept of Proverbs,Eranos 76 (1978): 7185; J. Russo, T he Poetics of the A ncie nt Gre ek Pro ve rb,Journal o f Folklore Research 20 (1983): 121 30, a nd Prose G en res for the P erfo rm ance

http://info.utas.edu.au/docs/flonta/http://info.utas.edu.au/docs/flonta/

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to some proverb-like expressions with the words , or .4The problem with these terms, however, is that they are used for a

variety of speech genres and not just proverbial expressions. In thecourse of the fifth and fourth century b .c .e ., perhaps under theinfluence of the sophists, some new terms for proverbial expressions,including , , and , were introdu cedinto the Greek language .5 O f these four terms (gnome, gno-mai) seems to be the most comprehensive. Aristotle in the Rhetoricdefines a gnome as: a statement not concerning particulars, suchas what kind of a man Iphicrates is, but general, and not about all

things, such as that straight is the opposite of crooked, but about allsuch things as are actions, and whether they are to be pursued oravoided.6 Aristotle proceeds to quote a n um be r of examples fromH om er and the other Greek poets.7 I will argue that these gnomaiwere, at least until the fourth century b .c .e ., part of a living tradition in which every performance was a re-creation of the saying,very m uc h like epic verse. Th ey are, like epic verses, coin ed8 withthe help of traditional formulae and themes.

Adopting Aristotles definition, I identified over twelve-hundred

of Traditional Wisdom in Ancient Greece, in Poet, Public and Performance in AncientGreece, ed. L. Edmunds and R. W. Wallace (Baltimore, 1997), 49-64; A. Lardinois,W isdom in Context: T he Use of Gnomic Statements in Archaic G reek Poetry(Ph.D. diss. Princeton University, 1995), and Modern Paroemiology and the Useof Gnomai in Homers Iliad,'1' Classical Philology 92 (1997 ): 21 334; an d Y. Z.Tzifopoulos, Proverbs in M en an der s Dyskoios: T he Rh etoric of Po pular W isdom,

Mnemosyne 48 (1995): 169 -77, but with the exception o f Lardinois, W isdom inContext, these are all articles.

4 : II. 15.206, Theognis 16, Pindar I. 6.67; : Alcaeus fr. 360, Pindar

0. 2.22, P. 3.80 etc.; : II. 23.795, Euripides Fr. 508 N2, cf. T. Bergk, GriechischeLiteraturgesch.ich.te, vol. 1 (Berlin, 1872), 363. He raclitus (Fr. B34 D .-K ./2 M) onceuses the word for what ap pear s to be a proverb: see M . M arcovich, Heraclitus

Editio Maior: Greek Text with a Short Commentary (Merida, 1967), ad loc.5 See Kinds trand The Greek Con cept of Proverbs , Lardinois W isdom in

Context, 13~19, and Russo Prose Genres.G , ,

, , , , , Rhet.1394a21-26 Kassel.

7 For example , II. 12.243 and 18.309a = Rhet. 1395a 13-1 4, 15, Cypna Fr. 25E G F = Rhet. 139 5 a l617, Eur ipides Medea 294-95 = Rhet. 1394a29~30.

8 Th is is Aristotles term for the c reatio n of gnom ai: Rhet. 1395a7,cf. Aristophanes Th. 55 , Eq. 1379, Ra. 877, Nu. 952. Aristotle, however, also refersto a practice, perhaps becoming more frequent in his days, of using frequentlyqu ote d an d co m m on gn om ai ( . . .

Rhet. 1 3 9 5 a l 0 - l l ) .

