Alexander Edward Karsten (Duke University)
Broad latitude in the use of value terminology in the Theognidea is not a sign of carelessness or imprecision. It is a deliberate feature of the poetry, suited to the needs of sympotic reperformance. Five value terms dominate the diction of the corpus: agathos, esthlos, kalos, kakos, and deilos. A third of all couplets contain at least one of these words in some form. The frequency of their use, both in an absolute sense and relative to other contemporary poetry, has made them an important subject of study. In particular, the seemingly inconsistent application of these terms has long been a focus of scholarly controversy (n.b. Cerri 1968). Rather than attempt to reduce their disparate uses to a single ideological schema, I argue that their apparent inconsistency reflects their pragmatic flexibility and rhetorical power. Such flexibility and power are essential to the practical use this poetry served in sympotic performance.
Earlier scholars of Theognidean society assumed that agathoi and kakoi denoted distinct classes with readily identifiable and uncontroversial membership (cf. Legon 1981, 112). But recent scholars have put forward a performative model of aristocracy, in which status is earned by the sympotic display of cultural capital (Wecowski 2014). I argue that a corollary of this dynamic model is a more flexible, subjective use of these value terms, one that suits the unique circumstances of each particular symposion. But the interpretative paradigm of a single author (“Theognis”) severely restricts exploration of this subjectivity. Using the lens of reperformance instead, I show how symposiasts’ creative reuse of the poetry explains, and is in turn illuminated by, the traces of social contestation that pervade the corpus.
It is easy to mistake this contestation for inconsistency. Whereas in one passage, for example, wealth can make a kakos man esthlos (1117-1118), in another it only “hides” a man’s badness (1061-1062). I demonstrate that the propriety of either view must be judged by the needs of the particular performer and the social critique he deemed suitable for his sympotic audience. The range of uses for these terms was thus limited only by the symposiast’s rhetorical ability, the intent of his social performance, and his audience’s reception.
The social critique voiced by these terms had important stakes in the symposion. Individual status was fluid and disputed: depending on which participant you asked, symposia welcomed a mixed company of “bad” and “good” people. The speaker who could bring his audience to embrace his definition of “good” and “bad,” and his application of these labels to specific guests, would enjoy ultimate social prestige and authority as a social gatekeeper. The flexible use of these five value terms thus preserves important evidence of the contest for sympotic (and social) authority in archaic Greece.