Chapter 16. Victim of the Muses: Mythical Poets

As has been shown previously, the lives of the poets are often composed of legendary and mythical elements, side by side with historical elements. We will now approach the problem from the other side, looking at selected mythical poets, testing these myths for attestations of the same patterns. A more complete survey of mythical poets can be found in Jeno Platthy’s odd book, The Mythical Poets of Greece.

Both Plato and the Aesop Romance assimilated their heroes to Marsyas, the satyr, so he is a logical starting point. Though he is not a poet per se, he is a musician, and poetry and music (separated by modern definitions) were always closely associated in archaic Greece. [1] Furthermore, the structure of his story offers a close parallel to the stories of poetic agōnes we have found in stories of ancient poets, in the cases of Homer, Hesiod, and Aeschylus. Thus Marsyas is an important mythical antecedent to the legends of the Greek poets. In his myth, and in related stories, the hero is explicitly victim of the Muses. [2]

We first hear of Marsyas in Herodotus: “Here, too [at Celaenae, near Phrygia, in Asia Minor], the skin of Marsyas the Silenus is exhibited; according to the Phrygian legend Apollo flayed Marsyas and hung the skin up here in the marketplace.” [3] The oldest reference to an agōn is in Xenophon: “Here it is said that Apollo flayed Marsyas, having conquered him when he was striving [erizonta] with him concerning skillfulness.” [4] There are other early references in Plato, as Alcibiades compares Socrates to Marsyas and emphasizes the sacral sweetness of his music, in contrast to his (and Socrates’) satyrlike, bestial ugliness. [5] Apollodorus gives a standard exposition of the complete story: In other variants, it is made explicit that the Muses were the judges of the competition. [8]

Ovid tells us that the lamentations of the fauns, satyrs, nymphs, shepherds, and rustics produced such an enormous amount of tears that the river Marsyas resulted. [9] Later, we learn from Pausanias, Phrygians “repelled the army of the Gauls by the aid of Marsyas, who defended them against the barbarians by the water from the river and by the music of his flute.” [10] Both these details strongly suggest hero cult awarded to the satyr.

Though Apollo remained inimical to the pipe because of Marsyas for some time, Pausanias tells us that a Pythian flute tune was played at Delphi; [11] and that Marsyas’ pipes were eventually possessed by Apollo. The river Marsyas carried them to the Maeander, which took them to the Asopus, then they were washed ashore in the Sicyonian territory, and a shepherd gave them to Apollo. [12] Thus, according to the formulation of Burkert, enmity in myth entails unity in cult.

Here we see familiar themes. There is a poetic consecration, of sorts; in a comic story playing on Athena’s puffed-out cheeks and vanity, Marsyas receives his instrument from a goddess, just as Archilochus had received a lyre. (Our earliest iconographic evidence for Marsyas, the statue by Myron, portrays the satyr at this moment. [13] ) The poet-musician is subhuman, animalistic, yet rivalling Apollo himself in making beautiful music. The musical contest amounts to a trial (krisis) with the poet’s life at stake; he is bested unfairly perhaps, thus making the judgment against the poet unjust (perhaps). The death of the poet-musician follows; he is explicitly killed by the god, seconded by the Muses (with the theme of hanging). But the god eventually possesses the pipes that had originally caused the enmity. Finally, the musician receives hero cult, and gives victory in battle.

As has been mentioned, both Aesop and Socrates are explicitly linked to Marsyas in their vitae. The Aesopic parallel is above all linked to the ambivalent enmity with Apollo; the animalistic marginality in appearance is also comparable. The explicit Socratic parallels are the physical animalism, but also the mantic musicality of Socrates’ speech.

Similar stories are told of other figures in Greek myth. Pan also competed with Apollo in a musical contest, pitting rustic pipes against Apollo’s lyre, and the arbitrant, King Tmolus, awarded the victory to Apollo. [14] Interestingly, Apollo learned the gift of prophecy from Pan, [15] and so we have identification of victor with vanquished once again.

