BMCR 2004.10.01, Petropoulos, Eroticism in Ancient & Medieval

J.C.B. Petropoulos, Eroticism in Ancient and Medieval Greek Poetry.
London:  Duckworth, 2003.  Pp. xiv, 206; pls. 13.  ISBN 0-7156-2985-9.
GBP 45.00.

Reviewed by Vayos J. Liapis, Universite/ de Montre/al
(vayos.liapis@xxxxxxxxxxxx)
Word count:  5030 words
-------------------------------

This book is less ribald than its title might suggest but every bit as
exciting. "Exciting" in this context means that readers will certainly
find here a lot that is admirable, and also a fair amount that is
objectionable. But even those parts of the book that may raise some
eyebrows (including this reviewer's own) will nonetheless whet
appetites and provide welcome food for thought.

J.C.B. Petropoulos (hereafter P.) sets out to study the persistence in
time of erotic elements occurring in ancient, medieval and also
(despite the book's title) modern Greek folk poetry, or in literature
that arguably exploits folk material. This book (which has grown out of
the author's Oxford D.Phil. thesis, carried out under the supervision
of Sir Kenneth Dover) has therefore a diachronic intent. It aims at
reconstructing what the author sees as a continuous tradition of Greek
erotic poetry by comparatively examining literary manifestations of
love motifs, themes, images or formal devices, and by attempting to
extrapolate from these specimens a number of features which he
identifies both as popular and as characteristically Hellenic. The
time-scale of this study is a vast one, ranging from Homer and Sappho
through classical, Hellenistic, late antique and medieval authors to
modern Greek folk songs. The works or passages cited are chosen from a
variety of literary, social or ritual contexts: nuptial songs, both
popular and sophisticated; symposia; funerary themes both in literature
and on inscriptions; rhetorical handbooks; etc. The book's greatest
merit lies in its author's commendable industry: P. has meticulously
assembled a vast array of primary material, sometimes from the most
obscure sources, which he presents in English translation. He has even
taken the considerable trouble of unearthing valuable material from
unpublished collections of Modern Greek folk-songs in the Folklore
Archives at the Academy of Athens. For this, above all else, he is to
be warmly congratulated and thanked. In addition, despite occasional
gaps, P. has an admirable knowledge of secondary literature. Whenever
objections arise, it is mainly with regard to his sometimes
inconsistent methodology and his occasional tendency to strain the
evidence.

Despite the seemingly far-reaching title, P. wisely restricts himself
to the treatment of four select topics, or case-studies, explored in an
equal number of chapters: "Nuptial Praise" (pp. 10-48), "Nuptial Blame"
(pp. 49-60), "Harvest Imagery and the Motif of the Apple" (pp. 61-73),
and "Popular Amatory Wishes" (pp. 74-85). A prologue entitled
"Problems, Sources and Strategies" (pp. 1-9) expounds briefly the
theoretical problems attaching to any study of Hellenic literature that
implies diachronic "continuity". (Since "continuity" is a term
admitting of multiple interpretations, it must be stressed here that
for P. "'continuity' does not even remotely imply immutability, but
instead continuous ... re-handling and, in some cases, diversification
of features through time" [p. 16].) A brief epilogue (pp. 86-88)
presents conclusions. A large part of the book (pp. 89-177) is taken up
by auxiliary material (testimonia, addenda, appendixes, notes). There
is a twenty-page bibliography (pp. 179-198) and a fairly detailed index
(pp. 199-206). There are also thirteen plates hors-texte, which in my
view add very little to the argument.

