Peirano-Autor-fedro-Ille Ego Qui Quondam On Authorial An Ony

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Ille ego qui quondam: on authorial

(an)onymity
Irene Peirano
As an institution, the author is dead: his civil status, his bio-

graphical person have disappeared; dispossessed, they no longer
exercise over his work the formidable paternity whose account
literary history, teaching, and public opinion had the responsi-
bility of establishing and renewing; but in the text, in a way,
I desire the author: I need his figure (which is neither his
representation nor his projection), as he needs mine (except to
‘prattle’) . . .
Roland Barthes (1975: 27)
THE PARATEXTUALITY OF THE AUTHOR
The wave of post-structuralist criticism of the subject’s ability to

control language has fundamentally discouraged the possibility of
accessing and reconstructing that ‘somewhat decrepit deity of the
old criticism’1—the author and his intentions. According to this
critical model, the rich polysemic plurality of language cannot be
pinned down to any definite meaning, transmitted from author to
reader, but is irreducible and subject to constant multiplication
through readers’ readings and rereadings. To borrow another of
Roland Barthes’ famous formulations, if in discourse ‘it is language
1
Barthes (1974: 211).
Comp. by: 200509 Stage : Revises1 ChapterID: 0001869541 Date:1/7/13
252 Irene Peirano

that speaks, not the author’, it is only inevitable that the focus of
criticism should shift away from the subject behind the text to the
text itself.2 At the centre of this model of authorship, then, there is
no longer the objectivity of the intention-bearing author, who
is for all intents and purposes unknowable, but the subjectivity of
the reader.3
But, as Michel Foucault has powerfully argued, the author is a
historical phenomenon that simply cannot be ignored.4 As Seán
Burke points out, albeit in different forms at different times, many
societies and cultures display a ‘passionate, sincere, and sometimes
savage interest in retracing a discourse to its author or producer’.5
This ‘structure of resummons’ is an enduring form of discourse which
must be examined in its historical specificity:6 the question, argued
Foucault, is no longer ‘who really spoke?’ but ‘what are the modes of
existence of this [authorship] discourse? Where has it been used, how
can it circulate, and who can appropriate it for himself?’7
The author, however, is not simply a cultural phenomenon in need
of an explanation; it is more specifically a textual category.8 For,
though ultimately he is only what readers make him to be, the author
is nevertheless a powerful and important hermeneutical tool in liter-
ary discourse.9 If the author is not a deus ex machina that exists
transcendentally outside of the text, if it is not his intentions that are
the real meaning of the text, the author is nevertheless an essential
function of readers’ understanding of it. Thus the reader is constantly
challenged and teased by the text to infer the identity and beliefs of
its creator.10 Reading, as Eco has argued, is eminently a process of
2
Barthes, ‘The death of the author’, in Burke (1995: 126).
3
Barthes, ‘The death of the author’, in Burke (1995: 129): ‘a text’s unity lies not in
its origin but in its destination’.
4
Foucault (1979).
5
Burke (1995: 285).
6
Burke (1995: 289).
7
Foucault (1979: 160).
8
Booth (1983) was groundbreaking in establishing not only the implied author
(the image of the author constructed by the reader) as distinct from the real author,
but also in outlining the literary mechanism—the rhetoric—through which such
an image of the author is constructed.
9
‘[T]he author is postulated as the agent whose actions account for the text’s
features; he is a character, a hypothesis which, if accepted provisionally, guides
interpretation, and is in turn modified in its light’ (Nehamas 1981: 145).
10
‘[O]ne of the most persistent ways in which both Roman and modern readers
construct the meaning of a poetic text is by attempting to construct from (and for) it
an intention-bearing authorial voice, a construction which they generally hope or
Ille ego qui quondam 253

conjecture, one in which meaning is created by constructing from the
text an authoritative voice to whose intention such meaning is
assigned.11 The author thus constructed is a figure of reading or
understanding that is activated to some extent in all texts.12 One
might say with Barthes in the quotation with which I opened, that
desire for the author (‘in the text . . . I desire the author’) is an essential
component of the wider structures of desire which animate the
reading process.13
The author’s name appears to be an especially suitable topic from
which to examine the hermeneutic function of the figure of the author
in reading and interpreting texts. For the signature is perhaps the
most visible and yet least examined mark of authorial presence. The
deceptive simplicity and ordinariness of the author’s referencing
of his own name, which Gérard Genette calls ‘onymity’, belies a
complex and far from obvious nexus of functions associated with
the author and revolving around issues of authentication, fiction,
genre, and reception.14 ‘The author’s name,’ writes Foucault in his
classic ‘What is an author?’, ‘is not . . . just a proper name like the
rest’.15 Far from being straightforward conveyers of factual infor-
mation, indications of authorship can be an essential element in
understanding the genre and meaning of a text: for example in
deciding whether a text is a work of fiction or an autobiography,
the reader looks to see if the ‘I’ who speaks is the same as the ‘I’ on the
cover of the book.16 Put differently, references to the author on the
margin of a text signify a pledge of responsibility for the content
which varies according to genre, and is most significant whenever, as
in the case of historical or autobiographical texts, the author himself
is part of the narrative. In these cases, the name of the author activates
believe (in a belief which must always be partly misguided) to be a reconstruction’

(Hinds 1998: 49); see also his discussion of intentionality in the discourse of classical
philology in that chapter; and Edmunds (2001: 19–21, 164–6).
11
Eco (1990: 44–63).
12
De Man (1979).
13
Brooks (1984).
14
Genette (1997: 39–40).
15
Foucault (1979: 146). Amid the vast bibliography on the question of the author,
I single out recent surveys by Bennett (2005), Irwin (2002), Burke (1995), and Pease
(1990).
16
Lejeune (1989).
254 Irene Peirano

an autobiographical pact, attesting to the credibility of the narrative
by virtue of its being the account of direct testimony or ÆPłÆ.17
Yet even when the author is not part of the narrative proper, these
deceptively straightforward references to his name do more than
supply factual information. Though he is as much part of a text and
of our understanding of it as the story itself, as Genette noted, the
name of the author is more precisely ‘paratextual’, straddling the text
and the world outside it.18 To further paraphrase Genette, the author
is both literally and metaphorically at the threshold of the text:
physically, he is often on the fringes of the text, his name appearing
as a signature at the beginning or end of the book in so-called
sphragides (çæÆªE, ‘seals’), or, in modern times, on the book
cover.19 Hermeneutically, however, the physically liminal figure of
the author very much controls our understanding of the work. Thus a
reader’s understanding of a text will always be tied to some extent to
its author’s name and identity: our perception of Shakespeare would
change dramatically ‘if we proved that Shakespeare wrote Bacon’s
Organon by showing that the same author wrote both the works of
Shakespeare and those of Bacon’.20 One’s view of Cicero would have
to be considerably altered if it were discovered that he wrote under
the pseudonym of Catullus, as would our picture of Catullus.
In this paper, I pursue further the question of the role of the author
in the reading process by investigating the hermeneutic function
performed by references to the author’s identity and their reception
as they pertain to two classical authors, namely Homer and Virgil. To
what end and in which manner do authors name themselves? How
does the author’s name influence the reading of the text or, to put it
differently, what is the relation between the signature and the main
text? What, if anything, can we learn about the figure of the author in
classical antiquity from ancient discussions of, and responses to, the
authorial self-identifications, or lack thereof, of Homer and Virgil?
17
On the relation between authorial self-naming and authentication in ancient
historiography see Marincola (1997: 270–5). On autopsia as an authenticating device
of narrative in general, see Nünlist (2009: 185–93).
18
Genette (1997: 2).
19
The practice of classical philologists of defining such authorial statements with
the Greek term çæÆª is explained by the occurrence of this term in a controversial
passage of self-identification by the archaic Greek poet Theognis which I explore on p.
pp. 262–3. For a comprehensive survey of such passages see Kranz (1961).
20
Foucault (1979: 146).

Though for the sake of comparison, I will make reference to other
authors such as Theognis, Hesiod, and Ovid, I choose to focus on
Homer and Virgil for two reasons. In the first instance, we possess
rich evidence of the ancient reception history of their texts which
allows us to trace important trends in ancient understanding of
claims to authorship. Second, as we will see, Virgil’s strategies of
self-identification can be seen to be influenced by, and therefore be
part of, the history of reception of the figure of the Homeric author,
forming a fascinating dialogue not only with the Homeric poems, but
also with their exegetical tradition and mediated through the reading
of Hellenistic poets.
In what follows, I therefore focus on this ‘structure of resummons’
to the authorial subject outside of the text and investigate what it
accomplishes both for the reader and for the author through select
case studies of ancient authorial signatures and their reception. First,
the signature, I suggest, has an obvious authenticating force: it lends
credibility, authority, and thus value to the narrative, particularly if
the author is already a known figure.21 Paradoxically, however, such
references to the authorial persona, which normally function as
authenticating devices, can also have the opposite effect of exposing
the text as ‘too real’, and thus as fake, as I show with reference to
ancient debates on Homeric and other authorial self-identification.
Homeric anonymity, however, is not necessarily to be equated with
‘non-onymity’: in response to Homer, Virgil, for example, signs the
Aeneid by way of self-citation in the song of Iopas on the heels of a
tradition of allegorical reading of the figure of Demodocus. Ultim-
ately, the fate of the authorial signature, now presented and received
as an indicator of truth and now exposed as an emblem of deception,
highlights the textuality of the author and its authenticating role as
one grounded in literary convention and implicated in the problems
shared by all acts of literary reference.
Second, I stress how the authorial signature acts as a temporal and
hermeneutic bridge between writer and audience, creation and fru-
ition, world and text, intention and reception. If the author is her-
meneutically on the threshold of text and world, instances of his
written name can be said to be temporally paratextual: while being
in the past from the point of view of readers, the signature retains the
21
Baudrillard (1981: 102–11) on signatures as conferring value to artistic objects.
256 Irene Peirano

