¹ Kanungo, R. and Lambert, W.E., ‘Semantic satiation and meaningfulness’, The American Journal of Psychology 76 (1963), 421–8CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed, at 421. Much of the current terminology and the approach to the topic was established through articles from the early 1960s by researchers at McGill University, beginning with Lambert, W.E. and Jakobovits, L.A., ‘Verbal satiation and changes in the intensity of meaning’, Journal of Experimental Psychology 60 (1960), 376–83CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. Earlier terminology is discussed by L. Jakobovits, ‘Effects of repeated stimulation on cognitive aspects of behaviour: some experiments on the phenomenon of semantic satiation’ (Diss., McGill University, 1962), 3; see also S.R. Black, ‘Review of semantic satiation’, in S.P. Shokov (ed.), Advances in Psychology Research 26 (New York, 2003), 62–74.

² e.g. Black (n. 1), 65, 67–9. This distinction was investigated largely through experiments on the association of homonyms with given lexical contexts after repetition.

³ Tian, X. and Huber, D.E., ‘Testing an associative account of semantic satiation’, Cognitive Psychology 60 (2010), 267–90CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

⁴ Titchener, E., A Beginner's Psychology (New York, 1916), 26, 118–19Google Scholar, cited in Tian and Huber (n. 3), 269–70.

⁵ The expression is taken from Littlefield, D.J., ‘Metaphor and myth: the unity of Aristophanes’ “Knights”’, SPh 65 (1968), 1–22Google Scholar, at 4.

⁶ For the meaning of βρέτας, see Scheer, T.S., Die Gottheit und ihr Bild. Untersuchungen zur Funktion griechischer Kultbilder in Religion und Politik (Munich, 2000), 24–33Google Scholar, who emphasizes the strong affective force of this word.

⁷ This use of δέρμα to refer to the male genitals is reinforced by the apparent use of this same word of a dildo at Plato Comicus, fr. 188.18 K.–A., as suggested by F.C.W. Jacobs apud J. Schweighaeuser, Animadversiones in Athenaei Deipnosophistas (Strasbourg, 1801–7), 5.468; cf. J. Henderson, The Maculate Muse: Obscene Language in Attic Comedy (Oxford, 1991²), 15 §19.

⁸ These names are given in our manuscripts, but will have been absent from the Aristophanic autograph. It is therefore unclear whether we ought to see an association of the unnamed slaves with specific generals or politicians, rather than with the whole political establishment threatened by Cleon. The allusions in the text are ambiguous, but in performance the question might have been settled by the use of portrait masks. The argument for the association of the slaves with these generals is given by Sommerstein, A.H., ‘Notes on Aristophanes’ Knights’, CQ 30 (1980), 46–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 46–8; the argument against by J. Henderson, ‘The portrayal of the slaves in the prologue of Aristophanes’ Knights’, in J.A. López Ferez (ed.), La comedia griega en sus textos (Madrid, 2013), 17–30 (slightly expanded version in G.W. Bakewell and J.P. Sickinger [edd.], Gestures: Essays in Ancient History, Literature, and Philosophy Presented to Alan L. Boegehold [Oxford, 2002], 63–73).

⁹ When used in reference to speech, adverbial συνεχές appears to indicate continuity rather than sequentiality, as is suggested by the implicit distinction between the adverbs ξυνεχῶς and ἐφεξῆς at Ar. Ran. 915; cf. Lucian, Somn. 4 συνεχὲς ἀναλύζων.

¹⁰ Although the distorting effect of semantic satiation on sensory data is not a point of focus in the scholarship, this feature is reflected in some early accounts, e.g. G.K. Chesterton, Alarms and Discursions (New York, 1911), 30–1: ‘Have you ever tried the experiments of saying some plain word, such as “dog,” thirty times? By the thirtieth time it has become a word like “snark” or “pobble.” It does not become tame, it becomes wild, by repetition. In the end a dog walks about as startling and undecipherable as Leviathan or Croquemitaine.’

¹¹ e.g. Pl. Cra. 397d ἀπὸ ταύτης τῆς φύσεως τῆς τοῦ θεῖν θεοὺς αὐτοὺς ἐπονομάσαι ‘from this natural proclivity to run they are called gods’; further examples can be found throughout the etymologies (390e–427d).

