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Herodas and the Kitchen Sink

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

W. Geoffrey Arnott
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Extract

‘Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien.’ Voltaire's epigramfits Greek literature like a glove. In school and university syllabuses, just as in our own private reading, we concentrate on the best authors; and a large number of the merely good authors stay on the library shelves, neglected and unread except by a steadily decreasing number of experts in forgotten fields. How many of us are on terms of easy familiarity with the bittersweet epigrams of Asclepiades, or that remarkably modern opening of Heliodorus' novel, or (for that matter) with the mimianiboi of Herodas?

Herodas was the major Hellenistic author of mimes. His work was singled out by the younger Pliny (Ep. iv. 3. 4) as the standard by which to assess contemporary poetasters in the field. Yet before 1889 he was no more than a name, to whom a few dull fragments could be assigned. In fact before 1889 the whole genre of Hellenistic mime, literary and non-literary alike, was a dark mystery, doubtless consigned to oblivion during the ages of Byzantine antischolasticism. To the immense popularity of mimes in late antiquity countless references in contemporary sources bear a distinctly scandalized witness. Some descriptions survived, a few definitions, many condemnations, but no texts.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 18 , Issue 2 , October 1971 , pp. 121 - 132
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1971

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References

page 121 note 1 Continental scholars generally favour the form Herondas, British scholars (with the notable exception of Dillwyn Knox) Herodas, Knox Herodes. The evidence, such as it is, points most strongly to the Doric form ῾Ηρῴδας. A bibliography of the older discussions is provided by G. A. Gerhard in RE s.v. Herondas, 1080f.; cf. also I. C. Cunningham in the introduction (i, § 2) to his forthcoming edition (Oxford) of Herodas.

page 122 note 1 Cf. Arnott, , PACA x (1967), 41 ff.Google Scholar It is only fair to add that the last decade has seen a renewed interest in Herodean studies, stimulated particularly by Cunningham and Volkmar Schmidt.

page 122 note 2 A full survey of Herodas' chronology and geographical background will be found in Gerhard's RE article, 1084ff., which now requires correction over the dramatic scene of the fourth mime (see Cunningham, , CQ xvi [1966], 115ff., and also his forthcoming edition).Google Scholar

page 123 note 1 Cf. Swiderek, A., Eos xlvii (1954), 63 ff.Google Scholar, and Cunningham, p. 119 of the cited paper and ii, § 34 of the introduction to his edition.

page 123 note 2 Apart from the one scrap of Sophron (Page, D. L., Greek Literary Papyri [Loeb], no. 73Google Scholar) that does nothing to illustrate or counter his high reputation in antiquity.

page 123 note 3 Cf. Swiderek, , loc. cit.Google Scholar

page 123 note 4 The text is published most conveniently in Otto Crusius's Teubner editio minor of Herodas, 110ff., or in Page, op. cit., no. 77 (a partial text only). For a full discussion see especially Sudhaus, S., Hermes xli (1906), 247 ff.Google Scholar

page 124 note 1 Cf. Page, pp. 350f.

page 124 note 2 126f. Crusius, 7f. Page.

page 124 note 3 154 Crusins, 35 Page.

page 124 note 4 182f. Crusius, 63f. Page.

page 124 note 5 Cf. Page, p. 353.

page 125 note 1 Even today, despite many warnings (the most recent by Cunningham, , CR xv [1965], 8 n. 1Google Scholar), scholars continue to fall into the verismo trap; at the opposite extreme, Knox's denial (his Loeb edition, p. 183) of any contact with real life (as opposed to literary influences) in Herodas' mimes seems equally purblind.

page 125 note 2 Cf. Greece & Rome xv (1968), 12f.Google Scholar

page 125 note 3 Cf. Cecil, Lord David, Early Victorian Novelists (London, 1934), in his chapter on George Eliot.Google Scholar

page 126 note 1 Colombo, M. Pinto, Dioniso iv (1934), 109Google Scholar, gives a good account of Bitinna's sensual and dominant personality.

page 128 note 1 The title has been disputed; see Groeneboom's, P. commentary (Groningen, 1922), 177Google Scholar, and Cunningham, , op. cit. 113 n. 2.Google Scholar

page 128 note 2 Cf. Crusius, , Untersuchungen zu den Mimiamben des Herondas (Leipzig, 1892), 127.Google Scholar

page 128 note 3 Cf. in Herodas alone the way that Kynno's companion treats her servant in the fourth mime (53) and Bitinna her slave in the fifth.

page 129 note 1 With the (at first sight) awkward exception of 69 f., but even there Koritto excuses her lapse by the plea ‘We are by ourselves’.

page 130 note 1 Untersuchungen, 1.Google Scholar

page 130 note 2 But notably not Gorge, her companion; Theocritus is intending to individualize Praxinoa by this trait.

page 130 note 3 Cf. Greece & Rome xvii (1970), especially 52ff.Google Scholar

page 130 note 4 Crusius, , Untersuchungen, 99Google Scholar, providing parallels for this expression, denies the presence here of any erotic sense.

page 130 note 5 For parallels see, in addition to Herodas' commentators, A. S. F. Gow on Theo critus i. 18.

page 131 note 1 The Uses of Literacy (London, 1957)Google Scholar, in chapter 2.

page 132 note 1 This is an amended version of a paper delivered in Manchester, Madrid, and Granada in 1969–70, and is dedicated in all humility to Professors M. Fernandez Galiano, J. de Hoz, and J. Lens.