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gnomai in the works of the archaic Greek poets.9 Very few of thesesayings are repeated verbatim. Instead, the texts display a variety of

renditions of the same basic thought; for example, Od. 7.294: a id yap te vecotepoi (ppaSeotioiv (For always thoughtless are youngsters)expresses the same sentiment as II. 3.108: aiei 8 07tA,0Tp(Dv avSpcovcppeve) %pii + infinitive (O ne m u s t . . .). This

formation is found for example at II. 2.24: ox>xpr^ rcavv'uxiov evSeiv(3(n)Axpfj Kaicoiai 0t>|iov 7UTpe7tr|v.10Another often recurring formula is a|iivov + infinitive (It is betterto . . .), as at II. 1.274: 7iei tceiBectBcu apEivov, Od. 22.104: TETEDxfjaBouyap d|iivov, and Hesiod WD 314: to Epyd^EoBai d|iivov.u Lexicalelements typically found in Greek gnomai are the so-called gnomicaorist and epic te. Together with the syntactical formulae they forma special diction which enables a speaker to create a gnomic saying

in performance.Besides conforming to such structural patterns, most gnomai also

conform to certain standard themes, which embody the idea behindthe gnom e. F or example, the shortest formulation o f the idea thatsuffering brings learning is Aeschylus famous dictum mBsi p,dBo

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version of the thought that suffering brings learning is found someseventy lines later in Ag. 250:

(Justice so weighs the scales that learning comes to those who havesuffered). On the other hand, a thought can be reshaped byreplacing one of the nuclear terms with an equivalent term; one maycompare PindarIsthmian 1.40b: 6 (One who has toiled also gains foresight for his mind) with thescholion tha t p araph rases the line as: 6 (O ne who has suffered also becom es th ou gh tful in hism ind ).14 At II. 17.32 and 20.198 both terms are replaced, although

in this case the root - still makes its presence felt: the infinitive is deployed in the pre ceding sentence, referring to the sameaction as in the gnome. Both Menelaos and Achilleus counsel the ir T ro jan oppon ents to retre at before they suffer () anyharm. The full text reads

. . . '

,

- .15

. . . B u t I o r de r you to re t rea t an d to s t andb a c k in th e th ro n g a n d n o t to o p p o se m e b e fo re y o u

su f f e r a n y h a r m . A f o o l g a i n s u n d e r s t a n d i n g a f t e r t h e d e e d .

At Hesiods WD 218, the same expression occurs with the verb in place: (A fool gains understan ding after suffering). I am not arguing that or sayingsthat contain both these terms are Somehow older or more authentic than Hesiodic or Iliadic examples which reshape one or more of

the thematic terms. The nuclear theme is only an ideal type, whichalways manifests itself in different shapes and forms.Another example of a gnomic theme is the thought that men

are a citys best defenses. Gnomai expressing this idea appear tobe built around a word for m en, a word for city, and someterm for wall or defense work. The theme is fully displayed both

words connected by mutual expectancy (Martin, Language o f Heroes, 64, following

J. B. Hainsworth, The Flexibility o f the Homeric Formula [Oxford, 1968]). I prefer touse the w ord th em e for the semantic conten t of gnom ai in order to make a distinction with the structural patterns that determine the shape of the gnome, suchas %pf) + infinitive, for which I reserve the term formula.

14 A. B. Drachm ann, Scholia vetera in Pindari carmina (Leipzig, 1927), 3:206.15 II. 17.28-30 = 20.196-98.

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at Alcaeus Fr. 112.10 and at Plutarchs Lycurgus 19.12. Alcaeus saysth at war rio r m en are a city s tow er (

[]),16 an d P luta rch that no t withou t walls will be a city thatis pro tected by manly ones ins tead of stone ones ( , ).17 In oth er attestations of this thought, one of the nuclear terms is either left outaltogeth er,18 or replaced by a synon ym ,19 or a circumlocution.20 Infifth-century Athens, significantly, ships were added to the equation.Thus, Sophocles can say that neither wall nor ship is anything,devoid of men who live in it (. .. /

), an d Thucydides that men makea city, no t walls or ships empty of m en ( , ).21 These last two examples show thateven the underlying themes of gnomai are subject to modification.

