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COWERING GUMNĒTES: A NOTE ON TYRTAEUS FR. 11.35–8 W*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2014
Extract
The extended exhortation of Tyrtaeus fr. 11 W urges the audience to take up their shield and spears and fight in a defensive fashion, ‘placing foot against foot, leaning chest on chest’ (v. 31). The overt message of the poem is clear: do not shirk nor run away, but rather stand firm and fight. Within the poem, Tyrtaeus weaves a more subtle message, describing a hoplite group which derives its defining characteristics through possession of a stalwart, ‘passive’ courage and a shield with a ‘belly’ (v. 24). The cohesion that this poem calls for and reproduces through its use of the second person plural and description of close, hoplite fighting, however, is disrupted by the last four lines of the poem, which form a jarring address that sit uneasily alongside the remainder of the poem. In West's text they read:
- ὑμεῖς δ', ὦ γυμνῆτες, ὑπ' ἀσπίδος ἄλλοθεν ἄλλος
- πτώσσοντες μεγάλοις βάλλετε χερμαδίοις
- δούρασί τε ξεστοῖσιν ἀκοντίζοντες ἐς αὐτούς,
- τοῖσι πανόπλοισιν πλησίον ἱστάμενοι. (vv. 35–8)
But you, light-armoured men, throw your great boulders, cowering here and there under a shield and hurling your polished spears against the enemy, as you stand near to the fully armoured men.
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Footnotes
*
I would like to thank Prof. Robert Fowler, the anonymous reader, and the editor of CQ for their help and comments on earlier versions of this note.
References
1 The term ‘passive courage’ to describe that shown by the hoplite is taken from Lendon, J.E., Soldiers and Ghosts: A History of Battle in Classical Antiquity (New Haven, CT, 2005).Google Scholar
2 West, M.L. (ed.), Iambi et Elegi Graeci: Ante Alexandrum Cantati, Vol. 2 (Oxford, 1992 2).Google Scholar The translation is my own.
3 I have translated ἄλλοθεν ἄλλος as ‘here and there’ as opposed to Gerber's ‘on either side’ (Greek Elegiac Poetry: From the Seventh to the Fifth Centuries b.c. [Cambridge, MA, 1999], 57)Google Scholar because of the Homeric parallels. The phrase occurs in the Odyssey with the verb ϕοιτάω to depict movement to and from no particular direction (Od. 9.401, 10.119, 11.42, 24.415). The Iliad uses ἄλλοθεν ἄλλος to denote spatial configurations; the sense here is of a stationary group with no specific configuration. The men involved are standing or sitting intermixed around or near a dominant hero (Il. 2.75, 9.311, 9.671, 13.551; see also Od. 9.493, 10.442, 12.392, 18.231). I have decided, therefore, to follow the Homeric usage and translate ἄλλοθεν ἄλλος so that it refers to a general, indiscriminate location near the πάνοπλοι and not to a specific location on either side of the πάνοπλοι.
4 Irwin, E., Solon and Early Greek Poetry: The Politics of Exhortation (Cambridge, 2005), 37–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 294, is particularly firm on the separation of Heraclids and γυμνῆτες.
5 J.A. Hartung, Die griechischen Elegiker, I (Leipzig, 1859)Google Scholar, 40. Campbell, D., Greek Lyric Poetry: A Selection of Early Greek Lyric, Elegiac, and Iambic Poetry (London, 1982)Google Scholar, 176 n. 37, notes that the final couplet is ‘clumsily attached to the previous sentence’ and suggests that those who wish to remove it ‘may be right’; Hartung's emendation, however, is preferable.
6 See e.g. Brunck, R.F.P., Ἠθικὴ ποίησις sive gnomici poetae Graeci: ad optimorum exemplarium fidem emendavit (Strassburg, 1784)Google Scholar, 61, and Prato, C., Tirteo: Introduzione, testo critico, testimonianze e commento (Roma, 1968)Google Scholar, app. crit. for fr. 8.38.
7 See Gerber (n. 3), 57, for a neutral translation of πτώσσοντες.
8 πτώσσω is also used in both poems for similes, comparing the subject to some sort of cowardly animal (Il. 5.476, 21.14; Od. 22.304).
9 See in particular on this point Irwin (n. 4), 291–6.
10 Even in the formulation of Irwin (n. 4), 49–51, whereby exhortative elegy facilitates aristocratic role-playing as Homeric heroes, the command to cower while fighting does not make sense.
11 Hartung (n. 5), 40. He expands upon T. Bergk's proposed emendation, which suggests ξυστοῖσιν for ξεστοῖσιν (Poetae Lyrici Graeci, teriis curis: Pars II: Poetas Elegiacos et iambographos continens [Leipzig, 1866], 401Google Scholar).
12 Hartung (n. 5), 40. The probable cause of the corruption is that ξεστός is a common word in Homer, particularly in the Odyssey. Though no MS shows a corruption of ξυστός to ξεστός, MS G for Od. 1.138 shows a reverse corruption, from ξεστός to ξυστός (Adler, A., Suidae Lexicon iii [Leipzig, 1933]Google Scholar, ο 251 p. 527). While the variant cannot be correct, as the line contains the formula παρὰ δὲ ξεστὴν ἐτάνυσσε τράπεζαν (also appearing at Od. 7.174, 10.370, 15.137, and 17.93), it does show that the two words are similar enough in both spelling and meaning to be confused.
13 See West (n. 2), app. crit. for fr. 23a.12.
14 This also removes the need to translate ἀκοντίζοντες as an imperative if we wish to take πτώσσοντες with γυμνῆτες with West's text.
15 The combination of πτώσσοντες and the command to fight through βάλλετε may parallel the earlier statement that the νέοι had fled the battlefield, though now they are prepared to stand fast (vv. 9–10). If so, this parallel continues to include but demarcate the γυμνῆτες, as, while the νέοι now stand ready, the γυμνῆτες cower. Yet the γυμνῆτες have not fled, and so they remain a part of the group, unlike the τρέσσαντες in v. 14 who are brought in as the out-group to define the in-group. I am grateful to the anonymous reader for CQ for the suggestion of this parallel.
16 van Wees, H., Greek Warfare: Myths and Realities (London, 2004), 48–52.Google Scholar See also Hanson, V.D., The Western Way of War: Infantry Battle in Classical Greece (London, 1989), 58–9.Google Scholar