III.2.1 Intertextual Memories

In both Homeric poems, characters repeatedly recall events from their own past which were also familiar from the larger mythical tradition. Whenever a character remembers or reminds another of an earlier experience, the audience are similarly invited to recall their own knowledge of this episode. Such cases of indexical memory are generally less agonistic than the appeals to hearsay we encountered in the previous chapter, but they nevertheless serve an encyclopaedic and incorporative function: through characters’ reminiscences, the poet gestures to the broader web of tradition within which he situates his own work.

III.2.2 Intratextual Memories

In all of the foregoing cases, we have been dealing with an inevitable degree of speculation, tracing the contours of potential pre-Homeric traditions from internal and post-Homeric evidence. Many of our examples seem very plausible, but given the state of our evidence, absolute certainty is impossible. Nevertheless, these cases of intertextual ‘poetic memory’ in Homer are supported by instances where memory and knowledge function similarly to index intratextual connections within each poem.

III.2.3 Selective Recall

In many of the cases that we have explored above (§iii.2.1–2), indexical memory gestures to a wider canon of myth, incorporating broader traditions and details that reflect on the present poem. These signposts often introduce allusions that seem less agonistic than many of the instances of indexical hearsay that we have explored before. But indexical memory is not entirely free from combative posturing. We have already noted the competitive aspect in characters’ challenges to their addressees’ memories, revealing an anxiety surrounding the fallibility of individuals’ powers of recall. But beyond this, there are also cases of indexical recall which introduce a selective and partial reshaping of tradition. We have already noted Athena’s omission of Hera’s enmity, but here we shall explore two more complicated cases, one from the Odyssey and one from the Iliad. Appeals to memory authorise departure from tradition, while also inviting audience members to supply what is left untold from their own knowledge.

III.2.4 Proleptic Knowledge

Internal characters’ repeated references to memory, knowledge and forgetting thus had a strong indexical potential in both Homeric poems, triggering an audience’s recall of other episodes from the larger tradition, even those that had been suppressed or pointedly reshaped. Before turning to the phenomenon in the wider epic tradition, however, it is worth dwelling on a distinctive aspect of indexical knowledge: the tendency for Homer’s characters to exhibit knowledge which transcends the expected limits of their immediate circumstances, displaying an uncanny familiarity with events of the mythical future.

A simple example of this phenomenon occurs in Iliad 10. After Diomedes has chosen Odysseus to accompany him on his night mission, the Ithacan hero insists that Diomedes should not say too much about him, since ‘you are saying these words among Argives who know’ (εἰδόσι γάρ τοι ταῦτα μετ’ Ἀργείοις ἀγορεύεις, Il. 10.250). As Maureen Alden has noted, ‘What Odysseus thinks the Argives know on this occasion is that joint action by himself and Diomede[s] is a common theme in the tradition, and that he also has a number of solo night missions to his credit.’Footnote ⁹⁵ Indeed, shortly before this, Diomedes has asked how he could possibly ‘forget’ Odysseus as his ideal partner (πῶς ἂν … λαθοίμην, Il. 10.243), making the very same point. What Alden does not acknowledge, however, is the fact that most of these collaborations and nocturnal missions are events that take place after the action of the Iliad. Their joint theft of the Palladium (Il. Parv. arg. 4e GEF) and wounding of Polyxena (Cypr. fr. 34 PEG),Footnote ⁹⁶ as well as Odysseus’ capture of Helenus (Il. Parv. arg. 2a GEF) and disguised expedition in Troy (Il. Parv. arg. 4b–d GEF; Od. 4.240–58) all take place after the death and burial of Hector; only their joint slaying of Palamedes occurs earlier than the events of the Iliad (Paus. 10.31.2 = Cypr. fr. 27 GEF).Footnote ⁹⁷ Odysseus thus presents the Greeks as having an anachronistic knowledge of his expertise and companionship with Diomedes from previous tellings of the myth. Their knowledge becomes aligned with that of Homer’s audience.

Such proleptic knowledge is a recurring element of both Homeric poems. In the Odyssean Nekyia, the newly deceased Elpenor already ‘knows’ (οἶδα) what lies in store for Odysseus after his Underworld trip – that he will make a return visit to Circe on Aeaea before continuing his homeward voyage (Od. 11.69–70). Such knowledge is strictly anachronistic – and the first that Homer’s audience has heard of this plot detail.Footnote ⁹⁸ As with the Iliadic Argives’ larger knowledge of Odysseus and Diomedes’ teamwork, so too here, Elpenor’s knowledge derives from the larger tradition, or at least from an atemporal familiarity with the whole of the poem that is still in progress. In the Iliad, meanwhile, both Hector and Agamemnon claim with unerring accuracy that they know full well that Troy will fall, an event that lies not only in their future, but even beyond the scope of their current poem (Il. 4.163–5 = 6.447–9):

These repeated verses provide a complementary and contrasting insight into what Troy’s fate means to both the Greeks and the Trojans, Agamemnon’s assertive declaration serving as a foil for Hector’s later pathetic acknowledgement.Footnote ⁹⁹ But the knowledge they express here again transcends their usual mortal limits. Agamemnon could be referring back to the Aulis prophecy which Odysseus recalled several books earlier, but Hector, as far as we are aware, has not been privy to any such divine message. Moreover, it is striking that after these verses both speakers utter alternative visions of the future which contradict this confessed ‘knowledge’: Agamemnon goes on to fear that Menelaus will die and the expedition be abandoned in ignominy (Il. 4.169–82), while Hector changes his tune to pray that his son Astyanax may rule mightily over Troy and be deemed superior to his father, a source of continuing joy for his mother – an image incompatible with his previous vision of Troy’s ruin (Il. 6.476–81).Footnote ¹⁰⁰ Their prophetic knowledge almost seems to be a quotation of the mythical tradition, of which they themselves in character remain uncertain.Footnote ¹⁰¹

Even more striking than this prophecy of Troy’s general doom, however, is Hector’s dying prediction of Achilles’ future death (Il. 22.356–60):

Hector shows an intimate awareness of the details of Achilles’ death, the clearest in the whole poem. Throughout the Iliad, we have received increasingly precise premonitions of Achilles’ fate, especially from his own horse Xanthus (Il. 19.416–17), and Achilles himself has admitted that he ‘knows full well’ that he will die thanks to the insight of his divine mother Thetis (εὖ νυ τὸ οἶδα καὶ αὐτὸς ὅ μοι μόρος ἐνθάδ’ ὀλέσθαι, Il. 19.421).Footnote ¹⁰² But Hector’s remarks here transcend such a general awareness to specify the precise details of Achilles’ fate: he will die at the hands of Paris and Apollo at the Scaean gates. Scholars often note that the dying were thought capable of supernaturally prophetic speech in antiquity, the same kind of precognition also displayed by Patroclus when he predicts Hector’s impending demise at Achilles’ hand (Il. 16.852–4).Footnote ¹⁰³ But as Currie has argued, it is striking that Hector here – despite his misreading of the future at other times in the poem – matches the record of traditional mythology precisely.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ In both the Aethiopis and later artistic depictions, it is both Paris and Apollo who are responsible for the hero’s death (Aeth. arg. 3a GEF), while the Scaean gates are mentioned in the context of Peleus, Thetis and Achilles in a highly fragmentary papyrus ascribed to the Hesiodic Catalogue (Σκαιῇσι πύλῃσι, Hes. fr. 212b.5).Footnote ¹⁰⁵ Crucially, Hector prefaces this prediction by emphasising his own knowledge (γιγνώσκων), marking his privileged understanding of Achilles’ whole fabula. His knowledge transcends what a character should logically know within the plot.

