Appendix B: Aggression and the Defensive Topos; Archilochus, Callimachus, Horace

Thus far, I have focused on the lives of the poets, with only occasional supportive reference to the poet’s poetry. The subject of this chapter will be a theme that has been considered in passing, aggression and the defensive stance as an apologetic for satirical attack, [1] as it is reflected in poetry. This topos, extending from Archilochus to Callimachus to Horace, [2] allows the poets to portray themselves as victims; thus, as they attack, they are moral, administering justice. Satirical poets are not scurrilous, inherently negative; they are, in fact, positive, lashing out at evil. The moral satirist is almost by definition a victim.

Here the theme of poet as victim is in the poet’s poetry, not just in the biographical tradition. The stories of the persecuted poets, whatever their source, exist in a tight nexus with the poets’ creations.

A classic statement of the satirical apologetic is found in Archilochus 223W/167T, in which the poet is a cicada having its wing pulled by a callous human. Lucian, in his The Liar 1, [3] addresses a man who has humiliated him by criticizing a literary mistake he supposedly made: Thus the unnamed antagonist slandered Archilochus. Archilochus is forced to resort to iambs to attack the slanderer in response. The aggressor has forced the issue—as it were, he is asking for the iambs. The original attack is likened to a man taking a cicada by the wing, which makes the insect cry out louder. This metaphor has a rich range of resonances, characterizing as it does both the slanderer and the poet. The slanderer is the type of person who would take a beautiful insect by the wing, a most delicate part of its body. He is viewed as callous, even malignant, torturing a very much smaller, less powerful creature for his own amusement.

The poet, on the other hand, is the cicada. As we have noted he is small, comparatively defenseless on a physical plane; he is a continual singer, as Lucian notes—“talkative by nature, even without any compulsion.” This is an important aspect of Archilochus’ apologetic, for the torturer knows that the cicada sings continually, is good at it; the slanderer should have had respect for his art. In other words, Archilochus’ slanderer probably knew Archilochus was a poet, but despised the art and powers of the satirist. This adds to the culpability of the victimizer and the innocence of the poet.

Furthermore, the cicada is an effective symbol for the poet as creator of beauty—the cicada was proverbial for its lovely singing, as is well documented. One of our earliest references to the tettix is the well-known passage in Hesiod’s Works and Days (582–584): Thus the poet is a creator of beauty, an innocent defenseless creature, who is being tortured by an arrogant, powerful enemy. The poet is the victim, the beautifully singing insect being mangled. He fights back only in self defense; and his counterattack, satire, is the powerful weapon of the oppressed, a weapon of justice. [6]

Archilochus also used animal fable to attack Lycambes, in the “Lycambes epode” (172–181W). [7] The satirical apologetic is a focal point of this fable (Aesop Fable 1 Perry, quoted before 172W). In Aesop’s version of it, the fox and the eagle make a treaty (emphasized by Archilochus, xuneōniēn / emeixan, 174W) of friendship. However, the eagle tramples on it, and feeds the fox’s children to his own. The fox, which cannot reach its enemy of the air, is reduced to cursing him. The eagle carries a burning piece of sacrificial meat to its nest, accidentally sets the nest on fire (thanks also to a sudden gust of wind), and burns his children. They drop out of the nest, and the fox eats them in front of his enemy—exactly symmetrical justice, if a repulsive image for modern sensibilities. [8] The eagle is more powerful and prestigious than the fox, which makes his original act all the more despicable. In Aesop’s fable, the fox is weaker, the victim, and aggressive verbalizing is the only defense of the oppressed: “Because of which, standing far off, she [the fox] cursed her enemy, which is the only thing left to those who are powerless and weak” (διόπερ πόρρωθεν στᾶσα, ὃ μόνον τοῖς ἀδυνάτοις καὶ ἀσθενέσιν ὑπολείπεται, τῷ ἐχθρῷ κατηρᾶτο).

We have only a few fragments of the Archilochean treatment of the fable, but one of them seems to be a quotation from that curse. It is not at all the kind of curse one might expect from the Archilochus of evil reputation; instead, it is theological, an appeal to Zeus, to justice. [9] This is not the Archilochus who arbitrarily fattens himself on hatreds (Pindar Pythian Odes 2.55); it is instead a hapless victim who appeals to god for justice, and punishes, perhaps, in Zeus’ name, almost as an earthly representative of the god. He views his poetic task almost as a theological imperative. [10]

