Marco Fantuzzi, Richard Hunter Tradition and Innovation in Hellenistic Poetry

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TRADITION AND INNOVATION IN

HELLENISTIC POETRY
Hellenistic poets of the third and second centuries bc were con-

cerned with the need both to mark their continuity with the classical
past and to demonstrate their independence from it. In this revised
and expanded translation of Muse e modelli: la poesia ellenistica da
Alessandro Magno ad Augusto, Greek poetry of the third and second
centuries bc and its reception and influence at Rome are explored,
allowing both sides of this literary practice to be appreciated. Genres
as diverse as epic and epigram are considered from a historical perspec-
tive, in the full range of their deep-level structures, shedding brilliant
new light on the poetry and its influence at Rome. Some of the most
famous poetry of the age such as Callimachus Aitia and Apollonius
Argonautica is examined. In addition, full attention is paid to the
poetry of encomium, in particular the newly published epigrams of
Posidippus, and Hellenistic literary criticism, notably Philodemus.
m arco fan tu z z i is Professor of Ancient Greek Literature at the

University of Macerata and at the Graduate School of Greek and Latin
Philology of the University of Florence. His published works include
Bionis Smyrnaei Adonidis Epitaphium (Liverpool, 1985) and Ricerche
su Apollonio Rodio: Diacronie della dizione epica (Rome, 1988).
r i c h ard hu n ter is Regius Professor of Greek at the Univer-

sity of Cambridge and Fellow of Trinity College. He has published
extensively on Hellenistic poetry and previous works include The
New Comedy of Greece and Rome (Cambridge, 1985), The Argonau-
tica of Apollonius: literary studies (Cambridge, 1993), and Theocritus,
Encomium of Ptolemy Philadelphus (Berkeley, 2003).
TRADITION AND
I N N OVAT I O N I N
H E L L E N I S T I C P O E T RY
MA R C O FA N T U Z Z I A N D R I C H A R D H U N T E R

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Originally published in Italian as Muse e modelli: la poesia ellenistica da Alessandro

Magno ad Augusto by Gius. Laterza & Figli Spa, Roma Bari 2002 and 2002 by
Gius. Laterza & Figli Spa, Roma Bari English language edition.
First published in English by Cambridge University Press 2004 as Tradition and

Innovation in Hellenistic Poetry
Contents
Preface page vii

List of abbreviations ix
1 Performance and genre 1

1 Invoking the Muses, evoking models 1
2 Impossible models and lost performance contexts 17
3 Disassembling and reassembling 26
4 Marginal aberrations? 37
2 The aetiology of Callimachus Aitia 42

1 Callimachus 42
2 The structure of the Aitia 44
3 Aetiology 49
4 Hesiod and Callimachus 51
5 Acontius and Cydippe 60
6 The reply to the Telchines 66
7 Callimachus and the Ician 76
8 Poems for a princess 83
3 The Argonautica of Apollonius and epic tradition 89

1 Epic song 89
2 An epic world 98
3 Heroic anger 104
4 Epic memory 117
5 An epic leader 126
4 Theocritus and the bucolic genre 133

1 Theocritus and the realism of everyday life: in search
of new worlds for poetry 133
2 Verisimilitude and coherence 141
3 Bucolic poetry after Theocritus: between imitation
and stylisation 167
4 Bucolic and non-bucolic love 170
v
vi Contents
5 Epic in a minor key 191
1 The epyllion 191
2 Callimachus Hecale 196
3 Theocritus Little Heracles 201
4 Heracles the Lionslayer 210
5 The Europa of Moschus 215
6 The Phainomena of Aratus 224
6 The style of Hellenistic epic 246

1 Introduction 246
2 Callimachus 249
3 Theocritus 255
4 Apollonius Rhodius 266
7 The epigram 283

1 Inscription and epigram: the prehistory of a genre 283
2 Funerary and dedicatory epigrams: epigraphic
conventions and epigrammatic variations 291
3 Erotic epigrams 338
8 The languages of praise 350

1 Callimachus Hymns and the hymnic tradition 350
2 The dialect of kings 371
3 Posidippus and the ideology of kingship 377
9 Hellenistic drama 404

1 Menander and New Comedy 404
2 Hellenistic tragedy 432
3 Lycophrons Alexandra 437
10 Roman epilogue 444

1 A critical silence? 444
2 Philodemus and Hellenistic poetics 449
3 Graecia capta 461
4 Verbum pro uerbo 467
5 Poetry or translation? 474
6 The limits of translation 476
7 Catullus Attis 477
Bibliography 486
Index of passages discussed 500
General index 506
Preface
This book is a revised and augmented version of Muse e modelli: la poesia

ellenistica da Alessandro Magno ad Augusto (RomeBari 2002). In the Preface
of the Italian book we drew attention to the sympathy which one might
expect the modern age to have for a literature which was self-consciously
belated, in which meaning was created by a confrontation, both direct and
oblique, with the classical works of the past. It is perhaps no great surprise
that some critics have even seen in Hellenistic poetry a ludic post-modern
enterprise. Modernity, however, has its own history, particularly in the
poetry of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and it is against that
background that poets such as Callimachus and Theocritus first came to
be seen as modernists avant la lettre, practitioners of an experimental and
virtuoso art for arts sake. The catalyst for such views came, often enough,
from the emphasis in Wilhelm Krolls seminal studies on Kreuzung der
Gattungen and effects of surprise in Hellenistic and Roman poetry. The
phenomena to which Kroll pointed are real enough, and are given deserved
prominence in this book, but his insights and particularly his most famous
catch-phrase have too often been used as a substitute for serious analysis
and hard thinking about the complexity of the Hellenistic engagement with
the past.
The principal purpose of this book is to set Hellenistic poetry within its
own intellectual and cultural context, which will in fact appear very different
from that which gave rise to the modernist movements to which it is most
often compared. The use of and allusion to the poetry of the past was for
ancient poets part of the tools of the trade, a mark of their professional
techne; paying homage to their great ancestors was not (necessarily) a sign
of anxiety. With some marginal exceptions, ancient poetry emphasises
tradition and continuity with the past, rather than modernist rupture, even
when it is at its most innovative (as, for example, in Callimachus Aitia).
With changes of taste and conditions of performance come, of course,
changes in style, in poetic canons, and in generic preferences, but the past
vii
viii Preface
was never abandoned, even rhetorically; the most audaciously modern
texts continue to use the langue of the traditional genres, as well as the
parole of the great poetry of the past and of the institutions through which
it flourished and which it itself sustained. The manner in which Hellenistic
poetry and the Roman poetry which was influenced by it embrace the past
without either epigonal nostalgia or classicising enthusiasm and use it in
what were, in reality, quite new cultural and political contexts is perhaps
their most powerful attraction; the paradigms of the past are neither rejected
nor slavishly followed this, of itself, is not the least marker of continuity
with the poetic practice of the archaic and classical ages. The persistent
historical and archaeological concerns of Hellenistic poets in exploring,
reconstructing, and preserving the poetic past will, we hope, emerge very
clearly from this book.
It will be immediately obvious that this book makes no claims to com-
prehensiveness or to being a handbook of Hellenistic poetry, and there is a
good reason for this choice. Probably more than any other period of Greek
poetry, Hellenistic poetry has suffered from lazy, (un)critical generalisations;
mud sticks, even today when the number of those interested in Hellenistic
poetry, and the quality of the work they are producing, is very high. Gen-
eralisations have their uses, and we have not avoided them, but one must
begin with the particularity of each poet and each poetic mode; the very
rich diversity of what survives of the Greek poetry of the last three centuries
before Christ deserves its own celebration.
Each chapter or section is essentially the work of one author, though we
have both lived with the whole book (and each other) for many years: MF
is responsible for Chapters 1, 4, 6, 7, 8.3, and 10.2; RH for the rest. MFs
chapters have been translated by Ron Packham and RH. We hope that it
is unnecessary to state that neither of us swears that he believes every word
which the other has written.
We wish here to repeat the thanks to friends and colleagues expressed
in the Italian version, particularly to Alessandro Laterza for his continuing
support; we are now very pleased to be able to add our gratitude to Michael
Sharp of CUP for his encouragement and patience, and to the Faculty of
Classics of the University of Cambridge for its liberal hospitality to MF
and for its generosity, which has made this book possible.
MF
RH
Abbreviations
Standard abbreviations for collections and editions of texts and for works
of reference are used; Callimachus is cited from Pfeiffers edition, unless
otherwise indicated. The following may also be noted:
CA J. U. Powell, Collectanea Alexandrina (Oxford 1925)

CEG P. A. Hansen, Carmina epigraphica Graeca (BerlinNew York
1983, 1989)
EG G. Kaibel, Epigrammata Graeca (Berlin 1878)
EGF M. Davies, Epicorum Graecorum fragmenta (Gottingen 1988)
FGE D. L. Page, Further Greek Epigrams (Cambridge 1981)
FGrHist F. Jacoby, Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker (Berlin
19231930; Leiden 19401958 and 1994)
GESA J. Ebert, Griechische Epigramme auf Sieger an gymnischen und
hippischen Agonen (Berlin 1972).
GG W. Peek, Griechische Grabgedichte (Berlin 1960)
GPh A. S. F. GowD. L. Page, The Greek Anthology. The Garland
of Philip, III (Cambridge 1968).
GVI W. Peek, Griechische Vers-Inschriften, I (Berlin 1955)
HE A. S. F. GowD. L. Page, The Greek Anthology. Hellenistic
Epigrams, III (Cambridge 1965)
IAG L. Moretti, Iscrizioni agonistiche greche (Rome 1953)
IEG M. L. West, Iambi et elegi Graeci ante Alexandrum cantati,
III (2nd ed., Oxford 198992)
IG Inscriptiones Graecae (Berlin 1873)
IMEGR E. Bernand, Inscriptions metriques de lEgypte greco-romaine
(Paris 1949)
LfgrE Lexikon des fruhgriechischen Epos (Gottingen 1955)
LGPN P. M. Fraser, E. Matthews et al., A Lexicon of Greek Personal
Names (Oxford 1987)
ix
x List of abbreviations
LIMC Lexicon iconographicum mythologiae classicae
(ZurichMunich 19811997)
LSJ H. G., LiddellR. ScottH. Stuart JonesR.
McKenzieP. G. W. Glare, GreekEnglish Lexicon, with a
revised Supplement (9th ed., Oxford 1996)
PCG R. KasselC. Austin, Poetae comici Graeci (BerlinNew York
1983)
PEG A. Bernabe, Poetarum epicorum Graecorum testimonia et
fragmenta I (Leipzig 1987)
PMG D. L. Page, Poetae melici Graeci (Oxford 1962)
PMGF M. Davies, Poetarum melicorum Graecorum fragmenta, I
(Oxford 1991)
RE A. PaulyG. WissowaW. Kroll, et al. (eds.),
Real-Encyclopadie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft
(StuttgartMunich 18931980)
SGO R. MerkelbachJ. Stauber, Steinepigramme aus dem
griechischen Osten (StuttgartLeipzig 1998)
SH H. Lloyd-JonesP. Parsons, Supplementum Hellenisticum
(BerlinNew York 1983)
SVF H. F. A. von Arnim, Stoicorum veterum fragmenta, IIV
(Leipzig 190324)
TGF A. Nauck, Tragicorum Graecorum fragmenta (2nd ed.,
Leipzig 1889)
TrGF B. SnellR. KannichtS. Radt, Tragicorum Graecorum
fragmenta (Gottingen 1971)
VS H. DielsW. Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (6th
ed., Berlin 195152)
All dates are bc, unless otherwise indicated.

chap t e r 1
Performance and genre
1 in voking the muses, evoking models

For the Greeks, from the age of Homer to the late imperial period, the
poet received his inspiration from the Muses or from some other god
(e.g. Apollo or Dionysus), to whom he attributed the responsibility for the
enthousiasmos which allowed him to sing as he wished to sing; consequently,
it was a widespread practice for poets to apostrophise these divine sources
of inspiration at the beginning of their works, or even to claim that they
had been invested as poets by them (as in the case of Hesiod). Particularly
in the Hellenistic age, however, we find that another figure takes his place
beside the divine inspirer, or at times substitutes for him in the role of
guarantor of the origin of the work. The conventional role of acting as a
source of inspiration may well be left to the Muses, but now an illustrious
predecessor often steps in to teach the new poet the ropes, and how to
proceed to construct the work he has undertaken, or else he verifies and
ratifies the correctness of the method that the new poet has followed. In
practice, in their combination of these two series of figures the Muses and
the poetic masters or models it is as if Hellenistic poets turned to their
advantage the distinction between inspiration by the poetic divinities, on
the one hand, and the primacy of craft, techne, on the other; the two now
formed a powerful unit, no longer a pair of opposed possibilities.
These two competing origins of poetry go back to a familiar cultural
model of the fifth century, best represented for us by, on the one hand,
Democritus and, on the other, by Platos Ion and Phaedrus.1 Socrates words
in the Ion are perhaps the most famous ancient assertion of the inspiration
view of poetry:
1 Although poetry was considered the fruit of inspiration by the Muses throughout the archaic and
classical periods, the idea of poetic ecstasy and the concomitant downgrading of poetic techne
are very Platonic, cf. P. Murray, Plato on Poetry (Cambridge 1996) 612; it is, of course, far from
easy always to distinguish between poetic inspiration and ecstatic possession, cf. Finkelberg (1998)
1920.
1
2 Performance and genre
The poet is a light and winged and sacred thing, unable to create poetry unless he
is first inspired by the god and out of his wits, with no reason in him any longer
(
); . . . seeing
that it is not by any art that they create poetry and say many fine things about
their subjects . . . but by divine destiny ( ); a poet can only succeed in
the type of poetry towards which the Muse inspires him one man in dithyrambs,
another in encomia, another in hyporchemes, another in epic poems, and another
in iambics while in all the other kinds of poetry he is unsuccessful. In reality, it is
not by virtue of techne that they speak, but thanks to a divine force: if techne made
them capable of composing fine expressions on a single subject, they would be
able to do the same on all the other subjects, too ( !" # $%
&## '$( ) ) * +, !" # -% # )
.## /(). (Plato, Ion 534bc)
In the Phaedrus, Plato does not completely deny the existence of poetry
created only by virtue of techne, but he establishes a clear hierarchy between
this inferior level and the kind created by divine inspiration:
He who arrives at the doors of poetry without the madness of the Muses (. $
0$%), thinking that he can be a good poet thanks solely to techne,
remains incomplete, and the poetry of the sane poet is eclipsed by that of the mad
(1 % 2, 1 % 1%).2 (Plato,
Phaedrus 245a)
So too in the Laws, Plato states that the poets techne lies in the mimesis of
the characters, and again presents this craft as a sort of low-level, dangerous
instrument, even if he admits that the inspired poet too makes use of it to
express himself:
When a poet takes his seat on the tripod of the Muse, he cannot control his
thoughts. Hes like a fountain where the water is allowed to gush forth unchecked.
His art is the art of representation ( ! 3% 4% ), and when he
represents men with contrasting characters he is often obliged to contradict himself,
and he doesnt know which of the opposing speeches contains the truth. (Plato,
Laws 4.719c (trans. Saunders))
Only here in fact in Plato do enthousiasmos and mimetic techne coexist.3
Platos low valuation of mimesis as the techne of poetry, together with
the idea that the only really inspired, philosophical poetry was the non-
mimetic kind (with its extremely limited possibilities the dithyramb, and
2 In the light of the subsequent comparison between inspired prophecy and simple divination by
means of birds, it may be deduced that the inspired poet stands to the mere technician as the
inspired prophet stands to the mere augur, cf. D. A. Russell, Criticism in Antiquity (London
1981) 76.
3 Cf. Finkelberg (1998) 6 n. 19.
hymns to gods or to men), led the philosopher, both in the Laws (817bc)
and in the tenth book of the Republic, to banish poetry virtually entirely
from the ideal State; there was, after all, no getting away from mimesis,
whether by that is meant a continuous representation of characters by the
author (for example, in drama), or an intermittent representation, as in the
case of direct speech in epic poetry, alternating with non-mimetic episodes
of narration. Aristotle started from the same presuppositions (poetry as an
activity that is always predominantly mimetic, that is to say, a more or less
continual representation of characters), but without Platos metaphysical
agenda he was able to consider mimesis in thoroughly positive terms, as
the techne which allows the representation of the universal, purified from
accidental empirical reality. At the climax of a process which had started
with the Sophists, then, the conception of poetry as deriving from divine
inspiration, based on a poetics of truth (a truth of which the poet is merely a
spokesman for the divine inspirer), is largely rejected, and for it is substituted
a secular conception of poetry as deriving from techne, and consequently
based on a poetics of fiction, elaborated by means of the techne that the
poet himself possesses.4
As regards the poetry of the third century, it is obvious that the intellectual
climate was closer to that of Aristotle than to that of Plato; in particular,
poets now cultivated a variety of genres during their careers, and the idea,
most familiar from Platos Ion (above pp. 12), that a poet could only be
inspired by the god in a single literary genre must have seemed rather
dated. Nevertheless, Hellenistic poets preferred not to forgo the positive
advantages of the idea of divine inspiration, which guaranteed for them a
sort of privileged sacrality compared with other !5, or professionals;
indeed, even those who stressed the specifically professional element of their
activity, stating that they had learnt how to compose poetry from this or
that previous poet, transformed this idea of learning from a text-model into
various forms of investiture by a poet-model, which conferred on them
an image almost as honourable as divine inspiration.
The introduction of the figure of the guarantor of a specific techne is
not universal to all the poets or all the compositions of the Hellenistic
age; in particular, it is not found with any form of narrative epic, such as
Callimachus Hymns, Theocritus epic-mythological poems, or the Argonau-
tica of Apollonius.5 Rather, this new authorising strategy is most common
4 Cf. in general, Finkelberg (1998). On the rarity of references to the Muses in tragedy, cf. D. I. Jakob,
67 8 &! +## ' (Athens 1998) chapter 1.
5 Cf. Albis (1996) chapters 1 and 2 on how Apollonius presents himself as a sort of modern Demodocus.
See also below, pp. 967, 1934.
where the precedent of a tradition either is not immediately apparent, or
does not exist, and therefore must be invented. We see a clear case of
this in Theocritus bucolic hexameters.6 In the programmatic Idyll 7, the
first-person narrator, Simichidas, a poet from the town, meets a goatherd-
singer, Lycidas, in the Coan countryside one sunny afternoon. Lycidas, the
model-predecessor/guarantor, was already a famous bucolic poet, though
whether he is purely fictional or an allegorical version of an author who
really existed, it is impossible to say; Simichidas and Lycidas then hold a
competition of bucolic singing together. As a result, by virtue of both the
influence of the master, and the inspiration of the bucolic landscape (and
its Nymphs), Simichidas song assumes a bucolic colouring and, at the end
of it, he gives a sublime description of a locus amoenus, the aim of which
appears to be to demonstrate that he is now fully mature in his bucolic
sensibility.7
Herondas too, the author of mimes written in choliambs (limping
iambics), a metre typical of the archaic iambist Hipponax, dedicates an
apologetic-programmatic poem, Mimiambus 8, to the defence of his poet-
ics. Following a familiar third-century mode, the form of this poem is not
directly polemical, but rather allusive and allegorical;8 that is to say, he
attacks his critics and/or rival poets without mentioning them by name, as
in Callimachus Prologue to the Aitia (below pp. 6676) and Iambus 13.
The narrator, who is probably the poet himself, relates a dream: he was in
the countryside, and he was pulling a goat (a symbol of Dionysus?) behind
him in a valley,9 where there were some goatherds gathered (a symbol of
rival poets: Theocritus, or Callimachus, or other mimographers?)10 . The
goat escaped, and started eating the leaves of plants in a sacred place; con-
sequently, it was slaughtered by the goatherds. At this point, a new figure
appears, whose dress is described in great detail: a fawnskin, buskins, and
ivy on the head all point clearly to Dionysus, and in all probability allude
to the theatre. The goatherds inflate a goat skin, and start playing a game
of askoliasmos, in which men tried to stand on a greasy and inflated skin.
6 Cf. below, pp. 13840.

7 For a more detailed analysis of Id. 7 from this point of view, see below, pp. 137 and 1634.
8 For these recurrent aspects of Hellenistic polemics cf. in particular Treu (1963). A perceptive parallel
reading of Herondas, Mim. 8 and Theocritus 7 is offered by Simon (1991) 6782; cf. also V. Gigante
Lanzara, Il sogno di Eroda in ArrighettiMontanari (1993) 2378.
9 A herdsman in a lonely place is the protagonist of scenes of divine initiation into poetry from the
Hesiod of the Theogony (cf. above) to Simichidas in Theocritus 7; the Archilochus of the biographical
tradition (inscription of Mnesiepes, SEG XV.517) was taking a cow into town to sell it when he met
the Muses. Cf. further Rosen (1992) 208.
10 Cf. Mastromarco (1984) 702.
This is undoubtedly a symbol of a dramatic contest11 (cf. the authors com-
ment as we do in the choruses for Dionysus, v. 40),12 but the others do
not succeed in maintaining their balance, whereas the protagonist is twice
successful.
At this point, an old man intervenes (v. 59), threatening to thrash
the narrator. This figure has sometimes been identified as Callimachus or
Philetas, but he is now generally held to be Hipponax, who is presented
as a model that Herondas had modified; irritated by these modifications,
he reacts with the harshness and truculence that he had always shown in
his poetry. The fact that the old man concludes his speech with the literal
quotation of a fragment of Hipponax ( 9"
:, v. 60, Hipp. fr.
8 Degani = IEG 20)13 leaves little doubt about this identification. At this
point, the protagonist calls a young man as a witness: this figure is probably
a symbol of (again) Dionysus, who appears to assign the same punishment,
or more probably, the same prize, to both the protagonist and the old man
(v. 64).14 On awakening, the protagonist interprets his dream (vv. 66ff.): the
goat that he was leading represented a fine gift from Dionysus; the fact that
the goatherds violently slaughtered it in the performance of their sacred
rites, and feasted on its meat meant that many men will tear apart my
songs [# , with a pun on limbs], the product of my labours (
!)
among the Muses;15 his victory in the game of askoliasmos, in which he
alone was successful (vv. 734), and his achievement of the same result as
the churlish old man (v. 75) meant that his poetry would bring him glory,
and consequently the chance, expressed with all the emphasis of a closing
sphragis, to sing, after Hipponax, the one of long ago (?) . . . limping verses
to the descendants of Xouthos, i.e. the Ionians. Here, Herondas clearly
seems to wish to advertise the synthesis that he has created between the
comic tradition, represented by Dionysus, and the archaic iambic tradition,
represented by Hipponax, who is irritated at this spoiling of his genre.16
11 There was a widespread belief that this game had given rise to comedy, cf. K. Latte, ;<=>?@;<0><
Hermes 85 (1957) 38591 = Kleine Schriften (Munich 1968) 7007. Before Herondas, the belief may
already be reflected in Eubulus, PCG 7, but cf. Hunter (1983a) 934.
12 For the interpretation of Dionysiac elements as references to comedy and mime, cf. B. Veneroni,
Ricerche su due Mimiambi di Eroda RIL 105 (1971) 22342 and Rosen (1992).
13 For the identification cf. Degani (1984) 506.
14 Cf. Degani (1984) 102 n. 139 and Rosen (1992) 21314.
15 Poetry as the fruit of toil is a common image in Hellenistic poetry, cf. Philetas fr. 12 Sbardella
(CA 10), Asclepiades, AP 7.11 = HE 942ff., Theocritus 7.51, Callimachus, HE 1293, Meleager,
AP 12.257.3 = HE 4724.
16 Cf. C. Miralles, La poetica di Eroda Aevum antiquum 5 (1992) 111: Dionysus, who is young, takes
sides, as usual, seeing that he is young, with the novelty of the poetics of Herondas, which is clearly
rooted in the world of Demeter and the iambic tradition, but has incorporated the mime and
archaia.
In the polemical and programmatic Reply to the Telchines (below,
pp. 6676), Callimachus defines his poetics both negatively, in comparison
with the rejected works of certain previous or contemporary poets (fr. 1.9
16 Massimilla = Pfeiffer), and positively through praise of certain works
by Philetas and Mimnermus, which thus rise to the level of real models,
even if they are never expressly declared to be such. Callimachus then
states that he is assisted and directed in these choices by Apollo and the
Muses:17 indeed, his choice of poetry is introduced as an implementation of
Apollos advice. Homers Phemius had been proud of being '',
in the sense that the god had inspired every kind of song in his heart
(Od. 22.3478); Callimachus, too, affirms that he has learnt from Apollo,
but unlike Phemius, who is instructed in every kind of song, Callimachus
receives from Apollo precepts which are very similar to the principles of
his own poetics: he is to nurture a Muse who is # #, delicate,
not overweight, and walk where no heavy carts travel, but rather along
narrow, unbeaten pathways, with the result that he will sing with the voice
of the cicada and abhor the braying of asses (fr. 1.2230). Callimachus
introduces his way of composing poetry, and offers his motivation for it, as
a parallel to the inspiration received from the Muses by his model, Hesiod,18
thus elaborating a sort of technical specialisation of the traditional idea of
inspiration by the Muses in general (frs. 3 and 4 M.). He imagines himself
transported by the Muses in a dream from Libya to Mount Helicon, where
the goddesses inform him about the origins of rituals, or uses and customs.
This is an explicit assimilation, marked as such both by the localisation
on Mount Helicon and also by allusion to Hesiod, WD 265 in line 5 of
fr. 4, of his own experience to that of the Hesiod of the Theogony, who had
previously been taught by the Muses on Helicon to sing of divine genealogy
(cf. Call. fr. 4.14 M.).
Callimachus seems, however, to have adapted Hesiods scenario to the re-
quirements of his own poetics: in particular, the setting of his meeting with
the Muses is not the foot of Mount Helicon (as in Hesiod, Theogony 23),
but close to Hippocrene, and therefore at a higher point on the mountain;19
17 Cf. fr. 1.2230 M. for the assistance of Apollo, 1.378 for the assistance of the Muses. The very
fragmentary invocation of fr. 2 M. is normally understood as addressed to the Muses, but other
divinities cannot be ruled out; the Libyan Nymphs were suggested by N. Krevans, Invocation
at the End of the Aetia Prologue ZPE 89 (1991) 1923, or perhaps the Muses are speaking of the
Charites: cf. below, pp. 524. The taste for variation between different inspiring divinities is most
familiar from Theocritus 16, cf. below, pp. 1523.
18 Cf. below, pp. 5160. Cameron (1995) 36272 rightly pours cold water on some pan-Hesiodic
readings of the Aitia prologue, but goes too far in the other direction.
19 Cf. Selden (1998) 357.
furthermore, to judge from the Latin echoes at least, it would appear
that Hesiods initiation, as presented by Callimachus, involved drinking
from Hippocrene itself, or rather from the stream Aganippe,20 and thus it
included the poetological image of the stream of pure water, familiar else-
where from Callimachus poetry.21 In this case, then, the model/guarantor
is shaped to look very like the poet who invokes him.22 At the same time
by adopting the dream form it is likely that Callimachus was implicitly
establishing a parallel also with the experience of another theogonic poet,
Epimenides (VS 3B1), who had analogously imagined receiving the contents
of his work from the gods in a didactic dream (A ''(%#) dur-
ing a sleep lasting several years.23 Finally, Callimachus returns to Hesiod,
and specifically to his inspiration from the Muses, in the epilogue to the
Aitia; verbatim repetition of the opening of the Dream (fr. 4.14 M.
fr. 112.56 Pf.) underlines the Hesiodic origin, the aition, of the poetry of
the Aitia.24 Callimachus (AP 9.507 = HE 12971300) also made Hesiod
the model from whom Aratus derived his refined style (# B4% )
in spite of the fact that the didactic-astronomical epos was, like the Aitia,
substantially a new genre (below, pp. 2247).
In an analogous but probably far more explicit manner, Timon
of Phlius presents his relationship with his main model: in his syn-
thesis of polemical derision of philosophical ideas a la Xenophanes
and the parodic-gastronomic poetry which largely developed after
Xenophanes, Timon clearly acknowledges his debt to the latter and
quotes, perhaps at the beginning of his poem (undoubtedly in the
first book), one of the leading exponents of such satire, Euboeus of
Paros (fr. 2 Di Marco = SH 776). On the other hand, however,
20 Cf. A. Kambylis, Die Dichterweihe und ihre Symbolik: Untersuchungen zu Hesiodos, Kallimachos,
Properz und Ennius (Heidelberg 1965) 69123, N. B. Crowther, Water and Wine as Symbols of
Inspiration Mnemosyne 32 (1979) 111. Cameron (1995) 12732 argues against this inference from
Latin texts.
21 Cf. HApoll. 10812 and AP 12.43.34 = HE 10434; cf. F. M. Giuliano, >' C &, 4 :
ancora poetica della brevitas? MD 38 (1997) 15373.
22 Cf. Selden (1998) 357.
23 At least until Fronto, Epist. ad M. Caes. 1.4.6, it was clear that the verb -% came towards,
used by Callimachus, fr. 2.2, to describe the Muses approaching Hesiod, implied that the latter was
awake at the time. It was only later that allegorical interpretations imagined that Hesiods meeting,
as well as Callimachus, had taken place while he was asleep, cf. Massimilla (1996) 234.
24 Cf. Selden (1998) 356. On the reasons why Callimachus chooses to set the appearance of the Muses
in a dream cf. R. Pretagostini, Lincontro con le Muse sullElicona in Esiodo e in Callimaco, Lexis
13 (1995) 1702: a poet of the third century bc like Callimachus, who makes truth one of the bases
of his poetics, [. . .] in order to make the meeting with the Muses on Mount Helicon credible, has
no other means than transferring it from the rationally incredible level of reality to the rationally
plausible level of a dream: the epiphany of the goddesses [. . .] for the learned Alexandrine poet, can
be hypothesised only in the realm of the imaginary.
he also constructs his second and third books in dialogue form,
as an exchange of question and answer between himself and Xenophanes
(cf. Diogenes Laertius 9.11112). Very likely, he placed this conversation
during a katabasis in Hades, thus allowing him contact with the philoso-
pher who had died some time before, as Callimachus sleep allowed him
contact with the Muses.25 Here, then, Xenophanes seems to have acted at
the same time as a guarantor of the truth of the contents and as a signal
identifying the literary genre: he plays substantially the same role as the
Muses for Hesiod and, in particular, for the Hesiodic Callimachus of the
first two books of the Aitia.26
In the Iambi, Callimachus both evokes the model and specialises it, i.e.
he declares (or rather, he lets the model itself declare) in what terms he
intends to adapt it. In the first Iambus, which is clearly programmatic in
character, Callimachus does not appear to have involved the Muses, but
he introduces his poems as a sort of answer to the provocation/invitation
of the iambic poet par excellence: he imagines that Hipponax comes back
from the dead to Alexandria, in order to hold lessons on good manners
for the philologists of the Museum. In this role of critic and corrector of
morals, which a powerful Hellenistic-Roman tradition actually attributed
to him,27 Callimachus Hipponax clearly maintains his customary critical
and polemical spirit; thus, in addressing the philologists of the Museum,
he uses expressions that verge on contempt for the abusive psogos of
the archaic iambic (vv. 2631),28 but at the same time he states that he is
bringing to his new place of performance, the Alexandria of the third cen-
tury, iambics which are singing not the warfare against Bupalus (vv. 34).
In other words, the new iambi are purified from the biting personal aggres-
siveness with which, according to the biographical tradition, the archaic
Hipponax drove his enemies, Bupalus and Athenis, to commit suicide (just
as the other principal archaic iambic poet, Archilochus, was believed to have
done to his beloved, Neobule, and/or her father). In so doing, Callimachus
Hipponax not only reveals, with a keen sense of history, that he knows that
invective poetry was closely linked to the specific context where it was pro-
duced (the culture of archaic Ionia), but he also reflects, within the scope
of his new poetic programme (and that of Callimachus), a sense of the pro-
gressive elimination of personal polemic, which had marked the evolution
25 The most recent editor, M. Di Marco (Timone di Fliunte. Silli (Rome 1989) 225), substantially
adopts this idea of Meineke (with some important modifications).
26 See below, pp. 446.
27 Cf. [Theocritus], AP 13.3 = HE 3430ff., Horace, Epod. 6.1114, Degani (1984) 1801.
28 Cf. D. Konstan, The Dynamics of Imitation: Callimachus First Iambic, in HarderRegtuit
Wakker (1998) 135.
of comic and satirical literature from iambic poetry to Middle and New
Comedy.29
It is not only this clear statement that demonstrates that the Iambi of
the resurrected Hipponax have been carefully adapted to the reality of
third-century Alexandria. Hipponaxs rhesis, discourse, is very similar in
its formal organisation to the typical discourse of an orator or philosopher
of third-century Alexandria.30 His words abound with images connected
with reading and writing (cf. vv. 11, 31, 88), appropriate to the everyday
life of a Museum scholar,31 but obviously not to the real Hipponax (early
sixth century).32 Even the movement of the Callimachean Hipponax from
the Underworld to the world of the living underlines the idea that he is
a model adapted to the new reality, one brought up to date; Hipponax,
moreover, agrees to be resurrected to third-century Alexandria, whereas the
judgement and/or the special knowledge of the great figures of the past had
regularly been obtained by means of katabaseis, descents to the Underworld,
in which it was the living who took the initiative and the dead whose spirits
and knowledge remained unaltered, fossilised by death (cf. Aristophanes
Frogs and Gerytades,33 and the Silloi of Timon (above p. 78)).
The archaic Hipponax, however Alexandrianised, is still clearly recog-
nisable in the first five poems, not only in the choliambic metre and the
Ionic dialect, but also in the technique of first-person speech and assumed
personality, which looks to a specific mode of archaic poetry:
As regards the presentation of moral character (, D), there are certain things
which, if said about oneself, may be the cause of envy or prolixity or contradic-
tion, or if said about another, leave us open to the charge of being abusive or
rude; it is therefore advisable to have these things said by another person (E
!8 # 5), as Isocrates does in the Philip and in the Antidosis, and as
Archilochus does when he expresses criticism (F C;!#! : ). Archilochus
makes a father speak about his daughter in the iambic poem, There is nothing
29 Cf. Hunter (1997) 501. 30 Cf. Falivene (1995) 9215. 31 Cf. Bing (1988) 1048.
32 Cf. Falivene (1995) 923 and Acosta-Hughes (2002) 245, 512. Hunter (1997) 489 offers an attractive
reading of the story of Bathycles cup. Even as he preaches peace between the learned scholars, the
Callimachean Hipponax, with the agonistic attitude of the Hellenistic philologist, may have supplied
a different version from the one given by the original Hipponax for the same episode; it cannot be
excluded that fr. 65 Degani = IEG 63 (Myson, who was declared by Apollo to be the wisest of all
men) refers to this story; cf., however, Degani (1984) 467 for a sceptical position on this kind of
interpretation of the fragment.
33 In the G The Cheirones of Cratinus (PCG 24668), however, Solon returns to earth to
advise the city, and in Eupolis The Demes (PCG 99146), the same function is performed
by a delegation of past Athenian statesmen (Solon, Aristides, Miltiades, and Pericles). In view
of the clear contextual affinities, these comedies are Callimachus most likely model. Cf. further
L. Bergson, Kallimachos, Iambos I (fr. 191 Pf.), 2628, Eranos 84 (1986) 1516, Vox (1995) 2768,
Kerkhecker (1999) 1517.
that cannot be expected or that we can swear to be impossible (IEG 122.1), and
he makes the carpenter Charon speak in the iambic poem that begins Not for
me the estate of Gyges (IEG 19.1); so too Sophocles presents Haemon speaking
about Antigone to his father, as though quoting what others have been saying (cf.
Antigone 688700). (Aristotle, Rhetoric 3.1418b2333)
In archaic iambic poetry, then, a speaking I, who was not the same as
the author, seems to have been not infrequent, and this could give rise to
misunderstandings about the identity of the persona loquens for anybody
not present at the first performance of the work.34 Aristotle, as we have
just seen, identifies certain cases where Archilochus places criticism in the
mouth of a third party,35 and Simonides too presented a cook speaking in
the first person (fr. 24) and possibly also a hetaera (fr. 16). As for Hipponax,
the use of different personae is not as easy to ascertain as it is for Archilochus
(thanks to Aristotle)36 , but it is likely that the adoption of the iambic mask
of the petulant miser was a common feature of his poetry;37 be that as it may,
Callimachus use of Hipponax as his spokesman clearly adopts a familiar
technique of archaic iambic. Moreover, Hipponax or his characters regularly
speak of Hipponax himself in the third person,38 and this too is a mode
aped by Callimachus Hipponax, who from the very beginning speaks of
himself in the third person.39
It is in Iambi 15 and 13 that the clearest elements of continuity with Hip-
ponax are seen: here is the true *9
character aggressive, bantering,
admonitory expressed in the Ionic dialect; Iambi 14 are in choliambs,
the metre expressly connected with Hipponax in Iambus 13,40 while in
34 Cf. K. J. Dover, The Poetry of Archilochos, in Archiloque (Entretiens sur lantiquite classique
10) (VandoeuvresGeneva 1963) 2068, M. G. Bonanno, Lio lirico greco e la sua identita (anche
biografica?) in I. Gallo and L. Nicastri (eds.), Biografia e autobiografia degli antichi e dei moderni
(Naples 1995) 2339.
35 The views of Charon on wealth went against contemporary conceptions, cf. e.g. Alcaeus fr. 360
Voigt, M. Noussia, Solone. I frammenti dellopera poetica (Milan 2001) 303, and this was presumably
not a unique example.
36 For other possible examples, cf. West (1974) 2933 and G. Nagy, Iambos: Typologies of Invective
and Praise, Arethusa 9 (1976) 191205.
37 Cf. West (1974) 2833, Degani (1984) chapters 2 and 3.
38 Cf. frs. 42b1.4 Degani = IEG 32.4; 44.2 Deg. = IEG 36.2; 46 Deg. = IEG 37; 79.9 Deg. =
IEG; 196.4 Deg. = IEG 117.4),
39 The first verse of Iambus 1 has sometimes been considered to be a verse of Hipponax, used as an
opening motto, cf. Degani (1984) 445, A. Cavarzere, Sul limitare: il mottoe la poesia di Orazio
(Bologna 1996) 6164, Acosta-Hughes (2002) 378.
40 On the choice of choliambs, rather than the iambic trimeters which were now indissolubly connected
with drama, cf. Kerkhecker (1999) 58. By including poems in various different metres within a
collection framed by exemplary choliambs (Iambi 14 and 13), Callimachus probably recalled the
original polymetry which characterised the Hellenistic editions of both Hipponax and Archilochus
(cf. below, pp. 1415, 256).
Iambus 5, the epodic pattern of iambic trimeter plus iambic dimeter, actu-
ally found in Hipponax (fr. 129 Deg. = IEG 118) and Archilochus, is mod-
ified to admit choliambs.41 In these poems, moreover, Callimachus plays
some very iambic variations on the game of masking the persona loquens,
thus concealing, as Aristotle thought iambic authors did, his own identity
when impersonating a series of more or less embarrassing roles.
Iambus 2 offers an explicit application of the lesson taught by Hipponax
through the story of the cup of Bathycles in Iambus 1. The application
is presented as a fable (D 5 2$
, HI #., it was the time
when . . .): the animals once spoke the same language as men, but then
Zeus, in his anger at their importunate requests and claims, gave the voices
of the animals to men, with the result that men became chatterboxes;42
in particular, the narrator adds, Eudemus inherited the voice of the dog,
Philton that of the donkey, and the tragedians those of marine animals
(vv. 1013).43 The voice in which the fable is spoken is remarkably like
that of Callimachus: the periphrastic and erudite definitions of birds as
,
, marine animals as #(%%" and man as #,
J4 mud of Prometheus are particularly noteworthy.44 Neverthe-
less, the voice now reveals itself as that of Aesop ( 'C ;K%
<', L thus spoke Aesop of Sardis), who is thus responsible not
only for the fable, but also (paradoxically) for its application to Callimachus
contemporaries (vv. 1013).45 By setting the poetic voice inside this series
of Chinese boxes, Callimachus repeats the pattern of the resurrected Hip-
ponax of Iambus 1, who tells an improving anecdote, as Archilochus too had
often done, thus freeing himself from the responsibility for the psogos by
using a fable (we do not know whether this technique had also been used by
the archaic Hipponax). This allows Callimachus to move even further away
from personal responsibility than the Hipponax of Iambus 1, because the
subject matter of his fable is, with at least some truth, explicitly attributed
to Aesop. Even if it is obvious that the individual targets of Callimachus
psogos (Eudemus, Philton etc.) were not chosen by the real Aesop, these
targets were, however, presented as simple examples of the application of
the maxim that emerges from Aesops experience Aesop came to a sticky
end for saying what he said (cf. vv. 1617 Aesop [. . .], the one whom the
Delphians did not receive well when he sang his story), but Callimachus
41 Cf. Degani (1984) 456. 42 Thus the diegesis and vv. 1315.
43 As Acosta-Hughes (2002) 184 comments, the fable remains etiological, but it is not the origin
of human language that is the poets concern, but the origin of his contemporaries babbling
noises.
44 Cf. Acosta-Hughes (2002) 1767. 45 Cf. Kerkhecker (1999) 60.
has nothing to do with this: he is only the spokesman, or at most, the
candid exegete, who has merely added some examples in order to clarify.
In Iambus 3, yet another personal attack of the iambic kind is justified
as the result of observations, which frame the poem, on the decline of
the social value of poetry and the deterioration of ethical values.46 The
opening reminds us of the beginning of Hesiods myth of the ages, which
was a paradigm protest against the greed of the present and the death of
justice: compare Callimachus, fr. 193.1 KC D) .M N##) 1C
D Ah, Apollo, if only I had lived when I did not exist, with Hesiod,
WD 1745 C C N ## O % 5 | &'(%
I should not have been a member of the men of the fifth generation. The
identity of the gods who are apostrophised (Apollo in vv. 1 and 10, and
the Muses, in all likelihood, in v. 2 and probably also in vv. 1011) leads
us to understand that Callimachus was actually expressing his regret for
the present in his capacity as a poet, perhaps with an attitude analogous
to that of Theocritus lament in Idyll 16 for the decline of the traditional
appreciation for poetry and the sad lot of the poor poet.
In the second half of the poem, however, moralising about the fortunes
of poetry develops in a completely different manner: poverty and honesty
are, in the eyes of Callimachus the poet, evils which cause his suffering
at the hands of a young boy, Euthydemus; after the boys initial promises,
supported by his mother, he had apparently passed over to a wealthier lover
(the digression on this injustice appears to run at least from v. 24 to v. 33).47
Thus we see that the high moral tone of the opening was yet another
mask, this time used to launch an attack against an unfaithful boy; regret
for the limited prestige of poetry in the present age is the result of this
disappointment in his love life, and Callimachus concludes by declaring
that rather than follow the Muses, it would have been better for him to
be a castrated Corybant, a singer of the great Mother, or to sing hymns to
Adonis. Whatever the exact meaning of this final wish may be,48 it is clear
that Callimachus concludes, somewhat paradoxically, by repudiating his
dedication to the Muses, in the light of his current erotic distress. In short,
46 The speaker introduces his own grievances as mere illustration of general moral reflections [. . .]
Iambus III starts out pretending to be a poem about & 4. It is really about an offended poet; thus
Kerkhecker (1999) 745.
47 The same eroticisation of the topos of the poor poet for which cf. e.g. G. Giangrande, in
LEpigramme grecque, 1359, G. Tarditi, Le Muse povere, in Studi in onore di A. Ardizzoni
(Rome 1978) 101321, G. Mazzoli, Sandalion 20 (1997) 1078, Acosta-Hughes (2002) 22532
is found in the Callimachean epigram AP 12.150 = HE 1047ff., for which cf. below, p. 343.
48 On its possible nuances cf. Kerkhecker (1999) 7980.
Callimachus attacks wealth simply because it has taken away his beloved,49
and the sublime moralist of the opening lines turns out at the end to be a
selfish lover. The reader both the modern reader, with his experience of
the mask of the poet-miser as one of the conventions of iambic poetry, and
the ancient reader, who will have perceived a certain degree of artificiality
in the exaggerated laments for poverty and degradation may then wonder
whether the persona loquens of the final part is also, at least partly, a mask:
the mask of the selfish and miserly iambic poet takes the place of another
character familiar from archaic iambus and elegy, the high-minded moralist.
The masking performed by means of fable is taken to an extreme in
Iambus 4, because the fable itself appears to put on a mask, assuming
functions that are different from those it had at the beginning and which
it resumes at the end. The poet, who to judge from the diegesis is in
conflict with someone, perhaps a rival poet50 or a rival in love,51 addresses
a passer-by, Simus, in a rather sharp tone, perhaps suggesting that they are
not on the same social level; he tells him a fable, which, though its moral
is that one should be conscious of ones own social status, is principally
an allegory of the superiority of Callimachus over his rival. The fable is
about a quarrel for supremacy between the laurel and the olive, and the
responsibility for it is attributed to the ancient Lydians (vv. 78); the
dispute is settled, however, not by the trees themselves, but by an exchange
of dialogue between two birds, which is reported by the olive and which
includes the confirmation of the supremacy of the olive. After the exchange
of the birds comments and the ratification of the victory of the olive, the
laurel turns violently on the bramble, which had tried to intervene in the
dispute between the two more noble plants, and silences it, because it is an
inferior plant, which should not even dream of being on the same level as
the laurel and the olive (vv. 102ff.). The abuse directed against the bramble
picks up the sharp tones in which the persona loquens had addressed Simus
in the opening lines. This ending, however, poses a further problem for
the reader: if the victorious olive tree stands for Callimachus-the-author,52
why is it the laurel that apparently pronounces the final moral?53 However
49 Cf. D. L. Clayman, Callimachus Iambi (Leiden 1980) 22.