¹² As in the recent commentary by L. Swift (Archilochus: The Poems. Introduction, Text, Translation, and Commentary [Oxford, 2019], 124–5, 297–8), this text of the Archilochus fragment prints Martin West's supplement ‹πᾶς›, which he had left in the apparatus criticus; justification for this choice is given in n. 16 below.

¹³ The cases of the repeated proper name in Anacreon and in the passage by Cleochares follow the same order, suggesting that the citing authority has chosen his examples on account of the order of the cases, and this makes the readings in Archilochus all but certain, as first argued by E. Lobel, ‘Questions without answers’, CQ 22 (1928), 115–16; cf. M.L. West, Studies in Greek Elegy and Iambus (Berlin, 1974), 130–1; F. Murru, ‘Le πολύπτωτον de Léophile’, Eos 67 (1979), 183–9, at 185; Swift (n. 12), 297.

¹⁴ This is not to discount C.M. Bowra's important suggestion (Greek Lyric Poetry from Alcman to Simonides [Oxford, 1961], 284) that the polyptoton allows for a degree of levity alongside the strong emotions expressed by the verbs ἐρέω and ἐπιμαίνομαι.

¹⁵ Aristotle calls nominatives ‘the names of words’ (An. pr. 48b42 τὰς κλήσεις τῶν ὀνομάτων), and contrasts this against ‘the case of a word’ (48b40 τὴν τοῦ ὀνόματος πτῶσιν), followed by examples of words in the genitive, dative and accusative. Ancient evidence for the notion that nominatives represent the uninflected names of words is collected by J. Thorp, ‘On cases: standing up falling down’, Échos du monde classique / Classical Views 33 (1989), 315–31. Modern grammar also recognizes the extra-grammatical nature of root nominatives, discussed below, n. 30.

¹⁶ West (n. 13), 130–1. The reading ἄκουε is consistent across all manuscripts, but the line as it stands is too short. West suggested πᾶς, noting Aesch. fr. 78a.4 Radt ἄκουε δὴ πᾶς. The collective noun πᾶς is regularly so used to exhort a group of soldiers, cf. Kannicht and Snell's note to TrGF Adesp. fr. 654.26, and this would suit Archilochus’ poem extremely well. Other proposed supplements require the name Leophilus in a case other than the accusative, and so they break the expected order of the polyptoton (see n. 13 above). West's suggestion is further developed by K. Tsantsanoglou, “Ο Αρχίλοχος και ο λαός του: αποσπάσματα 115, 93a, 94 (W.)”, in G.M. Sifakis, F.I. Kakridis, I.S. Touloumakos and O. Tsagkarakis (edd.), Κτερίσματα. Φιλολογικά μελετήματα αφιερωμένα στον Ιωάννη Σ. Καμπίτση (Heraclion, 2000), 369–93, at 373: “Η πρόταση είναι πολύ πιθανή. Όσο για την ερμηνεία, μπορεί να είναι ορθή, αν το όνομα του Λεωφίλου περιλαμβανόταν σ’ αυτά τα διαγγέλματα: π.χ. Λεώφιλος λέγει τάδε.”

¹⁷ The piece fits into Archilochus’ larger œuvre as an example of ‘raillery among comrades’ (A.P. Burnett, Three Archaic Poets: Archilochus, Alcaeus, Sappho [London, 1983], 43 n. 30), alongside poems such as frr. 114, 115, 124, 158, 167 and possibly 113 W. In a moment of performance, such poems might be used to mock a fellow symposiast. The name looks like a speaking name (λεώς + φίλος ‘lover of the people’) and might not refer to a historical individual. For other puns on names in Archilochus, see Swift (n. 12), 38–9.