We also find the satirical apologetic in Hipponax 115W. [11] Here we find a powerful example of extreme abuse, perhaps the most virulent blame poetry in archaic Greece. At first glance, the poet seems the aggressor, and is making his target a victim. But at the end of the fragment as we have it, we find that the invective is buttressed by the same satirical apologetic that we have found in Archilochus’ poetry: Hipponax curses his enemy, but only because his enemy, once a trusted friend, has done the poet a serious injustice, breaking solemn oaths. For the Greeks, there was a deep religious dimension to oath breaking. Jon D. Mikalson writes, “The violation of an oath was an impious act of the type which the gods were thought to punish … The individual often specified in a curse the punishment which should afflict him if he violated his oath.” [12] The poet’s only recourse is bitterly abusive verse, this poem, which is something of a curse. The poet, who at first glance appears to be making a victim of an enemy, sees himself as the actual weak, primary victim, and is satirizing and cursing only in self-defence. [13]

Callimachus might seem to offer a vivid contrast to the bitter abuse of Archilochus and Hipponax. He is urbane, scholarly; as a Hellenistic Alexandrian, he is in many ways writing in a different intellectual universe than that of the two early satirists. Yet an essential aspect of Callimachus’ sophistication was his absorption and use of earlier poets; he was influenced by Archilochus, and Hipponax was a favorite, as any reader of his Iambs knows. Some have explained this relationship in purely formal, technical terms: Callimachus was attracted to the originality of Hipponax’s diction, his meters, his learning, his concentration on lyric rather than epic. But if Callimachus did not have sympathy for some aspect of Hipponax’s central themes, one would be hard pressed to explain his resurrection of the iambist in the important, programmatic Iamb 1. [14]

In one of the Alexandrian poet’s most famous poems, the introduction to the Aetia, we find the satirical apologetic emphasized, and applied to a literary quarrel. Callimachus attacks the “Telchines,” mischievous hobgoblins, his rival poets, who have abused him because of his refusal to write epic; [15] now he abuses them in self-defence (lines 1–5): Callimachus proceeds to explain that quality, not quantity, makes great poetry, and that often the smaller is the more beautiful (16, 24). Furthermore, he sings “among those who love the clear voice of the cicada, and not the tumult of asses” (τεττίγω]ν ἐνὶ τοῖς γὰρ ἀείδομεν οἳ λιγὺν ἦχον / … θ]όρυβον δ’ οὐκ ἐφίλησαν ὄνων, 29–30). [16] Here we have the Archilochean motif of the poet as cicada, adapted to Callimachus’ literary-critical argument, and in a poem that is rhetorically structured as a defence and counterattack. The image of the poet surrounded by malevolent beings, Telchines, is the base conception here, and suggests elemental realities; on a human level, stoning, a collective punishment that involves a community singling out an especially despised scapegoat; and, on a more primeval level, the animal cornered by a pack of predators.

A similar rhetorical stance is found in the ending of the Hymn to Apollo (105–113). In this famous passage, Envy states that it will not praise a singer who does not even sing as broadly as the sea; Apollo strikes or banishes Envy with his foot and replies that a big river like the Euphrates is full of mud and refuse. We have attack and defence leading to counterattack once again, applied to practitioners of different kinds of poetry. [17]

Thus this familiar defensive stance in key programmatic Callimachean texts is an adept application of archaic, Archilochean technique toward Hellenistic literary polemic. In addition, Callimachus’ extended satirical poem, the Ibis, which Ovid used as a model for his own Ibis, compares its target to a bird who pollutes constantly. [18] Probably the satirical apologetic was at work here too, if Ovid’s work adequately reflects its model. [19]

It is curious to see this rhetorical strategy—that allowed Archilochus to write poetry that would drive those who had once been close friends to the point of suicide (in legend, at least)—applied in an Alexandrian aesthetic. [20] It shows us how much archaic Greece and the Hellenistic tradition had in common, and how different they were. Before Callimachus turned his satirical aggression against his opponents, he had to feel attacked, by numerous envious critical hobgoblins; he was a literary isolate as it were, a literary victim receiving aggression unjustly before he returned it justly (and elegantly).

Rome continued the Hellenistic literary traditions of Callimachus. Like Callimachus, Horace turned to Archilochus and Hipponax for inspiration, and his book of Epodes includes poems of surprising savagery, seemingly uncharacteristic of the urbane, gently witty Horace. [21] Some have explained the occasional violence and crudity in these poems by suggesting that the Epodes may be close reworkings of Archilochus or Hipponax. But though there may be some adaptation of these poets here, [22] Horace’s own voice is also present; in his other work, he was consistently a satirist, obviously in the Satires, often even in the Odes. [23]

The sixth Epode is almost a manifesto for the satirist’s defensive apologetic: [24] Like Archilochus, Horace turns to animal imagery, which is used skillfully to characterize the poet and his enemy. The bad dog is aggressive, and attacks those who are innocent [immerentis]; it is very loud—line 1 is probably a reference to barking; we have “threats” in line 3; in line 9, his fearful voice fills the forest. But if he meets a real challenge, wolves, he is a coward. The good dog, the poet, is, on the other hand, strong, faithful to his masters the shepherds; a fearless defender against wild animals, heroically wading through deep snow with his ears perked up. And if the bad dog attacks him, he will bite back (me remorsurum). [27] This is the defensive apologetic for literary violence in its pure form. The poet does not begin the hostilities; he only bites in return—in defense, as punishment. [28]

