Mimnermus
Encyclopedia
Mimnermus was a Greek
elegiac
poet from either Colophon or Smyrna
in Ionia
, who flourished about 630-600 BC. He was strongly influenced by the example of Homer
yet he wrote short poems suitable for performance at drinking parties
and was remembered by ancient authorities chiefly as a love poet. Mimnermus in turn exerted a strong influence on Hellenistic poets such as Callimachus
and thus also on Roman poets such as Propertius, who even preferred him to Homer for his eloquence on love themes (see Comments by other poets below). His work was collected by Alexandrian scholars in just two 'books' (relatively few compared for example with the twenty-six books for Stesichorus
) and today only small fragments survive. The fragments confirm the ancient estimate of him as a "consumate poet" but also indicate that he was in fact a "sturdier character" than the indulgent love poet he was assumed to be by various ancient commentators. Almost no reliable, biographical details have been recorded. One ancient account linked him romantically with a flute girl who subsequently gave her name to one of his two books - Nanno.
provides a good example of the biographical uncertainties.
The gap indicates a corruption in the text and the original wording probably testified to two books, though the only source we have for this number was the grammarian Pomponius Porphyrion
. Suda's mention of Astypalaea, an island in the southern Aegean, as a possible candidate for the poet's home town, is mere fantasy. Smyrna seems to be the most likely candidate. The nickname Ligyaistades was probably taken by Suda from an elegy addressed to Mimnermus by one of the seven sagesthe Athenian lawgiver and elegiac poet, Solon
(see Comments by other poets). Solon clearly admired the skills of the older poet, whom he addressed as Ligyaistades, yet he objected to his hedonism and singled out this couplet for criticism:
Solon thought he should be willing to live to eighty. Plutarch
was another ancient author critical of the poet's self-indulgence, dismissing one poem (see Fragment 1 in Poetic style below) as "the utterances of intemperate people." Mimnermus however was not timid in his hedonism, as indicated by a couplet attributed to him in the Palatine Anthology
, an exhortation to others to live intemperately: "Enjoy yourself. Some of the harsh citizens will speak ill of you, some better.". However, the same lines have also been attributed to Theognis
. A robust side to his personality is shown by his versatility as a poet. Archaic elegy was often used for patriotic purposes, to screw courage to the sticking place in times of war and to celebrate national achievements, and there is ample evidence that Mimnermus assumed this role as a poet. A quote recorded by the geographer Strabo
represents the earliest surviving account of the Ionia
n migration, celebrating the settlement of Colophon and Smyrna from Pylos
,
while another quote, recorded by Stobaeus
, describes the heroic exploits of a Greek warrior against the cavalry of the Lydia
n king, Gyges
, early in the 7th centuryMimnermus evidently hoped thereby to strengthen his countrymen's resolve against further Lydian encroachments. In fact the name 'Mimnermus' might have been chosen by his parents to commemmorate a famous Smyrnean victory against Gyges near the Hermus
river (and yet names ending in 'ermus' were quite common in Ionia). He was alive when Smyrna was besieged for the final time by the Lydians under Alyattes II
and possibly he died with the town. The disappearance of Smyrna for the next three hundred years might be the reason why Colophon was able to claim the poet as one of its own, yet Smyrna's own claim persisted and this suggests that its claim had the advantage of being true.
Unlike epic and lyric verse, which were accompanied by stringed instruments (the cithara and barbiton
respectively), elegy was accompanied by a wind instrument (the aulos
) and its performance therefore required at least two peopleone to sing and one to play. Ancient accounts associate Mimnermus with a female aulos player, Nanno, and one makes him her lover (see quote from Hermesianax
in Comments by other poets below). Another ancient source indicates that Mimnermus was a pederast
, which is consistent with conventional sexual themes in Greek elegy. However, as noted by Martin Litchfield West
, Mimnermus could have been a pederast and yet still have composed elegies about his love for Nanno: "Greek pederasty...was for the most part a substitute for heterosexual love, free contacts between the sexes being restricted by society." Mimnermus apparently was also capable of playing all by himselfStrabo described him as "both a pipe-player and an elegiac poet". According to the poet Hipponax
, Mimnermus when piping used the melancholy "fig-branch strain," apparently a traditional melody played while scapegoat
s were ritually driven from town, whipped with fig branches.