Chapter I, entitled "Problems, Sources and Strategies", duly presents
the book's aim and the methodological problems associated therewith. In
the author's words, the book aspires to trace "by means of diachronic
comparison and analysis ... the main historical connections between a
number of putatively popular or sub-literary motifs, images and even
formal devices which occur in ancient Greek poetry, and seemingly
identical or analogous motifs, images and formal devices found in
medieval and modern Greek popular poetry" (p. 1). The main problems
inherent in such an enterprise are suggested by the use of "putatively"
and "seemingly" in the above quotation. As P. demonstrates, our direct
evidence for popular songs -- at least until the 19th century, when
systematic collection of folk-songs was attempted for the first time --
is extremely sparse; in practically every case, popular material has
come down to us through the intermediary of middle- or high-brow
sources.[[1]] Aside from the fact that literate intermediaries
regularly attempt to 'ennoble' their popular material according to
classicizing standards, rummaging through written sources of all
periods in a quest for folk elements entails the risk of begging the
question: namely, of treating such-and-such an element as "popular"
simply because it conforms with the researcher's pre-conceived notions
of what "popular" is. Moreover, as P. well demonstrates (pp. 1-9),
learned and popular literary forms mutually osmose in complex ways.
Thus, typically middle-brow channels, such as the liturgical or
homiletic tradition, have exerted an incalculable influence on folk
literature, while (as P. is well aware, p. 140 n. 46) written sources
may even give rise to new types of folk song or other forms of popular
entertainment.[[2]] Greek literature, especially in the Middle Ages,
affords quite a few examples of this complex interaction: the Alexander
'romance', for instance, albeit drawing occasionally on popular
material, started life as a purely literary composition; subsequently
it ramified into a kaleidoscopic variety of redactions and
translations, which were sometimes absorbed by folk legend (not only in
Greece but also e.g. in Persia) and even by such forms of popular
entertainment as shadow puppet-theater. An analogous process is
probably to be posited for the medieval Greek narrative of "Dighenis
Akrites", and (as P. points out on p. 5) for V. Cornaros' early
17th-century verse romance "Erotokritos", which not only drew on
popular material but also influenced folk poetry by means of its
chap-book editions.

The above considerations, however, should not -- and in P.'s case do
not -- lead to excessive pessimism as to the recoverability of folk
material from literate sources. We are today possessed of a body of
Modern Greek folk songs that is both large and diverse (geographically
and chronologically), and in many cases has been collected and edited
on sound methodological principles. Such songs may serve as a valuable
control: when a given theme, motif, or formal feature occurs in the
later tradition of "demotic" songs, this may in principle be taken as
an indication that the occurrence of the same or a comparable feature
in earlier high-brow literature is due to popular influence. In this
respect, P.'s study would have been infinitely more useful if he had
included an even larger sample of Modern Greek folk material than he
already does -- not only songs, but also folktales, proverbs, and
suchlike (examples of such additional material are given below, as
occasion arises). P. has also unaccountably omitted to consult standard
collections of Modern Greek popular songs, such as those edited by
Jannaris, Legrand, or Lu+deke.[[3]]

In Chapter II ("Nuptial Praise"), P. sets himself the task of
demonstrating that hymeneal praise (often phrased in erotic terms) is a
diachronic feature of the Greek wedding, and that the original
(popular) nuclei of nuptial encomia can be retrieved by means of
systematic comparison between literary and folk manifestations of the
genre (given the aforementioned literary osmosis between plebs and
clergy). Discussion of the relevant material is preceded by a
methodological section in which P. rehearses with greater specificity
and subtlety his warnings about the often inextricable web of
interrelations between the learned and the popular: folk-song not only
inspires high-brow literature but is equally subject to influence both
from literary versions of wedding encomia and from the rhetorical
collection and arrangement of nuptial laudatory topoi, especially as
codified in manuals of preliminary rhetorical exercises
(progymnasmata); the latter could seep down even to the illiterate
mainly through Church hymnography and homiletic literature. This
methodological section is followed by a morphological classification of
hymeneal encomiastic forms (simile, metaphor, makarismos, salutatio,
comparison to mythical exempla, antiphonal question and answer etc.);
for each of these formal features P. tries to make a case for its
origins from folk poetry or ritual and magical practices. This section,
despite its occasional overfastidiousness (e.g. it is doubtful whether
metaphor is to be sharply divorced from allusive address), cannot but
command admiration for the author's mastery of the most diverse
material and is of obvious use as a collection of primary sources that
are often hard to get by.

