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THE SHAPE OF EARLY GREEK UTOPIA
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 September 2021
Abstract
The paper offers a new approach to utopia in early and classical Greek texts from Homer to the fifth century. The model is based on four motifs regularly occurring in ‘utopian texts’, that is, descriptions of places that are distant in time and/or space. A comparative analysis of such texts (drawn from Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, Old Comedy and Herodotus) and of how they manipulate the four motifs sheds new light on specific problems (as, for example, the relevance of Herodotus’ Ethiopian episode, or the role of the myth of Perseus in Pindar's Pythian 10) and encourages more nuanced readings of famous texts, such as Homer's account of Scheria.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association
Footnotes
I wish to thank Sherry Lee and Christopher Moore for discussing earlier drafts of this paper, and the anonymous referee for helpful comments and suggestions.
References
1 More, T., Libellus vere aureus, nec minus salutaris quam festivus, de optimo rei publicae statu deque nova insula Utopia (Louvain, 1516)Google Scholar.
2 R. Levitas, Utopia as Method: The Imaginary Reconstitution of Society (New York, 2013), 178. For a survey of the relationship between utopia and classical texts, from More to the nineteenth century, see L. Bertelli, ‘L'utopia greca’, in L. Firpo (ed.), Storia delle idee politiche economiche e sociali. L'antichità classica (Turin, 1982), 462–581, at 463–71.
3 A. Giesecke, The Epic City: Urbanism, Utopia, and the Garden in Ancient Greece and Rome (Washington, DC, 2007), 1; also R. Levitas, The Concept of Utopia (New York, 1990), 8 and ead. (n. 2), 3–19. Cf. Zimmermann, B., ‘Utopisches und Utopie in den Komödien des Aristophanes’, WJA 9 (1983), 57–77Google Scholar, at 59: ‘Utopie ist hauptsächlich eine inhaltliche Kategorie’.
4 M.I. Finley, The Use and Abuse of History (London, 1975), 178: ‘All Utopianism has an element of fantasy or dreaming, or at least of yearning, for a better life and a better world.’
5 By de-finition I mean a delimitation of the range of texts that can be deemed utopian in the absence of a content-based definition (I elaborate on this below).
6 V. Propp, Morphology of the Folktale (Austin, 1968 [first ed.: Leningrad, 1928]), 19. Even though Propp's formulation neatly encapsulates the concept of morphology I adopt in the analysis of utopia, my methodological framework is not related to Propp's analysis of the folktale.
7 ‘Early’ refers to the starting point of the utopian discourse, not to its end: in fact, I will discuss texts down to the fifth century.
8 Cf. Sargent, L.T., ‘African Americans and utopia: visions of a better life’, Utopian Studies 31 (2020), 25–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
9 More himself taps into the homophony of outopia and eutopia ([n. 1], ‘Meter of IV verses in the utopian tongue’).
10 M.L. West, Indo-European Poetry and Myth (Oxford, 2007), 349–50.
11 Outside classical studies, see e.g. Sargent, L.T., ‘The three faces of utopianism revisited’, Utopian Studies 5 (1994), 1–37Google Scholar, at 9. In a similar vein, I am not concerned with utopia as a literary genre (on which, see M.F. Pinheiro, ‘Utopia and utopias: a study on a literary genre in Antiquity’, AncNarr 5 [2006], 147–71), both because of the limitation of the time period under examination and because the categories of ‘literary’ and ‘fictional’ applied to the texts examined would constitute an entirely different problem.
12 See e.g. Quarta, C., L'utopia platonica (Milan, 1985)Google Scholar and De Brasi, D., ‘Platone, padre dell'utopia?’, LEC 75 (2007), 207–26Google Scholar.
13 My notion of ‘text’, which includes specimens that range from twelve lines of the Works and Days to several books of the Odyssey, can be questioned. The working criterion adopted is that all the information that can be gathered about specific utopias are part of a single ‘utopian text’ (e.g. all the parts of the Odyssey that deal with Scheria). The resulting expansive notion of text will, I hope, not be seen in a hindrance to the argument but as a valuable offshoot of the discussion.
