Furor Poeticus: Poetic Inspiration in Greek Literature before Democritus and Plato

Author(s): E. N. Tigerstedt
Source: Journal of the History of Ideas , Apr. - Jun., 1970, Vol. 31, No. 2 (Apr. - Jun.,
1970), pp. 163-178
Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2708543

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 FUROR POETICUS: POETIC INSPIRATION IN
GREEK LITERATURE BEFORE DEMOCRITUS AND PLATO

BY E. N. TIGERSTEDT

Ingenium misera quia fortunatius arte

credit et excludit sanos Helicone poetas
Democritus.. .2

We all know these Horatian verses. As often in the Ad Pisones,

Horace here voices a common, widely held opinion. We find the same
statement in Cicero and in Clemens Alexandrinus, but this time
Democritus's name is coupled with Plato's.3 In such a case, we should
not solemnly speak of a "doxographical tradition." We have simply
to do with a commonplace, familiar to any educated Greek or Roman.
Owing to the loss of Democritus's writings, we are not able to
form any clear idea of his concept of poetic "madness," for the in-
genious reconstruction attempted by a Belgian scholar remains, as its
originator himself conceded, hypothetical.4 It seems, at first sight,
difficult to reconcile a belief in the divine inspiration of poets with a
materialistic Weltanschauung.5
However this may be, with Plato we are, seemingly, on safer
ground, his statements about poetic inspiration being many and de-
tailed. He has devoted a whole dialogue, the Ion, to this topic, and
treated it in several other works, the Apology, the Menon, the
Phaedrus, etc. Indeed, his reader is tempted to complain of an em-
barras de richesse, for the different sayings of Plato are by no means
easy to reconcile. Such a reconciliation, even if it were possible, will

1 Earlier treatments of the subject will be quoted below. Poetica Pre-Platonica,

ed. G. Lanata (Florence, 1963) is a useful and handy collection of relevant texts, ac-
companied by a copious commentary and a rich bibliography. Unfortunately, lack of
space has compelled Signora Lanata to exclude the Old Comedy. Herwig Maehler, Die
Auffassung des Dichterberufs im fruhen Griechentum bis zur Zeit Pindars (Hypomne-
mata, 3, Gottingen, 1963), deals with our problem only incidentally.
2Ad Pisones, 295ff.
3Cicero, De Oratore II 46, 194, De Divinatione I 38, 80: Clemens, Stromata VI 168.
These passages, together with the Horatian verses, appear as Democritus fr. 17-18,
Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, ed. H. Diels and W. Kranz, II (Berlin, 19526), 146;
Lanata, 254ff.
4A. Delatte, "Les conceptions de l'enthousiasme chez les philosophes pr6socra-
tiques," L'Antiquite Classique, III (1934), 28ff; cf. Lanata.
5W. K. C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy (Cambridge, 1965), II, 477
speaks of Democritus' "surprising belief in poetic inspiration or divine madness"; cf.
G. M. A. Grube, The Greek and Roman Critics (London, 1965), 57, n.1.
163

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164 E. N. TIGERSTEDT

not be attempted here.6 I shall limit m

ing upon a passage which can be rega
matter, because it forms a convenien
quiry into earlier Greek ideas of poeti
The passage in question occurs in Pl
the Laws: "There is...an ancient s
ourselves and endorsed by every one
seated on the Muse's tripod, he is not
fountain, which gives free course to t
again, Plato repeats his description of
possession, a state in which the poe
mouthpiece of a higher power.
The words about "the tripod of the
reader of the famous tripod of Apoll
sat when the God spoke through her
was only one of many seers (g&VrLs)
Greeks believed that there were perso
rather, be put into a state in which th
divinity. In other words, a deity took
came literally "full of God" (evffeo
means. They were "beside themselv
They were "raving" (ttavtKot) in "m
word the Greeks generally derived iar
said things impossible to them in a n
the gift of knowing all things, wheth
is the privilege of the gods. And, ind
them, though they knew it not, being
That this was an ancient and commo
denied by earlier scholars who would
Greeks entertained such superstitious
serted, of Oriental origin.'0 Today,
6I discuss the Platonic idea or ideas of poetic i
the Commentationes Rerum Humanarum of the
I also, alas, must discuss the vexed question of
Plato. (Kranz's pious wish, II, 83, is still unfulfil
7Laws 719 C. With some amendments, I use
edition of the Laws (London, 1926), II, 305.
8As does modern scholarship, see Hjalmar F
Worterbuch (Heidelberg, 1961), II, 172ff. s.v.
90n the terminology and manifestations
"Ekstase," Reallexikon fur Antike und Christe
and "Daimonismus," Realencyclopadie der kla
Suppl. VII (Stuttgart, 1940), coil. 100-14.
?1Thus Erwin Rohde, Psyche (TUbingen,
work, Wilamowitz mentioned mantic ecstasy o
Glaube der Hellenen (Berlin, 1931), I, 40, n.2 a