The chapter's most engaging part is its final section, in which P.
explores the diachronic persistence of select nuptial encomiastic
themes in Greek literature (exclamation, nature imagery, gold and
silver imagery, mythic exemplum, makarismos), and attempts to identify
the often diverse modalities of their survival. Readers will find here
a wealth of interesting, well-documented, lucidly presented remarks on
e.g. the evolution of the semantics of bird-imagery as a symbol of the
feminine in Hellenic literature; or on the Christian Church's varying
attitudes toward the use of wreaths in weddings -- a practice bitterly
contested by early apologists as a relic of sympotic revelry (P. omits
what is perhaps the most virulent of those attacks, namely Clement of
Alexandria, Paedagogus 2.8, esp. 71.1 [p. 112 Marcovich]), but accepted
by later Church Fathers as a symbolic prize for the newlyweds'
quasi-athletic victory over temptation. Of special interest here is the
section on the cypress motif as a persistent feature of Greek wedding
praise. Here, P. ably demonstrates that from the time of Sappho
onwards, comparing a youth (male or female) to a cypress has been an
encomiastic topos with distinct erotic connotations. P. is aware that
this comparison occurs in funeral contexts (cf. the passages he cites
on p. 35), but misses what is perhaps the most characteristic and
extensive of them all, namely Theodoros Prodromos' epitaph for
Theodora, Nicephorus Bryennius' daughter-in-law, in which this
remarkable 12th-century litte/rateur intertwines plant-imagery, nuptial
motifs, and of course funerary themes.[[4]] Given that the cypress
motif features prominently also in modern Greek folk songs that combine
nuptial and funeral themes (the most celebrated of which is the song
known as "Slender Maid and Charon", <greek>TH=S LUGERH\S KAI\ TOU=
*XA/ROU</greek>),[[5]] it might have been profitable if P. gave an
overview of the interconnection of wedding and mourning, which is of
course well known from Attic tragedy. P. could have been greatly aided
in such an overview by Guy Saunier's fundamental study (which became
widely available three years ago) of Modern Greek wedding songs with
funeral themes.[[6]]

As P. is aware, his major methodological challenge in this chapter is
to establish that parallelisms between ancient and later wedding-songs
are positive indications of continuity rather than universals likely to
appear in practically any wedding-song in any culture. To this purpose,
he proposes two methodological controls, namely (i) to detect
undeniable traces of continuity in ancient and modern wedding rituals
involving nuptial song of praise, and (ii) to map out the nexus (if
any) of morphological features that distinguish popular Greek
wedding-praise from its non-Greek counterparts. In employing control
(i), P. rightly extends his enquiry to pictorial evidence rather than
limiting himself to the written sources. Still, he is on occasion
overly prone to rely entirely on iconography, even straining the
evidence afforded thereby, while overlooking important literary
testimonies. Thus, after giving a good picture of Modern Greek wedding
songs that dwell on the bride's physical beauty, her attire, her
jewellery, or her rich dowry, P. is anxious to find comparable evidence
amongst ancient Greek sources too. To this end, he makes decidedly too
much of a 435/430 BCE Attic red-figure pyxis (reproduced as Plate
2),[[7]] which depicts a mythologized scene of wedding preparations
with Nereids as protagonists. In spite of P.'s assertions (p. 11), I
can see no evidence whatsoever on this vase for song accompanying the
ritualized action. P.'s straining of the pictorial evidence is all the
more perplexing, since there is one item of ancient literary evidence
that provides the crucial missing link that P.'s belaboured
argumentation is at pains to establish. This is Sappho fr. 44 Voigt,
which ostensibly narrates the legendary wedding of Hector and
Andromache, but is likely to have come from a wedding song celebrating
a real-life wedding by implicitly comparing the newlyweds to their
mythical counterparts -- a well-known feature of nuptial praise for
which P. gives ample documentation (pp. 20-21).[[8]] Sappho's poem
contains, inter alia, explicit mentions of the makarismos of the couple
("equal to the gods", ll. 21, 34), of collective songs of praise for
the newlyweds (ll. 24-34), and, most importantly for P.'s argument, an
admiring description of Andromache's sumptuous dowry (ll. 8-10).

P. is honest enough to admit that it is often impossible to designate a
particular motif or theme as popular or literary. Time and again (e.g.
pp. 29, 30, 33), we hear that such-and-such motif or formal feature or
theme is just as likely to be due to popular influence as to rhetorical
amplification. When all is said and done, a diachronic study of nuptial
motifs reveals inextricable complexities in the interrelation between
the popular and the learned, complexities suggesting that "a vicious
circle of multiple 'contamination'" (p. 16) and cross-contamination
between the two levels has been at work for centuries.