¹⁸ E. Bowie, ‘The sympotic tease’, in J. Kwapisz, D. Petrain and M. Szymański (edd.), The Muse at Play: Riddles and Wordplay in Greek and Latin Poetry (Berlin, 2013), 38–9 suggests that this intentionally difficult word, with which the poem ends, provides a linguistic puzzle to stimulate discussion in a sympotic environment. He further suggests that the best translation for διοσκέω among those offered by Hesychius is ‘I corrupt’ rather than ‘I stare at’, and this fits well with his own immediately preceding discussion of our only other extant poem to mention Cleobulus (PMG 357 = 14 Gentili, discussed at Bowie [this note], 36–8; cf. Max. Tyr. 18.9 = PMG 402). However, Bowie also leaves open the interesting possibility that all of Hesychius’ options are guesses: ‘perhaps Anacreon uses not a rare word but a nonsense word, and wants to leave his audience guessing what the third limb of his polyptoton involves’ ([this note], 39). If this appears something of a stretch, the final verb is undeniably rare, and its relative obscurity marks out the final instance of the lover's repeated name.

¹⁹ Ascription to Cratinus’ play was first suggested by T. Bergk, Commentationes de reliquiis comoediae Atticae antiquae libri duo (Leipzig, 1838), 11–12 and is followed by J. Schwarze, Die Beurteilung des Perikles durch die attische Komödie und ihre historische und historiographische Bedeutung (Munich, 1971), 167 and by R. Rosen, Old Comedy and the Iambographic Tradition (Atlanta, 1988), 47–8. While impossible to prove, this ascription remains likely, given (1) the specificity of Cratinean allusion to Archilochus in other fragments from the Archilochoi, (2) the reference to an associate of Pericles, who was a regular Cratinean target, and (3) the lateness of the fragment's citation by Plutarch (Prae. ger. reip. 15.811E), since Cratinus continued to be read in the original as late as the second century c.e., as reflected in papyri finds (e.g. PSI 11.1212 = Cratinus, fr. 171 K.–A.).

²⁰ The text printed here deviates from Kassel and Austin in not including the nominative form Μητίοχος at the beginning of the third line within the cruces, since the pervasive use of this same case in all five other clauses suggests that the nominative was retained throughout.

²¹ This phenomenon has been recognized by D. Fehling, Die Wiederholungsfiguren und ihr Gebrauch bei den Griechen vor Gorgias (Berlin, 1969), 203 n. 12. The major treatment of repetition in Latin poetry is J. Wills, Repetition in Latin Poetry: Figures of Allusion (Oxford, 1996).

²² Against R. Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship: From the Beginnings to the End of the Hellenistic Age (Oxford, 1968), 12–14, who in discussing these two poems concluded that ‘such figures arise from the spontaneous pleasure of the poet in playing on the various forms of the same word’ (at 13).

²³ For other triple anaphoras in early Greek poetry, employing verbs, adverbs and the like, see Wills (n. 21), 397–405, with possible positional allusions to the Nireus passage at 404. Our other triple repetition of a proper name in Homer is found at Il. 5.30–1 (προσηύδα θοῦρον Ἄρηα. | Ἆρες Ἄρες βροτολοιγέ, μιαιφόνε, τειχεσιπλῆτα), involving ‘the rare combination of three adjacent forms of the same word and the repetition across the line-boundary’ (Wills [n. 21], 394). Here repetition is probably to be understood in terms of other multiple invocations of divine names (see further pages 12–14 below).

²⁴ J. Crossett, ‘The art of Homer's Catalogue of Ships’, CJ 64 (1969), 241–5, at 243.

²⁵ B. Sammons, The Art and Rhetoric of the Homeric Catalogue (Oxford, 2010), 161–2. By extension, for Sammons, Nireus ‘stand[s] outside the frame of traditional heroic values and on the outskirts of heroic society’ (at 163), much like Leophilus.

²⁶ The verb ἄρχω recurs throughout the Catalogue of Ships (Hom. Il. 2.494, 512, 517, 576, 586, 609, 622, 623, 636). More generally, Archilochean parody of Homeric source material has long been known, for which see especially D. Page, ‘Archilochus and the oral tradition’, in Archiloque (Vandoeuvres, 1964), 117–64.

