“Shaky Hands, Misty Eyes, and Weary Limbs: Greek Poetry of Retirement”

   © 2010 DANIEL LEVINE.  REPRODUCTION BY PERMISSION ONLY. (DLEVINE@UARK.EDU)

“Shaky Hands, Misty Eyes, and Weary Limbs: Greek Poetry of Retirement”

In Honor of Will Freiert: May 8, 2010. 

Gustavus Adolphus  College

St. Peter, Minnesota

Daniel B. Levine

[Footnotes at end]

(slide 1 Title Slide)

(slide 2 Will Freiert)

INTRODUCTION

    Thank you for that lovely introduction. I am flattered by the attention, but ask that we remember: today’s focus is Professor Freiert. With that in mind, I have

composed a small oration tailored specifically to his identity: because he is a Classicist, it will deal with the cultures of the Greco-Roman world; because he is a Philologist, it will concentrate on language and literature; because of his dedication to the Humanities, it will deal with issues common to all people; and because he is on the verge of becoming an Old Man, it will be short, simple, and delivered slowly, in a loud voice.

(slide 3 Old Age in Ancient Greece)

    If you ask a classics professor to tell you about “Old Age in Ancient Greece,” you will probably be treated to a 50-minute lecture with a long list of examples: Wise Nestor ruled over the third generation of men; Priam’s elderly status earned him great respect; Laertes had a sad old age on his farm until his son Odysseus returned to Ithaca; Sophocles composed tragedies after his eightieth year; Socrates learned lyre playing in his old age; the Spartans entrusted their state’s welfare to the council of elders: the γερουσία. In Greek comedy, old men are cantankerous and irascible, as Philokleon in Aristophanes’ Wasps and Strepsiades in the Clouds. Some Classics professors will tell you that the inhabitants of Mt. Athos were thought to live to 140, and the long-lived Ethiopians to 120. Plato wrote the Laws at 81; Euripides wrote Bacchae and Iphigeneia at Aulis at 80. Isocrates finished his Panathenaicus just before his death at age 98. The sophist Gorgias lived to 108 -- says Lucian -- because he never accepted a dinner invitation from anyone (Lucian Macrobioi 23).

    But, if you ask the same Classicist about “Retirement in Ancient Greece,” you are liable to get a shorter answer. There’s Laertes, “retired” in his garden; Nestor, after the Trojan War rules his people, entertains guests, sacrifices to Poseidon, enjoys his family -- and continues to make long speeches. In Plato’s Republic, old Cephalus stays at home in Peiraeus, garlanding himself for sacrifices, and sitting on a soft chair, eating and conversing with friends. “Cephalus” is literally the “head” of his household.

     But what about the rest? What was “retirement” like for οἱ πολλοί? Since we gather this afternoon in congenial company to celebrate Will Freiert’s imminent

retirement, it is appropriate to examine some evidence of Retirement in Ancient Greece.

(slide 4 Modern Greek Terms for Retirement, with Greek Syntaxiouchos picture)

THE TERMINOLOGY OF RETIREMENT

    In Modern Greek, “I retire” is παίρνω σύνταξη, which literally means “I take a pension,” and a pensioner is one who “holds his syntax”: συνταξηούχος. From my experience with him, I am sure that in his retirement Will Freiert will hold his syntax, and hold it well. And it’s somehow appropriate for a classicist of a certain age to enter this advanced stage of “syntax-holding,” since it is to syntax that we dedicate a good part of our professional lives. Syntax is literally a ‘marshalling together,’ ‘ a gathering,’ and of course, ‘a grammatical construction.’ But in terms of retirement, it refers to the money that our employers or the government guards for us, and which we collect after we attain

a certain age. Did we get this idea from classical antiquity? We most definitely did not. Here’s an interesting fact: the Oxford Classical Dictionary has two articles on “Age,” three on “Marriage,” two on “Death,” and articles on “Rites of Passage,” “Children,” “Childbirth,” “Education,” and “Motherhood,” but no entry on “Retirement” -- which is not even mentioned in any of the other articles. Why is that?