appearance of authorial presence or in Derridean terms of a transcen-
dental form of ‘nowness’ (maintenance).22 Such authorial mainten-
ance is always proleptic, created and intended for the consumption of
readers in the future from the point of view of composition. Signa-
tures are thus primary foci for scenes of reception, allowing authors to
stage projected encounters with their audiences. Thus I explore how
in imagining their own reception, Homer and Virgil borrow from
genres such as epic and epigram which are vehicles of meditation on
topics such as memory, excellence, and immortalization.
EPIC (AN)ONYMITY
For many centuries, the history of interpretation of the texts of the

first authorial figure of western culture—Homer—has been a deeply
contested debate over questions of authorship and authority. What-
ever view one might take on the question of composition and written
transposition of the Homeric poems, it seems reasonably clear that
the Homeric author is better thought of not as a historical, real flesh
and blood composer and maker of a reconstructable Urtext, but as an
authoritative figure invoked to embody a specific tradition.23 Thus
one influential account asserts that ‘Homer’ never existed but was
rather a retrojected founding figure whom the first professional
Panhellenic performers invoked as the source of their songs and to
whom they claimed to be related to enhance their prestige. The
‘invention of Homer’ was instrumental in the process of transmission
of the Homeric texts throughout antiquity and into the present. One
such clan of performers was that of the Homeridai who claimed
descent from Homer himself and are described in ancient sources
22
‘[B]y definition, a written signature implies the actual or empirical nonpresence
of the signer. But, it will be said, it also marks and retains his having-been present in a
past now, which will remain a future now, and therefore in a now general, in the
transcendental form of nowness (maintenance)’ (Derrida 1982: 328). His essay ‘Sig-
nature, event, context’ is essential reading on the question of signatures and self-
naming.
23
See Nagy (1996: passim and 21), where he states his view that Homer is
‘retrojected as the original genius of epic’. Porter (2002) and Graziosi (2002),
following an earlier contribution by West (1999), are essential reading on the devel-
opment of the authorial persona of ‘Homer’. See also Beecroft (2010), and on
references to the biographical persona in early Greek poetry see Griffith (1983).

as coming from Chios, one of the poet’s putative fatherlands.24 The
rhapsodes developed a rudimentary discussion of Homeric biog-
raphy, presumably to boost the fame and appeal of their ancestor
whose works they claimed to be reperforming.25 Starting with the
figure of Homer, the evocation of the biographical persona of the
author is thus inextricably linked to a claim to authority of the text.
One of the earliest instances of recourse to the figure of Homer—
the sphragis in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo—already prefigures the
enduring relationship between the persona of the author, the value
and authority of the text, and its survival. In its present form, the
Hymn to Apollo consists of two parts, which focus respectively on
Delos and Delphi. The first section on Apollo of Delos refers to
a poetic Iª
on the island dear to the god in which local maidens
(v. 157 ŒFæÆØ ˜ÅºØ) sing hymns ‘remembering men and women
of old’ (160–1).26 The poet concludes the first half of the Hymn with a
reference to himself, asking his internal audience of Delian girls to
remember him as the ‘blind man who lives in rocky Chios’ (v. 172)
and as the singer whose songs ‘will be the best forever’ (165–76):
Iºº’ ¼ªŁ’ ƒºŒØ b
ººø
æ ØØ
,
åÆæ ’ E AÆØ· K E b ŒÆd ØŁ

ÆŁ’, › Œ
Ø KØåŁ
ø
I
Łæ ø
K
Ł’ I
æÅÆØ E
ÆºÆæØ KºŁ
·
‘t ŒFæÆØ, ’ h Ø
I
cæ lØ IØH
K
Ł øºEÆØ, ŒÆd ø fi æŁ ºØÆ’;
E ’ s ºÆ AÆØ Œæ
ÆŁ’ Pç ø·
‘ıçºe I
æ, NŒE b ø fi
Ø ÆØÆºfiÅ,
F AÆØ ØŁ
IæØıØ
IØÆ’.
E ’ æ
Œº Y
‹
K’ ÆrÆ
I
Łæ ø
æç ŁÆ ºØ s
ÆØÆ Æ·
ƒ ’ Kd c
ÆØ, Kd ŒÆd Kı
KØ
.
But now come, let Apollo be propitious together with Artemis; and hail
all you girls and remember me also in the future, whenever one of the
24
Acusilaus FGrH 2 F 2; Hellanicus FGrH 4 F 20, Strabo 14.1.35. On the Home-
ridai see West (1999: 366–72) and Graziosi (2002: 201–34).
25
See Plato Rep. 599e; Ion 530d; Isoc. Helen 65.
26
On the passage see Graziosi (2002: 62–6), Burkert (1979), and West (1975).
Whether the second section, which focuses on Apollo of Delphi, was originally
conceived as a separate poem and if so, how it was joined to the first one, remains a
subject of intense speculation (West 1975; Janko 1982: 99–132).
258 Irene Peirano

human beings who populate the earth comes here as a guest, after much
suffering, and asks: ‘Maidens, of those who come here, who in your
judgment is the sweetest singer, in whom do you rejoice most?’ Then
answer all together propitiously: ‘A blind man, he lives in rocky Chios,
and all his poems remain the best for times to come’. We will bring your
glory wherever on earth we will wander among the well-inhabited cities
of men. Surely they will believe me, since this is indeed the truth.
The two attributes—blindness and Chian origin—chosen to identify
the author suggest that the poet is here representing himself as
Homer whose blindness was probably known to Stesichorus (fr. 192
PMGF), and who is referred to as the ‘Chian man’ by Simonides
(fr. 19.1 West), but also as O Åæ[ in fr. 20.14 West from the same
poem, and later by Theocritus (7.47; 22.218).27 Certainly, this was an
interpretation shared in antiquity by several sources which identified
the blind man from Chios as Homer: this passage from the Hymn to
Apollo is the source of the anecdote, retold in the Contest of Homer
and Hesiod (315–21 Allen), according to which Homer recited the
Hymn at the very festival mentioned by the author and found so
much favor with his audience that the Delians kept a written copy in
the temple of Artemis. In the third book of the Histories, Thucydides
quotes two passages from the poem as evidence for the antiquity of a
Panionian festival held on the island of Delos, a tradition recently
revived by the Athenians in 426/5 BC (3.104), and identifies its author
as Homer. The identification of the author with Homer is in keeping
with the general tendency in antiquity to treat the Hymns as Homeric.28
This archaic sphragis and its reception history adumbrate many of
the issues associated with the function of the author’s name and
identity. First, the authorial self-identification is introduced as part
of the projected future reception of the poem and yet the drama of
reception staged in the passage is connected in interesting ways to the
narrative present of the poet’s performance. Most notably, the poet
depicts the stranger who is to enquire about the best poet in ways that
are very reminiscent of himself: the who comes in after much suffering
(v. 168 E
ÆºÆæØ) resembles the poet who ‘wander[s] among
27
On similar instances of antonomasia with poets’ names—the practice of refer-
ring to poets not directly through their names but through a periphrasis—see Farrell
(1991: 33–60, esp. 37–40 on this passage).
28
Allen, Halliday, and Sikes (1963: lxiv–lxxxii), and on the reception of the
Homeric Hymns in Hellenistic and Roman culture, see Barchiesi (1999).

the well-inhabited cities of men’ (v. 175).29 Both are obviously remin-
iscent of the Homeric Odysseus who is read as an autobiographical self-
projection of the Homeric author already in the Contest of Homer and
Hesiod, where the wanderings of ‘Homer’ are clearly modelled on those
of the Homeric hero.30 Moreover, the poet, who had earlier praised
the maidens for their superior skill at imitating the voices of men (vv.
162–4), here himself imitates and assumes the voice of both stranger
and Delian maidens.31 The poet’s injunction to the Delian girls to
remember him beyond the present moment (v. 166–7 K E b ŒÆd
ØŁ |
ÆŁ’) is also mirrored in the suggested response
which he puts in the mouth of his audience: the Delian girls are invited
to attest to the excellence of the poet ‘in times to come’ (v. 173
ØŁ
). This collapsing of present performance and future recep-
tion can be read as protreptic: by staging this drama of reception, the
poet invites his audience to recognize his excellence in the present
moment of the Iª
, the Delian festival which is given as the setting of
the poem in vv. 146–78.
In second place, the introduction of the poet’s person is a form of
self-advertisement which constructs ‘Homer’ as the recipient of the
epic glory (Œº) normally reserved for his heroes. The identity of
the poet thus enters the text as part of the author’s effort to configure
his work as authoritative discourse. The very narrative structure of
the passage, which is couched as a response to the enquiry of a
stranger, provides a vivid example of the way in which the allusion
to the authorial identity of the speaker is tied to self-advertisement
and survival. The poet proposes a poetic contract of sorts:32 in return
for the advertisement proffered by the Delian maidens, the poet will
29
E
ÆºÆæØ is a Homeric phrase (Od. 7.24 of Odysseus himself; 17.84;
19.379). Indeed, the manuscripts of Thucydides 3.104.5 read ÆºÆæØ ¼ºº
(‘another much suffering human being’), which would render the comparison be-
tween ‘Homer’ and the fictional questioning character even more explicit. See also vv.
190–1 where the sufferings of men (I
Łæ ø
| ºÅ
Æ) is the preferred subject
matter of song for the Muses and the gods.
30
Graziosi (2002: 138–63). The criterion of sweetness (v. 169 XØ) and pleas-
ure (v. 170 æŁ) as a measure of the excellence of song is also in the Odyssey:
13.80, 8.368.
31
Thus capitalizing on the centrality of mimesis in this passage, Nagy (1990:
375–6) reads the Delian maidens as images of the Muses.
32
See v. 166 EK E, v. 174 E æ
. See also Od. 8.497–8, where
Odysseus promises Demodocus that in exchange for him singing of the sufferings of
the Achaeans at Troy he will ‘declare to all mankind that the god has willingly granted
[him] the gift of divine song’ (ÆPŒÆ ŒÆd AØ
ıŁ ÆØ I
Łæ ØØ
, | ‰ ¼æÆ Ø
260 Irene Peirano