²⁷ Hom. Il. 1.287–9 ἀλλ’ ὅδ’ ἀνὴρ ἐθέλει περὶ πάντων ἔμμεναι ἄλλων, | πάντων μὲν κρατέειν ἐθέλει, πάντεσσι δ’ ἀνάσσειν, | πᾶσι δὲ σημαίνειν, ἅ τιν’ οὐ πείσεσθαι ὀίω ‘But this man desires to be above all others; he wants to hold power over them all, to rule them all, and to command all, among whom I for one am minded not to obey.’

²⁸ K. Stanley, The Shield of Homer: Narrative Structure in the Iliad (Princeton, 1993), 19, 313–14.

²⁹ If καλός inscriptions are relevant to Anacreon's implicit reading of the Nireus passage, we might consider the possibility that staring at Cleobulus doubles as an ancient reader staring at the written name ‘Cleobulus’.

³⁰ The most thorough discussion of the root nominative remains that of W. Havers, ‘Zur Syntax des Nominativs’, Glotta 16 (1927), 94–127. For the concept in antiquity, see n. 15 above.

³¹ Root nominatives include any syntactically unnecessary repetition of a noun. Repetition of the name Eetion at Hom. Il. 6.395–6 is widely recognized as the most significant example, since the proper name first appears in the genitive, but reverts to the nominative when repeated. For other root nominatives in Homeric anaphoras, see Fehling (n. 21), 184 with n. 30.

³² Triple anaphora of a proper name is not common and may in itself be sufficient to recall Nireus. Wills (n. 21), 397: ‘Of these [sc. triple-line anaphoras], most repetends are prepositions, pronouns, conjunctions, and adverbs which authors inevitably multiply at a more frequent rate than nominal or verbal forms.’

³³ On the extensive use of sound effects throughout this play, see S. Gurd, ‘Resonance: Aeschylus’ “Persae” and the poetics of sound’, Ramus 42 (2013), 122–37, who recognizes that ‘repetition empties even signifying language of its semantic reference’ (at 134), but overlooks the defamiliarizing effect of repetition on the otherwise familiar name Xerxes (at 124). Note too R. Seaford, ‘Aeschylus and the unity of opposites’, JHS 123 (2003), 141–63, at 142–3 (repr. in id., Tragedy, Ritual and Money in Ancient Greece: Selected Essays [Cambridge, 2018], 111–42, at 111–14), who sees the juxtaposition of formally similar sentences with opposite content in these lines as a feature of ritual lamentation.

³⁴ A thorough and useful summary of previous scholarship, with a justification of the traditional account of δόρυ meaning ‘spear’, is given by C. Santaniello, ‘A soldier's destiny: Archilochus fr. 2 West’, Chaos e Kosmos 15 (2014), 1–36. The traditional account is made particularly transparent from Hybrias the Cretan's highly allusive PMG 909.1–5; cf. Santaniello (this note), 11–12. An argument for breakdown between signifier and signified in this fragment has previously been made on analogy with the use of θυμός in Archil. fr. 128 West by N.F. Rubin, ‘Radical semantic shifts in Archilochus’, CJ 77 (1981), 1–8, at 6–7; cf. H.D. Rankin, ‘Archilochus fg. 2D’, Emerita 40 (1972), 469–74, who adds, among other things, that the position of ἐν δορί changes in the final clause. The most recent discussion by Anika Nicolosi begins from but ultimately (and in my view incorrectly) rejects the possibility of a ‘formal convergence with an apparently disconcerting semantic divergence’ (‘Archilochus’ elegiac fragments’, in L. Swift and C. Carey [edd.], Iambus and Elegy: New Approaches [Oxford, 2016], 180, repeating the arguments from ead., ‘La frustrazione del guerriero in armi, ovvero il simposio negato [Archil. fr. 2 W.2]’, Prometheus 31 [2005], 35–40).

³⁵ W. Allan, Greek Elegy and Iambus: A Selection (Cambridge, 2019), 59–60; Swift (n. 12), 207. The effect, if not the interpretation, was previously noted by D.E. Gerber, Euterpe: An Anthology of Early Greek Lyric, Elegiac, and Iambic Poetry (Amsterdam, 1970), 12. Note also the alliteration in δορὶ δ’ οἶνος. For onomatopoeia more generally, see E. Tichy, Onomatopoetische Verbalbindungen des Griechischen (Vienna, 1983).

