Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T08:47:38.077Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Rhetoric and Poetics in Hesiod

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2014

John T. Kirby*
Affiliation:
Purdue University
Get access

Extract

Interest in the study of rhetoric and its effects has, of late, seen a notable increase in literary circles. This is understandable, given the whole tendency of current literary theory, but one might equally understandably suppose that that tendency would long postdate Greek poetry of the Archaic period. It would be striking, then, to discover here—at the earliest extant stratum of western literature—a vital interest in the nature of human communication, in its sociological and political effects, and in its relationship to what we have come to think of as artistic creativity. And yet, I submit, that is just what we do discover.

In the case of the Iliad and the Odyssey, the task of extrapolating a synthetic theory of rhetoric would be a complex one, because so much of the text is couched in what Benveniste calls ‘histoire’, i.e. ‘historical narration’—that is, rather than the narrator's addressing the audience, implicitly or explicitly, in a direct I/you relation, both are looking away towards a third point, the site of the dramatic action. Moreover, rather than engage the reader/audience in the consideration of some abstract disquisition, the poet presents a muthos, i.e. represents a series of actions. Much more of Hesiod's verse, however, is in the form of what Benveniste calls ‘discours’, or ‘discourse’, which is directed precisely to the reader/audience. Even the narrative portions of Hesiod often have what we might term a frankly philosophical application; that is, the purpose of the narrative is didactic and, typically, ethical.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Aureal Publications 1992

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Among recent theorists interested in the rhetoricity of literature, one thinks particularly of Jacques Derrida and Paul de Man, though some would take issue with the latter’s idea of what qualifies as ‘rhetoric’; see e.g. Vickers, Brian, In Defence of Rhetoric (Oxford 1988), 453–69Google Scholar. Aristotle is, in my estimation, the first to distinguish poetics from rhetoric, though he does so in such a way as still to insist upon their organic relation; see Kirby, John T., ‘Aristotle’s Poetics: The Rhetorical Principle’, Arethusa 24 (1991) 197–217Google Scholar.

2. Benveniste, Emile, Problems in General Linguistics (Coral Gables 1971Google Scholar; a translation of volume 1 of Problèmes de linguistique générale [Paris 1966]Google Scholar), in particular chapters 18–20. My word ‘audience’ here is a standard designation of the addressee, but its etymological connection with the Latin audire might induce us to think explicitly in terms of hearing; and indeed formulaic epic was originally oral, and was improvised on the spot for a live audience. Today, of course, its ‘audience’ will typically be a reader. Most precisely, in any case, the narrator addresses the narratee. For more on this concept see Prince, Gerald, ‘Introduction à l’étude du narrataire’, Poétique 14 (1973) 178–96Google Scholar (translated as ‘Introduction to the Study of the Narratee’ in Tompkins, Jane P [ed.], Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism [Baltimore 1973], 7–25Google Scholar), and Genette, Gerard, Narrative Discourse Revisited (Ithaca NY 1988Google Scholar; a translation of Nouveau discours du ricit [Paris 1983]), 130–34Google Scholar. À propos of all this, I think Griffith, Mark, ‘Personality in Hesiod’, CA 2 (1983), 37–65Google Scholar (esp. 41 and 46 with nn.36 and 37), is right to point up the similarities of the the two poets (or, I should say, of the Homeric and the Hesiodic poems): “The reason Homer does not mention his own name or introduce his personality into the narrative is simply that his audience and the occasion for his song are never specified. It is not that he lacks self-awareness. On the contrary, he is a highly self-conscious artist’ (46). In other words, [a] the ‘rhetorical exigence’ of the speech-act is not enunciated per se, and [b] the author does not (for the most part) draw attention to his role as rhetor. On rhetorical exigence, see Bitzer, Lloyd, ‘The Rhetorical Situation’, Ph&Rh 1 (1968), 1–14Google Scholar; on the rhetoricity of literary texts, see Kirby, John T., ‘Toward a Rhetoric of Poetics: Rhetor as Author and Narrator’, Journal of Narrative Technique 22 (1992), 1–22Google Scholar.

