- Introduction to "Moralizing Strategies in Early Greek Poetry"
Moralizing, in the sense both of didactic advice and of reflection on received wisdom, is a prevalent feature of ancient Greek literature. Didactic poetry was a long-established genre, first known to us from Hesiod, though with much older roots, but elements of didacticism are important to small-scale non-hexameter poetry, whose performance function is often explicitly to guide or advise its audience. The symposium, for example, encouraged reflection on shared values as a mechanism for bonding the hetaireia, and some surviving sympotic poetry (most notably the Theognidea) contains overt advice on issues such as friendship and politics. Yet moralizing strategies are found in poetry whose aim is not simply to tell its audience how to live their lives, and a core aim of the conference on which this volume is based was to explore ways in which early Greek poetry uses implicit moralizing within a broader poetic framework. In other words, we are interested in exploring how moralizing is embedded in poetry whose overt goal appears to be something different (including, for example, entertainment, storytelling, or the expression of blame). The term "moralizing" may also imply a straightforward lesson for the audience, yet early Greek poetry often complicates any such "message" even as it gives it, and a further aim of the collection is to think about the status of the moral advice embedded in the performance. To what extent is direct advice questioned or undermined? How far can the audience trust the narrator and his or her perspective?
One area of particular interest in the collection is the difference between explicit and implicit moralizing, and how the advice given by the two can be reconciled. This question is discussed in detail in Michael Sampson's article, which gives several examples of how explicit statements are undermined by the progression of a poem. Thus, Semonides' famous diatribe against women (fr. 7W) opens with what appears to be a clear introductory gnōmē suggesting that women are both other and diverse, but Sampson argues that the truth of this statement fluctuates over the course of the poem and becomes ultimately ambiguous. Throughout his article, Sampson suggests that the [End Page 3] strategies poets use to embed their morals, such as comparanda and exempla, make a single interpretation impossible, and challenge the idea that the moral explicitly stated is the one that the audience should take away. Chris Carey's article on blame poetry considers the relative impact of direct and indirect moralizing, noting that, contrary to what one might expect, explicit attack is rare, because of its limited ability to involve the audience or retain their attention and support. Direct appeals to morality do occur (as in Archilochus frr. 172–173W, where Lycambes is criticized for his transgressions), and where they do they are usually highly conventional and accept the prevailing value system, in order to direct blame away from the poet–narrator. However, criticism can also be offered indirectly, in the guise of restraint or an attempt to speak supportively. Carey discusses this strategy with reference to Archilochus' Cologne Epode (fr. 196aW), where the girl addressed in the poem is praised, yet the depiction of her serves an invective purpose. Both Chris Carey and Laura Swift see this indirect form of criticism operating within the biographical tradition of Sappho's brothers. Carey argues that Sappho's avowed aim (restoration of her family's stability) is at odds with later descriptions of her abuse of her brother Charaxus, while Swift notes the disjunction between Sappho's narratorial tone in the Brothers Poem (P. Sapph. Obbink 1–20) and the rhetorical effect of her statements. Sappho's apparent trust in the young Larichus is undercut by her implied criticism of his failure to "raise his head" and protect his family, which invites the audience to question why he has not yet fulfilled his duty as a man. Similarly, the poem expresses optimism for Charaxus' return from his voyage as a means of drawing our attention to his failures and the chaos his family has been left in.
Another overarching theme of the collection is the relationship between...