In chapter III ("Nuptial Blame"), P. begins with an anthropological
interpretation of ritualised nuptial blame -- a quintessentially
popular nuptial motif --, in which he mainly follows Evans-Pritchard,
Radcliffe-Brown, and (for the Greek world) Seaford. According to this
convincing explanation, nuptial blame is one of the safety valves
intended to release, in a safe and controlled manner, accumulated
tension, even aggression, between the two parties brought in contact by
means of the wedding. As such, nuptial blame appears to be the ritual
flip-side of nuptial praise, which P. had interpreted in Chapter II as
an acculturating device aimed at socially validating the crudely sexual
basis of the wedding. The rest of the chapter is devoted to an
examination of two prominent themes of nuptial skommata, namely "The
bumbling bridegroom" and "Negative ecphrasis and the motif of the randy
hag". The complementary nature of these motifs is instantly apparent:
the clumsy or ignorant bridegroom fails his social role by not being
predatory enough, while the lecherous crone oversteps the boundaries of
her own position by being exceedingly predatory. P. makes a good case
for the persistence of both themes through time. The former he is able
to trace (with a good deal of intelligent conjecture) from Sappho down
to Choricius in the 6th century CE. He also adduces, hesitantly, a
12th-century satirical epithalamium by Theodoros Prodromos, in which
the motif of the bumbling bridegroom is applied, mockingly, to an
overaged, impotent husband, while his young bride is compared inter
alia to a rose, "king of flowers". As is evident, this song combines
both encomiastic and skoptic elements, and is therefore examined both
in Chapter II as testimonium TF1 (pp. 34-35) and in the present chapter
as TF11 (pp. 52-54). In both instances, P. is uncertain about the
degree of Prodromos' indebtedness to folk motifs, although he does
produce some arguments in favour of its closeness to vernacular song.
He would have been more assured had he not missed two crucial pieces of
relevant evidence. Prodromos' comparison of the bride to a rose, with
the specification that the rose "reigns among flowers", does admittedly
reek of learned influence, especially since this very motif's locus
classicus (missed by P.) is found in as sophisticated an author as
Achilles Tatius 2.1.2-2.1.3 (Leucippe sings the praise of the rose as
"king of flowers", but she herself is just as lovely as a rose).
However, the motif is in all likelihood a popular one: P. need have
looked no further than N. Politis' widely available edition of Modern
Greek folk songs to find an erotically flavoured (self-) encomium of
the rose as the best of flowers.[[9]] What is more, as regards the
motif of the bumbling bridegroom, Prodromos' dialogue with folk
tradition would have been better illuminated by a comparison to that
anonymous, undatable but probably late Byzantine satire "That an Old
Man Should not Marry a Young Girl",[[10]] in which the motif of the old
and unresponsive bridegroom is self-evidently a central one. As for the
latter of the motifs examined in this chapter ("negative
ecphrasis/randy hag"), P. offers a persuasive, if necessarily
fragmentary, reconstruction of its history, tracing relevant
testimonies from modern folk songs through the Middle Ages back to
Archilochus' physically oriented invective and to Aristophanes'
sex-crazed beldames. One would wish to add here at least one important
piece of evidence, namely the memorable image of the old hetaira as a
decrepit ship in Anth. Pal. 5.204 (Meleager). Also, attestations of the
inverse motif, namely of the aged woman who is both erotically
available and still attractive, could have been used here as
additional, e contrario evidence of continuity: cf. e.g. Anth. Pal.
5.13 (Philodemus), 5.62 (Rufinus). In conclusion, what this chapter has
shown is not so much that a certain type of motif can be traced back to
a common origin (few would nowadays uphold this all-too-restrictive
concept of "continuity"), but rather that there is a finite corpus of
traditional material, drawn upon both by popular and by learned
literature.

