Solon fr. 1-3 W: The Poetics and Politics of a Gesture

This article takes its point of departure from a tradition found in the Homeric scholia and fourth-century Athenian political invective: apparently, when Solon went to the agora to recite his politically illicit poem exhorting the Athenians to renew their war on Salamis (fr. 1-3 W), he reenacted a gesture attributed to Odysseus at Iliad 2.183; like the epic hero in an equivalent moment of military defeatism among the troops, Solon cast off his cloak or chlaina. The discussion I present here offers a new reading of fr. 1-3 which aims to demonstrate not only that Solon’s engagement with the Homeric precedent is much more sustained than earlier commentators have recognized, but that the Athenian poet draws equally on a very different poetic tradition, that of iambos. Modeling his quasi-epic address and conduct simultaneously on that of both mythical and historical practitioners of mockery and abuse, chiefly the Iliadic Thersites and Archilochus – from whom he borrows the persona of herald adopted by the Parian poet on two occasions so as to perform an abusive or obscene poem – Solon assumes the role of authorized deliverer of invective. The article concludes by tracing the tradition concerning Solon’s gesture in the work of Critias, the Athenian poet-politician who, even as he connects himself to Solon, takes as his target the persona constructed by Archilochus; the suggestion I make here concerns the parallelism already visible in Homer and focused on the figure of Odysseus between throwing away a shield and a cloak