Oral Features o f Gnomic Expressions in the Homeric Epics

In order to show how exactly Greek gnomai are composed, I willtake a detailed look at the first three gnomai in Homers Iliad.22 Iwill examine several structural features and lexical elements, such asdistinctive particles, epic , the gnomic aorist, phonetic devices andrhythm , which occur in these gnom ai. Som e of them correspond todiscourse features found in other, non-Greek proverbial expressions,

16 Alcaeus Fr. 112.10 Voigt. Alternatively, Alcaeus may hav e said tha t men are

a citys wa rrio r to w er ( []); see .- . V oigt,Sappho

et Alcaeus. Fragmenta (Amsterdam, 1971), ad loc.17 Plutarch Lyc. 19.12, cf. Apo. Lac. 228E.18 Fo r example, Aeschylus Pers. 349: (but

no te the w ord in the previous line.)19 D io Cassius 56.6: , . H ere the original

thought is changed from men are a citys defenses to humans are a citys structures in general. Another example is Gorgias Hel. 1: .

20 Ano ny m ous po et, citedby Pla to Leg. 778d7.

21 Sophocles O T 5657, Th ucyd ides 7.77.7; com pare H erod otus 8.61 wh ereThemistocles says that Athens will be a city as long as it has two hundred ships

filled with men (cf. Plutarch Them. 11.1). The Spartans, by contrast, are associatedwith the land version: Plato Leg. 778d7 is applied to Sparta, as is Lycurgus version (Plutarch Lyc. 19.12, Apo. Lac. 228E). Compare also Plutarch Apo. Lac. 210E(attributed to Agesilaos) and 217E (attributed to Antalcidas).

22 Ahrens, Gnomen in griechischer Dichtung, 1213; Lard ino is W isdom in C on tex t,49-52, 278.

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while others are peculiar to Greek gnomai. They constitute a distinct language that helps the speaker to create a gnomic saying extem

pora neously and the listener to iden tify th e expression as gnom ic.The first gnome in Homers Iliad is found at 1.63:

(for even a dream com es from Zeus). It is spoken byAchilleus when he decides to consult a seer or dream-interpreterabout the pestilence that is sweeping the Greek camp. This gnomeis introduced by , which indicates its close conn ection to the surroun ding context, in pa rticular to Achilleus dem and , in the pre ceding half-line, for a d rea m -in terpre ter ().23 This par ticle

is followed by , a conjunc tion often paire d with , which characterizes the expression as an arg um en t.24 M ost gnomai func tion asarguments and are introduced by conjunctions which reveal this stateof affairs.25

Next, th ere is the peculiar use o f ep ic which, according toRuijgh, emphasizes the generalizing force of the expression as wellas its connec tion to the prece ding contex t.26 By themselves these pa rticles can be found in all kinds of statements, but taken togetherthey are a strong indication that we are dealing with a gnomic

expression.2' The syntax of this particular saying is not extraordinary, the sequence subject-complement-verb (in this case predicate-copula) being a common word ord er in Greek sentences.28 T he sayingdoes seem to contain, however, a traditional gnomic formula (noun+ ).29 T he succinctness of the expression is another possible indication that it is, indeed, proverbial.30

The second gnome in the Iliad, 1.8083, is by contras t an extended

23 , a cco rdin g to C . J . Ru ijgh, Autour de te pique (Amsterdam, 1971), 724,emphasizes not the whole sentence but only the word , which is the word that

picks up on in th e preced in g se ntence. C om pare th e use o f in fo rexample I I 2.291, 7.282, 9.502, Od. 3.196, 4.197, 14.85.

24 Fo r the pa iring of and in argu m ents, see J. D. D enn iston, The GreekParticles, 2d rev. ed. (Oxford, 1954), 108-9.

