This is an attempt to find a context for Korinna’s poem. For whom was it written? for what occasion? why did Korinna choose this subject? is there a time and place for the composition and performance of the poem which would have been more suitable than any other?

The Poem²

The text begins with the final 64 lines of a poem. Enough survives from lines 12-34 to give some idea of the content: it is about a singing contest between Kithairon and Helikon, with the gods as judges and the Muses presiding. Lines 12-18 contain the end of a song about the concealment of the infant Zeus from Kronos by the Kouretes and Rhea³. The gods vote, Kithairon wins and is overjoyed. Helikon takes the defeat badly and either kills himself or hurls rocks down from the mountain.

Most commentators have focussed on lines i.12-34, which are susceptible to more or less satisfactory restoration⁴. But the fragments which precede and follow these lines, and the marginal notes as well, offer important information.

i.1-11 (exempli gratia): “I (deserve) the crown (στέϕανον, ἔγωγε), because (ἐπιδὴ)… (when I was) at the very top (of the mountain) hunting (ἐπ’ ἄκρυ, marg.: θήραν… (I struck the) chords (of my lyre) (χορδὰς) (and sang of)… and sacred mountains (ἱ]αρῶν τ’ ὀρίων)… (and drew beasts and) birds (ϕοῦλον ὀρνί[θων) (by my singing)⁵… (and I sang of the birth) (γενέθλα) (of Zeus, how in) the snow (marg.: χιόνα), …

i.12-34: the Kouretes hid (the infant) in the hallowed cave of the goddess, concealed from devious Kronos, when blessed Rheia stole him away and gained great honour from the immortals”. This was his song, and straightway the Muses bade the blessed ones bear their voting pebbles in secret to the golden urns; they all rose in a group. Kithairon won the greater number, and straightway Hermes proclaimed with a shout that he had won the victory he longed for. The blessed ones adorned his head with wreaths, and his heart rejoiced. But Helikon, in the grip of dire wretchedness, (rushed to) a bare cliff, and piteously bewailing his lot he hurled (it or himself) down from on high in a shower of tens of thousands of rocks⁶. i.35-ii.11 (exempli gratia): … ambrosian (ἀμ]βροσίας)… hair (τρίχα)… limbs or songs (μελ[.]ων)… (possibly Kithairon) rushed (at him) (ἐ]σόρουσέν]… (or he joined Helikon in death, but at any rate they were both killed)… light? (ϕέγ[γ)… (something involving) the gods (μα]κάρων, and perhaps μακ]άρέσσιν)… the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne (Δι[ὸ]ς Μναμοσούνας… κῶρη)… (the gods proclaimed that the mountains) were to be named after (them) (marg.: ἐπικληΘήσέσθαι), Helikon (Ғє[λικὼν)… (and) Kithairon (Κιθη]ρών), (where Zeus had been) concealed (]κρου[)…

On this reading what began as rivalry ends on a note of reconciliation.

Korinna’s Date

Scholarship is divided into two camps, one of which accepts the tradition of late antiquity which makes Korinna an older contemporary of Pindar, the other putting her into the Hellenistic period⁷. Partisans of the later date accept A. Kalkmann’s dismissal of the testimony of Tatian, Oratio ad Graecos 33, who refers to a statue of Korinna by Silanion (fl. 360-320)⁸. This was one of a group of statues in Rome of Greek poetesses by various sculptors, some of whom are not known from any other source.

The discovery in Rome of a statue base inscribed ΜΥΣΤΙΣ | AΡΙΣΤΟΔ̣ΟΤ̣[ου] has nullified Kalkmann’s argument, for among the statues in Tatian’s list is one of Mystis by Aristodotos⁹. If we accept Tatian’s account, as we must, then it follows that Korinna flourished before or during the lifetime of Silanion. This gives a terminus ante quem in the last quarter of the fourth century BC.

It does not, however, follow that Korinna was, as the tradition relates, contemporary with Pindar. Indeed, it is unlikely, for even in the poem under discussion here there are clues that she lived and wrote at the earliest during the third quarter of the fifth century. To be sure, there are echoes in the poem of Hesiod and Aischylos¹⁰, but two other passages seem to have later antecedents: ϕοῦλον ὀ̣ρ̣νί[θων] (i.6) is a direct quotation, both in words and context (that of hunting) from Sophokles, Antigone 342, which seems to have been performed for the first time at the end of the 440s¹¹. And, as M. L. West has pointed out, the motif of Zeus being concealed by the Kouretes can be traced back only as far as a theogony attributed to “Epimenides” and dated ca. 430 BC¹².

We now have a reasonable terminus post quem of the third quarter of the fifth century, and a terminus ante quem of the third or fourth quarter of the fourth. We can therefore look within that period for a possible occasion for the composition and performance of the poem, which might in turn help confirm the dating.

The Context of the Poem

It has been argued that the poem was written for the Plataians¹³. However, I think it is unlikely that the Plataians, who seized any and every opportunity to distance themselves from the rest of the Boiotians, would have commissioned a Boiotian poetess to write a poem for them in the Boiotian dialect¹⁴. Moreover, if I am right in my dating of Korinna, the Plataians would hardly have been in a position to do so. After the Theban attack on Plataia in 431, many of them fled to Athens. The rest surrendered to the Thebans in 427, and Plataia together with its satellite settlements was absorbed by Thebes¹⁵, remaining that way until, presumably, the King’s Peace of 386. Little more than a dozen years after that, in 373, the Thebans took Plataia and razed it again; it was not restored until after the battle of Chaironeia¹⁶. During this period the territory of Plataia was divided up among the Thebans¹⁷. Effectively, therefore, during the periods 427 to 386 and 373 to 338 the polis of Plataia did not exist and the territory of Plataia belonged to Thebes. It follows, on the one hand, that anything that happened at Plataia during these periods was done under Theban auspices, and on the other, that if Korinna wrote this poem as a commission for a public occasion, the commission was more likely to have come from the Thebans than from anyone else¹⁸.

