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Becoming the Lyre: Arion and Roman Elegy

2017; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 50; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/are.2017.0010

1080-6504

Lauren Curtis,

Historical and Literary Studies

Becoming the Lyre:Arion and Roman Elegy* Lauren Curtis In this essay, I investigate the figure of the Greek poet Arion in Roman elegy, in a case study that reconsiders how musical imagery relates to the representation of genre in Latin poetry. Arion, the legendary Greek singer who was miraculously rescued by a dolphin thanks to the beauty of his music and song, was a well-known figure at Rome. He is mentioned by Cicero and Virgil; Marcus Cornelius Fronto, writing in the second century c.e., even devoted a short monograph to his life.1 Yet as I argue, it is in Augustan elegy that the story of Arion finds its most detailed and complex exposition. In Propertius 2.26A, a poem in which the speaker imagines his beloved suffering a shipwreck, she is miraculously saved by the same Dolphin that rescued Arion's lyre. At the beginning of Fasti 2, Ovid narrates the tale of Arion to explain the constellation of the Dolphin, who is elevated to the heavens for rescuing the poet (2.79–118). What makes Arion such a potent figure in Roman elegy? Arion played a mythical and historical role in the early development of Greek [End Page 283] lyric, a role represented especially by his symbolic lyre. It is precisely this persona, I propose, that allows Propertius and Ovid to reflect on the nature of their poetry. Arion is not the only archetypal poet available to Roman writers as they define their own voice: Orpheus and Amphion, for instance, are also prototypical singers who appear frequently in Roman poetry. But unlike other mythical figures of song, Arion comes to embody not just poetry writ large but, more specifically, the complicated and interconnected relationship between lyric and elegy. My essay begins in Hellenistic Alexandria, uncovering the earliest traces of Arion's story in what survives of Greek elegy. In an epigram by Posidippus from the third century b.c.e., Arion is already emblematic of the generically marked relocation of lyric into elegy in the context of court poetry for the Ptolemaic queen Arsinoe II. I then examine Propertius and Ovid in turn, arguing that they both read Posidippus and draw on his strategies for defining an elegiac persona in dialogue with the lyric figure of Arion. For Ovid, Propertius's love poetry also provides a further layer of allusion. Arion, the quintessential lyric poet, helps elegists articulate, through an allusive poetics, their transferal of a first-person poetic voice from lyric to elegy. At the same time, Arion is a flexible figure who also embodies the divergent and innovative ways in which Propertius and Ovid understand their relationship with elegy. For Propertius, Arion is involved in expressing the relationship between Cynthia and his poetry, and thus the possibilities in Roman elegy for expressing literary concerns in erotic terms. For Ovid, Arion returns as a figure who heralds not erotic elegy but public calendar poetry. For both poets, the figure of Arion is deeply involved in affirming the underlying affiliation of the elegiac genre with the poetics of commemoration that may be tied to Arion's own act of dedication after his rescue by the dolphin. ARION AND HELLENISTIC ELEGY According to the oldest and most detailed version of the story in Herodotus, Arion was an archaic Greek poet from Methymna on Lesbos.2 Herodotus characterizes him as one of the most renowned kitharodes of the time [End Page 284] (κιθαρῳδὸν τῶν τότε ἐόντων οὐδενὸς δεύτερον, Hdt. 1.23), having made his fame in the court of the tyrant Periander of Corinth. He was not just an excellent performer, but also an innovator in the history of melic poetry: Herodotus distinguishes him as the inventor of the dithyramb, which he composed, named, and taught at Corinth (καὶ διθύραμβον πρῶτον ἀνθρώπων τῶν ἡμεῖς ἴδμεν ποιήσαντά τε καὶ ὀνομάσαντα καὶ διδάξαντα ἐν Κορίνθῳ).3 During a sea voyage from Tarentum back to Corinth, Arion was set upon by pirates greedy for the wealth he had amassed. Arion requested to play one last concert before being put to death: on the ship's deck, in full kitharodic regalia and accompanied by his kithara, he played a melodic song that Herodotus characterizes as the orthios nomos and threw himself into the sea. He was promptly saved by a dolphin who...