25 Lardin ois, M od ern Pa roem iolog y, 219.26 Ruijgh, Autour de te pique, 2-3.27 T he com bination is regularly found in g nom ai (Ruijgh, Autour de te

pique, 721): e.g. II. 9. 406, 13.279, 24.527, Od. 3.147, 4.397, 5.79, 7.294, HesiodWD 30, 214, 547, 761, Phocylides Fr. 7.2 Diehl, Theognis 281. The combination is also u sed to intro duc e a string of gnom ai at II. 9.502.

28 K. J. Dover, Greek Word Order (Cambridge, 1960), 25.29 Co m pare the gno mic ph rases in II. 2.1 97 : , H es io d WD

765: " , and Th. 96: . A r esh ap ed versio n ofthis formula is found at II. 9.502, 19.91 and Hesiod WD 256.

30 Russo, Poetics of the An cient Gre ek P rov erb , 122.

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saying. This gnome is distinguished at the beginning by its syntaxand its m arked order of predicate-conjunction-subject: / , / , , / .31 The absence of the copula secures the first line as a nom inal ph rase, w hich is ano the r typical feature of Greek gnom ai.32 W ha tis most remarkable about this saying is the way it is expanded overthree full lines. A number of other gnomai share this feature, including II. 1.278-79, 2.24-25, 2.196-97 etc. A gnome may be expandedby th e addition of a single w ord,33 or a half-sentence ,34 or it may

be conjo in ed to a whole new gnomic express ion.35 In gen era l onecan say that an expansion gives a gnome greater weight in accordance with the H om eric principle tha t bigger is better.36

The third gnome in the Iliad is neither as short as the first one(1.63b) or as long as the second (1.80-83), but of average length:one he xa m ete r line .37 It is spoken by Achilleus at 1.218 in answer

31 Fo r very powerful [is] a king wh en h e is angry with a lesser m an, an d evenif tha t same day he swallows his ang er, till it is vented he ho lds a grievance in hisb re ast. For th e construction pre dic ate + co nju nction + su bject co pula , com paree.g. II. 1.589, 9.406, 407, 9.497, Od. 2.244-45, 4.103, 4.837.

32 E. Benv eniste, La ph rase no m inale (1950), reprin ted in Problmes de linguistique gnrale, vol. 1 (Paris, 1966), 151-67 , 162; C. Gu iraud, La phrase nominale en grecd Homre Euripide (Paris, 1962), 33-34. A bou t one third of H om eric gnom ai arenom inal phrases. M ost others make use of w hat is sometimes referred to as gnomictenses: present, aorist and occasionally perfect; see W. W. Goodwin, Greek Grammar,rev. ed. (London, 1894), 276.

33 For example, II. 6.493a: / . Th is same gnom eis found at II. 20.137 but without the expansion. Cf. Od. 1.359a, 11.353a, 21.353a.

34 Relative clauses: e.g. II. 1.278 -79: ' / , ; cf. II. 2.25, 2.293b~93, 3.66; added sentences:e.g. II. 2.19 6- 97 : , / , : cf. II. 1.81-83, 5.408-09, 6.147-49.

35 For example, II. 5.532, 9.319 and 320. For a similar phenomenon in NewMexican Spanish and sixteenth century English proverbs, see C. I. Briggs, Competencein Performance: The Creativity o f Tradition in Mexicano Verbal Art (Philadelphia, 1988),119; R. D. Ab raham s an d B. A. Babcock, T he Literary Use of Proverbs, Journalo f American Folklore 90 (1970): 414-29, 422-23.