(slide 5 Emeritus/Decessus)

    Neither Latin nor Ancient Greek had a standard vocabulary for retirement in our sense. “But wait,” you say, “What about the participle emeritus, from the verb emereo, emerere, emerui, emeritum ‘to earn, fully’ that we use to mean ‘retired’?” Well, yes, emeritus does mean “retired”— sort of. But the Romans used it as a substantive to describe a soldier who has served his time, a veteran. Literally it means ‘having fully earned,’ or ‘having completed one’s term of service.’ In a way, his matches our modern definition, and describes our friend Will Freiert, who will soon be a professor emeritus, defined in the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, “retired or honorably discharged from active professional duty, but retaining the title of [his] office or position.” But to the Romans the word emeritus refers to soldiers -- not to classics teachers, or anyone else, for that matter. My grandfather pronounced it ee-mer- EYE-tis, and said it was a disease that afflicted professors who stopped teaching.

    Another specialized Latin word that can describe retirement is decessus, from decedo, decedere, decessi, decessum ‘to depart,’ but it too is a specialized term, meaning “having retired from a province after a term of office.” Latin expressions like these refer to people in military and political spheres, who retire to private life (vita privata) after their service (vita publica) is complete. But what about the non-soldiers, the nonpoliticians? What about the rest of us?

(slide 6 Greek Retirement Terminology)

    And what was the ancient Greek word for retirement -- before the Modern “syntax-taking” expression? This question presents a problem, because retirement as we know it was all but unknown to the Ancient Greeks, so it is not surprising that they had practically no vocabulary to describe it. In some of the epigrams we shall consider this afternoon, the poets resort to periphrasis to describe the act of retirement. They use expressions like ἐκ τέχνας παυσάμενος, “having ceased from his craft,” or καμάτων παυσάμενος “having ceased from troublesome toils,” or variations on these. To Plutarch, who wanted men never to retire from public office, retirement was ἀπραξία “doing nothing; idleness (784a).” Other sneering descriptions he uses for “retirement” reinforce the notion that it is an act of betrayal. A man who retires from public life “slinks off” (καταδύομαι) to an effeminate lifestyle at home (784a). A retiree in Plutarch’s view is a deserter ( πολείπω 785e; καταλείπω 790c), or someone who literally “gives himself up to a life of inactivity” (μεθιέναι ἑαυτὸν εἰς βίον ἄπρακτον· 792b). The rest of this speech will be a look at what retirement was like for Greeks of various sorts, and to examine the sources that portray it.

(slide 7 Cephalus in Plato’s Republic)

RETIREMENT IN CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY

    Plato portrays a retired man in the Republic: wealthy old Cephalus, whom Socrates visits in the Piraeus [note 1].He is introduced as looking older, sitting on a cushioned chair and wearing a garland, having just offered sacrifices in his courtyard. He greets Socrates and says:

My dear Socrates, you don’t come to see us here in the Piraeus as often as you should. Of course, if I were strong enough to make the journey to Athens, you wouldn’t need to come here, for I should come to see you. But, as it is, you really must visit our house more often. My bodily pleasures are rapidly diminishing, but my desire for the pleasures of good conversation grows just as rapidly. So don’t refuse us. Regard us as your good friends. Please feel at home in this house, and be a companion to these young men.

When Socrates asks Cephalus how it feels to be an old man, he replies that he enjoys the company of other oldsters, but does not like to hear their complaints about missing the feasting, drinking, and women that made their youths so sweet. Cephalus does not agree with this attitude, and tells Socrates that with the abatement of youthful passions, old age “brings with it an experience of tranquility and release in these and other matters.”

    Old Cephalus has a pleasant retirement: he enjoys conversation, staying at home, sacrificing and relaxing on soft furniture. It is a comforting image, but how typical is it? Robert Garland’s book The Greek Way of Life contains a forty-five-page chapter on “Elders and the Elderly,” which examines the subject of old age from many angles [note 2]. It has a section on “Retirement” that is all of twelve lines long. In these dozen lines, Garland says “The option of retirement is “occasionally hinted at in Athenian literature” (262-263), and he cites two examples: First there is crazy Philokleon in Aristophanes’ Wasps, an old man who has turned over control of his home to his son, and spends his time as a juryman; and secondly, a private speech of Isaios that tells of an adopted son and his wife who look after the old man Menekles (2.10-12). Garland concludes,

“Needless to say, for those at the lower end of the economic scale, whether self-employed or in the service of others, the option of retiring simply did not exist.” No wonder it’s not in the Oxford Classical Dictionary.

