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itself is obviously full of apparently moral terms:  (1, 17),  (13),  (15, 18, 34),  (19),  (29, 40), and  (39). Do not these words virtually compel some sort of moral reading? |
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Not necessarily. The poem is also full of terms describing the activity of praising and blaming:  (3),  (24),  (27),   (33), and  (37).44 Now the presence of these latter terms need not be remarkable in itself. On the moral reading, Simonides first determines what is good and bad, and then goes on to praise the good and to blame the bad accordingly; first he makes a moral argument, then he draws from it the consequences for the kinds of discourse he will produce. But we have seen that the moral terminology of the poem does not seem to yield a coherent argument in ethical terms, but rather, from one section of the poem to another, it shifts freely among quite different varieties of ethical views without declaring allegiance to any particular one, and without progressing consistently in a single direction or even seeming to notice contradictions and discrepancies. It might be noted, moreover, that the language of praise and blame does not emerge only later in the poem than that of good and bad, but already appears in the opening sentence as the culminating term in the definition of the truly good man ( , "without reproach" 3). |
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It is a well-established hermeneutic precept that a poem that does not seem to work should be turned upside down, like a finely crafted Swiss watch, and shaken a couple of times to see what happens. Applying this sophisticated procedure to Simonides' ode reveals that it is possible not only to use ethical terms as a starting point in order to define discursive ones, but also to use discursive terms as a starting point in order to define ethical ones. Not only can "good" and "bad" designate primary qualities of persons which then justify praising or blaming them: alternatively, praise and blame can be primary activities which result in their objects being called good or bad. "Good" need not denote a moral substance, but simply "what is praised"; and conversely "bad'' may mean nothing more than "what is blamed." This is how even Aristotle, for example, proceeds in his ethical treatises. To determine what is good or bad, he often asks what it is that people praise or blame; for example, the fact that they praise the mean indicates that it is good, the fact that they censure extremes means that they are bad.45 Prima facie there is no reason to expect Simonides to employ a more sophisticated method of reflection in such matters than Aristotle does. |
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Simonides' ode to Scopas, then, is a poem not about  a word which does not appear anywhere in it but about praise and blame. It does not ask what it is that makes a man good or bad, but instead what kind of |
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44 This has been noticed by Crotty (1982) 3334. |
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45 E.g., Arist. EE 3.7.1, 8, 10; 8.3.4; MM 1.2.12, 5.12, 22.23, 23.12; DVV 1.1, 8.34. On the ways Aristotle makes use of  in moral and rhetorical inquiry, see Most (1993a). |
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