著者

逸身 喜一郎

出版者

日本西洋古典学会

雑誌

西洋古典学研究 (ISSN:04479114)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.56, pp.1-13, 2008

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Did the poets we describe as 'didactic' regard their work as part of a generic tradition? Starting from this question I examine how each poet defines himself in relation to his predecessors. A central problem is that there is no word equivalent to 'didactic poetry' in the ancient world, except epos (all hexameter poetry). Grattius, Cynegetica 94-97 (o felix…) reminds us of Virgil, Georgica, 2. 490-2 (felix, qui…) or of Lucretius, 5. 8-12 (deus ille fuit, …, qui…). Has the tradition of didactic poetry a stock of common themes, motifs, or rhetorical expressions? Rather, Grattius, destined to be a second-rate poet, may have naively imitated a Virgilian/Lucretian expression. Contrary to Virgil or Lucretius, however, his appraisal of the felix is exaggerated. But the exaggeration is not deliberate. If it had been so, it would have been a parody, like Archestratos fr. 36. 1-5 vis-a-vis Hesiod, Erga, 383-4. Certainly, some poets were capable of comprehending the general idea of 'didactic poetry'. Ovid writes a mock-didactic in elegiac: Ars amatoria. Virgil seems to have grasped the essentials of didactic poetry when he made a Carthagian rhapsode sing an epos (Aeneid, 1. 740-6). Following Servius (Praef. ad Georg.) we tend to suppose a tradition of didactic poetry starting with Hesiod and culminating in Virgil's Georgica. The ancients, however, had no division between epic (in a narrower sense) and didactic poetry. Aristotle blames the tendency to classify poems according to metre (Ars poetica, 1. 1447b17), but he is an exception. Hesiod is not regarded by the didactic poets as their ancestor, or the originator of their genre. Rather, they are proud of being successors of Homer; e.g. Nicander (in the sphragis of Theriaca) or Lucretius (3. 1036-38). According to the latter, Homer is even a poet of rerum naturam expandere dictis (1. 126). Manilius' catalogue (2. 1-49) collecting Greek didactic poets starts with Homer. We should not over-estimate Hesiod's influence on Virgil, through a cliche in citation (Georgica 2. 176). Virgil is rather independent of Hesiod, especially in Book 2 (as well as 3 and 4). So is Aratus. The epigram of Callimachus (27 Pf.) does not say anything to suggest that Hesiod created a different generic entity from Homer. I imagine there are two characteristics in 'didactic poetry': (1) catalogue (2) denial of myth. There are some interactions between epic and didactic, of course, for example the Catalogue of Ships in the Iliad or the Orpheus myth in the Georgica. But Manilius's manifesto is interesting. At the end of his catalogue of heroic/historic epics (3. 1-30), he denies vulgarity. Myth is vulgar and should be denied (cf.ps.-Virgil, Aetna 74-5). Note the same tone in Virgil, Georgica, 3. 3-11. I imagine also there are two 'key-words' of 'didactic poetry': (1) artes (2) rerum causae. Observation of stars, weather, thunder, earthquakes leads to rerum causae. Interestingly, Ovid starts the Metamorphoses with the origin of the world and ends with Pythagorean theory (15. 66-72, similar to Virgil, Aeneid, 1. 740-6, above), although the central parts are catalogue of myths: this is an innovation of Ovid, self-conscious about the nature of epos. It is perhaps impossible to answer the question: 'What is didactic poetry?' There is no core of didactic poetry, comparable to the Iliad in the case of epic. Nor was there any agreement of opinion among the poets. Some simply imitate superior poets and other like to deny vulgarity. Virgil and Ovid are rare cases.