In Chapter IV ("Harvest Imagery and the Motif of the Apple"), P.
provides copious evidence for the stock comparison of young people to
plants, flowers or fruits, which he convincingly traces to popular
usage. He also examines in great detail the complementary motif of an
"aorothanatos" youth as a flower or fruit withered or plucked by Death.
As usual, P. offers here a wealth of literary and epigraphic evidence,
which will be valued greatly by students of literature and ritual
alike. He also has extremely interesting remarks on the ambidextrous
nature of this motif, which is attested both in marital and in martial
contexts: a 'deflowered' virgin may be actually likened to a plucked
flower, but also Ares may be said to 'reap' or 'shear' the military
youth as one might cut off a flower. Here, both phallic penetration and
battlefield ravaging are viewed as essentially parallel acts of
aggression: Aphrodite and Ares are not after all as odd bedfellows as
one might have thought. Although P.'s argumentation is no doubt
compelling, one feels that he would have had a much firmer documentary
basis for his analyses had he used the indispensable study on the
"aorothanatoi" by Ve/rilhac.[[11]] Moreover, P.'s specific argument
that <greek>TRUGA/W</greek>, "harvest (as if) a grapevine", has sexual
connotations of defloration as early as Aristophanes (Pax 1342-43) it
seems to me to overstate the case. The Aristophanic Chorus' desire to
"harvest" (<greek>TRUGH/SOMEN</greek>) Trygaios' bride, although it
certainly plays on the traditional image of the nubile woman as a fruit
to be reaped, may not reflect actual popular usage in the time of
Aristophanes and is more likely to be intended as a pun on his
bridegroom's name, Trygaios. It is surely not an accident that
<greek>TRUGA/W</greek> in the sense posited by P. does not occur again
before the 6th century CE, and its wide attestation in medieval and
modern Greek poetry is probably due to the influence of the Biblical
image of nubile persons as grapevines or vineyards (cf. e.g. Cantic.
1.6, 1.14, 7.9). In other words, while the image of nubile girls as
flowers to be plucked or fruits to be reaped is a frequent one, it
seems never to have taken in classical sources the specific form of a
grapevine to be harvested.

The chapter concludes with an attempt to trace the "unbroken pedigree"
(p. 60) of yet another erotic motif, namely the comparison of a nubile
girl to an apple. Predictably, P. starts his investigation with Sappho
fr. 105a Voigt, and meticulously follows the motif, in its varied
manifestations and transformations, through Hellenistic and
middle-Byzantine down to Modern Greek sources. Little doubt will remain
after P.'s persuasive exposition that the bride-as-apple motif is
indeed a fundamentally popular one and that its learned treatments are
but variations on a distinctly folk theme. The only thing which I find
objectionable here -- and this does not by any means affect the central
argument -- is that P.'s interpretation of the aforementioned Sappho
fragment relies, like that of several editors, solely on Himerius'
Oration 9.16 (p. 82 Colonna). The Sapphic fragment runs, in effect,
thus: "[the bride is] like a sweet-apple that is ripening/has grown
ripe (<greek>E)REU/QETAI</greek> admits of both translations) on the
topmost branch of the apple-tree, an apple neglected by apple gatherers
-- no, not neglected, it was simply beyond their reach". According to
Himerius, Sappho suggests here that the bride, like an apple that has
remained unreachable to those attempting to gather it while still
unripe, has safeguarded her chastity by making herself erotically
available only to the one who had the prudence to 'harvest' her at the
proper time. P. even gives an ingenious anthropological twist to
Himerius' interpretation: the implicit praise of the bridegroom's
restraint as opposed to his antagonists' impatient raucousness is meant
to assuage pre-marital anxiety on the bride's part and also to divert
her residual hostility against male aggressiveness as represented by
those (fictive or actual) suitors. The foremost difficulty with this
interpretation is that it misses the point of the epanorthosis in ll.
2-3 of the Sapphic fragment: "no, not neglected, it was simply beyond
their reach". The epanorthosis does not make sense, unless we assume
that the apple-simile here is a device intended discreetly to brush off
the delicate subject of the bride's advanced age. Remarkably, in a
number of Modern Greek folk songs (surprisingly disregarded by P.), an
unwed girl past her prime is compared to an over-ripe apple that is
bound either to wither away or to be pecked by birds.[[12]] Indeed, in
one of these songs the girl movingly asks for her bed to be made
outdoors, in a garden, so that she may be strewn with the flowers and
apples that she would have normally received on her wedding day.