Besides evoking episodes of the mythical past, therefore, characters’ declarations of knowledge can also have a proleptic edge, looking forward to future events that reach beyond the strict confines of narrative logic. Such indexing of tradition is even more self-conscious than retrospective nods elsewhere, since it involves characters’ familiarity with events of which they should strictly have no awareness. Of course, in a world that believes in prophecy, these moments could perhaps be taken as naturalistic descriptions of plausible human behaviour within the story world. But there are a number of factors that differentiate these episodes from the usual mantic mode elsewhere in Homer. First, they are not spoken by seers or prophets: except for those at death’s door, these words are spoken by ordinary mortals from whom we would not expect such spontaneous, intuitive divination.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ Second, their predictions are direct, unmediated by a dream or the interpretation of omens.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ And third, their prolepses are both specific and precise, lacking the normal ambiguity of literary prophecies.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ Even in antiquity, their proleptic knowledge of future events would have been arresting and unusual. Through his characters’ words, the prophet-like poet looks ahead to future mythical events.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ Characters’ knowledge can look both forwards and backwards to incorporate the whole story of the Trojan war.

III.2.5 Mapping Epic Memory

As the foregoing examples have demonstrated, poetic memory was already a well-established feature of Homeric poetry. Characters’ recollections and knowledge of other episodes in their fictional world repeatedly map onto the recall of both earlier and later episodes from the epic tradition. Of course, not every mention of ‘memory’ will necessarily have such indexical potential. When characters ‘recall’ general nouns, such as ‘battle’, ‘valour’ and ‘food’, we would be hard pressed to interpret these indexically.Footnote ¹¹⁰ But in every instance where Homeric characters recall events (of the past or future), often alongside a temporal ὅτε (or ὡς/ὅσα), they appear to index a familiar episode from the larger cycle of epic myth.

So far, we have focused almost entirely on the Iliad and Odyssey as rich sources for such cases of indexical memory. When we turn to the broader corpus of early Greek epic, by contrast, it is striking how few parallels we can find. In Hesiod’s Works and Days, we only encounter repeated exhortations to Perses to ‘remember’ the instructions he has received (μεμνημένος, Op. 298, 422, 616, 623, 641, 711, 728; cf. HhAphr. 283: Aphrodite to Anchises), while in the Theogony, characters only remember a handful of events from within the narrative: the Cyclopes recall Zeus’s favour (ἀπεμνήσαντο, Theog. 503); Zeus recollects Prometheus’ deception (μεμνημένος, Theog. 562); and the Hundred-Handers remember their friendship with Zeus (μνησάμενοι, Theog. 651). The best non-Homeric example occurs at the start of the seventh Homeric Hymn (to Dionysus), which does not launch into its narrative with the usual hymnic relative clause, but rather with an act of memory (Hh. 7.1–4):

As we have already observed, the Homeric Hymns frequently foreground their narrator’s engagement with memory, especially at their opening and close (§iii.2), and scholars frequently suggest that this specific Hymn’s phrasing is a simple variant for the imperatival ἔννεπε/ἔσπετε found in other hymnic introductions.Footnote ¹¹¹ But it is noteworthy that this foregrounding of memory precipitates an immediate dive into the Hymn’s narrative: such framing suggests that the subsequent story of Dionysus’ capture and revenge was a familiar story. After all, the delocalised and distilled nature of the hymn’s narrative certainly seems to presuppose a fuller pre-existing tradition of Dionysian epiphany and retribution.Footnote ¹¹²

Of course, the precise nuance of μνήσομαι here could be debated: the verb hovers ambiguously between the poles of ‘making mention of’ something (i.e. introducing it into – and inscribing it within – collective memory) and actively ‘recalling’ it (i.e. drawing it from pre-existing memories). In this case, however, the latter interpretation is encouraged by a close Iliadic parallel which combines the same verb (μνήσομαι) and same conjunction (ὡς) in a context which clearly refers to the recollection of prior information (Il. 9.646–8):Footnote ¹¹³

In his final dismissive response to the embassy, Achilles cites Agamemnon’s original misstep as the cause of his continuing rage. His recollection intratextually looks back to the first book of the poem. It is thus plausible that the hymnic poet’s own recollection, phrased in similar language, looks out intertextually to prior Dionysiac traditions in a similar fashion, presenting the ensuing account as established and authoritative.

Even if we count this example, however, our extant remains of early Greek epic offer slim pickings when it comes to indexical memory beyond the Iliad and Odyssey. As far as our evidence goes, it seems to be an almost exclusively Homeric phenomenon, far more so than in the case of indexical hearsay. This is a significant finding, and one that could lend support to those scholars who picture Homeric epic as uniquely ‘meta-Cyclic’ or ‘meta-epic’, positioning itself against larger traditions in an extremely self-conscious manner.Footnote ¹¹⁴ However, it is likely that this apparent Homeric monopoly on indexical memory is largely a result of the narrative form of the Iliad and Odyssey, rather than any unique self-reflexivity. This allusive mode relies above all on the presence of character speech in extended mythical narratives, precisely what we find repeatedly in Homer, but rarely in the rest of extant archaic Greek epic. If other early Greek epics survived in their entirety, our picture would likely be very different. It is well known that Proclus’ summaries of the Epic Cycle downplay the significance of character speech, making it very difficult to see what role it played there.Footnote ¹¹⁵ Rather than claiming ‘poetic memory’ as something originally or distinctively ‘Homeric’, then, it is better to see it as particularly tied to Homer’s blend of the mimetic and diegetic modes.

Before concluding, however, we should address two potential objections to many of these cases of indexical memory in Homer and archaic epic. The first is the potentially formulaic nature of the language in which they are expressed. Many of the above examples have been introduced by a single recurring phrase, ἦ οὐ μέμνῃ/οἶσθ’ ὅτε (Il. 15.18, 20.188, 21.396; Od. 16.424, 24.115), while the close structural parallels between Od. 1.29–31 and Od. 4.187–9 might similarly suggest formulaic scaffolding.Footnote ¹¹⁶ If so, the allusive readings above may put too much weight on what were simply traditional modes for introducing narratives and character speech. However, I do not think this is the case. For a start, we should not overplay the formulaic nature of all these examples: with Od. 1.29–31 and Od. 4.187–9, for example, we must stress that these are the only two places in Homer which combine the verbal forms μνήσατο and ἐπιμνησθείς; a fact which should make us hesitate before classing them as formulaic.Footnote ¹¹⁷ But in any case, this ‘formulaic’ objection relies on an outdated view of Homeric formulae as empty place-fillers, convenient building blocks devoid of meaning. Recent scholarship, by contrast, has highlighted the connotative meaning embedded in recurring formulae based on their repeated appearances (cf. §i.2). In this case, we could plausibly argue that the traditional resonance of ἦ οὐ μέμνῃ ὅτε lies precisely in its evocation of other stories and characters: traditionally, this phrase functions as a longhand ‘cf.’. In short, the formulaic quality of this language bolsters, rather than inhibits, its indexical value.

