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402 Classical Quarterly 61.2 402–411 (2011) Printed in Great Britain doi:10.101

402 Classical Quarterly 61.2 402–411 (2011) Printed in Great Britain doi:10.1017/S0009838811000346 IN BETWEEN POETRY AND RITUAL JOSÉ MARCOS MACEDO IN BETWEEN POETRY AND RITUAL: THE HYMN TO DIONYSUS IN SOPHOCLES’ ANTIGONE (1115–54) It may be said that the ideal of reciprocity between gods and mortals underlies ancient Greek religious practice and permeates most of its hymns. And an ideal it is indeed, for a number of rhetorical strategies employed by the hymnic poet are in fact an attempt at transforming an unequal relationship, in which humans are subordinated to gods, into a relationship of coordination, characterized by the mutual exchange of essential goods: in the case of hymns, praises in the form of word and song are exchanged for divine favours and gifts. One creates, as it were, a fictitious scenario in which there exists between deity and worshipper a link of reciprocal benefit by means of the offered hymn.1 In the hymnic diction, it is not unusual for the poet to ask the deity whether he or she could lend his or her favour to the hymn he is singing, the present object of his devotion, and, by means of this very object, he counts himself devoutly fit to worship the godhead whose help he is requesting. In so far as the worshipper focusses on his own hymn and devotion for better propitiating the deity,2 many hymns are characterized by a clear progression from the universal to the particular, from the timeless to the here and now, from myth to performance in the dynamics of their composition. Let’s see how this works in a hymn of great refinement, the hymn to Dionysus corresponding to the fifth stasimon of Sophocles’ Antigone. 1 On the idea of reciprocity in Greek religion and in its hymns, see R. Parker, ‘Pleasing thighs: reciprocity in Greek religion’, in C. Gill, N. Postlethwaite and R. Seaford (edd.), Reciprocity in Ancient Greece (Oxford, 1998), 105–25; J.M. Bremer, ‘The reciprocity of giving and thanks- giving in Greek worship’, in ibid., 127–37; and C. Calame, ‘Variations énonciatives, relations avec les dieux et fonctions poétiques dans les Hymnes homériques’, MH 52 (1995), 2–19, at 11–12 (‘Contrats de réciprocité’). See also R.L. Hunter, Theocritus and the Archaeology of Greek Poetry (Cambridge, 1996), 73: ‘Power, particularly when it is power over us, is an uncomfortable poetic subject, because praise of the powerful can never be simply praise – it always contains a recognition of our vulnerability and an attempt to protect that vulnerability by “buying off” the powerful with praise.’ 2 A few words on the distinction between hymn and prayer might not be unsuitable here. The divide between them is admittedly fluid, but one may say, as does S. Pulleyn, Prayer in Greek Religion (Oxford, 1997), 43–55, that prayers spoken or sung by individuals are petitions addressed to a deity that refer to a libation, a votive object or a sacrifice offered in the present or the past, or else to be offered in the future, whereas hymns are offerings that carry in them- selves the ability to generate χάρις, serving as a sort of negotiable commodity in the hope of obtaining some future favour, or as a thanksgiving for some past benefit. The distinction, in sum, is best sought in terms of function, not external characteristics such as music, metrics or length: a prayer is a request that offers a further act of devotion (sacrifice, etc.), whereas the very content of a hymn sung by a community – its carefully wrought language, music and dance – is a means of gaining the god’s goodwill, offering laudatory words in place of sacrifice. On the verbal strategies of hymnic poets, see W.H. Race, ‘Aspects of rhetoric and form in Greek hymns’, GRBS 23 (1982), 5–14; W.D. Furley, ‘Praise and persuasion in Greek hymns’, JHS 115 (1995), 29–46; W.D. Furley and J.M. Bremer, Greek Hymns (Tübingen, 2001), passim. IN BETWEEN POETRY AND RITUAL 403 Creon, having being severely reprimanded by Tiresias, has just departed from the scene, firmly intent on making up for the injustice he committed by preventing Polynices’ burial and arresting Antigone. Precisely at this point the chorus sings an ode to Dionysus:3 πολυώνυμε, Καδμείας στρ. α νύμφας ἄγαλμα 1116 καὶ Διὸς βαρυβρεμέτα γένος, κλυτὰν ὃς ἀμφέπεις Ἰταλίαν, μέδεις δὲ παγκοίνοις Ἐλευσινίας 1120 Δηοῦς ἐν κόλποις, ὦ Βακχεῦ, Βακχᾶν ματρόπολιν Θήβαν ναιετῶν παρ ̓ ὑγρὸν Ἰσμηνοῦ ῥέεθρον, ἀγρίου τ̓ ἐπὶ σπορᾷ δράκοντος. 