3. I begin from the premise (now common) that these poems are by the same author, but it is worth remembering that there have been those who have denied it; see Solmsen, Friedrich, Hesiod and Aeschylus (Ithaca 1949)Google Scholar, 4f. n.2, and Hamilton, Richard, The Architecture of Hesiodic Poetry (Baltimore 1989)Google Scholar, chapter 2, for details and bibliography. On the non-Hesiodic authorship of the Catalogue of Women and Shield, see e.g. West, M.L., The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women: Its Nature, Structure and Origins (Oxford 1985), 127–37Google Scholar with nn. It is important to keep in mind that the issue of authenticity is crucial for the reader’s concept of the writer, or what is known as the ‘scriptor’; on this whole topic see Kirby (n.2 above).

4. Lloyd, G.E.R., Early Greek Science: Tholes to Aristotle (New York 1970), xiiiGoogle Scholar.

5. The assertion of Schiappa, Edward, ‘Did Plato Coin Rhētorikē?’, AJP 111 (1990), 457–70Google Scholar. See also Cole, Thomas, The Origins of Rhetoric in Ancient Greece (Baltimore 1991), 2,98fGoogle Scholar., 121.

6. I think that, in any case, Schiappa’s (n.5 above) thesis will have the salutary effect of causing us to ponder the extent to which [1] a thing is reified or hypostatised by (and only by) the invention or application of a fully suitable name or designation and [2] the possession of such a name or designation will a priori skew our impression or definition of the thing. À propos of all this, of course, it is probably no coincidence that Plato’s Cratylus deals with the question of the relationship between essence and naming: the whole dialogue revolves on the nature and importance of linguistic terms.

7. Kennedy, George A., Classical Rhetoric and Its Christian and Secular Tradition from Ancient to Modern Times (Chapel Hill 1980)Google Scholar, chapter 1.

8. Kennedy (n.7 above), 7.

9. Kennedy (n.7 above), 8.

10. Kennedy (n.7 above), 16f. His rhetor/logas/audience matrix is of course based on the Aristotelian formulation at Rhetoric 1356a. The emphasis placed on audience by the philosophical strand is reminiscent of that foundational text of philosophical rhetoric, Plato’s Phaedrus, in which Socrates insists that the rhetor understand the psukhai of the audience (270e-272b).

11. The remains of these are conveniently collected in Radermacher, L. (ed.), Artium Scriptores. Reste der voraristotelischen Rhetorik (Vienna 1951)Google Scholar.

12. Kirby, John T., ‘The “Great Triangle” in Early Greek Rhetoric and Poetics’, Rhetorica 8 (1990), 213–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I urge the reader to consult this essay for an exposition of the Triangle that is fuller than I have space to provide here.

13. I should asseverate once again that I am not for one moment alleging that the notion of the Great Triangle had suggested itself to Hesiod or to any other of the ancients—much less that it ought to be reified within some sort of metaphysical system. I offered it originally, and invoke it again here, sheerly as an analytical construct that is intended to help make some sense of a mass of difficult, abstruse, and sometimes inaccessible material. But it should be evident that the binary associations with which we are conjuring—peithō/bia, bia/erōs, erōs/bia, and (particularly germane in Hesiod) peithō/dikē and bia/dikē—are ubiquitous in all these authors, and that, furthermore, such associations are natural to the human mind. On the mechanism of such associations, see especially the very interesting work of Lakoff, George, Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind (Chicago 1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14. Hesiod, , Theogony, Works and Days, Shield, tr. Athanassakis, Apostolos N. (Baltimore 1983)Google Scholar. Most of the translations of Hesiod in this essay are taken or adapted from this translation. Line references are to the Greek text.

15. West, M.L., Hesiod: Theogony (Oxford 1966), 158–61Google Scholar. West himself seems to favour a combination of the first and third approaches.