14 This is not the place to discuss whether there is anything ‘outside’ the text in the first place, and what a historical con-text looks like. On this question, see R.D. Hume, Reconstructing Contexts (Oxford, 1991); also Holsinger, B., ‘“Historical context” in historical context’, New Literary History 42 (2011), 593–614CrossRefGoogle Scholar and P. Bourdieu, Les règles de l'art: genèse et structure du champ littéraire (Paris, 1992), 284–7.
15 See Maclachlan, B., ‘Feasting with Ethiopians: life on the fringe’, QUCC 40 (1992), 15–33Google Scholar, who talks specifically about the Ethiopian utopia as drawing on sources from different ages, and P.A. Bernardini in B. Gentili et al., Pindaro: Le Pitiche (Milan, 1995), 630–1 on 10.30, tracing the Greek sources of the Hyperboreans.
16 The concept of discourse I will work with is a gross—but heuristically useful, it is hoped—simplification of M. Foucault's discours, most fully developed in L'ordre du discours (Paris, 1971).
17 Text and translation from G.W. Most, Hesiod: Theogony, Works and Days, Testimonia (Cambridge, MA, 2006).
18 Most's (n. 17) ‘shared out the fruits of their labors’ departs, both here and later in the text when the same expression ἔργ’ ἐνέμοντο recurs (231), from the interpretation of M.L. West (Hesiod: Works and Days [Oxford, 1978], 181 on line 119), who glosses ἔργ’ ἐνέμοντο as ‘lived off their fields’. West compares Il. 2.751, but in the Hesiodic context (both here and in line 231) the reciprocity and mutual agreement conveyed by Most's translation seem entirely appropriate. This reciprocity is in fact reinforced in line 118 by the adjective ἐθελημοί (cf. below, n. 20).
19 West ([n. 18], 181 ad loc.), unlike Most (n. 17), athetizes line 120 (‘wealthy in sheep, dear to the blessed gods’), although he thinks that ‘it has a Hesiodic enough appearance’ to be borrowed from ‘a similar passage in the Catalogue or some other poem’. R. Janko, reviewing Most's text (BMCR 2007.03.31), puts this line among the ones that are ‘perhaps [spurious]’.
20 I use ‘Age’ to refer to the passage as a whole and underscore its temporal dimension. The section it belongs to is usually called the ‘myth of the Races’ (Hesiod uses γένος, not χρόνος), but cf. H. Van Noorden, Playing Hesiod: The ‘Myth of the Races’ in Classical Antiquity (Cambridge, 2014), 75, who argues for a shift of γένος from ‘race’ to ‘era’ over the course of the myth.
21 I am not concerned here with tracing the diachronic origin of the symbology of gold and metals in the overall structure of the Races, on which see M.L. West, The East Face of Helicon: West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth (Oxford, 1997), 312–19 and Most, G.W., ‘Hesiod's myth of the five (or three or four) races’, PCPhS 43 (1997), 104–12Google Scholar.
22 Brown, A.S., ‘From the Golden Age to the Isles of the Blest’, Mnemosyne 51 (1998), 385–410CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 392–4.
23 More precisely, West (n. 18), 180 ad loc. glosses ἐθελημοί as ‘‘as they pleased’, casually and unforcedly’.
24 On the success of Hesiod's Golden Age in antiquity, see Van Noorden (n. 20). The paradigmatic value of this utopia is already established in Hesiod's text, in which the Golden Age functions as a point of reference for the other Ages and in the subsequent description of the ‘just city’, which displays some of the same motifs and several linguistic points of contact (West [n. 18], 214, 216 on lines 231, 236–7).
25 The connection between the beginning of the episode in Book 7 and its end in Book 13 is reinforced by the close similarity of the two scenes: I. de Jong, A Narratological Commentary on the Odyssey (Cambridge, 2001), 315 on 13.36–63.
26 V. Di Benedetto, Omero: Odissea (Milan, 2010), 455 on 8.100 (‘lo smontaggio dell'ideologia agonale’). Cf. de Jong (n. 25), 203 on 8.147–8, who emphasizes the rather unheroic idea of kleos that the Phaeacians entertain.
