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THE FINE ART OF HORSING AROUND: A NOTE ON WORDPLAY IN MESOMEDES’ HYMN TO NEMESIS1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 April 2014
Extract
I have deliberately left ζυγόν untranslated, for it is from this ambiguous noun that we will take our starting point. Two of the most prominent scholars to analyse this hymn have interpreted ζυγόν radically differently. According to Ewen Bowie in his survey of Antonine poetry, the word refers to the ‘balance’ or scales of justice with which Nemesis weighs men's fates. Tim Whitmarsh, on the other hand, believes that it refers to the ‘yoke’ of the chariot the goddess drives, and links the image to a wider leitmotif of deities as charioteers that he detects throughout Mesomedes’ hymnic poetry.
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Footnotes
1
My thanks to Christopher Faraone and the editors of CQ for their comments on earlier drafts of this note. Any errors that remain are entirely my responsibility.
References
2 Bowie, E.L., ‘Greek poetry in the Antonine Age’, in Russell, D.A. (ed.), Antonine Literature (Oxford, 1990), 53–90Google Scholar, at 86. Bowie is followed by Hornum, M.B., Nemesis, the Roman State, and the Games (Leiden, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 63.
3 Whitmarsh, T., ‘The Cretan lyre paradox: Mesomedes, Hadrian and the poetics of patronage’, in Borg, B.E. (ed.), Paideia: The World of the Second Sophistic (Berlin, 2004), 377–402Google Scholar, at 385–6.
4 In addition to LIMC 6 s.v. ‘Nemesis’, see Hornum (n. 2), Appendices 3, 4 and 5; for the Roman West specifically, López, F. Fortea, Némesis en el occidente romano: Ensayo de interpretación histórica y corpus de materiales (Saragossa, 1994), 309–30.Google Scholar
5 Hornum (n. 2), 50–6, reviews earlier bibliography and argues convincingly that such suggestions are ill supported by external evidence.
6 Whitmarsh (n. 3), 379–80 regards such multiplicity of meanings, which he dubs ‘interpretative hypertrophy’, as inherent in patronal poetry generally. I am indebted to his analysis throughout. On the question of performance, ibid. 383–4.
7 For good examples, see LIMC 6 s.v. ‘Nemesis’ nos. 278, 279 and 280, coins from the reigns of Philip the Arab, Caracalla and Elagabalus, respectively.
8 See e.g. Edwards, C.M., ‘Tyche at Corinth’, Hesperia 59.3 (1990), 529–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 532–3 n. 18; Hornum (n. 2), 27.
9 Matters are not helped by the fact that ἄστατος is an epithet often applied to the goddess Τύχη herself; see e.g. Epicurus (Ep. 3, p. 65 Usener), Menander (Gnomai Monostichoi 82 Jaekel) and, in late antiquity, Palladas (Anth. Pal. 9.183, line 5). For the assimilation of Nemesis to Tyche in art, see LIMC 6 s.v. ‘Nemesis’ no. 244, on a gem dated by Federico Rausa as ‘età tardoaugustea’, and, closer to our period, no. 265 (‘ultimo quarto II sec. d.C.’).
10 For the proverb, see Suda s.v. Νέμεσις (163); LSJ s.v. πούς 4b.
11 LSJ s.v. ἐλαύνω Ib.
12 ἐξελαύνεις, being a trochee followed by a spondee, will fit neither the apokroton nor the paroemiac. On Mesomedes' metrical art, see Husmann, H., ‘Zu Metrik und Rhythmik des Mesomedes’, Hermes 83.2 (1955), 231–6Google Scholar; West, M.L., Greek Metre (Oxford, 1982), 172–3Google Scholar; Bowie (n. 2), 84 n. 71.
13 Note also that the goddess is sometimes shown with both scales and a yardstick, as in LIMC 6 s.v. ‘Nemesis’ 41 (‘I. Hälfte 3. Jh. n. Chr.’, according to Paulina Karanastassi).
14 Admittedly, πῆχυς can also mean ‘cubit’, and so might refer to Nemesis’ yardstick (see n. 13 above); but the root meaning would also have been present.
15 An excellent example – depicting, we may note, Helios in his celestial chariot – is LIMC 4 s.v. ‘Helios’ no. 142, a relief in Brussels dated by Cesare Letta to the third century c.e. As Whitmarsh (n. 3), 386 points out, γαυρούμενον αὐχένα κλίνεις also evokes the charioteer as he curbs his horses.
16 See e.g. LIMC 6 s.v. ‘Nemesis’ 163, a marble votive relief from Thessaloniki that Paulina Karanastassi places in the third century. Hornum (n. 2), 63–4, discusses the symbolism attached to Nemesis’ scales.
17 Booth, S., Shakespeare's Sonnets: Edited with Analytic Commentary (New Haven and London, 1977)Google Scholar, 346 ad Sonnet 107, lines 1–8.