Thamyris engaged in a similar foolhardy contest, which is attested as early as the Iliad: According to Apollodorus, “Thamyris, who excelled in beauty [16] and in lyre-singing, engaged in a musical contest with the Muses, the agreement being that, if he won, he should enjoy them all, but that if he should be vanquished he should be bereft of what they would. So the Muses got the better of him and bereft him both of his eyes and of his lyre-singing.” [17] The blinding is attested as early as Hesiod, apparently. [18]

The theme of the blinding of the poet, evidenced most memorably in the Homer vita, returns again. Demodocus was another poet who was blinded by a Muse, but was given the gift of song as recompense. [19] One thinks in this connection of Tiresias, the seer, who had his eyesight taken away by Hera, as punishment for taking Zeus’ side in the two gods’ famous quarrel as to which of the sexes experiences most satisfaction in love making; in recompense, Zeus gave him the power of prophecy. [20] Here we have a clearly parallel motif shared by poet and prophet. Thamyris, of course, does not fit this mantic pattern, for he loses both his eyesight and his poetic gifts simultaneously. But his musical gifts cause his blindness.

Thamyris seems a somewhat unsympathetic failure, disastrously punished by the Muses in his hubris; he nevertheless received a statue, in the grove of the Muses at Helicon. [21]

The Linus who was the forefather of the Linus killed by Heracles (according to Pausanias), fits into this category of poets. Τhe son of a Muse, Urania, he “ won a reputation for music greater than that of any contemporary or predecessor, and … Apollo killed him for equalling him in singing [exisoumenon kata tēn ōidēn].” [22] After his death the whole world mourns (which seemingly puts Apollo in an unsympathetic light); even in Egypt there was a Linus lament. Here the poet is almost assimilated to the dying god of Frazer and the ancient Near East. As in the case of Hesiod, there is a significant emphasis on the placement of bones after death: “The Thebans assert that Linus was buried among them, and that after the Greek defeat at Chaeronia, Philip the son of Amyntas, in obedience to a vision in a dream, took up the bones of Linus and conveyed them to Macedonia; other visions induced him to send the bones of Linus back to Thebes.” Also in the grove of the Muses at Helicon is a rock sculpture of Linus: “To Linus every year they sacrifice [enagizousi] as to a hero before they sacrifice to the Muses.” [23]

Here we have familiar patterns: close association with the Muses or Apollo, including cultic association after death; the bestness of the poet; enmity with Apollo—agōn and execution by the god; lamentation, emphasis on the bones and grave of hero, and hero cult. We are moving in the same world as the vitae of Aesop, Archilochus, and Hesiod.

The recurrent association of these agōn myths with Apollo leads us repeatedly to think of Delphi, the site of the Aesopic cult myth. Burkert writes, “Music was the primary mode of experiencing the Delphic god’s epiphany, and the musical agōn was the most important at Delphi.” [24] This musical agōn appears faithfully in these myths of poets, as it does in the story of the contest of Homer and Hesiod, [25] because of the close connection between seers and poets. Here one recalls the riddle contest between seers, as in the story of Calchas and Mopsus, where the seer who loses the contest dies of grief or through suicide. [26]

Shamanistic themes begin to be repeatedly associated with all these themes. [27] After path-breaking studies by K. Meuli and Dodds, Burkert, and Bremmer have urged caution in speaking of Greek shamanism. For the purposes of this study, it is less important to determine whether actual extra-Greek shamanism influenced Greece than it is to isolate authentic shamanic themes that appear there. Furthermore, it is clear that shamanism can be broadly or narrowly defined.

The shaman was focused on ecstasy. Eliade defines the shaman as “the great master of ecstasy” who experiences “a trance during which his soul is believed to leave his body and ascend to the sky or descend to the underworld.” Animals often act as helpers. In its pure form, shamanism is found in Central and North Asia. [28]

Often the shaman was a healer. [29] In a similar way, the archaic Greek poet sometimes functioned as healer—Aelian writes, “If ever the Spartans required the aid of the Muses on occasion of general sickness of body or mind or any like public affliction, their custom was to send for foreigners at the bidding of the Delphic oracle, to act as healers and purifiers. For instance they summoned Terpander, Thales [= Thaletas], Tyrtaeus, Nymphaeus of Cydonia, and Alcman.” [30] This links the archaic Greek poet closely to the wandering seer/wise man such as Epimenides, who was a healer and purifier.