The Thebans for their part had close connections with both Kithairon and the story of the birth of Zeus. It was on Kithairon that Amphion and Zethos were born. It was there that Oidipous was exposed, and it was on Kithairon that the women of Thebes traditionally celebrated their Dionysiac rituals. The Thebans regarded Kithairon as their own, and in their minds, Kithairon formed the southern edge of their χώρα.

As far as Zeus was concerned, Thebes was one of the places which claimed to be his birthplace¹⁹. In fact, Boiotian mythology is permeated by the tradition of the birth of a divine child. It goes back to the Bronze Age at least²⁰, and is reflected not only in the stories of Ino-Leukothea and her child, but in the traditions of the birth of gods: Athena at Alalkomenai, Dionysos at Haliartos, Dionysos and Herakles at Thebes, Hermes at Tanagra, while the birth of Zeus was celebrated at Chaironeia and possibly Plataia in addition to Thebes.

There is a political dimension to these myths, since Zeus (Karaios or Akraios) was, with Athena, one of the two principal gods of the Boiotian ethnos. For the Thebans to claim that their polis was the birthplace of Zeus was, in the context of internal Boiotian politics, equivalent to claiming leadership of the country²¹. Zeus Karaios was originally a god of the Orchomenians and seems to have been co-opted by the Boiotoi in the second half of the sixth century BC. The Thebans completed their absorption of this Zeus into their own pantheon with the institution of the Basileia in his honour after the battle of Leuktra.

It would therefore have been appropriate for the Thebans to have commissioned a poem which celebrated both the birth of Zeus, the common god of the Boiotian ethnos, and Mount Kithairon.

There is another aspect of this poem. It not only glorifies Kithairon and Zeus, and thereby the Thebans, it also degrades Helikon and its gods, and through them the Thespians, whose mountain it was. If we search for a time when the Thebans might have wished to humiliate the Thespians, several come to mind, but only one can be connected with Helikon and its gods. In 479 the Thebans successfully urged the Persians to raze the city; in 423 they tore down the walls themselves, and in 414 they put down a democratic uprising. But in all these cases it was a matter of supporting or opposing whatever faction happened to be in the ascendant. It was different in the period 382-373, however, when the Thespians were actively allied with the Spartans, who had a harmost and garrison stationed there. It also seems likely that it was during this period of Spartan occupation and protection that the sanctuary of the Muses on Mount Helikon was formally instituted as an official cult of the polis²².

I suggest therefore that the most probable time for the performance of Korinna’s poem was after the suppression of Thespiai and Plataia, probably during the Theban hegemony. It may have been connected with the dedication at Plataia of the statues by Praxiteles of Hera Teleia and of Rhea and the stone²³. Hera Teleia was the goddess of the Daidala, an ancient ritual celebrating national unity which goes back at least to the Bronze Age²⁴, and it would have been most apt for the Thebans to have commissioned these statues at what was in fact a pan-Boiotian sanctuary (moreover one placed right under the eyes of the Athenians), and also to have commissioned a celebratory poem from the leading Boiotian poet of the day.

Several scholars have written disparagingly of Korinna’s poetry, her background and her intellectual powers. Admittedly in recent years there has been a reaction to this, particularly from those who write with a feminist agenda, but the point deserves to be made that on the evidence of this poem alone, Korinna was very well and widely read. The quotations of and allusions to earlier authors should be proof enough of this. If she chose to write in the Boiotian dialect (I do not say that the text as we have it necessarily reproduces the text she composed), she did so for a reason. And if she wrote, as I think she did, in the first half of the fourth century, which saw the highest point of Boiotian power and influence, her choice might have been made for nationalistic reasons. In the end, this did her reputation a disservice, for she has been branded provincial and parochial as a result.

*

The Text (fr. 654 PMG, incorporating West 1996):

]υστεϕανον

]γῶγ᾽ επὶδῆ

]επ᾽ άκρῡ

]χ̣ορδα̈́σ̣

5 ]α̣ρῶν τ᾽ ορ^ειων

].ι̣ϕõυλο̣νο̣ρ̣νι

]

]

]. .

Notes:

i.13: δαθι: above δα, not an acute accent, but ζα; above ι, ε; 19: μω̣ση: above ω̣σ, ο̣υσ̣; 21-22: υ̣ above χρο̣υ;.].ϕαίνᾱσ ει above ί; 23: πλιον: ει above ι; εθλε: εῖ above εθ; 27:… ]α̣ρ̣ατώ or… ]δ̣ι̣ατώ; 30: final ε: ἑ, ɛ̌, or ἐ; 39: ]π̣α̣ο̣[or]π̣ι̣σ̣τ̣[.; 47: ο̣: ors σ̣; 51: ]υ̣σκαλ̣ε̣[: or δ̣ε̣; ii.4: ρα: or αρ/αιρ/αϕ In Margine:

at i.5: θηραν; 11: χ̣ι̣ο̣να or τ̣ι̣να; 21: ες; 37: εκ; 41: εις; 45: αερ̣[; 50: αποτου[