I.

Athenaeus quotes Xenophanes in order to illustrate a specific form of a rare word (Deipn. 9.368d–f):

Athenaeus’ philological citation offers no clue whatsoever about the context of the Xenophanes fragment, and ‘the absence of context makes the point unclear’.Footnote ⁶ Indeed, Heitsch simply writes that these verses ‘establish [γάρ] a statement which is not preserved alongside it and which cannot be reconstructed’, labelling some hypotheses ‘mere guesswork’.Footnote ⁷ Other scholars before and since have more adventurously offered ‘diverse, speculative and not entirely satisfactory interpretations’Footnote ⁸ in an attempt to explain the fragment on the basis of the Greek itself.

Some identify Xenophanes’ addressee as a fellow poet and the fragment as an attack on him.Footnote ⁹ Xenophanes elsewhere attacked other poets (A22, B1.21–2, B10, B11, B12), but here there is nothing specific and concrete to suggest that the addressee is a poet. His fame will last as long as the race of Greek songs (or possibly singers),Footnote ¹⁰ but it does not follow that he himself belongs to the race of Greek singers.Footnote ¹¹ The point of the final couplet is that this man will be celebrated in song as long as song itself exists. Such limitative temporal clauses expressing an unlimited (or unimaginably long) extent of time are conventional in predictions of poetic fame of the sort which Xenophanes at once mocks and embodies (see further below).Footnote ¹² In any event, Greek poets were usually more overtly concerned with perpetuating others’ fame rather than their own.

A more specific and hence inherently less probable variation of this thesis, which is exposed to the same objections, identifies the addressee as Simonides.Footnote ¹³ Xenophanes attacked Simonides elsewhere (B21, quoted below), but if our fragment were directed against the canonical lyric poet then one might have expected Athenaeus or some other source to have told us so. Throughout antiquity Simonides’ biography attracted extensive and enduring interest.Footnote ¹⁴

Others identify the addressee as a patron of poetry rather than as a poet. So, most recently, Mackenzie writes that ‘the fragment seems to be addressed to a patron. In sending only the thighbone of a kid, the patron has received good value for money in attaining the leg of a fatted bull, most likely a metaphor for Xenophanes’ song’.Footnote ¹⁵ One objection to such an approach is that it lacks a good parallel in the fragments of Xenophanes. If he elsewhere speaks of literal wine and literal food (B1, B2.8, B5, B22, B38), why should one suppose that our fragment concerns metaphorical meat? This reconstruction also makes for an odd mismatch between the literal and figurative: the thigh of a real kid is exchanged for the metaphorical leg of a bull. Other Archaic poets write of sending poems to a distant patron or location for performance,Footnote ¹⁶ but this usage of the verb πέμπω is restricted to Pindar and Bacchylides (note Dionysius Chalchus fr. 1 W²). On this reading, moreover, a patron first sends a slight reward in advance of services rendered (πέμψας, aorist), then receives a poem as greater recompense in return (ἤραο, aorist), and is subsequently castigated for doing so by Xenophanes. But if the initial reward was insufficient, why then should the poet have none the less offered greater recompense in return—and then composed another poem attacking an illiberal patron? On this reconstruction the patron does look cheap, but Xenophanes looks like a remarkably unsavvy, and perhaps unethical, entrepreneur. In any event, other fragments and testimonia provide little firm evidence for patronage, and it is not clear that Xenophanes generally composed on commission.Footnote ¹⁷

Lesher (n. 5), 67–8 proposes an alternative reading: ‘you (the athlete) sent (that is, for sacrifice) a thigh of a goat; you won (as a prize) the fat leg of a bull, quite an honour for someone whose fame will spread throughout Greece …’Footnote ¹⁸ There is no signal in the Greek that the addressee is an athlete.Footnote ¹⁹ One might have expected a live goat, rather than the thigh of a dead goat, to be ‘sent for sacrifice’. In any event, the Greeks did not speak of sending animals (or cuts of meat) for sacrifice; no parallel has been adduced for such a practice or locution.Footnote ²⁰ Citing Pl. Leg. 950e, Lesher (n. 5), 68 suggests that Xenophanes was ‘referring to the kind of sacrifice made at the games for the sake of a victory’, but the Platonic passage concerns the well-attested practice of sending delegates, rather than meat, to the games (πέμπϵιν κοινωνοῦντας θυσιῶν τϵ καὶ ἀγώνων).Footnote ²¹

