‘The second task required of a writer of an historical work (the first task being to select a suitable subject) is to decide where to begin and how far to go.’ The fundamental questions of ‘where to begin’ and ‘where to end’ must be as old as literature itself. They automatically pose themselves to any would-be poet or author. Moreover, passages such as Od. 9.14 show that, from an early stage, poets openly addressed the questions ‘What then shall I recount first, what last?’ (albeit here in the voice of the character Odysseus at the beginning of his long narrative to the Phaeacians). In all likelihood these questions quickly became a literary topos (possibly before Homer), which in turn could playfully be modified by subsequent poets and authors (cf. Hunter, this volume). They thus prepared the ground for literary critics to treat the whole issue in their analyses. No doubt, they especially needed to address this issue because those compositions which were the earliest extant works and also the undisputed masterpieces of Greek literature, the Homeric epics, displayed a remarkable temporal structure and thus intrigued readers.

Starting from a definition of plot (and its counterpart fabula) that is essentially rooted in ancient rhetorical theory, the present chapter then goes on to explore the various applications of the concept and its ramifications in ancient literary criticism. These include questions such as overall plot structure, motivation and narrative coherence, forward and backward references within the plot (prolepsis, analepsis) and their functions, the introduction of characters and how this contributes to a coherent plot, changes of scene, and the handling of multiple storylines and digressions.

The general distinction between fabula and plot is very common in modern literary criticism. Fabula stands for a reconstruction, in chronological order, of the events that are narrated, irrespective of their relative position in the text. Plot refers to the narrated events in the order and disposition that the particular text under consideration exhibits. The plot of the Iliad, for example, begins with Chryses' arrival at the Greek ships (Il. 1.12), the fabula, say, with Paris' judgment (cf. Il. 24.29–30). Although the distinction as such is not explicitly made by ancient literary critics, a comparable distinction nevertheless underlies their reasoning.

Ancient rhetorical theory differentiates between how to find an appropriate topic for one's speech and how to make use of this topic in order to construct the speech. Of especial importance in the present context is the model of Dionysius of Halicarnassus. He makes a distinction between ‘subject-matter’ (πραγματικόν) and ‘style’ (λεκτικόν).

Ancient scholars do not seem to have been aware of the oral nature of Homeric epic (see also Chapter 15), but they did recognise the recurrent pattern of particular Homeric scenes, as the present chapter will show. Thus their approach is similar to Arend's in his seminal study Die typischen Scenen bei Homer (1933), who neither knew of Parry's results nor drew a corresponding conclusion himself. Unlike Arend, the scholia do not make use of a particular term for ‘type scene’.

ARMING

The type scene which receives the most attention in the Homeric scholia is the arming scene (ὁπλισμός). The impulse seems to come from Zenodotus' treatment of Paris' arming before his duel with Menelaus in Iliad 3, as explained by Aristonicus:

The scholia that form the basis of this book comment on literary texts that normally have a plot with a mythological subject-matter. Consequently, the relevant scholia also deal with questions of myth. In fact, these scholia are so numerous and often long (see in particular the mythographical D-scholia to the Iliad and the scholia to Apollonius of Rhodes and Lycophron) that a systematic discussion would go beyond the scope of this book. Instead the following account will try to give a general idea of the major questions which ancient commentators address when dealing with mythological issues.

The most basic (and probably most common) type of comment simply states the ‘facts’ of the relevant myth. Though typologically similar, the notes in this group cover a wide range and vary considerably in scope. The scale ranges from concise notes such as ‘X is the son of Y’ to extensive retelling of entire myths. Despite the difference in size and scope, they have a similar function in that they primarily intend to provide the reader with background information that is deemed necessary to understand the text under discussion (cf. page 16). (On occasion, however, the scholion seems to contain more information than is immediately necessary. The commentator appears to take the opportunity to put his knowledge on display or to provide a ‘mythological handbook’.) Notes which primarily state the ‘facts’ of the myth may or may not mention an authority on which their evidence is based.