Often the shaman used music (chanting and dancing, accompanied by sacred drums) to induce ecstasy and healing. [31] Thus, Dodds writes, “Out of the north came Abaris, riding, it was said, upon an arrow, as souls, it appears, still do in Siberia … he banished pestilences, predicted earthquakes, composed religious poems, and taught the worship of his northern god, whom the Greeks called the Hyperborean Apollo.” [32] In such a figure, we have the healer, the prophet, the poet. And we have seen that ecstasy is an important aspect of poetic creativity (as in the consecration epiphanies of Aesop, Archilochus, Hesiod, and Aeschylus; Archilochus sings the Dionysiac dithyramb when thunderstruck with wine) and of poetic communication (Tyrtaeus instilled enthousiasmos, a state of divine possession, into the Spartan warriors).

Since we have seen the persistent association of poet as cult hero with Delphi, it is worth noting that the poet Olen, a Hyperborean, was one of the founders of Delphi; he became Apollo’s first prophet, and the inventor of hexameter poetry. [33] Thus poetry and prophecy are explicitly associated at the beginning of the Delphic tradition. [34] The Hyperborean background of Olen brings shamanism to mind. [35] Strabo tells us that Delphi kept a staff of poets who versified the oracles. [36] M. L. West notes that, from northern Thrace, “it is not far to Pieria, the region north and east of Mount Olympus” and that in shamanism there is the tradition of a sky god with “seven or nine ‘sons’ or ‘daughters.’” There was an early cult of the Muses at Delphi. [37] The first Delphic Sibyl was reared by the Muses at Helicon, and the Muses were associated with the Castalian spring, close to Delphi. [38]

Epimenides is firmly in the tradition of poet-prophet, and is curiously half-mythical, half-historic [39] —a philosopher and a seer with shamanic characteristics. I consider him here for his many parallels with Hesiod, for his blame fragment, and for his associations with purification. Huxley remarks that the seers “Melampous and his family stand out, by reason of their skill and percipience, as the true intellectual ancestors of the philosophical pioneers of early Ionia.” Thus Greek philosophy and poetry had their roots in the mantic in archaic Greece. [40] Greek philosophy was never entirely separated from the mantic. [41]

Like Hesiod, Epimenides receives a divine consecration, and like Hesiod, he was a shepherd, and there is a pastoral setting for the supernatural event that gave him his mantic vocation. “One day he was sent into the country by his father to look for a stray sheep, [42] and at noon he turned aside out of the way, and went to sleep in a cave, where he slept for fifty-seven years … so he became famous throughout Greece and was believed to be a special favorite of heaven.” [43] His fifty-seven-year-long dream taught him divine wisdom. [44] Like Hesiod, he wrote a Theogony; [45] he also wrote an Oracles, just as Hesiod wrote a Mantika. [46] Like Hesiod and Aesop, he was reborn after death. [47]

We know, on the basis of one fragment, that he was a blame poet: he wrote, “Cretans, always liars, evil beasts, idle bellies.” [48] Aside from the echoes of Hesiod and the early blame tradition here, [49] the fragment is interesting for the tension it expresses between the poet and his native land. According to West’s interpretation, this is part of the poetic/mantic initiation theophany (as the Hesiodic a parallel would support)—after Epimenides’ long cave sleep, “Truth and Justice” (attributes of Zeus?) visit him and speak these words. [50]

There is perhaps a hint of the consecration theme in the tradition that he “was never seen to eat” because he had received special food from the nymphs. [51] It is tempting to see these nymphs as Muses, [52] but this is not explicit. Later, Epimenides starts to build a temple to the nymphs, but a heavenly voice advises a temple to Zeus instead. [53]

Thus we have a blame poet critical of his native country receiving the patronage of the nymphs; he receives wisdom from supernatural sources. This poet was also a famous seer; Plato calls him a “divine man” (anēr theios) and describes how he foretold events in the Persian wars. [54] However, according to Aristotle, an important part of his seership involved looking into the past. [55] This would be an important aspect of his function as a famous purifier; in order to purify a city or a person, one had to look into the past and diagnose the cause of the pollution. According to Aristotle, Diogenes, and others, Epimenides was brought to Athens to allay a plague; he diagnosed it as deriving from the murder of Cylon’s associates, who had taken refuge at the altar of Athena. Accordingly, he “purified [ekathēren] the city and stopped the pestilence” (ἐκάθηρεν αὐτῶν τὴν πόλιν καὶ ἔπαυσε τὸν λοιμὸν)—by sacrifices of sheep, according to one account, and of two young men, by another, undoubtedly fictional, account. [56] Epimenides is also said “to have been the first who purified houses and fields, and the first who founded temples.” [57] The prophet also cured individuals: “He professed to purify people by rite from any damaging influence whatever, physical or mental, and to state its cause.” [58] It is possible that Epimenides used music, poetry, and spells in his healing; another Cretan seer or poet, Thaletas, used music to combat a Spartan plague, [59] a theme that has been found in the life of Stesichorus. [60]