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 POETIC INSPIRATION IN GREEK LITERATURE 165

explanation. Modern scholarship has proved beyond rea

doubt that from the beginning the Greeks shared these notio
other peoples."
The Greeks thus, from time immemorial, believed in mant
spiration as a state of divine madness or possession. But did t
conceive poetic inspiration to be a similar state of mental pas
This is what Plato explicitly declares, when he speaks of "the
tale which we ourselves always have told and which has been endorsed
by all other men." It is an apodictic assertion which seems to exclude
any hesitation or limitation. No wonder, that even today many
scholars accept Plato's statement without any critical reservations.
And yet, such acceptance meets, as we shall see, with the great dif-
ficulty that it is impossible to find in Greek literature before Plato'2
any indisputable proof of the truth of Plato's assertion. No doubt, the
greatest part of this literature has perished. But it would be a strange
coincidence if all expressions of what according to Plato was an old
and common belief had disappeared.
More than a hundred and thirty years ago, in a book which still
remains the best treatment of its subject, the German scholar Eduard
Muller-a younger brother of the famous Karl Otfried Miller-con-
fessed himself unable to find in the old Greek poets from Homer on-
wards any clear expressions of a belief in the divine possession of the
poet,'3 though he did not dare directly to contradict Plato.'4
Many years later, an English scholar came to the same negative
conclusion about the testimonies of the poets. Less cautious than
Miller, he nevertheless explicitly endorsed Plato's statement. Plato,
he believed, reverted "to the primitive idea of ecstasy, in which the

of the same opinion: La mantique apollonienne a Delphes (Paris, 1950), 42ff. Still more
radical is Wesley D. Smith, "So-called Possession in Pre-Christian Greece," Trans-
actions of the American Philological Association, 96 (1965), 403-26, who claims that
belief in possession was a late phenomenon in Greece. This paradox is refuted by the
very word "VOEos.
11E. R. Dodds' now classic work, The Greeks and the Irrational (1951; I quote from
the second paperback edition, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1963). Cf. the relevant
passages in Martin P. Nilsson, Geschichte der griechischen Religion, I-I1 (Munich,
1955-612) and Kurt Latte, "Orakel," RE, XVIII:I (1939), coll. 829-66.
12 And Democritus, but we do not know exactly when he lived, still less whether his
views were really identical with Plato's; cf. n. 3.
13 Eduard Muller, Geschichte der Theorie der Kunst bei den Alten, I (Breslau, 1834),
7ff., 9ff., 11ff. As to Democritus, MUller pointed out that his praise of Homer's art
does not tally with a belief in poetical passivity, such as Plato held; cf. also Lanata,
255ff.

14MUller quotes the passage in the Laws (719 C) without comment, I, 44 n.b.
J. Tate, "On the History of Allegorism," Classical Quarterly, 28 (1934), 112ff., seems
to argue in the same way.

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 166 E. N. TIGERSTEDT

prophet-poet is merely the unwittin

This way of reasoning has been
A typical example can be found i
poetic inspiration by the well-k
Vicaire. After having pointed out
read, themselves do not speak of
"Sans doute les deux philosophes,
l'un apres l'autre, une notion qu
mune, sans que pourtant les poet
eprouvaient, qui avaient acquis u
mais pris la peine de mettre nett
c'est-a-dire les philosophes, appela
we are confronted with a really
offers no explanation.
An argument of the same sort
in Sir Maurice Bowra's recent b
view of Poetry, Bowra states tha
tremes, both of which were familiar in Greece. On the one hand
poetry was thought to be a matter of inspiration and nothing else, and
the poet to be a possessed being, a kind of medium, through whom
inspiring words passed from a god to men."17 To prove this state-
ment, Bowra refers to Democritus and Plato.
Sikes, Vicaire, and Bowra assume that Plato is right and wisely
abstain from trying to prove him right. Other scholars have been less
circumspect. In a paper which has exerted great influence, Walther
Kranz, the editor, after Hermann Diels, of the Presocratic philoso-
phers, endeavored to give a comprehensive view of the relations be-
tween the creator and his work in ancient Greek literature.'8 Here we
have a serious and reasoned argumentation in defense of Plato's
thesis.
Kranz begins with a general statement, which is simply Plato's
assertion slightly modernized: "Der Gedanke dass der Mensch mit
nichten der Schopfer des Werkes ist, das da gesungen oder gesprochen
oder aufgeschrieben wird, sondern dass er selbst, das Ich als solches,
entweder scheinbar gar nicht vorhanden oder nur Empfangender oder
nur Instrument einer hiheren Gewalt ist-dieser Gedanke kann als
der zentrale der altesten hellenischen Literatur bezeichnet wer

15 E. E. Sikes, The Greek View of Poetry (London, 1931), 68; cf. 19ff.
16 Paul Vicaire, "Les Grecs et le mystere de l'inspiration poetique," B
de I'Association Guillaume Bude (1963), 75.
'7C. M. Bowra, Pindar (Oxford, 1964), 13.
18Walther Kranz, "Das Verhaltnis der Schbpfers zu seinem Werk in der al
ischen Literatur," Neue Jahrbucherfuir das klassische Altertum, Geschichte und
Literatur, 27 (1924). 19 Ibd., 67.

