BMCR 2009.03.36, Luigi Battezzato, Linguistica e retorica

Luigi Battezzato, Linguistica e retorica della tragedia greca. Sussidi
Eruditi 78.  Roma:  Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 2008.  Pp. xvi,
184.  ISBN 9788884985071.  EUR 25.00 (pb).

Reviewed by Martin Cropp, University of Calgary ([email protected])
Word count:  1186 words
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To read a print-formatted version of this review, see
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/2009/2009-03-36.html
To comment on this review, see
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Table of Contents
(http://www.loc.gov/catdir/toc/casalini07/08664544.pdf )

Luigi Battezzato's book contains five studies of some particular
features of tragic style, three of which were first published between
2000 and 2003,[[1]] while the first and third are new. What ties them
together is Battezzato's interest in applying recent linguistic theory,
especially in the areas of syntax and pragmatics, to the features he
discusses, and in tracing their development from the language of early
Greek poetry to the language of tragedy.

A brief essay on 'Oedipus and Homer' starts by noting the association
in early Greek culture between poetic and oracular language, and the
uses (and abuses) of both in politics. In Sophocles' play Oedipus'
misinterpretations of oracular language are in part prompted by
traditional poetic devices. He treats the oracle's warning that he
would murder 'the father who begot me' (OT 793) as a mere poetic
pleonasm, and the point is underlined when he refers to 'Polybus who
raised and begot me' (OT 827) as if the traditional pleonasm could be
taken for granted. Battezzato adds that Oedipus' casual remark that he
has not caused Polybus' death 'unless he wasted away through longing
for me' (OT 969-70) recalls the wordings in which both Anticlea and
Penelope describe their longing for Odysseus (Odyssey 11.202, 18.203-4,
19.136), so that epic phrasing is here linked to his ignorance of the
identity of his own mother and wife.

The hysteron proteron phrasing of OT 827 is one amongst many examples
surveyed in Battezzato's second chapter, which offers both a strict
definition and a linguistic explanation of this 'figure'. On
Battezzato's definition (p. 21) a hysteron proteron arrangement  'puts
on the same level, by means of a coordinating conjunction, two verbs
(or two nouns) in an order inverted with respect to the order of the
chronological sequence of events (or of the sequence implied in two
nouns), leaving the chronological sequence to be understood from the
semantic relationship between the inverted verbs (or nouns), without
giving signals by means of verb-tenses or temporal adverbs'. Battezzato
argues that the 'figure' originated naturally in the tendency of
Homeric Greek to use coordination rather than subordination in
expressing causes or circumstances, or with concessive effect.
Sentences such as 'Allow me to kill the man and to come within
spear-cast of him' (Iliad 5.118), where the second infinitive phrase
expresses a precondition for the focal action expressed by the first,
were therefore not unusual. Only later did such phrasing come to be
seen as artificial and to be used as a figure by poets recalling
Homeric style. Battezzato discusses some well-known Sophoclean and
Virgilian examples from this point of view, and adds appendices
illustrating the relevant ancient technical terminology, some
contrasting modern explanations, and an array of examples from Homer
and the tragedians.

The more substantial of the two new essays (Ch. 3) surveys the
tradition of 'rhetorical superlatives' (i.e., attributions of primacy,
supremacy, or authority) used in declarations of value or importance.
Statements such as 'Water is best' or 'Eros rules over all the gods'
were rhetorical exaggerations, often with a gnomic character which is
reflected in priamels, ainigmata and the like. Their implications were
limited by context and convention, but contradictions could easily
arise if they were taken literally or were actually used categorically.
In a culture which attributed powers to many gods and tended to deify
abstractions as well, these contradictions were likely to generate
theological problems, and the results emerge in the questionings of
Xenophanes and later thinkers. Battezzato's focus  is Euripides' Hecuba
798ff. where (he argues) Hecuba's assertions about nomos ('which rules
over the gods') and peitho ('sole tyrannos for men') are rhetorical
superlatives reinforcing her appeal to divine justice (799-805) and her
resort to persuasion once that appeal has failed, although her gesture
towards the definition of nomos as convention (800-1) hints at a
tension between this traditional rhetorical mode and the implications
of sophistic thought.

A study of interrogative phrasing in Euripides (Ch. 4) considers the
text of Andromeda F 125, where Battezzato proposes to read
<greek>parqe/nou d'eikw\ ti/na</greek> 'and what image of a maiden . .
.' rather than the transmitted <greek>parqe/nou d'eikw/ tina</greek>
'and some image of a maiden . . .' which many editors have accepted
(Rutherford and Housman preferred the interrogative, and it has been
adopted by several editors of Andromeda since Battezzato's initial
publication). Battezzato illustrates the inversion of the pronoun-noun
order normally used in interrogative phrases and explains it in
pragmatic terms (the promotion of the noun gives prominence to a new
topic or, as here, sub-topic). He also shows incidentally that
<greek>automo/rfwn</greek> in line 3 may well mean 'true to her very
form'.

Lastly, Battezzato's study of interlinear hiatus in tragic trimeters
(Ch. 5) makes important advances on the discussion of this topic by T.
C. W. Stinton in 1977 (following those of E. Harrison and C. J.
Herington). Battezzato provides a modified definition and
classification of enjambement, making an important distinction between
stronger types (such as those involving prepositives at line-end) and
less strong types (such as those involving separation of subject and
verb). He also offers a more accurate quantification of the data and a
linguistic explanation. Battezzato broadly confirms his predecessors in
finding that enjambement-with-hiatus is generally more frequent in
Aeschylus than in Sophocles and Euripides, though the frequencies
increase somewhat in the later plays of these two (only Euripides'
Helen exceeds Aeschylean rates, and of the rest only his Electra and
Iphigenia in Tauris approach them). But it also emerges that in the
stronger types of enjambement hiatus is equally rare throughout.
Battezzato explains these phenomena as a result of changing
'phonostyles' in tragedy. For Aeschylus a slower and more formal
verse-delivery would have made hiatus between enjambed lines less
objectionable than in the increasingly fluent phonostyles of his
successors. Sophocles, using enjambement very freely, was
correspondingly sensitive to hiatus, while Euripides became more
tolerant of it to the extent that he moved towards informal diction and
the norms of Comedy. To these general findings Battezzato adds comments
on some special cases (Prometheus Vinctus, Trachiniae, Cyclops,
Rhesus), on short final syllables in lines enjambed without hiatus, and
on the accentuation of oxytone words at the end of enjambed lines.

One could (naturally) debate a few marginal points of classification,
but these studies are generally persuasive and enlightening, based as
they are on a thorough knowledge of the scholarship in this area and of
current trends in linguistics. It is good to have them in book form,
which should give them a higher profile. The book itself is handsomely
produced and reasonably priced. I noticed a dozen minor errors but only
one that could be seriously misleading: in Table 5 (p. 136) the figure
in the right-hand column for Orestes should be 8%, not 18%. On p. 69,
line 14 the words 'Il famoso passo delle Nuvole di Aristofane' should
be deleted. On pp. 73-4 much of the paragraph repeats what has been
said on pp. 68-9. And on p. 120, in the second paragraph of section
7.1, the references should (I think) be to category E and p. 136, Table
5.

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Notes:


1.   Ch. 2 in G. Avezzu\ (ed.), Il dramma sofocleo. Testo, lingua,
interpretazione (Stuttgart-Weimar, 2003), 17-48); Ch. 4 in MD 44
(2000), 141-73; Ch. 5 in Seminari Romani 4.1 (2001), 1-38.