Smyrna lay near Mount Sipylos, one of whose rocky outcrops was traditionally imagined to be the tragic figure Niobe
. Like other archaic poets, Mimnermus adapted myths to his own artistic needs and Aelian
recorded that he attributed twenty children to Niobe, unlike Homer, for example, who attributed twelve to her. According to Sallustius
, Mimnermus was just as creative in his poetical account of Ismene
, representing her as being killed by Tydeus
at the command of the goddess, Athena
, in the very act of making love to Theoclymenus
an original account that was soon accepted by an international audience, being represented on an early Corinthian amphora
(pictured below). Imaginative accounts of the sun, voyaging at night from west to east in a golden bed, and of Jason
the Argonaut voyaging to "Aeetes
' city, where the rays of the swift Sun lie in a golden storeroom at the edge of Oceanus
", survive in brief quotes by ancient authors. According to Strabo, Smyrna was named after an Amazon and, according to a manuscript on proverbs, Mimnermus once composed on the theme of the proverb "A lame man makes the best lover", illustrating the Amazonian practice of maiming their men.
Ancient commentators sometimes refer to a work called Nanno and there is one clear reference to a work called Smyrneis. Modern scholars have concluded that these could be the two books mentioned by Porphyrion. Nanno appears to have been a collection of short poems on a variety of themes (not just love), whereas Smyrneis appears to have been a quasi-epic about Smyrna's confrontation with the Lydians. A cryptic comment by the Hellenistic poet, Callimachus (see Comments by other poets below), also seems to refer to those two books, commending one for "sweetness" and destinguishing it from "the great lady". The latter seems to be a reference to Smyrneis, whereas the sweet versesapparently the slender, economical kind of verses on which Callimachus modelled his own poetryappear to refer to Nanno. However, the comment is preserved as an incomplete fragment and modern scholars are not unanimous in their interpretation of it. Another Callimachus fragment has been interpreted as proof that Mimnermus composed some iambic verse
but this conjecture has also been disputed.
Elegy has been described as "a variation upon the heroic hexameter
, in the direction of lyric poetry
," and, in Mimnermus, this takes the form of a variation on Homer, as appears for example in Fragment 1, quoted below, about which one modern scholar had this to say.
Typically, the elegiac couplet enabled a poet to develop his ideas in brief, striking phrases, often made more memorable by internal rhyme in the shorter, pentameter line. Mimnermus employs the internal rhyme in the pentameter lines 2 and 4 . Here is the same poem paraphrased in English to imitate the rhythms of an elegy
, with half-rhymes employed in the same lines 2 (far...for) and 4 (youth...bloom):
Commenting on the poem, Maurice Bowra
observed that "...after the challenging, flaunting opening we are led through a swift account of youth, and then as we approach the horrors of old age, the verse becomes slower, the sentences shorter, the stops more emphatic, until the poet closes with a short, damning line of summary."
Of all the other early elegists, only Archilochus
might be compared with Mimnermus for effective use of language, both being lifelong poets of outstanding skill.
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...
elegiac
Elegiac
Elegiac refers either to those compositions that are like elegies or to a specific poetic meter used in Classical elegies. The Classical elegiac meter has two lines, making it a couplet: a line of dactylic hexameter, followed by a line of dactylic pentameter...
poet from either Colophon or Smyrna
Smyrna
Smyrna was an ancient city located at a central and strategic point on the Aegean coast of Anatolia. Thanks to its advantageous port conditions, its ease of defence and its good inland connections, Smyrna rose to prominence. The ancient city is located at two sites within modern İzmir, Turkey...
in Ionia
Ionia
Ionia is an ancient region of central coastal Anatolia in present-day Turkey, the region nearest İzmir, which was historically Smyrna. It consisted of the northernmost territories of the Ionian League of Greek settlements...