Epimenides’ vita has a number of themes that are arguably shamanic: long departure from his body; cave initiation; tattooing; withdrawal into a cave; prophecy, healing; and reincarnation: “Tradition assimilated him to the type of the northern shaman.” [61] Plutarch writes that he was “wise in divine things related to possession [enthousiastikēn] and initiation lore [telestikēn sophian].” [62]

Finally, Epimenides was given hero cult. He was worshipped by the Cretans after his death. “The Cretans sacrifice to him as a god; for they say that he had superhuman foresight.” But “The Lacedaemonians guard his body in their own keeping in obedience to a certain oracle.” [63] Just so, Hesiod’s body is kept at a certain town because of an oracle. [64]

A key poet-prophet figure with shamanic resonances is Orpheus. [65] There is an extensive literature on him and on “Orphism,” so one must be selective in any treatment of him. His associations with music and poetry were proverbial; he was also a magical healer. Pausanias writes, “Orpheus excelled … in the beauty of his verse, and reached a high degree of power because he was believed to have discovered mysteries, purification from sins [ergōn anosiōn katharmous], cures of diseases and means of averting divine wrath.” [66] By his singing, he causes rocks and trees to move; animals are captivated by his singing; his music convinces Hades to allow Eurydice to live again. [67] He was the son of a Muse; [68] by one account, he was the son of Apollo. [69] The god gave him personal lessons in lyre-playing in the woods. [70]

After Orpheus’ visit to the underworld, he suffered a violent death. According to one early account, Dionysus, angered by Orpheus’ tendency to honor the sun over him, had his maenads tear him to pieces. Aeschylus writes, “He [Orpheus] did not honour Dionysos, but accounted Helios the greatest of the gods, whom also he called Apollo … Therefore Dionysos was enraged [orgistheis].” [71] This leads us back to the theme of divine rage in the story of Aesop and Apollo. Since Orphic cult was closely linked to a similar death of Dionysus, [72] we have once again enmity in myth entailing cultic unity. [73] Furthermore, the head of Orpheus is finally enshrined in a shrine of Dionysus, the Bakkheion, at Lesbos. [74] On the other hand, Orpheus’ lyre is preserved in a temple of Apollo. [75] The roles of Apollo and Dionysus in Orpheus’ life recall the beneficent and ambivalently maleficent/beneficent roles of the Muses and Apollo in the life of Aesop.

Orpheus’ death has variants. Pausanias has Orpheus struck dead by a Zeus-thrown thunderbolt (keraunōthēnai). [76] Ovid describes him being stoned to death. [77]

After Orpheus’ death, a plague ensues; the oracle enjoins the burial of the poet’s head, [78] and he receives hero cult. At first, Orpheus’ head is in a hero shrine, but later it becomes a full-fledged divine shrine, and he receives sacrifices typical of the Olympian gods. [79] According to one account, the Muses gather his limbs and bury them. [80] After he was torn to pieces, his head, still singing, floated out the Hebrus, into the ocean, and to the isle of Lesbos, where it was enshrined and delivered oracles. The singing, oracular head has been identified as a shamanic motif. [81]

Fritz Graf has offered an important interpretation of Orpheus that emphasizes his connections with the warrior and Männerbund, discounting the ties with shamanism. [82] But shamanism may be a component of the myth without being its guiding principle, and parallels with archaic Greek poets incline me to accept shamanistic themes in archaic poet-seer miracle-workers.

