Textual Criticism and Reception: The Case of Plut. Mor. 153f-154a

Abstract

This paper aims to present a new methodology for the study of the ancient fictional biographies of the poets, which combines the resources of textual criticism with the approaches of reception studies. A useful case study to test this approach is the account of the story of the contest between Homer and Hesiod in the Certamen Homeri et Hesiodi and in Plutarch, Dinner of the Seven Sages 153F-154A.This paper starts from the proposition that the fictional Lives of the poets reveal how the author was imagined, and how his works were received (e.g. Graziosi 2002, Hanink 2008, APA panel 2010). This paper uses this insight in order to question the principles used to reconstruct the texts of the Lives. It argues that variations in the manuscripts are often not the result of corruption, but reflect the innate flexibility of the biographical tradition. The Lives of the poets were used to reshape the figure of the author for specific purposes and readerships. Thus, although textual critics have tried hard to align different versions, and correct apparent contradictions and divergencies, this approach turns out to be unsatisfactory. A comparison between the Certamen Homeri et Hesiodi and Plut. Mor. 153F-154A demonstrates this. In telling the same story, our two passages present many differences. These have either been ignored, or have been explained by arguing that Plutarch’s account is closer to the pristine version of the contest, and that the Certamen testifies to later developments (Richardson 1981). Far from being a pristine version of a lost Ur-text, this paper claims that Plutarch’s version is shaped by his specific concerns: for example, he depicts a contest between many poets, because the contest in Chalkis is meant to parallel the meeting of the seven sages.The role of Lesches as a contestant is textually disputed. The Teubner text (Paton, Wegehaupt and Pohlenz 1974²), following the majority of the manuscripts, reads: καὶ προύβαλe μέν, ὥς φασι, Λέσχης, ‘and Lesches, as it is asserted, proposed this [riddle]…’. However, Allen (1912) and (1924), Babbitt (1928), Kivilo (2000) and Koning (forthcoming) prefer the reading of manuscript O: προέβαλʹ ὁ μέν ὥς φησι Λέσχης, ‘and he –Homer – proposed this [riddle], as Lesches asserts’. Lesches thus becomes the narrator of the story of the contest. Some of the editors of the Little Iliad follow this reading, and claim that Lesches told the story of the contest in the Little Iliad, or even invent a second Little Iliad in order to accommodate the story of the contest (e.g. Evelyne-White 1914, Bernabe 1988). Lesches, then, becomes the Ur-author of the Ur-version of the Contest (Kivilo 2000).This paper argues that the reading in O is an ancient attempt to harmonise Plutarch’s version with the story found in the Certamen Homeri et Hesiodi, and that editors and critics should not suppose that Lesches played the role of narrator of the contest in Plutarch’s work – far less that a real Lesches included the story of the contest in the Little Iliad. Rather, Plutarch freely adapted the story of the contest so as to create an image of the poets which suited his purposes. He felt free to do so also because he considered the story of the contest a fiction in the first place (cf. Scholia to Hesiod’s Works and Days ad 650-659). This case study shows how ancient representations of the poets, because of their recognised fictionality, developed their own peculiar dynamic of reception and re-composition which deserves a textual approach able to account for their variability.