REPETITION OF SYLLABLES AND SOUNDS

In the opening scene of Aristophanes’ Knights, two slaves while away the time bemoaning the ‘domestic tyranny’ of the newly bought slave Paphlagon over the rest of the hired help.Footnote ⁵ They play verbal games that belie deeper poetic and cultural notions, parodying the aulos music of the mythical Olympus by wailing (Ar. Eq. 10 μυμῦ μυμῦ μυμῦ μυμῦ μυμῦ μυμῦ) and stuttering the word for ‘cult statue’ or ‘idol’ (βρέτας) in a hesitant profession of atheism (32 ποῖον βρετέτετας; ἐτεὸν ἡγεῖ γὰρ θεούς; ‘What do you mean idododol? Do you really believe in the gods?’).Footnote ⁶ Among these activities, the slaves play a game of repeating a set of sounds in a given order, with an increasingly quick tempo that is compared to masturbation, and in so doing translate meaningless syllables into a first-person subjunctive verb (21–9):

As with the other games, there is a serious underlying message; the slaves wish that by running away they might escape servitude. Indeed, the comparison to masturbation suggests that the possibility of absconding has an orgasmic level of desirability.Footnote ⁷ The repetition game allows for the one slave, sometimes considered a travesty of the general and politician Nicias, to bring the other slave, sometimes considered a travesty of Demosthenes, to speak a verb and express an idea he was not expecting to have done, through the mere repetition of a set of syllables.Footnote ⁸ For what it is worth, this unspeakable call for desertion (αὐτομολῶμεν) works better for military men than it does for slaves, where the appropriate verb would be δραπετεύω. For our purposes, what is important is that the linguistic effect underpinning the joke uses repetition to slur adjacent sounds. Technically this repetition merely inverts and recombines two given words (μόλωμεν ‘let's go’ and αὐτό ‘itself’) into an unexpected new compound (αὐτομολῶμεν ‘let's run away’). It is therefore notable that Slave B or Nicias gives the injunctions to pronounce syllables rather than words (ξυλλαβών), and to do so persistently (ξυνεχές),Footnote ⁹ which together imply a lack of intonation. These instructions suggest not a conceptual transposition but a verbal effect, occurring through the act of repetition alone.

A remarkably similar instance of sound recombination through repetition is found in one of the etymologies in Plato's Cratylus. Here the difference between the visual reordering and the acoustic effect that brings it about is even more clearly accentuated (Pl. Cra. 404b–c):

The connection of Hera with air is conventional, as is the use of juxtaposition to imply an etymological connection between the two words (Hom. Il. 21.6–7 ἠέρα δ’ Ἥρη, Theagenes DK 8A2 = Schol. [b] Hom. Il. 20.67). When Plato speaks of placing the beginning at the end, he is referring to the nominative forms ἀήρ and Ἥρα, or as he would have written them ΑΗΡ and ΗΡΑ, which are the same but for the position of the alpha. Remarkably, he goes on to suggest that this visual connection manifests audibly when repeating the word multiple times (πολλάκις). As in the Aristophanic prologue, Plato's etymology points to some degree of recognition that words undergo acoustic distortion when repeated a sufficient number of times; this recognition is tampered, however, by an implicit, neat rationalization of this phenomenon as a conceptual or visual reordering of words or letters.

In both of the above examples, words are conceived of as syllable-length sets of sounds, whose reconfiguration through repetition not only dissociates those words from given meanings but changes them into new ones.Footnote ¹⁰ The same effect is much more commonly seen in the juxtaposition of semantically unrelated words, where the repetition of sounds suggests etymological resonances between words with shared perceptual features.Footnote ¹¹ The repetition of similar sounds in ancient etymologies is not mundane or trivial, but reflects the dulling effect of repetition, which momentarily collapses the denotative value of words, and with this the boundary between one word and another.