In Chapter V ("The Wings of Desire: Popular Amatory Wishes"), the
book's concluding chapter, P. sets out to examine examples of (mostly)
fantastic, unrealizable amatory wishes, and to trace their survival
from ancient sympotic poetry down to Modern Greek demotic songs. These
wishes he subdivides into two main groups, namely the "would that I
might become X" type and the "I wish I had X, Y and Z" type. The former
type is nicely exemplified in a couple of archaic skolia (PMG 900, 901
Page), in which the male narrator wishes that he were a piece of golden
jewellery so that he might be worn by a beautiful woman, or an ivory
lyre so that he might be carried by chorus boys. With regard to these
songs P. rightly insists, against e.g. Bowra, that they are "frankly
amatory and unserious" (p. 75).[[13]] Still, he befuddles his own
argument when he compares these skolia to a wholly different type of
wish, in which the desire expressed is, by contrast, entirely realistic
and fulfillable. At any rate, the rest of the chapter contains much
that is of value. I should single out for special mention P.'s minute
analyses of the morphology of "would that I might become X" wishes both
in ancient and in later and modern Greek (verbal modalities, syntactic
patterns etc.), bringing out fascinating parallelisms which are too
detailed and subtle to summarise here but will certainly repay close
study. Still, I find rather hair-splitting the distinction that P.
proposes between wishes conjoining two independent optative clauses on
the one hand ("would that I might become X and would that I might Y"),
and wishes consisting in a principal clause and a subordinate final one
("would that I might become X, so that I might Y"): what is the point
of such a distinction? At the risk of being diagnosed by BMCR readers
with terminal peevishness, I venture to make here yet another
suggestion, one of a more general import: P. should not have shied away
from drawing additional comparative material from contemporary Greek
popular (and 'pop') songs, in which the male narrator variously wishes
that he were a golden button on his beloved's dress (a motif occurring
already in a demotic song published in 1881, cf. P.'s testimonium
TG66), or a breeze of air so that he could sneak into the woman's bosom
(an almost exact parallel for Anth. Pal. 5.83 which P. quotes as
TB17[2]!), or a vine so that he could lean over his belle as if over
the balcony of a three-storey building.

One feature that makes this book less user-friendly than it could have
been otherwise is its format. While, as pointed out more than once in
this review, P.'s collection of primary sources is a stunningly rich
one, he has decided to relegate his testimonia inconveniently to the
last quarter of the book rather than incorporate them into his main
text. These testimonia are not consecutively numbered, so as to
facilitate localization, but rather designated by letters from A to G
according to their approximate date (A is for archaic and classical, B
for Hellenistic etc.), and then numbered consecutively within each
letter. A generous amount of cross-referencing between testimonia
certainly does little to alleviate the reader's aggravation, not to
mention the several pages of addenda, appendixes and, most
exasperatingly, endnotes that are sandwiched between testimonia and
bibliography. What is more, some testimonia (p. 96 TA35(b); p. 119
TF17) consist only of references to ancient authors, with no actual
text quoted; worse still, in at least one case (p. 96 TA40), the
testimonium consists of a mere bibliographical reference to "M. Alexiou
(1974), 232 n. 16"! Things would have been simpler if P. had chosen the
efficient format adopted by R. Hamilton in his Choes and
Anthesteria:[[14]] testimonia, consecutively numbered, are quoted in
translation at the appropriate point in the relevant chapter, while an
appendix groups together the testimonia (again, with consecutive
numbering) in the original Greek.

Speaking of which, it should be emphasised that P. presents his Greek
sources solely in English translations (with very few exceptions).
Thus, readers who wish to form their own ideas of the original Greek or
to check the accuracy of P.'s renditions will experience considerable
inconvenience in doing so -- and they will find this impossible when it
comes to unpublished folk-songs stored in slip form at the Academy of
Athens Folklore Archives. From a random sample I was able to spot a few
instances of mistranslation, especially in Modern Greek dialect texts.
Thus, in the skoptic song from Pontos that P. quotes as testimonium
TG43 (p. 115), one finds lines 3-4 translated as: "Her teats (vulg.)
[are] squash, they bang, take the [?]". This gibberish results from
misunderstanding the Pontic original: <greek>TA TSITSI/' AT'S
KOLOGKU/D</greek>(<greek>E</greek>)<greek>A, KROU/G'NE PAI/R'NE TA
SAGA/N</greek>(<greek>E</greek>)<greek>A</greek>, which means "her
(i.e. the bride's) breasts are [large like] pumpkins, they crash
against the griddles and sweep them away". Evidently, a fantastically
big-chested bride is envisaged here, who cannot make a step without her
breasts bumping on the cooking utensils that hang around (one may
compare here Modern Greek traditions about the monstrous Lamiae, who
have breasts large enough to use them as oven-cleaning
equipment.)[[15]] Another dialect song is mistranslated on p. 112,
namely a Cypriot nuptial encomium (P.'s testimonium TG32), in which the
performer, having compared the bride to a "slender cypress", addresses
to her the following words: <greek>EGU/REUKA/ SE 'POU TZIAIRO/N TZI'
HU/RA SE DKIALEME/NON</greek>. P. translates "I was looking for you for
a long while and now I've found you alone"; however,
<greek>DKIALEME/NON</greek> does not mean "alone" but 'choice' (adj.),
'select'. The bride addressed here is slender as a cypress, and
'exquisitely' so.