    Sir Moses I. Finley has elaborated on this dearth of information on retirement [note 3]:

Then, there were no pensions, no benefits, none of the questions arising from conditions of employment or unemployment, no formalized or institutionalized concept of retirement. Political and administrative rulings about retirement were therefore restricted almost entirely to the army. (Finley 1-2)

He further tells us that old people were on their own as they faced their final years:

 There is not one text, to my knowledge, attesting either private or governmental action to assist the elderly -- no charities, no pensions, no almshouses, poor houses or old-age homes, nothing. … Sons were held responsible for the maintenance of their parents and grandparents,

and that was the end of the matter. And if they failed or were unable to do so, or if they predeceased their parents, what then? The answer is that we simply have no idea, and I see no virtue in idle guesses. (Finley 14)

Finley concludes bluntly, “The only exit from the genuine labour force, free or slave, self-employed or hired by others, was through physical incapacity or death” (Finley 15).

    In sum, what we call the “Golden Years” could be brutal for the elderly in the ancient Mediterranean —unless they had military pensions, or like Plato’s Cephalus, could afford to live on their accumulated or inherited wealth.

(slide 8 De Senectute)

CICERO’S DE SENECTUTE

    Which brings us to Cicero’s dialogue De Senectute, “On Old Age.” Although this speech for Will concerns Greek retirement, I must remind you that every classicist is obliged — by law — to mention De Senectute in any scholarly discussion of the elderly. But I will make it brief.

     The main message of De Senectute is that men should maintain an active, enlightened, and dignified old age. Its main interlocutor, appropriately named Cato “the Elder,” quotes the early Roman poet Ennius, who, he says, died in poverty at age 70. In these two hexameter lines, Ennius compares himself in old age to a gallant, victorious race-horse (5.14):

Sicut fortis equos, spatio qui saepe supremo

Vicit Olumpia, nunc senio confectus quiescit.

Like a courageous steed which has often won races in the last lap

At Olympia, and now, worn out by years, takes his rest.

We will return later to “the old horse” as a metaphor for retirement. The Elder Cato then mentions the possibility of his own retirement, only to dismiss it. I paraphrase his speech: “Retirement? Not me! No. Please don’t think I would do that; I may be old, but I’m working; and besides, I’m very busy planning to destroy Carthage” (6.18).

     We can read De Senectute in fact, as an anti-retirement tract. A good part of the dialogue is about the joys of not retiring, with examples of prominent men who were productive and active into extreme old age. To Cicero’s Cato, it seems almost sinful for an old man to do nothing. The closest De Senectute comes to allowing an old man to enjoy a peaceful old age is in its approval of the Joys of Farming. Cato puts forth the idea that one of the best things an old man can do is to spend time on the farm, relaxing and playing dice (16.57-58):

A well-kept farm is the most useful thing in the world, and also the best to look upon. And old age (senectus), far from impeding the enjoyment of your farm, actually increases its pleasures and fascinations... Out of all the sports that exist, just leave us old men our two kinds of dice, the oblong and the cube -- if you choose to, that is, for even without them old age can still be happy! 

    Of course, the cultivation of the soil (agri colendi studia 17.60) that Cato repeatedly praises actually means that the retired gentleman will potter about on his farm, watching his slaves do the work. This blessed rural retirement is not shared by the poor. In fact, when Laelius mentions this fact to Cato, the Elder’s nine-word response is the acknowledgement that “Old age cannot be easy in extreme poverty” (Nec enim in summa inopia levis esse senectus potest). Finley says that these nine Latin “throwaway words” show that “Cicero has not the slightest interest” in the elderly poor, and that even admitting that the poor have it bad is rare (Finley 11). The coziness of retirement is reserved for the wealthy: those who actually have a “syntax” to take.

(slide 9: Dr. Känner-Bra)

     Perhaps it will be a good idea here to point out that Gustavus Adolphus College is one of the few if not the only school in the United States that requires faculty applying for retirement to undergo both a physical and a psychiatric evaluation. Will Freiert, like generations of Gustavus faculty before him, recently consulted with the college physician, Dr. Känner-Bra, whose name in Swedish means, appropriately enough, “Dr. Feel-Good.” I have obtained the transcript of this visit, part of which reads as follows.