16. Pausanias (9.29.2) tells us of an alternate tradition in which, instead of Hesiod’s nine Muses (Theogony 60), there were three: Melete (‘Practice’), Mneme (‘Memory’) and Aoide (‘Song’, i.e. performance). These three are of course personifications of the elements necessary for being an actual performing bard—or, substituting ‘delivery’ for ‘song’, of an orator. From Cicero (De Natura Deorum 3.54) we learn of a roster of four Muses: Arche (‘Beginning’), Melete, Aoide and Thelxinoe (‘Enchantress of the Mind’). On these alternate traditions see e.g. van Groningen, B.A., ‘Les Trois Muses de l’Hélicon’, AC 17 (1948), 287–96Google Scholar.

17. Theogony 65–74; Works and Days 1–4. Theogony 48 actually says that the Muses themselves, like Hesiod, ‘begin and end their song with him’; but the line was branded spurious by Guyet, and is bracketed by both Solmsen and West.

18. Havelock, E.A., Preface to Plato (Cambridge MA 1963), 103Google Scholar, takes a similar (though perhaps overstated) position: ‘That is why it is natural that Hesiod’s hymn as it celebrates the Muses can turn also into a celebration of Zeus himself. Their song is coextensive with the mind of Zeus; it comprehends the social and political order … they form an Olympian system of their own. They have, indeed, their own little Olympus, namely Helicon … ’ Havelock’s text includes a footnote to Theogony 37 and Works and Days 661 and 483. In speaking of ‘metonymy’ and ‘contiguity’ I have in mind the work of Jakobson, Roman, ‘Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of Aphasic Disturbances’, Part II of Jakobson, R. and Halle, Morris, Fundamentals of Language (The Hague 1956Google Scholar; reprinted in Jakobson, R., Language in Literature [Cambridge MA 1987], 95–114Google Scholar). This work was furthered by Lodge, David, The Modes of Modern Writing: Metaphor, Metonymy, and the Typology of Modern Literature (Ithaca NY 1977)Google Scholar; see esp. 73–124. In citing this work I should avow my reservations about Jakobson’s sharp distinction between metaphor and metonymy, since it appears to me that metonymy itself functions in a somewhat ‘metaphoric’ way: others have had similar objections (see e.g. duBois, Page, Sowing the Body: Psychoanalysis and Ancient Representations of Women [Chicago 1988], 29CrossRefGoogle Scholar with nn. 20 and 21). Nonetheless I discern some usefulness in the distinction, since (by my understanding) ‘metonymy’ suggests some pre-existent connection between tenor and vehicle that may not be there in metaphor. Genette, Gérard, ‘Rhetoric Restrained’ (chapter 6 of Figures of Literary Discourse [New York 1982]Google Scholar, a partial translation of Figures III [Paris 1972]), 118Google Scholar, objects to the way in which the ‘age-old tendency of rhetoric to reduction seems … to have culminated in an absolute valorisation of metaphor [sc. at the expense of other tropes], bound up with the idea of the essential metaphoricity of poetic language—and of language in general.’ Cf. ibid. 125 n.36: ‘There is certainly no question here of denying this metaphoricity, which in any case is obvious, but simply to recall that the essential figurativeness in any language should not be reduced to metaphor.’

19. Exodus 6.30–7.2. Biblical translations are my own.

20. This curious and vivid expression is metaphoric for the lack of rhetorical skill. Elsewhere the adjective ‘rl, ‘having a foreskin’ and thus ‘uncircumcised’, is applied to the heart (Jeremiah 9.26, Ezekiel 44.7, 9) and the ear (Jeremiah 6.10), but in such cases it seems to refer to some defect of character. Perhaps the closest analogue to Moses’ use of the word is Leviticus 19.23–25: ‘And when you enter the land and plant all kinds of trees for food, you shall [at first] reckon their fruit as uncircumcised. For three years it shall be uncircumcised to you; [it] must not be eaten. But in the fourth year, all its fruit shall be holy, a praise-offering to YHWH. And in the fifth year you are to eat of its fruit, so that its yield may increase for you. I am YHWH your God.’ In this instance the word apparently means ‘unready,’ or even ‘immature’.