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 POETIC INSPIRATION IN GREEK LITERATURE 167

Thus it was in the beginning. The god himself-whe

the Muses, or some other deity-spoke to and through th
expression of this belief is the first verse of the Iliad, in wh
begs the Muse to sing of Achilles' wrath. And such "inv
repeated in later Greek poetry. But far more frequent ar
of a belief in a collaboration between the poet and his d
tor. The deity gives the poet its advice or its instructio
invocation which introduces the so-called Catalogue of
Iliad or in the first verse of the Odyssey. The poet beco
prentice, thus Phemius in the Odyssey. This emphasis o
own activity evidently represents a later stage. The last s
acterized by the absence of any supernatural inspirator; t
self is the sole creator of his work.
It is easy to see why Kranz's paper made such an impression.20 It
seemed to put the various and divergent utterances by Greek writers-
poets or philosophers-about poetic inspiration into a luminous
order. It does justice to the many poets who spoke of their own ac-
tivity without giving Plato the lie. Nor has the strong evolutionistic
flavor of this thesis-one is reminded of Comte's "law of the three
stages"-done it any harm. On the contrary, the reader finds hi
faced with a well-planned development: in the beginning w
omnipotent god, in the middle the trustful collaboration betwee
and man, in the end man stands alone and autonomous.
Being a good scholar, Kranz was uneasily aware that "a typol
always violates the material."2' How strongly his typology r
violates the material, only an analysis of the relevant texts disclo
'EK Ati o apXt/Iea.22 In Homer, not only Kranz but several
scholars have found evident proofs of the existence of the first
the belief in the passive possession of the poet. In Homeric tim
German scholar assures us, the ecstasy which filled the seers o

20 E.g., Otto Falter, Der Dichter und sein Gott bei den Griechen und Romern
Wirzburg, 1934), who uncritically copies Kranz. Cf. Alice Sperduti, "The Div
Nature of Poetry in Antiquity," Trans. and Proc. of the American. Philological A
tion, 81 (1950), 209-40; Karel Svoboda, "La conception de la poesie chez les plus
anciens poetes grecs," Charisteria Thaddaeo Sinko-oblata, Warszawa (1951) 349-60;
and G. Lanata, "La poetica dei lirici greci arcaici," ANTIAfPON Hugoni Henrico
Paoli oblatum (Genoa, 1956), 168ff. In the same way, T. B. L. Webster takes what he
calls "the inspiration theory" for granted: "When writing, he (the poet) is possessed";
"Greek Theories of Art and Literature down to 400 B.C.," Classical Quarterly, XXXIII
(1939), 174ff. See also the very hypothetical arguments in Mario Untersteiner, "Per
una storia della poetica classica," Rivista di storia dellafilosofia, 1 (1946), 334-52.
21 Kranz, 84.
22The literature on Homeric "poetics" is immense. Copious bibliographical
references in Lanata's Poetica Pre-Platonica, 2-19. See further Wolfgang Schadewaldt,
Von Homers Welt and Werk (Stuttgart, 19593), 54ff.; Walther Kraus, "Die Auffassung

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168 E. N. TIGERSTEDT

age also dominated the bard and

the god, that Demodocus's Ov#
compels him to sing (Odys. VIII
But when Demodocus appears
Phaeacians, and begins his song,
stasy or possession in him. Th
silver-studded chair in the mid
him "a cup of wine to drink wh
When all, the singer included, "
and drink, the Muse moved the
warriors" (Odys. VIII 65-73).24 I
like a consultation of the Pythia
We are indeed told that the
verses earlier, we are told that
other men, and gave him both g
him, but gave him the gift of
on, we are once again told that t
of divine song" (Odys. VIII 498),
taught the lays and who theref
revered (Odys. VIII 479-81).
Whatever the relationship betw
the latter is obviously not an u
This is confirmed by what Phem
himself: "Self-taught (avTro6i6
in my heart all manners of la
contradiction in this utterance,
divine activity did not exclude
means the same as OEo6i6aKTos.2
In the same way, we must exp
Muses. However they may be
passivity. He is helped, taught,
as to lose his freedom and consc

des Dichterberufs im friihen Griechen

Marg, Homer fiber die Dichtung (Miins
der Dichter," Gymnasium, 72 (1966), 43
23E. Diehl, "... fuerunt ante Homeru
81-114; cf. W. J. Verdenius, "Der Begr
Geschichte der Philosophie, 44 (1962), 13
241 have freely used A. T. Murray's t
Library, I-II (London, 1919).
25A. Lesky, "G6ttliche und mensc
Sitzungsberichte der Heidelberger Aka
Latte's objections in his Gesammelte Sch
26Thus rightly Otto Luschnat, "Auto
164.
27Alessandro Setti's important paper
Filologia Classica, XXX (1958), 135ff.

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 POETIC INSPIRATION IN GREEK LITERATURE 169

zov~aa and the original function of these deities are uncertain and d
puted,28 but they have nothing to do with mantic ecstasy.29 It shou
be added that ecstasy in all its forms is conspicuously absent
Homer, as has been pointed out so often.30 Even the seer Calchas is
not possessed. Still less should we expect any poetic ecstasy in Home
True, like the mantic gods, the Muses teach the poet the truth abo
the past and the present-if not about the future31; they, so to say
guarantee the truth of his poem,32 but without putting him in
ecstasy.
But is not this argumentation rather superfluous? The passages
Homer quoted here and others in the same vein did not escape t
attention of the scholars who asserted that the Homeric poems con
tained traces of a belief in poetic madness. But, they added, the
traces are survivals from "pre-Homeric" times, preserved in the ver
of poets and singers who themselves did no longer share this belief.33
For originally, the Greeks like other primitive peoples had "sha
mans," seer-poets, who in their trances performed miracles, foret
the future, and chanted poems.34 Indeed, such "shamans" surviv
into later, historical times: Orpheus, Pythagoras, Empedocles.35