, who flourished about 630-600 BC. He was strongly influenced by the example of Homer
Homer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
yet he wrote short poems suitable for performance at drinking parties
Symposium
In ancient Greece, the symposium was a drinking party. Literary works that describe or take place at a symposium include two Socratic dialogues, Plato's Symposium and Xenophon's Symposium, as well as a number of Greek poems such as the elegies of Theognis of Megara...
and was remembered by ancient authorities chiefly as a love poet. Mimnermus in turn exerted a strong influence on Hellenistic poets such as Callimachus
Callimachus
Callimachus was a native of the Greek colony of Cyrene, Libya. He was a noted poet, critic and scholar at the Library of Alexandria and enjoyed the patronage of the Egyptian–Greek Pharaohs Ptolemy II Philadelphus and Ptolemy III Euergetes...
and thus also on Roman poets such as Propertius, who even preferred him to Homer for his eloquence on love themes (see Comments by other poets below). His work was collected by Alexandrian scholars in just two 'books' (relatively few compared for example with the twenty-six books for Stesichorus
Stesichorus
Stesichorus was the first great poet of the Greek West. He is best known for telling epic stories in lyric metres but he is also famous for some ancient traditions about his life, such as his opposition to the tyrant Phalaris, and the blindness he is said to have incurred and cured by composing...
) and today only small fragments survive. The fragments confirm the ancient estimate of him as a "consumate poet" but also indicate that he was in fact a "sturdier character" than the indulgent love poet he was assumed to be by various ancient commentators. Almost no reliable, biographical details have been recorded. One ancient account linked him romantically with a flute girl who subsequently gave her name to one of his two books - Nanno.
Life and work
The Byzantine encyclopaedia SudaSuda
The Suda or Souda is a massive 10th century Byzantine encyclopedia of the ancient Mediterranean world, formerly attributed to an author called Suidas. It is an encyclopedic lexicon, written in Greek, with 30,000 entries, many drawing from ancient sources that have since been lost, and often...
provides a good example of the biographical uncertainties.
The gap indicates a corruption in the text and the original wording probably testified to two books, though the only source we have for this number was the grammarian Pomponius Porphyrion
Pomponius Porphyrion
Pomponius Porphyrion was a Latin grammarian and commentator on Horace, possibly a native of Africa, who flourished during the 2nd or 3rd century....
. Suda's mention of Astypalaea, an island in the southern Aegean, as a possible candidate for the poet's home town, is mere fantasy. Smyrna seems to be the most likely candidate. The nickname Ligyaistades was probably taken by Suda from an elegy addressed to Mimnermus by one of the seven sagesthe Athenian lawgiver and elegiac poet, Solon
Solon
Solon was an Athenian statesman, lawmaker, and poet. He is remembered particularly for his efforts to legislate against political, economic and moral decline in archaic Athens...
(see Comments by other poets). Solon clearly admired the skills of the older poet, whom he addressed as Ligyaistades, yet he objected to his hedonism and singled out this couplet for criticism:
Solon thought he should be willing to live to eighty. Plutarch
Plutarch
Plutarch then named, on his becoming a Roman citizen, Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus , c. 46 – 120 AD, was a Greek historian, biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonist known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia...
was another ancient author critical of the poet's self-indulgence, dismissing one poem (see Fragment 1 in Poetic style below) as "the utterances of intemperate people." Mimnermus however was not timid in his hedonism, as indicated by a couplet attributed to him in the Palatine Anthology
Palatine Anthology
The Palatine Anthology is the collection of Greek poems and epigrams discovered in 1606 in the Palating Library in Heidelberg. It is based on the lost collection of Constantine Cephalas of the 10th century, which has been composed using older anthologies. It contains material from the 7th century...
, an exhortation to others to live intemperately: "Enjoy yourself. Some of the harsh citizens will speak ill of you, some better.". However, the same lines have also been attributed to Theognis
Theognis
Theognis was a member of the Thirty Tyrants of Athens . Lysias was able to escape from the house of Damnippus, where Theognis was guarding other aristocrats rounded up by the Thirty....
