The Scroll and the Marble: Studies in Reading and Reception in Hellenistic Poetry

2. Impersonation of Voice in Callimachus' Hymn to Apollo

This is an updated version of an article that appeared in TAPA 123 (1993) 181–98. © 1993. The American Philological Association. 1. The difficulties that these verses present to interpretation are notorious. See my appendix to the present essay for a discussion. 33 Impersonation of Voice in Callimachus’ Hymn to Apollo
Toward the end of the Delian section of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, as the climactic event in his description of the great Ionian festival, the blind singer of Chios presents what he calls “a great wonder, whose fame shall never perish” (µγα θαυ
µα, @ου κλος ο_ποτ/ 4λει
ται, v. 156). This “wonder” is the chorus of Delian maidens, who sing hymns to Apollo, Leto, and Artemis, followed by songs about “men and women of old.” What is truly wondrous about their performance, however, is their ability “to mimic the voices and sounds of all men. Each man,” claims the poet, “would say that he himself is speaking. So closely fitted [i.e., in its verisimilitude] is their beautiful song” (πντων δ/ νθρπων φωνς κα κρεµβαλιαστ1ν /µιµει
σθ/ :σασινD φαη δ κεν α"τς Iκαστος / φθγγεσθ/D οaτω σφιν καλ συνρηρεν οιδ , vv. 162–64).1 The Deliades’ simulation is certainly an awe-inspiring feat. How, one might ask, could an individual listener find his voice reflected in the collective voice of the chorus—moreover, a speaking voice in that of a singing voice? Further, how could a multitude of listeners each think that he was speaking when the chorus sang its song? The relationship between these voices—individual’s and chorus’, spectators ’ and performer’s—was, I think, to intrigue Callimachus some two chapter 2 and a half centuries later.2 The Hellenistic poet certainly recurred to this Homeric hymn with remarkable insistence, mining it as a source.3 And the multiplication of voice, with its concomitant effects on the listener—thatµγα θαυ
µα, which brought the Deliades undying fame—is as striking a component of Callimachus’ Hymn to Apollo as it was in its archaic counterpart . Callimachus seems to have taken the traditional monologic speech of hexameter hymn and invested it here with a veritable chorus of voices. In his hands it becomes a nexus of overlapping identities (cf. Winkler 1985: 203), whose components cannot easily be disentangled or even held distinct . Perhaps that µγα θαυ
µα of the Deliades challenged the poet to produce one of his own, a contemporary equivalent that might likewise secure him undying fame. With his six hymns, Callimachus was apparently the first poet to make extensive use of the Homeric hymns and to revive them as a genre. He did so, I think, because, first of all, they suited his aesthetic program: they were pleasing in their limited size and lack of epic bombast, yet they could be viewed as genuinely “Homeric.”4 Their use as a model would permit Callimachus to turn the Homeric tradition to productive use without trying to rival it, for here he would find those aspects that were less known, atypical, unfaded. Hans Herter has aptly called this the desire to be, “in the footsteps of Homer, as un-Homeric as possible” (1929: 50 ⫽ 1975: 371). What is more, Callimachus conspicuously uncoupled the genre from its original task and, in so doing, made what I consider a programmatic gesture. For whereas the evidence, both internal and external, suggests that such hymns previously functioned as prooimia (or preludes) to epic recitation and were unthinkable apart from epic performance (signaling in fact that this would shortly begin),5 the Hellenistic poet—counter to those expectations—simply dropped the epic sequel as inconsistent with his aesthetic goals and made the hymn stand on its own, a selfcontained and independent genre—“as un-Homeric as possible,” though still “in the footsteps of Homer.” Second, and even more important for the question of voice, these hymns provided the only “Homeric” model 34 The Scroll and the Marble 2. For the date of the Homeric hymn, cf. Burkert 1979: 59–62; on that of Callimachus’ hymn, cf. Williams 1978: 2, 36 ad v. 26. 3. For its influence on, e.g., Callimachus’ hymns to Artemis and Delos, cf. Bing 1988: chap. 3 passim; Bing and Uhrmeister 1994. 4. Thucydides (3.102) and Pindar (Pae. 7b ⫽ fr. 52h Snell-Maehler) considered the Homeric Hymn to Apollo to be genuinely Homeric (cf. Bing 1988: 104–5), and similar hymns were evidently part of the rhapsodic tradition of the Homeridai, who—as their name suggests— situated themselves squarely in the Homeric tradition as if they were his heirs. 5. On the Homeric hymns as prooimia, cf. Richardson 1974: 3...