spread their Œº throughout the earth (v. 174 æ
Œº
Y
). This reciprocal exchange implicitly compares the Delian
girls’ allusion to the identity of the poet to the Œº which ‘Homer’
will confer on them.
It is therefore no surprise that the narrative configuration of the
passage in which the poet’s self-presentation is expressed not in his
own voice but rather focalized through secondary narrators—respect-
ively the stranger and the Delian maidens—has a strong affiliation
with epic, where different heroes embed imaginary speeches of an
anonymous figure (i.e. Ø KæØ / Ø Yfi ÅØ) in their own discourse.33
The embedded perspective of the anonymous voice is often used to
articulate the primary speaker’s fears and hopes as they pertain to how
his community will view his actions and character. It is thus no coinci-
dence that it is Hector, the hero who is most sensitive to his people’s
evaluation of his actions, who gets the highest share of such speeches—
five in total— in the Iliad.34 One, in particular, occurs in book 7 and is a
relevant parallel for the Homeric Hymn. Hector is challenging the best
of the Achaeans to come forward and resolve the stalemate in the war,
fighting a duel with him on condition that the body of the loser be
returned to his people and buried (84–91, trans. Fagles):
I will hand back his body to the decked ships. So the long-haired
Achaeans can give him full rites and heap his barrow high by the
broad Hellespont. And someday one will say, one of the men to come
( Ø YfiÅØ ŒÆd OłØª
ø
I
Łæ ø
), steering his oar-swept ship
across the wine-dark sea, ‘There’s the mound of a man who died in the
old days (I
æe b
B Æ ºÆØ ŒÆÆŁ
ÅH), one of the brave
whom glorious Hector killed (‹
’ IæØ
Æ ŒÆŒÆ
çÆØ
‚Œøæ).’ So they will say, someday, and my fame will never die. (u
Ø KæØ· e ’ K e
Œº h ’ OºEÆØ)
Hector here imagines an anonymous traveller (v. 87 Ø . . . OłØª
ø
I
Łæ ø
; cf. Hymn to Apollo 167 Ø KØåŁ
ø
I
Łæ ø
) ap-
proaching the Hellespont where the Greek hero defeated by Hector in
the proposed duel will be buried. The Trojan hero then delivers an
epigrammatic couplet focalized through the voice of the anonymous
æçæø
Łe þÆ ŁØ
IØ
). See further Miller (1986: 61–5) for discussion of
this poetic exchange in the Hymn to Apollo, and Griffith (1983: 45).
33
de Jong (1987) is a full-length study of Ø-speeches in the Iliad.
34
Il. 6.460–1; 6.480–1; 7.89–90; 7.301–2; 22.107: de Jong (1987: 76–9).

and celebrating the excellence (v. 90 IæØ
Æ; cf. v. 173
IæØıØ
in the Delian maidens’ reply) of the defeated warrior
and thus implicitly of his opponent. In both passages, the embedded
anonymous voice is used to dramatize the reception of the primary
speaker’s character and to emphasize the hope of future recognition
and the kind of memoralization (v. 91 Œº; Hymn to Apollo, 174
Œº) desired by epic heroes. In turn, the embedded speech is
reminiscent of epigrammatic epitaphs, a parallel already noticed by
the ancients (schol. bT ad Il. 6.460).35 Thus, though the genre of
celebration is epic, which is traditionally oral, being named is im-
agined and configured as a written experience: for already the em-
bedded quotation of the Iliad is composed in the style of funeral
inscriptions in a bold allusion by an oral medium to a written genre.
Thus, if the desire by the poet of the Hymn to Apollo to be
identified and remembered is in some ways framed as a heroic
gesture, it is appropriate that in his wish to be named, ‘Homer’ should
be echoing the words and behaviour of his hero, Odysseus, who
famously chose to name himself to Polyphemus as he departed
from the Cyclops’ land (Od. 9.502–5, trans. Fagles):
˚Œºøł, ÆY Œ
ŒÆÆŁ
ÅH
I
Łæ ø
OçŁÆº F YæÅÆØ IØŒºÅ

IºÆø
,
çŁÆØ OıBÆ ºØæŁØ
KÆºÆHÆØ,
ıƒe
¸Ææø, ŁŒfiÅ
Ø NŒ’ å
Æ.
Cyclop, if any mortal men shall ask you about the shameful blinding of
your eye, say that Odysseus, the sacker of cities, made it blind, the son of
Laertes, who has his home in Ithaca.
Just like Odysseus, ‘Homer’ imagines an anonymous person (v. 502
ŒÆÆŁ
ÅH
I
Łæ ø
Hymn to Apollo, 167 Ø KØåŁ
ø
I
Łæ ø
) posing a question (v. 503 YæÅÆØ Hymn to Apollo, 168
I
æÅÆØ) in the answer to which is embedded the identification of
the main speaker. The act of identifying oneself is not an innocent
gesture of self-expression; rather it manifests itself as a desire to be
remembered and proleptically enacted in the mode of discourse of the
genre with which remembrance of excellence is most closely associ-
ated, namely epic.36
35
Scodel (1992).
36
See Lissarrague (1994) for a comparable analysis of the framing of a painter’s
signature.
262 Irene Peirano

In a highly controversial passage, the sixth-century poet Theognis
cites a ‘seal’ (çæÅª) which will ensure the integrity of his poetry
(Å).37 Once this mysterious device is placed on the poems, no one,
he says, will be able to steal from the text or change it, and everyone
will recognize Theognis himself as its author (19–23):
˚æ
, çØÇ
øØ b
K d çæÅªd KØŒŁø
E’ Ø
, ºØ ’ h Œº
Æ,
P Ø IººØ ŒŒØ
PŁºF Ææ
·
z b A Ø KæE· ‘¨ª
Ø KØ
Å
F ªÆæø·
Æ b ŒÆ’ I
Łæ ı O
Æ.’
Kyrnos, let a seal be placed on the present lines by me as I practise my art,
and they will never be stolen without detection, nor will anyone substitute
something inferior for the good thing that is there. And so will everyone
say: ‘these are the lines of Theognis of Megara, named among all men.’
On the basis of this passage, it has long been conventional to refer to
closing authorial statements in Greek and Roman poetic texts in which
poets name themselves either directly as Hesiod does in the proem to
the Theogony (v. 22–4) and Timotheus in the Persians (PMG 791.229),
or indirectly by way of periphrasis as Bacchylides (Ep. 3.96–8) does, as
sphragides, a practice which I have followed in this paper.38 Though
the term is a convenient label, Theognis never specifies what the seal
entrusted to protect the integrity of the text actually is, leaving gener-
ations of readers to puzzle over the meaning of these lines. It is hard not
to think that the poet is here, if nothing else, teasing the audience to
take his name as the elusive seal by the very narrative structure in which
the mention of the name is couched. For having just announced that a
seal must be laid upon (v. 19 KØŒŁø) his words, he proceeds to
incorporate or place upon his verses a quotation in the mouth of a
future anonymous member of his audience; the embedding of the
author’s name in the main text via the incorporation of this external
voice mimics the laying of the external seal onto the text.39
37
On this much disputed text see Edmunds (1997), Ford (1985), and Woodbury
(1952).
38
This extended usage of the word is practical but possibly historically inaccurate:
it is in fact uncertain whether the sphragis, which is mentioned by the second-century
grammarian Pollux (4.66) as the sixth part of the citharodic nomos, is actually a
signature at all (Edmunds 1997: 30–2).
39
The parallel is so compelling that it led some scholars to think that Theognis is
advertising a physical seal to be placed on his poems (Cerri 1991).

