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Antimachus of Colophon and the Position of Women in Greek Poetry / A fragment printed for the use of scholars cover

Antimachus of Colophon and the Position of Women in Greek Poetry / A fragment printed for the use of scholars

Chapter 17: EXCURSUS E.
By E. F. M. Benecke
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About This Book

The essays trace how women are depicted across Greek lyric, tragic and comic poetry, arguing that earlier verse centers male same-sex affection while a distinctly romantic ideal of male love for women appears later. The writer challenges claims that this change flowed directly from social emancipation or originated with commonly credited dramatists, suggesting an earlier poetic source instead. Close readings of fragments and plays, textual emendations, and focused excursuses on comic and tragic passages are employed to map shifting themes, stylistic tendencies, and the cultural meanings attached to women in successive Greek poetic traditions.

EXCURSUS E.

[P. 87.]

THE SECOND BOOK OF THEOGNIS.

The second book of Theognis consists almost entirely of love-poems addressed to boys, and might therefore be expected to furnish particularly valuable evidence in the present connection, especially as many of these poems are of a far more personal and purely erotic character than those in the first book. The date of this book is, however, disputed, and I personally am inclined to believe that it is very much later than the time of Theognis—too recent, in fact, to belong to the period we are discussing at all. This being so, I have naturally not chosen to lay stress on its contents. For the sake of completeness, however, I have added here a brief examination of its character, for the benefit of anyone who may believe in it.

The general tone of these poems, though noticeably more passionate than that of the earlier collection, is still chivalrous and dignified, and occasionally rises to a very high level indeed. That spirit of self-negation, which we have already observed to be peculiar among the early Greeks to this form of love, is in places very marked. Few passages in all classical poetry can equal the pathetic dignity of these words of resignation:

οὐκ ἐθέλω σε κακῶς ἕρδειν, οὐδ’ εἴ μοι ἄμεινον
πρὸς θεῶν ἀθανάτων ἔσσεται, ὦ καλὲ παῖ·
οὐ γὰρ ἁμαρτωλῇσιν ἐπὶ σμικρῇσι κάθημαι,
τῶν δὲ καλῶν παίδων οὔτις ἔτ’ οὐκ ἀδικῶν.[358] (l. 1279)

or of this farewell:

καλὸς ἐὼν κακότητι φρενῶν δειλοῖσιν ὁμιλεῖς
ἀνδράσι, καὶ διὰ τοῦτ’ αἰσχρὸν ὄνειδος ἔχεις,
ὦ παῖ· ἐγὼ δ’ ἀέκων τῆς σῆς φιλότητος ἁμαρτών,
ὠνήμην ἕρδων οἷά τ’ ἐλεύθερος ὤν. (l. 1377)

or of this:

οὐδαμά σ’ οὐδ’ ἀπιὼν[359] δηλήσομαι, οὐδέ με πείσει
οὐδεὶς ἀνθρώπων ὥστε με μή σε φιλεῖν. (l. 1363)

Similarly, that fatherly attitude on the part of the older man, which we have noticed both in Theognis and in the Theocritean imitation of Alcaeus, is apparent in more than one place (e.g. 1351 seqq.). This lends a particular point to those passages which compare the lover to a horse’s owner or rider (1249 seqq., 1267 seqq.)

Again, there is the same appeal to the friend’s better feelings that we have noticed in Theocritus (1319 seqq.), the same appeal to his care for his good name (1295 seqq.), all marked, too, by the same consideration and courtesy (1235 seqq.); there is the same exhortation to constancy, the same reproof of faithlessness (1257 seqq., &c.), the same warning, full of earnestness, but withal full of tenderness, as to the shortness of youth (1299 seqq., 1305 seqq.).[360]

But it is needless to go further into detail. Enough has been said to show the general character of these poems, and anyone who reads them can easily supplement these instances with others. So, whatever value one may be inclined to assign to the evidence here adduced, it must, at least, be admitted that there is nothing in it which in any way contradicts anything that has gone before.[361]