There are unfortunately quite a few misprints. Some of them will hardly
disrupt the flow of the text, but others (especially those involving
cross-references) are likely to cause confusion. Here is a selection
from both groups: "<greek>C</greek> for <greek>Z</greek> (p. xii);
"your" for "my" (p. 8 bis, reproducing a typo in the Greek original);
"Plate 2))", remove second bracket (p. 11); "simlar" for "similar" (p.
17); "TF5c" for "TF8c" (p. 17); "TE3.7" for "TE3.17" (p. 38); "TA8a"
for "TA8b" (p. 39); "princesss" for "princess" (p. 45); "toinde" for
"toionde" (p. 46); "TB16" for "TB1.16" (p. 47); "consesquently" for
"consequently" (p. 55); "it as if" for "it is as if" (p. 66);
"entendere" for "entendre" (p. 68); "TG3" for "TG47" (p. 68); "B12" for
"TB12" (p. 70); "c. 85" for "c. 585" (p. 101); "in Wuensch" for "by
Wuensch" (p. 143 n. 25); "and religious", remove "and" (p. 153);
"TA27-9" for "TG27-9" (p. 155); "TA28.2" for "TG28.2" (p. 155);
"Chionates" for "Choniates" (p. 155); "TA1.1731-42" for "TA18.1731-42"
(p. 157); p. 158: delete n. 264; "Catamyomachia" for "Catomyomachia"
(p. 164); "sukologoutes" for "sukologountes" (p. 168 n. 34); "e^tholon"
for "e^thelon" (p. 175 n. 83); "Pha+eth." for "Phae+th." (p. 184);
"kirygmnatos" for "kirygmatos" (p. 189); "ellinkou" for "ellinikou" (p.
194); "Diosynisiakoi" for "Dionysiakoi" (p. 196); "Voight" for "Voigt"
(p. 197).

I have pointed out above, as occasion arose, that P., despite his
meticulous research, has missed some important sources, both primary
and secondary. Here I wish to add a book of the utmost importance,
which P. has surprisingly overlooked, although it clearly constitutes
by far the most exhaustively documented and judicious general study of
the ancient Greek wedding: A.-M. Ve/rilhac & C. Vial, Le mariage grec
du VIe sie\cle av. J.-C. a\ l'e/poque d'Auguste [BCH Suppl. 32], Athens
1998.

To conclude: this book's foremost virtue lies in its impressive mastery
of literary sources from all periods and all registers of Greek
literature. It insightfully combines generally sound philology,
literary appreciation, and anthropological arguments into a remarkable
synthesis aimed at throwing fresh light on a field of study that is
still worthy (and in need) of serious research. It is elegantly
written, its arguments are generally presented with great lucidity, and
its author is admirably explicit about his methodology and
exceptionally honest about the problems involved in its application.
Such shortcomings as have been pointed out in this review are certainly
annoying, and it would be highly desirable to have them corrected in a
second edition, but they do not substantially detract from the book's
overall value. If used with reasonable care, this work will make an
essential guide for the understanding of Greek amatory and nuptial
poetry, and will provide a very useful foundation for studies in
related fields. For this reason I should recommend it to all students
of Hellenic literature and culture.[[16]]


------------------
Notes:


1.   In this connection, it should be pointed out, however, that P. has
missed at least one sample of medieval (12th cent. or earlier) popular
song whose intent is probably erotic, perhaps coarsely so. This is the
enigmatic line <greek>TA\ XE/RIA TOU= KLWSTO/MALLOU NA\ QA/YOUN TH\N
TZERDE/LLAN</greek>, preserved by Tzetzes (comm. Ar. Nub. 966, IV.2 p.
599 Holwerda). See B. Baldwin's learned and eloquent exposition in
Glotta 69 (1991) 137-39.