A TRADITION OF ALLUSIVE PROPER-NAME REPETITION

Semantic satiation was also used as a poetic effect in its own right. In a handful of related poems from antiquity, repetition was exploited to call attention to the material features, or otherwise disrupt the normal denotation of proper names. The two most telling examples of this tradition were collected already in an ancient rhetorical handbook, as part of a discussion of polyptoton, or the repetition of a given word in different cases. After citing Cleochares’ use of the name Demosthenes in all five cases, the author turns to two further examples of polyptoton, which he treats as a group, as though part of a distinct tradition (Ps.-Herodian, De figuris §40 Hajdú):

The pieces are remarkably similar in structure. The polyptoton is articulated by μέν and δέ particles, and new clauses are built around each new case of the name. In spite of considerable variety among manuscript readings for the name Leophilus, the cases must originally have followed the same sequence in both poems: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative.Footnote ¹³ The piece by Anacreon significantly lacks a nominative Κλεόβουλος, which adds weight to the contrast between the name of the lover and the emphatic ἔγωγε of the poem's first line.Footnote ¹⁴ This poem's speaker is always at a distance from the object of his affection, who is a changing lexical object, never the ‘real’ uninflected Κλεόβουλος.Footnote ¹⁵

Yet more connects these two passages than the polyptoton or other shared formal features. In both poems, special emphasis is placed on the final instance of the repeated name, which emphasizes its material features over its point of reference. The final instance of the name Leophilus does not use the word denotatively but cites it as a heard sound, as Martin West recognized: ‘If some part of ἀκούω is correct, and has Λεώφιλον as its object, the sense will be “hear the name Leophilus”.’Footnote ¹⁶ By explicitly referring to the name Leophilus as a unit of sound, the final words parody repeated naming as a feature of political advertisement and self-promotion.Footnote ¹⁷ More specifically, these lines both point to a reduction in a name's meaningfulness, when persistently repeated, and themselves reproduce the effect. The piece by Anacreon, by contrast, uses repetition of the name to activate the visual. The rare verb διοσκέω, with which this poem ends, is explained by Hesychius to mean ‘gaze at repeatedly, pretending to look elsewhere’ (Hsch. δ 1926 Latte–Cunningham διοσκεῖν⋅ διαβλέπειν συνεχῶς τὴν ὅρασιν μεταβάλλοντα).Footnote ¹⁸ Just as, in the narrative world of the poem, the authorial persona looks to his lover, so too in a moment of performance, the poem's speaker picks out and makes eyes at a fellow symposiast, forcing an individual audience member into the role of Cleobulus. The name Cleobulus thus takes on an unexpected new referent in the final line, as the immediacy of sight is made to foreground the pining incantation of the lover's name.

The resonance of these poems in later literature confirms this reading of the final instance of the repeated name as a moment of emphasis on its material qualities as heard sound. The earliest allusion is found in a comic parody of Archilochus’ piece on Leophilus, an anonymous fragment that possibly goes back to a play by Cratinus (Archilochoi?),Footnote ¹⁹ for whom Archilochus was a literary role model (Com. adesp. fr. *741 K.–A.):Footnote ²⁰

The author of these lines lambastes a contemporary associate of Pericles, roughly imitating his Archilochean model. Lack of polyptoton flattens the effect, as does the use of zeugma in the first two lines, and repetition of the name twice more than the original. The parody also emphasizes the final instance of the repeated name, confirming this feature in the source text. The final use of Metiochus’ name breaks with any reference to or qualification of Metiochus’ status as leader, switches verb tenses to the future, and predicts his suffering. The concatenation of ‘o’ sounds also transforms the name Metiochus into a groan or wail (Μητίοχος δ’ οἰμώξεται); this mirrors the sense of the verb even as it emphasizes the material features of the repeated name.

Imitations of Anacreon's triple anaphora of the name of his lover are much more widespread, appearing frequently in Latin literature.Footnote ²¹ Ovid's grieving Cephalus recalls his lost wife Procris in what is in turn a recollection of Anacreon's Cleobulus (Met. 7.707–8):

The allusion is seen in the tripartite repetition of the name, the expression of love, the emphatic first person pronoun (ἔγωγ’ ~ ego) and the order of the sequence in which the final element cites the name of the lover as a spoken word. Statius is even more explicit as to the name of the game in describing the army's love for Achilles (Achil. 1.473–5):

The Anacreontic model is seen in the triple repetition, the polyptoton and, most of all, the references to Achilles as an object of love (ardet, amant). This polyptoton ends with the nominative, the form of the name that would actually have been chanted by the soldiers. This repetition of the name also dissociates it from the person to whom it properly refers, an idea highlighted in the passage: it is not Achilles himself the warriors come to love, but ‘the name “Achilles”’ (nomen Achillis). Anacreon's minuscule poem resonated throughout Latin literature; later authors were in on the joke and reproduced it, aware that repetition could be used to emphasize the proper name as a spoken word, only tendentiously connected to the person for whom it stands.