Graf’s insight into Orpheus’ links with the warrior are still valuable, and provide another example of the ties of warrior with poet. In the Conon narrative, Orpheus is killed while initiating armed warriors in a hall of mysteries from which women are excluded. While celebrating the rituals, the men have to leave their weapons outside, and women, angered at being excluded, seize the weapons, enter the building, kill all the men who oppose them, and tear Orpheus to pieces, throwing his body parts into the ocean. The typical cultic denouement (plague, oracle, and cult for body of wronged hero) follows. [83]

In Pausanias (9.30.5) Orpheus’ death is associated with drunkenness and war: “The women of the Thracians plotted his death, because he had persuaded their husbands to accompany him in his wanderings … flushed with wine, however, they dared the deed, and hereafter the custom of their men has been to march to battle drunk.” [84] The story of the men warriors following the example of the wine-addled murderers of Orpheus is very curious. The death of Orpheus seems to be a charter myth for warriors, though why women are used as charter heroes is not immediately obvious.

The tattooing of the Thracian female killers of Orpheus also suggests warrior initiation. A cylix dated near 500 BC shows a Thracian maenad with a tattoo on her right arm killing Orpheus. [85] According to Plutarch, Thracian men tattoo their wives as punishment for the murder of Orpheus. [86] One would expect that Thracian warriors would tattoo themselves, not their wives, as tattooing is a common feature of initiation. [87] And in fact, Herodotus tells us that “Tattooing is judged to be a mark of high birth” among Thracian men, whose highest values are war and plunder. [88]

Furthermore, Epimenides, parallel to Orpheus in some ways, was found to be covered with tattoos when he died. And Zalmoxis, whom Graf finds close to Orpheus in initiation and Männerbund themes, [89] had a tattoo on his forehead. [90] It appears that the killing of Orpheus (by tattooed women) again provides a charter for a warrior-initiation practice.

Dodds identifies tattooing as a shamanic practice, and he is probably right, though he does not prove that the practice was characteristically shamanic. [91] Here again we find an ambiguity, if we choose shamanism or Männerbund initiation on a either/or basis. But if we see shamanism (possession) and warrior initiation as intersecting at times, there is no necessity for exclusive interpretation.

Though the female/male shift remains obscure, [92] perhaps a key to these issues may be found in the fact that the archaic religious leader gained his prestige by being a leader of warriors, and was also a master of magic, spells, poetry, related ecstatic states, initiation ritual, and Kampfwut. [93] One thinks of Archilochus as servant of Ares, living by his spear, yet also the servant of the Muses, and leading off the dithyramb of Dionysus, “thunderstruck with wine.” (And in addition wielding invective as potent as a warrior’s sword.) Just so, Orpheus has obvious ties with the Muses and Dionysus, but, as Graf has emphasized, he has links with war also. To the archaic mind, these categories created a unity; to the modern mind, the connections are not so comfortable.

The two dominant heroes in Greek myth, Heracles and Achilles, each have some association with poetry. In view of the importance of Heracles for chapter 18, “The Stakes of the Poet,” it will be useful to evaluate the importance of his poetic aspects here. Achilles and his men killed the mythical Pharmakos; he also killed the prototypical blame poet and scapegoat Thersites. Because persecutors are often identified with their victims, he is worth looking at for that reason alone.

Achilles, the greatest hero of the Trojan war, [94] sings to himself in his moments of leisure: Katherine Callen King writes, “Achilles is not the only man in the Iliad to sing … But he is the only one to sing individually.” Achilles had gotten his lyre as war plunder: “There is no opposition between lyre and battle here.” [96] In archaic Greece, every aristocratic man was a warrior; and perhaps every aristocratic man learned the basics of singing. But as King points out, it is worth noting that there is no opposition between the two phenomena in archaic Greece culture and ethos. One is hard put to think of a major modern poet who is also a mercenary soldier or for whom war is a central poetic theme.

Later tradition adds to the portrait. Achilles played the “first” lyre. [97] Philostratus gives the warrior poet a poetic theophany, in the tradition of Hesiod:

These details are clearly elaborated from the Iliadic picture of the lyre-playing Achilles, but they show that the fascination with the poetic/musical side of the warrior continued. Ovid would write that the centaur Cheiron taught Achilles the art of the lyre: “He is believed to have employed, in strumming the lyre, those hands which were one day to send Hector to death.” [99]

Cheiron, according to some traditions, invented the art of the lyre, and he was also a preeminent healer and mantis. [100] Achilles functions as a healer on occasion. [101] So Achilles has something of the poet-healer persona, even as early as the Iliad.