3

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to the goddess Athena: oq K 0eoi

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the gnomic aorist has close parallels in Vedic and may preserve theoriginal, timeless aspect o f this mood.43 How ever, the antiquity of

these constructions is no proof that the sayings themselves are ancientas well. It is possible that speakers of gnomic language, just like thoseof epic verse, preserved certain archaic features in order to createexpressions tha t soun ded venerable an d o ld.44 C lear examples o fnewly created sayings that exhibit similar features are the generalstatements found am ong the fragments of Heraclitus.45 These prosesayings further demonstrate that this gnomic language is not restrictedto the poetic representation of gnomic statements, but extends to

their use in ordinary speech.In an important article on the poetics of the ancient Greek proverb,

Josep h R usso has looked at some of the phonetic devices that m arkGreek proverbial expressions. Most o f his examples come from lateHellenistic and Roman collections of Greek sayings, but the same

phonetic devices already occur in H om eric gnomai. Russo concludesthat [a] large number of Greek proverbs have no striking featureswhatsoever. They make their point in plain language, through sheereconomy and sharpness o f insight. O f any acoustic devices, he says,[t]he preferences seem to be for alliteration and word repetitionmost of all; then for a med ium am ou nt (com pared to English) ofassonance and vowel harmony (with very little rhyme); and not infrequently binary structures in roughly isometric units, to bring out parallelism and sometimes to emphasize oppositiona l meaning s.46

An examination of the acoustic features of the gnomai in the Iliad

101

43 J . G on da , The Character of the Indo-European Moods, with special regard to Greek andSanskrit (Wiesbaden, 1956); E. Schwyzer and A. Debrunner, Griechische Gramatik, vol. 2,Syntax und syntaktische Stilistik (Munich, 1950), 285. Egbert Bakker, in this volume,has argued, quite convincingly, that the gnomic aorist in fact represents a presenttense. Even so, this use of the aorist, while perha ps n ot o f Ind o-E urop ean origin,would still be a distinctive feature of gnomic and other, related expressions.

44 O ne may c om pare the use of archaizin g features in African sayings: R. Finne gan,Proverbs in Africa (1970), reprinted in The Wisdom o f Many: Essays on the Proverb,ed. W. Mieder and A. Dundes (New York, 1981), 10-42, 22. What Roger Abrahamssays about m odern proverbs m ay apply to Greek gnom ai as well: Proverbs w o rk . . .bec au se th ey seem to em body the wisdom o f the past (Proverbs and ProverbialExpressions, in Folklore and Folklife: An Introduction, ed. R. M. Dorson [Chicago,

1972], 117-27, 122; his italics).43 For example, preposed relative clause: fr. 55 D .-K ./5 .:

, ; no mina l sentence: fr. 54 D .-K ./9 .: ; gn omic aorist: fr. 79 D .-K ./92 .: .

46 Russo, Poetics of the An cient G reek P rov erb, 125.

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largely confirms Russos findings. About two-fifths of all gnomai inthe Iliad exhibit no particular phonetic structure whatsoever. Among

the other ones, however, no significant difference between the number o f alliterations and assonance is found; in fact, th ere are slightlymore instances of assonance, and a fair number of gnomai display

both al litera tion and assonance, for example 1.63: .47 Few exam ples of word repetition with in the text of asingle gnome occur, but words are repeated from the immediatecon text o f gnom ai,48 an d there is some evidence o f w ord play.49Binary or isometric structures abound, especially if one adds the

expanded gnomai that express the same thought twice, for example5.5 31 -32: / .50 Russo argues th at these acousticelements are in general intended as mnemonic devices, which helpthe speaker to remem ber the exact w ording o f the expressions, butsince Homeric gnomai were not repeated verbatim, it is more likelythat they served to make the text of these gnomai stand out fromtheir context. Expressions displaying such acoustic elements are, asRusso says, the equivalent o f complete little poem s.51 A certain

belief in word -magic may also be at work in the suggestion th atphonem ic parallels correspond to connections in reality .52

47 Alliteration: II. 1.80, 5.531 (= 15.563), 9.63, 9.158, 11.390, 11.514, 12.270-71,15.207, 15.208, 17.99, 19.167-70, 22.75, 24.49; assonance or vowel harmony: II.I.274, 2.291, 5.383-84, 11.408, 15.202 (=116.52), 20.131, 24.525-26; with rhyme:

II. 1.278-79, 2.196, 2.297-98, 3.108, 5.441-42, 9.406 and 407, 19.497, 12.412,17.447, 18.328, 20.242, 22.72, 24.524; alliteration and assonance: II. 1.63, 5.407,9.249-50, 9.309, 9.632-33, 18.128-29, 19.90, 19.91, 19.162, 19.221, 19.227,

19.228-29, 20.248-49, 22.490, 24.463-64.48 For example, II. 7.282: , . T his p h e

nomenon was already noted by G. Nagy, review ofDie Wiederhohlung guren und ihrGebrauch bei den Griechen vor Gorgias, by D. Fehling, American Journal o f Philology 92(1971): 730^33, 731, who cites as examples II. 7.282, 13.72, 24.354 and HesiodWD 352.

49 For example, II. 2.292 ( ), 5.3 8 3 -8 4 ( . . .),6.261 ( ), 9 .309 ( ), 14.81 ( ), 19.91( , ), 20.2 50 ( ), 22.75 ( ).

50 Binary structures: II. 1.218, 2.204, 5.442, 5.874, 6.146, 9.313, 9.508, 9.318,319, 320, 11.409-10, 13.730-34, 14.81, 15.741, 16.630, 19.79-80, 19.81-82, 20.250,24.527-28.

51 Russo, Poetics of the Ancient Greek Prov erb, 123.52 Russo, Poetics of the Ancien t Gre ek P roverb , 124. For o ther exam ples of

word magic in Homer, see N. Austin, Name Magic in the Odyssey, California Studiesin Classical Antiquity 5 (1972): 1-19 , and R. R eneh an, The Staunching of OdysseusBlood: The Healing Po wer of M agic, American Journal o f Philology 113 (1992): 1-4.

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Some commentators, including Gregory Nagy, Ezio Pellizer, andJ. A. Fernandez Delgado, have further suggested that a traditional

meter, the so-called paroemiac, was associated with gnomic expressions.53 The paroem iac, nam ed after one o f the ancient Greek termsfor proverbia l expressions (), can be analy zed as a catalecticdimeter or procephalic dactylic trimeter and corresponds to the slot

betw een the penth em im ere s (or m asculine) caesura and th e end ofthe hexameter line. An example is the first gnome in the Iliad, whichI quoted above: (1.63). Nagy, Pellizerand Delgado, however, also include examples of sayings that start

after the trochaic or feminine caesura in the third foot. This metrical variant already suggests that these so-called paroemiac sayings were adapted to fit the hexameter line, unless one wants toassume, with Delgado, that the meter had developed a femininevariant independently of the intricacies of the hexameter line. Thisscenario is highly unlikely. Greek gnomai were composed in a variety of meters, including iambics, elegiacs and melic verse. In ordinary, non-poetic conversation they were probably composed in stylized

prose , like the sayings of the Seven Sages, the fragmen ts of Heraclitus,or the G reek proverbs studied by Russo.54 T he term paroe m iacmay have been invented by some Hellenistic scholar who noted theregular occurrence of such self contained gnomic phrases after the

penth emim ere s caesu ra in epic.55 The judgm ent of the second-century

53 Nagy, review ofDie Wiederhohlungsfiguren, 731; E. Pellizer, Metremi proverbialinelle O p e re e i giorn i di Esiodo: Oss ervazioni sulla tecnica compo sitiva della poesiaesametrica sapienziale, Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica 13 (1972): 24-37;

J. A. F. Delgado, La poesia sapiencial de greca arcaica y los origenes del hexametro , Emerita 50 (1982): 151-73.54 Proverbial expressions of Egypt and the Near East are also written in struc

tured prose, which the Egyptologist Miriam Lichtheim has dubbed orat ional(quoted by K. R obb , Preliterate Ages an d the L inguistic Art o f He raclitus, in