This embedded self-identification is a trope that will by now be
familiar: the poet’s identity is proffered not by the poet himself
directly but by an anonymous collective figure (A Ø) in the style
of Homer’s displaced celebration of his heroes in the embedded
epitaphs uttered by his characters. Being named (O
Æ) once
again takes the form of being celebrated in epic discourse—
Æ b
ŒÆ’ I
Łæ ı in itself being a Homeric formula.40 This interpret-
ation is further reinforced by the play between the two basic meanings
of O
Æ (and Z
Æ) as ‘named’ (and ‘name’) and ‘renowned’
(and ‘renown’).41 It is literally the name which is the glory. Self-
naming is not a value-free activity; on the contrary, it evokes and
arrogates the cultural capital of the genre through which memory and
celebration are enacted.
When Ovid wanted to allude to his potential for more elevated
poetry in the last poem of the Amores, it is to the model of embedded
epic sphragis that he turned as he imagined the anonymous reaction
of a visitor to the Paelignian region, his homeland (3.15.7–14):
Mantua Vergilio, gaudet Verona Catullo;
Paelignae dicar gloria gentis ego,
quam sua libertas ad honesta coegerat arma,
cum timuit socias anxia Roma manus.
atque aliquis spectans hospes Sulmonis aquosi
moenia, quae campi iugera pauca tenent,
‘Quae tantum’ dicat ‘potuistis ferre poetam,
quantulacumque estis, vos ego magna voco.’
Mantua rejoices in Virgil, Verona in Catullus; let me be called the glory
of the Paeligni who were compelled by their love of freedom to take
honourable arms, when anxious Rome feared her allied troops. And let
some guest, looking at the walls of Sulmo, rich in water, which occupy
but a small area of land, say, ‘You who could beget such a great poet,
small though you are, I call you great.’
40
Il. 10.212–13 ªÆ Œ
ƒ ıæ
Ø
Œº YÅ |
Æ K’ I
Łæ ı; Od.
1.299, 19.334, 24.94 (see n. 41).
41
See Od. 24.93-4: S f b
Pb ŁÆ
g
Z
’ þºÆ, Iºº Ø ÆNd |
Æ K’
I
Łæ ı Œº ÆØ KŁº
, åØººF. The same ambiguity exists in Latin and is
exploited by the poets: see Feeney (1986) on Lucan 1.135; Virgil, Aen. 6.776 haec tum
nomina [great names] erunt, nunc sunt sine nomine [name] terrae. Cf. 2.558 sine
nomine corpus; Ovid, Rem. 389 magnum iam nomen habemus.
264 Irene Peirano

The anonymous guest sets up a contrast between the poet and his
native city: small though the city might be, it is nevertheless to be
celebrated as great for having begotten such an outstanding poet.
Lurking behind the comparison of the poet to a building is the
widespread metaphor of the poetic text as an opus—a word which
encompasses the products of both physical and poetic workman-
ship.42 If the physical opus of the walls is in some sense a symbol of
the poetic opus of the Amores, the small size of the native region (v. 12
campi iugera pauca) can be read as a reference to the refined small
scale of elegy, and in fact the switch from elegy to tragedy is an-
nounced as a move to a physically larger space (3.15.18 pulsanda est
magnis area maior equis). The reference to the poet’s native land as a
marker of identity is traditional, but the presentation of the Pae-
lignian people in martial terms echoes the Propertian sphragis to
book 1, which similarly closes the book by giving the poet’s birthplace
in response to the enquiry of the book’s dedicatee.43 Another Proper-
tian passage, the first poem to book 4, similarly evokes the compari-
son of the text to the monument exploited by Ovid and does so
through an external focalizer (65–6):
scandentis quisquis cernit de uallibus arces,
ingenio muros aestimet ille meo!
Whoever sees the citadels climbing up from the valleys, let him judge
the walls by my genius!
Propertius and Ovid both relate their fame as poets through the
observation (v. 65 cernit; Am. 3.15.11 spectans) of an anonymous
visitor stumbling on the sight of the city’s walls, a physical monument
which triggers reflection on the monumentality of their poetic out-
puts. While the visitor in Propertius remains unknown (quisquis), his
poem is itself addressed to a hospes (4.1.1 hoc, quodcumque uides,
hospes, qua maxima Roma est) visiting the city of Rome. The address
to the stranger is an epigrammatic move but one mediated through
the epic tradition, since Propertius’ tour of Rome is meant to evoke
Evander’s encounter with Aeneas in Aeneid 8, where the epic hero
42
opus, referring to the collection, is the last word of the book: Am. 3.15.20 post
mea mansurum fata superstes opus (the poetic monument outlives the poet); cf. Am.
Ep. 2 hoc illi praetulit auctor opus.
43
1.22, esp. v.5 cum Romana suos egit discordia ciues Am.3.15.10 cum timuit
socias anxia Roma manus.

is also addressed as a hospes (Aen. 8.188) visiting the future site
of Rome.44
The embedded focalizer is an epic gesture used by Ovid in other
critically placed poems to stage instances of reception of his work (Am.
2.1.7–10; 3.1.19–20; 2.10.37–8), but the poet gives it a further spin in
this passage by turning the anonymous into a guest reminiscent of the
focalizer of Homeric Œº in the Hymn of Apollo.45 The contrast
between the smallness of the land and the greatness of the poet is
also one familiar from the epigrams on Homer’s homeland, a series of
which is found at the beginning of book 7 of the Greek Anthology and
which feature a similar opposition in infinite variations.46 Whether or
not Ovid’s aliquis hospes in Am. 3.15.11 gestures to the E
in the
sphragis in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, it is safe to say that he, just like
Propertius, has used the Homeric model of embedded sphragis to mark
the shift to a higher register:47 in the case of Propertius, it is aetiological
elegy on national themes (4.1.60 hoc patriae serviet omne meae). For
Ovid, the area maior is taken to be Tragoedia, which was announced as
the competitor to Elegia in the first poem of book 3, and which is here
implied through Ovid’s allusion to Dionysius and his thyrsus.48 Yet
Tragoedia herself is in many ways reminiscent of epic in her vocabulary
and aspirations, and Ovid’s choice of Virgil and Catullus (v. 7 Mantua
Vergilio gaudet Verona Catullo) seems to isolate two opposite poetic
modes of Virgilian epos and Catullan deliciae (v. 3 nec me deliciae
dedecuere meae Cat. 2.1 passer, deliciae meae puellae). Ovid’s higher
inclinations are confirmed not only by his use of the epic -tis/aliquis
embedded focalizer, but also by the epic register of his self-presentation
in v. 8: Paelignae dicar gloria gentis ego. The monumental expression,
which occupies a line, is an epic calque on the Greek expression ŒF
åÆØH
, suggesting that Ovid is here arrogating for himself the im-
mortality afforded by epic to its heroes.
44
Hutchinson (2006: 62) ad 4.1.1.
45
Cf. AA 3.7 dixerit e multis aliquis with Gibson (2003: 90) ad loc in the context of
epic allusion; McKeown (1998: 8) Ad Am. 2.1.7–10 aliquis iuuenum . . . dicat calls this
a formula ‘with a strong Homeric pedigree’.
46
E.g. AP 7.1.7–8 ‹Ø ŒŒıŁ | ÆØc, ıø
IæÆ ŒÆd Ææø
7.4.3–4 N
OºªÅ ªªÆıEÆ
å
I
æÆ
B, | c ŁÆ ÅØ.
47
Hutchinson (2006: 194–6).
48
Cf. 3.1.23–4 tempus erat thyrso pulsum grauiore moueri; | cessatum satis est:
incipe maius opus 3.15.17–18 corniger increpuit thyrso grauiore Lyaeus; pulsanda est
magnis area maior equis.
266 Irene Peirano

THE NAME OF HOMER
Surviving ancient testimonia of the reception of the sphragis in the

Hymn to Apollo offer a unique opportunity for tracing some of the
potentials and limitations of this authorial self-identification. As
I mentioned above, Thucydides cites two passages from the Hymn:
first he quotes vv. 146–50, stating that ‘Homer ‘makes very clear
(ÅºE b ºØÆ O Åæ) that this [ie. the ancient origin of the
festival] was the case in the following lines [146–50] from the Hymn
(æ Ø
) to Apollo’ (3.104.4). Having established that the Panio-
nian festival is at least as old as the Homeric Hymn, Thucydides
implies that Homer himself participated in the poetic competition
at the festival and gives as proof the lines containing the authorial
self-identification (3.104.4–6):
That there were also competitions of music and that the men resorted to
competing there, he also makes manifest (Æs ÅºE) in these verses of
the same hymn: for having celebrated the chorus of Delian women, he
concluded his praise with these lines [165–72], in which he also men-
tioned himself (K
x ŒÆd ÆıF K
ŁÅ). With such statements
Homer has given proof (ÆFÆ b
O Åæ KŒ Åæø
) that there
was a great meeting and festival even in ancient times.
It is noteworthy that the second quotation is ostensibly introduced to
prove that the festival involved musical competition. The presence of
music and poetry, however, was already corroborated by the first
passage which cites the Ionians delighting among other things in
song (IØ). Yet the second citation containing the sphragis can be
seen to fulfil a further, more subtle, though no less important aim,
enhancing the credibility of the Hymn as a source by presenting it as
the work of Homer. Just as the Hymn functions as proof
(KŒ Åæø
) of the version of events endorsed by Thucydides, so
‘Homer’’s mention of himself (K
x ŒÆd ÆıF K
ŁÅ) functions
as proof of authorship of the Hymn.49 The Hymn, and with it the
historian’s narrative, gains further credibility as a source through the
reference to the lived experience of its putative author. It is important
49
On the language of proof in Thucydides, see Hornblower (1987: 100–7).
Œ æØ
/ Œ Ææ ÆØ is repeatedly used by Thucydides of his own deductions
based on solid evidence (1.1.1), including the evidence of Homer’s text (1.3.3), as
opposed to fabulous imagination (1.21.1).