28See the rich collection of materials in Max. Meyer, "Musai," RE, XVI:1 (193
coll. 680-755, and Nilsson, Geschichte der griechischen Religion, I , 253ff. Walter
Otto, Die Musen und der gittliche Ursprung des Singens und Sagens (Diisseldorf-Ko
1955) belongs to poetry rather than to scholarship, but the theory of Otto's antipo
the Marxist Karolyi Mar6t, that the Muses were originally demonic beings,
Anfdnge der griechischen Literatur (Budapest, 1960), 19ff., seems also. improbabl
The etymology of tovCra is quite uncertain; Frisk, II (1963), 260ff.
29 Dodds, 82 and Treu, 436.
30 E.g., Rohde, 20 and Setti, 140. 31 See below, 171.
32 Dodds, 80ff. and Untersteiner, 338, who, however, make an anachron
ence between content and form, and believe that the poets regarded the
a giver of factual matter. But we are explicitly told that the song as su
the Muse's gift. See further, Silvio Accame, "Invocazione alia musa e l
Omero e in Esiodo," Rivista di filologia ed istruzione classica, 91 (1
385-415.
33Kranz, 69; Svoboda, 351; and Accame, 268ff.; also Maehler, 17ff. and Unter
steiner, 336ff.
34Cf. a comprehensive survey by Mircea Eliade, Shamanism (New York, 1964).
On seer-poets, also N. Kershaw Chadwick, Poetry and Prophecy (Cambridge, 1942),
a convenient resume of her and her husband's, H. Munro Chadwick, big work, The
Growth of Literature, 1-111 (Cambridge, 1932-40). On Greek Shamanism, see Karl
Meuli's suggestive paper, "Scythica," Hermes, 70 (1935), 121-76. These researches
were the point of departure for the bold speculations in F. M. Cornford's Principium
sapientiae (Cambridge, 1952). Even bolder, Jack Lindsay, The Clashing Rocks
(London, 1965), 317ff. See also the very hypothetical paper by W. Burkert, "POHZ,"
Rheinisches Museum, 105 (1962), 36-52, and his big monograph, Weisheit und Wissen-
schaft (NUrnburg, 1962), where Pythagoras is depicted as a "shaman."
35See the interesting and cautious chapter, "The Greek Shamans and the Origin
of Puritanism," Dodds, 135ff.

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 170 E. N. TIGERSTEDT

I have no quarrel with this the

themselves to prehistoric and pr
literature, not of religion; no
have been shaman-poets in Gree
tions to the Muses and other si
from a primitive stage of civili
the poets who in historical time
who chanted them, still less th
preted them in this way. At lea
Greeks-poets and non-poets-t
learned only by studying the
which we should always ask is:
Certainly not in Homer, as w
often told, was not a religious
ligion-like mantic ecstasy-wh
ing in him. The fact that the
songs in any abnormal state of
existence of such a state in ot
ecstatic poet was, as many sch
Hesiod.
That Hesiod, in contrast to Homer, has a strong moral and re-
ligious bias is obvious. He is a man with a message, a sermonizer and
moralizer, a "prophet," as he is usually called. It is a commonplace
of scholarship to compare him to the Hebrew prophets and to regard
his relations with the Muses as a parallel to the prophets' relations
with Jahve.38
For is it not exactly what Hesiod himself tells us in the prologue
to the Theogony?39 There he speaks of his meeting the Muses, when

36But according to a historian of religion, Mircea Eliade, true shamans are not
"possessed" for they control their spirits (6). In that case, it would be inappropriate
to call the Greek &VTEtLS "Shamans." On the whole, Eliade finds very little
Shamanism in ancient Greece; see his cautious remarks, 387-94. See also Nilsson's
rejoinder to Meuli, I2, 164, n.5. The very existence of Greek Shamanism has recently
been called into question by J. B. P. Bolton, Aristeas of Proconnesus (Oxford, 1962),
125ff., 146ff., and by J. A. Philip, Pythagoras and Early Pythagoreanism (Toronto,
1966), 159ff.
37 Dodds, 2ff.
38The originator of this parallel seems to have been Eduard Schwartz in his essay
on Hesiod in Charakterkopfe aus der Antike (1902; I quote the edition by J. Stroux,
Leipzig, 1943). No less a scholar than Eduard Meyer, "Hesiods Erga und das Gedicht
von den ftinf Menschengeschlechtern," Kleine Schriften, II (Halle, 1924), 24ff., has
compared the Hesiodic poems to the Hebrew prophetical books; also Cornford, 105ff.
But see the criticism of these parallels in Nilsson, I2, 622; Fr. Pfister, Die Religion der
Griechen und Romer (Bursian's Jahresbericht, 229, Leipzig, 1930), 188, 221; and
Accama, 408ff.
39 Lanata's copious commentary (20ff.) and esp. M. L. West's recent edition of the

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 POETIC INSPIRATION IN GREEK LITERATURE 171

tending sheep on the slopes of Helicon, and being addressed

goddesses:

HlotL#,VEs aypavXot, KaKK EX('yXEa, yaYTfp(S OLOV,

L68,v E(V6Efa TroXXa XYt?LV TV7O1o LLV O#ota,
76?ggv 6, UVT' MEOEXW E?v, al7t0ea yThpvaataOat.
4Qs Ett/aTav KoOpat Al'yaXOv Atos tapTLf7(tat
Katl got 7K477rrpov tbov batOfVfS eptOlX(ios orov
bp?taaSat, 0p71Tov' EVErTvcvcra 6c gaot av6iv
fOiartL, 'tYva KXEtlolt ra T' OtiTotEVva 7pO r' ovra.
Kat A EKEXOV
Kai O' hf'XovO'VaVElV
b,4wivgaKapwv
uaKapwvfyVOS
y'vos aLEP
alkv EOVTOV,
bvTrwv,
a7c&S 6' avXraS TrpCdTOV rT Katl UTaTr ov al v aE 6lbtv.

"Shepherds of the wilderness, wretched things of shame, mere be

know how to speak many false things as though they were true; but we k
when we will, to utter true things." So said the ready-voiced daugh
great Zeus, and they plucked and gave me a staff, a branch of flou
laurel, a marvelous thing, and breathed into me a divine voice to ce
things that shall be and things that were aforetime; and they bade m
the race of the blessed gods that are eternally, but ever to sing of th
both first and last.40

Is not this a tale of divine revelation and inspiration, and

Hesiod been given a truly mantic gift: the power to foret
future?41
However plausible this interpretation of Hesiod's tale may seem,
there are some strong objections against it. Firstly, the whole tone of
the narrative is decidedly nonmystic, nonecstatic. What the real ex-
perience of the poet may have been, we do not know and it is useless

Theogony (Oxford, 1966), with its soundly conservative text and excellent commentary,
dispense me from giving a detailed survey of earlier scholarship.
40Theogony, 26-34; I use with amendments, the translation in Hugh G. Evelyn-
White's Loeb edition of Hesiod (London, 1936), 81.
41Thus Schwartz, 19; Kranz, 72ff.; Dodds, 100, n.118; West, 159ff. Recently,
Hermann Koller, Musik und Dichtung (Bern, 1963), 28ff., has repeated the thesis of
Hesiod's prophetic mission and advanced two arguments for it. The one is the branch
of laurel, which the scholiast interpreted as a sign of seership, for the laurel is the holy
tree of the mantic god Apollo. What the scholiast really says is: j rapbaor ; '? bapvr
EVEpyEl Trpbs roUs v LovUffLtaTLiovS-Kal Ta rotuiara b6 #era 0eov ervErUCs eWlt prra7Tt
Glossen und Scholien zur Hesiodeischen Theogonie, ed. Hans Flach, (Leipzig, 1876),
211, ad v. 30, i.e., he expresses the Platonic idea of poetic inspiration. These scholia
are of late date and are influenced by Stoic allegorical interpretation; see West, 69ff.
But Koller leaves out what the scholiast says later on a propos, v. 32: rovro 6 fEirev,
iva SLeil1, OTL O/.SOLOV Trl ErTLv 7 XroflLS T frl #avre7La TO 6f KvpLuTepov KeiLTrCt Er
AaTvrTES, OVK Trl TOLrTroV, rT (aTOrflva I#Vr 6avva#ivo v Xye roV 7TOfnTrov. To the
scholiast, Hesiod is no seer. Koller's other argument is that the Oeia7rs aotb6i which
the Muses inspire Hesiod to sing is an oracle-song, "die Verkundung der Orakel im
hexametrischen Vers" (30). For, so Koller believes, the oldest Greek hexameters were
oracles (58ff.) In a special paper, he asserts that the expression Beaorts doZbos which
occurs often in Homer and Hesiod points to an earlier word, Oeariaoto66s, meaning

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172 E. N. TIGERSTEDT

to speculate about it.42 But his de

even a bit dry.43 He is not dream
hears the Muses and receives the b
But the gift of prophecy? I wi
rejecting the offending verse (Th
genuine, then the difficulty is th
prophecy about the future.46 If w
is owing to the loss of the poem's
now missing prophecy.47 Other
has in fact written a prophecy, th
Works and Days: the prediction of
But it was not such apocalypt
Greeks expected from their orac
formation and advice.49 Had Hes
of Ascra would have consulted him

"him who prophesies in oracle verse

277-84. According to Frisk, I, 667 s.v.,
verkUndet," but the rest of Koller's ar
Curiously enough, after having thus pro
consecrated Hesiod as a seer, he declares
and declined to foretell the future. A pr
mysterious verse 35 which was already un
7Trpi Spv 7j Irept 7riTptlv; cf. West, ad
allusion to the oracle in Dodona. The wh
R. P. Winnington-Ingram's review of Ko
42Thus rightly T. B. L. Webster, Greek
1959), 26; cf. Muller, I, 10 and West's caut
430n this point, I agree with Setti, 15
glamour surrounds Hesiod's mystic comm
44Unnecessarily sceptical is West, 159;
und ihre Symbolik (Heidelberg, 1965), 53ff
45As did Felix Jacoby in his hypercrit
140. He athetizes v. 32 as a "duplex rece
it) of v. 38, which he athetized as a copy
in Gittingische Gelehrte Anzeigen, 193, 19
46This had been pointed out by Lucian;
47Schwartz, 19. Kranz declared that t
der Absicht Hesiods, eine Verkiindigun
haben muss," 73. Does that mean that the
48Thus already MUller, I, 10ff., and now
49In his often convincing and illumina
of the Theogony, Friedlander declared
failliges Erahnen zufalliger Zukunftsdi
gesehen wUrde" (251). But Homer and He
Misleading seems to me also the interpr
stufen umschreiben das Standige," tho
Gedicht nicht ein zweiter Kalchas."
Okeaniden in Hesiods Theogonie," Abha
und der Literatur in Mainz: Geistes- un
n. 1.