The second possible objection to this analysis is the fact that most of these Homeric instances of indexical memory are extremely naturalistic. Characters within this fictional world remember events or people from their own past, which is a completely natural human process. In comparison to the Ovidian Ariadne’s overtly metaleptic memories, these Homeric examples are generally less marked, less in-your-face.Footnote ¹¹⁸ Given this greater subtlety, it might seem an overinterpretation to read these Homeric memories indexically. However, once again, I would challenge this reasoning. First, the instances of proleptic knowledge above (§iii.2.4) involve the citation of mythical traditions which do extend beyond the natural limits of a character’s available knowledge, not all of which can simply be explained away by ancient views on the supernatural insight of the dying. Moreover, it is striking that in every instance where characters recollect other events, these events belong either to earlier moments of the same text or to other traditional moments of the epic tradition. It would be overly sceptical to dismiss this mapping as a complete coincidence and deny its allusive significance.

Indeed, rather than seeing this difference between Homer and Ovid as a reason to dismiss our Homeric interpretations, it would be better to see it as an indicator of this index’s diachronic development. While indexical memory functions smoothly and seamlessly in Homer, it gradually becomes more overt and artificial over time. The embeddedness of the Homeric process certainly fits with an overarching incorporative aesthetic: the Homeric text subsumes all past traditions within itself, a practice which again fits with Scodel’s concept of Homer’s ‘rhetoric of traditionality’ (cf. §ii.2.3).Footnote ¹¹⁹ By casting the literary and mythical past as ‘memories’ of his characters, the poet maintains the pretence that everything is familiar and traditional – even, as we have seen, when those memories prove pointedly selective.

III.3.1 Mythical Recall

When we turn to extant lyric poetry’s treatment of myth, we find nothing precisely comparable to the Homeric cases of indexical recollection that we have explored above. There is no clear case of a character recalling an event from the mythical or poetic past. But there are a few glimpses of possible examples in several fragments and testimonia, which are worth exploring for what they tell us about lyric’s engagement with indexical memory.

At times, the lyric narrator notes that characters did or did not remember an aspect of the mythical past, a comment that invites an audience to recall their own knowledge of the myth in question. In Isthmian 8, for example, Pindar claims that the gods ‘remembered’ the pre-eminence of the Aeacids (ἐμέμναντ’) at the time when (ὅτ’) Zeus and Poseidon quarrelled over marrying Thetis (Isth. 8.24–31). This opening emphasis on memory not only acknowledges the traditional excellence of the Aeacid line (including Achilles, Ajax and Peleus),Footnote ¹²⁹ but also serves as a springboard into the narrator’s own recollection of the marriage of Thetis and Peleus. The combination of a verb of memory with the temporal conjunction ὅτε is almost a Pindaric rebranding of the common epic formula ἦ οὐ μέμνῃ ὅτε; the phrase has been redistributed but retains its allusive function.

Scholars have long debated whether Pindar is here following a familiar tradition or innovating, especially on the points of Zeus and Poseidon’s quarrel over Thetis and Themis’ subsequent prophecy revealing the danger of Thetis’ offspring for its father.Footnote ¹³⁰ If these were Pindaric inventions, the poet’s appeal to divine ‘memory’ may partly authorise this departure (especially when compounded by the concluding φαντί, Pyth. 8.46a). There is some evidence, however, that these elements are not complete fabrications. As Anne Pippin Burnett notes, Themis’ role might already be suggested by an early sixth-century dinos of Sophilos (LIMC s.v. ‘Peleus’ 211), on which Themis follows immediately after Cheiron in the wedding procession.Footnote ¹³¹ Regardless of the degree of Pindaric innovation, however, it is significant that this myth is introduced as an act of character memory, precipitating the audience’s own similar recall of the mythic past.Footnote ¹³²

In other lyric instances, a character reports their own memories or challenges that of another. An extremely scrappy fragment of Stesichorus’ Geryoneis offers a particularly tantalising case (fr. 18):

From what survives, we seem to have the start of an exchange between Athena and her uncle Poseidon – two gods who were no strangers to indexical memory in the Iliad (§iii.2.1). Athena begins her speech by appealing to Poseidon’s memory (μεμναμένος). The surrounding context is frustratingly lacunose, but the most plausible supplements offer an intriguing situation (fr. 18.6–9, suppl. Page and Barrett):Footnote ¹³³

These supplements offer a plausible reconstruction, with good epic and lyric parallels,Footnote ¹³⁴ and they also fit the larger context well: it is natural that Poseidon would be inclined to save his grandson Geryon, just as he saves his sons the Moliones from Nestor in the Iliad (Il. 11.750–2).Footnote ¹³⁵ Moreover, Poseidon and Athena are traditional rivals, not only in their competition for Athens, but also in their opposing treatments of Odysseus in the Odyssey; this is the latest in a series of ongoing confrontations. In any case, if this reconstruction is along the right lines, Athena here invites Poseidon to recall a promise that he had once made not to interfere in Geryon’s death, a promise that may well have featured earlier in the narrative.Footnote ¹³⁶ Athena’s appeal to Poseidon’s memory would then be akin to the intratextual recall of the Iliadic theomachy, where Ares challenges Athena’s own memory of Diomedes’ aristeia (Il. 21.394–9: §iii.2.2). This, of course, can remain no more than a tentative possibility, not only because of our dependence on supplements, but also because there is no guarantee that this ‘promise’ would have appeared earlier in the poem. In comparable cases from epic and drama, such ‘reminiscences’ sometimes invoke a promise or oath that has not in fact been mentioned previously.Footnote ¹³⁷ The ‘memory’ here would then establish a fact as newly traditional, inscribing it into tradition, rather than looking back to anything pre-existing. On current evidence, we cannot determine the truth, but this example at least shows the potential for indexed memories in narrative lyric.