to consider briefly the context in which the reference to the author’s
name is scrutinized and exploited. Homer is not any poet but the
poet: because of his high standing, he can be appealed to as a witness
to lend authority to espoused truths. The appeal to the authenticating
force of his name is directly related to a particular approach to his text
as a store-house of information. As E. M. Forster argued in an
important essay on literary anonymity, words that are thought to
convey information are the ones that more typically necessitate a
signature: ‘information is supposed to be true. That is its only reason
for existing, and the man who gives it ought to sign his name, so that
he may be called to account if he has told a lie.’50 The name of Homer
thus enhances the value of the text beyond its internal fictional
universe to reach out to the world of the audience.
In a curious twist, however, this authorial self-reference, which in
the reading offered by the historian authenticates the poem, had a
diametrically opposite effect for other readers. In explaining the
poet’s reference to the rhapsodes as ‘singers of stitched verses’
(Nem. 2.1–2), a scholium to Pindar Nemean 2 (Scholia in Pind.
Nem. 2.1c Drachmann = FGrH 568 F 5) attributes to the Hellenistic
historian Hippostratus the claim that Cynaethus, a prominent
member of the clan of rhapsodes which called themselves Homeridai,
and his fellow clan members composed many verses and inserted
them into Homer’s work (ººa H
KH
ØÆ
Æ K ÆºE
N
c
ˇ æı ÅØ
).51 The scholium continues: ‘this Cynaethus
came from a Chian family and of the poems that bear Homer’s
name, it was he who wrote the Hymn to Apollo and laid it to his
credit’ ( ˙
b › ˚
ÆØŁ E, n ŒÆd H
KØªæÆç
ø
ˇ æı
ØÅ ø
e
N ººø
Æ ªªæÆçg o

I
ÆŁØŒ
ÆPfiH).
Whether the poem and the signature passage were indeed the work
of Cynaethus, the presence of these lines in the Hymn can be ex-
plained as arising from a desire to ‘authorize’ the text with a reference
to Homer and thus to enhance its perceived value and chance of
survival.52 The sphragis passage in the Hymn to Apollo, which in
50
Forster (1951: 81).
51
On the scholium see West (1999: 367–72) and Burkert (1979).
52
The Homeridai are accused of forging Homer’s text already by Plato: see
Phaedrus 252 b–c, where the philosopher denounces the ‘stored away verses’
(IŁø
KH
) attributed by the Homeridai to Homer as forgeries.
268 Irene Peirano

Thucydides supports the poem’s attribution to Homer, caused Hip-
postratus and subsequent readers to suspect forgery.
Biographical self-referencing acts in effect as a double-edged
sword: the ‘signature’ is needed for audiences to validate the author-
ship of the text and enhance its value. Yet in the case of Homer,
anonymity may well have appeared as more authentic and ‘onymity’—
the practice of signing oneself in the text—suspiciously anachronistic.
Thus ‘onymity’ was singled out as a distinctive feature of the Hesiodic
as opposed to the Homeric persona by Velleius Paterculus, according
to whom Hesiod gave testimony of his fatherland and parents lest he
should end up in the same predicament as Homer (1.7.1: qui vitavit,
ne in id quod Homerus incideret, patriamque et parentes testatus est),
whose place of birth and parentage were the objects of furious debate.
Dio Chrysostomus similarly contrasts Homer’s choice not to name
himself (e ÅÆ F ªªæÆç
ÆØ e ÆF Z
Æ) with the practice of
Hecataeus, Herodotus, and Thucydides (Or. 53.9–10 von Armin; cf.
ps-Plutarch Vita Homeri 1). The second-century CE historian Ce-
phalion similarly omitted mention of his family and place of origin,
claiming to be following Homer’s model of anonymity.53 Arrian’s
refusal to name himself in the Anabasis (1.12.5) has been interpreted
as resulting from a desire to make his narrative more Homeric.54 The
perception of anonymity as characteristic of the Homeric authorial
pose might in fact explain why the poet of the Hymn to Apollo fell
short of naming himself, choosing instead to refer to himself as the
‘blind man from Chios’.55
The Hesiodic corpus offers a comparable example of the issues
of credibility raised by authorial self-references in early Greek poetry.
In antiquity the proems to the Works and days and Theogony were
widely believed to be spurious, and that of the Works and days (1–10)
53
FHG Müller, vol. 3 fr. 1.13–14 (from Photius Bibl.): ˇy e b
ª
ÆF ŒÆd
ÆæÆ, ‰ ÆPe KŒE
çÅØ
, uæ O Åæ IØøfi A.
54
On anonymity as a Homeric pose in these two historians, see Marincola (1997:
274).
55
Some scholars have in fact suggested that the injunction to anonymity is
explicitly commented on in v. 171, where the vulgate reads a nonsensical Iç’ H
which has been variously emended: Burkert (1979: 61) reads Iç ø, a variant
attested in the manuscripts of the Thucydidean passage where the hymn is quoted
and which he takes to mean ‘anonymously’; contra Richardson (2010: 110) ad loc, who
takes it to mean ‘in unison’. Most recently, Graziosi (2002: 65) has proposed the
reading Pç ø which she argues can mean both ‘propitiously’ and ‘in a respectfully
silent manner’, from PçÅ E
, ‘to be propitious’ or ‘keep silent’.

was absent in some copies. Thus we are told that Crates of Mallos
athetized both proems on the grounds of their lack of specific rele-
vance (Vita Dionys. Perieget. 72.58-60 Kassel = Fr. 78 Broggiato=-
Most, Hesiod T50):
Detaching the prooimion easily from the action, he athetizes the begin-
ning of the poem. That of the Hesiod’s WD and T. is a prelude for his
poetry as a whole (Å Ø æÆØ Øø); hence Crates too
athetized them with reason.
Aristarchus concurred.56 The proems were thus suspected of being
spurious—but why? The reported opinion of Crates takes us some
way towards an explanation: hymns, including the Homeric ones,
which were known in antiquity as æ ØÆ (prooimia), were intro-
ductory pieces performed before the Homeric poems and might
therefore be thought to be easily substitutable one for another. Yet
we might also speculate whether the ancient suspicion about the
Hesiodic proems betrays a distrust of the intrusive Hesiodic bio-
graphical persona. As Lamberton shrewdly observes, without the
prooimia, ‘the Hesiodic landscape is left impoverished and nearly
anonymous, and the poet himself without a name. To put it differ-
ently, without a prooimion, Hesiod approaches the condition of
Homer.’57 One might wonder whether the editorial omission of the
proems speaks to a desire to make Hesiod more anonymous and
therefore in a sense more Homeric.
VIRGILIAN ‘ONYMITIES’
I have argued that the name of Homer poses particular challenges for
ancient audiences: on the one hand, there is the attraction of invoking
his authority to validate the text. On the other, his absence as an
author from the Homeric poems speaks against accepting the trust-
worthiness of his self-identification elsewhere. The name of Homer
56
Schol. Hes. Op. Prolegomena A.c p. 2.7–12 Pertusi = Most, Hesiod T49: ‘some
have crossed out the proem, as for example, Aristarchus among others, who obelizes
the verses, and Theophrastus’ student Praxiphanes . . . This latter says that he encoun-
tered a copy without the proem, which lacked the invocation of the Muses and began
with . . . [v.11].’ See also Pausanias 9.31.4–5.
57
Lamberton (1988: 47).
270 Irene Peirano

then becomes subject to conflicting readings, with the author being
both exploited as a purveyor of authority and pointed at as a force
that disrupts the persuasiveness of the text.
Moving on to Virgil, it becomes clear, however, that such a conflict
is in no way typical only of Homer’s name. On the contrary, indica-
tions of authorship exhibit a troubling paradox that cannot be re-
duced to or explained by the specifics of one author’s or his readers’
construction of his persona but are rather indicative of much wider
issues concerning the role of the author in the reading process. For
here we begin to notice even more how the reference to the author’s
name and identity can be a destabilizing as well as an authenticating
force. Thus, precisely because self-naming was held to have an au-
thenticating force, sphragides were commonly inserted into both fake
and perfectly genuine texts in order to offer further proof of their
authorial origin with the consequence that the one and the same
device could be conjured up with radically different results.
The Virgilian corpus offers a striking example of such paradoxical
overlap between the validation of a truthful narrative and the attempt
to give credibility to a forged one: in the case of Virgil, we possess at
least two sphragides, one authentic and one spurious. The first comes
at the end of the Georgics (4.559–66):
Haec super arvorum cultu pecorumque canebam
et super arboribus, Caesar dum magnus ad altum
fulminat Euphraten bello victorque volentes
per populos dat iura viamque adfectat Olympo.
illo Vergilium me tempore dulcis alebat
Parthenope studiis florentem ignobilis oti,
carmina qui lusi pastorum audaxque iuventa,
Tityre, te patulae cecini sub tegmine fagi.
These things over the care of the fields and cattle, and of trees, I have
been singing while great Caesar thundered in war near the deep Eu-
phrates and while he as a conqueror gives laws to willing people and
makes his way to Olympus. At that time sweet Parthenope was nursing
me, Virgil, flourishing in the pursuit of undistinguished leisure; I who
played the songs of shepherds and in the boldness of my youth sang of
you, Tityrus, under the cover of a spreading beech tree.
The sphragis is in itself divided into two sections, with four lines
being devoted to the military achievements of Caesar, to which the
otium of the poet is contrasted in another four lines. The lines about