1125 σὲ δ̓ ὑπὲρ διλόφου πέτρας ἀντ. α στέροψ ὄπωπε λιγνύς, ἔνθα Κωρύκιαι στείχουσι Νύμφαι Βακχίδες, Κασταλίας τε νᾶμα. 1130 καί σε Νυσαίων ὀρέων κισσήρεις ὄχθαι χλωρά τ̓ ἀ- κτὰ πολυστάφυλος πέμπει ἀμβρότων ἐπέων εὐαζόντων Θηβαΐας 1135 ἐπισκοποῦντ̓ ἀγυιάς. τὰν ἐκ πασᾶν τιμᾷς στρ. β ὑπερτάταν πόλεων ματρὶ σὺν κεραυνίᾳ· νῦν δ̓, ὡς βιαίας ἔχεται 1140 πάνδαμος πόλις ἐπὶ νόσου, μολεῖν καθαρσίῳ ποδὶ Παρνασίαν ὑπὲρ κλειτὺν ἢ στονόεντα πορθμόν. 1145 ἰὼ πῦρ πνεόντων ἀντ. β χοράγ̓ ἄστρων, νυχίων φθεγμάτων ἐπίσκοπε, Ζηνὸς γένεθλον, προφάνηθ̓, ὦναξ, σαῖς ἅμα περιπόλοις 1150 Θυίασιν, αἵ σε μαινόμεναι πάννυχοι χορεύουσι τὸν ταμίαν Ἴακχον. You of many names, glory of the Cadmean bride and offspring of deep-thundering Zeus, you who care for famous Italy and rule in the hospitable recesses of Eleusinian Deo, O Bacchus, dwelling in Thebes, the mother-city of the Bacchants, by the watery flow of Ismenus and over the seed of the savage dragon; You the flashing, smoky flame saw over the twin-crested rock, where the Corycian Bacchic nymphs come, and the Castalian stream (saw you), and you the ivy-covered slopes of the 3 Text according to H. Lloyd-Jones and N.G. Wilson, Sophoclis Fabulae (Oxford, 1990). 404 JOSÉ MARCOS MACEDO Nysaean mountains and the green shore of many grape-clusters send, while immortal cries of euai are heard, a supervisor of the ways of Thebes, Which of all cities you, together with your mother whom the lightning killed, honour most. So now, since the whole city is in the grip of a violent sickness, come with cathartic foot over the Parnassian slope or the groaning strait. Hail, chorus-leader of the fire-breathing stars, master of the voices of the night, child born of Zeus, appear O king with your attendant Thyiads, who in their frenzy dance through the night for you, the steward Iacchus.4 The hymn maintains from the dialogue that precedes it the high emotive tension and translates it into the pious hope that, once Dionysus is present, the imminent catastrophe will be prevented at last. The poet’s strategy lies in making Dionysus’ universal power, as revealed at his different sites of devotion, flow to one and the same point, Thebes, where the deity’s cosmic nature becomes transparent in this one place – his chosen city. It is under the sign of multiplicity that the hymn opens up with the invocation: πολυώνυμε. But what comes next is far from being a sequence of epithets, as for instance in Philodamus’ paean to Dionysus, another hymn in which the god appears as a healing deity and which begins with an outpouring of epithets and cultic titles: ‘Lord Dithyrambus, Bacchus, god of cries, Bull, with ivy in your hair, Roarer’ (Διθύραμβε, Βάκχ̓ ε[ὔιε, Ταῦρε κ]ι̣σ̣σ̣ο̣χαῖτα, Βρόμιε). In fact, nowhere is Dionysus addressed or referred to by his own name; the poet’s point is to divulge the geographical comprehensiveness of his power. After a brief genealogical men- tion of his parents, Semele and Zeus,5 there follows a catalogue of sites that the god keeps under his authority (Italy, Eleusis, Thebes) in an ascending sequence culminating in the chorus’s native city.6 During this crescendo, which is a rhetorical 4 Translation by S. Scullion, ‘Dionysos and katharsis in Antigone’, CA 17 (1998), 96–122, at 97–8, with slight modifications. 5 The opening line (πολυώνυμε, Καδμείας) puts in a nutshell, in two contiguous words, the pattern by which the whole hymn will abide: from the multiple to the specific, from the many names to one name only, Cadmus, who apart from being Semele’s father is eponymous of Thebes’ citizens, οἱ Καδμεῖοι. The hymn starts with the sequence ˘˘ˉ˘˘ˉ, but πολυώνυμε, Καδμείας νύμφας ἄγαλμα is, according to A. M. Dale, The Lyric Metres of Greek Drama (Cambridge, 1968), 191, n. 3, ‘a dicolon ˘˘ˉ˘˘ˉˉˉ|ˉ|ˉ˘ˉ|˘ in which one double-short has con- tracted to accommodate the proper name’. Thereby Καδμείας receives a mild stress, with its three longs contrasting with the anapaestic opening. 6 A number of conjectures have been put forward to replace Ἰταλίαν 1119. R.D. Dawe, Studies on the Text of Sophocles (Leiden, 1978), 116, declares himself surprised that ‘Italy should be named alongside Thebes (1115), Eleusis (1120), Thebes again (1122), the river Ismenus (1124), a cave on Mt. Parnassus (1127), a stream at Delphi (1130), Nysa in Euboea (1131), and lastly Thebes again (1135)’. He thus suggests Οἰχαλίαν, arguing that ‘since Euboean sites are only mentioned once in the list, that area ought perhaps to be strengthened’. See also K. Förstel, Untersuchungen zum homerischen Apollonhymnos (Bochum, 1979), 396, n. 394, for whom the description ‘gains autonomy’ halfway through the catalogue: ‘Nachdem in der konventionellen Form der relativischen Anknüpfung Dionysos Walter über uploads/Geographie/ macedo-2011-in-between-poetry-and-ritual-1.pdf