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 POETIC INSPIRATION IN GREEK LITERATURE 173

The simplest explanation of the offending verse is that, like

other Hesiodean verses, it is borrowed from Homer, where it i
plied to the seer Calchas (Iliad, I 70). It was evidently an old fo
expressing divine omniscience, which Hesiod inadvertently app
himself.50 Therefore we need not interpret the verse as expressi
close connexion between poetry and prophecy which is widespr
early literature."51 Such an argument takes for granted what
be proved.
The poets after Hesiod, in what has been called "the Lyric Age
of Greece," have much to tell us of their relations with the Muses-
or some other deity-and of the inspiration they receive from them.52
They are the Muses' servants, messengers, favorites, even sons. Evi-
dently, they regard their poetry as a divine gift. But just as evidently,
they regard themselves as active and accomplished exploiters of this
gift. Their gratitude to the Muses is balanced by a strong conscious-
ness of their own merits. Not for them a belief in poetic madness and
passivity!
Pindar, however, some scholars affirm, is the exception which
proves the rule.53 For has he not explicitly called himself &aoibtuov
IILepibwv rpooakirav (the prophet of the Muses in song)?54 But in
classical Greek rpooTrns is not identical with #&vrts,55 still less with
the Hebrew nabi.56 Etymologically, irpon~rjrs means "announcer,"
5?Thus, with his usual sagacity, Edward Meyer, II, 17ff.; cf. also Setti, 160, n.l.
51 West, 166.
52 See the relevant texts in Lanata's anthology and her paper. "La Poetica dei lirici
greci arcaici," quoted above, n. 20. I feel no need to discuss those poets in detail, be-
cause, to my knowledge, no scholar has found in them a belief in poetic #avia, though
T. B. L. Webster did, indeed, quote invocations to the Muse by Bacchylides (XV 47,
Snell) and by Alcman (fr. 27, Page) as proofs of the survival of "the Homeric tradi-
tion"; but cf. his later work Greek Art and Literature 700-530 B C, 24ff.
53All quotations of Pindar are from Bruno Snell's Teubner edition, Pindarus, I-II
(Leipzig, 19643). There is an excellent chapter on "The Theory of Poetry" in Bowra's
Pindar; see also Hermann Gundert, Pindars Dichterberuf (Frankfurt, 1935). But the
right thing about Pindar's concept of inspiration had been said by. MUller, I, 1 Iff. The
opposite view has been strongly maintained by Jacqueline Duchemin, Pindare, poete et
prophete (Paris, 1955); cf. also Jack Lindsay, 319ff.
54Paean VI 6. So the words should be translated. See Bowra, 3; Lanata, Poetica
Pre-Platonica, 77; and esp. S. L. Radt, Pindars Zweiter und Sechster Paian (Diss.,
Amsterdam, 1958), 105ff. Duchemin wrongly translates &oiLbtov by "fameux," 70.
Bacchylides, too, called himself Mova&v ... Oelos 7poOrcTas (IX 3), probably ap-
ing Pindar, as Maehler, 98, n. 3, supposes. The passage is missing in Lanata's
anthology.
55The original and the later senses of irpojrlns in classical Greek are ex-
haustively analyzed in Helmut Kramer's article in Theologisches Worterbuch zum
Neuen Testament, VI (Stuttgart, 1959), coll. 781-95. See also Erich Fascher,
IIPO4HTH2 (Giessen, 1927); K. Ziehen, "Mantis," RE, XLV, 2 (1930), coll.
797-814.
56That nabi in the Greek Bible was translated by Trpocijrns, not by

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174 E. N. TIGERSTEDT

"proclaimer," especially of a div

himself announce what he had
rpoojiris but usually the func
in Delphi where the irpo0o-rrs
sometimes called TIpo r LS, the of
This difference is stressed i
Timaeus, where we are told tha
a&vrELs, not knowing that they
of what the seers say and behold
tant, Pindar himself makes a cl
Trpo0orlrTs when he says: .avre
thy oracle, Muse, and I shall int
ments: "But observe that it is t
the part of the Pythia; the poet
but only to act as an interpreter
however, well doubt whether Pi
a frenzy, icavia. It seems more
refers to the divine omniscien
words stress his activity in tran
But has not Pindar called him
sage in a papyrus fragment of
#aLTlS, was probably due to a desire to
was used for heathen seers; Fascher, 102f
57 Amandry, La mantique apollinienn
possessed, and asserts that the irpo4irr
the Pythia announced (see esp. 118ff.),
of the 1rpoqTkrns was "to reduce to int
by divine inspiration," H. W. Parke
(Oxford, 1956), xxxiii; but this view h
Geschichte der Griechischen Religio
neuesten Literatur," Historia, 7 (1958),
the prophet's real role. R. Flaceliere w
delire de Pythie est-il une legende?" R
The whole discussion is summed up b
coll. 531 ff., who concludes in favor of
58 Timaeus 71 E-72 B. As Kramer, 78
by his wish to put all ,#aVtKO under th
ophers. We should therefore proceed
59Pindar, fr. 150, Snell. The translat
dorien (Neuchatel, 1962), 456, translat
proph6tiserai"!
60Dodds, 82. This point is entirely m
Wormell, II, xxxiv. Against Dodds,
platonischer Philosophie (Berlin, 1958),
lich die Analogie Apollon: Pythia (r
interpretation cannot be confirmed, n
possessed. 61 Cf. Kramer, 792.