21. The ancient sources for this scenario are Strabo Geographica 9.3.5 (= C 419) and Plutarch Moralia 407b. See the austerely revisionist history of Fontenrose, J., The Delphic Oracle: Its Responses and Operations, with a Catalogue of Responses (Berkeley 1978)Google Scholar, particularly chapter 7; but Nagy, Gregory, Pindar’s Homer. The Lyric Possession of an Epic Past (Baltimore 1990), 162–67Google Scholar, does accept the view that the Pythia controlled the content of the mantic utterance, while the prophēiēs controlled the form. On the possible common derivation of mousa and mania see ibid. 163f. n.82.

22. Amos 3.8. The Hebrew words for ‘prophet’ and ‘prophesy’ come from a root (nb’) that may have originally meant. ‘gush forth, bubble up’—imputing an ecstatic or, shall we say, affective rather than a cognitive origin to the mantic utterance.

23. Nagy, Gregory, ‘Early Greek Views of Poets and Poetry’ in Kennedy, George A. (ed.), The Cambridge History of Literary CrittcisntVolume 1: Classical Criticism (Cambridge 1989), 5f.Google Scholar; see too Nagy (n.21 above), chapter 1, esp.21 with n.15.

24. Dodds, E.R., The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley 1951), 81Google Scholar. Dodds’s last sentence here includes a note citing Goethe, Lamartine and Shelley to this effect.

25. The exact meaning of this word is a conundrum all its own, since phrenes can have both cognitive and affective connotations in Homer.

26. Roth, Catherine P., ‘The Kings and the Muses in Hesiod’s Theogony’, TAPA 106 (1976), 331–38Google Scholar, at 337.

27. Cf. Minton, William W., ‘Homer’s Invocation of the Muses: Traditional Patterns’, TAPA 91 (1960), 292–309Google Scholar, at 292f.:‘… [In both Homer and Hesiod] all the invocations are essentially questions, appeals to the Muse for specific information to which the poet clearly expects an answer’ (original emphasis); idem, Invocation and Catalogue in Hesiod and Homer’, TAPA 93 (1962), 292–309Google Scholar, at 188: ‘Formally the Homeric invocations show precisely the same charac-teristics as those of Hesiod, characteristics which suggest very strongly that the invocation was in origin an appeal for information.’

28. von Rad, Gerhard, Old Testament Theology, voL 2: The Theology of Israel’s Prophetic Visions (New York 1965Google Scholar; a translation of Die Theologie der prophetischen Öberlieferungen Israels, vol. 2 of Theobgie des Alten Testaments [Munich I960]), 132Google Scholar. For more on authorship in archaic Greece see Ford, Andrew, ‘The Seal of Theognis: The Politics of Authorship in Archaic Greece’ in Figueira, Thomas J. and Nagy, Gregory (eds.), Theognis of Megara Poetry and the Polis (Baltimore 1985), 82–95Google Scholar.

29. West (n.15 above), 160; for the text in question see Peek, Werner, ‘Neues von Archilochos’, Philologus 99 (1955s), 4–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30. Phemius: Odyssey 1.153f., 22.330–39. Demodocus: Odyssey 8.67–69.

31. Some similar points are made by Nagy, Gregory, ‘Hesiod’ in James Luce, T. (ed.), Ancient Writers: Greece and Rome (New York 1982), i.43–73Google Scholar, at 50–53. For more on the skēptron see M. Combellack, Frederick, ‘Speakers and Scepters in Homer’, CJ 43 (1947–48), 209–17Google Scholar; Bérard, Claude, ‘Le sceptre du prince’, MH 29 (1972), 219–27Google Scholar; Puelma, Mario, ‘Sänger und Kōnig: Zum Verständnis von Hesiods Tierfabel’, MH 29 (1972), 86–109Google Scholar, at 94 n.37; and Duban, Jeffrey M., ‘Poets and Kings in the Theogony Invocation’, QUCC n.s. 4 (1980), 7–21Google Scholar, at 7 n.l.