50 So, most recently, Acosta-Hughes (2002) 1913. 51 Cf. Kerkhecker (1999) 112.
52 This is clear from the emphatic presentation of the dialogue between the chattering birds, which is
probably a self-quotation from the well-known passage of Hecale (on which cf. below, pp. 199-200
and 2524). Other likely cases of self-reference (cf. Acosta-Hughes (2002) 1912) are the reference
to Branchos (v. 28), who is a minor figure of myth, but the subject of one of Callimachus poems
(fr. 229), and the reference to daphnephoria, which is one of the opening aitia of Book 4 of the Aitia
(frs. 879).
53 Cf. Kerkhecker (1999) 11314.
the ending is understood, Callimachus forcibly reminds us that the persona
loquens of iambic poetry is not (always) to be taken as a simple mask for
the author.
Iambus 5 is another example of the psogos characteristic of archaic iambic
poetry. The subject of criticism here is impropriety in sexual conduct, which
finds a precise parallel in Hipponaxs criticism of the incestuous relationship
of Bupalus (frs. 2024 Deg. = IEG 1214 and 1617). The Callimachean
psogos is initially presented under the mask of benevolent advice, in a manner
which finds a very close analogue in the opening of Hipponaxs fragment
129 Deg. = IEG 118, which was certainly Callimachus metrical model
(iambic trimeter plus dimeter). Both poems begin with an apostrophe to
the poems addressee (named by Hipponax, but generically called friend
by Callimachus), and both claim to offer advice and therefore invite the
recipient to pay attention; in both cases, the reason for wishing to offer
advice is immediately stated.54 There are, however, also several differences,
both in the tone of the initial criticism (much sharper in Hipponax than in
Callimachus) and in the position of the Callimachean persona loquens, who
seems to pass in the last thirty (unfortunately very lacunose) verses from
accusing his friend to speaking about himself:55 perhaps he displayed his
own interest in the boys who attracted his friend, rather like the situation
described in Iambus 3?
In the other Iambi, by contrast, the poetic voice of Callimachus imposes
itself with a higher degree of autonomy than we find in the better attested
forms of archaic iambic poetry: a propemptikon to a departing friend leads
to an ekphrasis of the statue of Zeus at Olympia by Phidias; there are a
few aitia, an epinician, a poem celebrating the birth of a friends daughter,
etc. We also find, starting with Iambus 5 (cf. above), a gradual move away
from the metrical uniformity of the first four poems towards a series of
more or less marked variations on the theme of the iambic and epodic
metres developed by Hipponax and Archilochus (although in Callimachus
all epodic combinations do in fact have an iambic first line),56 together
with occasional Doric (Iambi 6, 9) or DoricAeolic dialectal colouring
54 On the relationship between the two poems cf. R. Kassel, RhM 101 (1958) 2356, Acosta-Hughes
(2002) 26063, Kerkhecker (1999) 1436. The use of the choliamb instead of the trimeter suggests
that Callimachus is even more Hipponactean than Hipponax himself, cf. Kerkhecker (1999) 123:
Callimachus is outlimping the father of the limping line. The epodic Iambus 5, which is still
recognisable as quasi-Hipponactean in its metre, acts as a bridge between Iambi 14 and the polymetry
of the following poems.
55 Cf. DAlessio (1996) ii.619 n. 102.
56 Iambi 6 and 7 are epodes composed of iambic trimeters and ithyphallics; Iambus 9 is in iambic
trimeters, and 11 is composed of iambic pentapodies.
(Iambus 7). These are both novelties in relation to the tradition of archaic
iambic; the nearly, but not quite, Hipponactean versification and the non-
Ionic dialectal colouring might be signals at the level of form which point
in the same direction as the gradual detachment from the themes and forms
of mimesis dear to the archaic poet. The great variety of subjects and metres
in Iambi 612 may, however, also reflect the form of a Hellenistic edition
of Hipponax, if, as seems certain, this was organised on the basis not of
thematic, but of metrical criteria;57 collections of poems by Hipponax,
with their varying occasional character, typical of lyric, elegiac and iambic
poetry, might well have served as a model for the variety of Callimachus
themes. In Hipponax, the variety had been the result of the close link
between a great plurality of social contexts and a way of producing poetry
that was still for the most part oral and extemporising. In Callimachus,
however, the variety is a literary imitation of the archaic form by a poetry
with a quite different social and performative context. Thus, the Iambi
were, in one sense, a faithful reinterpretation of the Hipponactean model,
even if this poetry book is very clearly a creation of the Hellenistic age in
its refined structural organisation, hardly imaginable in the oral archaic
period.
Iambus 13 is clearly complementary to Iambus 1. Callimachus is here
presented defending himself against the polemical criticism of the quarrel-
some Alexandrian scholars, to whom the censure of Hipponax in Iambus
1 had also been addressed.58 Even if this poem opens with an invocation
to the Muses and Apollo and a libation in their honour, presumably by
the poet,59 in reality it offers an image of poetic activity that is analogous
to that of Iambus 1 an image where little space is left for the traditional
inspiration of enthousiasmos, and where the idea of poetry as a techne based
upon the imitation and variation of models is dominant. At the close of the
poem, which would have formed the final sphragis to the book, if indeed
the thirteenth was the last Iambus,60 Callimachus defends his composition
of iambics in the manner of Hipponax, without mixing with the Ionians,
or going to Ephesus (even if he admits that Ephesus is the place from
which anyone who intends to produce limping verses not unwisely draws
the flame of his inspiration), and also the legitimacy of adopting a language
which is not uniform and of writing in Ionic, Doric and a mixed language
57 Cf. O. Masson, Les Fragments du poete Hipponax (Paris 1962) 17. 58 Cf. Depew (1992) 320.
59 Both Kerkhecker (1999) 2526 and Acosta-Hughes (2002) 70, 74 agree that the opening line 0%
# .##) P O %' Beautiful Muses and Apollo, to whom I make this libation
should most probably be attributed to the poet, and not to his critic.
60 Cf. below, n. 115.
(vv. 1719). The idea that one should visit the homeland of the author whose
model one intends to imitate, in order to draw the flame of inspiration
Q % suggests enthousiasmos and external possession appears to have
been common at the time of Callimachus; the idea occurs, for example,
only again to be implicitly rejected, in an (unfortunately corrupt) epigram
by Nossis:
R S M 5C) * Q # 5 ##! 0$#4
T < ! . $%
)
* 5 F 0Q%% # 4I ?
%%
U K% 'C V 3 W%%) K.
(AP 7.718 = HE 2831461 )
Stranger, if you sail to Mytilene of the lovely dances to be inspired by the flower
of Sapphos graces, say that a woman of Locris bore one dear to the Muses and to
her; you may know that my name is Nossis. Go.
Callimachus claims that anyone who wants to compose limping verses
(only), faithfully imitating the ancient model of Hipponax of Ephesus, must
immediately travel to Ephesus, for that is the wise course (cf. fr. 203.66:
8 &).62 Callimachus himself, however, does not need to do so, as
he had initially presented himself, in Iambus 1, as invested by a resur-
rected Hipponax, who no longer had any interest in the historical context
of the real Hipponax and no bellicose intentions towards his ancient rival,
Bupalus; Callimachus Hipponax himself was interested only in the histor-
ical and geographical horizon of Callimachus (the scholars of the Museum
at Alexandria and their squabbles). Furthermore, with the metrically and
linguistically varied book of Iambi behind him, Callimachus has clearly
demonstrated that it was not his intention to produce only limping verses
or to recreate faithfully the social and linguistic environment of Hipponax
by means of pure Ionic.
Thus, after making clear through his updated Hipponax that his inspi-
ration is not limited to the contexts of the original Hipponax, Callimachus
advances yet another model in the thirteenth Iambus. In answer to the
critics, who, according to the summary (diegesis), had charged him with
61 The text is that proposed by Gutzwiller (1998) 85. Reitzenstein (1893) 139 suggested that the epigram
was a closing sphragis to the collection of poems by Nossis; for its interpretation see esp. Gutzwiller
(1998) 86. Note that Nossis describes the habit of going to seek inspiration from the great poets of
the past in the centres where these great writers lived, but she presents this as something practised
by others for her own part, she stays proudly in her Locrian homeland.
62 & will, of course, carry a different nuance if it is the view of the critics (cf. e.g.
R. Scodel, HSCPh 91 (1987) 210), than if it is said from the perspective of the ironic Callimachus
(cf. Acosta-Hughes (2002) 789).
practising #$ ' , writing in many different genres,63 Callimachus
seems to echo the attitude of Socrates in Platos Ion64 who ever said . . .
you must compose pentameters, you heroic verses, you have received from
the gods the task of composing tragedies? Nobody, I believe (vv. 3033)
and thus to confute, at the same time, both his critics and the school of
thought that Socrates had represented. The Platonic Socrates had argued
that as a poet was inspired once and only once by a god, he could write
in only one genre of literature; Callimachus denies that this is true and,
as proof, cites Ion of Chios, the fifth-century poet of many genres par
excellence. Ion was most famous as a tragedian (he was known as Ion the
Tragedian), but he also wrote satyr dramas, dithyrambs, elegies, lyric poems
(paeans, encomia, hymns) and works in prose, and perhaps a comedy;
besides this specific model, Callimachus also presents, as we know
unfortunately only from the surviving summary (diegesis), the more
generic paradigm of the artisan, who is not criticised by anybody if he
makes tools of different shapes. Here the idea of poetic activity as techne is
laid bare; after poetry as the imitation of or inspiration from the updated
model of Hipponax, an idea which had been sufficient to introduce the first
few Hipponactean Iambi, Callimachus now comes out into the open and
admits his professionalism in order to justify the plurality of genres, metres
and dialects found in the other Iambi, or perhaps in the whole series of his
works. And yet here too, Callimachus avoids doing this by affirming, for
example, the rights of free speech and imagination, or even the right to play
with the forms, but rather he takes pains to find a historical guarantor for
his practice in the poetry of the past.
2 im possible mod els and lost per formance contexts

The concept of the contamination of literary genres has often, and rightly,
been identified as one of the distinctive characteristics of the refined poetry
which flourished in the Alexandria of Callimachus in the first half of the
third century bc.65 Much less correctly, however, such contamination has
at times been associated with an intellectualising pursuit of novelty at all
costs, with a ludic and subversive sophistication which was wholly preoc-
cupied with books and only too ready to sacrifice the traditional literary
63 It is impossible to establish whether the accusation regarded the Iambi or the whole series of Calli-
machus works (including the Iambi), cf. Kerkhecker (1999) 26870. In any case, there is no reason
to believe, despite repeated modern affirmations to the contrary, that Callimachus is defending
contamination of literary genres, or that he had been accused of such a practice, cf. Treu (1963) 277.
64 Cf. Depew (1992) 3257. 65 The following pages re-use material from Fantuzzi (1993a).
system. Arid intellectualism, experimentalism and arbitrariness are indeed
the qualities most often thought to characterise Alexandrian contamina-
tion, though the modern scholarly sense of the deliberate generic arbitrari-
ness of Hellenistic poetry in fact rather hardened over time. A. Couat in
1882,66 Ph. E. Legrand in 1898,67 R. Heinze in 1919,68 and L. Deubner in
192169 still spoke, respectively, of melange, of confusion des genres, of
Gemisch and of Mischung of genres, without pointing to a deliberate
authorial policy. In 1924, however, Wilhelm Kroll saw a more clearly defined
authorial strategy; for him contamination was Kreuzung der Gattungen,
and the reason for it was a taste for being modern at all costs and obtain-
ing surprising effects or for # variation;70 where Kroll led, very
many critics of Greek literature have followed.71 Intellectualism was indeed
an extremely important element in the radical reform of the literary sys-
tem carried out by Hellenistic poets, but it was not the only one, as we
shall see.
Moreover, generic contamination was not the exclusive prerogative of
the learned poetry of third-century Alexandria. Already in the Laws Plato
had complained that the common people now controlled the laws (
)
regulating poetry accompanied by music:
Once upon a time, Athenian music ($%4)72 comprised various categories and
forms. One type of song consisted of prayers to the gods, which were termed
hymns; and there was another quite different type, which you might well have
called laments. Paeans made up a third category, and there was also a fourth,
called a dithyramb . . . there existed another kind of song too . . . nomes (
)
for the lyre . . . Once these categories and a number of others had been fixed, no
one was allowed to pervert them by using one sort of tune in a composition belong-
ing to another category (Q '8 ' .## ) M
.## * .## !% #$ L') . . . Later, as time went on, composers
arose who started to set a fashion of breaking the rules and offending good taste.
They did have a natural artistic talent, but they were ignorant of the correct and
legitimate standards laid down by the Muse. (.! X &Q%$ Y
Q% X ) & Z 'X , '
0Q% ,
). Gripped by a frenzied and excessive lust for plea-
sure, they jumbled together laments and hymns, mixed paeans and dithyrambs,
and even imitated aulos-tunes on the lyre. The result was a total confusion of styles
66 La Poesie alexandrine sous les trois premiers Ptolemees (324222 av. J. C.) (Paris 1882) 258.
67 Legrand (1898) 41329.
68 Ovids elegische Erzahlung (1919), now in id., Vom Geist des Romertums 3rd ed. (Stuttgart 1960) 401.
69 Ein Stilprinzip hellenisticher Dichtkunst (1921), now in id., Kleine Schriften zur klassischen Alter-
tumskunde (Konigstein/Ts. 1982) e.g. p. 250.
70 Cf. Kroll (1924) 2023. 71 Cf. esp. Schwinge (1986) 447.
72 On the complex meaning of $%4 in Plato cf. e.g. Harvey (1955) 165 and Else (1967) 37.
( Q 'X 4$ [ '$(9) #"' '8
5 "' Q ) ( * ( %$( ). Unintention-
ally, in their idiotic way, they misrepresented their art, claiming that in music there
are no standards of right and wrong at all, but that the most correct criterion is
the pleasure of a man who enjoyed the performance, whether he is a good man or
not. (Plato, Laws 3.700ae, trans. Saunders (adapted))
Platos nostalgic reflections represent a revolution in the traditional rela-
tionship in melic poetry between the forms of musical accompaniment
and the themes of the poems; this revolution was probably that of the new
dithyramb, which reached its peak at the end of the fifth century and at
the beginning of the fourth with Timotheus of Miletus. At the heart of this
new music was a very radical search for mimesis of action in music, and
this was itself a good reason for Plato to hate it, hostile as he was to the idea
of mimesis as a techne of poetry and of art in general; the new music made
free use of the three different kinds of harmony (enharmonic, diatonic and
chromatic), and thus contaminated, on the one hand, nomes (
) and
dithyrambs and, on the other, citharodic and aulodic melodies.73 Platos
enthusiasm for the melic genres of the past was, in fact, an enthusiasm
for the well and truly departed: Plato did not have the chance to listen,
say, to many paeans or hymns of a Pindaric kind, for almost alone among
the lyric genres only the dithyramb flourished in his day, as a result of its
metamorphic capacity for adaption and variety.
While, as we have seen, Plato did not hesitate to express sharp criti-
cism of what he saw as the musical anarchy of contemporary dithyramb,
elsewhere he avoided passing judgement and, with a precise eye for con-
temporary reality, passed over all other melic forms in silence, giving space
only to the dithyramb. Thus, when in the Republic he divided the literary
genres on the basis of the three types of presentation, he reserved the third
category simple narrative presentation for the dithyramb (3.394bc).74
Likewise, Xenophon, who never speaks of melic poetry in general, classes
the dithyramb as, like tragedy or epic, a distinct genre of poetry (Memo-
rabilia 1.4.3).75 With the disappearance by the mid-fifth century of many
of the social or ritual contexts for other genres of melic poetry, which
had also caused them to be distinguished from each other in rhythmic
73 Cf. Privitera (1979) 31718 and West (1992) 3614; see Dionysius Hal., comp. verb. 19.8.
74 For Plato, the dithyramb is a melic genre; he thus ignores the mimetic-dialogic evolution
that the dithyramb had undergone during the fifth century, cf. P. Vicaire, Platon critique
litteraire (Paris 1960) 241, H. Farber, Die Lyrik in der Kunsttheorie der Antike (Munich 1936)
235.
75 In epic poetry, I have developed a special admiration for Homer, in dithyrambs for Melanippides,
in tragedy for Sophocles, etc.
intonation and thus in metre,76 these melic genres had practically died out
in the Athens of the late fifth and fourth centuries. It is in keeping with
these developments that the most prominent lyrical sections of tragedy and
comedy, the choruses, also suffered a radical limitation of their function
during the fourth century: they became intermezzos for entertainment
Aristotle defines such songs in tragedy as 9
#, Poetics 1456a29
often totally remote from the play being performed and/or repertory pieces
which were only occasionally composed by the dramatists themselves. It
is perhaps for this reason that they were eliminated from the texts in the
course of tradition (as in the last two extant plays of Aristophanes and in
Menander).
The history of the dithyramb has a particular interest for future develop-
ments in Hellenistic poetry. Since the time of Melanippides (second half of
the fifth century bc), the dithyramb had adopted new structures and new
forms of music,77 much more complex than those that had characterised
archaic melic poetry. In all probability, these were largely due to the search
for a greater mimetic expressiveness,78 and were allowed by the freedom
with which the dithyrambic poet-musicians almost all of them foreigners
(except Kinesias)79 could operate at Athens. Evidently, to Platos dis-
pleasure, the poets from outside Athens did not feel excessively bound to
respect the local norms of Athenian music, and Timotheus did not receive
the same treatment at Athens as he says he had received at Sparta, where
the people criticised him K Z") V # [
% & with blazing reproach, because I do not render homage
to the ancient Muse with my new hymns (PMG 791.21012). When these
complex musical novelties, mainly of foreign origin, became popular, they
probably helped to hasten the demise of melic poetry, since they were dif-
ficult to execute for anybody who was not a professional musician, and
they sharpened the separation between, on the one hand, the verbal ele-
ment and the metre and, on the other, the vocal element and the music;
76 The melic genres were differentiated both by style and content; of primary importance were the
performative context of each genre and the kind of vocal and instrumental performance required
for each occasion, cf. Gentili (1988) 36.
77 For the musical innovations of the new dithyramb, the fundamental text is the long fragment of
Pherecrates Chiron (PCG 155), which refers to the innovations of Melanippides, Kinesias, Phrynis,
Timotheus, and Philoxenus. Cf., most recently, G. Dobrov, From Criticism to Mimesis: Comedy and
the New Music, in B. Zimmermann (ed.), Griechisch-romische Komodie und Tragodie, II (Stuttgart
1997) 4974.
78 Cf. P. Mureddu, Il poeta drammatico da didaskalos a mimetes AION (filol.-lett.) 45 (198283)
7598 and B. Zimmermann, Critica e imitazione: la nuova musica nelle commedie di Aristofane
in GentiliPretagostini (1988) 199204.
79 As noted by West (1992) 359.
at the end of the fourth century, the separation became so sharp that Aris-
toxenus no longer used the syllable or the metron as the basis of musical
rhythm for his musical theories, unlike all his predecessors from Damon
to Aristotle.80 Moreover, at some (uncertain) period, the dithyramb, orig-
inally a religious and ritual song for and about Dionysus, was adopted
into theatrical contests, extended its scope to include myths of a non-
Dionysiac character, and assumed modes of presentation other than the
third-person lyrical-expository form, including even mimetic dialogue.81 If
we can believe Plato, the dithyramb of the end of the fifth and of the fourth
centuries retained an extraordinary popularity, thanks in part to its reuse
and combination of structural elements taken from dying melic genres,
including, it would appear, the nome (
), which still flourished in the
late fifth century and with which the dithyramb had shared musical exper-
imentations.82 The reconfiguration of the generic system was, therefore,
not only a poetic choice for the Alexandrians, but also a historical necessity
rooted in the experience of the fifth and fourth centuries, and one which
finds a partial analogue in the situation of the dithyramb-writers, the last
lyric poets of the classical age.83
Generic change was, of course, less where the contexts of performance
remained similar, as for epic. But epic poetry, too, was affected by the change
in the cultural climate: on the one hand, at both the high and the pop-
ular level, relatively new forms, such as historical, historical-encomiastic
and historical-geographical epic, gained ground in the changed political
80 The choice of intricate melodies, embellished with grace-notes (suggesting to comic poets path-
ways or ant-runs) brought with it less subjection to the metrical and rhythmic structures of the
verbal text, and in particular to the triadic structure typical of earlier melic poetry; Melanippides
introduced the so-called &9# preludes, i.e. astrophic solos, cf. Gentili (1988) 27. On the
&9#, cf. also D. Restani, Il Chirone di Ferecrate e la nuova musica greca Rivista italiana
di musicologia 18 (1983) 13992; G. Comotti, Lanabole e il ditirambo, QUCC 60 (1989) 10717.
For the influence of the relationship between music and metre in theoretical reflections on music,
see R. Pretagostini, Le teorie metrico-ritmiche degli antichi in CambianoCanforaLanza (1993)
3867.
81 Cf. Privitera (1979) 31116; D. F. Sutton, Dithyramb as \T: Philoxenus of Cytheras Cyclops
or Galatea QUCC 42 (1983) 3743; B. Gentili, Il coro tragico nella teoria degli antichi Dioniso 55
(198485) 1737, pp. 246, for whom the evolution of the dithyramb in a dialogic-mimetic direction
is already visible in Bacchylides Theseus (see, however, G. A. Privitera, Origini della tragedia e ruolo
del ditirambo SIFC 84 (1991) 18793). The presence of a strong Dionysiac component also in the
new dithyramb is underlined by Zimmermann (1992) 12932.
82 Cf. Pherecrates, PCG 155.268; for the contamination of nomos and dithyramb in Timotheus,
see [Plutarch], On Music 4, C. J. Ellingham Timotheus Persae, in PowellBarber (1921) 63, and,
more generally, B. Zimmermann, Gattungsmischung, Manierismus, Archaismus: Tendenzen des
griechischen Dramas und Dithyrambos am Ende des 5. Jahrhunderts v. Chr., Lexis 3 (1989) 2536;
see also id. (1992) 1336.
83 Rossi (2000) 150 draws an analogy with chess: the literary system (the chess-game) gradually pro-
ceeded towards new combinations, and the genres (the pieces) gradually assumed new values.
circumstances;84 on the other, the age witnessed the birth of a new short
form of erudite epos, the epyllion (Philetas, Callimachus, Theocritus, cf.
below, Chapter 5). So too, increasing emphasis was placed on aetiology
(Callimachus, Apollonius of Rhodes85 ), while the didactic epos of Hes-
iodic origin was revived (Aratus, Nicander, cf. below, Section 5.6); at the
same time, many of the leading writers of the third century were actively
engaged in the search for a new poetic language for both hexameter and
elegiac poetry, in an attempt to avoid the formulaic repetition which had
continued to characterise the epic up to Antimachus.86
The archaic and classical system of lyric genres, in particular, was based
on the close linkage between particular performance contexts and particu-
lar forms of poem. This linkage offered familiar conventions within which
poets traditionally worked and by which their poems were interpreted and
understood. Such cohesive conventions, which are basically the construc-
tive principles of genres, had a tendency, however, to become rigid, due to
a sort of inertia effect (which we might also call tradition), and thus to lose
their expressive force and become less capable of responding to the expec-
tations of the public; this trend was associated with the gradual change or
disappearance of the performance occasions with which the conventions
were functionally associated. At the close of the classical age, the perfor-
mance occasions for literature no longer seemed to be so widely differenti-
ated as they had been in the age of lyric poetry and the classical polis: the
great variety of such occasions and forms of expression no longer possessed
any real functionality in the cultural situation of the third century. The
proliferating literary forms of the archaic and classical ages had gradually
became more and more specialised and more numerous, compared with the
uniqueness of the sociological place reserved for epic. Different forms of
poetry were demanded by many different contexts: the traditional contexts
of the courts of kings and tyrants and citharodic contests, which had been
the privileged settings of poetry up to the sixth century, were joined by
the symposium, the public assembly, the many pan-Hellenic festivals, the
various forms of prayers to the divinities, religious ceremonies and social
rituals of many types (cf. the epithalamium, the encomium, the funeral
lament, etc.); in the fifth and fourth centuries, various types of theatrical
representation were added to the mix.
84 Cameron (1995) has prompted renewed interest in the survival of traditional forms of epic. That such
epic poetry did survive, at least among the authors, known to us almost exclusively from inscriptions,
who composed for public celebrations and contests is hard to doubt, cf. L. Lehnus, In margine a
un recente libro su Callimaco in Ricordando R. Cantarella: Miscellanea di studi (Milan 1999) 21625,
Fantuzzi (1988b) xxxivxli.
85 Cf. esp. Fusillo (1985) 1369. 86 See below Chapter 6.
The Hellenistic world which Alexander had created offered a very
changed picture. In the Alexandria of the third century, for example, there
seems to have been a return to public performance conditions analogous
to those that had characterised the age of Homeric kitharoidia: apart from
the spread of books, which became the main form of private enjoyment of
poetry, the sociological settings for the performance of poetry were largely
limited to recitals held at court, for a restricted public attracted by the
more refined forms of poetry,87 and more public performances, usually for
a wider public, who continued to appreciate the monumental epic and the
traditional forms of theatre. In any case, besides being much more limited
in number, the places and modes of public performance no longer had the
same institutional significance as they had had in the archaic and classical
periods; in the Hellenistic age, for the first time, literary communication was
first and foremost through reading, and authors displayed a clear awareness
of the importance of this medium. This macroscopic change in the mode
of literary communication is largely responsible for the sophistication of
Hellenistic poetry and its self-reflexive character. While the comprehension
of an oral text is achieved by means of empatheia between the reciter and
the listeners, in reception through reading, in which there is both spatial
and (usually) temporal separation between author and recipient, the con-
textual situation has little influence on comprehension. A reader uses both
his own general cultural knowledge and his specific knowledge about the
author and the authors context to understand the text; because a writer
knows how readers operate, the writer can organise more sophisticated
textual strategies, capable of guiding his reader. Texts thus become more
fixed, even closed, though of course they are always open to adventurous
deconstruction by single readers, or even by whole periods of taste; what is
lost, however, is the possibility of radical reorientation and that openness,
which, in the case of archaic and classical texts, was always available through
subsequent re-performance.88
The intensive philological scholarship of the third century bc, which
sought to describe and classify literary forms of the past, may have facili-
tated the contamination of traditional genres. It is tempting to hypothesise
that this work of cataloguing and establishing conventional norms in fact
fostered a reverse normativity, or, in other words, that the Alexandrians
ended up by composing the laws of the genres in order to violate them
better.89 This hypothesis, which reduces contradiction to explanation (the
87 Cf. most recently Weber (1993) and Barbantani (2001) 3249.
88 See below, pp. 356 on the structure of the hexameter.
89 Cf. already Kroll (1924) 20210 (and above, pp. 1718), and the more cautious formulations of Rossi
(1971a) 83.
poet-philologists establish rules and structures qua philologists, which they
then set about violating qua poets), is particularly useful as it reveals the
strangeness of the phenomenon with which we are dealing. For some schol-
ars, the chronological coincidence between the fixing of genre norms and
poetic deviations from them merely confirms that Hellenistic poetry was
a purely intellectual and formalistic exercise. It is, however, a fact that
throughout the archaic and classical ages the rules of the various gen-
res remained unwritten: poetry was composed according to performance
context, with the modifications made necessary by specific historical or
geographical circumstances and specific groups of listeners. Previous texts,
as models, acted in practice as codifiers of genres,90 and previous authors
offered their successors a selection of practical applications, an empirical
poetics, so to speak. This was quite different from what was subsequently
to happen, when the observation of common, constant characteristics led
to critical reflection and normative theory: systematic analyses of genres
and explicit codifications took their place beside traditional texts, and the
result was a literary system based on generic awareness and reflection, and
no longer just on empirical experience.
During the classical age, the normative system for models to be imi-
tated was approximately the same for both poetry and rhetoric. In the field
of rhetoric, manuals were most probably an invention of the fourth cen-
tury, whereas the !, arts, attributed by tradition to the orators of the
earlier fifth century (Corax, Tisias, Theodorus, Thrasymachus, etc.) were,
in reality, nothing more than collections of examples, that is more or less
fictitious models to be imitated and adapted; we may compare the fictitious
speeches which the Sophists later offered to their students as paradigms to
be imitated (e.g. the tetralogies of Antiphon, the Encomium of Helen and
the Defence of Palamedes by Gorgias).91 In the later period, however, rhetoric
continued to enjoy a certain number of differentiated settings and insti-
tutional occasions of performance, which persisted, practically unchanged
and uninterrupted, until the end of antiquity. Thus, collections of examples
and manuals could continue to play a prescriptive role centuries after they
had been composed, and rhetorical regulations could still offer a program-
matic guide, because they were helpful in situations which were still real.
90 Even once codified, however, generic rules never substitute completely for the exemplary force of the
great models. The contrast between traditional literary practice and that informed by critical theory
was never absolute; the great models of the past always stood before writers and their audiences,
and from the earliest days both composition and reception presupposed a familiarity with written
language and with a multiplicity of texts and patterns of allusion.
91 Cf. Th. Cole, The Origins of Rhetoric in Ancient Greece (Baltimore 1991).
In the field of poetry, however, this did not happen. When the domi-
nance of written reception and the requirements of the Library92 led poets
and critics such as Philetas, Zenodotus and Callimachus to reflect on the lit-
erary system inherited from the past, there is no doubt that the occasional
context-bound character of much of the generic system and many of the
canonical authors was very clearly felt. Thus, one of the most conspicuous
imitations of an archaic model, Callimachus imitation of Hipponax in the
Iambi, was only achieved at the expense of a large-scale modernisation,
which severed the link between the poetry and some of its most important
contexts (e.g. the war against Bupalus). A further witness here is the organ-
isation of the Alexandrian editions of lyric poets. In most cases, and perhaps
whenever possible (we are certain in the cases of Simonides, Pindar and
Bacchylides93 ), the classification was by K', forms, defined on the basis
of contents and consequently of the performance context: hymns, paeans,
dithyrambs, love poems, epinicia etc. Within the last category, Callimachus
appears to have made further differentiations, for Pindar on the basis of the
various local festivities (Pythian Odes, Nemean Odes etc.), and for Simonides
on the basis of the athletic event being celebrated. Sapphos poems, on the
other hand, were organised by metre or alphabetically by their opening,94
with the exception of the epithalamia which were gathered in her ninth
book. The poetry of Anacreon and Hipponax was also classified by metre,
because of the lack of any clearly distinctive functional markers of different
content.95
In short, an increased understanding of the nature and contexts of archaic
and classical poetry led also to the realisation that such contexts were things
of the past; the classification of the genre norms of archaic and classical
poetry led almost automatically to an awareness of the impossibility of
writing anything else in those genres, at least if the same norms, which
included metrical and melodic norms, were to be followed.96 Moreover, the
new Gedichtbucher of the iambic and monodic poets, who had undoubtedly
92 Cf. Krevans (1984) 1834.

93 The case of Alcaeus is uncertain: some scholars have argued for a distinction between the political
poems (%%(), further organised on a chronological basis, and the non-political poems
(hymns, love poems etc.), cf. A. Pardini, La ripartizione in libri dellopera di Alceo RFIC 119
(1991) 25784, A. Porro, Vetera Alcaica (Milan 1994) 56 and 23941, and (contra) G. Liberman,
Alcee. Fragments (Paris 1999) xlviiilx. On Hellenistic editions of lyric writers cf. Pfeiffer (1968)
1819.
94 Cf. Harvey (1955) 159 (by metre), Pfeiffer (1968) 12930 (alphabetically).
95 Cf. e.g. C. Calame, QUCC 17 (1974) 121.
96 It is noteworthy that the earliest codification of Greek poetry which we possess, Aristotles Poetics, is
already poised between the cultural life and values of the polis and those of the library, cf. D. Lanza,
Aristotele. Poetica (Milan 1987) 83.
never themselves thought of a Gedichtbuch of their own works, increased
the impression of a poetry which was various, occasional, and impossible
to fit into a codified description, since many of the performance occasions
had disappeared, together with archaic culture itself. What remained was
a heritage of linguistic and metrical conventions, which had often lost
their functional contact with particular subjects and occasions: thus did
the possibility of new combinations appear.
3 d isassembling and reassembling