. A robust side to his personality is shown by his versatility as a poet. Archaic elegy was often used for patriotic purposes, to screw courage to the sticking place in times of war and to celebrate national achievements, and there is ample evidence that Mimnermus assumed this role as a poet. A quote recorded by the geographer Strabo
Strabo
Strabo, also written Strabon was a Greek historian, geographer and philosopher.-Life:Strabo was born to an affluent family from Amaseia in Pontus , a city which he said was situated the approximate equivalent of 75 km from the Black Sea...
represents the earliest surviving account of the Ionia
Ionia
Ionia is an ancient region of central coastal Anatolia in present-day Turkey, the region nearest İzmir, which was historically Smyrna. It consisted of the northernmost territories of the Ionian League of Greek settlements...
n migration, celebrating the settlement of Colophon and Smyrna from Pylos
Pylos
Pylos , historically known under its Italian name Navarino, is a town and a former municipality in Messenia, Peloponnese, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Pylos-Nestoras, of which it is the seat and a municipal unit. It was the capital of the former...
,
while another quote, recorded by Stobaeus
Stobaeus
Joannes Stobaeus , from Stobi in Macedonia, was the compiler of a valuable series of extracts from Greek authors. The work was originally divided into two volumes containing two books each...
, describes the heroic exploits of a Greek warrior against the cavalry of the Lydia
Lydia
Lydia was an Iron Age kingdom of western Asia Minor located generally east of ancient Ionia in the modern Turkish provinces of Manisa and inland İzmir. Its population spoke an Anatolian language known as Lydian....
n king, Gyges
Gyges of Lydia
Gyges was the founder of the third or Mermnad dynasty of Lydian kings and reigned from 716 BC to 678 BC . He was succeeded by his son Ardys II.-Allegorical accounts of Gyges' rise to power:...
, early in the 7th centuryMimnermus evidently hoped thereby to strengthen his countrymen's resolve against further Lydian encroachments. In fact the name 'Mimnermus' might have been chosen by his parents to commemmorate a famous Smyrnean victory against Gyges near the Hermus
Hermus
In Greek mythology, Hermus is a name attributed to multiple characters.-River god:Hermus is the god of the river Hermus located in the Aegean region of Lydia . Like most of the river-gods, he is the son of Oceanus and Tethys...
river (and yet names ending in 'ermus' were quite common in Ionia). He was alive when Smyrna was besieged for the final time by the Lydians under Alyattes II
Alyattes II
Alyattes, king of Lydia , considered to be the founder of the Lydian empire, was the son of Sadyattes, of the house of the Mermnadae....
and possibly he died with the town. The disappearance of Smyrna for the next three hundred years might be the reason why Colophon was able to claim the poet as one of its own, yet Smyrna's own claim persisted and this suggests that its claim had the advantage of being true.
Unlike epic and lyric verse, which were accompanied by stringed instruments (the cithara and barbiton
Barbiton
The barbiton, or barbitos , is an ancient stringed instrument known from Greek and Roman classics related to the lyre...
respectively), elegy was accompanied by a wind instrument (the aulos
Aulos
An aulos or tibia was an ancient Greek wind instrument, depicted often in art and also attested by archaeology.An aulete was the musician who performed on an aulos...
) and its performance therefore required at least two peopleone to sing and one to play. Ancient accounts associate Mimnermus with a female aulos player, Nanno, and one makes him her lover (see quote from Hermesianax
Hermesianax
Hermesianax of Colophon was an Ancient Greek elegiac poet of the Hellenistic period, said to be a pupil of Philitas of Cos; the dates of his life and work are all but lost, but Philitas is supposed to have been born c. 340....
in Comments by other poets below). Another ancient source indicates that Mimnermus was a pederast
Pederasty in ancient Greece
Pederasty in ancient Greece was a socially acknowledged relationship between an adult and a younger male usually in his teens. It was characteristic of the Archaic and Classical periods...
, which is consistent with conventional sexual themes in Greek elegy. However, as noted by Martin Litchfield West
Martin Litchfield West
Martin Litchfield West is an internationally recognised scholar in classics, classical antiquity and philology...
, Mimnermus could have been a pederast and yet still have composed elegies about his love for Nanno: "Greek pederasty...was for the most part a substitute for heterosexual love, free contacts between the sexes being restricted by society." Mimnermus apparently was also capable of playing all by himselfStrabo described him as "both a pipe-player and an elegiac poet". According to the poet Hipponax
Hipponax
Hipponax of Ephesus and later Clazomenae was an Ancient Greek iambic poet who composed verses depicting the vulgar side of life in Ionian society in the sixth century BC...