The other most tantalising example of mythical recall in lyric also concerns the Heracles tradition: Archilochus’ treatment of Deianeira’s rape by Nessus and the centaur’s subsequent death at Heracles’ hands. For this poem, we have no direct text at all, only a number of indirect references (frr. 286–9). Among these is the critique of Dio Chrysostom, who claims that some objected to the manner in which Archilochus portrayed the episode (Archil. fr. 286 = Dio Chrys. 60.1):

Dio’s anonymous critics considered the length of Deianeira’s appeal to Heracles inappropriate in context, giving her assailant all too much time to have his wicked way with her.Footnote ¹³⁸ To prompt such critical censure, Deianeira’s speech must have been an account of some length. The participle ῥαψῳδοῦσαν certainly suggests as much, figuring Deianeira as an epic rhapsode, stringing out an extensive recitation.Footnote ¹³⁹

Most significant for us here, however, is the content of her speech. According to Dio, she ‘reminded’ Heracles of her earlier wooing by Achelous and the events that took place at that time (ἀναμιμνήσκουσαν), recalling a previous occasion on which Heracles had faced another bestial foe to secure Deianeira’s hand in marriage.Footnote ¹⁴⁰ We know little more about the speech than what Dio gives us, but a Homeric scholion provides the further detail that Archilochus depicted Achelous in a taurine form (Archil. fr. 287). In that case, we might suspect that Deianeira’s report included a key detail known from many later accounts, a detail which is first explicitly attested in Pindar: that Heracles tore off one of Achelous’ horns in the skirmish.Footnote ¹⁴¹

We do not have any original verses from this poem, and we do not even have direct evidence of its genre or metre. But Ewen Bowie has plausibly argued that Archilochus’ poem was a narrative elegy,Footnote ¹⁴² and it is tempting to suppose that Dio’s summary reflects, at least in part, the basic language and structure of Archilochus’ original. In that case, given Dio’s emphasis on Deianeira’s ‘reminding’ of Heracles, the captured maiden could have explicitly prompted Heracles to recall the former occasion of the conflict with Achelous, perhaps even introducing it with the formula ἦ οὐ μέμνῃ ὅτε, a phrase that we have seen repeatedly in Homer. The Achelous episode would have provided a natural model for Heracles’ current situation, marking Nessus as a doublet of the river, another rival for Deianeira’s affections.Footnote ¹⁴³ In addition, it would presage his coming defeat: like Achelous, Nessus is no match for Heracles. Just as the Iliadic Achilles recalled his former encounter with Aeneas, so too here would Deianeira recall a former tussle for her love as a paradigm for the present.

Admittedly, this is a speculative case, dependent on the language of Dio’s summary, but it is the closest we come to the Homeric usage of this device in lyric. It may be significant, then, that this potential instance occurs in a strongly epicising context. As Bowie notes, ‘On the scant evidence we have, this is a poem in which elegy handled material usually treated in hexameter epic, and did so in the same way as hexameter epic.’Footnote ¹⁴⁴ Indexical memory within character speech may have thus carried a distinctively epic resonance, a resonance which would have been all the stronger if Stesichorus’ Geryoneis did indeed contain a comparable example. Scholars have long remarked on the epicising nature of Stesichorean lyric, and an epicising narrative is more likely to exhibit extended character speech, the prime host for indexical recall.Footnote ¹⁴⁵ Indeed, if we had a complete text of other Stesichorean poems, such as the Oresteia, Nostoi or Games for Pelias, we might well expect to find further cases.

There are thus only very limited hints of indexed character memories in lyric, whether in the voice of the narrator or characters. As with the larger corpus of archaic Greek epic, the major reason for this must be our general dearth of extended mythical narrative in lyric – a dearth which results in part from the fragmentary state of our evidence, forcing us to rely on scrappy fragments and second-hand testimonia.Footnote ¹⁴⁶ But it also reflects a larger compositional strategy of the genre: Greek lyric poets frequently introduce myths in passing and in summary form, as paradigms for their present. In so doing, they rarely give direct voice to the characters of the mythical past – and even when they do, rarely at any length.Footnote ¹⁴⁷ With this dominant approach to myth, it is unsurprising to find fewer cases of indexical memory in extant lyric. After all, every possible case we have explored concerns a fuller mythical narrative, each of which has a distinctively epic hue. We have already noted the epicising nature of Stesichorus’ lyric and of Archilochus’ Heracles narrative, while Pindar’s account of the gods and Thetis concerns the origins of the whole Trojan war, a key epic theme. Indexical memory may thus have had not only a close association with narrative, but also more specifically with epic traditions.

III.3.2 Personal and Mythical Memory

Besides these cases of internal characters’ memories within poems, we can also identify instances where a lyric narrator foregrounds their own memory at a moment of allusion to mythical precedents and prototypes. Here too, the myths recalled have a distinctively epic tinge. In Nemean 9, Pindar uses an act of recall (μνασθείς, v. 10) as a springboard into his account of Adrastus, Amphiaraus and the expedition against Thebes, evoking Theban myth (Nem. 9.10–27). In another unplaced fragment, he bids Apollo ‘remember’ that Heracles set up an altar to him and Zeus on Paros (μνάσθηθ’ ὅτι, fr. 140a.62–8), recalling the hero’s sojourn on the island during his quest for Hippolyte’s belt before his initial expedition to Troy, a tale that likely dates at least to the time of Archilochus.Footnote ¹⁴⁸ In a poem of the Theognidea, meanwhile, the speaker’s personal memory precipitates a summary account of archetypally epic adventures (Thgn. 1123–8):

The speaker’s wish not to be ‘reminded’ of his ills segues into the recall of a mythical figure who has endured such suffering: the epic Odysseus, an archetypal endurer (πέπονθα, 1123 ~ πάθεν, Od. 1.4). After launching into the exemplum with an act of recall, Theognis focuses on two major episodes of the hero’s fabula: the descent to the Underworld and his slaughter of the suitors.Footnote ¹⁵⁰ Such an Odyssean analogy fits into the larger narratorial posturing of the Theognidea,Footnote ¹⁵¹ or – if Bowie is right to ascribe the poem to Archilochus – the iambicist’s similar Odyssean persona.Footnote ¹⁵² Most crucial for my current purpose, however, is how this mythical exemplum is once again introduced with the language of memory: the speaker’s recall of his own ills prompts the recollection of an epic exemplar of such suffering. Personal memory transitions to mythical memory.

A similar blurring of personal and mythical recall occurs in Tyrtaeus’ elegy on ἀρετή, in which the poet begins with a catalogue of mythological exempla introduced by another verb of memory (fr. 12.1–9):Footnote ¹⁵³

In this opening priamel, the poet exalts ‘furious valour’ (θοῦρις ἀλκή) as the pinnacle of excellence (ἀρετή), dismissing other candidates for the title (extraordinary strength, speed, beauty, wealth, royalty and eloquence), which are each represented by a famous mythical hero. Tyrtaeus insists that he would ‘not recall nor include in my poetry’ a man who even outstripped these mythical forebears, preferring instead the man who is good in battle, an opposition reinforced by verbal repetition (ἄνδρα, fr. 12.1 ~ ἀνὴρ ἀγαθὸς … ἐν πολέμῳ, fr. 12.10 = fr. 12.20, ἀνὴρ … πολέμου, fr. 12.43–4). As H. James Shey has highlighted, however, these exempla are carefully selected to emphasise the dangers of the other traits: ‘In every instance, the mythological characters of the priamel possess aretaí which cause harm to themselves or others, or which are unable to save them from harm, unhappiness, or bad reputation’: Polyphemus’ brawn was outwitted by Odysseus’ brains, Tithonus’ beauty eventually withered into an extreme old age and so on.Footnote ¹⁵⁵ The larger tradition lying behind each name implicitly indicates why Tyrtaeus most highly values θοῦρις ἀλκή.