Many of the generic contaminations of Theocritus and Callimachus are
of a common kind, and produce similar results. In both poets, the two
recitative metres par excellence, the hexameter and the elegiac couplet,
dominate, even in the case of forms and subjects which were formerly
peculiar to the melic or mimetic genres.97 As for lyric metres themselves,
the increasing separation between music and metre, which we have already
noted in connection with the dithyramb, appears to have led poets to use
them in a recitative manner for which they were never designed. Plato had
already recorded this as a general trend, with wider relevance than just the
dithyramb:
In the midst of all this confusion . . . the poets also divorce rhythm and movement
from the tune by putting unaccompanied words into metre, and rob tune and
rhythm of words by using stringed instruments and auloi on their own without
singers. When this is done, it is extraordinarily difficult to know what the rhythm
and harmony without speech are supposed to signify and what worthwhile object
they imitate and represent. (Plato, Laws 2.669de, trans. Saunders)
So, too, in answer to his fathers exhortation to follow the custom of sym-
posia and to sing some lyric poetry of Simonides, Aristophanes Pheidippi-
des protests that playing the lyre and singing at a symposium is old stuff
and that he would rather perform a rhesis by Euripides than chant songs
(mele) of Simonides (Clouds 135371). This attitude finds a precise parallel
in the behaviour of the late learner described by Theophrastus (Characters
27): the ]:4 tries, albeit late in life, to learn recitative rheseis from the
tragedians by heart, to use them at symposia (only to forget them at the
crucial moment).98
97 For the melic genres cf. West (1982) 138, 1523, Hutchinson (1988) 16; for the theatrical genres cf.
Schwinge (1986) 3036.
98 On the decline of musical competence as a goal of education, cf. Reitzenstein (1893) 345, Pasquali
(1964) 34451, G. Nagy, Pindars Homer: the Lyric Possession of an Epic Past (Baltimore 1990) 10611
and 40710.
Competitions in accompanied singing were a rarity in the Egypt of
the Ptolemies; they are indeed recorded in continental Greece and Asia
Minor, but even outside Egypt it was the recital of epic which was the
dominant form.99 Very few lyric texts of the third or second centuries have
the strophic structure, which may be regarded as a clear sign that they were
to be sung; such strophic songs as do survive are all either anonymous or by
authors who are otherwise unknown, and almost all of them belong to the
epigraphic tradition and were never, as far as we know, recorded in books.
The context of such songs is not Ptolemaic, but they are rather for the most
part linked to the conservative tradition of religious singing, which was still
practised in the sanctuaries of the Greek homeland; there is, curiously, no
evidence from Egypt for the performance of paeans in honour of kings or
military leaders (with one exception, a paean in ithyphallics by a certain
Theokles for Ptolemy Philadelphus or Philopator).100 Learned poets did
sporadically make use of the lyric metres, which the archaic lyric poets
had employed in strophic or epodic structures, but they mainly used them
%!, i.e. by repeating the same metrical pattern verse after verse
(as in hexameter epic). These stichic reuses of lyric verses were sometimes
explicitly considered to be true inventions by their authors (cf. pp. 378 on
Philicus), who sometimes subsequently gave their names to them.101 This
revolution in the nature of how lyric metres were used hardly ever produced
99 In a ratio of about 3:1, judging by the list in A. Hardie, Statius and the Silvae: Poets, Patrons and
Epideixis in the Graeco-Roman World (Liverpool 1983) 206; in general, see J. Frei, De certaminibus
thymelicis (Diss. Basel 1900); M. Guarducci, Poeti vaganti e conferenzieri delleta ellenistica,
Memorie dellAccademia dei Lincei (Classe di scienze morali) 2 (192729) 62965; J. U. Powell,
Later Epic Poetry in the Greek World in J. U. P. and E. A. Barber (eds.), New Chapters in the
History of Greek Literature, ii Ser. (Oxford 1929) 3546; M. R. Pallone, Lepica agonale in eta
ellenistica Orpheus 5 (1984) 15666; Gentili (1988) 1746; Barbantani (2001) 332.
100 The epigraphic texts of a religious nature are all collected in CA; cf. J. U. Powell and G. Murray,
Lyric Poetry. 1. Hieratic, in PowellBarber (1921) 4254, L. Kappel, Paian: Studien zur Geschichte
einer Gattung (BerlinNew York 1992) 189290, Parker (2001) 315, Cameron (1995) 2924. Other
important texts include the Fragmentum Grenfellianum (cf. Hunter (1996b) 810) and the short
mimetic dialogue between a hetaera and her lover on the portal of a temple at Marissa (second
century bc). For the lyric mime in the late Hellenistic and imperial age cf. Athenaeus 14. 620d
621d, even if we cannot determine their specialities with any degree of precision. According to a
famous hypothesis advanced by Wilamowitz, Crusius and Leo, the polymetry of Plautus cantica
drew on this musical mime, but cf. E. Fraenkel, Elementi plautini in Plauto (1960) 31223. In the
classical period, Sophrons mimes were composed in prose, albeit a prose which included numerous
rhythmic sequences, cf. Sophron, PCG test. 19; mimes from the Roman empire in both prose and
a mixture of prose and verse are familiar. There are, however, at least three mimes of the imperial
age which recall the polymetry of the Grenfell fragment: POxy. 219 (=4 Cunningham), PRyl. 15
(=9 C), PLit. Lond. 52 (=13 C). Rossi (2000) 156 points out that the Roman pantomime may be
far more deeply rooted in the Greek tradition than is commonly thought.
101 Cf. F. Leo, Die plautinischen Cantica und die hellenistische Lyrik, Abh. Gottingen 1.7 (1897)
6170. The scholarly editions of lyric writers, from Aristophanes of Byzantium onwards, reveal a
new attention to colometry and stanzaic division, whereas the pre-Aristophanic papyri present the
serious and/or long poems, but led rather to archaeological revivals of long-
dead forms and to virtuoso experimentation (such as the Aeolian poems
by Theocritus,102 or the technopaegnia103 ). Here, if anywhere, it may be
legitimate to speak of play with the forms.
Other works introduced themes and forms of presentation, which had
been typical of melic poetry, into the now dominant form of the hexameter.
The most famous example is the Distaff of the poetess Erinna,104 a lament for
the death of her friend Baucis, which recalls happy moments passed together
in their childhood. This was a hexameter poem of some length (about
three hundred verses, of which a papyrus preserves some fifty very lacunose
lines105 ), but the tone, from every point of view, is threnodic. In the archaic
age, lamentation had been the prerogative mainly of lyric-choral poetry, and
only partly, and only later, of elegy.106 Even if we do not believe the tradition
that Erinna died at the age of nineteen,107 and even if the sentimental naivety
of this work has been greatly exaggerated by certain critics,108 it is extremely
difficult to see experimental intellectualism, playing with the forms, in a
poem which makes the intense presentation of feelings its principal literary
strategy. What are the apparently heterogeneous elements which have gone
into the mix of Erinnas poem?109 If the dominant Doric dialect of the poem
lyric texts as if they were prose; exceptions such as that of the Lille papyrus of Stesichorus (PMGF
222b), which dates to the second half of the third century, however, suggest caution in judging
the competence in lyric metre and music on the part of the philologists of the third century: cf.
Hunter (1983a) 191; T. Fleming and E. C. Kopff, The Survival of Greek Dramatic Music from the
Fifth Cent. to the Roman Period in B. Gentili and F. Perusino (eds.) La colometria antica dei testi
poetici greci (PisaRome 1999) 1629. For a radical scepticism as regards Hellenistic colometric and
musical competence, cf. Parker (2001).
102 Cf. Hunter (1996b) 16786; M. Fassino and L. Prauscello, Memoria ritmica e memoria poetica:
Saffo e Alceo in Teocrito Idilli 2830 tra &!# metrica e innovazione alessandrina MD 46
(2001) 937.
103 Cf. below, pp. 401.
104 Erinna has been variously dated to the first or second half of the fourth century, or to the early
decades of the third. She is praised by Asclepiades (AP 7.11 = HE 942ff.), and there are no serious
reasons for not accepting the chronology of Eusebius, who places her floruit in the middle of the
fourth century. For discussion cf. Levin (1962) 1934, Scholz (1973) and Neri (1996) 12938.
105 SH 401. For the identity of this poem with the C 7#(, the poem of 300 hexameters which
the Suda ( 521 Adler) attributes to Erinna, cf. Averil and Alan Cameron, Erinnas Distaff CQ 19
(1969) 2858.
106 Cf. H. W. Smyth, Greek Melic Poets (London 1900) cxxivcxxviii, Harvey (1955) 168172.
C. M. Bowra, Problems in Greek Poetry (Oxford 1953) 163 notes that Erinnas Lament for Bau-
cis is remarkable in that it is written in hexameters. As such it differs from earlier , which
were choral poems written in choral metres, and resembles Hellenistic poems, like the Lament for
Daphnis in Theocritus Idyll 1 or the anonymous Lament for Bion.
107 Cf. Levin (1962) 1978 and Neri (1996) 1404.
108 Cf. Scholz (1973) 39 and West (1977) 11619 (West suggests that the author was in fact a refined
male poet).
109 Neri (1996) 18694 speaks of a Kreuzung without Spiel .
was not a result of her homeland,110 it might have been the expression
of a link with the tradition of the lyric threnos (particularly Pindar and
Simonides), whereas the further Aeolian colouring may have pointed to
the themes and tones of Sapphos poetry (the distress of separation and the
memory of a happy past are typically Sapphic themes). As regards the form
of the hexameter, a stichic dactylic hexapody (generally with initial and final
spondees) had been used by Sappho in at least three poems111 which, in view
of their epithalamic content, might well have expressed Sapphos distress
at separation (cf. frs. 105a, 105b and 106 Voigt) and in another poem which
alluded to friendship between young girls or between them and Sappho
(fr. 142).112 This metre was expressly called the Aeolian epos by the ancient
metricians, who also included the Sapphic among the varieties of heroic
verse.113
Under the name of Theocritus, we have a corpus of some thirty-one
poems of very varying length; apart from four short poems in Aeolian
metre and language, all others are in hexameters, but for a brief section in
elegiac couplets in the almost certainly spurious Idyll 8. For Callimachus,
there are only four certainly lyric fragments out of a total of more than
four hundred; two of these four, frs. 226 and 227 Pfeiffer, are composed
in metres, the Phalaecian hendecasyllable and the Euripidean respectively,
which Callimachus may well have considered iambic-recitative in tone,114
and these poems might therefore have been included in the Iambi.115 Apart
from these four lyric poems and the recitative Iambi, all other Callimachean
110 So West (1977) 117.
111 Cf. M. B. Arthur. The Tortoise and the Mirror: Erinna PSI 1090 CW 74 (1980) 65.
112 In yet another poem, fr. 104a, a hexameter is followed by a lyric verse, which can be interpreted,
e.g., as an iambus plus Pherecratean with two dactyls.
113 Cf. Hephaest., p. 23.34 Consbruch and schol. ad Hephaest., p. 293.156 C. On this subject, see
G. Liberman, Les pseudo-hexametres homeriques de Sappho Revue de Philogie 64 (1990) 1934.
114 Hephaestion (p. 33.12 Consbruch) states that in the Phalaecian metre only the first syzygy is
antispastic (or, in other words, the first two feet are identified as an antispast), whereas the
other two are iambic. When Catullus calls his Phalaecian verses iambi (36.5, 40.2, 54b.6), this
may refer to their metre as well as to their aggressive content (cf. e.g. K. Quinn, Catullus: an
Interpretation (London 1972) 2701), but a purely metrical meaning has been recently argued, cf.
Lennartz (2000) 2447. The Euripidean metre is simply an asynartete composed of an iambic
dimeter plus ithyphallic (perfectly analogous to the asynartete composed of iambic trimeter and
ithyphallic in which Iambi 6 and 7 are written).
115 The four poems (frs. 2269) which precede the Hecale in the papyrus of the diegeseis are generally
considered to be a separate group of melic poems. It is difficult to see all four as belonging to
the Iambi (cf. e.g. Cameron (1995) 16373), because the archebulean verses and the choriambic
pentameters in which fr. 228 and 229 are respectively composed are actually metres which have
nothing in common with the iambic rhythm. The hypothesis of A. Ardizzoni, La struttura del
libro dei Giambi di Callimaco in Miscellanea di studi alessandrini in memoria di A. Rostagni (Turin
1963) 25762, that at least fragments 226 and 227 should be included among the Iambi, has some
attractions; cf. the preceding note.
poems are in hexameters or elegiac couplets. Callimachus epinicians are
interesting from this point of view, for he here abandoned the lyric tradition
of Simonides and Pindar, while reviving an archaic subject for poetry. One
epinician, for a certain Polycles of Aegina, is in iambics, and was included as
the eighth poem of the Iambi;116 two others are in elegiac couplets: one for
a certain Sosibios, very probably a leading figure at the court of Ptolemy117
(fr. 384 Pf.), and one for the victory of Berenice II in the chariot race, which
is included in the Aitia as the proem of Book 3 (SH 254, cf. below, pp. 835).
At least since the middle of the fifth century, choral epinician poetry had
become increasingly rare, and the dominant epinician form had become
the elegiac epigrams of celebratory inscriptions; the choral epinician of
Simonides and Pindar did, however, bequeath a common set of motifs
and celebratory language to both Hellenistic epigram and Callimachean
epinician elegy.118
As regards the Hymns of Callimachus, three (to Apollo, Athena, and
Demeter) appear to be a sort of cross between narrative Homeric hymns
and motifs and forms of presentation which had been peculiar to archaic
choral hymnody (in the case of Hymns 5 and 6 to Athena and Demeter, the
choral inheritance is reinforced by a Doric dialectal colouring).119 In these
two latter poems, the ritual framework is always crucial and the included
myths serve the purposes of the ritual which is imagined to be taking place;
the poems stage ceremonies rather than just celebrating the god. There is
no reason to ascribe Callimachus development of this type of mimico-
sacral poem, which he bequeathed to the Latin poets of the first century
bc, to a simple ludic spirit of contamination. Rather, Callimachus revived
the forms and motifs of the mimico-sacral hymn by using the metre and
some of the formal elements of the rhapsodic hymn, as choral metres and
performance were no longer in fashion. Callimachus would in fact have
found a sort of precedent for the structure of these hymns in the Homeric
Hymn to Apollo. In v. 146 of this archaic hymn, the diegetic and detached
style of the third-person narration is interrupted to give way to a descrip-
tion of the celebration of Apollo at Delos, with the evident intention of
establishing the shape of future such celebrations; the poets role is therefore
not very different from that of master of ceremonies in Callimachus.120
116 It is unclear whether the metre was the stichic iambic trimeter or an epodic combination, cf. Ch.
M. Dawson, YCS 11 (1950) 8990.
117 Cf. e.g. Meillier (1979) 229 and n. 139.
118 Cf. Fuhrer (1992), ead. Callimachus Epinician Poems, in HarderRegtuitWakker (1993) 907.
119 Cf. e.g. Bulloch (1985) 27, and below pp. 3717.
120 Cf. C. J. Herington, Poetry into Drama (Berkeley 1985) 6, S. H. Lonsdale, Arion 3 (199495) 2932,
and below pp. 3601.
The poet then concentrates his attention on the Delian maidens, who sing
and dance in a chorus, thus creating an atmosphere reminiscent of that of
the partheneia of choral lyric poetry.121 What should be noticed in Calli-
machus, however, is the obsessively archaeological precision with which he
refers to the actual performance, in a manner that is typical of the hieratic
hymn, as a poem that accompanies a specific ceremony.
Direct, deictic reference to the situational context and the interlocutors
had been a constant element of archaic lyric poetry, elegy and iambics, which
had developed within a system of communication that was still largely oral;
the occasions, recipients, and observers of the songs were integral parts of
the songs themselves, and through them many poems have a genuine flavour
of the here and now.122 In particular, choral-hieratic lyric, both that of
the great poets of the archaic period and that found on inscriptions dating
even to the Hellenistic age, included descriptions of the religious event,
even if such descriptions were limited to those situations of the ceremony
that were most predictable for the poet, such as the relationship between
the chorus and its leader or the roles which any chorus inevitably had
to fulfil. It is the great emphasis on these two elements, in comparison
with their place in archaic choral poetry, which gives substance to the
mimetic tone of Callimachus Hymns to Apollo, Athena, and Demeter,
where the poet assumes the role of koruphaios or master of ceremonies.
By constantly apostrophising those officiating and those present, the poet
acts as a guide to both leaders and audience; he portrays their movements,
or the event itself, in a series of descriptive pictures, with a detail that
the archaic poet had rarely permitted himself. We may speculate that,
because in the archaic age the composition of the poem preceded the actual
performance of the religious event which the song was to accompany,
the poet could foresee with certainty only a few details of what would
happen; in Callimachus, however, the role of the song as an accompaniment
for the celebration was, above all, a literary pretence.123 Those whom the
121 Cf. F. Dornseiff, Die archaische Mythenerzahlung (Berlin 1933) 89, J. Strauss Clay, The Politics of
Olympus: Form and Meaning in the Major Homeric Hymns (Princeton 1989) 4852.
122 Cf. W. Rosler, Dichter und Gruppe (Munich 1980) and id. Uber Deixis und einige Aspekte
mundlichen und schriftlichen Stils in antiker Lyrik WJA 9 (1983) 728; for a different view of
the nature of deixis in archaic lyric poetry cf. J. Latacz, Realitat und Imagination: eine neue Lyrik-
Theorie und Sapphos -Lied MH 42 (1985) 6794. Whatever the genesis of
these references, they would undoubtedly have been perceived by a Hellenistic poet as essential and
typical components of archaic lyric and elegiac poetry. Cf. further J. Danielewicz, Deixis in Greek
Choral Lyric, QUCC 63 (1990) 717, D. Clay, Alcmans Partheneion QUCC 68 (1991) 4767.
123 Particularly striking are the neighing of horses and the grinding of chariot wheels in the Hymn to
Athena (vv. 2 and 14). That the mimetic hymns were performed in the course of actual celebrations,
rather than as descriptions of the celebrations as they took place, remains an hypothesis favoured by
Callimachean master of ceremonies is really guiding are, of course, the
readers, to whose imagination the ritual description and deixis is directed.124
This remains the case, even if these hymns were actually recited, perhaps
in the context of a Ptolemaic policy of religious restoration;125 in this latter
case, the explicit ritual detail would serve a didactic purpose for a watching
audience, as well as nourishing the phantasia of readers.
The elegiac metre of the Hymn to Athena is often seen simply in terms of
experimentalism, and there must be some truth in this. Nevertheless, there
were precedents. From the second half of the fourth century, we have the
openings of two poems of hymnic tone composed by Crates of Thebes:
one to the Muses (SH 359), which might, however, only be the proem of
an elegy (cf. Solon fr. 1 Gentili-Prato), and one to ^# Parsimony
(SH 361), which two witnesses label specifically as a hymn.126 We may add
the Hymn to Demeter by Aristocles (SH 206), an elegiac text of uncertain
date, quoted by Aelian to illustrate the sacrifice of oxen at Hermione, a
town in the Argolis (the very region where Callimachus Hymn to Athena is
set!): perhaps, then, Callimachus had the historicising intention of reviving
a popular use of this metre in the Argolis.127 In any case, the use of elegiacs
in cult poetry might have been more common in Hellenised Egypt than
we can now tell: the hymns of a certain Isidorus, two in hexameters and
two in elegiac couplets, were engraved, perhaps in the first century bc, on
the two pillars of the entrance to the sanctuary of Isis at Medinet Madi.128
As for the mimetic genres at Alexandria, Hellenistic tragedy is for us
largely unknown territory,129 and only Machon among leading comic poets
seems to have focused his career in the Ptolemaic capital.130 In the poems
many, cf. e.g. F. Cairns, Propertius and the Battle of Actium in T. Woodman and D. West (eds.),
Poetry and Politics in the Age of Augustus (Cambridge 1984) 14954, Cairns (1992) 1315, Cameron
(1995) 637. For further discussion cf. below, pp. 3701.
124 We may compare the emphasis in Horaces Odes on musical performance, in spite of the fact that,
in all probability, the Odes were not actually performed to a musical accompaniment: cf. L. E.
Rossi, Orazio, un lirico greco senza musica SemRom 1 (1998) 16381.
125 The scholium introducing the Hymn to Demeter connects this poem with the mystery rites intro-
duced at Alexandria by Ptolemy Philadelphus as an imitation of the Athenian mysteries (for
which cf. Fraser (1972) i.2001); whether or not Callimachus poem does have anything to do with
Alexandrian rites is, however, very debatable (cf. Hopkinson (1984) 3243).
126 Julian, Or. ix, ii.1 p. 167. Rochefort, Clemens Alex., Paed. 3.35.3.
127 Cf. Bulloch (1985) 367. 128 Cf. IMEGR pp. 63152 (no. 175), below Chapter 8.1.
129 Cf. Fraser (1972) i.61821, Schwinge (1986) 3033. The decline of formal drama is matched by the
rise of popular minor theatrical genres, such as the hilarotragedy of Rhinthon (cf. M. Gigante,
Rintone e il teatro in Grecia (Naples 1971)) and the sub-literary mime of Ptolemaic Egypt (cf. above
n. 100, S. Santelia, Charition Liberata (Epoxy. 413) (Bari 1991)). For the theatre in the world of the
Greek poleis, cf. G. M. Sifakis, Studies in the History of Hellenistic Drama (London 1967), and for
the new fashion for lyric virtuosi cf. Gentili (1979) 6387.
130 Cf. Athenaeus 14.664a.
of Herondas and Theocritus, however, there survives a radical attempt to
renew traditional mime forms. Herondas poems might well have been
recited, as well as read in books;131 his choliambic Mimiamboi, Mimes
in (limping) iambics, written in a version of archaic Ionic (cf. above on
Mimiambus 8), must have sounded very new to anybody familiar with the
classical tradition of prose mime. Theocritus mimic poems, however, are
always cited as the prime example of contamination of genres, because they
combine the epic metre, the metre par excellence of third-person narrative
presentation, with various important elements of first- and second-person
mimetic or mimetic-lyric performances (as, for example, the famous song
of the abandoned woman in the so-called Fragmentum Grenfellianum).
Thus, Idyll 22 even combines epic narrative with stichomythic dialogue; in
Idyll 10, elements from the mime tradition are translated into popular songs
in hexameters; in Idylls 3 and 11, the same thing happens with love serenades,
in the second part of Idyll 15 with a hieratic hymn, and in Idyll 24.79 with
a lullaby; Idyll 1 presents a sort of mimesis of the strophic structure of
ancient lyric through the pauses marked by the refrains, and something
similar might be true of Idyll 3;132 Idyll 16 contaminates Bettelgedicht, mime
and encomium. The Theocritean corpus is in fact a veritable Noahs ark of
mimetic-lyric forms which have been adapted to, and hence saved by, their
transference to recitative metre.
If it is true that mimes in hexameters are an absurdity,133 Herondas cho-
liambs obviously draw upon the natural affinity between archaic iambic, on
the one hand, and mime and comedy, on the other. As is well known, the
iambic metres were traditionally considered the closest to spoken language;
witnesses include Aristotle134 and the epilogue of Callimachus Aitia, which
apparently leads into the pedestrian Iambi.135 What is in any case clear is
that the constantly low, and often salacious, thematic and linguistic level of
the Mimiambi is much bawdier and closer to low mime than the bucolic
and urban mimes of Theocritus; so, too, Theocritus is much less con-
cerned than Herondas with the (real or fictional) dramatisation and scenic
quality of the poems. Rather, Theocritean poetry uses a particularly refined
131 Cf. Mastromarco (1984), Hunter (1993b). 132 Cf. Rossi (2000) 1523.
133 Cf. Kroll (1924) 204, J. Griffin in K. J. Dover (ed.), Ancient Greek Literature (Oxford 1980) 139.
134 Cf. Poetics 1449a228, Rhet. 3.1408b32.
135 Fr. 112.9: O 0$% _,
but I will pass on to the pedestrian pasture
of the Muses. Some scholars take this as an allusion to the prose of grammatical writings, and not
to the pedestrian metre of the Iambi, which remains however much the likeliest interpretation,
cf. R. Pfeiffer, Philologus 87 (1932) 226; for the verse as a declaration of intent, cf. P. E. Knox, The
Epilogue to the Aetia GRBS 26 (1985) 5965. Camerons view ((1995) 1546) that these verses were
not the end of the Aitia, but the beginning of the Iambi, seems less likely.
hexameter to exalt the traditionally humble characters of mime, which now
somewhat paradoxically lays claim to the status of high poetry.136
The overwhelming predominance of the dactylic hexameter and the ele-
giac couplet in Callimachus and Theocritus, and the recitative portrayal in
these metres of themes and modes of presentation previously reserved for
other genres, correspond to a general feature of Hellenistic poetry. Aristo-
tle (Poetics 1459b3236) had already observed, as regards the hexameter: If
narrative poetry were composed in any other verse, or in several, the result
would be undignified (& ), because the hexameter is the verse which
possesses the greatest solidity and elevation for this reason, it best sup-
ports glosses and metaphors, etc. As for the elegiac couplet, it had since the
archaic age shown close similarities of theme and occasion to iambic poetry,
but from the end of the sixth century on, it had come to be used also for
occasional or semi-improvised songs, as well as for dedications and epitaphs,
where iambic metres had previously been more widespread.137 It was, how-
ever, differentiated from iambics by a greater elevation of form, guaranteed
above all by the hexameters association with the epic; on the other hand, it
was differentiated from epic as being more suitable for non-mythological
and realistic subjects, and for expressing the personal experiences of indi-
viduals or collective groups to audiences which might be less formal and
public than those of the epic rhapsode.138 The clear Hellenistic preference
for these two metres was accompanied, most notably (again) in Callimachus
and Theocritus, by the development of a versification governed by precise,
rigorous principles, capable of distinguishing clearly between the Hellenis-
tic hexameter or elegiac couplet and those of the archaic and classical ages.
136 The difference between the polemical harshness of the old man (whoever he is) in Herondas 8
and the easy-going and ironical superiority of Theocritus Lycidas is symptomatic of the difference
with which the two poets present their master-models, cf. Stanzel (1995) 7682.
137 Cf. West (1974) 19.
138 Cf. B. Gentili in Lepigramme grecque, 645, West (1974) 18. Compared with the epic hexameter,
the elegy maintains its didactic, up-to-date character, even when it goes outside the limited circle
of the symposium, cf. E. L. Bowie, Early Greek Elegy, Symposium, and Public Festivals JHS 106
(1986) 1335. The original distinction between hexameter and elegiac couplet in terms of seriousness
and openness might still have been felt in the fourth and third centuries, and may have influenced
the choices, e.g., of Antimachus, Philetas, and Callimachus, just as we know that it subsequently
influenced Latin poets (cf. Ovid, Amores 1.1 etc.). Antimachus used the hexameter for the solemn
epos of the Thebaid, and elegiacs for the catalogues and unhappy love stories of the Lyde ; Philetas
wrote the epyllion Hermes in hexameters, but used elegiacs for the Paignia Light poems and the
Demetra, a work which probably focused on the wanderings of the goddess in search of Persephone,
but with a strong aetiological flavour, cf. Sbardella (2000) 449; Callimachus used the hexameter
for his highest, public poetry (the Hymns) and for the mythological epyllion of the Hecale, but he
used elegiacs for the Aitia, a work proclaiming some kind of continuity with Mimnermus, who may
have been perceived as an anticipator of the taste for historical and aetiological elegy, cf. Krevans
(1984) 190 and 20712.
So, too, Lycophron and the tragedians of the Pleiad (cf. below, pp. 432
43) seem to have imitated the structure of the iambic trimeter of archaic
iambus and Aeschylean tragedy,139 which was much less free than that of
late Euripidean tragedy or comedy; they also, however, introduced certain
prosodic modernisations, which might suggest a project of reform and/or
regularisation, analogous to that of the Callimachean hexameter, even if
the details remain much less clear to us.
Callimachus hexametric practice includes a series of rhythmical refine-
ments which affect both the relationship between dactyls and spondees and
the arrangement of the various prosodic structures of single words or Wort-
bilder 140 in particular positions of the verse; the aim seems to be to obtain a
substantially regular division into cola.141 Already in Homer, spondees tend
to be found more rarely at certain points than at others and, in particular,
hardly ever in the fifth foot; Callimachus and the Callimacheans further
develop this preference for the dactyl and, in particular, seek to avoid two
successive spondees in a verse. One of the results of this trend is that out of
the twenty-two attested arrangements of dactyls and spondees in the first
five feet of the Homeric hexameter, Callimachus reproduces only seven.
This tendency to reduce the number of possible arrangements of the hex-
ameter is not shared by Theocritus in his serious bucolic idylls (1, 37),
where the Doric linguistic flavour must have made it extremely difficult to
follow contemporary dactylic taste. Doric, like other literary and/or spo-
ken dialects in the archaic and classical periods, had become increasingly
incompatible142 with the artificial language of Homers poems; thus, for
example, verbal contraction greatly reduced the available number of short
vowels, although dactylic composition requires a ratio of 1:2 between long
and short vowels, a ratio that Homer can meet, for example, by allow-
ing hiatus between two vowels. This analysis is confirmed by the fact that
Idyll 7, the most Homeric of the Idylls with respect to diction, is also the
least spondaic of the serious bucolic poems; in all of his poems, however,
Theocritus takes care to maintain a dactylic sense, at least in the second
half of the verse, by the dominant use of dactyls in the fourth and fifth feet.
Already in Homer the hexameter tends to divide into four rhythmic
units of relatively uniform and stable length: these cola are marked off
139 Cf. West (1982) 856 and 15960; Del Ponte (1981) 1014.
140 Groups of words, composed of a word plus one or more particles, or enclitics or proclitics, or
semantically linked words.
141 The following pages presuppose Fantuzzi (1995a).
142 Cf. M. Cantilena, Approccio metrico alle teorie della composizione orale, in R. M. Danese, F.
Gori, and C. Questa (eds.) Metrica classica e linguistica (Atti del Colloquio: Urbino 36 Ottobre
1988) (Urbino 1990) 6672.
by the beginning and the end of the line and by the ends of words or
Wortbilder (particularly the central caesura and the bucolic diaeresis after
the fourth foot).143 In Homer, however, this rhythmical structure is still far
from fixed, and there are several cases, for example, in which the first colon
is particularly short, and other cases in which there is no word-end after
the first long element or after the first short syllable of the third foot (i.e.
there is no central caesura, which otherwise guarantees the basic division
of the hexameter into two parts). This is probably due to the fact that
oral performance allowed a compensation for the most serious imbalances
between the lengths of the cola by the person reciting the verse, through
variations in the tempo of the recital, such as slowing down or prolonging
the most seriously unbalanced short cola and accelerating the longer ones,
or introducing more or less noticeable pauses, depending on the degree of
imbalance between the cola.144 The poetics of the archaic hexameter may in
fact have exploited the rhythmical differentiation between cola in the sung
recital of performance; we may perhaps compare the much more obvious
imbalances between various lyric cola within the strophes of melic poetry,
where it was again sung performance which would adequately restore the
balance.
The hexameters of Callimachus and Theocritus, in the serious bucolic
idylls, together with (to a lesser extent) those of Apollonius Rhodius, prefer
a harmonious regularisation of the dimensions of the cola which make up
the verse; it is reasonable to suppose that this is part of the same project
which can be detected behind the network of those prohibitions of word-
end at various points in the Callimachean verse, which were identified by
scholars (particularly) in the second half of the nineteenth century.145 The
result is a verse which constantly aspires to the most perfectly harmonious
balance between cola; when, at times, this is violated, it is for the purpose
of emphasis and other stylistic effects. These hexameters can be read and
enjoyed as a well-balanced unit, without any need for the bard to slow down
143 According to the scheme presented by Frankel (1955), the ending of a word in the first hemistich
(A) has four possibilities, while two possibilities exist for the ending of words between the first and
second hemistich (B), and another two in the second hemistich (C):
144 Cf. L. E. Rossi in FantuzziPretagostini (19956) ii.2858, 30910, id., I poemi omerici come
testimonianza di poesia orale in R. Bianchi Bandinelli (ed.), Storia e civilta dei Greci, i (Milan 1978)
1057.
145 It was Frankel (1955), first published in 1926, who first drew together the positive programme of
Callimachean metrics lying behind the various prohibitions on word-end. For these metrical laws
cf. e.g. Hopkinson (1984) 515, Hollis (1990) 1523, Fantuzzi (1995) 2218.
or accelerate; perhaps the Hellenistic poets who performed this regularisa-
tion of the hexameter, with their awareness that they were also writing for
diffusion in book form, intended the harmonious nature of their verses to
be readily appreciated by everybody, even at the simplest reading (presum-
ably out loud, as was regularly the case in the ancient world); moreover,
they thus freed themselves from dependence upon virtuoso bards. It is,
however, to be remembered that all this happened in a period when the
progressive decline in the use of melic poetry must have turned the bal-
ancing of cola by means of variations in diction itself into a particularly
difficult art.146
Theocritus is a particularly important witness to this Hellenistic metrical
project, for on the one hand he pursues an almost Callimachean rigour
in the serious bucolic idylls (1, 37), and, on the other, he can be radically
anti-Callimachean in Idyll 11, when he clearly wishes to mark metrically the
clumsiness of the Cyclops song, and again in Idyll 10, which is no longer
bucolic but rather agricultural and Hesiodic in content, and also in the
epic-mythological poems, which return to the technique of the Homeric
and Hesiodic hexameter.147
4 marginal aberrations?
Hellenistic poets, then, were interested both in the history and traditional
function of the inherited generic system, an interest which we might call
museological or archaeological, and in how that system might be mod-
ernised to meet a new reality; what emerged was, as we have seen, neither
arbitrary nor simply ludic. On the other hand, the conditions of the third
century undoubtedly fostered, more than any other previous age, the figure
of the man of letters who delighted in experimentalism, including generic
experimentalism;148 the importance of this element of the Hellenistic lit-
erary mix is, however, not to be exaggerated, for it largely involves a few
minor figures and not the poetics of Callimachus and Theocritus.
Many experimental virtuosos are little more than names for us, remem-
bered by subsequent scholars only because they are associated with inven-
tions, usually simple innovations in the use of lyric or iambic metres. As
the literary system was now firmly grounded in hexameters and elegiacs,
such experiments had very little effect on its integrity. This is the case, for
example, with Philicus, one of the members of the Alexandrian Pleiad, who
146 Cf. Pretagostini (2000) 7. 147 Cf. Fantuzzi (1995a) 23543.

148 Cf. Bing (2000) 1423.
composed a Hymn to Demeter in choriambic hexameters149 in the first half
of the third century. The surviving opening of the poem expresses his sat-
isfaction with his abstruse invention specifically designed for a small group
of grammarians150 (SH 677):
($ %$% `#$) ) ' , 2T
Grammarians, I bring you the gift of the innovative written composition of Philicus
Philicus invention is actually limited to the stichically repeated use of the
choriambic hexameter, and perhaps to the coincidence of choriambs with
words or phrases. Likewise, Castorion of Soloi, an author of the beginning
of the third century, wrote a Hymn to Pan in iambic trimeters, such that
each metron coincides either with a single word or with a semantic unit (SH
310); he too is well aware that his erudite composition ( 8 %4),
that is to say, the apparent (though, in fact, limited) interchangeability
of the metra,151 is difficult to understand for anybody who is not erudite
('Q% % 8 % #Q ). The same satisfaction is found in another
virtuoso of uncertain date,152 Boiskos of Cyzicus, the proud author of a
new poem, who dedicates his invention of the catalectic iambic octameter
to Phoebus (SH 233):
a% /, =$_) b 4)
, ]($ 2O %!) `9" % '
Boiskos of Kyzikos, writer of a new poem, inventor of the eight-footed verse,
dedicates it as a gift to Phoebus
Lyric metres continued to be used not uncommonly for social satire,
a poetic register which was traditionally considered to be semi-serious
(%$' #). The accursed poet, Sotades, produced lyric verses
of a new kind which subsequently took their name from him, sotadeans
(catalectic Ionic tetrameters a maiore with frequent anaclasis). In this metre
he composed hard-hitting and witty attacks on the court of the Ptolemies,
and expressed a subversive spirit even towards the highest divinity of literary
tradition by rewriting the Iliad in sotadeans.153 Another satirical moralist,
149 This verse had already been used albeit not in a stichic series by Simias for one of his technopaegnia
(cf. below), as noted by Hephaestion, pp. 30.2131.13 Consbruch.
150 Cf. Bing (2000) 142.
151 Cf. P. Bing, Kastorion of Solois Hymn to Pan AJP 106 (1985) 5029.
152 F. Susemihl, Geschichte der griechischen Literatur in der Alexandrinerzeit (Leipzig 1892) ii 524, suggests
a date in the early Alexandrian period.
153 On Sotades cf. Pretagostini (1984) 13947. For the Sotadean as an inversion of the hexameter,
parallel to the parodic-effeminate distortion in the contents of Sotades poetry, cf. Bettini (1982)
6669, below pp. 4834.
Cercidas from Megalopolis, employed not only Hipponactean choliambs
(CA fr. 14) and iambic trimeters (CA fr. 16), but also invented a stichic
use of iambic-lyric metres (meliamboi), which were based on the dactylo-
epitrites of the lyric-choral tradition.154
Callimachus and Theocritus tend to restrict their metrical experimental-
ism to relatively short, occasional poems, of the kind to which Callimachus
seems to refer in a self-epitaph (AP 7.415 = HE 11856) which depicts the
author as a poet c X &'8 *'
) c 'C KI %$ #(%
truly expert in song, and equally in appropriate jesting [i.e. composing
playful poetry?], while drinking wine. This limit upon the use of verses
different from the hexameter and the elegiac couplet shows these poets
again taking a historicising view of traditional forms. Thus, Callimachus
limits these experiments to the light poetry of certain epigrams,155 to the
154 Cf. most recently Lennartz (2000) 2412. Hellenistic %$' # made widespread use of
other metres as well, such as the iambic, the hexameter, and the elegiac couplet (cf. e.g. G. A.
Gerhard, Phoinix von Kolophon: Texte und Untersuchungen (LeipzigBerlin 1909) 23869).
155 Some of the epodic combinations used in the epigrams of Callimachus may, of course, have had
archaic precedents. Cf. Callimachus, AP 13.25 = HE 1137ff.: two cat. iambic dimeters plus asyn-
artete made up of a dactylic tetrapody and an ithyphallic (cf. Theocritus], HE 3434ff.: the same
asynartete was known to the ancients as Archilochean, and had been used in an epodic combi-
nation with the cat. iambic trimeter by Archilochus, cf. IEG 18892); Callimachus AP 13.24 =
HE 1143ff.: cat. iambic dimeter plus Phalaecian hendecasyllable (cf. Alcman, PMGF 38, at least
according to the interpretation of B. Gentili, Metrica greca arcaica (MessinaFlorence 1950) 72,
and Theocritus], HE 3440ff.); Callimachus, AP 7.728 = HE 1255ff.: Archilochean asynartete +
Phalaecian hendecasyllable (the opposite of the epodic structure of Theocritus], HE 3422ff.).
The epigrams attributed to Theocritus by the Palatine Anthology are usually considered not to
be authentic, but they reveal the same taste for epodic metres. Cf. [Theocritus], AP 7.663 = HE
3422ff.: Phalaecian hendecasyllables plus Archilochean asynartetes; Theocritus], AP 7.664 = HE
3434ff.: a microstrophe made up of an Archilochean asynartete plus acat. iambic trimeter plus cat.
iambic trimeter (Archilochus, for whom this epigram is a fictitious epitaph, had often used an epode
made up of the same asynartete plus cat. iambic trimeter); Theocritus], AP 9.599 = HE 3440ff.:
iambic trimeter plus Phalaecian hendecasyllable (see above); Theocritus], AP 9.600 = HE 3454ff.:
vv. 1, 5, 9 cat. trochaic tetrameters, vv. 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 Reiziana, vv. 3, 7 iambic trimeters (cf. perhaps
Sappho fr. 132 Voigt, G. Perrotta, SIFC 14 (1937) 30110, D. L. Page, Sappho and Alcaeus, Oxford
1955, 1312 n. 4). There are a few other isolated examples of epodes in the work of other poets:
Phaedimus, AP 13.22 = HE 2911ff.: iambic trimeter plus Alcaic decasyllable; Asclepiades, AP 13.23 =
HE 962ff.: cat. iambic tetrameter plus cat. iambic trimeter; Theodoridas, AP 13.21 = HE 3562ff.:
iambic trimeter plus ithyphallic; Hegesippus, AP 6.266 = HE 1905ff. and 13.12 = 1917ff., Nicaene-
tos, AP 13.26 = HE 2711ff., Arcesilaus, SH 122: dactylic hexameter plus iambic trimeter (cf. GVI
553 and 15012). The stichic use of unusual metres is relatively more frequent in Callimachus
(cf. AP 13.7 = HE 1129ff.: cat. iambic dimeters; AP 13.9 = HE 1341f.: cat. trochaic pentameters;
AP 13.10 = HE 1343f.: greater Asclepiadeans; HE 1345ff.: Pherecrateans) than in other epigram-
writers. For stichic iambics in later epigrams cf. GPh, i, p. xxxviii. Trimeters occur in Phaedimus,
AP 13.2 = HE 2907ff.; Leonidas, AP 6.211 = HE 1959ff., APlan. 182 = HE 2098ff., AP 7.455 =
HE 2385ff., HE 2465ff., APlan. 307 = HE 2514ff.; adesp. APlan. 182 = HE 3916f.; Phalaecus,
AP 13.5 = HE 2939ff. (cat.); choliambs in Aeschrion, AP 7.345 = HE 1ff. and [Theocritus],
AP 13.3 = HE 3430ff. (an epitaph for Hipponax!); Phalaecian hendecasyllables in Phalaecus,
AP 13.6 = HE 2946ff. and [Theocritus], AP 9.598 = HE 3446ff.; Archilochean asynartetes in
Theodoridas, AP 13.8 = HE 3530f.
four 0#, which are in two cases clearly occasional (Poem 1 = fr. 226
is paederastic in theme, and Poem 2 = fr. 227 is defined in the diegesis as
(a symposium song))156 and to the Iambi (above pp. 1415); in
Idylls 2831 Theocritus takes up the traditions of Sappho and Alcaeus, in
length, theme, language and metre.157
Lastly, the marginal position of lyric-iambic metres is demonstrated by
their use for ludic figurative poems, ! , in which the succes-
sion of verses of different lengths gave the layout of the poem itself the
shape of a particular object; such poems tend to be replete with arcane
glosses and may even be presented as riddles ( 5).158 In practice, this
was a re-invention of the archaic epigraphic text: originally, the width and
height of the written lines were dictated by the shape of the object bearing
the inscription, whereas in the figurative poem it was the writing and metre
itself that aimed to create the object on which the text was supposed to
be engraved.159 The use of lyric lengths in this kind of poem owed nothing
to the practices of archaic lyric poetry, any more than did the Hellenistic
use of lyric lengths in stichic series; metre in these poems was imposed
by pictographic necessity, without any regard for the traditional strophic
organisation of lyric cola. Three of the figurative poems of Simias of Rhodes
(late fourth to early third century160 ), Axe, Egg and Wings, are extant. After
he had shown the way, two further poets of uncertain date, Dosiadas and
Besantinos, who both appear to have composed a figurative Altar, took up
the mantle.161 Tradition also attributes a figurative poem to Theocritus, the
Pan-pipes (< M), though scholars disagree about its authenticity. Of all
the figurative poems, this is the only one which does not use lyric or iambic
verses for its trapezoidal outline, but only dactylic. Whether the author was
Theocritus, or a clever imitator,162 we may speculate that the poet of the
156 Both of these may have belonged to the Iambi, cf. above n. 115. The hieratic content of the last two
0# (3 = fr. 228 and 4 = fr. 229) might have brought with it the lyric verses in which they are
written, cf. above p. 27 and n. 100.
157 Cf. Hunter (1996b) 17186, M. Fassino and L. Prauscello, memoria ritmica e memoria poetica:
suffo e Alceo in Teocrito Idilli 2830 tra &!# metrica e innovazione alessandrina MD 46
(2001) 937.
158 This is the case with the Syrinx and the Altar of Dosiadas.
159 Cf. Krevans (1984) 186, Bing (1988) 1718.
160 Cf. H. Frankel, De Simia Rhodio (Leipzig 1915) 11.
161 The only certain chronological information for Dosiadas is that he is later than the Alexandra of
Lycophron, to which the Altar alludes, and prior to Lucian, who quotes it (see, however, Pfeiffer
(1968) 90 n. 3). Besantinos is generally placed in the age of Hadrian.
162 R. Dupont-Roc and J. Lallot, La Syrinx Poetique 18 (1974) 17693 have shown that this poem is
the work of a highly accomplished author.
Syrinx rejected Simias polymetric patterns and enclosed his technopaignion
in recitative dactyls to mark how the bucolic Theocritus used only dactylic
hexameters; thus, even the most virtuoso of technitai (or perhaps Theocri-
tus himself in a moment of experimentalism) could pay respectful homage
to the metrical system chosen by Theocritus.163
163 So too, the poet who composed the lyric epigrams known to us under the name of Theocritus (cf.
above n. 155) was aware of the archaeological rediscovery of the lyric tradition by Theocritus in
Idylls 2831.
chap t e r 2
The aetiology of Callimachus Aitia
1 callimachus
The figure of Callimachus dominates the poetry and intellectual life of
the third century bc. Callimachus was a native of Cyrene, the flourishing
city whose Greek royal house was famously celebrated in Pindars fourth
and fifth Pythians. Relations between Cyrene and the Ptolemaic court at
Alexandria varied in the course of the century, from the friendly to the
openly hostile, but natives of Cyrene seem to have been a major influence on
the cultural and intellectual life of the Ptolemaic court from the early days;
Cyrene was finally brought within the Ptolemaic orbit with the marriage
of the princess Berenice to Euergetes in 246 bc, a period which also saw
the headship of the Library pass to the Cyrenean Eratosthenes.1
What we know of Callimachus life2 and work associates him with the
courts of Philadelphus and Euergetes. Most of his extant poetry cannot
be dated with any confidence, although much may belong to the 270s,
and his influence on other poets seems to have established itself early. He
wrote an epithalamian for Arsinoe (fr. 392), whose marriage to her brother
probably belongs to the first half of the decade, and substantial fragments
of his poem on her death (270 or 268 bc) and apotheosis survive (fr. 228).
From a quarter of a century later survive major poems for Berenice II, the
bride of Euergetes, which frame Books 3 and 4 of the Aitia;3 Callimachus
career may indeed have lasted into the 230s.4
Although Callimachus appears never to have held the post of Librarian at
Alexandria, his scholarly work placed him at the very heart of the Museum.
Our direct evidence for this work lies in the scattered observations of later
grammarians, but some at least of his extraordinarily varied poetry, which
1 For Callimachus celebration of this marriage cf. below pp. 858. For Callimachus and Cyrene see,
for example, L. Lehnus, Antichita cirenaiche in Callimaco Eikasmos 5 (1994) 189207, and Cameron
(1995) 911.
2 Cf. Fraser (1972) II 10045; Cameron (1995) 311. 3 Cf. below pp. 838.
4 Cf. L. Lehnus, Riflessioni cronologiche sullultimo Callimaco ZPE 105 (1995) 612.
42
1 Callimachus 43
ranks among the most distinctively individual achievements of Greek liter-
ature and whose importance for the Latin poetry of the late Republic and
early empire outweighs that of any other Alexandrian poet,5 has survived
the ravages of time. Until relatively recently, our knowledge of this poetry
was largely confined to the six Hymns and the Epigrams, both of which
are preserved in a manuscript tradition, and to a large number of isolated
poetic quotations in later writers; Callimachus, and in particular the Aitia,
with which this chapter will be concerned, has, however, been one of the
major beneficiaries of the papyrological revolution of the last century, and
we are now substantially better informed about his poetry than were our
predecessors a century ago, even if we still possess only a small fraction of
his output.
Callimachus scholarly work in the Ptolemaic Library was crucial in the
organisation and cataloguing, and hence preservation, of classical litera-
ture.6 Among his lost prose works, pride of place goes to the Pinakes (frs.
42953), a kind of descriptive catalogue, arranged broadly by genre, of the
Librarys holdings, and hence of virtually all of Greek literature. This vast
work in 120 books, if the text of the Suda is to be believed dealt not
merely with the titles of works, but also with problems of nomenclature,
of ascription and of writers lives.7 It soon established itself as an authori-
tative source to which others could appeal; much of our knowledge of lost
Greek literature may ultimately derive from it. It is in fact Callimachus
who most clearly exemplifies the Alexandrian fusion of scholar and poet.
It is not merely that his scholarly research and vast knowledge of prose lit-
erature provided much of the material of his poetry, or that his vocabulary
often reflects contemporary scholarly discussion (particularly of Homer),8
but his whole style reveals, and demands of his readers, an extraordinarily
easy familiarity with the Greek literary heritage and with the various levels
of literary and non-literary Greek. Callimachus choice of words, and the
order in which he places them, is constantly surprising; it is this, more than
anything else, which distinguishes his poetry from that of all other surviv-
ing Greek poets.9 Words of high literary parentage or of the greatest rarity
occur alongside others drawn from the contemporary world of mundane
5 Cf. e.g. Wimmel (1960); W. Clausen, Callimachus and Latin Poetry GRBS 5 (1964) 18196; Thomas
(1993). For the Aitia in particular cf. J. F. Miller, Callimachus and the Augustan Aetiological Elegy
ANRW II 30.1 (1982) 371417.
6 Cf. Pfeiffer (1968)12351; Blum (1991). 7 Cf. Pfeiffer on fr. 453; id. (1968) 12634; Blum (1991).
8 Cf. Pfeiffer (1968) 13840; A. Rengakos, Homerische Worter bei Kallimachos ZPE 94 (1992) 2147.
9 Cf. F. Lapp, De Callimachi Cyrenaei tropis et figuris (Dissertation Bonn 1965), R. Schmitt, Die Nomi-
nalbildung in den Dichtungen des Kallimachos von Kyrene (Wiesbaden 1970).
44 The aetiology of Callimachus Aitia
activities,10 but there is also a remarkable lack of obvious verbal adornment
in a poetry which, on closer inspection, reveals itself as some of the most
intellectually mannered poetry ever written. The apparent spareness of the
Callimachean style is one that transcends the boundaries of the various gen-
res in which he wrote, though in other respects Callimachus style shows
clear generic differentiation. The sense of control, of the elimination of
excess and its replacement by a severe poetic discretion, also emerges from
a consideration of Callimachus metrical technique.11 Although the poem
that we will consider in this chapter is in elegiac couplets, it is in his treat-
ment of the stichic hexameter that Callimachean severity is most sharply
seen. Whereas some twenty-two patterns for the hexameter are common in
Homer, the figure for Callimachus is only seven; so, too, a series of refine-
ments and prohibitions governing word-breaks and possible combinations
means that the Callimachean hexameter is a very strict instrument, which
imposes a marked intellectual formalism on all his poetry in this metre.
In this, he was building upon tendencies already visible in the previous
century, but the strictness of his practice is genuinely novel, and consonant
with the professed elitism of his poetic persona.
2 the structure of the a i t i a

The Aitia, in perhaps some six thousand verses and four books, is the poem
for which Callimachus was best known in later antiquity and in Rome,
and by which his reputation as a or perhaps the principal Greek elegist
was established. The subject-matter of the poem was the origins of local
customs and cults drawn from all over the Greek world; Callimachus drew
upon local histories and chronicles to put into verse stories which had never
before been the subject of high poetry.
Although the four books as a whole are bound together by the Hesiodic
dream of frs. 34 M., which recurs in the Epilogue (fr. 112), the internal
organisation of the poem has been the source of considerable controversy
and much must remain unknowable, until new texts come to our aid.12
In Books 1 and 2, many, if not all,13 of the individual aitia were responses
by the Muses to questions put by the poet, who represented himself as
10 Nice examples in Parsons (1993) 1718.