27 For this notoriously difficult problem, see Giannopoulou, Z., ‘Middles and prophecy in the Odyssey’, Yearbook of Ancient Greek Epic 1 (2017), 137–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
28 Cf. e.g. the suitors’ laughter in Od. 20.345–9.
29 Since Scheria is often set as a positive example against the dysfunctional island of the Cyclopes in Book 9 (A. Heubeck and A. Hoekstra, A Commentary on Homer's Odyssey, Volume II [Oxford, 1990], 21–2 on 9.116–36), it is relevant to notice the differences between the two islands. The only utopian motif to be found on the island of the Cyclopes is automatic food (9.107–11), which explicitly connects them to the gods, who let the food be automatically produced (9.107). Given the importance of the relationship with the divine in early Greek utopias, this motif and this connection, surfacing at the outset of the episode, would lead us to expect the presence of other utopian motifs on the island. However, no other motif will occur in the episode, and in fact none could occur: motifs b, c and d refer in all the other texts to individuals that, while being above the human level, still present distinctively human traits (on such traits see below, pages 474–5). The Cyclopes lack several such traits: for example, their society, predicated on nature rather than on culture (G. Nagy, The Best of the Achaeans [Baltimore, 1998], 180–1), is a complete perversion of the motif of eunomia (106, 112–15, 275–6); no gold is to be found here, nor are the Cyclopes endowed with special longevity. In this sense, the lack of all utopian motifs other than automatic food on the island of the Cyclopes supports the opposition between them and the Phaeacians (cf. Heubeck and Hoekstra [this note], 21 on 9.106–15: ‘[The Cyclopes] are a negation of human values, and a negative counterpart to the Phaeacians who enjoy all the benefits of civilization; they are the embodiment of the non-human’).
30 Text from Gentili et al. (n. 15), translation from W.H. Race, Pindar (Cambridge, MA, 1997).
31 On the historical and performative background of the ode, see Bernardini (n. 15), 263–9.
32 For the meaning of ἀγών in this passage, see Bernardini (n. 15), 631 ad loc.
33 On the place of such visit in Perseus’ myth, see further F.J. Meister, Greek Praise Poetry and the Rhetoric of Divinity (Oxford, 2020), 118–19.
34 The meaning of these two lines, as well as the role of Nemesis, is debated, but the connection of Nemesis with Justice (Δίκη) is broadly accepted: Brown, C.G., ‘The Hyperboreans and Nemesis in Pindar's Tenth Pythian’, Phoenix 46 (1992), 95–107CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially 102–3, and Bernardini (n. 15), 636–7 on 10.41–4.
35 See Meister (n. 33), 124 n. 141 with references.
36 P. Rose, Sons of the Gods, Children of Earth: Ideology and Literary Form in Ancient Greece (Ithaca, NY, 1992), 179.
37 Both Odysseus and Perseus enjoy a heroic status; as for the Fish-Eaters, see Hdt. 3.19, discussed below, on their special alimentary regime and language competence. As for the bridging role of these special individuals, something similar happens in Hesiod's Theogony, where the class of heroes, born from a goddess and a mortal father, is used to establish connection and continuity between gods and humans, as persuasively argued by Pache, C., ‘Mortels et immortelles dans la Théogonie’, Mètis 6 (2008), 221–38Google Scholar.
38 See the analysis by Rose (n. 36), 179–81.
39 On the superhuman status of the Hyperboreans, see also Meister (n. 33), 121–2.
40 B. Maslov, Pindar and the Emergence of Literature (Oxford, 2015), 210–12.
41 See Meister (n. 33), 125 n. 144 with references, and more extensively Rose (n. 36), 171–82.
42 Compare e.g. Hom. Od. 8.248–9. This is not the only parallel between the Pindaric Hyperboreans and the Homeric Phaeacians: see Brown (n. 22), 401–4.
43 Cf. Bernardini (n. 15), 633–4 on 10.33–4.
44 Cf. Meister (n. 33), 121. For ‘sacred race’ (usually γένος, instead of the rarer γενεά used by Pindar here) connoting gods and superhumans, see Hes. Theog. 20, 104, 345; Pind. fr. 29.1 S.–M.
45 Athenaeus’ criterion of selection is not entirely perspicuous: Baldry, H.C., ‘The idler's paradise in Attic comedy’, G&R 22 (1953), 49–60Google Scholar. Cf. also M. Farioli, Mundus alter: utopie e distopie nella commedia greca antica (Milan, 2001), 197.