To build on Shey’s point, we could note how the opening emphasis on memory and λόγος encourages an audience to recall these wider traditions and to fill in the rest of each story. As a common tactic of praeteritio, the speaker invites his audience to recall what he claims he will leave unspoken. Of course, if we wanted to, we could easily find a mythical candidate who equally exemplifies the dangers of θοῦρις ἀλκή: Telamonian Ajax exhibits this very trait in Homer (e.g. Il. 11.566), and as we have already seen, he too comes to an ignominious end (§ii.3.1). Tyrtaeus, however, avoids pointing us in that direction and rather encourages us to recall the fabulae surrounding the characters he does name. In this poem, memory has shifted from a character’s embedded speech to the narrator’s own voice. His power of memory controls which myths are recalled or not.

As Ernst-Richard Schwinge has emphasised, however, this priamel is not purely ethical, for it also has a larger poetic and generic significance. Tyrtaeus is not just dismissing specific myths associated with other potential ἀρεταί, but also a collection of myths with a distinctively epic timbre.Footnote ¹⁵⁶ Most of the heroes he cites are familiar from the epic tradition; the values they represent are valorised in epic;Footnote ¹⁵⁷ and the very language in which they are expressed also draws heavily on the epic tradition: verse-ends, in particular, exhibit a whole host of familiar epic idioms,Footnote ¹⁵⁸ while the phrase Ἀδρήστου μειλιχόγηρυν (fr. 12.8) may also draw on an epic formula associated with lost Theban epic.Footnote ¹⁵⁹ The poet’s opening appeal to his own memory thus triggers the recall of a host of epic traditions as a foil for his elegiac poem, with its new attitude towards ἀρετή. In what follows, he articulates an alternative poetics distanced from epic. By beginning with his own act of memory (μνησαίμην), he even usurps the traditional role of the epic Muses (μνησαίαθ’, Il. 2.492). The poet’s memory evokes and appropriates the epic tradition – in many ways, a foreshadowing of the Roman recusatio.

Indexical memory in lyric, therefore, was not restricted to internal characters’ recollections of their fictional autobiographies, but also extended to the memory of poetic narrators, especially in elegy. In both of the foregoing cases, however, it is worth emphasising again that the myths recalled have a distinctively epic resonance: Theognis’ Odysseus and Tyrtaeus’ catalogue of epic figures. Once more, indexical memory seems particularly associated with the epic past; it is as if lyric poets were specifically acknowledging the epic heritage of this indexical device.

III.3.3 Memories of the Moment

Another major distinction between lyric and epic poetry also helps to explain lyric poets’ apparently limited use of indexical memory, namely their far greater concern for their immediate present. Lyric poets frequently picture themselves and their audiences in their own contemporary world, focusing more on personalised reminiscences of specific occasions from the recent – not mythical – past. When discussing such contemporary affairs, the language of memory will inevitably have a different valence to that found in continuous mythical narratives.

The Lesbian poet Sappho, for example, shows an emphatic concern with the memories of (what she depicts as) her personal, lived experience.Footnote ¹⁶⁰ In one fragment, the narrator addresses a departing woman and bids her ‘remember me, for you know how we looked after you’ (μέμναισ’, οἶσθα γὰρ ὤς <σ>ε πεδήπομεν, fr. 94.8) and goes on to ‘remind’ her (ὄμναισαι, fr. 94.10) of all that they experienced with a catalogue of past loves and festivities (fr. 94.10–29).Footnote ¹⁶¹ In another, a woman who has departed to Lydia ‘remembers gentle Atthis with longing’ (ἀγάνας ἐπι-|μνάσθεισ’ Ἄτθιδος ἰμέρῳ, fr. 96.15–16), while in the famous priamel on τὸ κάλλιστον, the speaker’s description of Helen ‘reminds’ her of another absent female friend, Anactoria (]με νῦν Ἀνακτορί[ας ὀ]νέμναι-|[σ’ οὐ] παρεοίσας, fr. 16.15–16). These and other fragments evoke a network of fond female farewells, in which memory played a key role in preserving social bonds, apparently a far cry from the functioning of poetic memory in the heroic world of archaic epic.

The same social and contextual aspects of memory are also active in the work of many other lyric poets. In a ‘ship-of-state’ poem by Sappho’s Lesbian contemporary Alcaeus, the poet encourages his addressees to ‘remember’ some previous object or event (μνάσθητ̣ε τὼν πάροιθε μ̣[, fr. 6.11), recalling the turbulent and stasiotic life of his hetaireia on Lesbos.Footnote ¹⁶² Archilochus bids his friend Glaucus to ‘remember’ the land of Thasos (γῆς ἐπιμνήσαιο τ[ῆσδε], fr. 96.3); Alcman hopes to preserve the ‘memory of those present’ (ἔστι παρέντων μνᾶστιν † ἐπιθέσθαι †, fr. 118); and Pindar claims that Hieron will be ‘reminded’ of the battles in which he previously stood steadfast (ἀμνάσειεν, Pyth. 1.47). Lyric poets’ frequent focus on the present and recent past differs strikingly from epic poetry’s immersion in the distant world of myth.

Even here, however, it is possible that these emphatic appeals to memory may have often served an indexical role, recalling recent poetry and songs on contemporary events. Sappho, in particular, is a likely candidate for such poetic self-reference. As we have already seen, she is insistent elsewhere that she and her group will be remembered in the future, unlike the anonymous addressee of fr. 55, a claim which asserts the commemorative power of her poetry (§iii.3). And indeed, the women ‘recalled’ in frr. 16 and 96 do seem to have been regular fixtures in her larger poetic corpus. Atthis features repeatedly in other extant fragments (frr. 8, 49, 90(10^A).15, 130.3–4) and appears alongside Anactoria in later lists of Sappho’s companions (test. 219, 253, 263 = Ov. Her. 15.17–19).Footnote ¹⁶³ Whatever precise relationship Sappho had with these women, they were evidently a recurring feature of her poetry.Footnote ¹⁶⁴ As Sappho recalls these absent friends and her former experiences with them, we may thus be invited to recall their presence in her other songs.

The language of these poems certainly encourages us to pursue such cross references. In fr. 94, for example, the events which Sappho recalls resonate richly against her wider extant corpus, with numerous echoes of language and theme (fr. 94.7–29):

