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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 August 2016
Pindar's Celedones have raised much controversy over the years. Their identity still remains uncertain, although there have been many attempts from scholars to specify whether the term refers to mythical creatures comparable to the Sirens of Homer or to elaborate life-like statues adorning the gable of a long-lost Delphic temple. In this paper, I wish to argue for a metaphorical reading of the Celedones in Pindar's Paean 8 that resides in the poetic (re-)signification of proper names and how they are put into narrative(s). Drawing intratextual evidence from Olympian 1 and intertextual evidence from early Greek epic, I contend that the Celedones, richly semanticized as they are, become the means by which Pindar deals with the rigours of the song-making process, as he strives to introduce an ambivalent take on the choral praise of Apollo at Delphi, one that rests on the paradox of song exquisiteness and its negative consequences.
1 For overviews, see Sourvinou-Inwood, C., ‘The myth of the first temples at Delphi’, CQ 29 (1979), 231–51Google Scholar, at 244–6; I. Rutherford, Pindar's Paeans: A Reading of the Fragments with a Survey of the Genre (Oxford, 2001), 219–20; Papalexandrou, N., ‘Keledones: dangerous performers in early Delphic lore and ritual structures’, Hephaistos 21/22 (2003/2004), 145–68Google Scholar, at 157; T. Power, ‘Cyberchorus: Pindar's Κηληδόνες and the aura of the artificial’, in L. Athanassaki and E. Bowie (edd.), Archaic and Classical Choral Song: Performance, Politics and Dissemination (Berlin and New York, 2011), 67–113, at 69–71.
2 On alliteration in early Greek poetry, see M.S. Silk, Interaction in Poetic Imagery with Special Reference to Early Greek Poetry (Cambridge, 1974), 173–8; id. ‘The language of Greek lyric poetry’, in E.J. Bakker (ed.), A Companion to the Ancient Greek Language (Malden, MA and Oxford, 2010), 424–40, at 437–9. On phonetic conceits in Greek lyric, cf. E. Csapo, ‘The politics of the New Music’, in P. Murray and P. Wilson (edd.), Music and the Muses: The Culture of ‘Mousike’ in the Classical Athenian City (Oxford, 2004), 207–48, at 222 (under the heading ‘phonemes’): ‘Play with the sound of words or syllables for rhythmic or harmonic effects is found in all Greek lyric, but the purely phonic aspects of language gain unprecedented importance in New Musical verse.’
3 A. Sharrock, ‘Intratextuality: texts, parts, and (w)holes in theory’, in A. Sharrock and H. Morales (edd.), Intratextuality: Greek and Roman Textual Relations (Oxford, 2001), 1–39, here 5.
4 Sharrock (n. 3), 7.
5 On the (re-)signification of proper names in early Greek poetry, see E. Tsitsibakou-Vasalos, Ancient Poetic Etymology. The Pelopids: Fathers and Sons (Stuttgart, 2007), 66–80.
6 For this approach and its methodological grounding, cf. Tsitsibakou-Vasalos (n. 5), 57: ‘The archaic poets make etymology of theonyms and anthroponyms an organic and nuclear part of their narrative; they disentangle the etymological semata of names and weave their narrative around them by means of clustered cognates, synonyms and/or loose paraphrases of their meaning. With the narrativized etymology, a well-documented technique in archaic poetry, the qualities evoked by the signifier or the signified are attributed to the heroic or divine figure in the compass of narrative and in verisimilitude with the bearer's mythical vita. Proper names contain their own microstory […].’
7 Rutherford (n. 1), 220 tends to identify the Celedones’ song as παιάν. This implies an intriguing scenario of a skilfully performed, though utterly rejected, mythicized paean embedded within a successful paean performed by Pindar.
8 For a possible allusion to the sweet song of the Celedones in Callimachus’ Aetia, in a narrative section referring to the building of Apollo's temple at Delphi, see fr. 118.6 Pf. with G.B. D'Alessio, Callimaco: Aitia, giambi e altri frammenti, volume secondo (Milan, 1996), 553 n. 11.