³⁶ The Homeric meaning ‘under arms’ (e.g. Il. 13.594, 13.608, 18.521), though argued for in many readings of this poem, is not required and has less interpretative upside.

³⁷ For other precise Callimachean allusions to earlier patterns of repetition, see e.g. Wills (n. 21), 285–6, 394, 398.

³⁸ The sound effect is discussed in greatest detail by P. Krafft, ‘Zu Kallimachos’ Echo-Epigramm (28 Pf.)’, RhM 120 (1977), 1–29, at 1–16, who sides with a minority in seeing the echo in the repetition of the word καλός, rather than in the closing words. The traditional view is given, for example, by A.S.F. Gow and D.L. Page, The Greek Anthology: Hellenistic Epigrams (Cambridge, 1965), 2.156–7 and E.R. Schwinge, ‘Poetik als praktizierte Poetik: Kallimachos’ Echo-Epigramm (28 Pf.)’, WJA 6 (1980), 101–5, at 103. On echoes as repetition effects generally, see Wills (n. 21), 346–7.

³⁹ e.g. Gow and Page (n. 38), 2.156: ‘This solution has some attraction, but σαφῶς then seems to lack point.’

⁴⁰ On epigram pairs, see R. Kirstein, ‘Companion pieces in the Hellenistic epigram (Call. 21 and 35 Pf.; Theoc. 7 and 15 Gow; Mart. 2.91 and 2.92; Ammianos AP 11.230 and 11.231)’, in R.F. Regtuit and G.C. Wakker (edd.), Hellenistic Epigrams (Groningen, 2002), 113–35, together with his citation of earlier literature on the subject at 114–16. For paired epigrams on stēlai, perhaps the conceptual basis for the literary convention, see M. Fantuzzi, ‘La doppia gloria di Menas (e di Filostrato)’, in A.M. Morelli (ed.), Epigramma longum: Da Marziale alla tarda antichità (Cassino, 2008), 2.603–22.

⁴¹ A related effect is found in some close-succession repetitions in tragedy, such as Soph. Aj. 866 πόνος πόνῳ πόνον φέρει ‘toil brings toil upon toil’, where the triplet reproduces the idea of an accumulation (cf. Eur. Bacch. 905).

⁴² For a discussion of this poem and its relation to other versions of an early hymn to Zeus attributed to Orpheus, see A. Bernabé, ‘El himno a Zeus Órfico. Vicisitudes literarias, ideológicas y religiosas’, in A. Bernabé, F. Casadesús and M.A. Santamaría (edd.), Orfeo y el orfismo: nuevas perspectivas (Alicante, 2010), 67–97, with an analysis of the poem at 72–6 (a similar analysis appears in A. Bernabé, ‘The Derveni theogony: many questions and some answers’, HSPh 103 [2007], 99–133, at 116–18). The Orphic Hymns of later date, while less emphatically repetitive, do regularly name the god addressed multiple times (e.g. Hymn. Orph. 15 Quandt).

⁴³ Note more generally the prominence of sound repetition in magical incantations, e.g. aski, kataski, which Bernabé compares with English ‘abra-cadabra’ (‘The Ephesia Grammata: genesis of a magical formula’, in C.A. Faraone and D. Obbink [edd.], The Getty Hexameters: Poetry, Magic, and Mystery in Ancient Selinous [Oxford, 2013], 71–95, at 85), reflecting ‘a deliberate preference for phonic play over semantic meaning’ (at 93).

⁴⁴ The poem is briefly discussed from a metrical standpoint by J. Dangel, Le poète architecte: arts métriques et art poétique latins (Leuven, 2001), 272; cf. E. Courtney, The Fragmentary Latin Poets (Oxford, 1993), 464.

⁴⁵ In some literary manifestations, incantatory repetition of a religious sort shades into other types of repetition, as, for example, in Aesch. Ag. 1080–2 Ἄπολλον⋅ Ἄπολλον⋅ | ἀγυιᾶτ’, ἀπόλλων ἐμός. | ἀπώλεσας γὰρ οὐ μόλις τὸ δεύτερον ‘Apollo, Apollo, God of the Streets, my destroyer. For you have utterly destroyed me a second time’. What begins as religious invocation turns into figura etymologica.