32. See Toulmin, Stephen, The Uses of Argument (Cambridge 1958)Google Scholar, esp. chapter 3.

33. It will be seen that I dissent here from West (n.15 above), 164, who (following Meister, K., Die homerische Kunstsprache [Leipzig 1921 ], 232CrossRefGoogle Scholar) says, ‘If Hesiod bore a staff instead of a lyre, then, it was not because this was typical at his date, in his area or for his genre, but rather because he could not obtain a lyre or could not play one—he had had no professional training.’ Surely in such a pervasively formulaic scene Hesiod would not suddenly revert to the reportage of an autobiographical detail that contravened the formula, above all in view of the embarrassing nature of such a situation. And in any case, it is difficult to believe that he was trained in the oral composition of formulaic hexameter verse, but not in the music that went along with this. I would draw attention to the collocation of aoidoi and kitharistai in Theogony 95; if the kai there is epexegetic, then aoidoi virtually = kitharistai. If that is so, we need not expect Hesiod to receive a lyre at his bardic inauguration: it might be assumed that he was in possession of both a shepherd’s staff and a lyre before the event he describes at the beginning of the Theogony.

34. Cf. West (n.15 above), 156 (ad 11–21): ‘The Muses cannot walk in silence. They sing a processional upon their favourite theme, the gods, and in the first place Zeus.’

35. This quarrel, of course, once introduced, continued until Aristotle attempted to resolve it, by means of an ingenious move that I have discussed in Kirby (n.l2 above).

36. This may be an early precursor of the long tradition, stretching from Plato and Aristotle to Cicero and beyond, that the deliberative/political species of oratory was the noblest and most important; see Kirby, John T., The Rhetoric of Cicero’s Pro Cluentio (Amsterdam 1990), 25Google Scholar with n.20.

37. Of interest in this regard is how the Greek word logos came to accrue such a spectrum of meanings, including both ‘language’ and ‘ratiocination’. Cf. Aristotle’s famous definition of the human being as a politikon zōbn that has the faculty of logos, the capacity to discern good and evil, justice and injustice—the expatiation of which is the function of intelligible speech (Politics 1253a).

38. I refer to the masculine gender purposely, as Hesiod’s worldview is resolutely androcentric. Notice, for example, that while Dike the goddess is extolled as the embodiment of Hesiod’s most significant moral principle, she is nonetheless the daughter of Zeus and sits beside him (Works and Days 256–60): that is, by both genealogy and authority, she is beneath him.

39. Theogony 123,223–29.

40. See e.g. Aristotle, Categories la, Topics 106a-107b, Sophistical Refutations 175a-180a.

41. This is, incidentally, the sort of text to be adduced by the person who denies that the Theogony and Works and Days are by one author in Theogony 228 we are told that the children of Eris, herself the daughter of Night, include combats and battles (teke … Husminas te Makhas te). But in the present passage it is the bad Eris that fosters war and battle (polemon te kakon kai dērm opheliei), but the good Eris that is the daughter of Night. If these are by a single author, he is either adopting a separate tradition here or revising the received notion himself. On the two Erides see e.g. Pucci, Pietro, Hesiod and the Language of Poetry (Baltimore 1977), 130–35Google Scholar; Hamilton (n.3 above), 53–66. On the possibility of a similar homonymy of aidōs in Hesiod, see e.g. Sinclair, T.A., ‘On AIΔΩΣ in Hesiod’, CR 39 (1925), 147fGoogle Scholar.; McKay, K.J., ‘Ambivalent AIΔΩΣ in Hesiod’, AJP 84 (1963), 17–27 and 303Google Scholar; φsterud, Svein, ‘The Individuality of Hesiod’, Hermes 104 (1976), 13–29Google Scholar at 19 n.21; Pucci, op. tit., 11. Such homonymy is denied by West, M.L., Hesiod: Works and Days (Oxford 1978), 236Google Scholar (ad 317).