Language and Thought in Early Greek Philosophy, ed. K. Robb [La Salle, 111., 1983],153-20 6, 153). T he same applies to Indo -Eu rope an wisdom sayings, if the earlyIrish material is representative (for some examples, see R. P. Martin, Hesiod,Odysseus an d the Instruction o f Princes, Transactions o f the American Philological

Association 114 (1984): 29-48). Here are some examples of orational style in thepro se sayings o f th e Sev en sages, w hic h are pre serv ed in Sto baeus 3.1 .172, whocites from a collection prepared by Demetrius of Phaleron (I cite from the text inDiels- K ran z, vol. 1, 63 -66 ): e.g. alliteratio n: Th alesnr.6 , assonan ce: T h a le s n r. 11; chiasm (+ rhyme): , Pe rian de r nr. 16; word -so un d play: , , Cleo bo ulu s nr. 17; parallelism : , Cleob oulus nr. 20.

55 Co m pare . L. West, Hesiod Works and Days (Oxford, 1978), 211: Gnomic

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c.E. metrist Hephaestion seems to me to be entirely correct: Acatalectic dimeter is called a paroemiac because some proverbial

expressions () are found in this m eter . . . but there arepro verb ia l expressions in epic and iambic verse as well, and not onlyin this meter. Therefore, it is not proper to call this meter alone a

paroem ia c.56Evidence for the oral composition of gnomai in performance also

comes from the way the Homeric heroes are represented in the epicsas speaking. Diomedes, for example, is a young hero in the Iliad,who, according to Martin, learns how to speak effectively through

out the course of the epic. In Book 10 he is still fairly inept, as isshown, among other things, by what Martin calls his clumsy gnomicutte ran ce at lines 22 4-26 :37

, .

W he n tw o go t oge the r , a t le a s t one i n t u r n is m ind f u l

o f w ha t is be s t, b u t a m a n a lone , e ve n i f he is m ind f u l,

s ti ll has less m in d a n d his w it is s lende r .

This is not the m ost coherent statement ever made. O ne of the prob lems with the statement is that the expansion of the first saying bya second one at lines 225b~26, while adhering to a common pattern, does not make the thought any clearer. Another problem isthe excess of epic : one normally finds one or two such particlesin any one saying, but Diomedes prbduces no fewer than six of themin just three lines. I believe that Diomedes is presented as overdoing it, because he still has to learn how to make a proper gnomic

tags often occupy the second h alf of the he xam eter (hence the nam e paro em iacfor the colon).

56 To . . . . He ph aestio n8.6 (Cons. pp. 26-27). This does not mean that the paroemiac slot in the hexameter line cannot represent an older meter. Given its close correspondence to otherIndo-European meters, in particular the Slavic 10-syllable epic verse (see C. Watkins,Indo-Eu ropean metrics and A rchaic Irish Verse [1963], reprinted in Selected Writings,vol. 2 [Innsb ruck, 1994], 349404, 351), it pro bab ly does. I only question wh ethe rthis meter has any specific connection with Indo-European proverbs or pre-Homericgnomai.

57 M art in , Language o f Heroes, 125.

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105

expression. It is highly ironic in this regard that in the second halfof his statement he singles out a man who alone, even if he is

mindful, still has less mind and his wit (|Lifjti9 T h e w it () o f the o ther pe rson to wh om Dio m edes m ay be referring, Odysseus, is of course n eve r in doub t.

60 Excep tions are certain ritual praye rs; see for exam ple J . Scherze r, Namakke,Sumakke, Kormakke: Th ree T ypes of C una Speech Event, in Explorations in the Ethnographyo f Speaking, ed. R. B aum an and J. Sche rzer (Cam bridge, 1974), 26382, wh o co ntrasts such prayers with the more creative, and m ore app reciated, a rt of speech-making amo ng the C una Indians of Panam a. F or a Greek example, I can refer tothe beginning of Olympian 9, where Pindar favorably contrasts his newly createdvictory ode (which nevertheless follows a traditional scheme) with the fixed andstand ardiz ed -ode of Archilochus: see L. K urke, Th e P oe ts Pen tathlon:Genre in Pindars First Isthmian, Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 29 (1988): 97-116,106; K. A. Morgan , Pindar the Professional and the Rhetoric of the ,Classical Philology 88 (1993): 115, 7-8 .