11 Cf. West (1982) 1527, Hopkinson (1984) 515, Hollis (1990) 1523.
12 The huge bibliography can best be traced through Parsons (1977), Cameron (1995), Massimilla
(1996). The account offered here is necessarily brief and simplified.
13 For doubts about the usual view cf. J. E. G. Zetzel, On the Opening of Callimachus, Aetia II ZPE
42 (1981) 313; Harder (1988).
dreaming that he was a young man transported from North Africa to Mt
Helicon, where the Muses instructed him, as once they had instructed
Hesiod; the form of the instruction, however, was entirely different the
Muses now answered the poets often very obscure questions, rather than
withdrawing to the background after inspiring the poet with the gift of
song. There is a little evidence to support the hypothesis, very likely on
general grounds, that the poet awoke at the end of the second book.14 The
order of aitia in the early part of Book 1 is known from the Florentine
scholia,15 though the detailed way in which transitions from one question-
and-answer to another were handled within the overarching structure of
the dream-conversation is obscure; almost nothing is certain about the
order of Book 2.16 At one point early in Book 1, the poet asks the Muses a
double question: He enquires why people accompany sacrifice to Apollo
in Anaphe with mutual mockery and sacrifice to Heracles at Lindos with
curses (Schol. Flor. on fr.9.1925, p. 79 M.). The cataloguing instincts of the
young pedants mind have already grouped similar cult practices together
before confronting the divine sources of knowledge, but the answers to the
related questions would seem to have had nothing to do with each other; the
enquiry about Anaphe leads to a relatively lengthy treatment of the return
of the Argonauts, whereas the Lindian rite is traced to the hungry Heracles
killing of a peasants ox. Despite the fragmentary nature of the texts, it is
tempting to think that the double question about apparently similar rites is
one of a series of strategies within the early part of the poem which ironise
the whole intellectual structure of aetiology.17 Be that as it may, the Lindian
story looks both forwards and backwards, for it is followed by a similar18
story of how Heracles killed an ox belonging to Theiodamas, king of the
Dryopes, an action which led to a war, with catastrophic consequences for
the Dryopes. Here, at least, a thematic coherence may be traced through
the ordering of individual episodes.19
Books 3 and 4 were framed by major pieces (the so-called Victoria
Berenices and the Lock of Berenice)20 in honour of Berenice II, the
Cyrenean princess who married Ptolemy Euergetes in 246. In these books,
Callimachus seems no longer to have used the organising device of a con-
versation with the Muses; rather, individual aitia (of very various length)
14 Cf. Cameron (1995) 13740. 15 For the opening aition cf. below, pp. 524.
16 For some speculations cf. below, p. 80. 17 Cf. further below, p. 501.
18 Cf. Schol. Flor. p. 97 Massimilla.
19 For other relevant considerations cf. Harder (1993). For another probable pairing cf. L. Lehnus,
Ancora su Callimaco in P.Mich.Inv. 6235 ZPE 91 (1992) 20 and cf. also A. S. Hollis, Teuthis and
Callimachus, Aetia Book 1 CQ 32 (1982) 11720.
20 Cf. below, pp. 838.
followed each other without transitional passages, and the constant pres-
ence of the Muses gave way to the poet himself and a variety of rather
unusual narrators (a long-dead poet, fr. 64, a lock of hair, fr. 110, perhaps
a speaking wall, fr. 97). Some individual aitia now assumed the look of
individual poems marked by clear opening and closural devices;21 it is
consonant with this change that there is evidence that some, at least, circu-
lated as individual poems before as well as after their inclusion within the
Aitia, and the aetiological direction of several narratives seems very weak by
comparison with the narratives of Books 1 and 2. So, too, the narrative of
what might be called historical events (frs. 93, 102) and of rites which were
explicitly no longer current (frs. 91, 98), and an apparently increased inter-
est in material remains (statues, fountains, buildings) suggest a broadening
of range and focus in Books 3 and 4; it is likely enough that Callimachus
created suggestive similarities and oppositions between the pairs of books,
but the state of our evidence allows only guesses. There are reasons, in addi-
tion to the changes in structure, for believing that Books 3 and 4, together
with the Reply to the Telchines and the Epilogue (fr. 112) were added
by Callimachus many years after the publication of an original two-book
Aitia; if correct, this may account for some of the changes in direction, but
we must wait for new texts before we can proceed further. A suggestive case
can, however, be made for certain structures which bind the four books
together: thus, the concluding Lock of Berenice picks up some of the
themes of removal and displacement of the poets opening dream,22 and
the penultimate aition is an Argonautic story, as was the second episode of
Book 1.
The order of episodes within most of Book 3 and Book 4 is known
from the Milan Diegeseis, and certain thematic patternings emerge.23
Thus, killing and sacrifice seem to have played a major role in Book 4
(cf. Melicertes, Theudotos, Leimonis, Oesydres, and perhaps the Syrma
Antigones),24 and Athenian narratives were also prominent (Leimonis,
the Pelasgian Walls, Androgeos).25 Just as poems in honour of Berenice
frame Books 3 and 4, so Book 3 itself is framed by poems linked to
21 Gutzwiller (1998) 186 suggests the influence of Hellenistic epigram books.

22 Cf. Selden (1998) 3589.
23 For new evidence about Book 3 cf. C. Gallazzi and L. Lehnus, Due nuovi frammenti delle Diegeseis.
Approssimazioni al III libro degli Aitia di Callimaco ZPE 137 (2001) 718. Confidence in our certainty
about such matters is waning, cf. the discussion at Callimaque 301.
24 Cf. A. Henrichs in R. Buxton (ed.), From Myth to Reason? (Oxford 1999) 2334.
25 This is suggestive for Propertius 4, a collection of aitia of the other great city of the ancient world,
Rome. Athens was not, of course, absent from the earlier books (cf. frs. 51, 178 (below, pp. 7683)).
two different Panhellenic athletic festivals in honour of Zeus (Berenice
Nemea, Euthycles Olympia). Both episodes are also linked to another
aition of Book 3, the Elean marriage rite (frs. 767), which commemo-
rates an action of Heracles and the subsequent foundation of the Olympic
Games; the figure of Heracles was, of course, central to the foundation of
the Nemean Games in the opening Victoria Berenices. The closing story
of Euthycles and the outrage to the tomb of Simonides (fr. 64) both involve
the desecration of memorials to great figures of the past. So, too, marriage
and childbirth obviously played a major role. The theme is introduced by
the opening verses of the book:
d W I !% E' ] #)
Q) % 4 e , P . . .
(SH 254.12)26
To Zeus and Nemea I owe a gift (lit. wedding-gift), O bride, sacred blood of the
brother-sister gods . . .
The aitia of the exclusion of unmarried girls from the Athenian Thes-
mophoria (fr. 63), of the ritual uses of the Argive fountains (frs. 656),
and of Artemis role in childbirth (fr. 79), together with the narratives
of the loves of Acontius and Cydippe27 and of Phrygius and Pieria (frs.
8083), all play with these themes in different ways. So, too, the juxta-
position of Diana Lucina to the story of Phrygius and Pieria emphasises
the role of Artemis in the latter story, as it was at her festival that the two
lovers met. Artemis in fact seems to have been a very significant figure in
Book 3 (cf. Phalaecus, Acontius and Cydippe, Phrygius and Pieria, and
Diana Lucina) and she will have played an important role in the shifting
tension between unity and disparateness with which Callimachus plays.
Many centuries later, Aristaenetus wrote prose versions of both Acontius
and Cydippe and Phrygius and Pieria in the first book of his Epistles,
and Callimachus clearly designed the two narratives as a pair, though
(typically) he did not actually juxtapose them within Book 3; both pairs of
young people are united under the eye of Artemis, and as Acontius and
Cydippe begins with the names of the lovers (fr. 67.12), so Phrygius and
Pieria seems to close with them (fr. 83.3). Whereas, however, Acontius
and Cydippe focuses upon the time before the marriage, the narrative
centre of Phrygius and Pieria lies in what happened after the happy
26 It is tempting to read Q[ at fr. 110.91, which would reinforce the ring around Books 3 and 4, cf.
Hunter (1998) 116 n. 9.
couple were united.28 Clearly, then, Callimachus invites us to make mean-
ing as we read by constructing significance in the patterns we find.29
Callimachus rings the changes in how poetic voice links or divides one
aition from another. The Fountains of Argos concludes with a formal
farewell to the springs:

C C;$Z `$%(' f#
g @ C ;( ) # ! $
* # B 5 J #% ('
Lady Amymone and dear Physadeia and Hippe and Automate, hail, most ancient
dwellings of the nymphs and, Pelasgian maidens, flow brilliantly! (Callimachus fr.
66.710)
The closural #% (' (i.e. Argive) seals the aition by identifying its set-
ting. The next hexameter, separated in our principal witness by a coronis,30
introduces a new narrative, but the voice of the poet carries over:
, h^ ''M C;
)
#
i
=$'" 5 )
!) #.
Love himself taught Akontios, when the boy burned for the lovely maiden Kydippe,
the art . . . (Callimachus fr. 67. 13)
A similar seal (note the final j(%) is placed upon the aition of the
Athenian Thesmophoria by a kind of closing QED:
3] 3 % C A% [P]% *'[%]
]5 A k %
$
]
% # Q # #%%
]X $ !4 C;U%
For this reason it is in no way permitted for the virgins of Attica to behold with their
eyes the rites of Demeter Thesmophoros before they have come with a husband
to the marriage bed (Callimachus fr. 63. 912)
The immediately following episode, however, is spoken as we eventually
learn by the long-dead Simonides.31 With a shock, we come to see that
we have intruded upon the great mans train of thought:
'C .] =(
% ,
% &[]'

] %$ Q9 (%U
]
%) #.
28 Annette Harder points out that Pieria obviously played an important speaking role in her poem,
whereas Cydippe remains silent (cf. below, p. 66).
29 Fr. 114 (= 64 Massimilla) might be an example of juxtaposed Apolline aitia, but too much is uncertain
about this fragment for confidence.
30 Cf. POxy 2211 fr. 1 r. 31 On this episode cf. Bing (1988) 6770.
3 Aetiology 49
Not even the moving of Kamarina32 would threaten so great an evil as the moving
of a pious mans tomb. For once my tomb (suffered this fate) . . . (Callimachus fr.
64.13)
Here, it is tempting to think, is a very clear example of poetry which is
' , not continuous.33
3 aetiology
Aetiology, the explanation of the reasons for names, customs and cults, had
a long history in Greek poetry before the Hellenistic age,34 but becomes a
very prominent feature of Hellenistic and Roman poetry. The reasons for
this are, as is well known, complex and have been placed in the context
of a general Callimachean poetics of displacement by Daniel Selden 35
but if we ask after the aetiology of the Aitia itself, more than one answer
presents itself. The aetiological project of poets such as Callimachus and
Apollonius takes its place within both the totalising Ptolemaic culture of the
Alexandrian centre and the world of the Hellenistic cities, with their own
local traditions, cults, and politics. If Callimachus work is in one sense
a contribution to canon formation, a revision of the inherited Hesiodic
canon of myth and explanatory story, we must ask about the relationship
between this revised canon and the inherited conglomerates of local tradi-
tion. Why were some stories chosen and others not? To what extent does
this Callimachean act of krisis, of inclusion and exclusion, replay (and how
deliberately?) the processes by which some local narratives had acquired
pan-Hellenic status and others had either disappeared or were destined to
remain in the realm of the quaint? To what extent, then, is this poetic return
to the local and the particular not pure antiquarianism, the Librarian at
play, but rather a politically and culturally charged act of repetition? The
mythic origins of cities, and the links between them which mythic nar-
ratives created, remained real and vital forces in inter-state diplomacy; if
32 The citizens of Sicilian Kamarina had been warned: Dont move Kamarina, but they drained nearby
lake Kamarina with disastrous results.
33 Cf. below, p. 69.
34 Cf. G. Codrignani, L aition nella poesia greca prima di Callimaco Convivium 26 (1958) 527
45; F. Graf, Greek Mythology (BaltimoreLondon 1993) 11018; Veyne (1988) 246; M. Fantuzzi,
Aitiologie in der griechischen Dichtung in Der neue Pauly I (Stuttgart 1996) 36971. For the large
modern literature on the theory of aetiology see the survey in Loehr (1996) 138; valuable also in
this connection are the opening chapter of K. S. Myers, Ovids Causes (Michigan 1994) and F. Graf,
Romische Kultaitia und die Konstruktion religioser Vergangenheit in M. Flashar, H.-J. Gehrke,
E. Heinrich (eds.), Retrospektive (Munich 1996) 12535.
35 Selden (1998); cf. also Y. L. Too, The Idea of Ancient Literary Criticism (Oxford 1998) chapter 4.
much about Callimachean aetiology seems obviously ironic or playful, we
must not imagine that all Hellenistic aetiology shared these characteristics.
More specifically, the collection, and hence preservation, of the past
must have something to do with that consciousness of belatedness which is
everywhere present in the poetry and scholarship of the age. No doubt, also,
Ptolemaic interest in the wider Greek world gave a leading court poet ample
excuse to research and write about local antiquities. So, too, the dominance
in elite poetry of the aetiological mode must take its place within the slow
development which saw mythology join myth; the collection, writing
down and comparison of mythical material was part of the great system-
atisation of knowledge which so characterises the Hellenistic and Roman
periods. Myths, like customs, constitutions and courtesans, were sorted by
various methods of ordering and recorded for posterity. The Alexandrian
version of this activity almost always involved not merely collection, but
also the exercise of judgement, krisis, whether the matter was the authentic-
ity of a work of literature, the explanation of a Homeric hapax or the origin
of a curious custom. Aetiology, as we find it in Callimachus and Apollonius
is, at one level, the manifestation in the world of myth and custom of an
all-pervasive habit of mind in Alexandrian scholarship. This is, of course,
not to say that it is a mode unique to Alexandrian scholarship; far from it
there is much, for example, that recalls the critical methods of Herodotus 36
but it is crucial to the appreciation of Callimachus practice to recognise
that it is a very self-conscious transference to poetry of a manner redolent
of other modes of discourse.
The aetiological mode of explanation suits the boundless curiosity of the
scholar and the child Callimachus two most prominent modes of self-
presentation but it also offers a world which is invented and then remains
without change. The idea that customs and rites have a single explanation
and then remain without evolution of form or meaning might seem to us
a very naive indeed, childlike one, and one which we might be loath
to ascribe to Callimachus, however widespread this pattern of thought was
in antiquity (cf. the idea of the first inventor). At one level, of course,
such a simplified explanatory model is rather easier to turn into poetry
than anything more subtle would be, but Callimachus himself leaves us in
no doubt that the model is not to be invested with too great an authority.
The quotation of variant versions and variant sources, the poets parodically
confident parade of knowledge, and the way in which aitia constantly spill
over and get in each others way, make the playful quality of the poetic
36 Cf. O. Murray, Herodotus and Hellenistic Culture CQ 22 (1972) 20013.

material very clear; we can hardly doubt that the Aitia are intended for an
audience well-versed in the manner of ritual reconstruction, as practised
by both scholarly curiosity and patriotic fantasy. The very variety of Calli-
machus sources and the localities on which he draws, certainly at one level,
construct a readership of (paradoxically) common purpose every Greek of
every origin has his story to tell 37 but we should be wary of seeking grand
explanations for the aetiological mode in terms of a desire to compensate
for an alleged sense of deracination felt by Alexandrian Greeks, through
the forging of close links between the past and an observable present.38 The
fact that in what survives of the poetry (as opposed to the Diegeseis), the
poet, like a modern social anthropologist, always uses the present tense
Why is it that X does Y? is to be connected with his self-presentation,
particularly in Books 1 and 2, as a man and scholar who literally lives in
the past, whose intellectual horizons are determined by what he has read;
for the narrator (as opposed to the poet) of the Aitia, these customs really
do still exist, because they are recorded and one can point to authorities
for them. The dream of rejuvenation with which he introduces the poem
is symbolic at several levels, one of which is a rejection of the present his
real life is in the past. It is, however, important to remember that different,
often apparently incompatible, ways of looking at the world coexist in the
minds of men of all ages.39 Callimachus is not to be turned into a modern
rationalist or sociologist; he may well have more personal belief invested
in the aetiological mode of explanation than we would be happy with, but
every discourse he touches erotic, religious, political becomes in his
hands a vehicle for a distinctively ironic way of viewing the world, and
aetiology is no different.
4 hesiod and callimachus

The aetiology of Books 1 and 2, at least, of Callimachus poem also has
its own specific aition. The opening sequence presented Callimachus as a
new Hesiod, meeting the Muses on Mt Helicon and receiving information
37 Cf. M. Asper, Gruppen und Dichter: zu Programmatik und Adressatenbezug bei Kallimachos A&A
47 (2001) 84116.
38 Cf. the otherwise helpful accounts of Zanker (1983) 1323 and (1987) 1223. Such a motivation is
not far from the patriotic piety which Veyne (1988) 45 ascribes to Callimachus; this hardly does
justice to the complex tone of the Aitia. Veyne is closer to the mark when he describes mythology
(as opposed to myths) as acquiring the prestige of the elite knowledge that marks its possessor as
belonging to a certain class.
39 The matter has been very much discussed; the work of Geoffrey Lloyd is fundamental. See also
Veyne (1988), Feeney (1998) chapter 1.
from them; that the style and metre are entirely un-Hesiodic is only what
we would have expected from Callimachus. During the third century,
the shrine of the Muses below Helicon and the games which took place
there, the Mouseia, were reorganised, if not actually invented,40 and Hesiod
enjoyed something like hero-status in association with the Muses, whose
fame he had promulgated.41 The cult found some notable patrons during
the century, most famously Ptolemy IV Philopator and his wife Arsinoe
III, but perhaps also Philadelphus and his sister-wife. Unfortunately, the
identity of the Arsinoe who married her brother (Pausanias 9.31.1), whose
statue, seated on an ostrich, Pausanias saw on Helicon, is disputed, but
the wife of Philadelphus is not impossible.42 Be that as it may, there is
solid evidence for political connections between Ptolemaic Alexandria and
Boeotia at various stages of the century,43 and Callimachus revival of the
Boeotian poet is very likely to have had contemporary significance.
The poem proper presumably began with the first aetiological inter-
change with the Muses, in which Klio explains to the poet why the Graces
are worshipped on Paros without pipe music and the wearing of garlands;
Minos was sacrificing to the Graces when word came of the death of his
son, and rather than disturb the ritual he merely stopped the music and
took off his garland. In another sense, however, that aition seems itself to
have been proemial to the main body of the poem.44 It concludes with an
invocation to the Graces:
## ) # % 'C :4%% #Z%
! 5 5) l $#b % .
Come now and wipe your hands, rich with oil, upon my elegies, so that they may
last for many a year. (Callimachus fr. 9.1314 M.)
It seems easier to imagine this programmatic wish spoken by the poet
outside the framework of the dream rather than by the young dreamer,
but there can be no certainty. Nevertheless, an important similarity with
40 Cf. R. Lamberton, Plutarch, Hesiod, and the Mouseia of Thespiai ICS 13 (1988) 491504. The
standard collection of evidence is A. Schachter, Cults of Boeotia 2. Herakles to Poseidon (BICS Suppl.
38.2, London 1986) 14779.
41 Cf. the essays of Calame, Hurst and Veneri in A. Hurst and A. Schachter (eds.), La montagne des
Muses (Geneva 1996).
42 Cf. Cameron (1995) 142.
43 Cf. S. Barbantani, Competizioni poetiche tespiesi e mecenatismo tolemaico Lexis 18 (2000) 12772.
44 For the Graces as part of the opening sequence cf. Massimilla (1996) 2534, Harder (1998) 1067.
The presence of the Graces, alongside the Muses, in the Epilogue (fr. 112) and the apparent echoes
of fr. 7 at the end of the Argonautica and in Catullus 1 are particularly suggestive. Serious problems,
of course, remain about what followed vv. 1314. For further echoes of this passage in subsequent
literature, cf. G. Massimilla, Linvocazione di Callimaco alle Cariti nel primo libro degli Aitia (fr. 7,
914 Pf.) in Proceedings of the XXth International Congress of Papyrology (Copenhagen 1994) 3225.
the opening of Hesiods Theogony is observable. In that poem, an opening
invocation and description of the Muses (121) is followed by the account
of their epiphany and instructions to the poet (2235); the poet then obeys
their instruction (34) by singing first of the Muses themselves and their gifts
to men (36103), before invoking them afresh:
!
) '
'C e
%% &'4U
# ' C &( e , m *X
) #.
Hail, children of Zeus, grant lovely song! Sing of the holy race of the ever-living
deathless ones . . . (Hesiod, Theogony 1045)
The prayer for e
%% &'4 corresponds to Callimachus wish for
elegies over which the Graces have wiped their hands.45 Hesiod then asks
the Muses to sing of the holy race of the ever-living deathless ones, i.e. the
subject of the Theogony proper (10515); the beginning, marked as such by
Z%, follows immediately:
i X Z% G( CU
n5 C Q% ) #.
First of all was Chaos, but then broad-breasted Earth . . . (Hesiod, Theogony 11617)
In a poet such as Callimachus, we will not look for simple replication, and
the texts are far too broken to allow confidence, but the similarity of the
patterns should be apparent.46 That Callimachus recognised v. 116 as the
beginning of the Theogony is suggested by what survives of his account of
Hesiods meeting with the Muses:
# C K! ]M l$
67%
' 0$% +%, V C -%
] e G( %[
. . . when the group of Muses met the shepherd Hesiod as he was grazing his flocks
by the footprint of the swift horse . . . the creation of Chaos . . . (Callimachus fr.
4.13 M.)
Here the Theogony is evoked, as ancient poems standardly were, by its
opening.47 Moreover, just as Hesiod performs as a theogonic poet before
the start of the Theogony proper, so Callimachus Muses explain the Graces
45 Lynn (1995) 1512 well observes the importance of the opening structure of the Theogony, but links
vv. 10415 with the Musenanruf , which linked Prologue to Dream rather than with the appeal to
the Graces, cf. further below.
46 The Hesiodic pattern lends further colour to Lobels ] C at the head of fr. 7.15.
47 For Chaos as the beginning of the Theogony cf. also Virg. Georg. 4.347, Ovid, Met. 1.7, Barchiesi
(1997b) 2323. If v. 5 (cf. WD 265) similarly stands for the whole of the Works and Days (cf. Pfeiffer
and Massimilla ad loc.), then the choice of verse may be connected with the recurrent theme of
malignity, cf. Cameron (1995) 12930.
to the poet before the start of the poem proper. It is a fair guess that the
subject of the Graces did not just leap into the poets mind, but arose from
something the Muses themselves said to him; it is the Graces who accom-
pany the Muses, not only throughout Greek literature,48 but specifically in
the Theogony prologue (v. 64), and it may be thought a very Hellenistic
procedure to choose to elaborate upon what is but a brief mention in the
archaic model.49 Moreover, it is the Hesiodic model which also serves to
explain the poets choice of subject.50 The Theogony tells of the ancestry
of the Olympians, their coming to power, and the functions assigned to
each; to some extent, it also covers the birth of the heroes and demi-gods.
Although the Theogony, like the Works and Days, has a strong aetiological
direction, what it does not do, with one major exception, is to tell the aitia
of the various cults and rites by which men honour the gods and heroes;51
Callimachus Aitia is thus a kind of sequel to the Theogony, which takes the
story to the next stage in this progression, the existence of gods precedes
the existence of cult and religion, rather than (as some Greek thinkers
held) being a product of it. The major exception in the Theogony is, of
course, the account of how Prometheus tried to trick Zeus and, along with
all mankind, was punished for it (535616); Prometheus trick of making
Zeus choose the bones rather than the flesh of a sacrificed animal is clearly
in essence an aition for the nature of Greek sacrifice. This, however, remains
merely implicit, and the episode itself clearly marked off by ( at
the beginning (535) and a closing moral (61316) explicitly tells of why
Prometheus was punished, and of the origin from Pandora of the race of
women, not of why men sacrifice as they do. Nevertheless, here at the heart
of the Theogony, Callimachus found the seed from which his own poem
grew.
As the Theogony shows a world-order coming into being, so the Aitia
presents a series of second-order refinements and local variations within
the Hesiodic structure, most notably within the Pan-Hellenic sacrificial
order established by Prometheus. Aetiology takes the place of genealogy
as the predominant explanatory mode, but the similarities between the
two are as important as the differences. Genealogy, at least as practised in
Greece, is an even more strongly teleological narrative form than aetiology,
48 Cf. e.g. E. Schwarzenberg, Die Grazien (Bonn 1966) 445.

49 The scholiast on Theogony 64 claims that there was a shrine of the Graces on Helikon; this would
cetainly be an obvious way for them to enter the poem, but there is no other evidence for this cult.
They are, of course, very much at home elsewhere in Boeotia (Orchomenos etc.).
50 Cf. e.g. Harder (1988) 5.
51 It is noteworthy that K and its cognates do not occur in our remains of Hesiod.
and particularly Callimachean aetiology, with its frequently disconcerting
randomness.52 Genealogy constructs the past out of the present for partic-
ular contextualised purposes. Both genealogy and aetiology leap from the
crucial beginning, whether legendary founder or one-time ritual event, to
the present, with a tendency to elide all time in between. Moreover, the
Hesiodic concern with sequence and order, the telling M &!, from the
beginning (Theog. 45), is replaced in the Aitia by a sequencing dependent
(as far as we can tell) upon the interests of the poet-enquirer. The imma-
nent teleology of the Theogony has been replaced by a purely human, poetic
ordering.
The Theogony brings its story down to Zeus matings with women of
the generation before the Trojan War, or even later, depending on where
the end of the poem is placed. Nevertheless, unlike the Works and Days, the
main body of the poem remains very firmly in what it is fair to think
of as mythic time. The first aition of Callimachus poem, however, is set
in the time of Minos, the great Aegean king who lived long before the
Trojan War, but to whom Thucydides (1.4.1) gives special prominence as
the earliest man of whom we know by report (&4) to have established a
fleet and whose rule marked a turning-point in Aegean history (1.8.2). Did
Callimachus use Minos as a further marker that his poem was to become
the standard account of periods covered by oral and written tradition, as
Hesiod provided the authority for earlier events? The fact that the story
of Minos is followed by narratives of the Argonauts and of Heracles, and
that the whole four-book poem finishes with Callimachus own patrons,
Euergetes and Berenice, lends colour to the idea that the Aitia is to be
seen as a complete human history to match the divine history of the
Theogony.53 Ovids Metamorphoses subsequently combines both by moving
from chaos to Augustus.
The Hesiodic model, then, provides one aition for Callimachean aetiol-
ogy. Any full account must wait until we know more of how the narrative
of the dream and the aition of the Graces was actually conducted. It is
clear, however, that Callimachus made much of the naive enthusiasm of
the young scholar, whose questioning of the Muses gave ample opportunity
for the epideixis of his own knowledge.54 Thus, he tells the Muses that he
52 Cf. Selden (1998) 3214.

53 It must be stressed that this chronological frame is just that, a frame. Within the frame no such
progression can be traced; thus the Argonauts reappear immediately before the Coma Berenices.
There is a useful survey of the chronological scope of the Aitia in A. Harder, The Invention of Past,
Present and Future in Callimachus Aetia Hermes 131 (2003) 290306.
54 Cf. e.g. Lynn (1995) 16971.
knows of three competing genealogies for the Graces, in which, however, the
father (Zeus) was always the same; the authoritative answer given by Klio
(Dionysos and the Naxian nymph Koronis) was entirely different.55 Why
did Callimachus place this form of exchange near the head of the poem?
One obvious answer lies in the characterisation of the narrator (see below),
but another lies in the nature of Callimachean aetiology itself. Having to
choose between mythological (particularly genealogical) variants was not
an experience unique to Hellenistic poets, and it is a process to which Calli-
machus constantly recurs in the Hymns, but placed at the head of the Aitia
this procedure threatens to destabilise the undertaking before it has really
got off the ground. The open acknowledgement of competing authorities
both sets the poem in a context of agonistic scholarship and ironises, as we
shall see Callimachus doing again, the very pursuit of truth. Truth is the
subject of perhaps the three most famous verses of the Theogony:
. $#) (C # ! ) % L)
K' : Q' ## # Q% 5)
K' ' C) cC # ) &# Q%%.
Shepherds of the field, wretched disgraces, mere bellies we know how to speak
many lies which are like true things, and we know, when we wish, to speak the
truth. (Hesiod, Theogony 268)
It may be thought unlikely that the opening sequence of the Aitia failed to
make some allusion to this celebrated address by the Muses. One exploita-
tion at least lies in the competing genealogies of the Graces. Genealogy
itself, however, is the prime structuring mode of the Theogony, whereas it
plays a much smaller role in Callimachus poem; its prominence in the first
aition of the poem should, therefore, be seen as a further Hesiodic marker,
a trace of the ancestor. Moreover, the parentage of the Graces which Klio
reveals is amusingly different from the Hesiodic answer to the same ques-
tion (Theog. 9079).56 Hesiod may provide the literary frame, but he is no
guide to truth; when Klio and her sisters told Hesiod of the parentage of
the Graces, they were lying, as they had precisely warned the poet that they
could (Theog. 27).57 Hesiod almost certainly was not identified by name
55 Schol. Flor. 2935 (Pfeiffer I p. 13, Massimilla (1996) 76). Massimilla (1996) 247 notes that Klios
answer may have a Ptolemaic connection; this would certainly strengthen its links with the Epilogue.
The exact relation between the enquiry concerning the Parian rite and that concerning the parentage
of the Graces remains unclear: were there two separate questions, or merely one question and one
answer? The discussion of this passage by Loehr (1996) 1968 is unsatisfactory. For Ovids reuse of
this passage cf. e.g. A. Barchiesi, PCPS 37 (1991) 8.
56 Cf. Reinsch-Werner (1976) 390.
57 Callimachus in fact uses the Hesiodic genealogy elsewhere (cf. fr. 384.45). On the importance of
possible Hesiodic untruthfulness within the subsequent didactic tradition, cf. Barchiesi (1997b)
1836.
in the Callimachean text he is concealed behind the innocent-looking
e 'C . . . L some others have claimed of fr.6 (= 8 M.) 58 but the
point would hardly be lost on any reader. Who is to say that Klio and her
sisters are not lying again? The genealogy of the Graces, no more than the
genealogy of Eros, is a subject upon which no one authoritative opinion
can be given; Greek society had always known this, but scholarly habits
and constant recourse to written records reinforced this truth. As for the
genealogy which Klio offers, a Naxian parentage (and a Naxian source?)
may make sense in the context of an aition concerned with the famous cult
of the Graces on the nearby island of Paros, but the narrowly local speci-
ficity of the explanation59 contrast the rival pan-Hellenic explanations,
in which the mother is either Hera, or a daughter of Ocean or of Ouranos
sits in slightly uneasy juxtaposition with the pan-Hellenic worship of the
Graces. It is almost as though Callimachus here reflects upon the relation
between local cult and Olympian figure; the form of the aition presupposes
the oddity of the Parian worship in the context of the universal cult of
the Graces (cf. fr. 7.911 = 9.911 M.), but these Graces have a very local
parentage.
It is particularly unfortunate that we are even less well informed about
the other clear case where competing aetiologies were explicitly listed. In
Book 3, Callimachus dealt with the question of why women experiencing
difficulty in childbirth call for assistance upon the virgin Artemis; the sur-
viving summary indicates that he offered three explanations: either because
[Artemis herself ] was born [painlessly], or because on Zeus instructions
Eileithyia bestowed this special function upon her, or because she freed
her own mother from labour pains when she was giving birth to Apollo
(Diegeseis i 2736). The wording of the summary suggests that the poet
himself did not choose between these explanations, each of which is of
itself perfectly sensible. This passage has been interpreted as offering a
complex three-part aetiology covering Artemis own birth, prerogatives,
and paradigmatic intervention, but it would at least be surprising to find
Callimachus concerned to provide a complete and internally consistent
account.60 Less surprising would be a set of competing aetiologies which
both over-explain the ritual phenomenon and leave it entirely unexplained.
58 The placing of this book fragment here is conjectural, but impossible to resist.
59 Massimilla suggests a Ptolemaic motive in view of the importance of Dionysus for the royal house;
both Naxos and Paros were within the orbit of Ptolemaic influence in the Aegean. At Diod. Sic.
5.52.23 Koronis is one of three Naxian nymphs who nursed the infant Dionysus, and as a result of
this the inhabitants had the gods gratitude (!(): is this a rationalising origin for the story of
the Charites? At Arg. 4.4245 the Graces are said to have woven a cloak for Dionysus on Dia (i.e.
Naxos), but it is unclear whether we are to imagine him as their nursling or their lover.
60 As suggested by Loehr (1996) 1956.
Be that as it may, what binds this example to that of the genealogy of the
Graces is not only the excess of aetiological material available, but also the
excess of the poets knowledge. The aetiological impulse here grows not
from ignorance, but from knowledge; or, we might rather say that it is
knowledge which brings the painful awareness of ignorance.
Even here, we may sense a Hesiodic dimension. In Works and Days,
Hesiod juxtaposes two explanations of why life is hard: the Pandora myth
and the account of the Five Ages. Modern scholars have debated at great
length whether those explanations are competing or complementary,61 but
from the perspective of a later age, it must have been clear enough that
they were different explanatory models one strictly aetiological, together
with the discontinuities of time entailed in such a model, and the other a
diachronic process. Hesiod never explicitly chooses between them, perhaps
because truth encompasses both; scholar-poets, however, claim to need
single right answers.
It has often been remarked that, whereas in Homer and Hesiod (par-
ticularly the Theogony) it is the Muses, rather than the poet, who have
the knowledge, in Callimachus there is a much more even distribution.
Whereas Homer allotted all knowledge to the Muses (Iliad 2.486), the
young Callimachus immediately tells the Muses what he knows, i.e. that
there are at least three competing genealogies for the Graces. Most memo-
rably, he prefaces a request for information about Zankle with a parade of
his knowledge of the foundation legends of virtually all other Sicilian cities
(fr. 43 = 50 M.); I shall tell you . . . I know . . . I know . . . I can explain
articulate the parade. At one level, this catalogue lays bare once again the
process of selection which is always on view in the Aitia the poet may
know these things, but we are none the wiser 62 but, at another level, the
whole project of completeness is exposed for what it is: as we shall see also
with the summary of Xenomedes Cean history in fr. 75,63 catalogue style
in fact advertises, rather than conceals, silences. The poet may indeed find
any gap in his knowledge intolerable, but the undertaking is as doomed as
the wish to make decisions between competing aitia. This poet is, however,
nothing if not indefatigable: cf. fr. 31b (= 35 M.), So she spoke, and at once
my thumos questioned them again. No sooner has Klio finished explaining
about the nameless founder of Zankle than the poet has another question
for her:
61 For some guidelines and bibliography cf. T. Rosenmeyer, Hesiod and Historiography Hermes 85
(1957) 25785, C. Rowe, JHS 103 (1983) 1323.
62 Cf. below, p. 64; for a rather different perspective cf. Harder (1998) 102.
o[] 1 X # ) O 'C [, $]%
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So she stopped speaking, and I wanted to know this too for my amazement was
nourished: Why does Haliartus, Cadmus city, celebrate the Theodaisia, a Cretan
festival, by the waters of the Kissousa . . .? (Callimachus fr. 43.847 (= 50.847
M.))
What is the nature of this (9) wonder? Not, I think, merely won-
der . . . at hearing the answer to so obscure a question,64 for we are now
well into the second book, nor merely a just wonder at the rich variety
of cultic practices to be found, or at the range of Klios wisdom. This
wonder causes the poet to ask about a Boeotian practice with no obvious
link to the Sicilian episode which has preceded. The apparent randomness,
emphasised by the parenthetic structure of vv. 845, is important. At one
level, this is mimetic of the jerkiness and brief attention span, as well as the
curiosity, of the child (cf. fr. 1.56), but at another, Callimachus exploits
an aetiology of philosophy (desire for knowledge) which we find in both
Plato (Theaetetus 155d) and a famous passage of Aristotle:
It is owing to their wonder (, $(_ ) that men both now begin and at first
began to philosophise; they wondered originally at the obvious difficulties, then
advanced little by little and stated difficulties about the greater matters, e.g. about
the phenomena of the moon and those of the sun and the stars, and about the
genesis of the universe. And a man who is puzzled and wonders (&
$(_) thinks himself ignorant (whence even the lover of myth is in a sense
a lover of wisdom, for the myth is composed of wonders); therefore since they
philosophised in order to escape from ignorance, evidently they were pursuing
science in order to know, and not for any utilitarian end. And this is confirmed by
the facts; for it was when almost all the necessities of life and the things that make
for comfort and recreation had been secured, that such knowledge began to be
sought. Evidently then we do not seek it for the sake of any other advantage; but
as the man is free, we say, who exists for his own sake and not for anothers, so we
pursue this as the only free science, for it alone exists for its own sake. (Aristotle,
Metaphysics 1.982b 1227, trans. W. D. Ross)
Philosophical enquiry has its origins in wonder, and Callimachus
enquiries are no different. This famous passage of the Metaphysics, how-
ever, throws into relief two particularly significant aspects of those enquiries.
64 Hutchinson (1988) 44. This in fact is the only occurrence of (9 in Callimachus, and
and its cognates are not found; elsewhere, (9 often connotes a kind of terror, but here it seems
little more than wonder.
Aristotle traces a progression from wondering enquiries about small mat-
ters to the larger subjects of astronomy. Into which category would Calli-
machus enquiry about the conduct of the Cretan Theodaisia at Haliartos
in Boeotia fall? Moreover, Aristotle clearly connects the growth of phi-
losophy with wonder about observable astronomical phenomena the
sun, the stars etc.; the ancients at least seem to have linked $(_
with the - root, seeing.65 The objects of Callimachus wonder are, more
often than not, things that he has never seen, sometimes explicitly so
(cf. fr. 178.2730 = 89. 2730 M.).66 In many cases, it may be doubted
whether any one of Callimachus generation had seen these practices. Thus,
it is the gulf between the inherited intellectual structure and the use to which
it is put that most clearly imperils the whole procedure. Secondly, Aristotle
stresses that philosophy is pursued for its own sake; it is thus like the free
man who does not exist for the sake of someone else, and (we may infer) it
is also an activity appropriate only to the free man. There is more at stake
for Callimachus here than merely another battle in the endless war over
whether poetry serves any useful purpose or not. Elsewhere, he uses the
rhetoric of freedom v. slavery to characterise his intellectual enquiries,67
and so here the wonder which prompts him to question the Muses is
part of the complex presentation of an intellectualism which has become a
crucial diagnostic sign for the free man.
5 acontius and cydippe

The longest continuous passage to have survived from the Aitia is the story
of Acontius and Cydippe in Book 3. This narrative was very influential
in Roman poetry (Virgil, Eclogue 2 and 10; Propertius 1.18; Ovid, Heroides
2021), and a surviving prose version from late antiquity (Aristainetos 1.10)
is clearly derived ultimately from Callimachus. The story is as follows:
Acontius of Ceos fell in love with Cydippe of Naxos when he saw her at the
festival of Apollo on Delos. He inscribed on an apple an oath by Artemis
to marry Acontius, threw the apple towards Cydippe and her nurse, and
Cydippe trapped herself by reading out the oath in the holy precinct of the
goddess. When, back on Naxos, Cydippes father tried to marry his daughter
off to another suitor, she repeatedly fell ill, until her father consulted Apollo
and learned the truth; the god told him to fulfil Cydippes oath, and so
65 Cf. Et. Mag. 443.3748 Gaisford.
66 This passage may in fact have stood close to the appeal to wonder near the head of Book 2, cf.
below, p. 80.
67 Fr. 178.19, cf. below, p. 78.
the couple were married. The account of Acontius lovesickness, which
caused him to seek the solitude of the countryside, where he poured out
his woes and carved Cydippes name on trees, was particularly important
for later poets, but only a few verses of this survive. What does survive is
an extended account of Cydippes fathers unsuccessful attempts to arrange
his daughters wedding (fr. 75. 149).68 The first surviving verses take us
straight to the self-conscious practice of aetiology:
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. . . and already the maiden was in bed with the boy, as the rite prescribed that
a bride should sleep her pre-wedding sleep with a boy whose parents were both
alive. For they say that once upon a time dog, dog, my shameless soul, you would
sing even of what is not lawful. It is very lucky for you that you have not seen
the mysteries of the dread goddess, since you would have vomited out their story
too. Much learning is in truth a terrible curse, when someone cannot control their
tongue. This child really does have a knife.69 (Callimachus fr. 75. 19)
Although the opening context is broken, it is not unreasonable to believe
that v. 1 teases us with the possibility that Cydippe is already enjoying a
wedding night with someone other than Acontius; in fact, however, she
is merely taking part in an obscure Naxian rite by which a bride spent the
night before her marriage with a pre-pubertal boy. In accordance with the
raison detre of the Aitia, the poet starts to tell the origin of the custom an
imitation of the youthful lovemaking of Zeus and Hera (Iliad 14.2956)
but breaks off when he realises, with archly proper piety, that to tell such a
story would be blasphemous. The idea of the poet as a child is recurrent in
the Aitia, but his shifting of the blame to his thumos and his lament about
the difficult burden of much knowledge in a poem expressly devised
to display that knowledge! are not merely witty, but again call attention
68 Recent discussions include Cairns (1979) 11720, Hopkinson (1988) 10210, Harder (1990) and
(2002) 1959, 2024, Lynn (1995) 192262, Cameron (1995) 25661, 3512, Nikitinski (1996) 12835,
P. Rosenmeyer, Love Letters in Callimachus, Ovid and Aristaenetus or the Sad Fate of a Mailorder
Bride MD 36 (1996) 931.
69 A reference to the proverb: Dont give a child a knife.
to the process of selection which must lie at the heart of any such poem.70
Moreover, the poets lament for his much knowledge follows immediately
upon the statement that he does not know about the rites of Demeter;
the poetic voice constantly undercuts itself with brilliant and bewildering
speed. Some aitia, however, are omitted for lack of space, others for lack of
courage. For they say that once upon a time Hera . . . (v. 4) finds a close
parallel in an anonymous Sotadean verse preserved in Hephaestion:
g 7 % , $
They say that once upon a time Zeus who delights in thunder . . . Hera (Sotades
fr. 16 Powell)
It is an attractive speculation71 that Sotades himself was the author of this
verse and that it comes from perhaps indeed was the first verse of a
poem which laughed at Philadelphus marriage to his sister Arsinoe (cf.
Sotades fr. 1 Powell); if so, Callimachus allusion to it would evoke the fate
of Sotades, and thus emphasise the real dangers to which the poets much
knowledge was exposing him.
After one false start, the poet begins his narrative all over again, but
this time from the apparently pious subject of sacrifice. The image of the
sudden anguish of the sacrificial cattle as they catch a reflected glimpse of
the blade which is to end their lives (vv. 1011) is a startling intrusion of
the pathetic fallacy after the witty self-mockery of the previous verse. This
empathy with the cattle undercuts the immediately preceding claim to strict
piety, a claim already made problematic by the paradoxical self-makarismos
of someone who has not been initiated at Eleusis; contrast the confident
assertion of the archaic Hymn to Demeter:
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Blessed the mortal man who has seen these things. He who has not been initiated
in the holy things, who has no share of them, never partakes of like things when
he is dead amidst the dank gloom. (Homeric Hymn to Demeter 4802)
The archaic hymns aetiological tale would have fitted perfectly into the
Aitia, but some things are best covered in silence . . . The Hippocratic
dismissal in v. 14 of the divine origins of epilepsy is moreover a further
70 It is tempting to believe that #Z%% tongue also suggests gloss and thus looks forward to the
rare # which follows; here is someone who really cannot control his use of glossai.
71 Cf. Pretagostini (1984) 144, Lynn (1995) 20415.
reason to doubt the conventional piety of the poet.72 Such a dismissal,
which gestures towards the writing of a further, medical aetiology73 , is
also of course a display of the poets much knowledge; in this case, it
really is a difficult burden, because the poet has got it wrong Cydippes
illness does in fact have a divine cause, namely the oath to Artemis.74 These
verses, therefore, display a brilliant control of poetic voice, exploiting the
claims to omniscience by a poet who sets himself up to narrate origins, but
is defeated by the multiple ramifications of the material he chooses. The
Apolline voice of the poet, who recounts Cydippes history with an interest
in symptoms and duration which would suit a real doctor, then gives way
to Apollo, the divine doctor himself, but it is an Apollo who speaks very like
Callimachus. The listing of Artemis haunts, the concern with Cean ritual,
and the implicit etymology of Etesian from * 5%75 point clearly to
the distinctive voice of the Aitia; the elaborate paraphrase for the Etesian
winds, by which many quail are entangled in the linen clouds (i.e. nets),
adapts the obscure language of an oracle to Callimachus extraordinary eye
for everyday detail. The poets special relationship with Apollo, a familiar
feature of Callimachean poetics, here provides a speech whose unity of tone
and voice stands in sharp contrast to what has preceded. All the problems
of aetiology disappear when you let Apollo do the talking: medicine offers
an alternative aetiological structure which also seeks to explain the present
from the past, but it is doomed to failure unless it carries Apollos personal
guarantee.
If the earlier verses dramatised the problem of selection which poetry
of this kind imposes, so too does the summary in the final twenty-eight
verses of the prose chronicle of the Cean historian Xenomedes, named by
Callimachus as his source for the story of Acontius and Cydippe.76 When
confronted with such expanse of time, the poet can dawdle or hurry at
will. As we have seen, the problem with aetiology is not merely that one
custom may have different explanations, but that almost everything could
72 The relevant text is On the Sacred Disease 15. It is noteworthy that when the Hippocratic author
exemplifies other diseases which seem to him just as divine as epilepsy he cites quotidian, tertian
and quartan ( 5) fevers (chapter 1). It is tempting to believe that this lies behind Cydippes
second illness.
73 For a collection of medical passages which use *# or its cognates cf. Loehr (1996) 32.
74 Cf. Nikitinski (1996) 135.
75 Cf. Hyginus, De astr. 2.6 (p. 27 Vire), < Arg. 2.498527b. It is not the least of the interesting problems
concerning the relation between Callimachus and Apollonius in the matter of the etesian winds that
the latter does not make his etymology (annual) explicit; in paraphrasing Apollonius account, <
Arg. 2.498527a felt compelled to add the explanation which Apollonius has omitted.
76 Cf. G. Huxley, Xenomedes of Keos GRBS 6 (1965) 23545, R. L. Fowler, Early Greek Mythography
(Oxford 2000) 3704.
require an aition; the poet must therefore select and control. Unlike the
archaic catalogue poet, Callimachus professes no need or desire to tell every-
thing, because the poet is now no longer the repository of the communitys
knowledge; now there are prose sources which claim comprehensiveness
(vv. 545 the whole island) and accuracy,77 although neither claim will
in fact stand up to examination (note $#
, v. 55, and the pointed
juxtaposition of vv. 767):
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From that marriage a great name was destined to arise, for your tribe, the Akonti-
adai, still dwell in great numbers and great honour at Ioulis, Cean. Of your desire
we heard from ancient Xenomedes, who set down the whole island in a mytholog-
ical history, beginning with how it was inhabited by Corycian nymphs, whom a
great lion chased away from Parnassus; for that reason they called it Hydroussa . . .
(Callimachus fr. 75.508)
.! F is the Callimachean equivalent of the Homeric +#O F,
taking up the story from when . . ., and should indicate the point within
a larger story, from where the poet begins his own narrative (cf. fr. 7.25 =
9.25 M., h.3.4);78 instead, however, of being a marker of selectivity, it here
reinforces T% to show that Xenomedes really did begin at the beginning,
with the first settlement on Ceos of nymphs chased away from Parnassos by
a lion, as no narrative poet of Callimachean sensibilities ever would. The
summary of Xenomedes chronicle in fact seeks to reproduce (parodically)
the catalogue style appropriate to a work structured by strict chronology
and the comprehensiveness which that chronology imposes: [Xenomedes
told] how (56) . . . and how (58) . . . and how (60) . . . and how (70).79
On the other hand, only someone with access to Xenomedes book will be
able to say how comprehensive it, or Callimachus report of it, was. The list
of names and successive generations merely advertises how many potential
Acontii are passed over in silence, by Callimachus and perhaps also by
77 It is tempting to believe that $" # whose concern was truth (v. 76) echoes or
evokes some claim in Xenomedes himself; such a historiographical topos is very familiar.
78 Cf. Lynn (1995) 162.
79 Cf. Orpheus cosmogonical song at Arg. 1.496511, and the song of Silenus at Virg. Ecl. 6.3173.
Xenomedes. The fact that one of the most prominent figures of Cean mythic
history, Aristaios, appears in the speech of Apollo, but not apparently80 in
the summary of Xenomedes history, makes manifest how the summary
itself is an exercise in selection. If the poetry of origins will always face
an embarrassment of material, so too will the prose chronicle. Moreover,
Callimachus does not limit his aetiological focus to the earlier section:
vv. 568 explain the name Hydroussa, appropriate once the nymphs had
arrived; vv. 602 suggest, but offer no answer to, the enquiry: Why does
Zeus receive offerings from the Carians to the sound of war-trumpets?,
and v. 63 all but gives us the origin of the name Ceos. Any attempt to
distinguish between Xenomedes own words and the summary of the
aetiologicallyobsessed poet would be folly; the two voices have become as
one.81
If we ask what does Acontius and Cydippe explain, then the most
obvious answer is the origin of the Cean Akontiadai.82 The projection
forwards to the present at vv. 502 (cited above), marked by the aetiological
, together with the fact that the poem opens with a foreshadowing of
Acontius success in capturing and marrying the beloved Cydippe (fr. 67.1
4), suggests that this is the telos to which the poem has been moving. When
the poet advertises the process of selecting his material, it is Acontius sharp
love83 which is singled out, in a reprise of the opening verses:
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The old man who cares for truthfulness told, Cean, of your fierce love, mixed up
with all these. From this source, the boys story travelled down to my Calliope.
(Callimachus fr. 747)
This love was lying mixed up with all the other potential stories until
Callimachus rescued it;84 L . . . % leaves quite ambigu-
ous just how extensive Xenomedes treatment was. As we have seen,
however, the poem is littered with other aitia, hinted at or passed by,85
80 Efforts are still made to accommodate him in vv. 589, cf. A. S. Hollis, ZPE 86 (1991) 1113.
81 Good remarks in Lynn (1995) 237.
82 This is rejected by, e.g. Fraser (1972) I 727 (with II 1017 n. 77) on the grounds that there is no other
example of such a genealogical quasi-aition.
83 Surely another (cf. fr. 70) allusion to an etymology of Acontius as the javelin.
84 M$ C 5 [sc. 5
# %] is certainly odd, but Maas & is unconvincing.
85 Cf. e.g. Eichgrun (1961) 121, Lynn (1995) 204. Lynn sees the (omitted) explanation of the origins of
the Naxian prenuptial rite as the principal aition of the poem. Some colour would be given to this
view by the fact that the immediately following aition is the nuptial rite at Elea (frs. 767a), but
this does not seem to account for the general direction of the poem.
and particularly in the context of Books 3 and 4 of the Aitia we should
perhaps not worry too much about pinning down the principal aition.
One other aition cannot, however, be passed by in silence. Although the
poem is almost universally referred to as Acontius and Cydippe, it is really
only Acontius story the ', of vv. 767 and it is a Cean,
not a Naxian, story. As Acontius marriage has ramifications in the present
day, so Callimachus gives us the aition of how he has come in the present
to write this story of the past. Aetiology works in two parallel lines, one
descending from the institution of rites and practices to their continua-
tion to a future age, often the present, and the other from Callimachus
sources to the Aitia. The poem begins with Acontius and Cydippe and
ends with Acontius and Calliope to mark this double process; Kydippe
must become Kalliope, the recording Muse, before she can enter the world
of poetry. The emphasis upon Xenomedes age and antiquity (vv. 54, 66,
76) may, of course, pick up something from his own work he wrote the
chronicle in old age 86 as well as stressing the time gap between chronicler
and poet; rather similar is Callimachus reference to a source in fr. 92 as
the old (#) researches of Leandros.87 Nevertheless, it also serves to
emphasise the unbroken line of tradition upon which Callimachus the
child, like the present-day Akontiadai themselves, draws. Aetiology in
Callimachus is always, at least in part, a reflection upon the practice of
writing.
6 the reply to the telchines