42. Aristotle, Rhetoric 1358a-b.

43. Theogony 116–22. As Lattimore, Richmond (tr.), Hesbd (Ann Arbor 1959), 222Google Scholar, points out, it is not explicitly stated that Chaos begot the other three original gods; but the phrase autar epeita (Theogony 116) might be taken to indicate this.

44. May, Rollo, Love and Will (New York 1969), 94fGoogle Scholar., forcefully draws the distinction between this archaic conception and the later (Hellenistic) ‘version’ of Eros. We should not forget, however, that Eros is called ho Dios pais (‘the son of Zeus’) in Euripides Hippotytus 534.

45. ‘The position of Eros here in the very first generation of created powers strongly suggests a quasi-demiurgic function’ (West [n.15 above], 195).

46. One is reminded of Homer’s phrase ‘he unstrung his limbs’ (luse de guia, e.g. Iliad 4.469), used when one warrior kills another.

47. West (n. 15 above), 196.

48. Known there under the names Phihtēs and Neikos (see e.g. DK 31 B 17, 20, 26, 30, 35, 36). The fact that Empedocles does not typically call them Eros and Eris suggests the possibility that Empedocles’ system is not in a direct line of filiation from the Hesiodic tradition. But it is hardly possible to imagine that Empedocles had no familiarity with the Theogony. (We find eridessi at B 20.4; and of course philotēs and neikos are good Hesiodic vocabulary.)

49. On the pairing of erōs and eris (and indeed also the doubling of the meaning of erōs) in Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis see Wilson, John R., ‘Eris in Euripides’, G&R n.s. 26 (1979), 7–20Google Scholar, at 16–19. On a similar theme in Pindar, see Drew Griffith, R., ‘Oedipus’s Bloodthirsty Sons: Love and Strife in Pindar’s Second Olympian Ode’, CA 10 (1991), 46–58Google Scholar.

50. West (n.15 above), 196; Kirby (n.12 above), 224 with n.18.

51. On Hermes in this capacity see e.g. Burkert, Walter, Greek Religion (Cambridge MA 1985Google Scholar; a translation of Griechische Religion der archaischen und klassischen Epoche, [Stuttgart 1977]), 158Google Scholar.

52. See e.g. Aeschylus Agamemnon 385f. and Euripides Hecuba 816–18. On the ambiguity of the Greek gods generally see e.g. Detienne, Marcel, Les Maîtres de vérité dans la Grèce archaïque (Paris 1967), 62–80Google Scholar.

53. That is, it is not just the musical nature of the nightingale, as asserted by the scholiast (cited in West [n.41 above], 206), that induced Hesiod to make the aēdōn the prey here.

54. Upon reflection, of course, it becomes clear that the real articulation of this peithō—more suasive than any amount of lament or wailing—is the Works and Days itself. There is no need for Hesiod to tell us what the nightingale is saying: he himself is saying it far more effectively in the poem.

55. Isocrates 20.2; Lysias 14.26, 24.18; Demosthenes 37.33, 45.4, 54.1, and especially 21 (Against Meidias). In the last speech, Demosthenes cites the Athenian law that condemns (but does not define) hubris. On the topic, see e.g. Hooker, J.T., ‘The Original Meaning of ‘YBPIΣ’, ABG 19 (1975), 125–37Google Scholar; MacDowell, Douglas M., ‘Hybris in Athens’, G&R n.s. 23 (1976), 14–31Google Scholar, and Demosthenes: Against Meidias (Oxford 1990), 17–23Google Scholar; Fisher, N.R.E., ‘Hybris and Dishonour I’, G&R n.s. 23 (1976), 177–93Google Scholar, and Hybris and Dishonour II’, G&R n.s. 26 (1979), 32–47Google Scholar; Gagarin, Michael, ‘The Athenian Law Against Hybris’ in Bowersock, G.W. et al. (eds.), Arktouros: Hellenic Studies Presented to Bernard M.W. Knox (Berlin 1979), 229–36Google Scholar.