The poems by Archilochus and Anacreon can also be traced back to a common source.Footnote ²² Although structurally different from them in certain respects (no μέν/δέ particles, no polyptoton), the invocation of Nireus is our only triple anaphora of a proper name in Homer,Footnote ²³ and it combines the notions of failed military commander and object of desire (Il. 2.671–5):

It has been recognized since at least Aristotle (Rh. 1413b31–1414a7; cf. Demetr. Eloc. 61–2) that the repetition of Nireus’ name is bathetic, ironically trumping up a minor character within the extensive catalogue of heroes in which it is found.Footnote ²⁴ Indeed, scholars often interpret these lines as a lead-in to the subsequent entry on Achilles.Footnote ²⁵ The triple repetition of this general's name contrasts with his command over a mere three ships. The same effect is found in Archilochus: repetition of the name ironically downplays Leophilus’ virtues as a leader. Indeed, Archilochus’ use of the verb ἄρχω may recall the Homeric catalogue of ἀρχοὺς αὖ νηῶν (Il. 2.92),Footnote ²⁶ much as the expression πάντα κεῖται recalls the polyptoton of πᾶς in Agamemnon's claim that Achilles’ obstinacy couches a hidden desire to rule.Footnote ²⁷ Anacreon by contrast draws on Nireus’ great beauty, rather than on his laughable career as military commander. Nireus is ‘the most beautiful man’ (κάλλιστος ἀνήρ) after Achilles, an idea further reflected in the speaking names of his parents, ‘Splendour’ and ‘Brighteyes’.Footnote ²⁸ Nireus’ repeated name is thus also that of the beloved, where his designation as most beautiful perhaps recalls naming in καλός inscriptions.Footnote ²⁹ In this way, Archilochus and Anacreon provide competing interpretations of a shared Homeric model.

Arguably, the final repetition of Nireus’ name also stands out, as in our other examples. The first line is a full clause, to whose nominative the second line stands in apposition; but the final instance of the name floats a-syntactically before a relative clause, a pronounced example of the root nominative.Footnote ³⁰ Repetition often reverts words to an extra-grammatical, ‘default’ nominative position, one coded as nominative but understood as standing outside any given syntactical relation.Footnote ³¹ The name in the default nominative comes to stand more directly for the person it names, so that the signified dissolves into the signifier, and we are left with nothing but ‘Nireus’.

One apparent allusion to the Nireus passage does not appear filtered through readings of Archilochus or Anacreon, and in this case the repeated proper name becomes dissociated from its point of reference, but without the distinctive final flourish (Aesch. Pers. 550–4):

Xerxes’ name is given three times, and the anaphoric recollection of Nireus appears to function as a trope for the inept and, in this case, defeated and disgraced commander.Footnote ³² A connection to the Catalogue of Ships is reinforced by the triple repetition of ‘ships’ (νᾶες) at the corresponding point in the antistrophe (560–4), recalling an earlier Asian catastrophe caused by a Greek fleet. As in the comic parody of Archilochus, repetition is again framed as groaning or sobbing, an idea reinforced by the replacement of an anticipated direct object by the onomatopoeic effects ποποῖ and τοτοῖ.Footnote ³³ The name Xerxes takes on an increasingly sound-like quality when repeated.

The passages discussed in this section are not all alike in every way, but they bear a family resemblance, whose primary characteristic is the repetition of a proper name. Archilochus and Anacreon share a playful polyptoton, but, while structurally similar, they use the trope of repeated naming to vastly different effect. Most of our Greek examples go back to Homer's Nireus and parody military leaders, whereas most of our Latin examples are in imitation of Anacreon's Cleobulus and repeat the name of a beloved. In either case, persistent unnecessary repetition of the proper name marks out the disreputable, unremarkable or inaccessible characters of this tradition of parodic repetition.