9 Power (n. 1), 122. Cf. also 77: ‘The Κηληδόνες are not merely anthropomorphic acroteria, stationary loudspeakers affixed to their perches above the temple. They are a divinely wrought ensemble of automata, a “cyberchorus” occupying the ontological interzone between animate and inanimate, human and machine, mortal and immortal, between too much life and no life at all.’
10 Both meanings are attested in Pindar: 1. ‘to sound, to shout’: Pyth. 2.15; Nem. 4.16; Pae. 2.101; 2. ‘to sing, to celebrate’: Ol. 1.9; Ol. 2.2; Ol. 6.88; Pyth. 2.63.
11 For the explicit connection of Athena and Enceladus, see [Apollod.] 1.37.5; Quint. Smyrn. 14.583–4 with Smith, A.H., ‘Athene and Enceladus’, JHS 4 (1883), 90–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
12 On the Sicily (Mt Aetna) / Enceladus cluster, see G. Massimilla, Aitia: Libri primo e secondo. Introduzione, testo critico, traduzione e commento (Pisa, 1996), 228, who notices the similar diction in Orph. Argon. 1251; M.A. Harder, Callimachus Aetia Volume 2: Commentary (Oxford, 2012), 82.
13 E. Lobel, The Oxyrhynchus Papyri: Part XXVI (London, 1961), 47. See also Sourvinou-Inwood (n. 1), 245–6, who assigns a prophetic voice to the Celedones and treats them as prefiguration of the Pythia at Delphi.
14 The epithet forms part of the formulaic junction Ἄρτεμις χρυσηλάκατος κελαδεινή, which recurs in early epic: Hom. Il. 16.183; 20.70–1; Hes. Cat. fr. 23a.18 M-W; Hom. Hymn Aphr. 6, 118; Hom. Hymn Art. 1. Further on the formula, see O.S. Due, ‘The meaning of the Homeric formula χρυσηλάκατος κελαδεινή’, C&M 26 (1965), 1–9.
15 For a good example of how narrativized etymologies, and the competing meanings they forge, work in the Odyssey, on the occasion of the Phaeacian queen Arete's double etymologizing from ἀράομαι and ἄ(ρ)ρητος, see M. Skempis and I. Ziogas, ‘Arete's words: etymology, ehoie-poetry and gendered narrative in the Odyssey’, in J. Grethlein and A. Rengakos (edd.), Narratology and Interpretation: The Content of Narrative Form in Ancient Literature (Berlin and New York, 2009), 213–40, at 215–28.
16 Both the single use of the superlative ἄριστον and the parataxis (μὲν ὕδωρ vs ὁ δὲ χρυσός and εἰ δ’ ἄεθλα) are climactic in nature and suggest comparison of accentuated entries within the priamel, which de-escalate in terms of extra-narrative assessment, though escalate in terms of intra-narrative salience. In other words, water may be ἄριστον with regard to gold and the Olympic Games, but the latter is important for the poem in question. Cf. D. Fisker, Pindars erste olympische Ode (Odense, 1990), 13: ‘Wasser ist das beste auf seinem nicht weiter spezifizierten Gebiet, Gold ragt hervor unter den Formen des Reichtums, die soziales Ansehen verleihen, und unter den Wettkämpfen sind keine besser als die in Olympia.’ See also D.E. Gerber, Pindar's Olympian One: A Commentary (Toronto, 1982), 4 and Race, W.H., ‘Climactic elements in Pindar's verse’, HSPh 92 (1989), 43–69 Google Scholar, at 45–6, who correctly speaks of a ‘principle of intensification’ in the syntactical ordering of Olympian 1.
17 For the Celedones as golden singers, see Paus. 10.5.12 (ἐς τὰς ᾠδοὺς τὰς χρυσᾶς). Interestingly, a bronze Celedon is said to have adorned the tomb of Sophocles: Test. Α (Vit. Soph.) 15 l. 66 Radt. In this case, again, the implication is that the Celedon stands for Sophocles’ sweet voice in composing poetry.