All the tests show you to be in excellent health… physically,” said Dr.Känner-Bra, “But we need assurance that you are psychologically prepared for retirement. Many faculty members think that they are ready, but actually have no idea what they are getting into as they age. Will, you have successfully passed your Grand Climacteric, but I must now ask you directly: When you retire, will you accept your old age, or will you decline it?” Will Freiert did not hesitate. He focused his hazel-brown eyes on the doctor, took a deep breath, and answered, "Senectus, Senectutis, Senectuti,Senectutem, Senectute.”

(slide 10 Plutarch of Chaironeia)

PLUTARCH: “WHETHER AN OLD MAN SHOULD ENGAGE IN PUBLIC AFFAIRS” [Note 4]

    Let us turn to some Greek examples, beginning with Plutarch of Chaeroneia, born about one hundred years after Cicero wrote De Senectute. His essay, “Whether an Old Man Should Engage in Public Affairs” is an argument for the elderly to stay active to the end of their lives. Even more than its Ciceronian exemplar, it deals with retirement in a negative way. It too is essentially an “anti-retirement” tract, ending with a final, surprising image of an active, productive old man.

    Plutarch is vehement and repetitive in his insistence that older men should not retire. Like Cicero, he draws examples from classical antiquity, and uses analogies from the natural and human realms to make his point. First, Plutarch calls a man who retires a worthless drone (783f-784a [Note 5]):

For no one ever saw a bee (μέλιττα) that had on account of age become a drone (κηφήν), as some people claim that public men, when they have passed their prime (ὅταν παρακμάσωσιν), should sit down in retirement at home and be fed (οἴκοι σιτουμένους καθῆσθαι καὶ ποκεῖσθαι), allowing their worth in action to be extinguished by idleness as iron is destroyed by rust. And of the many forms of baseness none disgraces an aged man more than idleness, cowardice, and slackness, when he retires from public offices (ἐκ πολιτικῶν ἀρχείων καταδυόμενον) to the domesticity befitting women or to the country where he oversees the harvesters and the women who work as gleaners. 

(slide 11 The Old Age of A Horse)

    In other words, “Do not retire to your farm and tend to your own personal affairs… that’s effeminate.” Real men don’t retire. In fact, it is disgraceful (αἰσχρόν) for men to withdraw (ἐξισταμένους) from public life, and give up ( πολιπών) their duties. What is worse, he asks, than a man busying himself with measuring flour and olive cakes and with tufts of sheep’s wool -- will he not be thought to be bringing upon himself “the old age of a horse (ἵππου γῆρας),” as the saying is, when nobody forces him to do so. 785c-d

    Plutarch’s use of the expression “The horse’s old age” (ἵππου γῆρας) [Note 6] reminds us of Ennius’s verse about the former Olympic prize-winning steed taking his rest in his old age. Old horses figure prominently in Greek retirement metaphor: after having distinguished themselves in their heyday [or "hayday"?] on the racecourse or battlefield, they later perform menial tasks, unbefitting of their former glory. Some suffered worse, as we surmise from the ancient Greek expression “aged horses are cast into ravines” [Note 7]. Aesop’s

fable of The Old Horse captures the sadness of this kind of retirement:

An old horse was sold to turn a flour-mill. When it was hitched up to the mill it sighed and said: “That it should come to such service/labour as this after all the races I have run!” So ought one not to pride himself in the potency of youth or fame; for many a man, old age (γῆρας) is past in heavy labour. [B138, Cf. Aes. 318 = Babrius 29] [Note 8]

Here we note a reflection of the sad condition of the poor, as Cato’s concession had hinted. The last line of this fable, “old age is past in heavy labour,” as John Wortley remarks, “probably describes the common lot: as failing strength was applied to decreasingly remunerative tasks” [Note 9].

(Slide 12 Plutarch of Chaironeia)

    Let us turn back to Plutarch’s tract, with its rich metaphors that decry retirement. A man who retires, he says, resembles sailors who desert their ship ( πολείπουσιν) before it is even moored, and “devote themselves to sexual indulgence ( φροδίσια).” It is like Heracles switching places with Omphale, abandoning his labors to wear a yellow gown, be pampered, fanned, and have his hair curled (785E). Plutarch uses Lucullus as a negative example (785f): He “gave himself up after his military activities to baths, banquets, sexual intercourse in the daytime, great listlessness, and the erection of newfangled

buildings (λουτρὰ καὶ δεῖπνα καὶ συνουσίας μεθημερινὰς καὶ πολὺν ἄλυν καὶ κατασκευὰς οἰκοδομημάτων νεοπρεπεῖς).” Lucullus’ idleness in retirement (βίον

ἄπρακτον) led to a home-bound and thought-free existence (καὶ δίαιταν οἰκουρὸν καὶ ἄφροντιν); he became “a wasted skeleton, like sponges in calm seas” (792b).