If Acontius and Cydippe presents the aetiology of the subject-matter of
Callimachus poetry, the Reply to the Telchines (fr. 1) offers the aetiol-
ogy of both subject and style. The parallel role played by Apollo in both
passages it is his instruction which leads to the marriage (frs. 75.2143)
and his instruction which produces the Aitia (fr. 1.219) confirms the
double-headed nature of Callimachus aetiology.
The Reply to the Telchines (fr. 1)88 is a programmatic and polemical
preface to (some, at least, of ) the Aitia. It is a matter of great dispute
whether this passage was written as a preface to an edition, dating perhaps
from the 270s, of Books 1 and 2, or was added much later, perhaps when
86 So, e.g. Huxley (n. 76 above) 244 n. 62.

87 Cf. Ovid, Fasti 1.7 sacra recognosces annalibus eruta priscis. For Callimachus presentation of the past
see Nikitinski (1996) passim; on #
pp. 1879.
88 On the history of interpretation see G. Benedetto, Il sogno e linvettiva (Florence 1993), Cameron
(1995). The fullest discussion of the Reply is now Asper (1997).
Callimachus put together Books 3 and 4, in which the dialogue with the
Muses framework was abandoned. Callimachus certainly presents himself
as a (very) old man, indeed as a Tithonus who lived for ever but did not
retain his youth (vv. 6, 3340),89 but this image works on more than one
level, and need not be interpreted merely literally. The Reply itself poses
extraordinary problems of interpretation, beyond the historical one of its
place and relative dating within the overall structure of the Aitia, and
nothing like a complete account will be attempted here.90
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89 Cf. G. Crane, Tithonus and the Prologue to Callimachus Aetia ZPE 66 (1986) 26978, C. Brillante,
Studi sulla rappresentazione del sogno nella Grecia antica (Palermo 1991) 11243.
90 Some of this section reuses material from Hunter (2001b).
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The Telchines often mumble against my poetry ignorant and not born friends of
the Muse because I did not accomplish one continuous poem in many thousands
of verses on kings or . . . heroes, but like a child I [unroll] my poem little by little,
though the decades of my years are not few. . . . To the Telchines I say: . . .
race . . . who know how to rot your liver [i.e. with envy/malice], . . . of few lines
but the fertile Thesmophoros far outweighs the long . . . of the two poems the
small-scale, not the large woman, taught that Mimnermus is sweet. . . . May the
crane, which delights in the blood of Pygmies, [fly] from Egypt to the Thracians,
and may the Massagetai shoot from afar at the [Median] soldier. [Nightingales]
are sweeter like this. Off with you, wretched race of Malice! In future [judge] fine
poetry by art, not by the Persian schoinos. Do not look to me for the birth of a
loud-resounding poem: thundering is not my job, but Zeus. When I first placed
the writing-tablet on my knees, Apollo, the Lycian one, said to me: . . . poet,
[feed] the sacrificial victim to be as fat as possible, but, my good friend, nourish
a slender Muse. [Moreover], this too I bid you: proceed on paths not trodden by
wagons, do not [drive your chariot] in the common tracks of others nor on the
broad highway, but on [unworn] roads, even if you will drive a narrower path. We
sing among those who love the pure sound of [cicadas], not the raucous noise of
donkeys. Let [another] bray like the long-eared beast, but may I be the light one,
the winged one; ah yes, that I may sing feeding upon the dew from the divine air,
and old age, may I shed it it weighs upon me like the three-cornered island [i.e.
Sicily] upon terrible Enceladus. . . . All those upon whom the Muses have looked
with straight eye as children, they do not expel them from their friendship when
they are grey. (Callimachus fr. 1.138)
Just as, for example, Aristophanes and Terence present their aesthetic creeds
as replies to criticism or lack of success, so Callimachus couches his poetic
declaration as a reply to the criticism of the Telchines, legendary spirits
who were attached particularly to Rhodes (cf. fr. 75.645) and associated
with spiteful malice and the power to cast the evil eye. The Telchines are no
friends of the Muses (i.e. they are ignorant about poetry),91 but Callimachus
belongs to those friends who will be cherished by the protecting eyes of
the Muses (378). There is no good reason to doubt that Callimachus
style of poetry had in fact attracted unfavourable comment, but the very
familiarity of the reply to criticism device, to which Callimachus also has
91 This is the clear implication of v. 2, although the syntax of that verse remains disputed, cf.
E. Magnelli, Quelle bestie dei Telchini ZPE 127 (1999) 528, Acosta-HughesStephens (2002).
recourse in Iambus 13, should warn us against wholescale reconstruction of
literary feuds; one ancient list of these Telchines does in fact survive,92
containing, among others, the names of the epigrammatists Asclepiades
and Posidippus and the peripatetic Praxiphanes of Mytilene, against whose
views Callimachus is known to have written a prose treatise (fr. 460). It is
very difficult to judge how much guesswork and how much hard knowledge
lies behind this list. The substance of the Telchines complaint, expressed
by Callimachus in indirect speech and thus marked as mediated to us by the
poet, seems to be that Callimachus has not written one continuous poem
in many thousands of verses on the subject of kings or heroes; rather, he
rolls out his verses little by little, behaving like a child, though he has in
fact left childhood far behind.93 This has often been understood as, and was
certainly appropriated by Roman poets as, a reference to long epic poems
of a traditional kind, which Callimachus certainly did not write, but Alan
Cameron has argued that the reference is rather to repetitive catalogue
elegy, of the kind most familiar to us from the fragments of Hermesianax
and Phanocles, but clearest for Callimachus generation in the Lyde of
Antimachus; Callimachus would thus be differentiating the style and the
manner of the Aitia from other long elegiac poems, and it is certainly the
case that the manner and voice of the Aitia seem entirely different from
anything that had been written before. However these verses are interpreted
in detail, the reference must primarily be to style, both verbal style and
arrangement, rather than to genre, as this term is commonly understood.94
Callimachus proceeds not, as he is often understood, to reject long
poems tout court, but rather to reject length as a valid aesthetic criterion.
What matters is techne, poetic craft, however long the poem. The proof
of this lies in the fact that the shorter poems of Mimnermus and Philetas
are better than their long poems (although the interpretation of these
broken verses is particularly problematic).95 That said, however, it is the
case that for Callimachus himself, though not necessarily for every poet, the
short poem, or at least the poem which can easily be broken into short
units, is the preferred mode of composition. Long poems are like loud
thunder (i.e. at the level of style, mere inflated bombast), and here there
92 In the Florentine scholia (Pfeiffer I p. 3, Massimilla (1996) 62), cf. Cameron (1995) 185232.
93 On the image of the child cf. Asper (1997) 14950. B. Acosta-Hughes and S. Stephens, Aetia fr. 1.5:
I told my story like a child ZPE 136 (2001) 21416, propose #[ M rather than +#%% at the end
of v. 5.
94 So rightly already H. Herter, Gnomon 12 (1936) 452. For a speculative interpretation of the phrase in
terms of Aristotelian ideas cf. Hunter (1993a) 1905.
95 Among recent contributions are W. Luppe, ZPE 115 (1997) 504, K. Spanoudakis, ZPE 121 (1998)
5961, and C. W. Muller, ZPE 122 (1998) 3640.
does seem to be an unmistakeable linkage between length and style; the
transitional sleight of hand is effected through in v. 19, which picks
up the language and ideas of length (note especially (# in v. 12), but
in an adverbial phrase with :$% in fact shifts the emphasis towards
quality and style. This is reinforced by what seem like clear echoes of the
debate between the thunderer Aeschylus and Euripides in Aristophanes
Frogs.96 The two tragedians debate the quality and nature of the language
of poetry, and Euripides accuses the older poet of filling his poems with
a meaningless bombast, which he was then forced to remove by placing
tragedy on a thinning diet (Frogs 93944). So, too, Callimachus presents
Apollo as having told him that sacrifices should be full of fat, but the Muse
should be kept # #, which carries implications of both slenderness
and fineness. Being a god, Apollo wants a decent meal, but being the god
of medicine, he also knows the dangers of too much fat;97 he gets the best of
both worlds by asking for the former for himself, but generously spares the
Muse, who is after all only his attendant, an unhealthy diet. Callimachus
elsewhere seems to use !Q as a term of literary disapprobation,98 and
this will reinforce the pointed contrast. Both the Aristophanic Euripides
and Callimachus wish to pare poetry down to what is strictly necessary,
to an intellectual poetry where nothing is wasted and every word counts.
Moreover, this is a poetry where innovation is important.
The Callimachean Apollo echoes, very appropriately, the (cruelly frag-
mentary) words of a Pindaric paean in honour of Apollo to urge the new
poet not to go where everyone else goes, but to seek a more individual
road:99
#'4%C [$)
6>4$ [ ], C &M

*
) &[ &#]# &C l
Make your hymns resound, going [not?] on the worn wagon-track of Homer . . .
[nor on?] the horses of another . . . (Pindar, Paean 7b.1012)
Callimachus appropriation of the Pindaric voice has been foreshadowed in
the earlier rejection of 9%, the jealous malice of the Telchines, for
96 Cf. e.g. Wimmel (1960) 115, Pfeiffer (1968) 1378, Cairns (1979) 810, N. OSullivan, Alcidamas,
Aristophanes and the Beginnings of Greek Stylistic Theory (Stuttgart 1992), Lynn (1995) 12031.
97 Cf. Asper (1997) 15675. 98 Fr. 398, cf. Krevans (1993).
99 Varying interpretations in V. Di Benedetto, Pindaro, Pae. 7b, 1114 RFIC 119 (1991) 16476; id., Da
Pindaro a Callimaco: peana 7b, vv. 1114 Prometheus 29 (2003) 26982; G. B. DAlessio, Pindaro,
Peana VIIb (fr. 52h Sn.-M) in Proceedings of the XIXth International Congress of Papyrology (Cairo
1992) I 35373; Asper (1997) 6470, who, however, doubts a direct imitation of Pindar; Rutherford
(2001) 2479; FurleyBremer (2001) i 1556, ii 1045.
this is one of the most common Pindaric themes, particularly familiar from
the end of the Hymn to Apollo. The importance in the third century of the
Pindaric voice, which stresses exclusivity and rejects the banal, is generally
familiar, but the fact that the Pindaric verses refer explicitly to Homer offers
some guidance as to the direction in which Callimachus is moving. Rather
than seeing here any (of itself entirely improbable) indictment of Homer,
it is the very existence of Homer which itself compels the good poet to seek
the narrow path; only asses, traditionally a very un-Apolline animal,100
would continue their ugly braying along the highway which Homer has
built. Here again, it is principally style, rather than genre, which is at
stake;101 what is rejected are poems that pushed unsophisticated imitation
of either Homer or Hesiod too far.102
In the fifth book of his On Poems,103 Philodemus reports and criticises a
set of views on literature, probably to be associated with Heraclides Ponticus
(fourth century), which seems irresistibly to bring to mind Callimachus
Reply. The scheme in question apparently categorised poems (at least
partly) by size, or at least matched size to style and thought: thus, at vii.25
32 Mangoni we learn that, according to this critic, the solider and greater
kind of poetry ( % Z _ ()104 requires,
in addition to the standard poetic virtues, such as clarity and concise-
ness (%$), both richness (#$# ), or perhaps fullness,105 and
weight (9 ). How the one or more other categories were described
remains unclear, though we do hear (viii.1619 Mangoni) of middling
(%) poems, and various references to lightness (, #
) have led
100 Cf. A. Ambuhl, Callimachus and the Arcadian asses: the Aitia prologue and a lemma in the London
scholion ZPE 105 (1995) 20913.
101 Critics note how ] 4% in v. 31 suggests stylistic A ; as the only spondeiazon in what
survives of the Reply, the rhythm is imitative of stylistic roughness, as the sound of the verse also
seems to echo with the ass bray (E. Livrea, Callimaco e gli asini SIFC 89 (1996) 568). For further
discussion of Callimachus use of the figure of the ass cf. Andrews (1998) 78, A.-T. Cozzoli, QUCC
54 (1996) 203.
102 Cameron (1992) 310.
103 Cf. Mangoni (1993) 2015. For the possible relationship between the critics attacked in Philodemus
work and trends in Hellenistic poetry cf. below pp. 44961. R. Janko, Philodemus On Poems
and Aristotles On Poets CErc 21 (1991) 564 argues that the object of attack in On Poems 4 was
Aristotles lost On Poets, a work likely to have been very influential at Alexandria. The flourishing
of Hellenistic didactic poetry, however, probably has little to do with Philodemus advocacy of
hexameter epic over tragedy (pace Janko 278). So, too, Philodemus preference for perfectly made
poems (. ) over the appeal of emotional reversals (xxxvi Mangoni) may perhaps
overturn Aristotles whole ranking of the genres of poetry (Asmis (1992) 413), but we must be very
cautious about associating this with the Callimachean demand for craftsmanship.
104 The translation is that of D. Armstrong in Obbink (1995).
105 This seems very unlikely to refer to Hellenistic poikilia, as it has sometimes been taken (cf. Mangoni
(1993) 205).
some critics to see here a tripartite division, which may or may not have
corresponded to a generic one.106 As often with Philodemus, there are
uncertainties concerning which terms are his and which derive from the
object of his criticism and/or whether he uses his opponents terms in
the sense in which his opponent did. However, what such references to,
for example, weighty and even tumid (] Z') poems (cf. Call. fr. 1.31
] 4%)107 show is not that Callimachus was picking up the language of
any particular critical scheme, but (as the comparison with Aristophanes
Frogs also makes clear) that the Reply plays provocatively with familiar
terms of literary discussion, drawn in fact from many areas and genres,108
as part of the production of a paradigmatically light poem.
In place of the heavy braying of the ass, Callimachus chooses for himself
the model of the cicada, beloved of the Muses because its only concern
is song (Plato, Phaedrus 259bd). Against the heavy weight of ass poetry
is set, in words which echo the Platonic Socrates famous description of
the poet in the Ion,109 the fragile lightness of the winged cicada with its
pure sound. An Aristotelian treatise on sounds classifies the song of the
cicada as # $
(clear, high) and #
(thin, On things heard 804a
224).110 The cicada is, however, also a vulnerable creature resembling an
old man,111 and one which can so easily be crushed by those who do not
appreciate its special beauty. In one respect, however, Callimachus must
confess to a likeness to the ass, the quintessential beast of burden. However
light his song, the poet bears a heavy burden (9(),112 that of old age,
which cannot be sloughed off. It crushes him as Sicily crushes the giant who
rebelled against Zeus, and his only consolation although no small one
is that the Muses do not abandon their favourites, unlike the dawn-goddess
Eos, who abandoned Tithonus (Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite 21838). Still,
106 Cf. e.g. F. Sbordone, La poetica oraziana alla luce degli studi piu recenti ANRW II 31.3 (BerlinNew
York 1981) 18661920, p. 1883.
107 Alongside tumid poems Philodemus places those without vigour (8 3); the precise refer-
ence is unclear, but it is difficult not to recall Hor. AP 267 sectantem leuia nerui |deficiunt animique;
professus grandia turget (where see Brinks notes).
108 Cf. Harder (2002) 20611, Acosta-HughesStephens (2002).
109 Cf. Hunter (1989b), Depew (1992) 3267. Acosta-HughesStephens (2002) 2512 helpfully adduce
the Trojan elders of Iliad 3, who are compared to singing cicadas.
110 Good discussion of such descriptions of sound in Asper (1997) 17798.
111 Cf. Iliad 3.14853, Wimmel (1960) 11112.
112 The opposition which is evoked here is sharpened by the fact that 9Q is the standard term
for deep sounds, the opposite of ]MQ, cf. [Arist.], On things heard 803a 8, LSJ s.v. 9Q III 1.
The loud thundering (cf. Asper (1997) 1968) which Callimachus rejects (v. 20) prepares for this
opposition. Callimachus here may not merely be playing with a conventional piety (together with
the familiar assimilation of Homer to Zeus), but he may also have an eye on Aristophanes Clouds,
where not only does Pheidippides dismiss Aeschylus as :
$ #, full of bombast (13667),
but thunder is explicitly denied to Zeus by the impious Socrates and the buffoonish Strepsiades
(374ff.); by implication, the Telchines are aligned with such tasteless creatures.
in old age the poet is able to write as he would wish: vv. 378 rework
famous verses from the prologue of Hesiods Theogony (Theog. 814), both
to demonstrate the continued poetic power which is the blessing of the
Muses113 and, on any reconstruction of the relationship between Reply
and Dream, to prepare for the Hesiodic scene which is to follow.
The poets wish for rejuvenation seems to have been granted, in that
he recalls how he fell asleep (while studying the Theogony?), and dreamed
that he really was young again114 and was transported to meet the Muses
on Helicon. Callimachus here replays Hesiodic experience in two related
ways. Although in the proem to the Theogony, Hesiod himself gives no
indication of how old he was when confronted on the mountainside by the
Muses, it is a reasonable guess that the Hellenistic age constructed Hesiods
encounter with the Muses as an experience of his youth the boy sent out
once upon a time (Theogony 22) to look after the lambs 115 as also were the
corresponding encounter between the Muses and the young Archilochus116
and the young Aeschylus dream of Dionysus.117 The Hesiodic text itself
encourages such a construction by representing the meeting with the Muses
as something which happened in the past, once upon a time (Theogony 22);
Hesiod recalls what the Muses then said to him, as Callimachus recalls
the youthful instructions he received from Apollo. Secondly, Callimachus
seems to evoke a tradition, attested explicitly only in later antiquity, that
Hesiod was in fact rejuvenated and thus lived twice, a tradition that may, as
Ruth Scodel demonstrated,118 also be important for the choral song on old
age in Euripides Heracles (637700), to which Callimachus makes explicit
allusion (vv. 356 Her. 63840), and which is important for this whole
section of Callimachus prologue.119 As the Euripidean chorus asserts that
it will never cease to mingle the Graces with the Muses (Her. 6735), so
113 Note the elaborate uariatio: \, (# 0%)
5'; Callimachus
A . . . 8 #
MI perhaps picks up Hesiods ( , % ' % |
* "% '"%, all look at [the good king] as he distributes ordinances with straight justice.
114 Cf. Lynn (1995) 1478, Andrews (1998) 1417; Massimilla (1996) 237 prefers to see a memory of a
dream the poet had as a young man.
115 Ascraeo . . . seni at Virg. Ecl. 6.70 does not, I think, argue against this hypothesis. Note the virtuoso
combination of Homer, Hesiod and Callimachus at Quintus Smyrnaeus 12.30810 2 5 T%(
% 4 C &'4) | C & %'% K$#) | <Q
''% #$ # ) #., you placed all the song in my heart, before my cheek
grew dark with the first beard, when I grazed my glorious flocks in the fields of Smyrna . . ..
116 SEG xv.517, inscribed about the middle of the third century in the Archilocheion at Paros, cf.
A. Kambylis, Zur Dichterweihe des Archilochos Hermes 91 (1963) 12950, below, p. 74.
117 When he was a boy, Aeschylus fell asleep while guarding grapes in the countryside, and Dionysus
appeared to him and told him to write tragedy (Pausanias 1.21.2 = Aesch.TrGF Test. 111).
118 R. Scodel, Hesiod redivivus GRBS 21 (1980) 30120.
119 Cf. G. Basta Donzelli, La seconda giovinezza di Callimaco (fr. 1, 32ss. Pf.) in Studi di filologia
classica in onore di Giusto Monaco (Palermo 1991) I 38794; E. Livrea, Callimachus senex, Cercidas
senex ed i loro critici ZPE 119 (1997) 3742.
at the very head of his poem Callimachus does just this, for the Muses are
introduced in the Dream and are central to the whole structure of Books
1 and 2, whereas the first aition of Book 1 is the Parian ritual in honour of
the Graces (frs. 59 M.).120 If Callimachus rejuvenation takes the form of
a dream experience, in which he reaches into the distant past to relive the
experience of Hesiod, this may prompt us to ask about the nature of the
old age which oppresses him. When interpreting this literally, we must
always allow for humorous exaggeration. The Telchines have accused him
of behaving like a child, though he is a grown man, and so he exaggerates
just how old he is as part of the demonstration of the absurdity of their
criticisms.121 Whatever view is taken of how old Callimachus actually was
when he composed the Reply, it seems clear that there is more at stake
here than just encroaching senility.
The approach or arrival of the weakness of old age seems to have been
a familiar poetic topos (cf. Alcman, PMG 26 (= 90 Calame), Eur. Her.
loc.cit.), which suggests that it may not be correct to read it at a simple,
literal level; it is rather a recognisable poetic code, even when the poet is
in fact (and is known to be) old. For Callimachus, the best contemporary
witness to the code is the so-called Seal of Posidippus (SH 705 = Posidippus
118 AB), in which the poet from Pella invokes the Muses in the context
of hateful old age122 and, perhaps under the influence of the (?) newly
founded Archilocheion on Paros, wishes to become a second Archilochos,
as Callimachus was a second Hesiod, with honours and a cult decreed by
Apollo.123 While his poetry will find immortal kleos, he himself will find
his own kind of eternity:
' c ! Q '($. Z
4 $%, L 6 '($ e
'4 # , Z)
&% %% ] 8 & C V#
# ' A#9
.
Let no one shed a tear, but in old age may I travel the mystic path to Rhadamanthys,
missed by the citizens and all the people, needing no staff to walk and speaking
clearly to the multitude, leaving house and prosperity to my children. (Posidippus
118.215 AB)
120 Cf. above, pp. 524.

121 Cf. e.g. Lynn (1995) 180 n. 17. On the charge of being a child cf. Asper (1997) 14950.
122 Austin-Bastianini adopt Friedrichs %$ for the transmitted %$ %' in v. 5, rather than
Diels %$ % ; this text makes the parallel with Callimachus even closer.
123 I follow H. Lloyd-Jones, JHS 83 (1963) 88; the Delphic decree which Lloyd-Jones discusses was also
a very striking example of divine favour to a poet, and must have struck a particular chord with an
initiate, if that indeed is what Posidippus was.
What in Callimachus is a wish for rejuvenation is in Posidippus a wish
for good health up until death in old age,124 followed by a journey on the
mystic path to Rhadamanthys. Whether we interpret this as meaning that
Posidippus was merely initiated into the mysteries of the Muses or that he
was actually an initiate of a Dionysiac or Orphic cult,125 Posidippus prays
to remain ] 4, speaking properly, to the end of his life; the prayer
for bodily health to the last, being &% %%, finds many parallels
throughout Greek literature, but it looks here like a reworking of Hesiods
description of men of the Golden Age, when there was no terrible old
age, but ever undiminished in feet and hands they took pleasure in feasts,
free of all ills (WD 11315). Whereas, therefore, Callimachus uses Hesiod
to console himself with the Muses protection of their favourites and his
own piety, Posidippus prays for public honours from his own people126
and continued good health until old age, followed by the certain reward
of the just initiate. Not for Posidippus the impossible wish of becoming
young again (cf. v. 25); his immortality will be more certain and more
long-lasting.
As for Callimachus, the wish to rid himself of the burden of old age,
like the cicada, arises from Apollos poetic programme: cicada-poetics is
the poetics of the 0% # # and the narrow path. The sequence
of thought suggests that the old age which crushes the poet is at one level
what we have learned to call the burden of the past, that consciousness of
tradition, of Hesiod, Pindar, Euripides, Aristophanes and the other great
figures of the past whose voices well up through Callimachus verses, a
consciousness which hems our every move with qualification, deferral and
doubt, and which, like old age, restricts the freedom of action we associate
with the light one, the winged one. In Platos myth cicadas were the first
poets, free to sing and honour the Muses as they liked, with no constraining
tradition of song behind them. It is Callimachus who, for us, makes the
decisive move in understanding rejuvenation in terms of the literary tra-
dition, thus completing the triangle of related ideas the weight of years,
the weight of tradition, and the hope for immortality. Tradition is figured
in terms of human aging. Callimachus is old and weary, crushed by the
immobilising sense of the years which have preceded. When the Telchines
tell Callimachus to grow up, what they mean is that he should adopt a
124 For the poetic heritage of such a wish cf. Mimnermus fr. 6 West (2nd ed.).
125 Cf. Laura Rossi, ZPE (1996) 65, W. Burkert in W. Burkert et al. (eds.), Fragmentsammlungen
philosophischer Texte der Antike. Le raccolte dei frammenti di filosofi antichi (Gottingen 1998) 3945.
For the former view see Asper (1997) 86, with bibliography.
126 The model here is not merely Archilochus, but possibly also Philetas of Cos, cf. A. S. Hollis, Heroic
honours for Philetas? ZPE 110 (1996) 5662, A. Hardie, Philitas and the plane tree ZPE 119 (1997)
2136. For the tradition behind Posidippus expression cf. Pind. Nem. 8.359.
poetics sanctioned by time and archaic practice (cf. Iambus 13), together
with the moral seriousness that attends it. Callimachus rejects both the
poetics and the gravitas in his extraordinary wish to start all over again.
7 callimachus and t he ician