46 ὕδωρ refers to the water used to wash the hands at the beginning or end of a meal: W.G. Arnott, Alexis: The Fragments (Cambridge, 1996), 733–4 on 263.2.
47 Cf. A. Grilli, ‘Funzioni simboliche del tempo nelle “Vespe”’, in Le Vespe di Aristofane. Giornata di studio in ricordo di Massimo Vetta (Pisa, 2020), 113–33, at 120.
48 Cf. P. Ceccarelli, ‘L'Athènes de Périclès: un “pays de cocagne”? L'idéologie démocratique et l’αὐτόματος βίος dans la comédie ancienne’, QUCC 54 (1996), 109–59, at 109, 122.
49 On such ideological compass, see Ceccarelli (n. 48), 141–58; cf. I. Ruffell, ‘The world turned upside down: utopia and utopianism in the fragments of Old Comedy’, in F.D. Harvey, J. Wilkins and K.J. Dover (edd.), The Rivals of Aristophanes: Studies in Athenian Old Comedy (London, 2000), 473–506.
50 J. Wilkins, The Boastful Chef: The Discourse of Food in Ancient Greek Comedy (Oxford, 2000).
51 Ruffell (n. 49), 476–81 and Ceccarelli (n. 48), 122.
52 For automatic food in other comic fragments, see the parallels cited in K.–A. on Crates, fr. 17.7.
53 See A. Grilli, Aristofane: Gli Uccelli (Milan, 2006), 42–108.
54 Most of our automatic-food fragments from Athenaeus probably belonged to epirrhematic agones (Ceccarelli [n. 48], especially 119), suitable for contrasting two lifestyles (the ancient and the new) embodied by the opposed characters—as witnessed by Aristophanes’ agônes.
55 Hadas, M., ‘Utopian sources in Herodotus’, CPh 30 (1935), 113–21Google Scholar; T. Säve-Söderbergh, ‘Zu den ätiopischen Episoden bei Herodot’, Eranos 44 (1946), 68–80, at 79–80; D. Asheri, A Commentary on Herodotus Books I–IV (Oxford, 2007), 425, 417, 423 on 3.17–25, 3.17.1, 3.23.4.
56 Irwin, E., ‘Ethnography and empire: Homer and the Hippocratics in Herodotus’ Ethiopian logos, 3.17–26’, Histos 8 (2014), 25–75Google Scholar, at 27–42.
57 Thuc. 3.58.4 (ὅσα τε ἡ γῆ ἡμῶν ἀνεδίδου ὡραῖα); Aesopus 42.3; Eur. fr. 484.4 Kannicht; Anaximander B22.7 DK; Asius, fr. 8 Bernabé.
58 Mehler teste N. Wilson, Herodoti Historiae (Oxford, 2015) emended manuscript αὐτήν to αὐτομάτην, making the link to the motif of automatic food even more explicit.
59 Their presence in Greek sources is ‘semi-legendary or utopian’ (Asheri [n. 55], 418 on 19.1), but cf. also Asheri (n. 55), 418 on 3.19.1 and Säve-Söderbergh (n. 55), 68–9.
60 O. Longo, ‘I mangiatori di pesci: regime alimentare e quadro culturale’, MD 18 (1987), 9–56, at 13–14; J.-P. Vernant, ‘Manger aux pays du Soleil’, in M. Detienne and J.-P. Vernant (edd.), La cuisine du sacrifice en pays grec (Paris, 1979), 239–49.
61 My use of ‘history’ and ‘historical’ here would require a separate paper: see E. Baragwanath and M. de Bakker (edd.), Myth, Truth and Narrative in Herodotus (Oxford, 2012), especially C.C. Chiasson, ‘Myth and truth in Herodotus’ Cyrus logos’, 213–32.
62 Beyond the fifth century, one could also point to Theopompus (BNJ 115 F 75c), who in his Philippica divides up the four motifs between the two imaginary cities of Eusebes (motifs a, b, c) and Machimos (motif d): M.A. Flower, Theopompus of Chios: History and Rhetoric in the Fourth Century (Oxford, 1994), 214–17.
63 See e.g. Ar. Av. 731–4 for an exemplary overdetermination of utopian motifs.