2.   A striking modern example is offered by the sensational newspaper
reports of the gruesome murder of a certain D. Athanassopoulos in 1931,
reports which gave rise to popular songs and shadow-theatre
performances. See S. Spatharis, <greek>A)POMNHMONEU/MATA KAI\ H( TE/XNH
TOU= KARAGKIO/ZH</greek>, 4th ed., Athens 1992, 117-119.

3.   A.N. Jannaris (Jeannaraki), Kretas Volkslieder nebst Distichen und
Sprichwo+rter (Leipzig 1876); E. Legrand, Chansons populaires grecques
publie/es avec une traduction franc,aise (n.d.); H. Lu+deke,
<greek>E(LLHNIKA\ DHMOTIKA\ TRAGOU/DIA</greek> (Athens 1943).

4.   Critical edition: P. Gautier (ed.), Nice/phore Bryennios: Histoire
[Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae. Series Bruxellensis 9]. (Brussels
1975) 355-367, esp. lines 24-60 (pp. 358-59 Gautier).

5.   See N. Politis, <greek>E)KLOGAI\ A)PO\ TA\ TRAGOU/DIA TOU=
E(LLHNIKOU= LAOU=</greek> (Athens 1914) no. 217.

6.   See G. Saunier, <greek>E(LLHNIKA\ DHMOTIKA\ TRAGOU/DIA: SUNAGWGH\
MELETW=N</greek> (1968-2000) (Athens 2001) 403-559.

7.   London, Brit. Mus. E 774 = J.D. Beazley, Attic Red-Figure
Vase-Painters (2nd ed., Oxford 1963) 1250 no. 32 (Beazley Archive
Database Record No. 216969). There are excellent reproductions of this
vase both in the online Beazley archive and in J.H. Oakley & R.H.
Sinos, The Wedding in Ancient Athens (Madison 1993) figs. 32-35, with
detailed description on pp. 18-19.

8.   For Sappho fr. 44 as an epithalamion see E. Contiades-Tsitsoni,
Hymenaios und Epithalamion (Stuttgart 1990) 102-109, with full
doxography and discussion. P. himself, in a different connection,
accepts that fr. 44 "is likely to be hymenaeal" (p. 166 n. 2), or even
more categorically that it is one of Sappho's "wedding-poems in
dactylic metre" (p. 61). P. should have also discussed this fragment in
his sections on the "mythic exemplum" as a modality of wedding praise
(pp. 20-21, 39-45).

9.   Politis, op. cit. in above, n. 5, p. 237 no. 232.

10.   <greek>PERI\ GE/RONTOS NA\ MH\N PARH KORI/TSI</greek>, edited by
G. Wagner, Carmina graeca medii aevi (Leipzig 1874) 106-111.

11.   A.-M. Ve/rilhac, <greek>PAI=DES A)/WROI</greek>: Poe/sie
fune/raire, 2 vols. (Athens 1978-1982).

12.   D.Ch. Settas, <greek>EU)/BOIA: LAI+KO\S POLITISMO/S</greek>, vol.
I (Athens 1976) p. 215 no. 204; also, Politis, above n. 5, no. 112.

13.   I have myself argued in favor of an erotic interpretation of
these and other skolia in Eranos 94 (1996) 111-122 (not cited by P.).
Some further bibliographical additions with regard to skolia: K.
Fabian, E. Pellizer & G. Tedeschi (eds.), <greek>OI)NHRA\
TEU/XH</greek> (Alessandria 1991); G. Lambin, La chanson grecque dans
l'antiquite/ (Paris 1992); H. Fabbro (ed.), Carmina convivalia attica
(Rome 1995).

14.   R. Hamilton, Choes and Anthesteria: Athenian Iconography and
Ritual. Ann Arbor 1992.

15.   Cf. N.G. Politis, <greek>MELE/TAI PERI\ TOU= BI/OU KAI\ TH=S
GLW/SSHS TOU= E(LLHNIKOU= LAOU=</greek>: <greek>PARADO/SEIS</greek>,
vol. I (Athens 1904) no. 819.

16.   I wish to extend my warmest thanks to the Department of Classics,
University of Cincinnati, for a Margo Tytus Summer Residency
Fellowship, thanks to which I was able, among other things, to do the
research necessary for this review. Thanks are also due to my colleague
Professor Benjamin Victor for valuable remarks on an earlier draft.