(Slide 13 Greek Dice Playing)

    The old man retiring from public service is like a ship’s helmsman (kubernetes) “who has sailed in great danger against adverse winds and waves, and, after clear weather and fair winds have come, seeks his moorings” (787d). Plutarch sneers at the idle old man “who spends the day in bed or sits in the corner of the porch chattering and wiping his nose” (ἐν κλίνῃ διημερεύων ἢ καθήμενος ἐν γωνίᾳ στοᾶς φλυαρῶν καὶ πομυττόμενος)” 788B. And later he describes the worthless pursuits of idle old men as consisting of lending money, sitting together and playing dice, and getting together for drinking-parties (δανείζειν ἢ κυβεύειν συγκαθεζομένους ἢ πίνειν ἐν ὥρᾳ συνάγοντας 795f). Cicero’s essay also had spoken of old men’s fondness for dice games. That dice playing is a game for useless and idle men is clear from the first book

of the Odyssey, where we meet the dissolute, lazy suitors, who were delighting their hearts with dice outside the doors (1.107 πεσσοῖσι προπάροιθε θυράων θυμὸν ἔτερπον). In the Classical period, Euripides’ Medea presents the Old Pedagogue reporting to the nurse that he had learned about Medea’s upcoming banishment as he went by the dice-playing place (πεσσοί), where the very old men (παλαίτεροι) sit (Medea 67-70).

    Also, we recall that Cicero’s De Senectute had praised the life on a farm as an ideal retreat for a retired gentleman: The austere Plutarch won’t allow even that. He says, don’t “hurry away to the country to dwell with agriculture as your handmaid or to devote the rest of your time to some sort of domestic management and keeping accounts.” He who does that “is urging the statesman to do what is wrong and unseemly” (ἄδικα πείθει καὶ χάριστα πράττειν 789C). We might summarize Plutarch’s attitude by paraphrasing Plato’s Socratic dictum: “The inactive life is not worth living for an old man:” ὁ ἄπρακτος βίος οὐ βιωτὸς γέροντι.

(Slide 14 Plutarch Moralia Herm)

    Plutarch’s lengthy essay ends on a striking and unexpected note of phallic symbolism, in which he sums up his main idea: Plutarch says that that representation of erect phalloi on Herms of elderly men embodies the active and fertile mind of the elderly: … for age does not so much diminish our power to perform services as it increases our power for leading and governing. And that is the reason why they make the older Hermae (τῶν Ἑρμῶν τοὺς πρεσβυτέρους) without hands or feet, but with their private parts stiff (ἐντεταμένους δὲ τοῖς μορίοις), indicating figuratively (αἰνιττόμενοι) that there is no need whatsoever of old men who are active by their body’s use, if they keep their mind (τὸν λόγον), as it should be, active (ἐνεργόν) and fertile (γόνιμον 797f) [Note 10].

    Plutarch’s final picture is of an elderly man’s head above an erect phallus -- a most potent symbol of his main point: the old are productive, firm, and strong; they can and must continue to be active. Retirement is for sissies.

(Slide 15 Will Freiert as Herm… then Slide 16: Closeup of Will Herm face. Also, Slide 17 and 18, Different version.)

(Slide 19 Greek Anthology)

RETIREMENT POEMS IN THE GREEK ANTHOLOGY

    The sixth book of the Greek Anthology contains 358 “dedicatory” epigrams: poems purporting to commemorate gifts to the gods -- anathemata -- of the sort inscribed on sanctuary offerings. Fifty of these poems deal with the imagined retirement of humble laborers: fishermen, hunters, prostitutes, and others -- regular folks. They are artistic representations of old peoples’ dedicating to a god “the tools of the trade” when at the end of their careers they are unable to continue to make their living in their professions. These epigrams often speak of infirmity, exhaustion, and the physical restrictions of old age, as well as providing a rich source of individual characterizations, as Graham Zanker has recently pointed out [Note11]. The earliest author of this sub-genre is Leonidas of Tarentum (3rd Century BCE), who wrote seven of the retirement poems in the Anthology, and of whom J. W. Mackail wrote in 1890:

He invented a particular style of dedicatory epigram, in which the implements of some trade or profession are enumerated in ingenious circumlocutions; these have been singled out for special praise by Sainte-Beuve, but will hardly be interesting to many readers [Note 12].