A further passage which sheds light on Callimachus self-positioning as an
aetiological poet is the story of the Ician in fr. 178 (= 89 M.).127 This
tells how the Athenian Pollis the name is known only from a citation
in Athenaeus continued to celebrate Attic festivals in the Alexandria of
the poets own day. At Pollis party to commemorate the Attic festival in
honour of Erigone, the *Z, the poet met Theogenes, a visitor from the
Aegean island of Ikos (modern Alonnisos):
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127 The following is a revised and (in part) abbreviated version of Hunter (1996c). In addition to the
standard commentaries cf. Fabian (1992), Harder (2002) 21217.
128 On this reading cf. Massimilla (1996) 408.
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. . . nor did the day of the Jar Opening pass him by, nor when the Choes of Orestes
bring a white day for slaves. And when he kept the yearly ceremony for Icarius
child your day, Erigone, who are most pitied by women of Attica he invited
to a banquet his friends, and among them a stranger who had not been in Egypt
for long, having come on some private business. He was an Ician by birth, and I
shared a couch with him not by design, but the saying of Homer is not false that
god ever brings like to like. For he too loathed draining goblets of neat wine, like
the Thracians, but took pleasure in a small cup. To him I said, as the beaker was
going round for the third time, when I had learned his name and descent: This
indeed is a true saying, that wine would have not only its portion of water, but also
of conversation. Therefore for we do not pass conversation around in ladles, nor
will you ask for it by gazing at the haughty brows of the cup-bearers, when the free
man fawns upon the slave let us, Theogenes, throw the drug of conversation into
the tedious drink; do tell me in answer to my question all that my heart yearns to
hear from you: Why is it the tradition of your country to worship Peleus, king of
the Myrmidons? What has Thessaly to do with Ikos? For what purpose does [a girl]
holding an onion . . . the procession of the hero . . . according to the account of
those who know . . . holding ears ready for those who are willing to tell their story.
When I had spoken thus . . . Truly, you are thrice blessed, happy as few are, if you
lead a life which is ignorant of sea-faring. But my life has been spent more among
the waves than is that of the gull. (Callimachus fr. 178, trans. Trypanis, adapted)
Verses 910 allude to Melantheus abuse of Eumaeus and the disguised
Odysseus in Odyssey 17:
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Now indeed do the worthless lead the worthless and, as always, god brings like to
like. Miserable swineherd, where are you taking this filthy creature, this loathsome
beggar, this scavenger of banquets? He will be a lounger at many mens doors,
rubbing his back against the posts, seeking for scraps, not swords or cauldrons. If
you gave him to me to guard the farmstead, sweep out the pens and take green
fodder to the young goats, then he might drink whey and round out his thighs.
But no he has learned bad ways and will never keep at any work; instead, he
means to go cringing and begging about the country to fill his never-sated belly.
(Homer, Odyssey 17. 21728, trans. Shewring, adapted)
By moving after three rounds129 to the pleasures of conversation, Theogenes
and the poet will certainly not be ' &#$ , scourges of the
feast.130 Those who do not follow their lead, on the other hand, are little
better than beggars, who add nothing to the pleasures of the feast; *4%
(v. 19) picks up *_ (Od. 17.222, 228) to point this implication. The
really free man (v. 19) will have freed himself from the tyranny of Dionysus
the liberator, the Looser who, paradoxically, binds mind and body in
the toils of confusion and sleep, thus reducing the free man to the status of
a shackled slave.131 C^# $ Q was a title of Dionysus at Athens and Attic
Eleutherai; the cult statue of Dionysus Eleuthereus was associated with the
theatre of the god at Athens (Pausanias 1.20.3). That Callimachus should
allude to this manifestation of the god fits perfectly with the fact that his
host was an Athenian interested in the festivals and cults of his home city.
Moreover, his insistence on a fastidious independence is marked, as often
in Callimachus, by a rare gloss: &4, servant, is the kind of language
which free men use.132 Pollis party thus joins a long tradition of intellectual
symposia, of which Platos Symposium, which also begins with a rejection
of heavy drinking (176ae), is the most famous. The tradition was very
much alive in Alexandria and Alexandrian literature;133 we may compare
the famous Letter of Aristeas, a (?) late second-century account of how
Philadelphus posed moral questions at a series of symposia he held with
the Jewish sages who were engaged in translating the Hebrew holy books
into Greek.134 Callimachus has moreover appropriated a long tradition of
129 For the fourth round as marking the descent into immodest drinking cf. Eubulus, PCG 93 (= 94
Hunter) with the notes of Kassel-Austin and Hunter.
130 On the meaning of &#$4 cf. Russo on Od. 17.220; it is not clear how Callimachus would
have interpreted the word.
131 Cf. Hesiod fr. 239 MW. For the paradox cf. Propertius 3.5.21 mentem uincire Lyaeo (with Fedelis
note).
132 Cf. Pfeiffer on fr. 507. 133 Cf. Cameron (1995) chapter 4.
134 Cf. M. Hadas, Aristeas to Philocrates (Letter of Aristeas) (New York 1951), S. Honigman, The Septuagint
and Homeric Scholarship in Alexandria (London 2003).
sympotic poetry on the subject of correct and moderate behaviour135 and a
more recent prose tradition, particularly associated with the peripatetics, of
# %$.136 A standard motif of such moralising was an alleged
distinction between the moderate drinking and intellectual pleasures of
the Greek symposium and the drunken excesses of barbarian others,
in this case Thracians, who were alleged to drink unmixed wine in great
quantities.137 Callimachus use of this theme was probably reinforced by
the poets apparent innocence of seafaring (vv. 2734), for the imaging of
the symposium (particularly one where wine flowed freely) as a sea voyage
was very common.138
Two sympotic models give shape to Callimachus rejection of heavy
drinking. One is the ritual frame provided by the introductory verses. The
aiora, Swinging Festival, commemorated Erigone, who hung herself from
the tree under which her father, Ikarios, was buried after he had been killed
by shepherds crazed by Dionysus gift of (unmixed) wine,139 and the first two
festival days named in the surviving verses, the Pithoigia (Jar Opening) and
the Choes (Pitchers), clearly evoke the pleasures and dangers of drinking.
The drinking contests which characterised the Athenian Choes presumably
encouraged the drinking of neat or only lightly diluted wine,140 and the
Choes pattern of solitary, silent drinking (in memory of the hospitality
offered in Athens to the matricide Orestes) is one which Theogenes and
the poet explicitly reject. The licence granted to slaves (vv. 12) becomes,
in the Callimachean view of the symposium, a distasteful subservience
(v. 19). Neat wine and solitary drinking are also the hallmarks of the other
rejected sympotic model which hovers over Pollis party. The Icians rejec-
tion of excessive drinking is described in the language of pleasure and
loathing:
135 Cf. e.g. Bielohlawek (1940), W. J. Slater, Sympotic Ethics in the Odyssey in O. Murray (ed.),
Sympotica (Oxford 1990) 21320.
136 Thus, for example, Aristotle, Theophrastus, Hieronymus, and Chamaileon all wrote treatises On
Drunkenness) and cf. Plato, Laws 1.637a642b; cf. further below, p. 112.
137 Cf. C. Corbato, Scritti di letteratura greca (Trieste 1991) 314. Alexis, PCG 9.812 contrasts Greek
drinking, characterised by moderately sized cups and pleasant conversation, with the other sort,
which is a bath, not a symposium.
138 W. J. Slater, Symposium at Sea HSCP 80 (1976) 16170, remains the seminal discussion.
139 For Callimachus use of the ritual background cf. R. Scodel, Wine, Water and the Anthesteria in
Callimachus fr. 178 Pf. ZPE 39 (1980) 3740.
140 Cf. Ar. Ach. 1229. Whether or not the wine drunk during the Choes-contest was mixed with water
has been the subject of much recent discussion; the most reasonable solution might be that each
drinker was given a jug of neat wine and when he poured it into his cup could mix it or not as
he chose (cf. N. Robertson, HSCP 95 (1993) 2234, and contrast A. M. Bowie, Aristophanes. Myth,
Ritual and Comedy (Cambridge 1993) 38) to drink it neat presumably increased ones chances of
finishing first. Callimachus point is not affected by the precise detail here.
k X &%$ !', .$%
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For he too loathed draining goblets of neat wine, like the Thracians, but took
pleasure in a small cup. (vv. 1112)
Callimachus pointed oxymoron a small kissubion evokes the large
kissubion in which Odysseus served the powerful wine to the Cyclops
in Odyssey 9 (cf. v. 346), an allusion confirmed by the pleasure which
both drinkers find in their respective cups (w' v. 12, w% Od. 9.353).
Whereas, however, three of these capacious draughts befuddled the Cyclops
sufficiently for Odysseus purposes (9.361), the third round is the sign for
Callimachus and Theogenes to move on to the pleasures of intellectual
conversation. Hard drinking at a symposium places you on the same level
as the Cyclops, whose story like that of Ikarios and Erigone is a clas-
sic example of the dangers of wine. Callimachus has fused the drinking
contests of the Choes with the fate of the Cyclops to produce a powerful
negative image of rejected sympotic behaviour.
Fr. 178 Pf. cannot be placed with certainty within the overall structure
of the Aitia, but there is now something of a scholarly consensus in favour
of a suggestion made by Anna Swiderek in 1951.141 Swiderek suggested that
fr. 178 belonged to the opening of Book 2 and that it preceded fr. 43 Pf.
(= 50 M.), the De Siciliae urbibus, which is known to come from Book
2.142 Theogenes replies to the poets tell me all that my heart craves to hear
from you143 with an Odyssean lament (cf. Od. 5.3067) for a life spent at
sea; the poet, on the other hand, both by his own admission (vv. 2730)
and by Theogenes pointed echo in v. 33 of Hesiods own profession of
ignorance about ships and the sea (WD 649),144 is marked as a Hesiod
who acquires information (whether from the Muses or a human informant)
and transmits it to others. Here then, we may see a renewal, in the opening
of Book 2, of the Hesiodic persona established in the opening sequence
of Book 1. Of particular interest in this context are vv. 1217 of fr. 50 M.:
141 J.Jur.Pap. 5 (1951) 234 n. 18; for subsequent discussion, cf. J. E. G. Zetzel, On the Opening of
Callimachus, Aetia II ZPE 42 (1981) 313, Fabian (1992) 13740, 31518 (who remains more cautious),
Cameron (1995) 13340, Massimilla (1996) 145, 320, 400.
142 If correct, the passage will form a ring with the allusion to Athens which apparently closed the
book, cf. fr. 51 ( = 60 Massimilla), Hunter (1996c) 22.
143 This grand wish (cf. Hutchinson (1988) 278) reads almost like a reworking of Sapphos prayer to
Aphrodite at fr. 1.267, but it may in fact owe more to Odysseus words at Od. 9.1213. *! is
another typical example of Callimachus use of a rare word with contextual significance: the learned
gloss points both to the scholastic nature of the poets interests and, just as importantly, to his ironic
self-awareness of the seeming triviality of those interests.
144 Cf. Reinsch-Werner (1976) 3834.
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. . . for certainly all the soft amber ointments and the fragrant garlands I then put
on my head swiftly breathed no more, and of all that passed my teeth and plunged
into the ungrateful belly nothing remained till the morrow; but the only things
which I still keep are those that I laid in my ears. (Callimachus fr. 50.1217 M.,
trans. Trypanis)
These verses are followed in the papyrus by a paragraphos, which may mark
the end of an episode or of a particular aetiological subject (e.g. a change
from Ikos to Sicily); the poet appears to speak continuously until v. 55,
where he is immediately answered by Klio. It is an attractive speculation
but no more that frs. 178 + 43.155 Pf. form a single narrative by the poet
to the Muses (in the course of the dream which seems to have occupied all
of Books 1 and 2): in his dream, unless this was interrupted at the head of
Book 2, the poet tells the Muses of Pollis party and of all he learned at it,
before asking them to fill in the gaps in his Sicilian knowledge.145
Despite the Hesiodic sequence with which the Aitia opens, the Odyssey,
with its many included tales and four books devoted solely to Odysseus
account of his diverse adventures, was a crucial model against which the
Aitia was written. It was the much-travelled hero who saw the cities of
many men and came to know their minds (or, with Zenodotus, customs)
whose physical journeys Callimachus recreates in the mind, leaving Alexan-
dria only in dreams; the gatherer of information may now remain stationary
in one spot, whether it be a library or a symposium, rather than travelling
the world like an Odysseus or a Herodotus.146 *% (v. 17) evokes
this intellectual journey, as the verb is properly used of loading a ship
(LSJ s.v.2), whereas the despised details of the menu sink to the depths of
the belly, just as the endless food consumed by Erysichthon flowed like
rivers into the depths of the sea (h. 6.8890). Not for Callimachus the
dangers of shipwreck among the tables; whereas the Muses had charged
Hesiod and his companions with being mere bellies, here the poet tells the
Muses that he has no interest in the culture of food.147 In fr. 43.1217 we
see the poet placed halfway between the Phaeacians and their mysterious
145 This was the suggestion of Zetzel (n. 141), although he himself did not accept it.
146 Cf. further Hunter (1996c) 24 on Polybius and Timaeus.
147 The possible relevance of Hesiod, Theog. 26 was suggested by Fabian (1992) 149.
guest. As an avid listener, the poet is like the Phaeacians,148 but as some-
one who recognises the curse of the belly, he resembles Odysseus himself
(cf. Od. 7.21521);149 the model to be rejected here is not just the professed
hedonist, but precisely the Cyclops, whose devotion to his stomach had
been turned by Euripides into a blasphemous worship (Cycl. 3348). The
professed lack of interest in garlands and food is not merely the declaration
of an elitist, which takes its place within a long tradition of debate about the
relative value of physical and intellectual experience,150 but also acts as an
introductory recusatio to the following aition, the elaborate account of the
origins of the cities of Sicily: this is to be no didactic poem on the courses
of a dinner (contrast, e.g. Matrons parodic C;, ' 5, SH 534),151
but rather a voyage, like Odysseus, around the cities of Sicily (cf. Od. 1.3).
Contrary to all accepted wisdom I hate, says the proverb,152 a drinking-
companion with a memory Callimachus proves to have a prodigious
memory for what his fellow-symposiasts say. Callimachus aural memory
includes, of course, what he has read in books,153 and fr. 178.27, *'
F
$% as those with knowledge assert may be a typically Callimachean
allusion to his written sources (? the Ikiaka of Phanodemus).154
Memory is important also in fr. 178. When the poet suggests to Theogenes
that they throw the drug of conversation into the cup from which they are
drinking (v. 20), there is an obvious allusion to the (Egyptian!) drug which
Helen placed in the wine of Menelaos and Telemachos to make them forget
grief (Od. 4.21926).155 In the Odyssey pleasure comes from forgetfulness,
in the Aitia from memory. Another Homeric pharmakon is also important
here. This is the ( %#
beneficent drug which Hermes gives
to Odysseus to protect him against Circes evil pharmaka; Circe turns men
148 On the Odyssean heritage of the Aitia and on Callimachus self-presentation as a listener cf.
D. Meyer, Nichts Unbezeugtes singe ich: Die fiktive Darstellung der Wissenstradierung bei
Kallimachos in W. Kullmann and J. Althoff (eds.), Vermittlung und Tradierung von Wissen in der
griechischen Kultur (Tubingen 1993) 31736.
149 &!(% varies .# at Od. 17.228, 18.364. The adjective does not merely make a topical
point about the ingratitude of the stomach (cf. Massimilla (1996) 323), but marks the symposium
where the pleasures of the stomach dominate as lacking in that charis which is the dominant virtue
of the well-ordered symposium, as Odysseus himself knew (Od. 9.5), cf. W. J. Slater, Peace, the
symposium and the poet ICS 6 (1981) 20514.
150 Cf. A. Barigazzi, Prometheus 1 (1975) 911. Callimachus may allude in particular to the famous
epitaph of Sardanapallos, SH 335.
151 Cf. S. D. Olson and A. Sens, Matro of Pitane and the Tradition of Epic Parody in the Fourth Century
BCE (Atlanta 1999). It is relevant also that later antiquity knew a substantial literature on garlands
(RE 11.1604), some of which was almost certainly available also to Callimachus.
152 Cf. PMG 1002, with Pages parallels. 153 Cf. Fabian (1992) 151, Meyer art. cit. (n. 148).
154 Cf. Fabian (1992) 3223, Fraser (1972) I 732. Pfeiffer, however, interprets the phrase as a reference
to sailors who have actually visited Ikos.
155 Cf. further Massimilla (1996) 412.
into pigs, just as does the excessive drinking against which Callimachus sets
his face. By protecting himself against this with the drug of conversation,
Callimachus seems to foreshadow (or reflect) allegorical interpretations
of Hermes in Odyssey 10 as the rational logos which prevents the wise man
from yielding to base pleasures.156 This passage thus has an important place
in the history of elite self-fashioning in the Hellenistic period.
Finally, it is important that in an Athenian context, and one which
specifically evokes the licence of a festival with close links to Athenian
comic drama,157 the poetic voice of the Aitia turns away towards the arcane
traditions of a small island off the Magnesian coast. The Athenian tradi-
tion, which was already on the way to being constructed as the classical
tradition, is thus both the necessary background to Callimachean poetry,
but also part of what must be set aside as the poet marks out his own
poetic space. Pollis act of cultural displacement, the recreation in Alexan-
dria of Athenian festivals, is both like and unlike Callimachus recreation
of the Greek poetic heritage. Pollis is non-selective in his mimesis he never
misses a festival and, like Xenomedes of Ceos (above p. 64), he serves as
an alternative and rejected model which throws Callimachus aetiological
practice into high relief. Callimachus poetry is no mere nostalgic copy-
ing, but rather an extraordinarily inventive use of the inherited tradition.
The real programmatic weight of the passage, wherever it originally stood
in the Aitia, lies not so much in the typically Callimachean stress upon
smallness and purity, but rather in its demonstration of Callimachus self-
consciousness about his poetic position and the remarkable virtuosity with
which the tradition is re-employed. As such, the passage is indeed a worthy
partner for the Reply to the Telchines.
8 poems f or a princess
The great occasion piece which opened Book 3, the so-called Victoria
Berenices (SH 25469), again highlights the central problem of aetiol-
ogy that different aitia spill over to infect each other, forcing impossible
choices upon the hardworking poet. This poem, which was perhaps as long
as 200 verses, celebrated in epinician (and, specifically, Pindaric) style a vic-
tory at the Nemean Games of a chariot team entered by Queen Berenice,
156 Cf. E. Kaiser, MH 21 (1964) 20810. The poet of [Theocr.] 9.356 seems to echo Hesiod and
Callimachus in making the Muses a source of protection against Circe.
157 For drama at the Anthesteria cf. A. Pickard-Cambridge, The Dramatic Festivals of Athens (2nd ed.,
Oxford 1968) 1517. In the Acharnians Aristophanes equates victory at a Choes drinking contest
with the victory of his own play in the dramatic competition.
the Cyrenean wife of Euergetes.158 The principal aition seems to have
been the origin of the sacrifices and wreathes of wild celery associated with
the Nemean Games, and perhaps also the origin of the Nemean Games
themselves. The Pindaric heritage of the poem is seen clearly in its enco-
miastic purpose, the aetiological thrust of the myth, and the choice of that
myth: Heracles was regarded as an ancestor of the Ptolemaic house, and so
Berenices victory replays in the world of the present a triumph of the autho-
rising past; such a pattern is very familiar from the epinicians of Pindar. In
particular, Callimachus seems to have evoked Pythian 4, by far the longest
of the epinicians, which celebrated the chariot victory of an earlier ruler of
Cyrene, Arcesilas. The central part of the Victoria tells the story (for which
we depend largely on a narrative of Probus, SH 266) of how Heracles, on
his way to fight the Nemean lion, is entertained at Kleonai by Molorkos,
a humble peasant.159 Molorkos tells the hero of the damage to the coun-
tryside which the lion has inflicted; the land lies squalid and unworked,
and Molorkos is unable to go outside, and thus can only provide Heracles
with the humblest of cold meals. He offers to sacrifice his only ram in
order to provide better entertainment, but Heracles tells him to postpone
the sacrifice until the lion has been killed, when Molorkos will once again
have abundant meat. The ram thus functions as a vow against Heracles
safe return, as the lock of hair was vowed against Euergetes return in the
companion Coma.160 Heracles sets off again and kills the lion, probably
with the help of Athena; the heroic feat was narrated very briefly, if at all.
On his return, Heracles relates to Molorkos a prophecy of Athena regarding
the crowning of future victors in the Nemean and Isthmian Games, and
when he has returned to Argos he sends Molorkos a gift of a mule.
This extraordinary poem offered ample opportunity for aitia: we learn
not merely of the Nemean Games, but also of the crowns at the Isthmian
Games (SH 265.59), of Heracles lionskin (SH 268BC), and of a ritual
(/ % ) connected with the Games (SH 265.21); it is an attractive sug-
gestion of Peter Parsons that the catasterism of the Nemean lion figured
somewhere in the poem, thus increasing the parallelism with the Coma, in
which the constellation Leo all but certainly figured.161 The most striking
feature of the poem, however, is the manner in which Heracles heroic feat
is displaced from the centre of interest by the description of Molorkos rus-
tic life. Here, the ultimate model is Eumaeus entertainment of Odysseus,
158 The fullest discussion and bibliography is Fuhrer (1992); see also P. A. Rosenmeyer, A cold reception
in Callimachus Victoria Berenices (S. H. 257265) CQ 43 (1993) 20614.
159 For the spelling of the name cf. J. D. Morgan, The origin of Molorc[h]us CQ 42 (1992) 5338.
160 Cf. below pp. 858.
161 Parsons (1977) 43. Cf. Catullus 66.65 and the scholia to the Greek poem (Pfeiffer I p. 118).
and there are obvious similarities with Hecales entertainment of Theseus
in the Hecale.162
It was probably during the first evening with Heracles that Molorkos
is troubled by mice and must set traps for them (SH 259 = fr. 177 Pf.),
an episode which perhaps formed an aition for particular types of mouse-
trap.163 Molorkos battle with the mice, rather than Heracles fight with the
lion, was in fact probably the central heroic feat of the poem. The strug-
gle is depicted in suitably epic terms: an elaborate epic time-periphrasis
(vv. 58),164 similes (vv. 1011, 21), and humorously grand language
%, ravagers, is used of the mice, where Homer used it (appropri-
ately) of wild beasts, including lions; Molorkos weary complaint in v. 14
that god moulded (#% ) [mice] as a bane to hosts/guests both evokes
a cosmological aition for the little creatures and parallels Heras creation
of the Nemean lion to be a difficult challenge for the son of Zeus (SH
267). If the mice resemble the suitors on Ithaca who eat everything in
sight,165 Molorkos cunning is an amusing echo of Odysseus or the guile
of the divine craftsman Hephaestus.166 Moreover, as Enrico Livrea pointed
out,167 Molorkos battle with the mice replays a foundation legend, accord-
ing to which Kleonai was settled by Chalcidians escaping from a mouse
plague; at every turn, then, aitia present themselves, and the presence of
aitia for the most ordinary of situations threatens to undermine the very
category which the poet has established: aetiology was never designed for
purposes as homely as this.
Framing Books 3 and 4 with the Victoria is the famous poem spoken
by a lock of Queen Berenices hair. When Ptolemy III Euergetes went
off to the Syrian War in 246bc, his recently married bride, the Cyrenean
princess (and Euergetes second cousin) Berenice, vowed that she would
dedicate a lock of her hair to the gods if her husband returned safe. When
he did so, Berenice duly fulfilled her vow, almost certainly in the temple of
her deified mother, Aphrodite-Arsinoe at Cape Zephyrium.168 When the
lock disappeared, the learned astronomer Konon announced that he had
identified it, now catasterised as a constellation, in a previously unnamed
group of stars near Leo and Virgo. Callimachus celebrated this splendid
event in a first-person elegiac poem, in which the lock expresses its regret
that it is no longer on the queens head (fr. 110). In form, the poem may be
seen as an extended version of the epigrammatic form in which an object
162 Cf. below pp. 196200. 163 For the language used cf. Parsons (1993) 17.
164 For this epic feature cf. Fantuzzi (1988a) 12154. Particularly relevant is Ap. Rhod. Arg. 4.162930.
165 Cf. Hutchinson (1988) 46 n. 42. 166 Cf. Pfeiffer on fr. 177.16f. 167 Maia 32 (1980) 2523.
168 This is not certain, but is the most likely interpretation, cf. Gutzwiller (1992) 363 n. 16. For this
temple cf. below p. 382.
which has been dedicated in a temple explains itself and how it came to be
there.169 The mode of the poem is, however, as far removed from that of
a simple dedicatory epigram as is its length. The lock speaks to the world
at large, referring to the queen in the third person (vv. 78, 758), but also
occasionally turns aside to address its complaint directly to Berenice (vv.
40, 45);170 its mastery of the rhetorical techniques of emotional pathos is
brilliantly funny.
In addition to a few verses preserved in the indirect tradition and some
brief prose paraphrases, two papyri (PSI 1092, POxy 2258c) preserve over
thirty verses of this poem, and we also have Catullus Latin translation,
apparently of the whole poem (Catullus 66).171 POxy 2258 seems to be a
codex anthology of Callimachean texts, in which the Coma Berenices is
immediately followed by the Victory of Sosibios (fr. 384), another courtly
elegy; the Diegesis, however, identifies the Coma Berenices as the last piece
in the fourth book of the Aitia. (Unfortunately, the text is missing at the
corresponding point of POxy 1011, which preserves the epilogue of the
Aitia (fr. 112)).172 This, together with the fact that Catullus 66 contains at
least one passage to which nothing in the Greek text corresponds (vv. 79
88)173 and also does not seem to translate the final two verses of the Greek
text, has prompted the now widely held view that Callimachus originally
wrote the Coma Berenices as a separate court poem, but then included a
lightly revised version of it as the final poem of the Aitia, matching it with
the Victoria Berenices which opened Book 3. That Catullus knew the
poem within the Aitia seems, however, probable from the fact that Poem
65, the elegiac epistle which introduces the Latin Coma Berenices, exploits
the narrative of Acontius and Cydippe from Aitia 3,174 thus making a very
appropriate introduction to a translation from Aitia 4.
Ludwig Koenen and Daniel Selden have recently produced powerful
readings of Callimachus poem in terms of the royal ideology and Graeco-
Egyptian symbolism of the Ptolemaic-Pharaonic court; Berenices ritual act
replays Isis mourning for Osiris, as well as finding many parallels in the
169 Cf. e.g. M. Burzachechi, Oggetti parlanti nelle epigrafi greche Epigraphica 24 (1962) 354; further
bibliography in Kerkhecker (1999) 183 n. 3.
170 Cf. Harder (1998) 99.
171 For the caution needed in reconstructing Callimachus from Catullus cf. P. Bing, Reconstructing
Berenikes Lock in G. W. Most (ed.), Collecting Fragments. Fragmente sammeln (Gottingen 1997)
7894.
172 Cf. above p. 46. I have left POxy 1793 (fr. 387 Pfeiffer) out of account because of the uncertainty of
the ascription to the Coma.
173 For recent discussion and full bibliography cf. Marinone (1997) 4154, Laura Rossi, La Chioma di
Berenice: Catullo 66, 7988, Callimaco e la propaganda di corte RFIC 128 (2000) 299312.
174 Cf. Hunter (1993c), below, pp. 4745.
traditions of Greek cult and literature. From these major studies, the poem
emerges as a primary witness to the creative fusion of Greek and Egyptian
motifs within Ptolemaic court-poetry.175 Here, there is space merely to note
how this poem forms a very suitable closure to the remarkable games with
poetic voice, which are perhaps the most striking feature of the Aitia.
Although the lock is grammatically masculine (#
) 9
%$!),
much of its rhetoric resembles that of a woman carried away to marriage
or abandoned by a lover; the pathos recalls that of Sapphic poems of sepa-
ration.176 In emphasising the femaleness of the lock, Catullus exploited not
merely the gender of the Latin Coma Berenices,177 but also genuine fea-
tures of his Greek original. The locks complaint at vv. 758 well illustrates
its dilemma:
(' %%4' !( V%[%]
&]%!(## $ M
[)
z .) [] X VC D ) ##
#() $ ' C &#$% Q.
These things do not bring me as much pleasure as the pain of no longer touching
that head, from which, when she was still a virgin, I drank many simple oils, but
never enjoyed the perfumes of married women. (Callimachus fr. 110.758)
The locks memory exploits the traditional comic theme of the bibulousness
of women, but also highlights how the lock sees itself as both an extension
of the queen but also now cut off from the new pleasures which the queen
enjoys. The lock seeks solace in the thought that it is missed:
.

% &' [# (v. 51)
My sister locks longed for me who had just been cut
However, the despairing hope with which the poem ends (sidera corruerint
utinam . . .)178 shows just how self-deceiving such consolation is. The
cutting of the lock stands in fact for more than one separation; it is a
multivalent symbol for many partings, some reparable and some eternal.
Loss of virginity both is and is figured as the cutting-off of a lock of hair.179
175 Cf. Koenen (1993) 89113, Selden (1998) 32654.
176 Cf. O. Vox, Sul genere grammaticale della Chioma di Berenice MD 44 (2000) 17581. If Cal-
limachus lock lies behind Medeas plea to Queen Arete at Ap. Rhod. Arg. 4.10212 (cf. Hunter
(1995a) 245), it will be hard to believe that it spoke with an unambiguously male voice.
177 Cf. A. Barchiesi, MD 39 (1997) 21217. The most powerful case for a female voice in the Greek
poem has been put by Gutzwiller (1992); cf. further Harder (2002) 2046.
178 The text is very uncertain, cf. Marinone (1997) 2214, but the tone of lamentation in the final
Catullan distich is hard to miss.
179 Cf. esp. Ap. Rhod. Arg. 4.279: Medea leaves behind a lock of her hair as a memorial of her
maidenhood.

newly cut seems to evoke
', newly wedded (Eur.
Medea 623) or newly killed (Eur. Rhesus 887), as
suggests
. The
locks sisters miss her, not only as Berenice longed for her absent husband,
but also as young girls miss a friend who has been taken away to the death
of marriage (cf. Theocritus 18.42). 5 to long for is applicable to the
longing felt both for those who are dead and for an absent friend or lover;
in accordance with his own poetic concerns, Catullus lugebant changes
the balance of the phrase. That the lock was carried from the temple into
the bosom of Aphrodite by Zephyros, the west wind, reinforces this erotic
sense, as the tendency of winds (especially Boreas and Zephyros) to carry
away young women is a familiar fact of the Greek mythic imagination.180 As
Aphrodite snatched up Berenice I and gave her a share in her own temples
(Theocritus 17.4650), and the Dioscuri snatched away Arsinoe herself,
Berenice IIs mother (Callimachus fr. 228), so the carrying off of the lock
both foretells its own divinisation as a constellation and foreshadows the
certain fate which awaits Berenice II when she dies.
In its patent insecurity, the voluble lock, by turns proudly arrogant and
transparently self-pitying, functions as a humorous analogy to the voice of
the encomiastic poet, always overrating his own importance while being
only too painfully aware of just how dispensable he is. The helpless femi-
nised voice captures this (constructed) powerlessness in a witty game which
the young Berenice may well have been sophisticated enough to appreci-
ate. The poem that began with the insufferably know-all young scholar,
relentlessly questioning the Muses, ends with the pathetically ineffectual
complaints of a small constellation, visible only to the cunning eye of the
court astronomer, which wants to reverse the whole aetiological moment
and thus deprive the poet of his subject. As there was no end to the scholars
questions, so the lock will never stop its complaints it will babble until
the destruction of the universe but the real poet has one power at least:
he can, quite literally, cut the lock off.
180 Cf. Gutzwiller (1992) 3801; E. Vermeule, Aspects of Death in Early Greek Art and Poetry (Berkeley
1979) 1689.
chap t e r 3
The Argonautica of Apollonius and epic tradition
1 epic song
Like Callimachus, Apollonius is a figure from the very heart of Alexandrian
scholarship. Our sources are almost unanimous that he came from Alexan-
dria itself; if this is correct, the designation Rhodian must go back to some
close connection with the island, perhaps through his family or because he
spent time there.1 Be that as it may, Apollonius served as Librarian in the
royal Library at Alexandria during the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus and
thus occupied perhaps the most important position of patronage within
the institutionalisation of culture established by the first two Ptolemies,
and what we know of his scholarly prose works clearly reflects the literary
concerns of the Museum. Thus, in one treatise he tackled Homeric prob-
lems, including textual problems, in a manner which apparently took issue,
in what might be thought a typically Greek agonistic spirit, with his great
forerunner as Librarian, Zenodotus;2 in other works he discussed issues
in the interpretation of Hesiod and Archilochus. Apollonius career thus
illustrates how textual immersion in the poetry of the past may become the
basis for the production of new poetry.
However, unlike both his famous predecessor and his successor,
Zenodotus and Eratosthenes, it is as a poet, rather than as a scholar,
that Apollonius was best known both in antiquity and today, although
with the exception of the Argonautica only the scantiest fragments of
his poetic output survive. Of particular interest are the titles and exigu-
ous fragments of poems on the foundations of cities, Ktiseis;3 we hear of
such poems concerning Kaunos, Rhodes, Knidos, Naucratis and Alexandria
1 The ancient Lives have him withdrawing to Rhodes after the initial failure of the Argonautica
in Alexandria. For our sources on Apollonius and more detailed discussion cf. Hunter (1989a)
19.
2 Cf. Pfeiffer (1968) 1468.
3 On these cf. Hunter (1989a) 1012, N. Krevans, On the Margins of Epic: the Foundation-poems of
Apollonius in HarderRegtuitWakker (2000) 6984.
89
90 The Argonautica of Apollonius and epic tradition
itself. This poetic exploration of a mythic past, the ramifications of which
are visible in the existing cultures of the present, both finds contem-
porary parallels in the work of Callimachus (who wrote a prose work
on Foundations of Islands and Cities and Changes of Name and who
treated the foundation of the cities of Sicily in Book 2 of the Aitia)
and foreshadows the great mythico-historical enterprise of Virgil in the
Aeneid.
The Argonautica,4 an extended multi-book epic poem on a mythical
subject, stands out as something of a one-off amidst the remains of
Hellenistic poetry. To what extent it would in fact have seemed unusual in
the third century is a subject about which debate continues to rage,5 but
two preliminary points are worth making. The story of Jasons quest for the
Golden Fleece is cited by Circe in the Odyssey in a way which suggests that
it is partially analogous to Odysseus journey (Od. 12.6972), and the sim-
iliarities and possible inter-dependence of the two stories was well known
to Hellenistic scholarship. Apollonius, therefore, has chosen a story which
Homer has avoided, as Odysseus is to avoid the Wandering Rocks, but
one which is given, already in Homer, an oblique and suggestive relation-
ship to the Homeric narrative. The Homeric treatment of Jasons story is
thus made emblematic of Apollonius own oblique relationship to Homer.
Secondly, it is clear that, if indeed large-scale imitation is a form of homage,
subsequent Greek and Roman poetry was in no doubt as to the importance
of the Argonautica and its place at the centre of Alexandrian poetry.6 By
accident or design, the only surviving Greek epic between Homer and
the later Roman Empire was to be extraordinarily influential in the future
directions which epic poetry was to take.
For antiquity, the Argonautica was an epic () , epos), just
as the Homeric poems were; post-Renaissance distinctions between epic
and romance or between oral and literary epic were never more than
foreshadowed in antiquity.7 Apollonius himself marks his generic status in
the opening verse through the phrase which designates the subject of his
song, # # . In the Odyssey, Demodocus is inspired by
the Muse to sing # &' (Od. 8.73), Achilles sings of # &'
4 The best guide to recent trends in scholarship on the Argonautica are the collections of Harder
RegtuitWakker (2000) and PapanghelisRengakos (2001).
5 The two poles of the debate are now symbolised, rightly or wrongly, by Ziegler (1966) and Cameron
(1995).
6 Cf. below, pp. 465, 47785 for the Nachleben of the Argonautica in Roman poetry.
7 For epic and romance cf. especially Quint (1993). The comparison by Longinus of the Iliad and
the Odyssey (De subl. 9.13) is of particular interest in this regard.
1 Epic song 91
when withdrawn from the fighting itself (Il. 9.189),8 and Phoenix tells
Achilles that there have been epic parallels to his own situation:9
[
% $
# &'
1Z) A C _( # !
# lU
' # ( C %%.
Thus we have heard too of the great deeds of heroic men of former times, when
terrible anger came upon them: they could be won over by gifts and persuaded by
words. (Homer, Iliad 9.5246)
The opening verse of the Argonautica therefore announces the genre of
the poem, and 1.24 describe its subject.10 Such an ordering foregrounds
the consciousness of the poet rather than the role of tradition, which had
been given prominence in the opening Homeric invocations to the Muse.
There is however, as we shall see, no straightforward distinction between
Hellenistic and archaic practice.
The adjective which Apollonius applies to the Argonauts, # 5
of old, born a long time ago, marks a crucial fact about the Hellenistic epic.
Phoenix evoked the deeds of heroic men before us in order to encourage
Achilles to emulation; the story which he proceeds to relate still lives in
his memory, though it is long ago, not at all recent (Il. 9.527). So too in
the Odyssey, Demodocus sings of men and events of his own generation
Agamemnon, Achilles, Odysseus, the fall of Troy. Most striking of all, in
Book 1 of the Odyssey Phemios sings of the nostos of the Greeks from Troy
(Od. 1.3267), events which are of very recent happening and are indeed, at
least for Odysseus, still going on. Here the poet fashions for us a glimpse of
the beginnings of a particular song tradition. The poet of the Iliad himself,
as opposed to his characters, draws a famous distinction between the heroic
prowess of his characters and men as they are now,11 so that the epic itself
8 For Virgils translation of # &' in the opening verse of the Aeneid cf. Conte (1986) 703.
Horaces designation of epic poetry as res gestae regumque ducumque et tristia bella (AP 73, cf. Epist.
2.1.2501) gives a distinctively public and Roman tinge to the idea. For some reservations about the
use of the phrase in Homer cf. Ford (1992) 5767.
9 Cf. below, p. 107. To what extent Phoenix is improvising to suit the rhetorical task in hand is not
relevant here, cf. L. Edmunds, Myth in Homer in MorrisPowell (1997) 41541, pp. 42532.
10 The question of whether 1.14 introduces the whole poem or merely Books 12 (cf. e.g. Kohnken
(2000)) may be left out of account here. It is sometimes asserted (e.g. Carspecken (1952) 111) that
the substitution of for the Homeric &' in this phrase marks the difference between
heroes and ordinary mortals, including women. Too much should not, however, be made of this,
particularly if the phrase bears some relationship to Hom.Hymn 32.1819, cf. Hunter (1993a) 129 n.
110, O. Vox, Noterelle di epica ellenistica Rudiae 11 (1999) 16372, pp. 1635; the phrase may have
been much more widespread in hymnic poetry than we can now establish.
11 Cf. Il. 5.3024, 12.3803, 44750, 20.2857.
tells of heroes (cf. Il. 1.4) born long ago, though those heroes themselves
listen to contemporary stories and songs. This difference between the
subject of Homers song and the subjects of which his bards sing may be
seen as a fundamental part of Homers creation of a distant, heroic world.
Nevertheless, despite the gap between then and now, and however walled
off absolutely from all subsequent times12 the epic past in Homer may be,
Homer does not in fact emphatically foreground the temporal distance
between himself and the subjects of his song, as Apollonius does in the very
opening verse; even the slighting references to men as they are now, which
establish Homers implied audience as a nameless collectivity, a weaker
and more ignorant generation of mortals living long after the heroes,13 are
rhetorically not much stronger than Nestors unfavourable contrast between
his own youth and the present lot (Il. 1.2712, 7.12360).14 Apollonius,
however, in both the proem and the closing envoi stresses his own temporal
distance from the Argonauts, and indeed from all figures of the heroic age,
the divinely-born
.' of 3.91921; moreover, in the only scene
of epic performance in the Argonautica, the Argonauts listen to Orpheus
cosmological song (1.497511), which tells of events truly long ago, thus
reproducing within the epic the relationship between audience and song
implied by the framing poem.
Apollonius apparent distance from his characters is merely one mani-
festation of a self-conscious generic placement, which is a central feature of
all surviving Greek and Latin epic after Homer, but whose seeds lie already
in Homers own nuanced attitude to the tradition in which he worked.
Apollonius stance towards characters born long ago thus develops from
one already found in the Homeric poems: it is not a matter of a radical
break with the past through the creation of a new poetics, but rather of
a rearrangement of emphasis giving new meaning to particular elements
within a pre-existing repertoire. Whereas, however, this generic placement
emphasises distance between then and now, the powerful aetiological
drive of the Argonautica works to break down that distance and to prob-
lematise the nature of epic time.15 This is merely one of several strategies by
12 M. M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination (ed. M. Holquist (Austin 1981) 15). Bakhtins very influential
account of the epic past (ibid. 1518) is really applicable only to the Iliad of classical epics, and even
there important reservations are necessary.
13 A. Ford, Epic as genre in MorrisPowell (1997) 396414, p. 410.
14 This is not, of course, to deny the importance of such passages as the opening of Iliad 12 on the
destruction of the Achaean wall (cf. Hunter (1993a) 1034, I. J. F. De Jong, Narrators and Focalizers:
the Presentation of the Story in the Iliad (Amsterdam 1987) 445), but it is the explicitness of the
Hellenistic poet which is at issue.
15 For aetiology in Arg. cf. Fusillo (1985) 11658, Goldhill (1991) 32133, M. Valverde Sanchez, El aition
en las Argonauticas de Apolonio de Rodos (Murcia 1989).
1 Epic song 93
which Apollonius collapses the hierarchy of time which he inherited with
the epic tradition.16
If, however, much has changed, the fundamental purpose of epic, the
perpetuation of mens fame, kleos, remains. The act of remembering (4Y
%, 1.2) is central to the whole generic project,17 for without epic song the
great deeds of the past will be forgotten. Gods may know of # &'
without the aid of the bard (Od. 10.330, 4579 (Circe)), but men are depen-
dent upon the poet; this is the commemorative role which Herodotus took
up in his famous opening, declaring the purpose of his history to be that
the great and marvellous feats of the Greeks and barbarians should not lack
kleos. Great deeds can indeed travel almost miraculously. Thus, whereas
Phemios ability to sing of the nostos of the Achaeans does not really stretch
credulity (Od. 1.3267), whatever part we assign to the Muses, we ought
perhaps to be surprised that Demodocus is able to sing of events at Troy:
what is the source of his information?18 The Phaeacians are like gods in
many ways, and Demodocus is exceptional among bards (Od. 8.445), but
Odysseus extravagant praise precisely thematises this marvel:

'C) M! '4 % 9 *_ C /(U
v % 0% C ''M ) \, ({) v % C C;
##U
#
% C;! L & ' )
V%% C EM C
V%%C
% C;!)
$ v , O v .##$ &Q%.
Demodocus, I admire you beyond all other men: either the Muse, child of Zeus,
taught you, or it was Apollo. With absolute rightness you sing the fate of the
Achaeans all that the Achaeans did and suffered and toiled as if somehow you
yourself were there or had heard from another! (Homer, Odyssey 8.48791)
In fact, the poet had noted that the kleos of the song of the quarrel of
Odysseus and Achilles at that time reached broad heaven (8.74), suggesting
that Demodocus sings a popular favourite, though that is not really a full
explanation for his knowledge. As with Odysseus, however, so Aeneas fame
reaches Carthage before any Trojan does: the decoration on the temple of
scenes from the battle for Troy (Aen. 1.45393) picks up the idea of Odysseus
kleos among the Phaeacians, and both the poet (uidet Iliacas ex ordine
16 Cf. below, pp. 1002. This account naturally simplifies: by the Hellenistic period the time hierarchy
was no longer a simple, univocal model. Choerilus of Samos had written an epic on the Persian
Wars (SH 41323) and, whatever ones view of the existence of Hellenistic epic, an epic manner of
describing contemporary events was certainly familiar. Nevertheless, despite the very fragmentary
nature of our evidence, it does seem clear that it is against the archaic pattern which Apollonius
seeks to be measured.
17 On memory in Arg. cf. below, pp. 11726.
18 The formulation of Scodel (1998) 179 requires modification here.
pugnas | bellaque iam fama totum uulgata per orbem, 1.4567)19 and Dido
herself (quis genus Aeneadum, quis Troia nesciat urbem etc., 1.565) explain
away this improbability. The Argonautic quest was of a rather different
kind, but even so the absence of such internal advertisement within the
poem is noteworthy. Like Circe or the Sirens, whose words they echo
(Od. 12.18990), the Libyan heroines know of the epic quest (4.131921),
but their intervention reverses the Sirens purpose by preventing a total
abnegation of the purpose of epic:
Q ( &, _ #%
Z$ . !% '
1Z e .% &Q%" C &#"U
There and then they would have all departed from life, the best of heroes with their
task uncompleted, leaving no name or trace by which mortal men might know
them. (Argonautica 4.13057)
In this poetics, the failure to leave a trace is as good as never having
existed.20
Apollonius has replaced this extraordinary power of impersonal tradition
or divine inspiration in Homer by an allusive mode which works in two
directions. The fame of Jason and Medea does indeed go before them,
but it is a fame, associated above all with Euripides, which looks to the
future rather than the past.21 Here again, however, Apollonius works within
Homeric patterns, for the futures of both Achilles and Odysseus are, in
different ways, inscribed within their respective epics. Secondly, the rich
literary texture, the constant reworkings of and allusions to Homeric and
post-Homeric scenes (above all, from the Odyssey) and language, mean that
there is another sense in which the kleos of the Argonauts goes before them,
because we as readers have been here, or somewhere similar, before. As they
retrace the wanderings of Odysseus in Book 4, or as Jason and Medea play
out a different version of the meeting of Odysseus and Nausicaa in Book 3,
we realise that in a literate and allusive poetics, kleos, like memory itself, is
a highly complex virtue. As the Odyssey acknowledges the Argonautic story
as prior in time (12.6972), so the Argonautica exploits the Odysseys literary
priority.
Apollonius mimesis of Homers foundational texts is quite different in
kind from that of Virgil. For Apollonius, Homer is, in the terminology
19 uulgata per orbem perhaps suggests the role of the epic cycle in spreading the Trojan story, cf. Barchiesi
(1997a) 273.
20 For the Libyan scenes cf. Hunter (1993a) 126, (2001a) 1014.
21 As such, it has obvious links with the phenomena discussed by Barchiesi (1993).
1 Epic song 95
of Gian Biagio Conte and Alessandro Barchiesi, far more a modello-
esemplare than a modello-genere.22 Apollonius rewrites, evokes, anal-
ogises and gestures towards Homeric language, specific scenes, themes and
techniques; meaning is regularly created by the interplay of similarity to and
difference from the Homeric text.23 What Apollonius does not do is scrivere
come Omero, i.e. not merely to rework Homeric language and scenes as a
storehouse of epic set pieces from which to draw, but to create a mimesis of
stili, convenzioni, norme, generi, which requires the Homeric text to act
as a matrice generativa from which something quite new may be derived.24
Apollonius innovations can indeed look quite unepic, and the resul-
tant whole differs radically from the massive consistency and (apparent)
transparency of the Homeric text.
The most important single difference between the inner design of the
Homeric poems and that of the Argonautica is that no character is as central
to the latter as Achilles and Odysseus are to the poems in which they appear,
or as Aeneas is to the Aeneid.25 Achilles, Odysseus and Aeneas all appear
by name or periphrasis in the opening verse of their epic (as indeed does
Hecale), whereas Jason does not enter the Argonautica until the explanatory
narrative of 1.517. The prominent announcement (1.202) and position
of the Catalogue reinforces the statement of the opening verse that the
subject of the poem will be # # , the glorious deeds
of men of old. So too, it is the whole collective of Argonauts to whom
the poet bids farewell at the end of the poem, as the singer of the Homeric
Hymns bids farewell to the god who has been the subject of his song.26 We
may wish to see the group of Argonauts taking the place of the central
hero,27 or prefer to see the poem as the story of an action, the bringing
of the Golden Fleece to Greece, but the plurality of Argonauts imposes its
own shape upon the generic pattern. We must, of course, be wary of over-
interpreting the difference between Apollonius and Homer in this matter,
but other epic models were also available and may seem structurally rather
closer than Homer to Apollonius.
22 Cf. Barchiesi (1984) 91122.
23 The standard synthetic account is now Knight (1995). On Apollonius recreation of a Homeric verbal
style see esp. Fantuzzi (1988a), (2001a), and below, pp. 26682.
24 Barchiesi (1984) 95. Contes discussion of the epic code ((1986) 14151) is also relevant here. For
Apollonius attitude to repetition cf. below, p. 123.
25 For the history of the hero in critical approaches to the epic cf. D. C. Feeney, Epic Hero and Epic
Fable Comp. Lit. 38 (1986) 13758. The following paragraphs are a revised version of Hunter (2001a)
1225.
26 On the hymnic frame of the Argonautica cf. now O. Vox, Dionigi Alessandrino e Apollonio Rodio:
cornici innodiche Lexis 20 (2002) 15370.
27 So Carspecken (1952).
The Epigonoi (Descendants [of those who fought at Thebes]) began
cC # &' &!Z 0%, Now again, Muses, let
us begin to sing of younger men (fr. 1 Davies), which might be thought
to have had some influence upon Apollonius opening # . . .
. Although younger men may be seen as virtually equivalent to
descendants and so this verse is not parallel to Apollonius generically pro-
grammatic opening,28 nevertheless such a poem, like the cyclic Nostoi, is
parallel to the Argonautica in having a plurality of heroes built into its very
structure. So, too, the Thebais clearly had a rich cast of warriors,29 and its
opening verse, h; . ' #$': . , Sing, goddess,
of thirsty Argos from which the lords . . . (EGF 1), points to this multiplic-
ity. How precisely the term $#
is to be glossed and to which poems it
applies are matters of very considerable debate,30 but the central specimens
of the type were clearly poems such as the Cypria, the Aithiopis, the Little
Iliad and the Nostoi which (at least when viewed from a third-century per-
spective) completed Homer by telling the stories of what happened before,
between and after the Iliad and the Odyssey;31 some (if not all) of these poems
were, like the Argonautica, considerably shorter than the Homeric poems.
The Argonautica is not on a Trojan theme, but deals with what, together
with the Theban story, is the most prominent mythic complex set before
the Trojan War and one to which Homers Circe herself famously refers
(Od. 12.6972); the link between the two stories is plainest in the figure of
the Argonaut Peleus, Achilles father. Argonautic material played a promi-
nent role in the Corinthiaca of Eumelus (? c. 700 bc) and the anonymous
Naupactia, both of which Apollonius seems to have used;32 it would not,
therefore, be difficult to see the Argonautic story as (in some senses) a
cyclic one. Moreover, much of what happens in Apollonius poem has
closer affinities to what modern scholars regard as typically cyclic than to
Homeric themes.33
As far as we can judge, superhuman abilities, such as the vision of a
Lynceus34 or the (virtual) invulnerability of a Kaineus (1.5764) or a Talos,
28 Cf. above, pp. 901. 29 Helpful survey in Davies (1989) 239.