The reminiscence moves in vivid snapshots, progressing at first through a scene of increasing intimacy (from head, to neck, to body, to bed), before expanding back out to more communal spaces and activities.Footnote ¹⁶⁶ At one level, this sequence of memories provides a ‘naturalistic’ recollection of a past experience, but for all these different details we can identify a range of parallel moments elsewhere in Sappho’s poetry. Garlands are a recurring feature of many fragments, as are flowers – and especially roses.Footnote ¹⁶⁷ Particularly suggestive are the connections with fr. 81, in which Sappho tells Dica to put lovely flowered garlands (στεφάνοις … ἐράτοις, 81.4) around her locks with her ‘tender’ hands (ἀπάλαισι χέρσιν, 81.5), paralleling the ‘tender’ garlanded neck in fr. 94 ([ἀ]πάλαι δέραι, v. 16). More generally, the adjective ἀπαλός recurs often in Sappho’s poetry, especially of her companions. Besides its appearances in fr. 94 (vv. 16, 22) and fr. 81, it describes Gyrinno (fr. 82a), a tender girl picking flowers (fr. 122), and a tender companion on whose bosom someone might sleep (fr. 126).Footnote ¹⁶⁸ Indeed, if the πόθος which is satisfied in fr. 94.23 refers to a ‘longing’ for sleep, as some scholars have suggested,Footnote ¹⁶⁹ fr. 126 would provide a particularly close parallel for Sappho’s recollection here. But even if fr. 94 conceals a reference to erotic πόθος (as is more likely),Footnote ¹⁷⁰ this too finds numerous parallels elsewhere in Sappho’s corpus (frr. 22.11, 36, 48.2, 102.2). Finally, the transition to the shrine (ἶρον, v. 25) and grove (ἄλσος, v. 27) also maps onto other aspects of Sappho’s poetry, especially fr. 2’s ecphrasis of the ‘holy temple’ (ναῦον | ἄγνον, 2.1–2) and ‘grove’ (ἄλσος, 2.2).Footnote ¹⁷¹ The language and details of Sappho’s reminiscences reverberate repeatedly against her wider poetic corpus, evoking other past songs and performances.

Sappho’s poetry in general is well known for its repetitive nature; throughout her corpus, she repeatedly returns to the same images, vocabulary and motifs.Footnote ¹⁷² One effect of such repetitions is the creation of a consistent speaking voice, conjuring a sense of ‘Sappho’ as a distinctive and recognisable personality.Footnote ¹⁷³ But the degree of repetitions and mappings that we have traced in fr. 94 do more than simply establish such an authorial persona: they also seem to offer a summary and distillation of many of the key themes and motifs of her poetry. Of course, our perception could be skewed by the vagaries of transmission. This poem is itself rather fragmentary, and very little now remains from the nine books of Sappho’s poetry that once comprised her Alexandrian edition.Footnote ¹⁷⁴ But at least as far as we can judge from what survives of this poem and her other extant fragments, this recollection provides almost a ‘table of contents’ for many of Sappho’s wider literary concerns. We should not suppose that this recollection looks back to another specific Sapphic poem which treated the same occasion(s); indeed, such stale repetition would be unparalleled within her larger corpus. Rather, these memories reflect a composite of experiences from other poems, evoking a familiar but disjointed Sapphic world.

Such a strategy of self-citation would fit within a wider phenomenon of Sappho’s poetry which has attracted recent critical interest: her deployment of ‘song cycles’, sequences of interrelated but discontinuous poems on the same topic.Footnote ¹⁷⁵ With the publication of Sappho’s (unprovenanced) Brothers Poem, scholars have focused particularly on a family cycle centred on the actions of her brother Charaxus, where – as Anastasia-Erasmia Peponi states – individual Sapphic poems serve as ‘snapshots’ or ‘vignettes’, ‘distinct and self-standing facets of a narrative that was never explicitly organized as such’.Footnote ¹⁷⁶ But we can equally identify traces of other cycles in Sappho’s corpus, including one which appears to have charted various stages of her relationship with Atthis, from loving intimacy (fr. 96, cf. fr. 49a) to bitter separation (fr. 130.3–4).Footnote ¹⁷⁷ Within such sequences of songs, Sappho’s recollections and self-citations would gain added point, highlighting the larger connections between her poems. Indeed, positioning fr. 94 as a whole against her wider corpus adds even further to our interpretation of it. Sappho’s female interlocutor stresses that she is now leaving ‘against her will’ (Ψάπφ’, ἦ μάν σ’ ἀέκοισ’ ἀπυλιμπάνω, 94.5) – a claim which reverses Aphrodite’s promise in fr. 1 that her similarly anonymous beloved would soon love her ‘even against her will’ (κωὐκ ἐθέλοισα, 1.24). This verbal parallel reinforces a key theme of fr. 1, the cyclicality of desire (cf. fr. 1.21–4): grudging union gives way to grudging departure. As a whole, therefore, fr. 94 invites us to trace links with Sappho’s broader poetic corpus. The emphatically repeated appeal to memory (μέμναισ’, οἶσθα, v. 8; ὄμναισαι, v. 10) reinforces this invitation, spurring Sappho’s audiences to recall her cycles of other related poems.

Such self-citation is also likely in Alcaeus’ appeal to memory. His extant poems foreground their future reception less insistently than Sappho’s,Footnote ¹⁷⁸ but at various points he acknowledges their enduring appeal, as when he claims that the weapons which he has just described ‘cannot be forgotten’ (τῶν οὐκ ἔστι λάθεσθ’, fr. 140.14) – a remark that ‘figures the poetic memorability of his own description’.Footnote ¹⁷⁹ It is thus very possible that his recollection in fr. 6 similarly indexes his wider poetic corpus, although the precise reference in this case is obscured by the papyrus’ fragmentary state, leaving the crucial object of memory concealed: μνάσθητ̣ε τὼν πάροιθε μ̣[ (‘remember the previous …’, fr. 6.11). Yet even so, all plausible supplements carry a possible indexical force. Hunt’s μ̣[υθῶν] (‘previous words’) would be particularly self-referential, gesturing to Alcaeus’ previous poetic speech, while the alternative μ̣[όχθων] (‘previous toils’) would evoke the hardships which Alcaeus complains of and prays to escape elsewhere (cf. ⸤μ̣ό̣⸥χ̣θ̣ων, fr. 129.11).Footnote ¹⁸⁰ In any case, a connection with previous events – and their poetic articulation – is reinforced by the poet’s opening remark that a wave comes upon the ship ‘again’ in the manner of a ‘previous one’ (⸤τόδ’ αὖ⸥τε κῦμα τὼ π⸤ρ⸥οτέρ̣⸤ω † νέμω † | στείχει⸥, fr. 6.1–2). The poet explicitly draws a connection with previous suffering at sea, perhaps evoking a larger cycle of ship-of-state songs, akin to Sappho’s Charaxus or Atthis cycles. By explicitly recalling past events later in the fragment, Alcaeus invites his audience to look back to other poems of his corpus.

Similar arguments can be advanced for the other examples above. Hieron’s martial achievements, for example, could have been celebrated elsewhere in song, especially given the frequency with which the tyrant appears to have patronised literary commemorations of his accomplishments. By ‘reminding’ Hieron of his past military success, Pindar could simultaneously recall earlier poetic celebrations of it (ἀμνάσειεν, Pyth. 1.47). As for Archilochus fr. 96, the addressee of Archilochus’ injunction to remember – Glaucus – reappears elsewhere in his poetry much as Atthis does in Sappho’s (frr. 15, 48.7, 105.1, 117, 131.1); the poet’s invitation to recall Thasos may well look back to Glaucus’ relationship with the island in other poems.Footnote ¹⁸¹ Of course, these final suggestions can be no more than tempting conjectures on current evidence, but from the work of Sappho and Alcaeus we can conclude that the indexical memory of archaic lyric was not restricted to the realm of myth. Poets’ ‘contemporary’ memories looked not only to their immediate social contexts (real or imagined), but also to the wider construction and articulation of their worlds in song.