Well, I have been interested in them lately, and so has Kathryn Gutzwiller, who has shown that Leonidas of Tarentum was one of the earliest poets to modify epigram types “to focus on the lives of the lower classes.” Gutzwiller says that Leonidas’ epigram book was probably the most sophisticated collection of inscriptional poetry in the Hellenistic era, and that many later epigrammatists followed Leonidean models [Note 13] . She describes him as “a creative artist who shared the lower-class values of his most sympathetically treated characters and who yet possessed the literary and philosophical expertise to produce a work of art appealing to the upper-class readers. The result was

not just an anthology based on thematic commonality, but a poetry book expressing an ideology of class (Gutzwiller 1998, 91).

    The first of Leonidas’ epigrams actually appears in Book 5, among the amatory poems. It represents a dedication by two aging flute girls:

(slide 20 Leonidas 1. Courtesans)

Melo and Satyra, the daughters of Antigenides, now advanced in age

(τανυήλικες), the easy-going work-women of the Muses (Μουσῶν εὔκολοι

ἐργάτιδες), dedicate to the Pimpleian Muses, the one her swift-lipped flute and this its box-wood case, and the amorous Satyra (ἡ φίλερως), her pipe that she joined with wax, her fellow evening reveler for drinking parties, sweetly playing on which far into the night she saw the dawn as she knocked on courtyard doors [Note 14].

    These sisters have adopted names appropriate to their profession. Μηλώ “Apple,” probably refers to “breasts” or “cheeks” (LSJ s.v. μῆλον B.II), and the name Σατύρη (of course) conjures lusty images of flute-playing satyrs.

    Leonidas wrote about several male professions, too. One of his best is about a carpenter (AP 6.204):

(Slide 21. Leonidas 2. Carpenter)

Theris, the cunning worker (ὁ δαιδαλόχειρ), on abandoning his craft (ἐκ τέχνας παυσάμενος), dedicates to Pallas his straight cubit-rule, his stiff saw with curved handle, his bright axe and plane, and his revolving gimlet [Note15].

This epigram is more than a list of tools. Gutzwiller has shown that it has epic and mythical resonances and imaginative phrasing in which “the reader is encouraged to re-conceive his commonplace tools as instruments of high artistry.” She points out the “careful variation of noun-adjective word order enhanced by play with sound and meaning,” conveying “not only the poet’s own literary skill but also the carpenter’s aesthetic appreciation of his tools -- the tension of curved and straight lines, flash of axe or plane, whirling movement of the borer” (Gutzwiller 1998, 92).

    Here is another simple Leonidean example (AP 6.4):

(Slide 22 Leonidas 3. Fisherman)

Diophantus the fisherman (ὁ γριπεύς), as is fit, dedicates to the patron of his art (νάκτορι τέχνας) these relics of his old calling ( ἀρχαίας λίψανα

τεχνοσύνας), his hook, easily gulped down, his long poles, his line, his creel, this weel, device (τεχνασθέντα) of sea-faring netsmen for trapping fishes, his sharp trident, weapon of Poseidon, and the two oars of his boat.

    Gutzwiller has pointed out that fishermen were, “among the most destitute individuals in Hellenistic society” (Gutzwiller 1998, 94). Nevertheless, as she shows, there is much artistry in this short piece, “that refigures the hard work of the fisherman as a high craft.” It possesses articulateness of poetic language, alliterative lengthened forms, and the artistic threefold repetition with the words technasthenta, technas, and technosunas.