30 Cf. Pfeiffer (1968) 230, Cameron (1995) 3949, Davies (1989) 18.
31 Such a way of viewing the Cycle may, of course, misrepresent the original relation between these
poems and Homer, cf. e.g. J. S. Burgess, The Non-Homeric Cypria TAPA 126 (1996) 7799, J. M.
Foley, Epic Cycles and Epic Traditions in KazazisRengakos (1999) 99108.
32 Cf. Hunter (1989a) 1516 with bibliography. On the Corinthiaca cf. now M. L. West, Eumelos: a
Corinthian epic cycle? JHS 122 (2002) 10933, pp. 11826.
33 The most helpful modern discussion is J. Griffin, The Epic Cycle and the Uniqueness of Homer
JHS 97 (1977) 3953; cf. more briefly Davies (1989) 910.
34 Cf. Cypria, EGF 13.
1 Epic song 97
were familiar cyclic motifs.35 Such characteristics are, of course, almost
normal among the Argonauts. So, too, the magical and the supernatural
seem to have been far more prominent in the cyclic poems than in (most
of ) Homer; Medeas lulling of the dragon or Circes purificatory magic
would be perfectly at home in such a poetic context, and for some of
the fantastical tales which are recorded in the Argonautica a cyclic version
and/or origin is known.36 So, too, the treacherous killing of Apsyrtus and
the maschalismos performed by Jason on the young mans corpse more
easily find cyclic than Homeric counterparts; at a different aesthetic level,
the apparent prominence of erotic romance in what we know of the Cycle
has often been remarked, and the whole business of Zeus desire for Thetis,
which plays such a prominent role at 4.790816, almost certainly owes an
extensive debt to the Cypria.37 It was the same poem which was the principal
epic source for the character of the blasphemous Idas,38 who appears from
time to time in the Argonautica to express his displeasure, rather like a
frustrated reader who finds himself in a poem different from the one he
expected. More important perhaps than cataloguing the cyclic forerunners
of individual stories and motifs is the overall impression of a poem which
revels in much that has no real Homeric analogue, even where verbal echo
of the Homeric poems predominates. It is perhaps not misleading to view
Apollonius epic as, in subject, a cyclic poem done in the modern, non-
cyclic style.39
Finally, we may note the narrative pattern which informs epic song.
Orpheus cosmological song at 1.496511 gestures towards the alternation
of philia and neikos, a theme which has a special place in the epic tradition.
In the Iliad the theme is most fully worked out in the relations of Achilles
and Agamemnon, which are set against the behaviour of Zeus and Hera
in Book 1, where an angry neikos (cf. 1.521, 579) between the divine pair
gives way to laughter and conjugal sleep (philia as lovemaking); so, too, the
duel between Menelaus and Paris, which was supposed to impose philotes
upon the neikos between Greeks and Trojans (Il. 3.73, 94), ends rather
with renewed strife, but lovemaking for Paris and Helen (Il. 3.441, 453).
35 For the invulnerability motif as it relates to the cyclic Achilles and Ajax cf. Davies (1989) 5861.
36 For Zeus mating with Philyra in the shape of a horse (2.123141) cf. Titanomachia fr. 9 Davies.
37 Cf. Cypria EGF 2, Vian III 1756. From the point of view of the Argonautica (and Catullus 64), the
loss of Nestors account of Theseus and Ariadne in the Cypria (EGF p. 31.389) is keenly felt.
38 Cf. EGF p. 31.2831, fr. 14.
39 This is not, of course, to say that the Argonautica is necessarily the object of Callimachus distaste
in Epigram 28Pf.; what Callimachus actually thought (or would have thought) of Apollonius epic,
we have no idea. For the Argonautica and cyclic epic cf. now A. Rengakos, Die Argonautica und
das kyklische Gedicht in A. Bierl et al. (eds.), Antike Literatur in never Deutung (Leipzig 2004)
277304.
The epic itself closes in the truce which Achilles and Priam arrange for
the burial of Hector (24.66070), though the resumption of neikos is not
far away. So, too, the Odyssey comes to a conclusion because Zeus wishes
to impose peace and philia (24.4856) and Athena commands the neikos
to stop (24.543). In the Aeneid, Juno apparently abandons her opposition to
the Trojan settlement of Italy and accedes to conubia felicia, leges and foedera,
i.e. # in its fully political sense (Aen. 12.8212).40 For the Argonautica,
however, beyond the immediate context of the quarrel between Idmon and
Idas,41 the theme resonates most strongly in our knowledge of the future
relations of Jason and Medea;42 the cyclic story of the Argonautic voyage
itself moves to a different rhythm.
2 an epic world
Whatever other models and narrative patterns have left their impress upon
the Argonautica, it is Homer who is the determinant influence, and if the
Argonautica is in part an exploration of the Homeric poems, it must also
confront their significance, as Virgils Augustan epic too recreates (with
differences) the moral and social protreptic at the heart of Greek cultures
reception of Homer. Long before the third century, the Homeric poems had
been invested with huge moral and political authority. Some of this derived
from the role of the warriors as founding heroes of cities all over the Greek
world,43 and as the Argonauts circumnavigate the known and unknown
world, the poems pervasive aetiology explicitly recreates this reception of
the Homeric poems into cultural history. Moreover, Homers characters
had long since been received into Greek culture and educational practice as
models for emulation.44 It is not so much, despite Platos fears, that every
Athenian schoolboy was taught to try to be an Achilles or an Odysseus as
that the poems offered paradigmatic social and moral patterns whose didac-
tic potential was not limited to any particular socio-cultural context. So,
too, we are encouraged to read Virgils Aeneas as a paradigmatic model to
be imitated and yet inimitable by the fact that he partially foreshadows the
living Roman who embodies all that is worth imitating, namely Augustus.
40 This picture of course over-simplifies, cf. D. C. Feeney, The reconciliations of Juno CQ 34 (1984)
17994.
41 Cf. below, pp. 11214. 42 For the future 5 cf. Eur. Med. 904, 1140.
43 Cf. e.g. I. Malkin, The Returns of Odysseus (Berkeley 1998).
44 Cf. e.g. Plato, Prt. 325e6a; Platos Protagoras has, of course, his own agenda, but there seems little
reason to doubt the general truth of his characterisation of education. The Aristophanic Aeschylus
is devoted to a comic version of the same didactic model, and the same attitude is also writ large
centuries later in Plutarchs How to Study Poetry.
2 An epic world 99
The situation with the Argonautica is, however, much more ambiguous, as
there is little in the poem which seems obviously designed to encourage
such _#. The Argonautica parades a quite different relationship with
its cultural context than that which Greek society had constructed for the
Homeric poems. One measure of this is expressed through the myth itself.
Although the Argonauts are the greatest heroes of the generation before the
Trojan War, a continuity particularly marked by the presence of Achilles
father, Peleus, Jason himself is a young man without children, and the
children he was destined to have by Medea were to die young in an anti-
paradigm of parental (lack of ) care. The passing-on of wisdom and heroic
values from father to son within the epic, most famously staged in the
relations of Odysseus and Telemachus in the Odyssey, acts as a figure for the
values which the epic itself transmits to successive generations and the cul-
tural significance which it bears; so, too, Achilles distance from and lack of
contact with his father mark his peculiar tragedy. In the Argonautica, family
relations are principally sources of grief (Jason and his parents, Cyzicus and
his young bride) or hostility (Medea and her parents). Viewed from this
perspective, Jason has no future, and his epic remarkably scripts its own
marginality.
Style and significance here go hand in hand. In his work on sublimity,
[:, lit. height, Longinus denies the higher regions of sublimity to Apol-
lonius by calling him ., unfalling, not putting a foot wrong (De
subl. 33.4),45 thus casting him into much the same category as Horace, who,
with self-deprecating humour, puts himself in Odes 4.2: whereas Horace
is content to imitate the low-flying bee which takes no risks in the pro-
duction of operosa carmina, any poet who seeks to imitate Pindar, the
soaring Theban swan, is bound to fall like Icarus. Crucial here is the link,
fundamental in almost all ancient literary criticism, between subject and
style (cf. already Ar. Frogs 105860): Pindars words, which break free of all
restraint, sing of gods, kings, Centaurs, the Chimaera, athletes raised to the
heaven and have the power to lift those whom he praises to the stars, but
small poets treat small subjects. Epic and tragedy are the biggest, high-
est genres of them all. Philip Hardie has explored how the grand theme
of Virgils Aeneid is reflected both in motifs drawn from cosmological and
theogonic poetry, such as the battles of Hesiods Olympians against the
Giants and Typhoeus and the work of Empedocles, and in a persistent
pattern of hyperbolic expression suggestive of the cosmic significance of
the poem.46 In the former matter, part of Virgils impulse derives from
45 Cf. below, p. 446. 46 Hardie (1986).

encyclopaedic readings of Homer, such as that of Demodocus song of Ares
and Aphrodite as a cosmological allegory, or of the shield of Achilles as a
symbol of the entire universe. Where does Apollonius position his poem
on this vertical axis?
Orpheus cosmological song at 1.496511 is a cosmic overture,47 sug-
gestive of the grandeur of the theme of the narrative, and two sets of
scenes in the Argonautica seem indeed to foreshadow the cosmology of
the Aeneid. One is the passage through the Symplegades in Book 2, where
echoes of the Hesiodic Titanomachy mark the Argonauts achievement as
the imposition of order the rocks are fixed for ever upon the previously
unknown and ungovernable.48 The second is the extended series of episodes
in Book 4 Circe with her Empedoclean animals, Talos from the Hesiodic
Bronze Age, the empty and terrifying chaos from which they are saved by
Apollo which mark the return to Greece as a voyage through cosmogo-
nical, as well as literary, time and space.49 In following in the footsteps
of a nameless traveller from the dawn of time (4.25981), the Argonauts
are pushed back through a world not yet governed by the regulations of
time.
It is, however, clear that the cosmic resonances of the Argonautica are
far less pervasive than those of the Aeneid, or even of Homer, when read
from the perspective of much post-Homeric criticism, and a Hellenistic
aesthetic of tonal poikilia is not the sole reason for this. A sugges-
tive passage is the description of the storm which wrecks the ship of
the sons of Phrixos (2.10971121); the Odyssey had bequeathed storm
and shipwreck scenes to subsequent tradition as one of the quintessen-
tial hallmarks of epic, and echoes of the Odyssey storms, as also of
Iliad 15.6239 and perhaps also Aratus,50 litter this Apollonian text.51
If by the standards of subsequent epic this Apollonian storm is rather
low-key, this will in part be the result of the fact that it is not the
Argonauts who are the storms victims, but rather a minor set of char-
acters, whose all too human experience is to be measured against the
heroic passage of the Argonauts through the Symplegades. Nevertheless,
47 For this phrase cf. Hardie (1986) 84. On this song cf. Hunter (1993a) 14850, 1623, Nelis (1992).
48 Cf. Hunter (1995a) 17. With 2.5667 cf. Hes. Theog. 67880.
49 Cf. Hunter (1991), (1993a) 1648, J. J. Clauss, Cosmos without imperium: the Argonautic journey
through time in HarderRegtuitWakker (2000) 1132.
50 The mighty plank (2.1111) which saves the sons of Phrixos might be not merely a memory of the
improvised raft on which Odysseus saves himself after his shipwreck (Od. 12.4205), but also a witty
reversal of Aratus, Phain. 299 where ]# . . . MQ# refers to the whole ship in a description of
the terrors of sailing; note also Phain. 425 2
9$! $## Arg. 2.11067 $'# . . .
C 2, Q%.
51 Cf. Vian on 2.1117, Knight (1995) 736; see also M. Williams (1991) 2206.
2 An epic world 101
the brevity of the description,52 which matches the brevity of the storm,53
and the fact that the victims are only four people, none of whom thanks
to Zeuss plan lose their life, minimises the potentially epic, hyperbolic
quality of the storm. The terrible rainstorm (A9 &%) of 2.1115
17 affects the sea and the Island [of Ares] and all the mainland opposite
where the insolent Mossynoikoi lived; the geographical specificity here
works against, rather than with, any cosmic universalisation of the threat.
One particular way in which the hyperbolic potential of this storm is
controlled is in the very passage which might seem to convey the most
miraculous feature of it:
' C 2 C %"% %$

'Q |M #$) P( ##(
B% % '%
%$

.
With the help of the gods the four of them clung to one of those mighty planks
which had been held together by sharp bolts, but which came loose as the ship
broke up. (Argonautica 2.111012)
The plank which saved the sons of Phrixos was merely one of many, as hap-
pens in any shipwreck.54 This is not merely a technique for literary enargeia.
Epic universalising in the Argonautica is seen as much in the assimilation of
what happens to a construction of universal and ordinary experience as in
grand hyperbole; we may indeed think of this as a lowering of tonal level,
a kind of epic version of the boast of the Aristophanic Euripides to have
brought tragedy within the realm of ordinary experience. Apollonius invests
his poem with some of the cultural and social value of Homer by making it
reflect general experience. So it is that when the priestess Iphias fails to speak
to Jason because of the press of the crowd, she is left behind as the old are by
the young (1.31516). In the famous simile of 2.5418 the speed of the cloud-
borne Athena as she travels to the area of the Clashing Rocks is compared
to the speed of the thoughts of a homesick traveller, as indeed we wretched
men often do wander . . . The reworking of an Iliadic simile (Il. 15.803)
turns every reader into an Odysseus, p (# ## #( !,55 thus
52 This brevity has caused suspicion of the transmission, cf. Frankel (1968) 28790, F. Vian, REA 75
(1973) 99100.
53 #M x C - #" at the head of 2.1121 comes as something of a surprise.
54 Cf. Frankel (1968) 286.
55 Cf. B. Marzullo, Hom. O 804 (Nascita di un pattern: esistenziale, storico, letterario. MCr 30/1
(1995/6) 718. It is tempting also to associate this simile with the very processes of mental envision-
ing necessary to read an epic description such as that of Athena on her cloud, cf. Reitz (1996) 545,
D. Meyer, Zur Funktion geographischer Darstellungen bei Apollonios Rhodios und in der Peri-
hegese an Nikomedes (Ps.-Skymnos) in Antike Naturwissenschaft und ihre Rezeption 8 (Trier 1998)
6181, pp. 678.
inscribing within the epic itself the generic and didactic significance asoci-
ated with Homeric poetry. The sympathy between ourselves and the char-
acters of epic is now explicitly marked by the shared patterns which govern
both their lives and ours (4.11659 is particularly noteworthy here). In very
broad and simplifying terms, what might be called the particularity of the
archaic epic is replaced by a mode, which we might perhaps call exemplary,
in which actions and scenes are overtly loaded with a cultural significance
beyond the narrative which governs them; in the earlier period, the closest
analogues for this mode are to be found in lyric and elegiac poetry, not in
hexameter narrative.
Immediately after the Catalogue we read:
'Z %% ( C $
V%% Q 4 ' )
cC . I ! .' 2 x# $## %)
'8 C K% 'C .% ) #.
When the servants had made ready everything with which oared ships are equipped
when men are forced to voyage over the sea, then the heroes went through the city
towards their ship . . . (Argonautica 1.2347)
Are we to say that the heroic expedition is here reduced to just another trad-
ing mission,56 or is Apollonius concern rather with generic exemplarity?
After all, even if his Argo was not the first ship, it is the ship par excellence.
The men to whom the poet refers in 1.236 are not specified further with
regard to the age in which they live, but they are most naturally taken to
be sailors of Apollonius own day.57 Rather similar is a slightly later scene.
The Argonauts feast on the beach on the evening prior to their departure:
'C &9' &##4#%
$ C P( ## ' K"
+:
) A C . [9 & .
They swapped stories of the kind young men always do when taking their pleasure
over a meal and wine, and all excess which is never satisfied has been banished.
(Argonautica 1.4579)
Once again, the generic significance of the scene is made explicit, and again
the young men are most naturally understood as not bound to a particular
time.58
56 There may here also be a glance towards a rationalising version in which the Argonauts are merchants
who carried off a local girl (cf. Hdt. 1.2.23). Cf. in general D. Braund, Georgia in Antiquity (Oxford
1994) chapter 1.
57 Apollonius accounts of sailing and ship-building seem to mix the archaising with the realistic. The
account in J. Rostropowicz, The Argonautica by Apollonius of Rhodes as a nautical epic Eos 78
(1990) 10717 does not squarely confront the issues.
58 On this scene cf. below, pp. 11214.
2 An epic world 103
In Homer, particularly in the Iliad, some of this generalising power of
epic poetry is carried by those similes which analogise heroic action to events
from a non-heroic and often suggestively contemporary world. Their force
draws the audience into the poem (they create empathy) and compels it
to admiration of the remote wonder of heroic events. In a broad generali-
sation, we may say that Homeric similes often render heroic action intel-
ligible. In the Argonautica, however, the picture is perhaps more varied.59
Some similes do indeed generalise: the fantasy of Athenas movement, for
example, is compared to something all men may experience (cf. above).
The complex literariness of other similes, however, and the fact that the
simile is a recognisable generic marker, and hence always in a special sense
programmatic, acts to distance such intelligibility; Apollonius seems to
have explored the simile as a site of distance from, rather than closeness to,
the events of the framing narrative. Thus, whereas the first extended simile
of the Iliad compares the gathering of the Greek army to the swarming of
bees (Il. 2.8793), the first extended simile of the Argonautica compares the
weeping Alcimede to a young girl who seeks solace in her nurse from the
torments of a stepmother:
4 ' C F C ! Q 4! ')
o ! #$%C &'Z ) -Q Q
*
&%% #8 , & %% 270
Q ) z 3 *% C .## ' )
&## C 2, $ 9 9b 1 #(_ U
+ # %% ] ' % %$#M )
' C ]'$" '' ' .")
' C ! #QM
%%
V%% ] ! 5U 275
o &', # % +, 5'C & !$%
j#') #.
Just as his mother had at the very first thrown her arms around her son, so now
she clung to him weeping bitterly. As a lonely young girl falls with relief upon her
grey-haired nurse and cries she has no longer anyone else to care for her, but
drags out a wearisome life at the beck and call of a stepmother. Just now she has
been battered by the ladys many reproaches, and as she grieves her heart within
her is held fast in the bonds of its misery, and she has not the strength to sob forth
all the sorrow that throbs within just so did Alkimede weep bitterly as she held
her son in her arms. (Argonautica 1.26877)
There is here a thick Homeric texture: the primary models are the narrators
simile describing Odysseus weeping at Demodocus song of the fall of
59 On Apollonius similes, which will not be considered here in any detail, cf. Hunter (1993a) 129
38, Effe (1996), id. The similes of Apollonius Rhodius. Intertextuality and epic innovation in
PapanghelisRengakos (2001) 14769, Reitz (1996), Fantuzzi, below, pp. 27582, all with further
bibliography.
Troy (Od. 8.52331) and Achilles simile describing the weeping Patroclus
(Il. 16.711); we remember also the suffering which Andromache fears awaits
the orphan Astyanax at Il. 22.496501 (note %Q #M , v. 273). This last
pattern of echo continues the extended evocation of the death of Hector
which hangs over Jasons departure from his parents home, as he enacts
the timeless ritual of the young man leaving for a war from which he may
well not return. Alkimede weeps like a young girl whose only solace is an
old nurse; she is about to lose her only consolation (Jason), and the simile
explores with great insight the complementary vulnerability of the old and
the young. Nevertheless, the simile is emotionally distancing: the young
girl has not a mother (as in Iliad 16), but a stepmother, which both activates
a set of literary stereotypes,60 and makes the situation particular, because
narrowly defined, rather than general and universal, as with the tears of
the young girl in Achilles simile.61 The simile itself evokes a concealed
narrative (note 271, 273) to which we are refused access; in the corresponding
simile of Odyssey 8, however, the suggested narrative is precisely that of the
death of Hector and the fall of Troy, i.e. that of the framing context (the
song of Demodocus). In short, this very broad distinction between Homer
and Apollonius may be seen as a rearrangement in the later poet of the
balance between the particularity of epic narrative and the timelessness of
the inherited world of the simile.
3 heroic anger
Homeric tradition had established that at the heart of an epic praxis stood
the behaviour and fates of individuals, and Jason has an obviously privileged
role within the poem, and one which can only be interpreted against the
pattern of the principal Homeric heroes. Thus, for example, the meeting
of Jason and Medea at the temple of Hecate rewrites the fatal duel between
Achilles and Hector in Iliad 22;62 Hector was thus mistaken in his belief
that he and Achilles could not speak together as a young man and a girl
(Il. 22.12628). The reworking foreshadows the ultimately disastrous con-
sequences of this meeting. It is obviously significant for the concerns of
the epic that one of Jasons two aristeia in the poem is a rhetorical victory
over an already lovesick girl; here, Jason is abetted by Hera (cf. 3.91926),
as he will be by Medeas magical advice in his second aristeia. The critical
60 Cf. P. Watson, Ancient Stepmothers: myth, misogyny, and reality (Leiden 1994).
61 Cf. the comment of the bT-scholia, #9O #X T # C
, , the poet takes an ordinary event and enlarges it with grandeur and envisionment.
62 Cf. Hunter on 3.95661, id. (1993a) 489.
3 Heroic anger 105
inferences to be drawn from these facts are, however, the subject of fierce
debate. Too much modern criticism has been concerned with assessing
whether or not Jason measures up to Homeric standards, as though those
standards were self-evidently worth simple replication. More productive
would be to see the Apollonian text as (in part) an exploration of the
Homeric text, concerned to tease out what is important and what is elided
in the archaic texts creation of a (? flawed) heroic world. A scene such
as Jasons testing of the crew after the Clashing Rocks have been safely
passed is a clear example of how Apollonius puts Homer under the critical
spotlight.63
The primary technique for this exploration of Homer is the transference
of Homeric scenes and patterns to new contexts. Thus, for example, the
impenetrable darkness which descends upon the Argonauts as they are
sailing home through the Aegean (4.16941718) has its Homeric counterpart
in the dark fog which Zeus pours around the combatants in Iliad 17 and
from which Ajax asks Zeus to save them:64
d ( &## %b B% 2 C - $P j!)
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'X ( A# %%) Q 3' [.
o () , 'X 8 ]#Q '($ !U
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-# ' C #: ) (! ' C T% (U
Father Zeus, save the sons of the Achaeans from this darkness, make the air clear,
and allow us to see. Destroy us in daylight, if this is your wish. So he spoke, and the
Father pitied him as he wept; straightaway he scattered the darkness and dispersed
the fog, the sun shone out, and the whole battle was clear to see. (Homer, Iliad
17.64550)
Ajaxs words are much admired in the critical tradition. Longinus praises
them as an example of how Homer enters into heroic greatness (De subl.
9.10), and the scholia on vv. 6457 express admiration for the fact that Ajax
asks for daylight, not so that he can be saved, but so that he can continue
to perform heroic deeds; this is the true mark of the #
. At first
reading, Jasons behaviour might seem the very opposite of heroic, by the
standards of the interpretative tradition:
. . . C@4%
! 5 &%!
(#" ] `59 &Q )
BQ%% #) 'C &%!#

'($U ## 'X J$5 2%! ) ## 'C jQ#)
63 Cf. Hunter (1988) 4457. 64 For other aspects of the Apollonian scene cf. Hunter (1993a) 167.
## 'C C>$ & % ' %% .
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B 0 # $ &4) l C
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zU
Jason, however, raised up his hands and in a loud voice called upon Phoibos,
summoning him to save them. In his despair tears flowed down; countless were
the offerings he promised to provide, many at Pytho, many at Amyklai, many to
Ortygia. Son of Leto, you heard his prayer and swiftly descended from heaven to
the two Melantian rocks which lie in the open sea. (Argonautica 4.17018)
Jasons position is, however, entirely different from that of Ajax: the Arg-
onauts do not even know where they are, in an extreme version of the
uncertainty as to the supernatural forces at work which characterises the
whole journey,65 whereas Ajaxs control of the world around him is marked
by his certainty that not even a complete fool would fail to recognise that
Zeus was aiding the Trojans (Il. 17.62930). Jasons urgent prayers (17045),
which are to prove successful, mark the desperateness of the Argonauts
plight, but they also echo the prayer to Apollo with which the voyage
began (1.41619), thus reminding the god of his promises with regard to
their nostos (1.3602), a theme reintroduced at 4.17001. Whatever view,
then, is taken of the Apollonian scene, it is clear that any simple distinction
between heroic and non-heroic behaviour misrepresents the complexity
of both texts. The Homeric scholia in fact express their surprise at Ajaxs
tears, noting that this unique show of emotion on his part marks the great
pathos of the situation. Tears are more common from Jason, and the addi-
tion of &%!#
(4.1703, cf. 1718) even interprets those tears for us, but
here again the starting-point is already found in the Homeric pattern.66
Alongside epic heroism goes, in the traditional account, epic emotion,
and here too the portrayal of Jason has seemed to many critics remarkably
deficient. Here too, however, Apollonius epic must be set within its literary
and contemporary context. The primary narrative motor of the Iliad is
Achilles wrath, first the unforgetting which determines the suffering
of the Greeks (1.15) and then the explosive mixture of anger and guilt which
leads him to resume fighting and to mistreat the body of Hector. The wider
semantic field of anger is, however, not the prerogative of Achilles alone:67
the first divine emotion of the poem is the anger of Apollo, introduced
65 Cf. e.g. Hunter (1993a) 789. Pietsch (1999) now provides a useful bibliographical survey of work
on character in the Argonautica.
66 There is, of course, much more involved in the Apollonian text than merely the difference from
Homeric patterns. Jasons prayer seems also to rework a passage from Book 1 of Callimachus Aitia
(fr. 20 Massimilla).
67 For useful surveys of anger in the Iliad cf. Galinsky (1988) 3406, Manakidou (1998) 2424, N. J.
Austin, Anger and disease in Homers Iliad in KazazisRengakos (1999) 1149.
3 Heroic anger 107
as early as the ninth verse, 9%# !# (cf. 1.44, 46, 75 etc.);
Agamemnons first speech (1.2632) seems angry as well as threatening,68
and the kings anger becomes an explicit theme soon enough (1.78, 812,
102ff. etc.).69 In a famous passage after the death of Patroclus, Achilles
reflects upon the pleasures and dangers of anger:
F C &Z &
#
!
#) A C #Q( !# )
V #b #$ # # 9
&' %4 %% &M -
U
F X !
#% .M &' C; .
&## X Q! (% &!Q )
$, %4 %% # '(% &( ".
Would that strife should vanish from the world of gods and men, and anger too,
which enrages even a man of great sense. Anger is far sweeter than trickling honey
and grows big in the hearts of men like smoke. This is how the ruler of men,
Agamemnon, has brought me to anger. But let us, despite our distress, forget the
past and forcibly suppress the passion in our hearts. (Homer, Iliad 18.10713)
In wishing for the disappearance of and !
#, Achilles wishes away
not merely the terrible narrative in which he finds himself trapped, but the
whole world of martial epic constructed out of strife and anger. It is this
heroic anger which Ajax still nurses, even in the Underworld (Od. 11.544,
55362). So too, Phoenixs attempt in Book 9 to win Achilles over conjures
up a whole world of real or potential epics (# &') fuelled by
wrath (Il. 9.5245). The association of Achilles with anger lives on in the
Argonautica through the wrath (!
#) of his mother Thetis against her
husband Peleus (4.81017, 8645, 879).
In the Odyssey, it is the anger of Poseidon, introduced as early as 1.20
(cf. 1.69, 78 etc.), which determines much of the suffering of Odysseus,
though it is the anger of Helios at the killing of his cattle (12.376) which
brings final destruction upon the rest of the crew. Anger is felt by many
characters, divine and human, through the Odyssey,70 but it is only very
rarely ascribed explicitly to Odysseus himself.71 Alcinous acknowledges that
68 Cf. the observation of the bT-scholia on 1.29, ## ! #

) , $,
.
69 Cf. Hor. Epist. 1.2.13 ira quidem communiter urit utrumque (sc. Achilles and Agamemnon); the
prominence Horace gives to ira in this poem is a clear sign of its generic significance.
70 J. S. Clay, The Wrath of Athena: Gods and Men in the Odyssey (Princeton 1983) studies the theme of
divine anger.
71 The possible significance of his name as Man of Wrath may be left out of account here. It is telling
that at 17.14 Telemachus, who now knows the identity of the stranger, raises the possibility that he
will feel menis, but in a speech designed to mislead Eumaeus. So, too, the potential for anger is
ascribed to Odysseus by others at 22.59, 369.
Odysseus was angered (!
) by Euryalos tactless remarks (8.238),
though Odysseus had merely declared himself roused (
$ '
*Z) by the thumos-biting speech (8.185). So, too, the disguised hero tells
Iros not to anger him (18.20), but here he is, at the very least, playing a role.
Less ambiguous perhaps is the poets statement that Odysseus felt anger
(& %) at the evil deeds of the maidservants (20.16), and the phrase
2
' *'Z, frequently used of Odysseus harsh stare (e.g. to Iros (18.14),
Melantho (19.70), and Eurymachos (22.60)) was certainly interpreted by
later grammarians as a mark of anger.72 Nevertheless, this meagre harvest
is one manifestation of the presentation of Odysseus as a man who weighs
up the options offered by any situation and prefers strategy to immediate,
potentially reckless, action (cf. e.g. 9.299305, 17.2358, 20.621); Achilles
observed that even the #Q man may be driven to anger (Il. 18.108)
and hence by implication to actions which he comes to regret, but
Odysseus, the most #Q of all Greek heroes, is the extreme example
of self-control.
The differences between Achilles and Odysseus, like the more familiar
contest between Ajax (in one way an ersatz Achilles) and Odysseus over the
arms of Achilles, were always available to be used to construct an oppo-
sition between the two, and some texts clearly exploit this potential. The
man of action versus the fluent speaker is a powerful, if simple, idea. In
commenting upon the opening of Achilles great speech to Odysseus in
Iliad 9, which expresses the heros distaste for less than truthful speech, the
scholia connect the wish for such straightforward speech with the anger
which Achilles feels. Here, then, Odysseus two principal characteristics
apparent emotional control and rhetorical skill are opposed to one heroic
pattern; the importance of such linkage for the Argonautica should be
clear. Of particular interest is Aristophanes Frogs, in which it is the loud-
thundering (814) Aeschylus who is characterised by violent anger (cf. 804,
814, 844, 856), whereas Euripides confidently relies upon powers of crit-
ical argument. Aeschylus is, of course, fashioned as a traditionalist, an
Achilles (992) to Euripides Odysseus, who is a schemer devoted to long
speeches and intellectual games. Anger is part of this epic portrayal of the
older playwright; the grand emotion has been appropriated as a mark of
the past. The Aristophanic Aeschylus anger is also to be connected with
the grandeur for comedy, unintelligible, bombastic grandeur of his
style. His language swells no less than his emotions, whereas the rhetorical
# # of Euripides is constructed as unworthy of the emotional
72 It is worth noting that Apollonius does not use this epic formula, or any variation of it (cf. Call.,
Hecale fr. 72 Hollis), in Arg.; this may be one small measure of his distance from Homer.
3 Heroic anger 109
power of tragedy, however clever it may be. Anger and the style which
attends it thus carry a distinct generic resonance. When Horace discusses
the relation between subject and style he notes that comedy can take on
tragic tones:
interdum tamen et uocem comoedia tollit
iratusque Chremes tumido delitigat ore
Sometimes, however, comedy too raises its voice and the angry Chremes rages with
swollen mouth . . . (Horace, Ars Poetica 934)
Both Chremes anger and his swollen style are out of place generically:
they belong to the higher realms of tragedy. Although, as we shall see,
there is plenty of anger in the Argonautica, the relation of the central male
character to this emotion may be important in assessing the stance adopted
by an epic poet to the generic tradition.
In the matter of anger, Apollonius Jason stands far closer to Homers
Odysseus than to Achilles, though still some distance away.73 In the Argo-
nautica, anger is, above all, the emotion of Zeus,74 of Aietes,75 and, of the
Argonauts, Idas (1.492, 3.566, 1170, 1252).76 The only other mortal characters
who are central to the narrative and who are explicitly stated to feel anger
are Heracles (1.1263), Telamon (1.1289, 3.383), Minos (3.1000, where he acts
as a parallel to Aietes), Medea (4.391, 16712) and, once, the collective of
Argonauts as a whole (2.20). The only passage, in fact, in which the poet
himself associates Jason with anger is the simile describing his rest period
between sowing the field and doing battle with the warriors who spring up:
. . . ' C 5 B(
&$%%( $" %9% [' ':U
(: 'X Q C #() 'C #4% $

&#) Z %$ K #) A B( C ]'

4 $%
C &'(%) & 'X ##

&, &, %
!(' B !.
With his helmet he then drew water from the flowing river to quench his thirst;
he flexed his knees to keep them supple and filled his great heart with martial
spirit. He was eager for the fray, like a wild boar which sharpens its tusks against
men who hunt it and streams of foam flow to the ground from its angry mouth.
73 Cf. Manakidou (1998), and on the whole subject of anger in Arg. cf. also P. Drager, Die Argonautika
des Apollonios Rhodios. Das zweite Zorn-Epos der griechischen Literatur (MunichLeipzig 2001), esp.
pp. 6276.
74 Cf. 4.458. 75 3.3678, 449, 493, 607, 614, 632; 4.9, 235, 512, 740, 1083, 1205.
76 The language in which Idmon describes the effect of wine on Idas (1.4778) derives from Phoenixs
account of Meleagers anger (Il. 9.5534).
The boar is the classic example of the angry creature,77 and the simile marks
Jasons present fitness for the task ahead. Even here, however, anger is not
explicitly ascribed to Jason and, like the foaming mouth, is not as appropri-
ate to him as to the hunted boar; here too, then, there is no straightforward
presentation of an angry Jason.78 As Achilles is the $ '4, the pas-
sionate man, par excellence, so it is noteworthy that $
, in all its related
senses, is associated with Jason in a strikingly small number of cases.79 At
3.51114 Peleus confident words to Jason use the term pointedly:
* 'C 3 (# $, + ( !$
-") 4 C , 4 C .##
' C &' ( 4 U
%!4% C) (
, Q %% .# .
If however, your heart does not have very full confidence in its manly courage,
then neither stir yourself to it nor sit here seeking some other man from among
us: I shall not hold back since the worst grief that can befall is death. (Argonautica
3.51114)
The response of the other heroes is clear enough:
C ;*'U s # 'X $, ])
% !
' C &
$% U 'X h@'
) ' C $e s$'U
%b 'X >* ') *_5%
&'(% ' V%%
*Q#$
&##U " e & ( { $
.
So did the son of Aiakos speak. Telamons heart was stirred and he leapt up in
eagerness for the task; so too did proud Idas, and also the two sons of Tyndareos.
With them also was the son of Oineus, placing himself among men in their prime,
though there was not yet any sign at all of his first soft beard; so great was the
strength bursting in his spirit. (Argonautica 3.51520)
Of Jasons thumos there is no further word.
Ancient ethical discussions standardly represent anger as a reaction to real
or perceived wrong, often involving a desire for revenge.80 This is obviously
relevant to the cases both of Achilles, in relation to first Agamemnon and
then Hector, and of Odysseus, in relation to the suitors and their hangers-
on. Heroic anger is intimately tied to perceptions of self-worth, a theme
which is all but entirely elided in the Argonautica. In Jasons case, the most
77 Cf. Ovid, Met. 7.5456 etc. 78 Cf. further Effe (1996) 3089.
79 Cf. 3.787, 1084, 4.1748; for 1.1289 cf. below, pp. 11516. I leave out of account the instances of the
thumos of all the Argonauts.
80 Cf. Arist. Rhet. 2.1378a 313, Lactantius, De ira dei 17.13, citing various Hellenistic definitions. There
is much of value on the whole subject in D. S. Allen, The World of Prometheus (Princeton 2000), see
Index s.v. anger, W. V. Harris, Restraining Rage (Cambridge, Mass. 2001).
3 Heroic anger 111
obvious object for anger would be Pelias, who, in the traditional story as we
find it evoked in Pythian 4, usurped the throne which belonged rightly to
Jason but offered to step aside if the young man would recover the Fleece.
This, however, is a theme to which Apollonius gives very little prominence;81
it appears explicitly only at 3.3334 in the course of Argos speech to Aietes,
where, however, it is only Jasons ancestral property, not any claim to the
throne of Iolcus, which is at stake. At 1.9023 Jason tells Hypsipyle that it
will be enough for him to be allowed by Pelias to live in [his] homeland
and to be delivered by the gods from his present trials; no word here of rule
in Iolcus. However opaque the situation evoked, it is clear that Pelias has
committed some wrong against the young hero, but it is a wrong which
calls forth no anger or thirst for revenge; it is stressed more than once that
Pelias will be punished not by Jason, but by Medea, who is acting as Heras
instrument of revenge for quite other wrongs done to her (cf. 3.11336,
4.2423). Pelias devises the voyage to rid himself of Jason, whom, on the
basis of the oracle he has received, he perceives as the potential source of
his own downfall, but Jasons role will in fact be limited to bringing back
with him the real destroyer; like many oracles, this one misleads. Thus, a
narrative technique which is usually seen as merely an elliptical variation
upon archaic fullness is in fact closely tied to Apollonius rewriting of
central epic concerns.
In his account of anger, the De ira, Seneca makes much of the fact that
anger cannot be concealed it shows itself with every flicker on the face
of an angry man (De ira 1.1.57). Jasons inwardness, his apparent passivity
in the face of events, is one of the most frequently remarked features of
Apollonius central character,82 and the apparent absence of anger is an
important part of this presentation. For Aristotle, an absence or deficiency
of anger (& %) was opposed to an excess (] #
) and to the
commendable mean, which he calls
(EN 2.1108a 49, 4.1125b26
26b10); he notes, however, that names for these conditions are not really
in common usage. The man who is deficient in anger comes in for some
harsh words:
Those who are not angry at the things they should be angry at are thought to be
fools (-#), and so are those who are not angry in the right way, at the right
time, or with the right persons; for such a man is thought not to feel things nor
to be pained by them, and, since he does not get angry, he is thought unlikely
to defend himself; and to endure being insulted and put up with insult to ones
friends is slavish. (Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea 5.1126a48)
81 Cf. Pietsch (1999) 3241.
82 On possible connections between such inwardness and literacy cf. P. Toohey, Epic and rhetoric in
I. Worthington (ed.), Persuasion: Greek Rhetoric in Action (London 1994) 15375.
Apollonius Jason is not, of course, &
in any absolute sense, any
more than he is a passionless Stoic sage; he presumably shares the anger
which all the Argonauts feel at Amycus challenge at 2.1920. Nevertheless,
this Aristotelian criticism can suggest just how provocative and puzzling a
figure Jason is, when viewed within the epic tradition.
No scene dramatises these issues more powerfully than the party on the
evening before the Argonauts set sail. This scene of feasting carries the
didactic force of a long tradition of poetry and prose dealing with
the correct conduct of the symposium;83 Idas drunken boasting is a clear,
negative paradigm, for this was an occasion without hybris, and Idmons
speech urging other words with which to encourage and console (1.476
84), accompanied by a mythological exemplum fitting the present situa-
tion, evokes the strongly gnomic element of earlier sympotic lyric and elegy.
The crucial Homeric passages in this tradition are firstly Odysseus famous
praise of the pleasures of the well-ordered feast (Od. 9.211), which stands in
counterpoint both to the brutality of the Cyclops, whose descendant Idas
is, and to the lawless feasting of the suitors, and secondly the feast of the
gods which concludes Iliad 1. In this latter passage, Hephaestus intervenes
to stop Zeus and Hera quarrelling (' '
| %# %% D')
! T, there will be no pleasure in the splendid feast, when
worse behaviour gets the upper hand1.5756), and then the sight of him
bustling about moves all the divine diners to laughter. In both Homeric
passages, the performance of song is crucial to the pleasure of the properly
ordered feast (cf. the performance of Apollo and the Muses at Il. 1.6034),
and that role is fulfilled in the Argonautica by Orpheus.
While most of the Argonauts swap stories (1.4579, above p. 102), a
preoccupied Jason has nothing to say:
C c C ;*%' X &4! * +5
Q % E%)
ZU
, ' C . C 2% (#" ] % h@'U
;*%') 4' % +#%% ;
3' %%% ,
. D % 'T"
(9 #
)
C &(#' .' &Q_ ;
K% '
$ ) A" Z% .##
' #% & ) ' C ]##
d b
% %%(
, '
$) 4 Q
# %% % ' C &( . #
83 Cf. Bielohlawek (1940), Hunter (1983a) 186. Of particular interest is the normative account at Xen.
Cyr. 2.2.114. It is interesting that Philodemus dealt with correct sympotic behaviour in On the Good
King According to Homer (below, p. 127), cf. frs. xviixviii, xx Dorandi.
3 Heroic anger 113
h @' +%) * , &
"U
5
C C;4 &%% _ .
There, however, the son of Aison pondered upon everything helpless and absorbed,
like a man in despair. Idas observed him with scorn and abused him in a loud voice:
Son of Aison, what is this plan which you are turning over in your mind? Tell us
all what you are thinking! Has fear come over you and crushed you with its weight?
It is this which panics men who are cowards. Be witness now my rushing spear,
with which above all other men I achieve glory in wars for Zeus is not the source
of so much strength as is my spear that no grief shall destroy us nor shall our
challenge be left unachieved while Idas travels with you no, not even should a
god confront us, so powerful a helper am I whom you have brought from Arene.
Idas demands that Jason speak openly, %%, rather than plotting in
silence ( +#%% ), if it is not in fact fear which has taken over. Silence
during a symposium may be a mark of disagreeable standoffishness84 or of
the wise self-control of the philosopher,85 but the two opposed models of
behaviour which Idas words set up may both be seen as extreme readings
of epic patterns of behaviour. On the one hand, Idas sets himself as an
Achilles, the best of the Greeks, and one who famously proclaimed the
necessity to speak openly without concealment (Il. 9.30813); so, too, in
his account of #:$!, which may be seen in part as the ethicised
version of traditional virtue, Aristotle observes that such a man must be
open in his hatred and his affections, for to act with concealment, to care
more for what people think than for the truth, is a sign of fearfulness, and he
must speak and act openly, for he always speaks freely (%%4) and
truthfully, except when speaking ironically to the many (EN 4.1124b 26
31). So too, the #
:$! considers himself worthy of great deeds and
honours, whereas someone who does not consider themselves so deserving
may be %Z but could not be great (EN 4.1123b 111).86 Whether
or not Aristotles account can shed light upon the actual presentation of
Jason,87 Idas boastfulness must be seen within a number of intersecting
contexts epic tradition, ethical theorising, traditional moral values. At
best, his self-presentation is a mildly parodic misrepresentation of Achillean
characteristics Achilles did indeed fight with gods, but the blasphemous
Idas was to be blasted for so doing as is made clear when the action of Jason
84 Cf. Plut. Mor. 456e, at a drinking-party, the man who remains silent is disagreeable and irksome to
the company (!8 5 %$%
).
85 Cf. Plut. Mor. 503d4a.
86 %Z and related words do not appear in the Argonautica; Homer has %
once each in
the Iliad and the Odyssey, and %%Q twice in the Odyssey.
87 Cf. e.g. DeForest (1994) 917.
and the rest of the crew to restrain the quarrel (1.4925) is described in verses
which rework Achilles own action to check a quarrel between Idomeneus
and the angry Ajax (Il. 23.48898); Achilles is a far more complex character
than the shallow and stereotyped set of responses displayed by Idas.88
As for Jason, Idas presents him as a kind of Odysseus, particularly the
Odysseus of the second half of the Odyssey, who plots in silence against the
suitors. We may think particularly of Od. 20.130, in which the disguised
hero restrains his desire to exact instant punishment from the wicked maid-
servants, and as he plots and tosses and turns (+#%% ) on his bed, he is
compared to a man constantly turning over a roasting blood-pudding. One
of the principal Homeric forerunners of this scene is indeed Demodocus
song of the neikos between Odysseus and Achilles at a feast of the gods (Od.
8.7582);89 the scholia explain that the two heroes quarrelled over the best
way to take Troy, i.e. to complete the task in hand, whether by intelligence
(%Q %) or by bravery (&' ): the scholium on 8.77 expresses this as
a contrast between :$!( and %(. The Apollonian scene offers a
more nuanced (and ironic) version of the scholiastic dichotomy. Moreover,
part of Apollonius dramatisation of the Homeric narrative also dramatises
a central difference of technique. In the Odyssey, Odysseus weeps as he
listens to the bards song in which he himself is a character, covering his
face for shame (Od. 8.8395); the meaning of the gesture is clear enough
to Alcinous, the only Phaeacian to observe it. In the Argonautica, however,
Jasons demeanour remains ambiguous to both readers and the other char-
acters (1.4601), while his role in the quarrel itself passes to Idmon, whose
very name suggests knowledge/understanding, the %Q % of the account
in the scholia.90 It is in general true that Apollonius tells us much less than
does Homer about the motives and drives of all his principal characters,
with the partial exception of Medea; our uncertainties as readers mirror the
mist of partial knowledge in which they themselves move. Nevertheless,
this poetic technique has a particular importance for the portrayal of Jason.
Restraint, the thinking through of a strategy (cf. Arg. 1.461), may indeed be
misread; the outwardness of irrational anger cannot be misunderstood.
The apparent absence of the emotion of anger from the presentation of
Jason is again thematised in the scene which follows the abandonment
of Heracles ( .%, 1.1285) in Mysia. Jasons silent distress is now
contrasted with the overt anger of Telamon, Achilles uncle:
88 It is tempting to see Idas unmannerly drinking (1.4724) as a memory of Phoenixs account of how
the infant Achilles used to make him wet with wine (Il. 9.4901).
89 Cf. e.g. Nelis (1992) 169, Clauss (1993) 803; above, p. 93.
90 For the etymology of Idmons name cf. 2.8212.
3 Heroic anger 115
. . . ' C &!"% &$!
' 5 Z ' 5
;*%') &## C z% 9 "
."
$, '. s # ' C E# !
#) H' C U
i% C 3 3#) Q . D
67# # 5U % 'C A )
A , $ ' &C 6^##(' 4 % #Q:")
K 'Z% 2
K'
%.
&## Q D';
% +
L t
' '
# %$ 4.
The son of Aison was so struck by helplessness that he could not speak in favour
of any proposal, but sat gnawing at his heart because of the grim disaster which
had occurred. Telamon, however, was gripped by anger and spoke out: Sit there
at your ease, since it was you who arranged to abandon Herakles. This was your
plan. You did not want his glory to overshadow yours throughout Greece, if the
gods ever allow us to return safe. But why waste time on words? I shall go after
him, even without these friends of yours who helped you plan this treachery!
Here too a version of Odysseus is opposed to a version of Achilles. The
language of Telamons speech (,
%, '
#) clearly paints Jason as
an Odysseus, a perspective reinforced by the narrators introduction, which
reworks Circes words to Odysseus at Odyssey 10.3789:
C [)C>'$% ) C . C E_ L% &Q'")
$, ') #.
Why, Odysseus, do you sit thus like a speechless man, eating your spirit . . .?
(Homer, Odyssey 10.3789)
So, too, Telamons rejection of words in 1294 echoes Achilles at Il.18.80,
as he too reflect on the loss of his dearest comrade:91
4) X . C>#Q M # %% U
&## D' # N# C +5
J(#) , O ( 5 +
L% #;
Mother, these things are the work of the Olympian. But what pleasure is there for
me in them, seeing that my comrade, Patroclus, has perished, he whom I honoured
above all comrades, equal to my own life? (Homer, Iliad 18.7982)
His eyes blaze, in imitation of those of Achilles (Il. 19.3656). The sequel
continues, but alters, these rewritings. When the epiphany and speech of
91 Cf. Clauss (1993) 2001.

Glaucus has caused Telamon to regret his anger (!
#, 1.1289), he asks
Jason not to feel anger (!
#) against him (1.1332); Jason replies that he will
not nurse bitter rage, despite the hurt ( 4 &' $ &M)
| & ) because of the proper motives of Telamons anger.
Jasons behaviour now gestures towards and away from that of Achilles
(cf. Il. 19.678);92 the poet has created a fusion of the quarrel of Iliad 1
with the synkrisis of Achilles and Odysseus in a powerful exploration of the
dynamic tensions within a group. This is also an excellent example of how
Apollonius characters are textured rewritings of earlier literary figures; such
a debt to the past, and particularly to Homer, was an enduring feature of
the ancient epic tradition.
Just as Glaucus confirms the folly of Telamons initial response, so at
3.3825 Jason restrains the son of Aiakos from a swift and angry response
to (the angry) Aietes, which would have been destructive (]#
); here, too,
Jason is distanced from heroic wrath,93 and from the thumos which moti-
vates both Telamon and Aietes (3.383, 396). This scene sets Jasons soothing
words and submissive manner against not only Telamons impulsiveness
but also against the epic response of Aietes, whose subsequent decision to
test the Argonauts is phrased in a close reworking of formulaic Homeric
decision-making. Jasons distance from traditional patterns is here as clear as
anywhere.94 So, too, Idas anger (3.557, 566) at the suggestion that the crew
seek Medeas help rather than mounting a frontal assault is plainly futile;
Idas preferred option would lead to certain destruction. It is not just Jason
who is distanced from the emotion of anger, but the whole value structure
of the poem. The repeated pattern by which Jason is distanced from the
central figure of the Iliad is, of course, of crucial significance for any reading
of this aspect of the poem: that a beautifully embroidered cloak worn for a
meeting with a princess takes the place of Achilles divinely-wrought shield
has obvious significance, though its meanings remain fiercely debated.95
What is less often appreciated is the complexity of the poetic context within
which this pattern is set and which actively works against any simplistic
interpretation of Jason as an inadequate hero.
If it is both tempting and dangerous to seek to draw broad conclusions
of socio-cultural history from the negative representation of anger in the
Hellenistic epic, there was at least one fairly recent paradigm which could
92 Cf. Beye (1982) 87, Hunter (1988) 4445.