, Mimnermus when piping used the melancholy "fig-branch strain," apparently a traditional melody played while scapegoat
Scapegoat
Scapegoating is the practice of singling out any party for unmerited negative treatment or blame. Scapegoating may be conducted by individuals against individuals , individuals against groups , groups against individuals , and groups against groups Scapegoating is the practice of singling out any...
s were ritually driven from town, whipped with fig branches.
Niobe
Niobe was a daughter of Tantalus and of either Dione, the most frequently cited, or of Eurythemista or Euryanassa, and she was the sister of Pelops and Broteas, all of whom figure in Greek mythology....
. Like other archaic poets, Mimnermus adapted myths to his own artistic needs and Aelian
Claudius Aelianus
Claudius Aelianus , often seen as just Aelian, born at Praeneste, was a Roman author and teacher of rhetoric who flourished under Septimius Severus and probably outlived Elagabalus, who died in 222...
recorded that he attributed twenty children to Niobe, unlike Homer, for example, who attributed twelve to her. According to Sallustius
Sallustius
Sallustius or Sallust was a 4th-century Latin writer, a friend of the Roman Emperor Julian. He wrote the treatise On the Gods and the Cosmos, a kind of catechism of 4th-century Hellenic paganism. Sallustius' work owes much to that of Iamblichus of Chalcis, who synthesized Platonism with...
, Mimnermus was just as creative in his poetical account of Ismene
Ismene
Ismene is the name of two women of Greek mythology. The more famous is a daughter and half-sister of Oedipus, daughter and granddaughter of Jocasta, and sister of Antigone, Eteocles, and Polynices. She appears in several plays of Sophocles: at the end of Oedipus the King, in Oedipus at Colonus and...
, representing her as being killed by Tydeus
Tydeus
In Greek mythology, Tydeus was an Aeolian hero of the generation before the Trojan War. He was one of the Seven Against Thebes and was mortally wounded by Melanippus before the walls of the city. The goddess Athena had planned to make him immortal but refused after Tydeus in a rage devoured the...
at the command of the goddess, Athena
Athena
In Greek mythology, Athena, Athenê, or Athene , also referred to as Pallas Athena/Athene , is the goddess of wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, warfare, strength, strategy, the arts, crafts, justice, and skill. Minerva, Athena's Roman incarnation, embodies similar attributes. Athena is...
, in the very act of making love to Theoclymenus
Theoclymenus
In Greek mythology, Theoclymenus , son of Polypheides, was a prophet from Argos, who, in the Odyssey, had been taken from that city after killing one of his relatives being captured by pirates. He fled to Pylos and sought refuge aboard the ship of Telemachus, who had come to inquire about the fate...
an original account that was soon accepted by an international audience, being represented on an early Corinthian amphora
Amphora
An amphora is a type of vase-shaped, usually ceramic container with two handles and a long neck narrower than the body...
(pictured below). Imaginative accounts of the sun, voyaging at night from west to east in a golden bed, and of Jason
Jason
Jason was a late ancient Greek mythological hero from the late 10th Century BC, famous as the leader of the Argonauts and their quest for the Golden Fleece. He was the son of Aeson, the rightful king of Iolcus...
the Argonaut voyaging to "Aeetes
Aeëtes
In Greek mythology, Aeëtes , , , was a King of Colchis , son of the sun-god Helios and the Oceanid Perseis , brother of Circe and Pasiphae, and father of Medea, Chalciope and Apsyrtus...
' city, where the rays of the swift Sun lie in a golden storeroom at the edge of Oceanus
Oceanus
Oceanus ; , Ōkeanós) was a pseudo-geographical feature in classical antiquity, believed by the ancient Greeks and Romans to be the world-ocean, an enormous river encircling the world....
", survive in brief quotes by ancient authors. According to Strabo, Smyrna was named after an Amazon and, according to a manuscript on proverbs, Mimnermus once composed on the theme of the proverb "A lame man makes the best lover", illustrating the Amazonian practice of maiming their men.