the poet contain a reference to his name (v. 563 Vergilium me), a
temporal (v. 563 illo . . . tempore) and geographical (v. 564 Parthe-
nope) indication of where he operated, and a reference to his
previous work. The text is thus signed in two different but comple-
mentary ways. First, the poet names himself directly, on the model
of his didactic predecessor, Hesiod, who in the proem to the The-
ogony says that ‘the Muses once taught Hesiod [ ˙
, also in the
accusative] fine song as he pastured his lambs below holy Helicon’
(Th. 22–3). This Hesiodic signature contrasts with an earlier, much
more veiled, reference to the poet’s name in book 1, where Virgil
hides an acrostic of the first two letters of his name (Publius Vergi-
lius Maro) in imitation of Aratus, whose Phaenomena he closely
follows in this passage and who had also introduced a similar
acrostic (Phaen. 778–818).58 The practice of embedding specifically
the poet’s name in an acrostic is found in another didactic prede-
cessor of Virgil, the Alexandrian Nicander (Th. 345–53; Alex. 266–
74), who also, like Virgil, names himself directly at the end of his
poems (Th. 958; Alex. 629–30).59 Secondly, in the sphragis to book 4,
Virgil refers to himself as the author of the Eclogues by reworking
the first line of that book.60 This too, however, can be read as a form
of self-naming: though Tityrus is here portrayed as the subject of the
poet’s song (v. 566 Tityre te . . . cecini), in Ecl. 6.4–5, the author
recounts that Apollo addressed him as Tityrus as he persuades
him to keep his poetry slender.61 Virgil, in other words, had already
suggested the possibility of reading the character of Tityrus as
allegory of himself, quite possibly on the analogy of the Theocritean
Simichidas who was read as a projection of the author.62
The poet’s reference to himself in this passage from Georgics 4
is treated as possessing an authenticating force by his biographer
Donatus in the fourth-century Life of Virgil (48):
58
Georg. 4.429–431, 433: maximus agricolis pelagoque parabitur imber; | at si
virgineum suffuderit ore ruborem, | ventus erit . . . | pura. On this passage see Farrell
(1991: 79–83) and Feeney and Nelis (2005).
59
For the practice of signing via an acrostic, see Caroli (2007: 63–4 n. 217). For
Nicander in Virgil, see Georg. 3.414–39, 3.513 with Thomas (1988) ad loc.
60
On self-quotation as a form of signature and its literary pedigree see pp. 278–80.
61
Ecl. 6.4–5 cum canerem reges et proelia, Cynthius aurem | uellit, et admonuit
‘Pastorem, Tityre . . . ’ For this identification see also Servius Ad Buc. 1.1 and Calpur-
nius Siculus 4.44.
62
Schol. Theocr. ad Id. 7.21.
272 Irene Peirano

So then, although there are many pseudepigrapha (that is, works that are
put out with a false title, under another’s name), such as our poet’s
tragedy Thyestes—which Varius published under his own name—and
other works of this sort, yet it is scarcely to be doubted that the Bucolics
are clearly Virgil’s, especially since the poet himself (fearing this very
thing) gave testimony at the beginning of the work, and also by saying
in another poem,
‘ . . . I who played shepherds’ songs, and emboldened by youth sang of
you, O Tityrus, under the cover of a spreading beech.’
Donatus points to the presence within the sphragis of book 4 of the
Georgics of a second embedded one, consisting, as we have seen, of
the near citation of the first line of the Eclogues. Donatus explains this
sphragis-within-a-sphragis precisely as being motivated by fear (hoc
metuens) that the Eclogues might not be recognized as his work. The
sphragis can be used as evidence for the Virgilian authorship of the
Eclogues by Donatus, who attributes to it the trustworthiness and
truth-value of a document in a way that is reminiscent of Thucydides’
approach to the Hymn to Apollo.63
The dynamics of book production and circulation might offer a
partial explanation for the use of editorial or supertextual indications
of authorship and their reception: to judge from our records, titles
themselves, consisting most often of the name of the author in the
genitive followed by the title of the book, came into use in the third
century but were far from stable in antiquity.64 Titles written on the
external margin and title tags (ººıØ) on papyri rolls, useful to
locate a text on a shelf, were subject to being lost. It is perhaps for this
reason that the practice developed to insert an end-title in the inner-
most and therefore safest section of the roll, though initial titles are
also found.65 Thus it is no surprise that authors chose to incorporate
references to themselves and their place of origin in their own works
in the incipit or at the end. Since external ascription was an unstable
matter, self-naming within the text was held by authors and readers
to have greater authority than we might otherwise expect. Not sur-
prisingly, because authorial signatures are perceived to authenticate
63
Hence Virgil is said to have given testimony (testatus sit).
64
Caroli (2007); Schironi (2010) notes how indications of authorship were by no
means standard in some genres such as grammatical and oratorical texts. By the
Roman period, books generally had titles (Horsfall 1981).
65
Schironi (2010: 83–4). Thus it is fruitful to investigate the ways in which the
literary device of sphragis plays and interacts with the book habit of end-titles.

texts, the absence of self-naming or authorial inscription is cited as a
factor that facilitates plagiarism. In the second century, Galen felt
compelled to write a treatise uniquely on the subject of his own
literary production (æ H
Nø
Øºø
) precisely in order to
clarify the content, chronology, and titles of his writings. The reason
he gives for doing so is that his work has been mutilated by strangers
who deleted and added things, or even read out his work as their own
(Galen, æ H
Nø
Øºø
, Kühn 19.9.15–20). As he explains,
they have been able to do this because many of his works circulated
without proper authorial ascription (Galen, æ H
Nø
Øºø
,
Kühn 19.10.4 åøæd KØªæÆçB).66
Yet the fate of the Virgilian sphragides highlights much broader
challenges of such super- or epitextual indications of authorship.
Moving on to our second Virgilian case study, according to both
Donatus and Servius, what is in our text the opening of the Aeneid
was preceded by lines which were edited out of the text by Varius
(Donatus, Vita Verg. 42) or Varius and Tucca (Servius Praef. Aen.
2.13), Virgil’s friends and posthumous editors. The four lines that
were supposedly cut out of the text form a link between the three
Virgilian poems (Donatus, Vita Verg. 42):
Ille ego, qui quondam gracili modulatus avena
carmen, et egressus silvis vicina coegi,
ut quamvis avido parerent arva colono,
gratum opus agricolis, at nunc horrentia Martis
arma virumque cano.
I am that man who once sang on a slender reed and coming out of the
woods forced the neighbouring fields to obey their owner, however
greedy for gain, a work pleasing to farmers, but now of Mars’ bristling
arms I sing and the man.
As in the case of other textual variants mentioned by Donatus and
Servius, the lines are not in the earliest manuscripts and for a variety
of reasons have been long thought to be spurious.67 Nevertheless, it is
interesting to investigate what kind of sphragis they retrospectively
66
For another anecdote linking private circulation with lack of authorial ascription
and therefore plagiarism, see the fifteenth-century life of Virgil known as the Vita
Donati aucti 68–70, expanding on a sixth-century epigram written in the persona
of Virgil and found in the Codex Salmasianus (Anth. Lat. 250 SB).
67
Austin (1968); Gamberale (1991).
274 Irene Peirano

create for Virgil’s epic poem. A reference to the Eclogues (v. 1 gracili
. . . avena; cf. Ecl. 1.2 tenui . . . avena, 10.71 gracili . . . hibisco) is
followed by a summary of the Georgics (v. 4 gratum opus agricolis)
and a bridge to the proem of the Aeneid (v. 4 at nunc . . . ). Further-
more, the pre-proemium associates the poet of the Aeneid with the
hero of the poem in ways that remind one of the collapsing of
‘Homer’ and Odysseus in the Hymn to Apollo as well as in the
biographical tradition. For, as Andrew Laird has noted, there are a
number of noticeable linguistic correspondences between the pre-
proemium and the first four lines of the Aeneid: the hero and poet are
identified in strikingly similar ways (Aen. 1.1 qui primus qui
quondam) and share a change of location (Aen. 1.2 ab oris . . . 1.2–3
Laviniaque litora egressus siluis . . . arua) and an association with
gods, respectively Juno (Aen. 1.4 Iunonis ob iram) and Mars (v. 4
horrentia Martis).68
The spurious ille ego pre-proemium to the Aeneid, linking two
authentic texts, fills an apparent gap. The Eclogues and Georgics, as
Donatus testifies, were ‘authorized’ by the sphragis at the end of the
Georgics, but no such authorship claim existed linking the Aeneid
back to his earlier works where one might in fact be expected on the
analogy of the poet’s practice in the Georgics. From a typological
point of view, the pre-proemium belongs to a distinct subcategory
of editorial fakes, namely passages interpolated to provide a measure
of authorial or narrative continuity between two distinct poems.69
One such case is represented by a variant reading of the end of the
Iliad in a scholium that reported the arrival of an Amazon.70 This
alternative version of the ending of the Iliad retrospectively prepares
the ground for the Aethiopis, one of the poems of the epic cycle which
dealt, among other things, with the exploits of the Amazon Penthesi-
lea. The lines support the attribution of the cyclic poem to Homer,
and thus confer authority on the version of the death of Achilles that
the Aethiopis favours as against other competing accounts (e.g. the
Little Iliad’s where Achilles is killed by Telephus’ son).
68
Laird, ‘Virgil, performance and the myth of biography’, in progress.
69
La Penna (1985) calls this type of spurious links ‘raccordi editoriali’.
70
Schol. T Il. 24.804a remarks that ‘some write: ‘so they busied themselves with
Hector’s funeral [Il. 24.804]. And an Amazon came, a daughter of Ares the great-
hearted, the slayer of men’ (Ø
b ªæçıØ
„S ¥ ª’ I ç
ç
‚Œæ· qºŁ
’ ÆÇ
, | @æÅ ŁıªÅæ ªÆºæ I
æç
Ø).