Bergk and Wilamowitz, apparently independently, point the way toward a more satisfying interpretation. Citing visual evidence, Bergk laconically writes that the Greeks ‘were accustomed to give the κωλῆν of a kid or a fawn for the sake of honour or love’.Footnote ²² Wilamowitz comes to similar conclusions.Footnote ²³ In connection with our fragment, he cites Alcaeus fr. 71 Voigt: φίλος μὲν ἦσθα κἀπ’ ἔριφον κάλην | καὶ χοῖρον· οὔτω τοῦτο νομίσδϵται, ‘you were a friend to invite to kid and pork; thus this matter has been established by custom’. The papyrus scholia suggest that this poem was addressed to Alcaeus’ erômenos and identify ‘invite to kid and pork’ as a proverb (τὸν τοῦ Ἀλκαίου ἐρώμ(ϵν)ον … παροιμία δ’ (ἐστὶν) ἐπ’ ἔριφ[ο]ν καὶ χο[ῖρον καλϵῖν).Footnote ²⁴ Wilamowitz’s other comparandum is Rhianus 9 GP = 75 Powell:

Writing in his elliptical later style, Wilamowitz does little to explain the relevance of these passages to our fragment (cf. note 38 below), and it is worth being explicit about what this evidence does, and does not, establish. Rhianus’ epigram does not show that the ἔριφος was an intrinsically unwelcome meal.Footnote ²⁵ On the contrary, the meat of a kid was generally desirable;Footnote ²⁶ what makes this particular kid unattractive is the leanness of its meat (λϵπτοτέρης … ἐρίφου; cf. Ar. Av. 901–2, Men. Sam. 399–404). Alcaeus fr. 71 Voigt does not show any specific or special connection between romantic love and the meat of a kid;Footnote ²⁷ the ἔριφος features as a generic, unmarked sacrifice from Homer onward (Od. 19.397–8, for example).

The social practice that underpins the Rhianus epigram is far commoner, and sheds far more light on our fragment of Xenophanes than Wilamowitz’s passing citation would suggest. There was a custom of ‘sending portions of a sacrificial animal to friends or others one wishes to honour or influence’;Footnote ²⁸ ‘in this connection πέμπϵιν is regular’.Footnote ²⁹ The social nuances of this practice are important for more fully understanding Xenophanes B6, as we shall see.

Sending sacrificial meat was a way to bring into the community of commensality someone who was not physically present at the sacrifice itself. Probably the earliest example comes from the cyclic Thebaid (fr. 3 West), where Oedipus’ sons have sent to him from their sacrifice a haunch rather than a shoulder:Footnote ³⁰ ὤμοι ἐγώ, παῖδϵς μέγ’ [Schneidewin; μέν MSS] ὀνϵίδϵιον τόδ’ [Buttmann; ὀνϵιδϵίοντϵς MSS] ἔπϵμψαν (‘woe is me! My sons have sent this to me as a great insult’).Footnote ³¹ Compare the words of an anonymous slave acting as go-between to Dicaeopolis in Aristophanes’ Acharnians (1049–50): ἔπϵμψέ τίς σοι νυμφίος ταυτὶ κρέα | ἐκ τῶν γάμων (‘a certain groom has sent you this meat from his marriage’). In Ephippus fr. 15 K.–A. the first speaker, who is accused of meanness (μικρολόγος, 10), is trying to prepare a meal on the cheap (ϵὐτϵλῶς, 1; μὴ πολυτϵλῶς, 3): A. πάντως κρέ’ ἡμῖν ἔστι. Β. πότϵρ’ ἔπϵμψέ τις; (‘A: Anyway we have meat. B: Did someone send it?’, 11). Menander Samia 403–4 parodies the practice: πέμψω δὲ γϵύσασθαι κατακόψας τοῖς φίλοις | τὸ κῴδιον· λοιπὸν γάρ ἐστι τοῦτό μοι (‘after I’ve chopped it up, I’ll send to my friends for a taste … the fleece. For that’s what’s left to me’). Theophrastus’ μϵμψίμοιρος (‘Ungrateful Grumbler’, Diggle), when his friend sends him a portion of meat, says to the person who brings it: ‘he begrudged me soup and wine by not inviting me to dinner’ (οἷος ἀποστϵίλαντος μϵρίδα τοῦ φίλου ϵἰπϵῖν πρὸς τὸν φέροντα· “ἐφθόνησέ μοι τοῦ ζωμοῦ καὶ τοῦ οἰναρίου οὐκ ἐπὶ δϵῖπνον καλέσας”, Char. 17.2). The rustic folk of Theocritus 5 provide another example (139–40): καὶ τὺ δὲ θύσας | ταῖς Νύμφαις Μόρσωνι καλὸν κρέας αὐτίκα πέμψον (‘and do you sacrifice to the nymphs and send Morson fine meat right away’).