REPETITION AS WORDPLAY

One prominent feature of the tradition described in the previous section is an emphasis on the final instance of the repeated proper name. An analogous repetition effect, in which the final instance of a repeated term reveals a surprise new meaning, occurs in an old interpretative chestnut from Archilochus (fr. 2 West):

It is a misapplication of an otherwise useful philological rule to assume that it would be necessary, in a playful sympotic poem such as this, for all three instances of the repeated expression (ἐν δορί) to carry the same meaning.Footnote ³⁴ Indeed, a certain playfulness is reflected in this couplet's other verbal effects, most notably the alliteration of mus in the first line, which is both a figura etymologica and an onomatopoeia for the sound of chewing tough, unrisen bread.Footnote ³⁵ The final repetition of ἐν δορί replaces a non-spatial locative meaning ‘in my spear’ (that is, ‘by means of my spear’)Footnote ³⁶ with a new, unanticipated meaning, articulated by the verb κλίνω and reinforced in performance as the reclining sympotic speaker momentarily doubles as a war mercenary leaning on a spear. Fictional and performance worlds blend in the levity of a pun. Archilochus appears to redeploy a repetition pattern he had previously taken from Homer's passage on Nireus to mock Leophilus. The final instance of a repeated term was made to stand out not as a sound effect but as antanaclasis, by giving it a surprise new meaning.

Repetition again leads into a striking wordplay in a Hellenistic epigram by Callimachus (Epigr. 2.5–6 Gow–Page = 28.5–6 Pfeiffer):Footnote ³⁷

Most scholars have seen ἄλλος ἔχει as an echoing inversion of ναίχι καλός, while less has been made of the fact that the word καλός is repeated once before it returns as the half-echo ἄλλος, with elision of the initial consonant.Footnote ³⁸ On this traditional reading of the line, τοῦτο refers to some part of the repeated phrase-end ναίχι καλὸς καλός, and ἠχώ τις is subject of the main clause that follows. The translation would thus run: ‘But before I have finished saying this, an echo is clearly heard: “another has him”.’ However, it is syntactically easier to take ἠχώ, rather than an implied με, as the accusative subject of the πρίν-clause, and this has the added benefit of restricting the reference of τοῦτο to the repetition of the word καλός. The traditional argument against this view has been that it obscures the purpose of the adverb σαφῶς,Footnote ³⁹ yet in fact it arguably helps clarify that adverb as in reference to the idea that ἄλλος is an unclear echo of καλός. Echo is herself pre-empted by the unidentified voice that intrudes in a number of Callimachean epigrams (for example Epigr. 1.3 Gow–Page = 31.3 Pfeiffer), including one in which he is forestalled from voicing his opinion on another boy the authorial persona finds beautiful (Epigr. 5.3–4 Gow–Page = 41.3–4 Pfeiffer):

The resonances between these two epigrams suggest that they once formed a matching pair: same scenario (lover, boy, confidant), similar structure (assertion followed by prevarication) and in both cases repetition of the word καλός leading into a pun.Footnote ⁴⁰ Indeed, the move from an individual beauty to the Platonic idea of beauty (καλὸς … καλός … τὰ καλά) casts the one poem's wishful speaker as misguided, much as the false echo of καλὸς καλός in ἄλλος ἔχει dissociates that poem's infatuated speaker from his own speech, mirroring his sense of lost possession over Lysanias. In this latter case, one word not only becomes another but becomes the word ‘other’, naming the verbal game.

INCANTATORY REPETITION OF DIVINE NAMES

We can often still identify semantic satiation at work as an effect in cases of repetition where no particular emphasis is placed on the final instance of the repeated word or name. The most extensive examples of multiple repetition are invocations of divinity, and in such cases the extent of repetition both assures semantic satiation as an effect and diminishes the potential for emphasis on any individual repetition of the divine name. Examples are commonly found in literary texts from the earliest periods onwards (Hom. Il. 5.30–1, Hes. Op. 1–4), yet even among literary texts some passages stand out for the extent of repetition (Aesch. fr. 70 Radt [Daughters of the Sun]):