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 POETIC INSPIRATION IN GREEK LITERATURE 175

nion-which reads: #IaVTLS Ws TEXcrwO/LepaTo0Xos

highpriest shall I fulfil").62 But we do not know who
assuming that it is Pindar, if he speaks of his poetry
the fragment is too weak an argument for the thesis
garded himself as a real IavTtLS.
On the contrary, we have ample evidence that Pind
die Seele des Dichters in keinem gleichsam ubernatirl
sam aufgeregten Zustande sich gedacht habe, dass er
Thatigkeit durch die grisste Besonnenheit beherrscht
as Eduard MUller already stated.64 The "Pindaric fr
later ages made so much seems to be an invention of
belief in the collaboration between god and men, bet
and the poet, Pindar shares the common faith of Gree
Still less should we discover an expression of popul
Aeschylus was a IavLKOS in Aristophanes's description of the
angry dramatist in the Frogs.66 True, the chorus sings of how his eyes
shall roll "fraught with terrible madness" (vbrb betLvs tavLas).67 But
this "madness" is not divine; it is very human. Aeschylus is indeed
"mad"-mad at Euripides, who dares to lay claim to the throne of
poetry in Hades.68 Nor should we try to find a proof of Aeschylean
tuavia in the gossip-for it cannot be called more-that he composed
his tragedies uedvwov.69 M`0T] is not Aavia. Drunkenness is not
identical with divine possession, not even among the followers of
Dionysus. The Maenads were not drunken with wine, though scoffing
unbelievers said so.70

62 Pindar, fr. 94 a 5, Snell.

63B. Snell, "Dichtung und Gesellschaft in der friihgriechischen Dichtung,"
Jahrbuch der Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Giottingen (1961), 26, hesitates.
Duchemin, 33, naturally believes that Pindar speaks of himself as a poet.
64Ibid., I, 12ff.
65 Eduard Fraenkel, Horace (Oxford, 1966), 435. One cannot exclude the possibility
that Horace voices an earlier (Alexandrian?) opinion.
66Max Pohlenz, "Die Anfange der griechischen Poetik" Nachrichten der
Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Gottingen, Philologisch-historische Klasse (1920),
146, n. 3. Pohlenz has found a follower in C. M. J. Sicking; see the latter's doctoral
dissertation on the Ranae (Leiden, 1962), 52, 101, 104, 145ff.
67 Sicking, 816-17.
68In his comprehensive commentary (Graz, 1967), 260ff., Ludwig Radermacher
passes over Aeschylus's tavia in silence.
69See the testimonia in Wilamowitz, Aeschyli Tragoediae (Berlin, 1914), 14ff.,
quoted by Pohlenz. Cf. Fritz Wehrli, "Der erhabene und der schlichte Stil in der
poetisch-rhetorischen Theorie der Antike," Phyllobolia fur Peter von der Miihll
(Basel, 1946), 14ff.
70On the Maenads, see Dodds, "Maenadism," 270ff. and the introduction to his
edition of Euripides's Bacchae (Oxford, 19602); H. Jeanmaire, Dionysos (Paris, 1951),
157ff.; and Nilsson, 1 , 56, cf. ff. On the connection of Dionysus with wine, see

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176 E. N. TIGERSTEDT

So much has been written abou

literature, that we ought to rem
frenzy was not poetic. A Greek
(the Maenads are silent.)71 Or, if
order to shout or to cry, not to
withstanding, for they form a t
authority on these matters conce
poet' composing in a state of e
further back than the fifth cent
older than that; Plato calls it a
Plato, we are not astonished when
it to be a by-product of the Dion
the value of abnormal mental st
edge, but for their own sake."72
This cautiously worded and s
viously inspired by a wish, cons
true. The same wish has inspir
German Platonist that Plato-and Democritus too-found the con-
cept of evOovLtatIa Oss in "Orphic" poems, i.e., poems which w
ascribed to Orpheus or Musaeus.73 But the myths about Orphe
never picture him as an ecstatic-in contrast to the Maenads who to
him to pieces.74
In a controversial book on mimesis, a Swiss scholar recently pro
posed to trace the origin of the concept of poetic madness back to o
Greek music and its theorists, especially the Pythagoreans.75 T
difficulty with this hypothesis is that while the Greeks undoubte
had "possessed," orgiastic dances-by the Maenads or the Koryban
as already stated-these dances were accompanied by instrumen