⁴⁶ Versnel, H.S., ‘A parody on hymns in Martial V 24 and some Trinitarian problems’, Mnemosyne 27 (1974), 365–405CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁷ Many shorter examples are collected in Miller, H.W., ‘Repetition of lines in Aristophanes’, AJPh 65 (1944), 26–36Google Scholar and id., ‘Comic iteration in Aristophanes’, AJPh 66 (1945), 398–408.

⁴⁸ An interesting variation occurs with the epistrophe λαβὲ τὸ βυβλίον ‘take the book’ (Ar. Av. 974, 976, 980, 986, 989). Both the oracle-salesman and Peisetaerus use the line to mean ‘look for yourself’, relying on the illiteracy of their opponent, who cannot check the written content. In the final instance of repetition, the phrase takes on a new meaning, that of receiving a blow from the wrapped-up scroll used as a baton (‘take this!’); cf. C.A. Anderson and K.T. Dix, ‘λάβε [sic] τὸ βυβλίον: orality and literacy in Aristophanes’, in R. Scodel (ed.), Between Orality and Literacy: Communication and Adaptation in Antiquity (Leiden, 2014), 77–86, at 77–9.

⁴⁹ On the scene in general, see Stroup, S.C., ‘Designing women: Aristophanes’ “Lysistrata” and the “hetairization” of the Greek wife’, Arethusa 37 (2004), 37–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 46–56. C.K. Prince is right to criticize the traditional explanation of ‘stand a lioness on a cheese-grater’ as a reference to sexual penetration from behind (‘The lioness & the cheese-grater [Ar. Lys. 231–232]’, SIFC 7 [2009], 149–75), yet the meaning of the phrase remains obscure and may not be intended to recall a specific sexual position, so much as to suggest certain images and associations.

⁵⁰ Wills (n. 21), 347 calls this reuse of Echo as a character ‘the simultaneous use of internal and intertextual Echo’. The character of Echo is indeed portrayed as the very same one to have performed in Euripides’ original play at Thesm. 1059–61, following Hartwig, A., ‘A double Echo? Problems in the Echo scene of Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae’, SemRom 12 (2009), 61–84Google Scholar. The passage has been recently discussed at M. Farmer, Tragedy on the Comic Stage (Oxford, 2017), 182–5.

⁵¹ The dynamics between Echo, the Relative and the Archer recall Dionysus’ attempts to halt the croaking refrain of the frog-chorus, which he eventually takes up himself (209–68). The repeated line βρεκεκεκὲξ κοὰξ κοάξ differs from our other examples in that these words are mere onomatopoeia, devoid of semantic content.

⁵² A connection between nonsensical speech and the idea of repetition is argued for by Kidd, S., Nonsense and Meaning in Ancient Greek Comedy (Cambridge, 2014), 36–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar, citing Plut. De garr. 504C, an anecdote in which one of Lysias’ clients complains that reading his speech over two or three times in succession rendered it ‘dull and ineffective’ (ἀμβλὺν καὶ ἄπρακτον).

⁵³ It is possible that the semantic content of names is more easily undercut through repetition than common nouns, since names do not have generic application but appear to refer only selectively to individuals, and so have less semantic content to begin with. For a more complicated picture of this topic in contemporary philosophy, see S. Cumming, ‘Names’, in E.N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2019 edition), <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2019/entries/names/>.

⁵⁴ Arist. Rh. 1413b19–22 οἷον τά τε ἀσύνδετα καὶ τὸ πολλάκις τὸ αὐτὸ εἰπεῖν ἐν τῇ γραφικῇ ὀρθῶς ἀποδοκιμάζεται, ἐν δὲ ἀγωνιστικῇ καὶ οἱ ῥήτορες χρῶνται· ἔστι γὰρ ὑποκριτικά. ἀνάγκη δὲ μεταβάλλειν τὸ αὐτὸ λέγοντας ‘For example asyndeta and saying the same thing many times are rightly rejected in writing, but orators make use of them in debates; for they are theatrical. It is necessary to introduce variation when repeating the same thing.’