This chapter supplements the general points made in Chapter 3 with some of the more specific characteristics that ancient scholars discovered in the speeches of Homer in particular.

SPEECH INTRODUCTIONS AND THEIR FUNCTION

Homeric speeches are normally introduced and capped by speech formulae, which have a function similar to quotation marks in a modern text. At the same time, the speech introduction allows the narrator to give an idea of what the speech is going to be like. As a note on the line that introduces Odysseus' first speech to Nausicaa puts it:

The note makes two observations. Firstly, the speech introduction provides the reader with a standard which he can apply to the speech (the implication probably being that this helps him to orient himself). Secondly, however, the information whether or not the speech fulfils its purpose is given only after the speech (e.g. in the capping formula).

The general point about Homeric speech introductions is made by Porphyry with considerably more detail and the explicit statement that this is a standard feature of Homeric speeches. The long note first states the general principle:

The masterpieces of Greek literature such as Homeric epic and Attic tragedy owe their deep and lasting effect not least to the prominence of fascinating and highly individualised characters. Readers (and spectators) of all times recognise immediately that the characters and their depiction are a central focus of Greek poetry. Little surprise, then, that ancient critics also paid considerable attention to the topic. The present survey first examines issues regarding the casts of dramatic and narrative texts and then turns to the question of characterisation itself.

CAST

In dramatic texts, the cast is limited in size for generic reasons and therefore does not pose major problems to a proper understanding. In tragedy, the number of speaking characters rarely exceeds ten and is unlikely to confuse an attentive reader. Ancient commentators generally confine themselves to listing the dramatis personae at the end of the hypothesis, often in the sequence in which they enter the stage for the first time (e.g. argum. A. Ag. p. 2 Smith). Occasionally, the hypothesis contains a few general remarks on characterisation (see below), but the identity of the characters does not receive much attention either in hypotheseis or in scholia to tragedy. The cast of Aristophanes' comedies tends to be somewhat larger and is, of course, not bound by tradition (Arist. Po. 1451b13–14). The extant scholia on Aristophanes, however, show little further interest in questions of casting.

The structural principle here called ‘reverse order’ is regularly referred to in ancient and modern scholarship on Homer, but there is no generally accepted term to designate it. ‘Reverse order’ describes the Homeric narrator's tendency to return first to the last of a series of two or more elements previously mentioned. Therefore, the structure of the principle can be represented as: A–B—B’–A’. To give an example:

The horses, which are mentioned last, are taken up first, which is especially striking as one might expect precedence to be given to the human fighters. This Homeric structural principle was well known to Aristarchus, who referred to it with the phrase πρὸς τὸ δεύτερον πρότερον ἀπαντᾶν, for example in the scholion on the quoted passage.

The extant corpus of scholia provides a remarkably high number of notes which comment on the principle. Perhaps even more interesting is the fact that the scholia contain traces of a scholarly debate as to whether the principle is always adhered to or not.

Ancient literary criticism is not the least studied subject of classical studies. The author of a new book on the topic cannot take it for granted that the field will unconditionally welcome the results of his efforts. So why this book?

A general overview of extant scholarship on ancient literary criticism recognises three major areas of interest. Scholars (i) explore the origins of ancient literary criticism (e.g. in Aristophanes or Plato) or (ii) they interpret the relevant ‘technical’ treatises (Aristotle's Poetics, Ps.Longinus' On the Sublime, Ps.Demetrius' On Style, etc.) or specific parts of them, or (iii) they provide collections (sometimes annotated and/or translated) of relevant passages from the texts of categories (i) and/or (ii). Conversely, literary criticism in the scholia is an underworked topic. Given that there is an undeniable interest in ancient literary criticism, this lack of attention is surprising and, as this book attempts to demonstrate, not justified. For the scholia are apt to put into perspective and supplement the evidence that can be gathered from the treatises. Both scholia and treatises have their respective merits and limitations, and much can be gained if one allows one type of source to throw light on the other and vice versa.