Dropping the metaphor in line 11, the poet is “most harsh toward wicked men” (in malos asperrimus). His attack is directed only at those who are evil; the satirist is repaying the balance, a person with a powerful weapon for good. Some argue for a limited tooth-for-tooth interpretation of this passage, but I would argue that Lindsay Watson’s interpretation of the poet as sheepdog argues for the more general ethical interpretation here. [29] The whole poem brilliantly characterizes the poet’s enemy as cowardly, loud, and inhospitable, while the sheepdog is loyal, determined, and courageous. David Mankin denigrates the idea of iambic poet as “crusader,” [30] but the image of a loyal sheepdog protecting the sheep as he wards off predators with his ears alert, running through thick snow, is precisely a heroic image. [31]

Taking up animal metaphor again, the poet is a man with a sharp weapon, a bull with horns prepared for action. And the final lines characterize the enemy as a poisonous snake; if the poet is bitten, he warns, he will not go unavenged. He uses verbal weaponry only when he has been attacked; twice Horace uses biting imagery as he portrays the poet as victim; he is bitten by a dog, and by a poisonous snake. Given such provocation, he is forced to resort to satire, like Archilochus’ cicada having its wing pulled by a callous tormentor. It is striking that, as we have seen, the satirist’s art is often compared to the bite of an animal or a poisonous attack; however, here we see the satirist is merely responding justly to such attacks, even if he is responding in kind.

A straightforward expression of the idea is found in Horace’s second book of Satires: Two problematic poems, Epodes 8 and 12, puzzlingly extreme, obscene attacks on an older woman, a former lover, both use the satirical apologetic, which may help us understand them better, despite their unpleasantly misogynous overtones. [32] In both, the poet is responding to an earlier attack, in which the lover disparaged his manhood publicly. The eighth Epode describes in repulsive detail the physical attributes of an aging woman, but only because she has accused the poet of aging, losing his sexual prowess. Horace—or Horace’s Greek model—is angered by her hypocrisy. Epode 12 quotes the actual words the woman uses to attack the poet’s masculinity: The target of this epode, then, has attacked the poet’s virility, has compared him insultingly with a more capable bedmate. Who was right in this particular quarrel—whether the poet attacked the woman with more or less justification—is immaterial for the present discussion, and certainly unanswerable in any case; for our present purposes, it is enough to recognize that the poet takes pains to show that he has been attacked; his satire, aggressive as it is, has a defensive cast to it. From his perspective, it was provoked, and is a just response.

This very selective survey shows that the satirist taking the defensive rhetorical stance is a theme that extends through the Greco-Roman poetic tradition. An essential aspect of this theme is the victimization of the poet (by the poet’s lights). Archilochus is the helpless cicada held callously by the wing; Hipponax has seen the oaths he swore with a friend trampled underfoot; Callimachus’ poetry has been attacked by tasteless, vindictive literary rivals; Horace is bitten by dog and poisonous serpent. Satirists, in programmatic poems expressing the reasons for their satire, view themselves as victims; they must see themselves as victims, or their invective cannot exist, given a moral perspective. And the defensive apologetic shows how important the moral perspective is to the satirist.

Thus, the theme of poet as victim is not just in legends or stories that are possibly nonhistorical, but is also in the poet’s poetry. Lefkowitz would argue that scholiasts may have taken these passages as starting points, and fabricated stories of exile and adverse trial from them. This certainly happened at times. Legends of poets also were produced by oral tradition long before they were written down. Such legends served as charter myths for the poetic profession, for the poet in the social matrix of ancient Greece (with heroized poets and warnings against inhospitable society embedded in the tales, and a theology for inspired poets’ apparent failures). Ritual sources for some legends should also be taken into account. All of these factors interrelated with each other.

But these phenomena should not prevent us from considering another cause-and-effect relationship, and ask what caused the victimization theme to appear in the poet’s poetry. Certainly, a thoroughgoing application of the biographical fallacy should be rejected. An artist can seem quite different from the art he or she creates. On the other hand, it is absurd to see the poets living their actual lives as completely divorced, emotionally, from what they write. Poets write on themes they are concerned with emotionally, aesthetically, humanely. In the case of Archilochus, even if he did not undergo all that later legend ascribed to him, he evidently did feel like a victim, attacked unjustly, at some point. And one cannot rule out the historical possibility that society will occasionally exile, execute, or punish poets because their poetry is offensive, as the lives of Alcaeus, Socrates, and Ovid richly show.