His death is voluntary; he chooses to die young, avenging Patroclus, rather than live to a ripe old age. [102] And Apollo, the inimical god whom he resembles so closely, guides the arrow that kills the hero. [103] Pindar represents Achilles’ hero cult as connected with the Muses: According to the Odyssey, “All nine Muses answering each other lamented [thrēneon] with their fair voices. Then you would not have seen any of the Argives tearless. For the clear-voiced Muse moved them to such an extent.” [105] Thus, lamentation by the grave, hero cult through immortalizing song, is bestowed upon a poet-warrior by the Muses. He is given the standard timē of hero cult. [106] But he is given poetic immortality in the Iliad. The motif of Apollo murdering the poet connected in cult with the Muses is Aesopic.

It is curious that Achilles and his men killed the original Pharmakos. They also kill Thersites, a sort of epic pharmakos. Thersites’ function is “to make strife against kings” (ἐριζέμεναι βασιλεῦσιν, Iliad II 214); he is the worst (ekhthistos, “most hated,” II 220; aiskhistos, “most base,” II 216) of the Achaeans; he is repulsively ugly and deformed, II 217–219; he reproaches the king, Agamemnon, II 225–242; he is beaten by Odysseus, II 265–268; later he blames Achilles with a sexual taunt, and Achilles himself kills this proto-satirist poet. This killing causes strife in the army, and Achilles must travel to Lesbos for purification, where he sacrifices to Apollo, Artemis, and Leto. [107]

Thus, though Achilles offers a valuable example of hero persecuted by a god he has close ties to, and though he seems to have some kind of connection with the pharmakos cult myth (perhaps because the Thersites myth was primary, and then Pharmakos was assimilated to his story), his ties with poetry are not extensive, though they are intriguing. Singing is at least a part of his persona; the Muses lament him after death; and he is associated with the centaur Cheiron, a healer and singer.

Such hints are even more scanty in the case of Heracles. There was a tradition that linked him with the Muses. He was called mousikos anēr [a man of the Muses—or musical man], Hercules Musarum [Hercules of the Muses]. This was a Roman tradition, but it had its roots in Greece. [108] On black-figure Attic vases, Heracles is frequently pictured playing the kithara, like Apollo. [109] Pausanias saw a statue group of Apollo, the Muses, and Heracles by Damophon of Messene. [110]

According to Theocritus, Heracles was taught to sing by Eumolpus: he “made of him a singer [aoidon] and shaped his hand to the box-wood lyre.” [111] Other accounts make Linus, a descendant of the earlier Linus, [112] his teacher; he misadvisedly hit Heracles, and the young hero struck back with his lyre and killed him—a musical homicide. [113] Here he seems almost an anti-poet.

Though we think of Heracles as a man of the labors, he also had obvious warrior associations. He is taught chariotry by his father Amphitryon, but Castor taught him the skills of fighting:

Heracles shares with the other figures in this book a certain persecuted, wronged nature, and dies a horrible death before achieving an extraordinary heroization/deification.

In a theme that links him with athlete-heroes and Archilochus, he is denied a promised wife, an event that leads to his death. After winning the marriage contests for Iole, her father and brothers deny him her hand. He eventually kills them and obtains Iole, but the action is fatal, for then the jealous Deianeira gives him the poisoned robe. [115]

Thus, Heracles’ poetic aspects are not strong, though the pattern of his heroic career offers a few parallels to poetic heroes. It is impossible to tell whether his poetic associations are late embroidery or decayed remnants of a previously stronger tradition. [116]

Thus the myths of Marsyas, Thamyris, Pan, Linus, and Orpheus share important themes with the vitae of Aesop, Hesiod, Archilochus, and the other poets. Often the poet is the earthly champion in his skill; there is enmity between Apollo and the poet, which is sometimes contrasted by the poet’s close alliance to the Muses; there is the agōn, which brings about the poet’s death; after the death of the poet there is lamentation, hero cult, and emphasis on the placement of the hero’s bones. In the cases of Marsyas and Orpheus, the cult of the hero killed by Apollo is identified with Apollo. After the death of Orpheus, a plague results, which can only be assuaged by hero cult paid to the poet.

If we assume the primacy of these myths over the lives of the poets, then, we can reasonably look to them as important sources (at least partially) for the poets’ legendary vitae. These myths gave a framework on which many biographies could have been based.