(Slide 23 Philip of Thessalonica Fisherman)

    One-third third of the Anthology retirement poems date to the 6th century CE, showing that the concept remained appealing to early Byzantine writers. Post-Leonidas retirement poems imitate him and add more pathetic physical ailments. For example, Philip of Thessalonica (1st cent CE) portrays a fisherman (using the same word as Leonidas: ὁ γριπεύς) who dedicates to Hermes his lines, oar, hooks, net, float, creels, flint, anchor and adds “weighed down by long toil and his right hand already shaky’ (ἔντρομος ἤδη/δεξιτερήν, πολλοῖς βριθόμενος καμάτοις AP 5). And, Julianus, Prefect of Egypt (6th century):

(Slide 24 Julianus Prefect of Egypt Retired Fisherman)

Old Cinyras (γέρων Κινύρης), weary of long fishing (κεκμηὼς χρονίῃ θήρῃ),

dedicates to the Nymphs this worn sweep-net; for no longer could his trembling hand (τρομερῇ παλάμῃ) cast it freely to open in an enfolding circle. If the gift is but a small one, it is not his fault, ye Nymphs, for this was all Cinyras had to live on. AP 6.25

(Slide 25 Greek Anthology Texts)

    This fisherman also has a shaking hand, is impoverished, and has given his only means of support to the Nymphs. He has nothing left. Julianus wrote another epigram about the same fisherman, with more pathetic details (AP 6.26). He gave the nymphs his net, “for his old age (γῆρας) cannot support the labour of casting it. Feed, ye fish, happily (γεγηθότες), since Cinyras’ old age (γῆρας) has given freedom (ἐλευθερίην) to the sea.”

    The trembling fisherman is very popular in the 6th century: Theaetetus Scholasticus (AP 6.27) writes of a fisherman whose “hand is heavy with ailing old age’ (γήραι νουσοφόρῳ βριθομένης παλάμης). Julianus writes of another who gives his fishing gear to Hermes, “having reached trembling old age” (τρομεροῦ γήραος ἀντιάσας AP 6.28), and again of a fisherman to Hermes, “fearing the weakness of old age’ (δειμαίνων γήραος ἀδρανίην AP 6.29).

[Slide 26: Philip on Callimenes]

    Other later epigrams describe literary men who give up their tools because their eyes are too weak to allow them to continue their work. Early Byzantine examples follow the work of Philip of Thessalonica, of the 1st century CE, who wrote about the literary man Callimenes, who, on giving up his work, dedicates his writing tools to the Muses, since old age has veiled his eyes (ποπαυσάμενος καμάοιο,/ θῆκεν, ἐπεὶ γήρᾳ κανθὸς ἐπεσκέπετο AP 6.62). Later works describe figures like Menedemus, weary and with misty eyes (κεκμηὼς Μενέδημος ὑπ᾿ χλύος ὄμμα παλαιόν), who dedicated to Hermes his writing tools (Damocharis, 5-6 cent. AP 6.63) -- he asks to be fed in return. Paulus Silentiarius (6th cent.) wrote three epigrams of a literary men, one who donates his writing tools to Hermes and the Muses due to old age causing his brows to hang over his eyes (ἐπεὶ χρόνῳ ἐκκρεμὲς ἤδη/ ἦλθε κατ᾿ ὀφθαλμῶν ῥυσὸν ἐπισκύνιον 6.64), and of another who is now “resting from its long labor his sluggish hand that trembles with age” (τρομερὴν ὑπὸ γήραος ὄκνῳ/ χεῖρα καθαρμόζων ἐκ δολιχῶν καμάτων 6.65), and a third whose “eye and hand were enfeebled by age” (γήραι κεμηὼς ὄμματα καὶ παλάμην 6.66). Julian, the 6th century Prefect of Egypt described a writer who dedicates his tools to Hermes, “now that Time has dulled his eyesight and set his hand at liberty” (ἐπεὶ χρόνος ὄμματος αὐγὴν/ μβλύνας παλάμῃ δῶκεν ἐλευθερίην 6.67), and another, who says, “These all, Hermes, are thy tools (σὰ ὅπλα), and do thou set straight the life (ἴθυνε ζηήν) of feeble Philodemus (ἀδρανέος Φιλοδήμου), whose livelihood is failing him (λειπομένοιο βίου 6.68).

    As votive epigrams, the retirement poems are unusual, in that almost all of these old people do not ask for reciprocity. Unlike young people, these retirees are at the end of their lives; there is no time left for a quid pro quo. They give up what they have, and expect from the gods nothing in return.