An important strength of treatises (as compared with the scholia) is their systematic approach. The selection of topics is premeditated and follows a meaningful order. The single phenomenon is given a definition and usually illustrated with an example.

In accordance with the principles laid out in the Introduction (page 5), this chapter on style focuses on the concepts that are discussed in the scholia with some frequency and does not attempt to give an overview of ancient notions of style in general. As a further restriction, the present account excludes most of the rhetorical figures that deal with single words or very short phrases (metaphor, synecdoche, litotes, etc.) and/or are of a more ‘technical’ type (epanalepsis, homoioteleuton, isocolon, etc.). They do not really address the questions of literary criticism that are the focus of this book and, more importantly, are better studied on the basis of the rhetorical handbooks. Instead, the chapter primarily discusses stylistic terms and concepts that can be applied to entire clauses, sentences or even larger units of text.

GRAPHIC QUALITY (ENARGEIA)

The title of this section needs a brief explanation. The word ἐνάργεια is usually rendered in English by ‘vividness’. However, the Greek concept of ἐνάργεια does not primarily refer to liveliness, vivacity, the state of being animated, etc., as ‘vividness’ suggests. Rather ἐνάργεια is a visual concept (comparable to German Anschaulichkeit) and designates the graphic description that enthrals the audience. ‘Graphic quality’ is an attempt to capture the visual connotations of ἐνάργεια. This visual foundation of the term manifests itself, among other things, in the way that the concept often goes hand in hand with the notion that the gripping account turns the reader into a spectator.

This final part is deliberately not called ‘conclusion’. All the preceding nineteen chapters are capped by a brief conclusion. Little could be gained from repeating or even summarising them here. More importantly, it is in the nature of conclusions to generalise. It is, however, doubtful whether a heterogeneous corpus such as the poetic scholia is conducive to such generalisations. The material has gone through too many different hands that often cannot be identified – at least not now. At the same time too much seems to depend on the sheer randomness and hazards of textual transmission. The latter point should also caution against drawing conclusions from statistical data (‘notes on X are three times more frequent than notes on Y’) or from argumenta ex silentio. It would be difficult to argue that scholars were not interested in a particular device just because it is never discussed in the extant scholia (or in one of the relevant treatises) – leaving aside the question whether ‘never’ could be said with sufficient confidence about a corpus that is vast, heterogeneous and to some extent insufficiently edited. This, of course, is not to say that one should not draw conclusions from the material presented here at all. The reader will find them at the end of each chapter with respect to that particular topic. It is, however, less clear to me whether one could (or even should) draw general conclusions about literary criticism in the corpus of poetic scholia as a whole.

It is a well-established fact that no text is a seamless series of pieces of information which provide the reader with an entirely complete picture. Instead, every text contains minor or major gaps which the reader is to fill in for himself or herself on the basis of the surrounding information that the text does provide. In the case of minor gaps, the reader hardly notices them at all. Other gaps, however, may be considered more serious and may therefore encourage a commentator to give an explanation that something is presupposed, but never explicitly mentioned, in the text. As a consequence, the scholia repeatedly report that a particular event happened κατὰ τὸ σιωπώμενον (‘in silence, tacitly’ ≈ ‘implicitly’). For instance, in Il. 5.221–8 Aeneas invites Pandarus to mount his chariot in order for them to attack the raging Diomedes. They do so in 239–40. What happened to the charioteer?

The passage may in itself seem unspectacular, and the interpretation of the scene perhaps somewhat literal-minded. What is important, however, is that κατὰ τὸ σιωπώμενον is recognised as a recurrent feature of Homeric poetry (καὶ ἔστι παρ᾿ ῾Ομήρῳ πολλὰ τοιαῦτα) at an early stage in ancient scholarship.