The realistic, even homely, register of many of these examples bespeaks a familiar social ritual enduring across centuries.Footnote ³² Xenophon’s Cyrus employs the same custom on a rather grander scale of prestige (Cyr. 8.2.4): ‘if he wanted someone to be courted by many friends, to these, too, he would send from his table (ἔπϵμπϵν ἀπὸ τραπέζης). For even now, whoever they see receiving things sent from the king’s table, these people they court all the more, thinking them to be honoured (νομίζοντϵς αὐτοὺς ἐντίμους ϵἶναι)’. Antigonus deployed the custom to overtly political ends (Plut. Arat. 15.1–2): ‘wanting either to lead [Aratus] over completely by friendship (μϵτάγϵιν ὅλως τῇ φιλίᾳ) or to put him at variance with Ptolemy, he displayed other acts of benevolence toward him (ἄλλας τϵ φιλανθρωπίας) when he did not come completely over to his side and in particular, when sacrificing to the gods in Corinth, he sent portions to Aratus in Sicyon (μϵρίδας ϵἰς Σικυῶνα τῷ Ἀράτῳ διέπϵμπϵ)’. With a similar degree of calculation Agesilaus would send a cloak and a prize cow (χλαῖναν ἔπϵμπϵ καὶ βοῦν ἀριστϵῖον) to those entering the Spartan gerousia, thereby seeming to honour them (τιμᾶν δοκῶν) while it escaped their notice that he was increasing his own power and that of the kingship through their resultant good will (ἐκ τῆς πρὸς αὐτὸν ϵὐνοίας συγχωρούμϵνον, Plut. Ages. 4.4). A rich dossier of Hellenistic and Imperial epigraphic evidence attests to what Carbon felicitously terms ‘travelling meat’ employed as a tool of statecraft to honour distant benefactors.Footnote ³³

In literary texts, and especially comedic ones, this custom repeatedly features as a locus of anxieties about real vs feigned (or opportunistic) friendship and symbolic vs instrumental (or monetary) value. Olson (n. 28), 328 speaks of ‘friends’ and ‘others one wishes to honour or influence’, and several passages turn on the fraught distinction between these two categories.Footnote ³⁴ Parker (n. 32), 43 observes that the practice of sending meat could be ‘a mark of lesser intimacy’ in comparison to an invitation to attend a sacrifice in person, and thus in the Acharnians passage mentioned above Dicaeopolis was not invited to the wedding of an anonymous groom previously unknown to him. Dicaeopolis is first pleased with the gift and then dismayed with a demand for recompense (Ach. 1049–55):

The exchange slides tellingly from the language of gifts and gratitude to that of cash sale (χιλίων δραχμῶν, genitive of price). The pragmatic trouble involved in sending meat, sometimes over large distances, shows that notionally ‘it was the perceived symbolic value of the meat that made it all worthwhile’ (Carbon [n. 33], 367); Aristophanes’ groom self-interestedly instrumentalizes the custom in an attempt to receive something of greater practical value in return. Somewhat similarly Theophrastus’ cynical μϵμψίμοιρος sees only cheapness in his friend’s kind gesture (Char. 17.2, quoted above). Themistocles’ detractors charged him with stooping even lower: ‘some accuse him of great cheapness and pettiness, on the grounds that he sold even the foodstuffs sent to him’ (οἱ δὲ τοὐναντίον γλισχρότητα πολλὴν καὶ μικρολογίαν κατηγοροῦσιν, ὡς καὶ τὰ πϵμπόμϵνα τῶν ἐδωδίμων πωλοῦντος, Plut. Them. 5.1–2; cf. Ath. Deipn. 14.656c, quoted below).