III.3.4 Audience Knowledge

As we have seen above (§iii.3.1–3), lyric poets rarely invoke audience’s memories of events. When they do, it is more often through the narrator’s own recollection, rather than those of its internal characters. When we turn to cases of indexical knowledge, however, it appears that lyric’s capacity for more direct engagement between narrator and audience revitalised this allusive mode. Lyric poets occasionally assert their own knowledge of the poetic past, as when Alcaeus claims that he ‘knows for certain’ that one should not move gravel (οἶδ’ ἦ μάν, fr. 344.1), advice that he may have drawn directly from a poem by his Lesbian contemporary Sappho (μὴ κίνη χέραδος, fr. 145 ~ χέραδος μὴ … | κίνεις, Alc. fr. 344.1–2).Footnote ¹⁸² More frequently, however, lyric poets appeal directly to their audience’s knowledge of the literary and mythical past. In these cases, we can trace the significance of the allusions more clearly than with lyric poets’ indexical memory. Poets appeal to their audience’s familiarity with tradition, explicitly evoking what ‘you all know’.

One such appeal to audience knowledge is Pindar’s evocation of Ajax’s suicide in Isthmian 4 (Isth. 4.35–6b):

Pindar directly invokes his audience’s acquaintance with Ajax’s ἀλκή, another element familiar from the epic tradition (cf. §iii.3.2 above on Tyrtaeus’ θοῦρις ἀλκή). Here, however, the poet does not just evoke Ajax’s character in general, but rather a specific episode of his fabula: his ignominious suicide after losing to Odysseus in the contest for Achilles’ arms, familiar from cyclic epic and archaic art onwards.Footnote ¹⁸³

It is unclear, however, how stable the details of Ajax’s death were in the early tradition. As Spelman has highlighted, at least in later tradition, the timing of his suicide differs from that in Pindar’s account.Footnote ¹⁸⁴ In Sophocles’ Ajax, the eponymous hero kills himself during the daytime, a version of events that seems to be found in other later treatments of the myth.Footnote ¹⁸⁵ It is thus possible that this appeal to the audience’s knowledge may look to more precise precedent than the epic tradition in general, invoking a specific version in which Ajax killed himself at night. If so, the scholion to this passage names a plausible candidate: in discussing the polyvalence of the phrase ὀψίᾳ ἐν νυκτί (‘late in the night’, 35b–6), it notes that ‘the details of the story also agree with those who take the expression as denoting the pre-dawn hours; for the author of the Aethiopis says that Ajax took his own life towards dawn’ (τοῖς δὲ τὸν ὄρθρον ἀκούουσι καὶ τὰ ἀπὸ τῆς ἱστορίας συνᾴδει· ὁ γὰρ τὴν Αἰθιοπίδα γράφων περὶ τὸν ὄρθρον φησὶ τὸν Αἴαντα ἑαυτὸν ἀνελεῖν, Σ Isth. 4.58b = Aeth. fr. 6 GEF).Footnote ¹⁸⁶ From this scholiastic citation, scholars have argued that Pindar is making a direct reference to the Aethiopis, marking it as familiar to his audience.Footnote ¹⁸⁷

However, significant caution is necessary here. First, we should note that Ajax’s suicide also featured in the Little Iliad (Il. Parv. arg. 1b GEF). Proclus’ summary of that epic does not specify its precise timing, but a nighttime setting is again most plausible: the suicide immediately followed Ajax’s maddened attack on the Achaeans’ livestock, an event that always takes place at night elsewhere.Footnote ¹⁸⁸ In his recent case for a specifically Aethiopic reference in Isthmian 4, Spelman dismisses this possibility, considering it ‘significant’ that the scholia only invoke the Aethiopis as Pindaric precedent, with no mention of the Little Iliad.Footnote ¹⁸⁹ But such an argument from silence is of limited value, especially when discussing ancient habits of scholarly citation, which – just as today – were never exhaustive. Moreover, there are good grounds for supposing that Sophocles’ daytime suicide was a specific innovation of the tragic stage, dependent on the restrictions of tragic staging and the common dramatic motif of a ‘single day’ of action.Footnote ¹⁹⁰ I thus consider it likely that the traditional epic version of the myth included a nighttime hunt and nocturnal suicide, and that it was only the lasting influence of Sophocles’ play that overrode this tradition. After all, even in the Sophoclean drama, Ajax’s failed attempt to take revenge on the Greek commanders (which likely derives from the Little Iliad) took place during the night (νυκτὸς … τῆσδε, Aj. 21).Footnote ¹⁹¹ It is only the suicide that is delayed into the next day, to allow a protracted exploration of its consequences.Footnote ¹⁹² The Aethiopis’ late-night suicide may well not be as distinctive as scholars assume.

On this occasion, therefore, I do not think our evidence is sufficient to argue for an intertextual link with a specific text. A precise epic may be intended, but on current evidence, it would be overly rash to argue for a direct link with the Aethiopis over the Little Iliad.Footnote ¹⁹³ The most we can plausibly say is that Pindar is evoking his audience’s knowledge of the epic tradition, whether or not he has a specific text in mind. Yet in any case, the subsequent verses’ celebration of Ajax’s enduring fame through Homeric verse (Isth. 4.37–42) seems to attach these epic traditions to the Homeric canon.Footnote ¹⁹⁴ By stressing Ajax’s honour ‘among mankind’ (τετίμακεν δι’ ἀνθρώπων, 37), Pindar emphasises the hero’s reception among a range of poetic audiences.Footnote ¹⁹⁵ The universalising and communal aspect of this noun looks back to Pindar’s opening appeal to his audience’s knowledge (ἴστε). Their familiarity with Ajax’s fate proves the success of the epic tradition in preserving his name and reputation, a model for Pindar’s own immortalisation of Melissus’ achievements (43–5).Footnote ¹⁹⁶

Such an appeal to group knowledge may well build on Homeric poetry: there too, speakers frequently address the knowledge of the whole community (e.g. Il. 2.301, 9.35–36, 10.250, 20.203–4), a knowledge which – as we have seen – often extends to that of Homer’s own audiences (§iii.2). In Pindar’s lyric, however, this appeal to his audience’s collective knowledge has become more pointed: through the second-person plural verb, he addresses them directly.