Ancient commentators sometimes refer to a work called Nanno and there is one clear reference to a work called Smyrneis. Modern scholars have concluded that these could be the two books mentioned by Porphyrion. Nanno appears to have been a collection of short poems on a variety of themes (not just love), whereas Smyrneis appears to have been a quasi-epic about Smyrna's confrontation with the Lydians. A cryptic comment by the Hellenistic poet, Callimachus (see Comments by other poets below), also seems to refer to those two books, commending one for "sweetness" and destinguishing it from "the great lady". The latter seems to be a reference to Smyrneis, whereas the sweet versesapparently the slender, economical kind of verses on which Callimachus modelled his own poetryappear to refer to Nanno. However, the comment is preserved as an incomplete fragment and modern scholars are not unanimous in their interpretation of it. Another Callimachus fragment has been interpreted as proof that Mimnermus composed some iambic verse
Iambus (genre)
Iambus was a genre of ancient Greek poetry that included but was not restricted to the iambic meter and whose origins modern scholars have traced to the cults of Demeter and Dionysus. The genre featured insulting and obscene language...
but this conjecture has also been disputed.
Poetic style
Hexameter
Hexameter is a metrical line of verse consisting of six feet. It was the standard epic metre in classical Greek and Latin literature, such as in the Iliad and Aeneid. Its use in other genres of composition include Horace's satires, and Ovid's Metamorphoses. According to Greek mythology, hexameter...
, in the direction of lyric poetry
Lyric poetry
Lyric poetry is a genre of poetry that expresses personal and emotional feelings. In the ancient world, lyric poems were those which were sung to the lyre. Lyric poems do not have to rhyme, and today do not need to be set to music or a beat...
," and, in Mimnermus, this takes the form of a variation on Homer, as appears for example in Fragment 1, quoted below, about which one modern scholar had this to say.
-
-
-
-
-
- Fragment 1
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Typically, the elegiac couplet enabled a poet to develop his ideas in brief, striking phrases, often made more memorable by internal rhyme in the shorter, pentameter line. Mimnermus employs the internal rhyme in the pentameter lines 2 and 4 . Here is the same poem paraphrased in English to imitate the rhythms of an elegy
Elegy
In literature, an elegy is a mournful, melancholic or plaintive poem, especially a funeral song or a lament for the dead.-History:The Greek term elegeia originally referred to any verse written in elegiac couplets and covering a wide range of subject matter, including epitaphs for tombs...
, with half-rhymes employed in the same lines 2 (far...for) and 4 (youth...bloom):
-
- What is life, what is sweet, if it is missing golden AphroditeAphroditeAphrodite is the Greek goddess of love, beauty, pleasure, and procreation.Her Roman equivalent is the goddess .Historically, her cult in Greece was imported from, or influenced by, the cult of Astarte in Phoenicia....
?- Death would be better by far than to live with no time for
- Amorous assignations and the gift of tenderness and bedrooms,
- All of those things that give youth all of its covetted bloom,
- Both for men and for women. But when there arrives the vexatiousness
- Of old age, even good looks alter to unsightliness
- And the heart wears away under the endlessness of its anxieties:
- There is no joy anymore then in the light of the sun;
- In children there is found hate and in women there is found no respect.
- So difficult has old age been made for us all by God!
- What is life, what is sweet, if it is missing golden Aphrodite
Commenting on the poem, Maurice Bowra
Maurice Bowra
Sir Cecil Maurice Bowra was an English classical scholar and academic, known for his wit. He was Warden of Wadham College, Oxford, from 1938 to 1970, and served as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford from 1951 to 1954.-Birth and boyhood:...
observed that "...after the challenging, flaunting opening we are led through a swift account of youth, and then as we approach the horrors of old age, the verse becomes slower, the sentences shorter, the stops more emphatic, until the poet closes with a short, damning line of summary."
Of all the other early elegists, only Archilochus
Archilochus
Archilochus, or, Archilochos While these have been the generally accepted dates since Felix Jacoby, "The Date of Archilochus," Classical Quarterly 35 97-109, some scholars disagree; Robin Lane Fox, for instance, in Travelling Heroes: Greeks and Their Myths in the Epic Age of Homer , p...
might be compared with Mimnermus for effective use of language, both being lifelong poets of outstanding skill.