II.

When placed against the wider social and cultural backdrop set out above, the pragmatic context, the comic thrust, and hence the philosophical significance of Xenophanes B6 acquire new lucidity. There is no good reason to suppose that the addressee is an athlete, a poet or a patron; we can confidently say only that he is someone who has, like Aristophanes’ bridegroom, instrumentalized the custom of ‘travelling meat’. Reaping use value from a practice ideally concerned with symbolic value and friendship, he has in effect purchased a larger piece of meat at the price of a smaller one. The bull, exalted in our passage with two tasty adjectives (πῖον … λαρινοῦ),Footnote ³⁵ was the largest animal in the Greek sacrificial repertoire and outranked a kid in desirability.Footnote ³⁶ By instrumentalizing a symbolic gesture to realize greater use value, the addressee has displayed the same sort of ‘great greediness and pettiness’ with which Themistocles was charged (Plut. Them. 5.1). Elsewhere ‘Xenophanes calls [Simonides] a skinflint’ (Ξϵνοφάνης κίμβικα αὐτὸν προσαγορϵύϵι, B21), and our fragment likewise mocks someone’s meanness.Footnote ³⁷

Wilamowitz thus accurately paraphrases Xenophanes as saying ‘you got the side of bacon after which you threw the sausage’.Footnote ³⁸ ‘Throwing the sausage after the ham (or bacon)’ is a German idiom for making a shrewd investment.Footnote ³⁹ Wilamowitz thus rightly implies that Xenophanes’ addressee has cannily first sent a gift (πέμψας, aorist) in the conscious, and correct, expectation of later receiving something more valuable in return—again, rather like Aristophanes’ bridegroom. Such calculated pseudo-philia and self-interested pseudo-reciprocity is castigated elsewhere. Consider Eur. fr. 969 TrGF: οὐ βούλομαι πλουτοῦντι δωρϵῖσθαι πένης, | μή μ’ ἄφρονα κρίνῃς ἢ διδοὺς αἰτϵῖν δοκῶ (‘as a poor man, I don’t want to give to a wealthy man, lest you judge me senseless or I seem to beg by giving first’). A similar distich is preserved in the Comparison of Menander and Philistion (1.292–3 = 2.51–2, page 100 and 104 Jaekel): μισῶ πένητα πλουσίῳ δωρούμϵνον· | ἔλϵγχός ἐστι τῆς ἀχορτάστου τύχης (‘I hate the poor man who gives to a rich man; it is a proof of his lot of starving’). An unidentified papyrus fragment (P.Giss. 132 = 310 CGFP) presumes the same situation and perhaps begins to quote a comparable reproach: ἐὰν πένης τις πλουσίῳ δῶρον φέρῃ, | ἐρϵῖ τις ουσωνη̣ (‘if some poor man bears a gift to the rich, someone will say …’).

Xenophanes’ addressee is self-evidently not starving—after all, he could have eaten the kid himself—but the disparity between the two meats very probably reflects a difference in status, as the passages just quoted would suggest.Footnote ⁴⁰ ‘The ideal was perhaps one of reciprocity’, writes Parker (n. 32), 43, ‘but an element of social ranking inevitably crept into relations based upon sacrifices’.Footnote ⁴¹ For the wealthier man the greater gift expresses his greater standing; for the poorer recipient it simply means more to eat. The addressee of B6 is not quite stealing or being deceptive, but his conduct verges on both and is certainly shameful.Footnote ⁴²