Such a hypothesis is in no way absolute—it does not rule out other components in the biographies, including an authentic historical nucleus to a biography. Lefkowitz’s thesis that the lives of the poets derive from mistaken interpretation of the poet’s writings is not excluded either, though such accretion would be merely a component of the biographical tradition. Lefkowitz’s method of explaining biography is by no means exclusive of mythical explanation. The biographer combs the extant text of the poet for biographical details; he misunderstands and misinterprets many details, but traditional themes from “the poetic biography” (Marsyas; Pharmakos; Aesop; Archilochus; Socrates) condition his misunderstanding, flesh out his biographical guesses. In fact, the scholiast may look for details in the corpus that fit the mythical “poetic biography.”

However, the historical nucleus of these seemingly mythical tales should not be underrated: the myths were applied to the poets because poets’ lives somewhat fit the structures of the already-existing myths. Poets were seen as sacred and powerful, inspired by god; poets came into conflict with elements of society, political or religious, or a combination of the two (Delphi, for instance, was a powerful political institution); poets were killed or exiled. So in the cases of poets such as Hesiod and Archilochus, no doubt their vitae are mixtures of history and myth; even a late figure such as Socrates, we have seen, has a biography self-consciously filled with mythical themes (Socrates is both Marsyas and Aesop; Aesop earlier had been Marsyas); but he certainly lived and was certainly tried by the Athenians, even if his trial may not have had all of the mythical power captured in Plato’s Apology.

A revealing study in the ambiguous intersection of history, myth, and cult in Greek antiquity is the story of Philip of Croton, found in Herodotus (5.47), and ostensibly historical. Philip is the best—“the handsomest [kallistos] Greek of his day”; [117] he is also an Olympic victor, which puts him in the sphere of Fontenrose’s athlete-heroes. Like Archilochus, he is betrothed, and his betrothal is broken off, causing him great depression. [118] Like many of the poets we have studied, he is exiled, from Croton. Finally, like Archilochus, he is killed in battle. After his death, he is given hero cult by the Egestaeans (whom he had died fighting) [119] because of his beauty; they build a hero shrine for him upon his tomb and worship him with sacrifices. [120] In interpreting this story, we are faced with at least two options: it is historically reliable, and cult was awarded this singularly handsome, but singularly unfortunate man. The other option is that it is simply a traditional hero biography applied to a remarkably handsome Olympic victor to expedite his heroization/deification. A study of the lives of heroes, athletic and otherwise, shows the pattern that heroes must be exceedingly miserable before death. [121] In this case, Philip may have received a similar biography by exactly the same process.

Thus if poets were seen as heroes, superhuman, linked to the divine, they had to submit to the mechanism for heroization (exile; broken engagements; god-induced deaths; foreign deaths; unsympathetic trials [122] ) standard in Greek myth. If we find such themes both in athlete-hero tales and poet-hero tales, it is likely that they came from the same source (mythical hero tale patterns). And of course, athlete-hero tales did not derive from learned conjecture out of the athletes’ writings.

If we have the hero tale pattern applied to athlete, and poet, it is not surprising that we also find it applied to seer, in the case of Carnos, whose military murder becomes an aition for a Doric festival. Apollodorus describes a regular cultic drama in a military context. The Heraclids are attacking the Peloponnese: The Dorians then gave cult to the enemy prophet after his death.

Fontenrose wrote perceptively of the application of hero myth to historical athletes: In the same way, the hero myth would attach itself to prominent Greek poets—Aesop, Archilochus, Hesiod, Homer. Thus we have such a curious life of a poet as that of Archilochus’: combining overtly mythical themes (consecration by the Muses) with some solidly historical facts, along with some themes that could be history and could be myth. The fact that many of these themes are shared by other poets and heroes leads one to view many such ambiguous themes as legend, not history. The poet leading a life of disappointment, wandering, and exile, and dying an unjust, divinely engineered death may be the traditional hero myth applied to the poet.

But, as has been noted, we should not underestimate the capacity for reality to imitate myth, since myths reflect cultural reality. A great poet can easily live a life of wandering, exile, and disappointment. There is, as it were, a mythical reality. To compound the problem, such a myth-imitating life would only attract mythical tailoring in the re-telling. In the ancient world, as in the modern, making an exact separation of myth from reality is impossible.