Pindar’s only other use of the expression ἴστε μάν occurs in the closely related Isthmian 3 and bears a similar indexical force (Isth. 3.13–16):

The relation between this poem and Isthmian 4 has been long debated. Uniquely in Pindar’s corpus, these two poems address the same victor in the same metre, which has prompted some scholars to join them.Footnote ¹⁹⁷ However, most scholars now accept their independence on a variety of metrical and structural grounds: Isthmian 3 was composed for a chariot victory at Nemea, shortly after Melissus’ earlier success in the Isthmian Games, celebrated in Isthmian 4.Footnote ¹⁹⁸ When Pindar mentions ‘twin prizes’ in Isth. 3.9 (διδύμων ἀέθλων), he thus refers to the two ‘crowns’ that Melissus has won (cf. στεφάνους, 3.11), as well as the pair of poems which celebrate these achievements (cf. ὑμνῆσαι, 3.7; ἀγαναῖς χαρίτεσσιν, 3.8). In the verses quoted above, however, Pindar looks beyond these two victories to the larger reputation of Melissus’ ancestors for chariot victories. This is again marked as something with which Pindar’s audience should already be familiar (ἴστε μάν). And here too, it seems that they would have been: Isthmian 4 had already recalled the ‘ancient fame’ of his clan, the Cleonymidae (φάμαν παλαιάν, Isth. 4.22), a fame which Pindar there specified as deriving from earlier chariot victories (Isth. 4.25–7):

It is likely that the ‘leaves of song’ (φύλλ’ ἀοιδᾶν, Isth. 4.27) mentioned here are the source of the knowledge that Pindar invokes in Isthmian 3, especially given the verbal echoes between these passages (δόξαν παλαιὰν ἅρμασιν, Isth. 3.16 ~ φάμαν παλαιάν, Isth. 4.22, ἅρμα Isth. 4.25). Pindar expects his audience to be familiar with this family’s reputation from its earlier poetic celebrations, whether composed by Pindar himself or another epinician poet.Footnote ¹⁹⁹ In Isthmian 3, the emphatic ἴστε μάν gestures indexically to this poetic precedent, reinforced by the adjective παλαιάν, which further emphasises the antiquity of this fame – it is an established feature of the epinician canon. By indexing this precedent through the plural ἴστε, Pindar again evokes his audience’s communal, shared knowledge of past song. He sets his own poetry within a broader epinician tradition, just as he situates Melissus’ victory within a larger framework of familial success.

This emphasis on an audience’s collective knowledge of tradition is a recurring feature of Pindar’s poetics. In fr. 188, the poet claims that ‘you recognise the well-known utterance of Polymnestus, the man from Colophon’ (φθέγμα μὲν πάγκοινον ἔγνωκας Πολυμνάστου Κολοφωνίου ἀνδρός), referring to a poetic predecessor of the seventh century.Footnote ²⁰⁰ Unlike our previous examples, he employs a singular verb (ἔγνωκας, perhaps directed to a specific addressee), but the communality of this knowledge is still conveyed by the adjective πάγκοινον: the poet’s song is ‘common to all’. In Pythian 3, meanwhile, the poet recognises that both he and his audience ‘know’ of Nestor and Sarpedon ‘from resounding verses’ (ἐξ ἐπέων κελαδεννῶν … γινώσκομεν, Pyth. 3.112–14), explicitly acknowledging their shared epic heritage.Footnote ²⁰¹ And in Isthmian 2, he claims that Thrasybulus’ family is ‘not unfamiliar’ with epinician poetry (οὐκ ἀγνῶτες, Isth. 2.30–2), a litotic expression which underscores how frequently the Emmenidae were recipients of poetic praise (cf. εὐδόξων … ἀνδρῶν, Isth. 2.34).Footnote ²⁰² Indeed, this claim concludes a list of Xenocrates’ earlier victories which had begun with a similar reference to a ‘not unknown’ Isthmian chariot victory (οὐκ ἄγνωτ’ … Ἰσθμίαν ἵπποισι νίκαν, Isth. 2.12–13), a phrase which may again look to earlier literary celebrations of former achievements.Footnote ²⁰³ The emphatically repeated litotes reinforces the sense that Pindar’s audience, too, should be familiar with these events from earlier song.

Such appeals to the audience’s knowledge thus gestured to traditions of myth and poetry with which they would be familiar, against which the poet could situate his own work.Footnote ²⁰⁴ But as with indexical hearsay in lyric, this appeal to audience knowledge could also invite audiences to supplement a myth with their broader familiarity of tradition. In Bacchylides’ ninth epinician, for example, a poem composed for the Phliasian athlete Automedes, the poet opens an allusive catalogue of Asopus’ daughters by appealing to his audience’s knowledge (Bacchyl. 9.47–56):

After commencing here with Thebes and Aegina, the subsequent fragmentary lines appear to mention Aegina’s son Aeacus (father of Peleus and Telamon) and continue with a list of other Asopids, before ending in a closural ring composition (9.64–5). The opening emphasis on the family’s fame and renown (μυρία … φάτις, v. 48; [μεγαλώνυ]μον, v. 55) emphasises the traditionality of the catalogue that follows, a familiarity that is reinforced by Bacchylides’ appeal to the audience’s knowledge. The rhetorical question (‘For who does not know … ?’, v. 53) implies that everyone is expected to be familiar with this myth.Footnote ²⁰⁵ And indeed, the list of Asopus’ daughters, all of whom had been wooed by gods and had become the eponyms of cities, appears to have been an established legend. A fragment of Corinna offers a similar list of nine Asopids, containing much overlap with Bacchylides (fr. 654 col. ii–iv).Footnote ²⁰⁶ And as Douglas Cairns has argued, both Corinna and Bacchylides seem to be following an earlier version of the myth, perhaps that by the Corinthian Eumelus or the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women.Footnote ²⁰⁷ We know, moreover, that an Asopid ancestry was an important feature of the Phliasians’ local mythology and part of a larger debate as to whether the ancestor of these illustrious city-nymphs was the Asopus river in Boeotia or its namesake in Phliasian territory.Footnote ²⁰⁸ As part of their claim, the Phliasians dedicated both a statue group of Zeus and Aegina in Delphi (Paus. 10.13.6) and a group of Zeus, Asopus and five Asopids (including Thebes) at Olympia (Paus. 5.22.6). In asking who is not familiar with these famous cities and their Asopid ancestry, Bacchylides indexes his engagement with a familiar and politically charged local myth.

Besides evoking a well-known myth, this invitation for an audience to recall their knowledge of the Asopids also invites them to supplement the bare details that Bacchylides offers, especially in relation to the first name he mentions: Thebes. The city is described here as ‘well-built’ (ἐΰδμα[τον], 54) and introduced as an example of ‘unsacked streets’ (ἀπορθήτων ἀγυιᾶν, 52). The earlier part of Bacchylides’ poem had already recalled the failed expedition of the Seven against Thebes (9.10–20), an event which on the face of it reinforces this assessment: the city stood strong and repulsed its assailants.Footnote ²⁰⁹ But any mention of the expedition of the Seven cannot fail to evoke thoughts of its sequel, the successful sacking of the city by the Epigonoi (§iv.2.3). In appealing to his audience’s knowledge of the myth, Bacchylides’ silence on this point resonates all too loudly. ‘Yes’, we are invited to reply, ‘we do know what happened to Thebes’. Scholars have seen a political purpose underlying this suppression of the Epigonoi myth, a way to downplay and negate Argive achievement while simultaneously ‘super-imposing a skewed pro-Phliasian genealogy’ onto Thebes.Footnote ²¹⁰ But despite the explicit silence, the poet’s appeal to his audience’s knowledge gives space for the lingering shadow of tradition to rear its head, undermining any simple patriotism.

Indexical appeals to audience knowledge, just like indexical hearsay, therefore, can invite audiences to fill in the gaps of a story with their knowledge of tradition, complicating a simple treatment of myth by evoking elements that remain untold.