B ETWEEN BELIEF AND DISBELIEF: THE
AUTHENTICATING FORCE OF THE AUTHOR
We are thus confronted with a noticeable paradox: the sphragis

passage at the end of Georg. 4 is taken by Donatus to authenticate
the Eclogues and simultaneously is itself the model for the fake pre-
proemium which according to the anecdote preserved in the Vitae,
accompanied the Aeneid. Signature devices of different sorts—self-
naming, self-citation, and editorial self-reference—which are used by
authors to authenticate their texts can just as easily be hijacked to
create the impression of authenticity. As in the case of Homer and
Hesiod, claims to authorship via self-reference are often part of the
complex apparatus of ‘authenticating devices’, which include indica-
tions of textual provenance, source citations, and indications of
historical occasion, that are inserted to convey the impression of
reliability, but actually have the effect of parading the mendacity
of the text.71 Put differently, as Simon Goldhill notes in relation to
the poet’s voice in the Homeric poems, ‘the fictive is always part of the
voice of truth’.72
The duplicitous nature of the signature and of such similar devices,
however, is a symptom of their profound involvement in the very
structures of language. For the name of the author is manifestly just a
sign, no better and no worse than any other. Though its authenticat-
ing power has been traditionally grounded in its ability to reference
something outside of itself—the lived experience of the author—this
act of reference is entangled in the ambiguity which is characteristic
of all mimetic activities, that whereby any sign can, but (crucially)
need not, correspond to a reality.73 As a linguistic gesture, therefore,
the signature can never fully disentangle itself from the paradoxes of
representation to create the presence to which it aspires. In this way,
signatures expose the tell-tale signs of the ‘real’ as a matter of easily
reproducible conventions, denouncing authenticity as ultimately a
matter of persuasion rather than proof.74 In the words of the Homeric
poet of the Hymn to Apollo, the future audiences will have to be
persuaded (
ÆØ) of the truth (Kı
) of the poet’s claim
71 72
Feeney (1993: 238–40). Goldhill (1991: 68).
73
Eco (1976: 6–7) on the relation between lies, truth, and signification; and see
Harris (2000: 161–82) with specific reference to the semiotics of the signature.
74
Schwartz (1996).
276 Irene Peirano

regarding the Delian maidens (v. 176 ƒ ’ Kd c
ÆØ, Kd ŒÆd
Kı
KØ
), just as future audiences of the Hymn will need to be
persuaded of the truth of Homer’s claim to authorship.
VIRGILIAN ANONYMITY OR PUTTING THE

AUTHOR BACK INTO THE TEXT
So far I have considered the challenges and rewards of ‘onymity’—the

referencing by the text to the lived name and figure of the author—
but equally interesting and worth exploring are those instances where
the author does not name himself.75 For it is in these cases where it is
most evident how the author is ultimately only a figure postulated by
the reader, a conjecture which is formulated in the reading process to
some extent irrespective of genre and narrative style. Tracing Virgil’s
reception of Homeric anonymity, one can illuminate the process
whereby, as part of the reading process, audiences retrospectively
inscribe authors back into otherwise anonymous or unauthorized
texts. Because of the reader’s desire for the figure of the author,
anonymity can thus never be reduced to a complete lack of onymity.
As we have seen, the process of constructing an author for a text
from or despite its anonymous nature already began with Homer.
Thus, in the biographical tradition, to which the sphragis in the Hymn
to Apollo alludes in its presentation of Homer as the blind man from
Chios, the Odyssean bard Demodocus is read as an allegory of the
poem’s author.76 It was this reading which informed Virgil’s choice to
sign the Aeneid, not with a reference to his name as he had done in
the Georgics, but more appropriately for a Homerus Romanus, in the
song of the Carthaginian bard Iopas, who entertains Aeneas and his
fellow Trojans at the court of Dido, just as Demodocus performed for
Odysseus and the Phaeacian royals (1.740–7):
. . . cithara crinitus Iopas
personat aurata, docuit quem maximus Atlas.
hic canit errantem lunam solisque labores;
75
On anonymity, see Forster (1951) and Mullan (2007).
76
Sch. EV Ad Od. 8.63, see Beecroft (2011), Graziosi (2002: 138–42), and
Marincola (2007).
unde hominum genus et pecudes; unde imber et ignes;

Arcturum pluviasque Hyadas geminosque Triones;
quid tantum Oceano properent se tingere soles
hiberni, vel quae tardis mora noctibus obstet.
ingeminant plausu Tyrii, Troesque sequuntur.
Long-haired Iopas whom mighty Atlas taught plays on his golden lyre.
He sings of the wandering moon and the sun’s toils, of where the race
of men and animals are from, of the origin of rain and fire, of Arcturus
and the Hyades, bringers of rains, and the twin Bears; of why the winter
days hasten to dip into the Ocean, and what delays the nights so that
they are slow to end. The Tyrians applauded repeatedly, and the Trojans
followed suit.
In striking contrast to Demodocus’ choice of erotic (love affair of Ares
and Aphrodite) and martial themes (fall of Troy), however, Virgil
represents Iopas as a singer of nature.77 And yet, while seemingly
distancing himself from Homer, he in fact translates and echoes at
several points the cosmological passage from the Shield of Achilles in
Iliad 18.78 Joe Farrell has discussed the implications of Virgil’s de-
parture from his Homeric model in his choice to represent himself as
a poet of natural philosophy, arguing that Iopas’ overt cosmogony is
influenced by an exegetical reading of Demodocus’ song on the love
affair of Ares and Aphrodite as an allegory of natural philosophy.79 In
turn, the theme of the song of Iopas can be read as an allegory of the
Aeneid itself, highlighting Virgil’s desire to present the foundation of
Rome as a cosmogony.80
Yet another exegetical tradition, however, is lurking behind the
figure of Iopas: for if on the evidence of the Homeric Hymn to
Apollo one reads the figure of Demodocus as a representation of
Homer, then Iopas himself can be read as a representation of the
author of the Aeneid prior to the composition of the poem, that is,
as a writer of rerum natura in the Georgics. Virgil supports this
self-identification with an intricate web of self-references, pointing
both backwards to his earlier poems and forward to other passages
in his epic.81 Most notably, Iopas cites two lines from a problematic
77
The song of Ares and Aphrodite is oddly displaced in the mouth of a female
divine singer, the nymph Clymene in Georg. 4.345–7.
78
v. 742 solis labores Il. 18.484 MºØ
’ IŒ Æ
Æ with Servius Ad Aen. 1.742; v.
744 Il. 18.486; v. 745 Il. 18.489.
79
Farrell (1991: 258–61).
80 81
Hardie (1986: 52–66). Theodorakopoulos (1997).
278 Irene Peirano

recusatio in the second book of the Georgics (2.481–2) in which Virgil,
speaking in the first person, delivers a makarismos directed at the man
who understands rerum causae, a puzzling statement in which the poet
seems to be expressing a preference for what he is in effect practising.
The choice of this passage from the Georgics is far from random. It is
significant that Servius already notes Virgil’s striking use of the first-
person (Servius ad 2.475 me . . . Musae). Here it seems that, by alluding
to this earlier passage in the same way as in the sphragis of the Georgics
he had made a reference to Ecl. 1.1, Virgil has inaugurated the autobio-
graphical reading of this first-person statement which will eventually
culminate in the biographical anecdotes connecting him with various
Epicurean figures.82
Moreover, all of the five lines of the song of Iopas are self-citations.
In v. 742, the combination canit errantem reminds one of Ecl. 6.64,
where the expression is found with reference to Gallus’ wanderings in
the song of Silenus (tum canit, errantem Permessi ad flumina Gal-
lum). In v. 743, the expression hominum genus et pecudes is repeated
in slightly altered form in Anchises’ speech at Aen. 6.728 (inde
hominum pecudumque genus), in itself a Lucretian didactic passage
on the fate of the soul.83 Finally, besides 745–6 mentioned above,
v. 744 is repeated exactly at Aen. 3.516, where it refers to the object of
Palinurus’ observation. Crucially, in his painstaking observations
of the stars (3.515 sidera cuncta notat tacito labentia caelo) and in
his role as interpreter and giver of signs (3.519 dat clarum e puppi
signum), Palinurus echoes the poet keeper and interpreter of signs in
Georg. 1 (1.204–5 Praeterea tam sunt Arcturi sidera nobis | Haedor-
umque dies seruandi et lucidus Anguis) and his model Aratus, and has
thus the potential to be taken as another figure of the author. The
reaction of Iopas’ audience—their re-echoing of their own doubling
of applause (v. 747 ingeminant plausu)—should be taken as a learned
marker of allusion, footnoting Virgil’s reduplication of his own
material in the preceding passage.84
82
Catalepton 5; Vita Donati aucti 79; Servius Ad Ecl. 6.13; Servius Ad Aen. 6.264.
83
Behind both passages in Aen. 1 and 6 there may be the important model of
Ennius: see v. 743 imber et ignes Ennius, Ann. 221 Skutsch (a passage translating
Empedoclean physics); v. 740 crinitus Iopas Ennius, Sc. 28 Jocelyn crinitus Apollo.
84
See Georg. 1.410–11 tum liquidas corvi presso ter gutture voces | aut quater
ingeminant, where the repetition of the ravens’ cry marks the engagement with
Aratus, Phaen. 1003–8; Ovid, Met. 3.369 ingeminant voces (Hinds 1998: 6).