56. For similar distancing use of narrative instead of discourse in a parable, see the treatment of the biblical account of David and the prophet Nathan in Kirby (n.2 above), 8f.

57. See e.g. Palmer, L.R., ‘The Indo-European Origins of Greek Justice,’ TPhS (1950), 149–68Google Scholar; West (n. 15 above), 183f.; Chantraine, P., Dictionnaire étymologique de la lange grecque (Paris 1967)Google Scholarsv, Benveniste, Emile, Indo-European Language and Society (Coral Gables 1973Google Scholar; a translation of Le vocabulaire des institutions Indo-Européennes [Paris 1969]), 379–88Google Scholar; Rodgers, V.A., ‘Some Thoughts on ΔIKH’, CQ n.s. 2l (1971), 289–301CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gagarin, Michael, ‘Dikē in the Works and Days,’ CPh 68 (1973), 81–94Google Scholar, and Early Greek Law (Berkeley 1986), esp. chapters 2 and 5; Pucci (n.41 above), chapters 2–3; Havelock, E.A., The Greek Concept of Justice (Cambridge MA 1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Dickie, Matthew W., ‘DIKE as a Moral Term in Homer and Hesiod’, CPh 73 (1978), 91–101Google Scholar, takes a markedly different stance from most other interpreters.

58. Benveniste (n.57 above), 386.

59. Benwniste (n.57 above), 388.

60. Cf. Nagy (n.31 above), 58: ‘Long-range, however, any ad hoc “judgment” can be turned into “justice” by Zeus, who is the authority behind all judgments’; Nagy (n.21 above), 256f. with n.38.

61. On the personified Dike see Pucci (n.41 above), chapter 3.

62. West (n.41 above), ad be, compares Psalms 7.15f., 9.15f., 57.6; Proverbs 26.27; Ecclesiasies 10.8; he might also have adduced Matthew 7.2 and Luke 6.31. His text of line 265 includes a gnomic te, which (if genuine) would demarcate a proverbial saying.

63. Line 120 is banished to the apparatus criticus in Solmsen’s edition, and bracketed in West’s, though in the latter’s commentary ad be. he remarks that it has ‘a Hesiodic enough appearance … It may have stood in a “wild” text … perhaps borrowed from a similar passage in the Catalogue or some other poem’ (West [n.41 above], 181). See also his overall comments on lines 111–120 (ibid. 179). On the later notion of a Golden Age see Baldry, H.C., ‘Who Invented the Golden Age?’, CQ n.s. 2 (1952), 83–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Reckford, Kenneth J., ‘Some Appearances of the Golden Age,’ CJ 54 (1958), 79–87Google Scholar.

64. On the possibility of reading the myth as other than wholly pessimistic, see φsterud (n.41 above), 20.

65. Earlier versions of this essay were presented orally at the Foreign Languages and Literatures Faculty Colloquium of Purdue University (April 1991); to the California Classical Association (Los Angeles CA, April 1991); at the Biennial Conference of the International Society for the History of Rhetoric (Baltimore MD, September 1991); and at the Classics Colloquium of the University of Iowa (October 1991). The written version came to approximate its current form under the auspices of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, which enabled me to participate in a Scholars’ Workshop in the Project on Rhetoric of Inquiry (POROI) at the University of Iowa. I am tremendously grateful to the NEH for its generosity; to the University of Iowa, and particularly the Department of Classics, for their hospitality; and to the members of the POROI workshop—Gertrud Champe, Marlena Corcoran, Janet Davis, John Finamore, Donald McCloskey, Donovan Ochs, and Takis Poulakos—for their collegiality, their encouragement, and their friendly critique. I also received helpful comment from Apostolos Athanassakis, Mary Depew, Thomas J. Farrell, James Kinneavy, Michael Leff, Steven Mailloux, Terry Papillon, Vernon Robbins, Edward Schiappa, and Jan Swearingen.