Jeanmaire, 24ff. and Nilson, I2, 570, 585. On Maenads and drunkenness, see als
L. R. Farnell, The Cults of the Greek City States, V (Oxford, 1909), 161, n.d.
71Diogenianus, Proverbia, III 43, Corpus Paroemiographorum Graecorum,
E. L. von Leutsch and F. G. Schneidewin, I (Gottingen, 1839), 222; cf. Rohde, II9
9 and Farnell, V, 162.
72 Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational, 82.
73 Paul Friedlander, Platon, II, 1 (Berlin, 19643), 306, n.8. To prove th
hypothesis, Friedlander refers to some vase paintings of the fifth century B. C., sho
ing Orpheus or Musaeus in a rapt (not ecstatic!) attitude. But inspiration is not
ipso possession.
74E.g., W. K. C. Guthrie, Orpheus and Greek Religion (London, 19522), 40, 47
Otto Kern, Die Religion der Griechen, II (Berlin, 1935), 148; K. Ziegler, "Orpheu
RE, XVIII: 1 (1939), col. 1302.
75Hermann Koller, Mimesis (Bern, 1954), 126ff., 148ff. I am not certain I h
always grasped the sense of his statements, for they are often obscure. Cf. Ha
Herter's review, Deutsche Literaturzeitung, 80 (1959), coll. 402-06.

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 POETIC INSPIRATION IN GREEK LITERATURE 177

not by vocal, music.76 As to the Pythagoreans, their musical

-so far as anything certain can be said about them77 seem to
centered upon the catharsis, the purification of the soul thro
incantatory power of music.78 To them, possession (tavia
sickness to cure, not a divine gift to cultivate.79 Such an attit
not seem a favorable condition for the development of a conc
poetic madness.
So far this inquiry has confirmed our initial doubts ab
reality of Plato's raXatbs fivos. There seems to be no other p
its existence save Plato's words. To many, this suffices. Other
well hesitate to accept blindly Plato's statement, the less s
know that he often appeals to mysterious or nonexisting auth
in order better to introduce opinions of his own.80 The facts
as we know them, point to the conclusion that the 7raXaLbs u
the Laws is no more historical and authentic than Diotima's discourse
in the Symposium or Er's vision in the Republic.81 For reasons not to

76Lilian B. Lawler, The Dance in Ancient Greece (London, 1964), 74ff., 92ff.; cf.
Dodds, 78ff.
77 Koller's argument depends upon his source-analysis of Aristides Quintilianus's
De Musica-where, like others before him, he finds the old Pythagorean musical
theory. But see the sceptical remarks by Gerald F. Else, "'Imitation' in the Fifth
Century," Classical Philology, 53 (1958), 85ff. We can now expect a commentary on
Aristides by R. P. Winnington-Ingram; see his Teubner edition of De Musica
(Leipzig, 1963), xxvi.
78I cannot discuss this difficult problem here. The existence of a Pythagorean
doctrine of musical catharsis before Aristoxenus was denied, e.g., by Max Pohlenz,
Die griechische Tragidie, II (Gottingen, 19542), 185ff., but it is accepted by so
critical a scholar as Burkert, Weisheit und Wissenschaft, 355. In any case, however,
it should not be regarded as an indisputable fact.
79According to Koller's own account of Quintilianus, 128ff. See also Jeanne
Croissant, Aristote et les mysteres (Bibliotheque de la Faculte de philosophie et des
lettres de l'Universit6 de Liege, 11, 1932), 56ff.
80This has been pointed out-not without some embarrassment-by Louis Robin
in the introduction to his edition of the Phaedrus in the Bude Plato, Platon, Oeuvres,
IV, 3 (Paris, 19615), xxx. Cf. his introductions to the Phaedd, IV, 1 (Paris, 1926),
22, n. 4 and to the Symposium, IV, 2 (Paris, 1929), xxiii.
81 Plato's use of the word voOos may be an indication that his readers should take
the philosopher's statement cum grano salis. In his Lexique de la langue philosophique
et religieuse de Platon, II, 355 s.v., Platon, Oeuvres, XV (Paris, 1964), E. des Places
translates iD0os in our passage by "legende, fable," and refers to an analogous use
of the word in Laws 865 D, where it is said that a citizen who unintentionally kills a
free man should undergo the same purifications as a citizen who has killed a slave.
This vi0os-of the dead man's wrath against his killer-is then told without any
comment by Plato. We get the impression that he did not think it true but found the
belief in it good for the city.
82 ne modern Platonic scholar who frankly admitted that the doctrine of poetic
madness was an invention and an innovation was A. E. Taylor, Plato (1926; I quote
the paperback edition, New York, 1956), 38ff., 234. However, he ascribed this inven-

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178 E. N. TIGERSTEDT

be discussed here, it suited Plato

with the venerable authority of o
statement as historical truth, we sh
find evidence where none is to be f

Stockholm, Sweden

tion to Socrates, in accordance with his g

and Plato. For this reason, perhaps, his o
sion on later scholars. W. J. Verdenius, "
134ff., concedes that nobody before Plat
that Plato by gavia meant real possess
acceptable. Recently, Eric A. Havelock, P
stressed that Plato's mania was a great in
seems to me scarcely acceptable; cf. the
Hellenic Studies, 85 (1965), 201-02 and
Philology, 87 (1966), 99-105.

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