Yet if the meat of a kid would make for a good meal, as indeed it would (note 26 above), why then has the addressee given it away? The most salient difference between the two meats, I suggest, is not quality but rather sheer physical size: a leg is bigger than a thigh,Footnote ⁴³ a mature bull is larger than a baby goat, and λαρινοῦ suggests a bull of remarkably large size (note 35 above). It seems, in other words, that the addressee has stooped to undignified behaviour simply to get more to eat. Xenophanes thus mocks not just his meanness but his gluttony. Our fragment fits in well with attacks against other forms of immoderation, gastronomic and otherwise, elsewhere in his work.Footnote ⁴⁴

Xenophanes A14 (= Arist. Rh. 1377a19–21) perhaps provides the best parallel for the skewed reciprocity of our fragment:

The proklêsis was a traditional (quasi-)legal procedure,Footnote ⁴⁵ and scholars generally suppose that Aristotle is closely following Xenophanes’ original thought.Footnote ⁴⁶ As often in the Aristotelian corpus, the argument is skeletal and needs fleshing out, but the paradox that makes Xenophanes’ bon mot memorable is evidently that somehow one and the same challenge to an oath (αὕτη) is not in fact equal (ἴση) for two parties. The saying thus specifically concerns, as Mirhady argues,Footnote ⁴⁷ a reciprocal exchange of oaths: Party A demands that both Party A and B swear something. Since the pious man fears divine retribution whereas the impious man does not, the superficial reciprocity of an exchange of oaths between them conceals an unethical asymmetry; it is in fact as unequal as if a strong man challenged a weak man to exchange blows, either taking or receiving the first punch.Footnote ⁴⁸ On this interpretation of A14, an impious man cynically instrumentalizes the reciprocal ritual exchange of oaths in order to win practical advantage; in B6, on the interpretation offered above, the addressee has similarly perverted the ideally reciprocal exchange of meat from ritual sacrifice in order to get more to eat.Footnote ⁴⁹

The larger pragmatic and cultural context posited above illuminates even the fine-grained poetic texture of our fragment. The parallel nouns κωλῆν and σκέλος, which are close in anatomical sense, suggest equality, but the disparate genitives attached to these accusatives (ἐρίφου … ταύρου λαρινοῦ) belie an unequal exchange. ἤραο incongruously applies a verb of agonistic victory over an opponentFootnote ⁵⁰ to what ought to be a reciprocal exchange between friends. The addressee has won a tasty piece of meat, but he ultimately loses his good name through Xenophanes’ poem mocking him—an exchange even more unequal than the thigh of a kid for the leg of a bull.Footnote ⁵¹ τίμιον is thus highly ironic: the man who gave the leg of the bull may have intended it as an honour,Footnote ⁵² but the addressee’s sharp conduct, now exposed, ultimately brings on him immeasurably greater dishonour. His fame, or his infamy, does indeed endure and travel widely through this very poem, in which he is derided.Footnote ⁵³ Xenophanes’ diction and syntax strongly recall traditional epic, the genre paradigmatic for transmitting immortal fame throughout the Greek world.Footnote ⁵⁴ Using high diction to mock low behaviour, our fragment turns on a bathetic contrast between ephemeral, material food and enduring, immaterial glory.Footnote ⁵⁵

III.

Many of the best parallels for Xenophanes B6 come from comedic genres, and the fragment emerges from this analysis as a biting piece of social satire whose barbed point depends on the fine-grained realities of ritual practice and the violation of social norms and niceties usually unspoken and implicit. The Xenophanes embodied in this fragment, quoted by the bookish Athenaeus in order to make a morphological point, looks very different from the theologian and cosmologist who is more familiar to us from many citations in the subsequent doxographic and philosophical tradition.Footnote ⁵⁶ And yet this fragment, as we have seen, makes a nuanced and substantial ethical point which fits in well with other fragments and testimonia. One wonders how much our picture of Xenophanes has been selectively shaped by our sources—and how much our impression of his intellectual agenda would be altered if more fragments, like this one, came down to us through sources outside of the doxographic and philosophical tradition. But it remains abundantly clear that the cosmologist, the theologian and the satirist were one and the same thinker.