(Slide 27 Phanias on Callon the School Teacher)

WILL FREIERT'S RETIREMENT

       We close with an epigram by Phanias, who was greatly influenced by Leonidas [Note 16].  His most interesting production represents an ancient Will Freiert -- a retiring schoolteacher (AP 6.294):

Callon, his limbs fettered by senile fatigue (πολιῷ γυῖα δεθεὶς καμάτῳ),

dedicates to Hermes the Lord these tokens of his career as a schoolmaster

(σύμβολ᾿ ἀγωγᾶς παιδείου): the staff that guided his feet, his flogging strap, and the fennel-rod that lay ever ready to his hand to tap little boys with on the head, his lithe whistling bull’s pizzle (κέρκον), his sandal with one layer of sole, and the skull-cap for his sparsely-haired pate [Note 17].

    Phanias gives us a vivid picture of this old pedagogue. The instruments of corporal punishment, including the sandal used for smacking the pupils, portray, in Zanker’s words, “a sadistic old curmudgeon indeed” [Note 18]. It is ironic that old man Callon’s toil is “grey” (πολιός), and that his feet and limbs are worn out; these details present us with a humorous image of a superannuated teacher no longer able to beat his students properly. We are to imagine his frustrated attempts at physically chastising his charges,perhaps falling down in the attempt. Despite his formidable arsenal, Callon no longer has the physical strength to allow him to beat the boys; it is time for him to retire.

    (Slide 28: Herm of Will Freiert: ΛΟΓΟΣ ΕΝΕΡΓΟΣ ΚΑΙ ΓΟΝΙΜΟΣ.)

    And so also now, in 2010, it is time for our friend Will to retire, and like Callon, to dedicate to Hermes whatever tokens of his career he chooses. We all know, however, that unlike the worn out old pedagogue in the Greek Anthology, Will Freiert is still vigorous, active, and productive -- the perfect Plutarchan portrait of one whose ΛΟΓΟΣ is both ΕΝΕΡΓΟΣ and ΓΟΝΙΜΟΣ.

(Slides 29-35: The Doctors of Gustavus)

NOTES:

1 Republic, Book 1: 328b-329d, translated by Richard W. Sterling and William C. Scott Plato The

Republic: Norton, 1985.

2 Robert Garland, The Greek Way of Life (Cornell University Press, 1990) 242-287.

3 M. I. Finley, “The Elderly in Classical Antiquity.” In Old Age in Greek and Latin Literature, ed. Thomas

M. Falkner & Judith De Luce (Albany: SUNY Press, 1989) 1-20. Originally G&R 28 (1981) 156-71.

4 Moralia 783b1ff. (ΕΙ ΠΡΕΣΒΥΤΕΡΩΙ ΠΟΛΙΤΕΥΤΕΟΝ An Seni Respublica Gerenda Sit)

5 Quotations from Plutarch’s “Old Men in Public Affairs” are from H.N. Fowler Plutarch’s Moralia,

Volume X (Harvard, 1991).

6 Erasmus, Adages 2.1.32, cited by John Wortley “The Aged in Aesopic Fables” International Journal on

AgIng and Human Development 44.3 (1997) 189.

7 Diogenianus 4.96 in CPG, cited by John Wortley “The Aged in Aesopic Fables” International Journal on

Aging and Human Development 44.3 (1997) 189.

8 Wortley, 1997 translation, p. 189. See also T320 for another version of this story.

9 Wortley 1997, 190.

10 Fowler comments in a footnote: “Plutarch seems to be in error; at any rate the extant Hermae which represent elderly men do not differ in the particular mentioned from those which represent younger men” (Fowler 1991, 152-153).

11 “Characterization in Hellenistic Epigram” Chapter 12 in Peter Bing, Jon Steffen Bruss, Brill's

Companion to Hellenistic Epigram. Leiden: Brill, 2007.

12 Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology Edited with a Revised Text, Translation, and Notes, J. W.

Mackail. Longman’s London,1890.

13 Poetic Garlands: Hellenistic Epigrams in Context, Kathryn J. Gutzwiller (California, 1998) 89, 113, 114.

14 Translation partly by W. R. Paton, The Greek Anthology, with an English Translation (Loeb, Cambridge,

MA 1960 (1916), with corrections by Graham Zanker (Zanker 2007) 238.

15 Translation W. R. Paton.

16 On Phanias’ debt to Leonidas, see Gow 1956, 231.

17 Translation combined from Paton and Zanker.

18 Zanker 2007, 239.

[Daniel B. Levine. Draft Revised May 10, 2010. Posted to google sites July 3, 2012]

   © 2010 DANIEL LEVINE.  REPRODUCTION BY PERMISSION ONLY. (DLEVINE@UARK.EDU)