Here repetition of the god's name gives emphasis to the notion of omnipresence: the god, like the god's name, is everywhere.Footnote ⁴¹ Zeus's equivalence to so many different and indeed opposed geographical coordinates reflects the progressively less clear denotation of his repeated name (traditionally Zeus may be air and sky, but he is not normally earth). Cult hymns tend to be even more repetitive, as becomes clear in another hymn to Zeus cited in the Derveni papyrus, later expanded versions of which have long been independently known (Orph. 14F Bernabé; cf. 31F, 243F):

As in the previous example, stress falls on the ubiquity of Zeus, who unites spatial and temporal extremes of beginning and end, head and centre; who is creator, life, ruler and endpoint to all things.Footnote ⁴² The recurrence of the epithet (ἀργικέραυνος) provides a ring structure to the four lines, while the repetition of the totalizing πᾶς (πάντα, πάντων, πάντων, ἁπάντων) matches that of the divine name.

From a later period, we have a Latin cult hymn to the Sun, whose outrageously repetitious second half indicates that this effect is not diminished by extension (the name Sol recurs thirty-one times over twenty-three verses). It is no coincidence that the final lines of this hymn once again emphasize the god's universality (Anth. Lat. 385 Shackleton Bailey):

An analogous usage is seen in the repetition of names in magical formulae to evoke divine presences,Footnote ⁴³ for example two metrical repetitions of cult names for Dionysus preserved at the beginning of Caesius Bassus’ metrical treatise (Gramm. Lat. 6.255 Keil):

The author follows up what are presumably intercessional rosary-like repetitions of the names Bacchus and Bromius with an example of how such repetitions could be used at the close of a cletic invocation (Caesius Bassus 2.8–9 Blänsdorf):Footnote ⁴⁴

In both hymnic and cultic contexts, semantic satiation is incantatory: the resultant loss of meaning encourages a change in the internal state and sensibilities of the speaker, even as it amplifies a sense of divine presence.

The extent of repetition in hymns, especially those used in cult, often far outweighs that seen in literary representations of divine invocation or in any literary type of repetition at all.Footnote ⁴⁵ The apparent exception is itself a transparent parody of this sort of religious procedure, Martial's epigram on a gladiator named Hermes, each of whose fourteen lines begins with this name (Mart. 5.24; cf. Wills [n. 21], 398). Historical gladiators are known to have used Hermes as a stage name, chosen to recall Hermes’ function as conductor of souls to Hades, and Martial's epigram exploits the divine associations of the homonym.Footnote ⁴⁶ The epigram closes with a remarkable oxymoron of the kind already discussed in the hymns to Zeus and Sol (Mart. 5.24.15):

Even as the epigram mocks hymnic repetition, it recreates an analogous effect, in this case not one filled with meaning but emptied of it. As Wills ([n. 21], 398) notes, repetition at such length has a ‘dulling effect’ in this case because the reality behind its comic hyperbole is mundane.

REPETITION OF LINES IN OLD COMEDY

Our other particularly extensive examples of multiple repetition are found in Old Comedy and involve the ostensibly arbitrary repetition of mundane words and phrases for laughs.Footnote ⁴⁷ As with the repeated naming of a deity, the extent of repetition makes semantic satiation likely, and content helps confirm the presence of this effect. Take, for example, the repeated insertion of the line-end ‘lost his oil bottle’ (ληκύθιον ἀπώλεσεν) into Euripides’ onstage recitation of prologues in Aristophanes’ Frogs (1198–248). The character Aeschylus explains that he has selected this oil bottle from among a variety of possible items (1202–4):

Aeschylus’ selection is emphatically arbitrary; anything at all (ἅπαν), even mundane household objects, can be made to fit into a Euripidean line. The criticism is explicitly about lack of compositional integrity at the level of the individual line, but the insertion of such everyday items into tragic prologues is also bathetic and rewrites Euripidean tragedy as comedy. Moreover, the joke is played out a whole seven times, suggesting that the humour is only partly connected to the semantic content of the repeated phrase, which comes to serve as a placeholder. Aeschylus’ capacity to insert the same arbitrary line-end repeatedly and indiscriminately into each new prologue highlights the monotony of Euripides’ versification.Footnote ⁴⁸ A second example of extensive epistrophe similarly uses the repetition of an arbitrary phrase to mark a tonal shift. Over nine sequential lines, Praxagora in her guise as a man repeats the same line-end ‘just as they have always done’ (ὥσπερ καὶ πρὸ τοῦ) to itemize behaviour she claims reveals the fundamentally conservative nature of women (Ar. Eccl. 221–9). The list pairs everyday domestic actions and religious conservatism (221–4) with well-worn comic stereotypes about the infidelity, prodigality and alcoholism of women (225–9). The structural similarity of the repeated line-end provides formal continuity to an otherwise radical shift of focus. Repetition has a structural function in these passages.