18 The periphrasis is not uncommon in Pindar: Pind. Ol. 7.67 Κρόνου σὺν παιδί (Zeus); Pyth. 3.4 γόνον … Κρόνου (Cheiron); 3.94 Κρόνου παῖδας (unspecified gods). Yet, intratextual evidence does not allow us to draw any firm conclusions about the identity of the ‘sons of Cronus’ in Paean 8.
19 For the possible setting of Olympian 1, see W. Mullen, Choreia: Pindar and Dance (Princeton, 1982), 214.
20 One wonders whether the single horse-race (κέλης) could be a reflection of the singularity of the ὕμνος in honour of Zeus as opposed to the Celedones' collective formation. It remains debatable, however, whether (and, if so, to what extent) the pragmatic scope of Pindar's victory odes intrudes in his poetics—a matter certainly worth systematic attention.
21 This etymologizing is not corroborated by the narrative of Paean 8, but rather suggested for a better understanding of the mythical frame in which the Celedones are overpowered by Zeus and Poseidon in a cultic domain supervised by Apollo.
22 An apposite definition of intertextuality already in early Greek epic is provided by C. Tsagalis, The Oral Palimpsest: Exploring Intertextuality in the Homeric Epics (Cambridge, MA and London, 2008), xii: ‘the interweaving of various fabrics which interact, answer, contradict, or rival other fabrics, result[s] in a thick web of associations metaphorically epitomized in the word intertext, a system or set of interwoven fabrics whose constituent parts are interrelated.’
23 On the meaning of κῆλα as ‘arrows’ and ‘projectiles of the gods’, see R. Beekes, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, Volume 1 (Leiden and Boston, 2010), 685; LfgrE s.v., which suggests that the term is cognate with κηλέω, καίω. West, M.L., ‘Hesiodea’, CQ 11 (1961), 130–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 140 argues that κῆλον may stem from κήελα ‘ships’ timbers’, itself an allomorph of κᾶλα.
24 Here, I postulate an etymological derivation of Κηληδόνες from κῆλα and ἀείδω rather than from κῆλα and ἡδονή. The latter derivation is exclusively stressed by Athenaeus (290d): The Celedones’ listeners forgot their need to receive nourishment and perished by virtue of the delight they draw from celedonic song. Eventually, of course, the notions of song (ἀείδω) and pleasure (ἡδονή) intersect.
25 Note that κῆλα is a congener with the verb κηλέω ‘to enchant, to charm’. I contend that the two cognates do not rule each other out in the case of the Celedones, from a perspective innately linked to the Pindaric narrative, but rather address the two rival meanings put forward by their enchanting song (< κηλέω) and the shafts by means of which the offspring of Cronus overpowers them (< κῆλα). For the Celedones' etymologizing from κηλέω, see Eust. Comm. in Hom. Od. 11.333; cf. Papalexandrou (n. 1), 158, who draws on P. Chantraine, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque: histoire des mots (Paris, 1968/1980), s.v. κηλέω.
26 For Pindar's stance toward the epic-hymnic tradition as far as the relation of Zeus and Apollo is concerned, see Rutherford, I., ‘Pindar on the birth of Apollo’, CQ 38 (1988), 65–75 Google Scholar, at 71–2. For the conjunction of Zeus and Apollo in Pindar, see G.B. D'Alessio, ‘Re-constructing Pindar's First Hymn: the Theban “Theogony” and the birth of Apollo’, in L. Athanassaki, R.P. Martin, J.F. Miller (edd.), Apolline Politics and Poetics (Athens, 2009), 129–49, at 140–1.
27 C. Sourvinou-Inwood, ‘Myth as history: the previous owners of the Delphic oracle’, in J. Bremmer (ed.), Interpretations of Greek Mythology (London, 1990), 215–41, at 227 thematizes the dialectic relation of Apollo's Delphic oracle and the all-encompassing power of Zeus in the mythical pattern ‘Zeus set up the sema of his assumption of sovereignty at Delphi’.
28 For the overlap of intra-narrative and extra-narrative layers of meaning in the meta-textual perspective, see J. Danielewicz, ‘Metatext and its functions in Greek lyric poetry’, in S.J. Harrison (ed.), Texts, Ideas, and the Classics: Scholarship, Theory, and Classical Literature (Oxford, 2001), 46–61, at 61.