Thus Virgil’s signature in the Aeneid blends two forms of poetic
self-identification. On the one hand, there is the epic tradition,
familiar from the biographical readings of the Homeric poems, of
the poet embedding himself in the text in the figure of a bard. On the
other, there is the practice of using self-citation as a form of signature
which Virgil already employed in the close of the Georgics, where, as
Donatus noted, the poet identified himself as the author of the
Eclogues. The signature in the song of Iopas is a Homeric gesture
mediated through a long exegetical tradition of allegorical (philo-
sophical and biographical) readings of Homer, but, not unlike the
sphragis of the Georgics, it is much indebted in its use of self-citation
to the Hellenistic practice of poets casting themselves as both authors
and editors of their own work.85
It has long been recognized that the weaving together of different
stages of the poet’s career by way of self-citation at the close of Georg.
4 may owe much to Callimachus’ editorial practice at the close of
Aetia 4, where the Alexandrian poet blended together two closural
devices.86 On the one hand, we have a form of internal ring-compos-
ition achieved through self-citation: although again the context is far
from clear, in vv. 5–6 Callimachus alludes to Hesiod by reusing two
lines from the Dream in the first book of the Aetia.87 On the other,
there is a supertextual closure linking the poem forward to the Iambi:
though the interpretation of this passage is disputed, it seems likely
that the ‘pedestrian pasture’ (Çe
. . .

) to which the poet will
move is to be understood as the Musa pedestris (Horace, Sat. 2.6.17)
of the Iambi, the work which in the comprehensive edition of Cal-
limachus’ works followed after the Aetia.88
85
In some epigrams, the author speaks qua writer to introduce or close a collection
(Posidippus SH 705), or someone posing as the editor presents a book (AP 9. 205
Artemidorus’ edition of a bucolic collection; AP 4.1 Meleager; Catalepton 15). See
Gabathuler (1937) and Lloyd-Jones (1963).
86
See Cucchiarelli (2008) and Fowler (1998).
87
Aitia fr. 112.5–6 fiH FÆØ ººa

Ø | f
Łı Kº
Ææ’
_
Yå
[Ø]
O ¥ ı (‘to him who as he was pasturing many grazing beasts, the Muses
gave stories by the track of the swift horse’) fr. 2.1-2 Ø
Ø BºÆ

Ø Ææ’
Yå
Ø
O ¥ ı | ˙Øø
fi . _
88
Aitia fr. 112.9 ÆPaæ Kªg ıø
Çe
[]Ø Ø

(‘and I move on to the
_
pedestrian pasture of the Muses’). This reference to the pedestrian pasture may in
itself be a form of ring composition if, as John Van Sickle has argued, the pedestrian
pasture is to be contrasted with the high pasture of Hesiod on Mount Helicon (Van
Sickle 1980: 14).
280 Irene Peirano

But yet another Callimachean closural composition blends the
two devices in the manner of the Virgilian sphragis, using super-
textual self-citation both to establish the identity of the poet and to
mark the end of the book. It is likely that Callimachus’ Epigrams
ended with a pair of epitaphs (30, 29 G–P), respectively on the tomb
of Callimachus and of that of his father.89 If it is indeed the case that
the poems concluded the collection of epigrams, the ending of the
first poem would have contained at least one direct reference to
the Aetia preface, since, in the voice of his father, the poet describes
himself as one who ‘sang things greater than envy’ (29.4 › ’ XØ
Œæ
Æ ÆŒÆ
Å), a phrase later reused by Horace in the con-
cluding poem of Odes 2 (20.4 inuidiaque maior) and an obvious
reference to the poet’s description of the Telchines as ‘the destructive
race of Envy’ in Aetia fr. 1.17 (BÆŒÆ
Å Oºe
ª
). This sphragis
is clearly indebted to the tradition of using fictional sepulchral
epigrams on the poets’ tomb as conclusions to the book (e.g. Proper-
tius 1.22) and in the poet’s vitae, in which fictitious epigrams of
different sorts are ‘cited’ to give evidence (cf. Gellius 1.24.2 quod
testimonium iustum esse potuisset) of various events in the author’s
life.90
Callimachus and Virgil sign the text both literally by naming
themselves (Georg. 4.563 Vergilium) or their ancestors (Ep. 29.1–2
G–P ˚ÆººØ åı YŁØ ˚ıæÅ
Æı ÆE ŒÆd ª
Å
; 30.1
BÆØø) and/or by identifying themselves as the authors of their
other poems through self-citation, as in the case of the song of Iopas
and the incorporation of the first line of the Eclogues (Tityre tu
recubans sub tegmine fagi) into the sphragis of the Georgics. The
two strategies, however, have much in common: if the name refers
the reader to the physical body of the author, self-citation directs
attention to his poetic corpus. Self-quotation, self-correction, and self-
allusion are thus primary vehicles for conveying the controlling
presence of the author in the text.91
89
Gutzwiller (1998: 211–13).
90
Woodman (1974) on Odes 3.30 has important remarks on Horace’s play with
the tradition of epitaphs for poets at the conclusion of the Odes.
91
Most (1993) on Hesiod’s self-correction at WD 11–12 (correcting Th.
225ff.).

CONCLUSION
As I have argued, different levels of authorial self-identification are

due to factors such as genre, context, and audience, and should not in
any way be taken as indicative of the level of self-awareness of the
poet as in the case of the Homeric anonymity of Virgil in the Aeneid
in contrast to the ‘onymity’ of the Georgics.92 More to the point, genre
is a useful concept with which to approach authorial self-identifica-
tion, not just because it is a variable in whether and to what extent a
poet chooses or not to name himself, but also because, in naming
themselves, poets cast the encounter of audiences with their work in a
language that is generically marked. Self-naming, that is, is not a
neutral activity, but one mediated, imagined, and filtered through
the genres in which memory is enacted. Moreover, I have suggested
that indications of authorship possess a symbolic rather than a prac-
tical function for the audience.93 The signature, heralded as an
emblem of truth, has in effect no practical value in establishing or
protecting authorship. Caught on the threshold of text and world, the
author and his name are inescapably intransitive: they refer the reader
back to something outside of the text—a ‘real’ person, a subject
responsible for the content of the writing—and thereby potentially
enhance the credibility of the text. However, in the final analysis they
never leave the domain of the textual, not only because, as we have
seen, this outside subject and his intentions regarding the text are
forever elusive, but also because indications of authorship are not
immune from the paradoxes shared by all representations, which,
while claiming to reproduce reality, create only an illusion of the real.
The author’s name does, however, possess abundant symbolic
meaning for the audience: if they are willing to believe it, it tells
them that they are listening to an authoritative version of the trad-
ition and involves them in the process of disseminating this version
associated with the poet’s name. The signature works as an injunction
not by protecting the text but by summoning the audience’s belief
that they are listening to an authoritative version. If they are willing to
subscribe to this fiction of presence and immediacy, the author’s
name delivers the illusion of authorial maintenance in what is ultim-
ately, however, nothing but a triumph of signification.
92
See Osborne (2010) against the idea that artists’ signatures signal a presumed
rise of the individual artist.
93
See Platt (2006) with reference to the social function of seal stones.
282 Irene Peirano

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by: 200509 Stage : Revises1 ChapterID: 0001869541 Date:1/7/13

OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – REVISES, 1/7/2013, SPi

Ille ego qui quondam: on authorial

As an institution, the author is dead: his civil status, his bio-

THE PARATEXTUALITY OF THE AUTHOR

The wave of post-structuralist criticism of the subject’s ability to

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252 Irene Peirano

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Ille ego qui quondam 253

believe (in a belief which must always be partly misguided) to be a reconstruction’

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254 Irene Peirano

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Ille ego qui quondam 255

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256 Irene Peirano

For many centuries, the history of interpretation of the texts of the

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Ille ego qui quondam 257

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258 Irene Peirano

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Ille ego qui quondam 259

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260 Irene Peirano

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Ille ego qui quondam 261

OçŁÆº F YæÅÆØ IØŒºÅ

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262 Irene Peirano

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Ille ego qui quondam 263

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264 Irene Peirano

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Ille ego qui quondam 265

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266 Irene Peirano

Surviving ancient testimonia of the reception of the sphragis in the

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Ille ego qui quondam 267

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268 Irene Peirano

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Ille ego qui quondam 269

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270 Irene Peirano

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Ille ego qui quondam 271

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272 Irene Peirano

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Ille ego qui quondam 273

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274 Irene Peirano

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Ille ego qui quondam 275

We are thus confronted with a noticeable paradox: the sphragis

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276 Irene Peirano

VIRGILIAN ANONYMITY OR PUTTING THE

OçŁÆº F YæÅÆØ IØŒºÅ