Another comic use of semantic satiation is seen in the immediate repetition of words or lines by different speakers, where repetition has a dulling effect on the vivid semantic content of the words initially spoken. This is the case, for example, with the oath administered by Lysistrata to Calonice on behalf of all Greek women (Ar. Lys. 209–39), which ends with the description of increasingly over-the-top sexual activity (223–32):

The bold imagery evoking sexual acts stands in tension with the promise not to perform such acts and with the vocal monotony of the oath's repetition.Footnote ⁴⁹ Similar are Echo's indiscriminate echoes of the Relative's tragic discourse, meta-commentary and increasingly abusive threats in a scene parodying Euripides’ Andromeda (Ar. Thesm. 1056–97).Footnote ⁵⁰ What begins as a tragic recitation with occasional interruptions is quickly reduced to single, repeated words and cries, as the Relative attempts to halt Echo's child-like echolalia (1070–81):

The process of repetition comes to outweigh the semantic content of the words initially spoken.Footnote ⁵¹ The Relative qualifies Echo's repetitions as talkative chatter (στωμυλλομένη), interruption (εἰσήρρηκας) and meaningless speech (ληρεῖς);Footnote ⁵² yet he himself, increasingly exasperated, comes to speak in a remarkably similar way to her, using short syntactic units that can be reproduced in their entirety. This moment before the re-entry of the Scythian Archer ends with a series of imprecations, verbal cognates of the sounds of wailing in tragedy (οἴμωζ[ε, ‘wail οἴμοι’, ὀτότυζ[ε, ‘wail ὀτοτοῖ’). The Relative attempts to halt Echo's duplication of his words using a diverse range of styles, from the tragic to the metatheatrical, pairing gentle requests with harsh abuse, but he is ineffectual; repetition has a deadening effect on every type of language.

Taking stock, we can outline some general patterns. In a wide range of poetic texts from antiquity, semantic satiation was used for specific effects. The most extensive shared characteristic across our various examples is a tendency to mark out the final instance of a repeated term, more often than not a proper name.Footnote ⁵³ In a number of cases, the loss of semantic content in the repeated term is signalled by a reference to it as heard sound. Yet loss of semantic content is not always experienced as an effect in its own right. When the religious minister repeats a divine name, satiation is not experienced as loss but paradoxically as a fullness of potential reference akin to the omnipresence and mystery of religious experience. So too, outside a hymnic frame, multiple repetition becomes an especially pronounced effect, and is used for parody from its earliest instantiations, even as it is itself parodied as an effect not long after.

Semantic satiation in ancient poetry occurs principally at an acoustic level, rather than at a visual one, as confirmed by ancient theories of repetition. When Aristotle speaks of multiple anaphoras, he notes that repetition is not effective in writing, and should be reserved for speech; he suggests that orators vary the tone between one use of a repeated word and the next.Footnote ⁵⁴ It is therefore unsurprising that satiation is often marked in poetry by a sound effect: multiple repetition translates a name into the sound of weeping, or literally elides a word in its echo. The acoustic dimension is not always primary, but it is always present; in sympotic monody, for example, satiation encourages forms of wordplay that highlight the performance environment over against the narrative world of the poem.

Specific ways of using repetition for loss of semantic content came to exist in ancient poetry, as one poet recognized and copied the effect from another, but there was also a tendency to innovate, as traditions developed, and to layer new, bolder acoustic games overtop inherited patterns of repetition. If the idea of semantic satiation was never fully conceptualized by an ancient authority, it had a long and complex life as a repetition effect in classical poetry.