Turning the Tables on the Audience: Didactic Technique in Solon 13W

Abstract

SOLON'S GREAT ELEGIAC POEM, variously called the Hymn to the Muses and the Elegy Eis Heauton, is odd work, one that has been the subject of exhaustive and varied study. Owing in part to its consider- able length and to its complex paratactic style, the poem's unity contin- ues to be the single most important issue for the scholars who study it. The apparent interruption of the elegy's train of thought line 33, as well as the puzzling statement about ate lines 63-70 that seems to contradict the description of divine justice earlier in the poem, has caused many scholars to doubt the poem's integrity altogether. 1 The interpreta- tions of the elegy's structure range from those that discover in it little more than a rambling patchwork of philosophically inconsistent reflections to others that seek to demonstrate that the elegy is in fact a closely knit and conceptually coherent unity. 2 1 Of those who believe that the elegy has been largely interpolated, Perotta (1924) takes the most extreme position. He argues that only lines 1-10 are genuine, with the rest being the addition of interpolator who wished to compile a volume of Solonian verse, so that the ten original lines were filled out with gnomic material. Masaracchia (1956) basically agrees with Perotta, adding his argument that the purpose of the poem is to modify the theory of justice found in Hesiod's Works and Days. Maddalena (1942) defends the authenticity of much more of the poem, rejecting only lines 63-76 (which contain the problematic description of ate\Grande (1956) is yet more generous in his assessment of the elegy, reducing the spurious passage to lines 67-70. Most scholars now accept the elegy as completely genuine. 2 Linforth (1919, 112-13) describes the poem as an aggregation of scraps but asserts that at the same time, it unquestionably springs from a single impulse and pos- sesses a genuine unity of conception. He explains the contradiction between the ate