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106 ANDR LARDINOIS

Madagascar, for example, among the Vakinakaratra, a speaker whopretends to be in experienced excuses him self by saying: I am not

an originator o f words, but a borrow er an d a preserver o f tradition .61 This does not m ean th at as an originator o f words he wouldonly say novel things; on the contrary, an experienced speaker issupposed to command the kabaty language, which is also the language of Malagasy proverbs and, unlike everyday speech, highly stylized.62 T he crea tion of Greek g nom ai is very similar to tha t o f Greekmyth or epic formulae. To an existing stock of tales and phrases,themselves subject to change, are continually added new ones, and

a composer working closely with traditional material can still claimto be origina l.63The closest parallel I found for such a creative formation of wis

dom expressions is the so-called wise words of the Western Apache.Keith Basso has shown how these wise words are continually generated, especially by the elder men and women of the villages, according to a strict syntactical schem e.64 He also reports , however, tha tsometimes a particularly good expression is picked up and used byothers in the village.65 Th is borrowing suggests that some created

sayings can become established. The close similarity between HesiodWD 218 ( ) and II. 17.32 or 20.198 ( ) seems to ind icate tha t, in this instance, a p ar ticu larversion of the gnomic thought had become more or less fixed, atleast within hexameter poetry. Such fixed sayings would approximate what we refer to as proverbs. In most cases, however, we haveto allow for a more flexible form, which couches a traditional thought

61 E. Keenan , Norm -Makers and Norm-Breakers: Uses of Speech by Men andWomen in a Malagasy Community, in Explorations in the Ethnography o f Speaking, ed.R. Bau ma n and J. S cherzer (Cam bridge, 1974), 12 5-43 , 135.

62 K een an , Norm -M ak ers, 126, 128.63 A. B. Lord, The Singer of Tales (Cambridge, Mass., 1960), 99ff. The ancient

Greek attitude towards originality and traditionality is well known. One quotationmay suffice: H. Lloyd-Jones, The Justice o f %eus (Berkeley, 1971), 44-45: We nowrecognize that in the view of the ancients a poets originality was not d i m i n i s h e d

by his use of old m ate rial, bu t ra the r displa yed in his ingen io us adaptati on o f thatmaterial to his own purposes.

64 K. Basso, Wise W ords of the W estern Apache: M etap ho r an d S em anticTheory, in Meaning in Anthropology, ed. K. Basso and H. Selby (Albuquerque, 1976),93-121.

65 Basso, Wise W ords, 118.

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in new words or expresses a novel idea in familiar phrasing. Thereis an English proverb which defines the genre as the wisdom of

m any and the wit o f one .66 In the case of Greek gnom ai both thewisdom a nd the wit belong to the m any.67

107

I>6 Qu oted by A. Taylor , Th e W isdom o f M any and the W it of O ne (1962),reprinted in The Wisdom o f Many: Essays on the Proverb, ed. W. Mieder and A. Dundes(New York, 1981), 3-9, 3.

67 Th is article is base d in pa rt on my dissertation, W isdom in Con text: T he

Use o f Gn om ic Statem ents in Archaic G reek Poe try (Princeton Un iversity, 1995).I would like to thank my original advisors: Richard Martin, Andrew Ford andFrom a Zeitlin, the anonym ous referee, and the participants o f the Epos and Logosconference for their valuable suggestions and comments, and Michelle Lewis, whohelped to revise my English. All remaining mistakes are still mine.