93 Cf. Campbell ad loc., attractively suggesting a memory of Athenas restraint of Achilles in Iliad 1.
94 Jasons subsequent silence, &!
, has a model in the reaction of the Greeks to
Hectors challenge at Il. 7.923, but that is, at the very least, a two-edged model, given Menelaos
reproaches, C;!' , C C;! (7.96).
95 Cf. Hunter (1993a) 529 (with bibliography).
4 Epic memory 117
hardly not be remembered. The surviving accounts of Alexander, some of
which draw extensively on the memoirs of Ptolemy Soter, stress both his
habitual courtesy and restraint, but also his proneness to extreme anger,
stories of which run like a leitmotif through the histories;96 no one asserts
Seneca baldly was as prone to anger as Alexander (De ira 2.23.3). This char-
acteristic is, of course, connected to his self-fashioning as an Achilles,97 but
the extant histories draw a close link between Alexanders irascibility and
his (occasional) over-indulgence in drink; Plutarch has a scientific explana-
tion for the fact that Alexander was , $ '4 (Alexander 4.4),
and notes that when he lingered too long over his cups he would become
unpleasantly boastful . . . too much the soldier (23.4). The combination of
Achilles, drinking, boastfulness, and the threat of violence offers a curious
parallel for the Apollonian Idas. Though there are many stories of sympotic
brawls told of Alexander, the famous occasion in Samarkand on which he
killed Kleitos, who objected to the blasphemous boasting of his flatter-
ers (cf. Idas boasts), holds a special place;98 it entered the rhetorical and
philosophic traditions as a stock example of the evil of anger.99 According
to most accounts, both men give way to drunken boasting, but Alexanders
passionate anger had fatal consequences. It is not that Idas or Jason or Idmon
stand for any historical character in this scene; the motifs are arranged in
quite different sequences. Rather, after Alexander, sympotic behaviour and
the place of anger in social relationships will have held a special place
in reflections upon leadership.100 Here, epic tradition, recent history, and
contemporary ethical reflection overlap in very productive ways.
4 epic memory
If anger is intimately connected to a perception of harm suffered or threat-
ened, it will obviously be closely tied to memory, and this is given particular
emphasis in the presentation of Junos anger in the Aeneid, and its mor-
tal counterpart, the unforgetting anger of Dido (4.532), which surpasses
even that of Juno in trying to control the whole of future history, not just
the immediate fate of Aeneas (4.60729).101 Aeneas sufferings are saeuae
96 Cf. Arrian, Anab. 4.8.9, 7.29.1, Quintus Curtius 3.12.19, 8.1.4352, Plut. Alex. 9.4, 13.2, 50.1.
97 Cf. Arrian, Anab. 1.12.1, 4.9.5, 7.14.4, 7.14.810, 7.16.8, Plut. Alex. 15.5.
98 Arrian, Anab. 4.8, QC 8.1, Plut. Alex. 501, R. Lane Fox, Alexander the Great (London 1973) 30914,
N. G. L. Hammond, Sources for Alexander the Great (Cambridge 1993) 8994.
99 Cf. Cic. TD 4.79, Sen. De ira 3.17.1. 100 Cf. further below, pp. 1267.
101 This is not the place for a discussion of anger in the Aeneid; for some starting-points and bibliography
cf. Galinsky (1988), M. C. J. Putnam, Anger, Blindness and Insight in Virgils Aeneid in M. C.
Nussbaum (ed.), The Poetics of Therapy (Apeiron 23.4, 1990) 740, D. P. Fowler, Epicurean Anger
in S. M. Braund and C. Gill (eds.), The Passions in Roman Thought and Literature (Cambridge
1997) 1635, pp. 305, Hardie (1997) 14251.
memorem Iunonis ob iram, and the combination of the goddess knowledge
of the threat posed to her beloved Carthage and the burning memory of
past affront (1.1232, 36 aeternum seruans sub pectore uulnus) are the motive
forces which dictate her actions. Virgils principal models here are, first,
Poseidons anger in the Odyssey and, secondly, Heras desire for revenge
on Pelias and the dark anger of Zeus against the Aiolidai (2.1195, 3.3369),
apparently intensified after the death of Apsyrtus (cf. 4.558), in the Argonau-
tica.102 Virgil overturns the divine structure of the Argonautica, in which
Hera (for her own motives) protected Jason on his travels. By comparison
with Virgil, however, Apollonius use of the motif of unforgetting divine
anger is, like much in the Hellenistic epic, understated. The brief narrative
in the proem of how Pelias paid due honour to his father Poseidon and
the other gods, but neglected Pelasgian Hera (1.1314) evokes and inverts
Homeric patterns: Pelias is cast in the role of the Cyclops, another son of
Poseidon, whereas the probable results of neglecting Hera will not need to
be spelled out to anyone familiar with the resentful Iliadic goddess. The
Iliad in fact offers a close parallel to Heras anger in Phoenixs account
of how Artemis sent the Calydonian boar because Oineus forgot to make
offerings to her alone of all the gods, v #( C v
% U &(% 'X
$I either he forgot or it did not occur to him; his mind made a
terrible mistake (Il. 9.53340). The narrative pattern is in fact made explicit
in the Argonautica in the included story of Aphrodites wrath against the
Lemnians for failing to pay her due honour (1.61415, 8023);103 this is part
of a wider technique in which events on Lemnos reflect and illuminate
the patterns of the narrative which frames them.104 So too, the story of
Paraibios (2.46889) is one of the punishment of impiety and of gratitude
for benefactions, a theme which one day will acquire ominous importance
for Jason who listens to the tale.
The importance of memory for epic narrative is far wider than merely its
link with anger, itself a primary narrative force;105 in the Odyssey, the danger
posed by the Lotus-eaters is of forgetting ones nostos (Od. 9.97), which
would, of course, put an end to the epic of nostos, and the conclusion of that
epic will require an act of forgetting so that conflict may cease (Od. 24.484
5). Even in relatively small details, such as the death of Elpenor, forgetting
102 On these latter themes cf. Feeney (1991) 629, Hunter (1993a) 7980, Campbell (1994) on 3.3369.
103 Cf. Feeney (1991) 59. Hypsipyles substitution of Aphrodites # . . . for the !
#
*
ascribed to her by the narrator is part of the rhetorical partiality of the princess account, cf.
Hunter (1993a) 11112.
104 Cf. Hunter (1993a) 4752.
105 Cf. J. A. Notopoulos, Mnemosyne in oral literature TAPA 69 (1938) 46593, though his account
of the effects of the introduction of literacy to an oral culture is now outdated; R. P. Martin, The
Language of Heroes. Speech and Performance in the Iliad (Ithaca 1989) 7789.
4 Epic memory 119
is inimical to the continuation of epic (Od. 10.557, 11.62); Polyphemos and
the Phaeacians remain for ever as symbols of those who suffered because
they remembered too late (Od .9.507, 17283),106 and the Trojans repeat
the fatal pattern as they bring the Wooden Horse within the city, instamus
tamen immemores caecique furore | et monstrum infelix sacrata sistimus arce
(Aen. 2.2445). If it is Junos memory which activates the action of the
Aeneid, it is rather the memory of the Muses which is made responsible
for narrative (cf. Il. 2.492, Aen. 1.8, 7.41, 645). Apollonius, however, stresses
his personal control of poetic memory and narrative (1.12, 1822, 23), as
part of his now familiar distance from the impersonal Homeric voice.107
Memory, however, also functions in epic in at least three other important,
and related, ways.
First, epic narration itself is always an act of memory, implying a
past narrative worth telling: thus, Aeneas sees his narrative task as infan-
dum . . . renouare dolorem (2.3), and the epic of Meleager is one which
Phoenix saw for himself and remembers (Il. 9.527). One aspect of this
valuation of memory is the privileged place epic gives to included narra-
tives, both of direct relevance to the principal story (e.g. Achilles to Thetis
in Iliad 1) and of more oblique significance (e.g. the stories of Nestor and
Phoenix in the Iliad, or of Menelaus in the Odyssey).108 In this feature
also, discretion within generic parameters, sometimes amounting to an
apparent preference for silence, is the Apollonian hallmark. In part, this
is because of the new prominence of the narrator, who himself is able to
expand tangential stories at length (e.g. the story of Aristaios, 2.498528),
and, as the Aristaios narration suggests, there is a sense in which aeti-
ology, which binds the present to the past, has taken the place of epic
stories, which rather accentuate the divide between the two. This distinc-
tion between Homer and Apollonius is not, of course, absolute. Phineus
account of his companion Paraibios (2.46889) evokes, as we have seen,
familiar epic themes; Lycus narrative of Heracles at 2.774810 suggests
the various Heracles epics known to antiquity,109 and athletic competitions
at funeral games (2.7805) is another well-known setting for epic poetry.
Nevertheless, brevity and ellipse are striking hallmarks of Apollonius epic.
Jason himself summarises the poem so far for Lycus at 2.76272, in a
catalogue which makes Odysseus account of his adventures to Penelope
106 The abandonment of Heracles in Mysia seems also related to this theme, though Apollonius does
not explicitly attribute that to forgetfulness (&' "%, 1.1283).
107 This remains true, whatever nuance is given to 0% ' C 24 L &' in 1.22.
108 Cf. Hardie (1993) 99, epic heroes themselves feel a strong pressure to narrate, by telling stories of
past heroic events.
109 Cf. Hunter (1998), and below p. 214.
(Od. 23.31043) seem positively verbose. A similar impression is left by a
comparison of Argos brief plea to the Argonauts for help (2.112333) with
Odysseus speech to Nausicaa when in a not dissimilar predicament (Od.
6.14985). A particularly interesting example is the encounter between the
Argonauts and the sons of Phrixos in Book 2.
In response to Jasons question as to the identity of the shipwrecked
foursome, Argos provides an Apollonian version of the familiar genealogical
self-presentation of the Homeric hero:
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That a descendant of Aiolos called Phrixos trevelled to Aia from Hellas I have no
doubt you yourselves are already aware. Phrixos reached the city of Aietes mounted
on a ram, which Hermes made golden, and even to this day you can see its fleece
spread out on the thickly leaved branches of an oak. Then on its own instructions,
Phrixos sacrificed the ram to the son of Kronos, Zeus Phyxios this chosen from
all his titles and Aietes received him in the palace and, as a gesture of his kindly
intentions, gave him in marriage his daughter Chalkiope and asked no bride-price
for her. These two are our parents. Phrixos died an old man in Aietes house and,
in accordance with our fathers instructions, we are travelling to Orchomenos to
recover Athamas possessions. If, as is natural, you wish to learn our names, this
mans name is Kytissoros, this is Phrontis, and this Melas. Myself you may call
Argos. (Argonautica 2.114156)
The most famous such speech in Homer is Glaucus response to Diomedes
at Il.6.145210 (as are the generations of leaves, so are those of men . . .),
containing the lengthy narrative about Bellerophon, and that scene does
indeed seem to have been in Apollonius mind. In both epics, the speech
of self-presentation leads to a recognition of relationship (Il. 6.215 Arg.
4 Epic memory 121
2.1160), but two specific features in the use of this motif mark the later epic.
Bellerophons grandfather was the Aeolid Sisyphus, a brother of Kretheus,
Jasons grandfather, and of Athamas, the grandfather of the sons of Phrixos.
Family relationship is therefore doubly figured in the dependence of the
Apollonian speech upon the Homeric; genealogy becomes a metaphor of
literary affiliation or, to put it in the terms of the Odyssey, recognition is
now of textual as well as personal identity. Secondly, there is the difference
in technique between the speeches. Having first rejected the importance of
4 in the face of human change, Glaucus then expatiates at length, not-
ing with a typically heroic concern for kleos that many men know of my
family already (Il. 6.151).110 Argos, however, dispenses with preamble: That
a descendant of Aiolos called Phrixos travelled to Aia from Hellas I have no
doubt you yourselves are already aware. We recognise a typical reworking
of an archaic motif the assumed fame of ones family history but the
form of the reworking forces us to ask: why should these complete strangers
(cf. 2.11234) know this? Perhaps Argos is so self-absorbed that he cannot
conceive of a human being ignorant of the story of the Golden Fleece, but
perhaps rather the literate poet, always concerned to put ironising distance
between himself and the discursive, repetitive style of archaic epic, not only
cuts the storytelling short but, in doing so, lays bare the assumptions of epic
form.111 Such commentary on inherited poetic techniques and themes is
a central feature of the Hellenistic epic. It is this poetic voice again which
we hear shortly after through Jasons words:
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But we will talk of these things at a later time; now first put on clothes. (Argonautica
2.11656)
Homeric characters always had time to talk.
Memory is thematised in the Argonautica through Jasons relations
with Hypsipyle and Medea.112 Both ask Jason to remember them (1.896
8, 3.106971), as Nausicaa had asked of Odysseus (Od. 8.4612); Jason
promises never to forget Medea (3.107980), as Odysseus had promised
to honour Nausicaa eternally for all days (Od. 8.468). Whereas, however,
110 For other relevant considerations here cf. Scodel (1998) 1756. The claim that the genealogy is
already famous is a familiar strategy of Iliadic heroes, cf. Il. 20.2035, Ford (1992) 637.
111 It is instructive of the difference between Apollonius and Virgil in their approach to epic form
that the latter avoids such a difficulty in the comparable scene of Achaemenides meeting with
Aeneas and his crew (cf. R. Heinze, Virgils Epic Technique Eng. trans (London 1993)) by having
Achaemenides recognise them as Trojans from clothes and weapons (3.5967).
112 Cf. Hunter on 3.1069, id. (1993a) 512.
Nausicaa is never mentioned again in the Odyssey after she and Odysseus
have said their farewells113 though some readers have found significance
in her absence from Odysseus summary of his adventures to Penelope at
23.31041 we know that Jason will forget Medea soon enough, and already
in the fourth book she is driven to accuse Jason of forgetfulness now that
he has got what he wanted (4.356). The recurrent analogy of Theseus and
Ariadne (3.9971004, 4.42434)114 casts this theme into relief, for Theseus
abandonment of Ariadne is an act which subverts the epic privileging of
memory which is indeed one of the reasons it is given pride of place
within Catullus un-epic epic, Poem 64.115 An epic with a forgetful central
character is generically unsettling: just as we never hear Jason himself give
anything like a full account of his past, so he also apparently cannot share
in the genres memorialising function.
Memory also functions within epic texts through repetition, of language
or scene, both within individual texts and intertextually.116 Paradigm cases
of the various types are, on the one hand, Homeric formula language and,
on the other, the constant reworking and evocation of Homeric scenes
in the Aeneid.117 The language of memory as a marker of intertextual
allusiveness has recently been much studied with regard to Latin poetry,
particularly Ovid,118 but it is the epic tradition that most fully exploits the
various layers of meaning in ideas of memory. Virgil, for example, sites his
poem against Homer through Junos memory, which here functions also as
the poets memory of epic tradition:
ueterisque memor Saturnia belli,
prima quod ad Troiam pro caris gesserat Argis -
necdum etiam causae irarum saeuique dolores
exciderant animo; manet alta mente repostum
iudicium Paridis spretaeque iniuria formae
et genus inuisum et rapti Ganymedis honores . . .
The daughter of Saturn, remembering the old war which she had once waged at
Troy on behalf of her dear Argos neither the causes of her anger nor the savage
grief were forgotten: deep in her mind lie stored the judgement of Paris, the wrong
done to her slighted beauty, her hatred for the race, and the honours paid to
Ganymede, snatched away . . . (Virgil, Aeneid 1.238)
113 A non-Homeric tradition, perhaps going back to the epic cycle, had Nausicaa marry Telemachus
and bear him a son called Perseptolis (Hellanicus, FGrHist 4 F156, Arist. fr. 512 Gigon).
114 Cf. Hunter on 3.9971004. 115 Cf. Catullus 64.58, 135, 2312, 248.
116 Good remarks in J. Nishimura-Jensen, The poetics of Aethalides: silence and poikilia in Apollonius
Argonautica CQ 48 (1998) 45669.
117 For the details cf. G. N. Knauer, Die Aeneis und Homer (Gottingen 1964); for the implications
Quint (1993), esp. chapter 2.
118 Cf. Conte (1986) 5762; J. F. Miller, Ovidian Allusion and the Vocabulary of Memory MD 30
(1993) 15364; Hinds (1998) 34; below, p. 470.
4 Epic memory 123
Apollonius largely avoids repetition of the most familiar Homeric kind,
that of formulaic language and of scene-type; variation, rather than same-
ness, is the principal determinant.119 It has often been thought that the move
away from repetition reflects (or perhaps influenced) contemporary schol-
arly disapproval of excessive verbatim repetition in Homer, but the matter
is far from certain; the nature and scope of Zenodotus critical work on the
Homeric text, for example, remains unclear in many areas,120 as does the
relation of Apollonius text to Zenodotean readings in Homer.121 It seems
safe to say that third-century scholarship took an interest in Homeric repe-
tition, but nothing suggests a full-scale effort to eliminate it from the text;
indeed, such an undertaking seems barely imaginable, except as a scholarly
joke. Whatever the connection between the two, the language, dialect and
style of the Argonautica are recognisably epic,122 though they mark out a
new, Alexandrian space within that tradition.
In other ways also, the Argonautica exploits some of the areas of epic mem-
ory which we have been considering. The return voyage of the Argonauts
offers an elaborate series of returns to scenes from the outward voyage.123
Thus, for example, the paired deaths of the seer Idmon, son of Abas, and
the steersman Tiphys on the way out (2.81556) are repeated in the deaths of
Kanthos, grandson of (? the same) Abas, and the seer Mopsos on the return
voyage (4.14851536). The deaths of the two seers foreground similarity and
difference, almost as if to advertise the gulf between Alexandrian and tra-
ditional epic (cf. 2.815204.15026). Both are killed by the vicious teeth of
animals trying to keep cool, but one in a watery place, the other in the burn-
ing desert. On the other hand, the passage through the Wandering Rocks
replays in a quite different key the voyage through the Symplegades in Book
2; now there is no need for heroic effort at all everything is accomplished
by the playful Nereids. The successful passing of the Sirens, on the other
hand, could hardly be more different from its Homeric model;124 from the
perspective of Book 4, the previous three books, no less than the Homeric
119 Cf. Hunter (1989a) 3940; below, pp. 26282. Here, too, Virgils practice is different and more
Homeric, cf. Conte (1986) 646. F. Cairns, Orality, Writing and Reoralisation: Some Departures
and Arrivals in Homer and Apollonius Rhodius in H. L. C. Tristram (ed.), New Methods in
the Research of Epic. Neue Methoden der Epenforschung (Tubingen 1998) 6384 seeks to gloss the
conventional view by noting reoralisation of certain recurrent rhetorical genres in Arg. This
would amount to the stylistic equivalent of the familiar practice of verbal analogising.
120 Cf. K. Nickau, Untersuchungen zur textkritischen Methode des Zenodotos von Ephesos (BerlinNew
York 1977) 62123, M. L. West, Studies in the Text and Transmission of the Iliad (MunichLeipzig
2001) 3345, and A. Rengakos review of West in BMCR 2002 (December).
121 Cf. Rengakos (1993) 5378, id. Apollonius Rhodius as a Homeric scholar in PapanghelisRengakos
(2001) 193216.
122 Cf. esp. Fantuzzi (1988a), (2001a), and below, pp. 26282.
123 Cf. Hutchinson (1988) 12141, M. Williams (1991) 27394.
124 Cf. Goldhill (1991) 298300, Knight (1995) 2007.
texts, belong to epic tradition. It is tempting to wonder whether it is here
that we should look for Apollonius contribution to epics persistent con-
cern, bequeathed to the tradition by the Odyssey,125 with fictionality. To
what extent the Homeric poems were true was an issue which was in the
air: Eratosthenes famously dismissed the whole of Odysseus wanderings
as pure invention,126 and any recreation of the epic of wandering could
hardly avoid the whole matter. The poets gradual disappearance behind
his Muse through the successive invocations to Books 1, 3 and 4, no less
than the contrasting modes of Phineus and Argos (cf. below), is perhaps a
self-conscious acknowledgement of the range of responses possible to epic
narrative. The Muse, daughter of Memory and hence preserver of truth
(i.e. that which is handed down), is also the creative force behind poetic
invention.127 Repetition, which always foregrounds similarity and differ-
ence, is a vehicle for fictions which are, as Hesiods Muses put it, like
truth.
The fantastical landscapes of Book 4 in fact extend the horizons of epic
in both time and space: the difference but clearly pointed relationship
(cf. 4.258, 2592.421) between the allusive obscurity of Argos speech of
direction128 and the dry and detailed ethnography of the prophet Phineus
is a paradigm case of difference within epic sameness. In drawing upon
oral tradition of a time before the world as the Argonauts knew it (%,
4.272)129 to explain the origin of the inscribed Q9 preserved in Colchis,
Argos thematises the functioning of memory over almost inconceivable
stretches of time; the inclusion of such material within epic authorises epics
own claims to memorialise (cf. 4.1774 * M ). So, too, the pattern
seen in Book 2 of detailed prediction followed by a close working-out of the
prediction confirms generic power in more than one way. Phineus plays
a role partly modelled on that of Circe and Tiresias in the Odyssey and,
as we have seen, such repetition is a distinct feature of epic. Moreover,
the confirmation of prediction within the epic is one way in which the
predictive power of the poem itself is confirmed. The famous sequence
125 The bibliography on the Odysseys concern with fictionality is very large; some of it may be traced
through Goldhill (1991) 3668, L. H. Pratt, Lying and Poetry from Homer to Pindar (Michigan 1993),
and E. L. Bowie, Lies, Fiction and Slander in Early Greek Poetry in C. Gill and T. P. Wiseman
(eds.), Lies and Fiction in the Ancient World (Exeter 1993) 137.
126 Cf. Pfeiffer (1968) 1668.
127 On how Apollonius constructs his relationship to the Muses and traditional narrative modes cf.
Albis (1996), Hunter (2001a) 94103.
128 On this speech cf. Hunter (1991) 949.
129 They say and related forms are, of course, often a nod to the use by the poet (and often his
characters) of written sources (cf. e.g. Hinds (1998) 12); this can, however, function alongside a
more literal significance in which orality is actually important.
4 Epic memory 125
of subsequently confirmed deathbed predictions in the Iliad (Sarpedon,
Patroclus, Hector) leaves no doubt of Achilles fate beyond the poem, and
Hectors death and the lamentation it produces prefigures, as the hero
himself was aware (Il. 6.44765), the sack of the city itself. The certainty
of Tiresias mysterious predictions for Odysseus beyond the narrative of
the Odyssey is established by the dramatisation of true prediction within
the poem. In the Aeneid, Virgil adopts a rather similar technique, although
predicted events beyond the narrative of the poem (e.g. Jupiters promise
to Venus at 1.26196) are partly confirmed within it through such devices
as the parade of future heroes in Book 6 and the Shield of Aeneas in Book
8. Important here is not merely the Homeric nature of Virgils mimesis,
but also the role of prophecy and prediction in Roman society.130
Explicit prediction of the future outside the poem plays a smaller role
in the Argonautica. The poet assures us that Heras revenge on Pelias will
become a reality,131 Glaucus foretells the futures of Heracles, Polyphemus
and Hylas (1.131525), and Hera tells Thetis that Achilles is destined to
marry Medea in the Elysian Fields (4.81114), as indeed he did in some
(fairly arcane) traditions. Three factors (at least) may be relevant to Apollo-
nius distinctive use (or failure to use) this technique. One is the prominent
foreshadowing of the future grim history of Jason and Medea which runs
through Books 3 and 4, signalled in ways other than explicit prediction.
Such a technique may be associated with the familiar Hellenistic and Roman
device of poeticising the prequels of famous stories, as for example in
Theocritus depiction of the youth of the Cyclops.132 Secondly, Apollonius
decision to write the story of the Argonautic voyage, and not, for exam-
ple, an epic about Jason, and to do so in a linear fashion, beginning at the
beginning and finishing the moment the voyage ends, offers (in one sense) a
closed structure and one not disposed explicitly to look beyond itself. Here,
Apollonius works both with and against epic tradition. Both Homeric epics
(as also the Aeneid) conclude with an episode not explicitly foreshadowed
in the proem the burial of Hector, the battle between Odysseus and the
suitors families and the actual end of both poems was in fact disputed
in ancient transmission. An alternative ending (or, rather, beginning of a
new direction) for the Iliad survives, o K C & ( g ^,
D# 'C j_Z | $ ( #4 &'
, so they
conducted the burial of Hector. An Amazon, the daughter of great-hearted,
man-slaying Ares arrived . . ., a phenomenon indicative of the expectation
130 On the whole subject cf. J. J. OHara, Death and the Optimistic Prophecy in Vergils Aeneid (Princeton
1990).
131 Cf. above, p. 111. 132 Cf. e.g. Barchiesi (1993).
in an oral tradition that an epic narrative will be continued.133 The con-
clusion to the Argonautica formally substitutes the hope of ritual repetition
(4.17745) for the expectation of continuation, as though the telos really had
been reached; all readers, however, know better than this. The end of the
Odyssey was placed at 23.296, &%(% # # %, K,
gladly, they renewed their former partnership in bed, by Aristophanes of
Byzantium and later Aristarchus, and it is tempting to see an allusion to
such a critical theory in the final verse of the Argonautica, however impor-
tant Od. 23.242, &%(% 'C 9 )
$
, gladly,
they stepped onto land, having escaped disaster, is as well.134 An end which
is no true end is indeed what the Argonautica offers.
Finally, we may note the status of prophecy within the epic itself.135
As harsh experience has taught Phineus not to exceed certain limits in
foretelling the future, so the deaths of Idmon and Mopsus both illustrate
the power of necessity, ! Z) L% (2.817, 4.1503), a power which is not
(always) to be foreseen by men. The obscurity of the gods purposes in
the Argonautica is thus matched by a relative unwillingness to commit to a
knowable future.
5 an epic lead er
It was not Virgil who first linked epic indissolubly to issues of government
and power, for Greek culture had long since given the Homeric poems a
central place in the articulation of social and political structures; the regular
recitation of the Iliad and Odyssey at the Athenian Panathenaia is merely the
most visible manifestation of their paradigmatic power. Within the poems,
Homer depicts a wide variety of political structures and the potential
conflicts which they generate. In the Iliad, the most relevant structures are
those of the Greek army (Agamemnon and the council of leading heroes,
with the different challenges posed by Achilles and Thersites), of Troy,
and of Olympus. At the centre of the Odyssey is the corruption of power
on Ithaca as the result of Odysseus prolonged absence, but the story of
Odysseus wanderings offers a further range of models from the idealised
Phaeacian society of Alcinous and Arete, through the incestuous fantasy
of Aeolus island to the solitary autarkeia of the Cyclops. Post-Homeric
133 Hardie (1997) 139. The verses are often associated with the Aithiopis, but cf. M. Davies, Epicorum
Graecorum Fragmenta (Gottingen 1988) 48 and id. (1989) 61.
134 For discussion and bibliography cf. Hunter (1993a) 11920, E.-M. Theodorakopoulos, Epic closure
and its discontents in Apollonius Argonautica in HarderRegtuitWakker (1998) 187204.
135 Cf. S. Said, Divination et devins dans les Argonautiques in AccorintiChuvin (2003) 25575.
tradition found in these various models a wealth of political advice, and
Homer became a central text in the copious kingship literature of the
Hellenistic age. The fragments of Philodemus On the Good King According
to Homer are the best known representatives of an important prose genre.136
Like the Homeric poems, the Argonautica displays a wide variety of
political and social structures, many characterised by typically Apollonian
irony. Thus, the feminine republic of Lemnos has a ruling princess, Hyp-
sipyle, the daughter of the former king, but she puts important decisions
to a democratic assembly, in which anyone can speak and unanimity is
an important ideal (cf. 1.655, 700, 705, 714). Among males, such a socio-
political structure must have had many close analogues in the Hellenistic
world, and it foreshadows a standard scenario of the Greek novel; hover-
ing over the Lemnian assembly, however, is Apollonius ironised depiction
of rational decision-making in the service of the universal desire for love-
making and reproduction. As so often, what is unspoken at a public meeting
is at least as significant as what is said openly. The unspoken is also central to
the representation of Alcinous and Arete, the rulers of Drepane, and char-
acters very familiar from the Odyssey. Whether or not we are to see in this
royal couple a partial reflection of the ruling Ptolemy and his sister-wife,137
it is clear that Alcinous is presented as an incarnation of the Hesiodic good
king who administers ordinances with straight justice (Theog. 846, cf.
Arg. 4.1100, 11769). By revealing his decision about Medea to his wife in
bed before he reveals it publicly and then falling asleep at once,138 he allows
us to understand that he is giving his wife, whose wishes in the matter he
knows only too well, time to make sure that the relevant conditions have
been fulfilled before the decision is announced. This is straight justice,
but of a very particular kind. The Hesiodic good king puts an end to
great quarrels % (Theog. 87): so Alcinous very skilfully uses his
knowledge to put an end to a 5 (cf. 4.1010, 1103). Alcinous is not the
only good king in the Argonautica. The whole idea is the source for broad
humour in the description of the king of the Mossynoikoi, who sits in
his high hut and administers straight judgements to the large population
(2.10267), but if he makes a mistake, the people lock him up and keep
him hungry for a day. Whatever anthropological observation lies behind
this claim, there is a humorous reversal appropriate for the topsy-turvy
customs of the Mossynoikoi of the Hesiodic pattern by which straight
justice banishes hunger from a city (WD 230).
136 Cf. T. Dorandi, Il buon re secondo Omero (Naples 1982), O. Murray, Philodemus On the Good
King According to Homer JRS 55 (1965) 16182, Cairns (1989) 184.
137 Cf. Hunter (1993a) 1612, (1995a) 225. 138 Cf. Hunter (1993a) 71.
The two most important political structures of the Argonautica are the
tyranny of Aietes and the decision-making processes of the Argonauts them-
selves. The former, as displayed in Books 3 and 4, is characterised by secrecy
and the exploitation of fear, the latter by openness and a sense of commu-
nity. The scene in which Heracles imposes the leadership of the expedition
upon Jason has been very variously interpreted by modern critics,139 but
there can be little doubt that at its centre lie very real issues about the nature
and qualifications of leadership:
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But, my friends, common is our hope for return to Hellas in the future, and
common our paths to Aietes palace therefore now without other thoughts choose
the very best man as your leader the man who will be concerned with every detail
in conducting both our quarrels and our agreements with men of foreign lands.
Jason is not, of course, .% in a Homeric sense, but he may be the
best leader in the circumstances of the expedition and in the context of
such a quest poem, as indeed Heracles (not usually regarded as a literary
critic) seems to recognise. Nor is it enough to argue: We accept Jasons
leadership through our intellectual grasp of narrative rather than from
emotional commitment to him as a character.140 Heracles himself is not
the figure to lead a communal exercise, as his loss to the expedition in
Mysia demonstrates: there, he is driven by his own personal passions,141
as at Lemnos he seems driven by the desire for kleos. A leader, however,
must be concerned with E%, all the details, and with the safety
of everyone (1.339, 461, 2.6317).142 Behind a leader, however, can stand a
king-maker, and Heracles uses the physical threat he represents to impose
his choice of leader; the situation finds many analogues in the military
states which followed in Alexanders wake.143
Whether or not the choice of Jason as leader was a good one has pre-
occupied much of modern Apollonian scholarship, but it must always be
139 For what follows cf. Hunter (1988) 4423. 140 DeForest (1994) 54.
141 Note esp. the simile of 1.12657.
142 Cf. Philodemus, On the Good King fr. viii Dorandi, the most kingly thing is , () K K
'$
) [T] (suppl. Murray).
143 Cf. A. Mori, Mutiny, Marriage, and Murder: Political Authority in Apollonius Argonautica (Disser-
tation, Chicago 1999).
remembered how many images of how many leaders are partially reflected
in the epic. Most obviously, the relationship between Jason and the other
Argonauts both gestures towards and is utterly different from that between
Odysseus and his crew.144 No third century reader could, however, also fail
to see in the Argonautic expedition a fore-echo of Alexanders eastern cam-
paign, particularly as the expedition of Sesostris, which Argos evokes as a
forerunner of the Argonauts return to Greece (4.25693), had already been
shaped by literary tradition as the model for Alexander.145 This is not, of
course, to say that Jason is Alexander, and indeed we have already seen one
important particular, proneness to anger, in which they could hardly be
more different; the most cursory reading of the extant Alexander-histories
will confirm extreme difference rather than similarity. Nevertheless, per-
ceptions of Alexander are one of the texts against which the epic poem
can be read, with whatever consequences for that reading. Moreover, there
were by the third century a number of other literary models for such an
expedition and the problems of leadership it posed.
One possible such model has been identified in Xenophons Anaba-
sis.146 A comparison of Xenophon and Alexander occurs more than once in
Arrian (Anab. 1.12.34, 2.7.89 (in Alexanders own mouth)); however much
this owes to Arrians own persistent imitation of Xenophon (here observ-
able in the very title Anabasis of Alexander after Xenophons Anabasis of
Cyrus), the comparison may have been familiar from a relatively early date.
In Xenophons Anabasis, as in the Argonautica, Greeks achieve a perilous
return journey by a circuitous route through dangerous, barbarian territory.
Common to both journeys are the territory and rivers (cf. Anab. 5.6.9) from
the Hellespont to the south-eastern shore of the Black Sea, which the Arg-
onauts traverse eastwards and Xenophon and his companions westwards;
landmarks such as the Acherousian route to the Underworld (2.73445,
Anab. 6.2.2) and the curious customs of the Mossynoikoi are also com-
mon to both texts (2.101529, Anab. 5.4.324), and a potential Argonautic
blueprint is in fact written into Xenophons journey.147 At 5.67, as the
Greeks find themselves on the Black Sea coast between Sinope and Trebi-
zond, Xenophon must persuade the troops of the falsity of a rumour that
he intends to lead them back eastwards to Colchis, where the king was
a grandson of Aietes (5.6.37). The return to the Aegean is thus figured as
a rejection of the Argonautic pattern.
144 Cf. Hunter (1988) 4412.
145 Hecataeus of Abdera is a key figure here, cf. Fusillo (1985) 524, Stephens (2003a) 1768.
146 Cf. Beye (1982) 756.
147 As was perhaps realised by the author of the Argonautic interpolation at 6.2.1.
It is perhaps unsurprising that certain narrative motifs are shared by the
two journey descriptions. Both Jason and Xenophon, for example, receive
the sanction of Apollo for their undertaking (1.35962, Anab. 3.1.67), and
the role of prophecy and mantike in the Anabasis is very prominent. At
various crucial points in Xenophons account, we may be reminded of
scenes from Apollonius epic: Clearchus refusal to command an initial
breakaway (1.3.15) begins not unlike Heracles refusal of command (1.345
7), but the two brief speeches could in fact hardly be more unlike in tone.
There is also a striking similarity between one of Xenophons rhetorical
strategies and Jasons invitation to his crew in the Colchian marshes:148
But now is the time for action, for the enemy may be here very soon. Those who
think that these proposals [of mine] are good should vote to approve them at once
so that they may be put into action. But if someone has any improvement on these
plans to offer, he should feel free to put it forward, even if he is a private soldier,
for we all share the need for common safety. (Xenophon, Anabasis 3.2.32)
#) i O X V '(
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Friends, I shall tell you the plan I myself favour, but it is for you to give it your
assent. Common is our need, and common to all alike the right to speak. The
man who holds back his view and opinion in silence should know that he alone
deprives our expedition of its chance for safe return. (Argonautica 3.1715)
The democratic rhetoric is shared, as it is also by Hypsipyle in the Lemnian
assembly (1.6646), but the differences between Xenophon and Jason are
palpable. The far fuller picture which Xenophon presents of himself suggests
a much more confident, resourceful and commanding figure than Jason:
If you choose to set out on this course, I am prepared to follow you, but if you
place me in the position of leadership, I make no excuses on the grounds of my
youth, but I think that I am in the prime of my powers to ward off disasters from
myself. (Xenophon, Anabasis 3.1.25)
Xenophon really is a leader who takes care of E%, a man on the
model of Odysseus, whose strategic sense and wisdom far outweigh the
qualities of those he leads (cf. 5.1.4); here again it is the nature of the Argo-
nautic crew which determines so much about the presentation of Jason.
148 Jasons words have been variously interpreted, but there are certainly no grounds for seeing an
abnegation of leadership, cf. Campbell on 3.17195.
We know all there is to know about Xenophon as a textual figure this
apparent transparency is not the least effective of Xenophons literary tech-
niques whereas the refusal to explain his characters is, as has often been
pointed out, a very striking feature of Apollonius technique. When, for
example, immediately after the speech quoted above, there is only one
dissenter (Apollonides, apparently a Boeotian) from Xenophons proposal,
Xenophon rounds on him roughly, $%Z . ) %Q 'X
Z% 'X &Q % #., you amazing fellow, you
see and yet you do not understand, you hear and do not remember . . ., and
concludes that he brings disgrace upon his homeland and all of Greece
(Anab. 3.1.2730); Xenophons sarcasm is immediately justified by the dis-
covery that Apollonides is no Boeotian, but a barbarian with pierced ears. In
Argonautica 3, Idas alone expresses disgust at the idea of relying on Medea
and Aphrodite, the good sense of which proposal seems already to have
been confirmed by an omen. Jason, however, seems entirely to ignore Idas
intervention, but rather than simply passing by in silence, the poet makes
him call attention to the omission: Argos should set out from the ship, since
everyone agrees to this plan (3.5689); the awkwardness is strengthened if
we remember Hypsipyles very similar speech in a situation where everyone
did agree (1.700). Whether this is thought to be brilliant leadership or awk-
ward gaucherie, the sequence is much more opaque than in the Anabasis;
we are offered no privileged, authorial access to a reality behind the surface
of the text. Moreover, there is in the Anabasis, particularly in Xenophons
speeches, a clear didactic and moralising direction (and not just in matters
of military tactics) which is quite absent from the Argonautica. To some
extent, the Anabasis is an excellent example of the usurpation by prose texts
of some of the traditional functions of poetry, a fact merely emphasised by
Xenophons own occasional assimilation of his adventures to the Home-
ric texts (cf. the games at 4.8.258, the encouragement to the troops at
6.5.24 etc.).
In short, the Anabasis is more important as an illustration of a mode of
writing which offers one possible literary code for the Argonautica than as
a model text from which Apollonius has drawn. Whatever models and
codes are reflected in the pattern of the Argonautic expedition, there can
be little doubt that the pursuit of power does not stand at its centre.
Whereas the Odyssey stages a return which re-founds secure and legitimate
authority, and the Aeneid is in part the story of a journey which is to lead
to the foundation of a great imperial power (Aen. 1.5, 33), the Argonautica
merely gestures towards certain traditional topics associated with kingship.
The almost total suppression of the motif of Pelias usurpation149 may be
seen as part of this rejection of the discourse of power. So, too, Jasons
polite refusal of Hypsipyles offer of the Lemnian kingship (1.83940) is,
of course, required by the plot, but Virgils elaboration of this hint into
Aeneas near assumption of kingly authority in Carthage shows the road
which Apollonius chose not to take.
149 Cf. above, p. 111.

chap t e r 4
Theocritus and the bucolic genre
1 theocritus and the realism of everyday life: in

search of new world s for poetry
Within the panorama of Hellenistic literature, Theocritus of Syracuse
reflects, as much or more than any other author of his period, the taste
for polyeideia writing in many literary genres. Like his contemporary,
Callimachus of Cyrene, he is a courtly encomiastic poet (Idylls 15, 16 and
17) and also a poet of epyllia (Idylls 13, 22, 24);1 there is also a group of
short poems in the Aeolic metre and dialect (Idylls 2831), the last three
of which are paederastic in character and clearly imitate Aeolic lyric of the
archaic period, rather as Callimachus composed both Iambi, which partly
recall the spirit, metre and dialect of the poetry of Hipponax, and also other
poems in lyric metres, which probably reflected models drawn from archaic
lyric poetry.2 Furthermore, Theocritus also wrote a significant number of
poems with realistic urban (Idylls 2, 14, 15) or rural (Idylls 1, 37, 1011) set-
tings, which describe scenes of daily life, for the most part in dialogue form.
It is very likely that the roots of Theocritus description of and opposition
between urban and rural environments3 lie in the Sicilian mime, to which, as
the scholia inform us, Theocritus was indebted for two urban mimes, Idylls
2 and 15.4 Through the representation of typical humble characters and their
daily occupations, rather than strikingly defined individuals, the Sicilian
mime gave the countryside and those who lived in it a literary prominence
which they had not enjoyed before. Epicharmus wrote a comedy entitled
1 Cf. above, Chapter 2.
2 On the question whether Callimachuss 0# were included in the book of Iambi, cf. above, p. 29
n. 115.
3 Cf. Th. Reinhardt, Die Darstellung der Bereiche Stadt und Land bei Theokrit (Bonn 1988).
4 Two introductory scholia on Idyll 2, which are probably the remains of an ancient hypothesis, state
that Theocritus derived the character of Thestylis crudely (& (#, cf. Wendel (1920) 70)
from the Mimes by Sophron and that (the author) derives the plot (2
%) of the spell from the
Mimes by Sophron (cf. pp. 26970 Wendel); the first scholium on Idyll 15 states: (the author) has
formed the poem by analogy with Sophrons Women Attending the Isthmian Games (p. 305 Wendel).
133
134 Theocritus and the bucolic genre
Land and Sea (PCG 209, see also frs. 158 and 162), where he probably
imagined a competition for supremacy between the two elements, in which
each boasted of the different products for which they were responsible.
This contrast between different types of environment was probably no less
significant in Sophrons mime entitled The fisherman to the farmer (PCG
4244, see also fr. 96).5 An analogous interest in the humble members of
the town population was shown in roughly the same period as Theocritus
by Herondas, and the taste for the description of the countryside and its
characters also finds parallels in other poetry of the period, particularly
the epigrams of Leonidas and Anyte.6 However, what most sets the bucolic
poems of Theocritus apart is the detail and consistency of the new world for
high poetry in hexameters which he creates; this new world is principally
based in an emphasis on bucolic music and song, which, on the contrary,
remain a wholly marginal element in, for example, the bucolic epigram.7
The relative prominence of bucolic poems within the extant Theocritean
corpus does not say much, in itself, in favour of a specific preference by
Theocritus for this type of poetry; this prominence may have been the
result, at least partly, of the popularity that pastoral poetry subsequently
enjoyed and which saw what for Theocritus may have been still only one of
the possibilities of mimic poetry transformed into a separate literary genre.
It is rather the image that Theocritus chooses to give in Idyll 7 of his own
personality as a poet that tells us something more certain about his own
bucolic poetics.
Idyll 7 is a first-person narration by Simichidas. Even if this is not the
name of the author (Theocritus), and even if, at times, especially in the
early stages of their encounter, the other protagonist of the poem, Lycidas,
seems to regard Simichidas with a certain superior detachment and humour
(cf. esp. vv. 216),8 it is clear that Simichidas represents, in many respects,
5 It cannot be a coincidence that this type of Sicilian mime plot reappears in Moschus and Bion.
Moschus fr. 1 concerns the relative merits of sea and land (cf. the comedy of Epicharmus), and Bion
fr. 2 the relative value of the seasons.
6 The accepted chronology of both Leonidas and Anyte has recently been questioned by Bernsdorff
(2001) 10426. Anytes bucolic epigrams are, in any case, not many (two dedications to Pan, APlan.
231 = HE 738ff. and 291 = HE 672ff., and two invitations to take refuge from the heat under a tree,
AP 9.313 = HE 726ff., APlan. 228 = HE 734ff.); as for Leonidas, there are a dozen epigrams which
have shepherds or farmers as their protagonists, or contain descriptions of the countryside, but these
should be considered alongside the large group of epigrams whose subjects are other humble workers
(fishermen, carpenters, musicians, spinning-women, hunters, woodcutters, etc.), which are at least
as numerous.
7 Cf. Bernsdorff (2001) 13954.
8 The irony applied at times to the figure of Simichidas (cf. Hunter (2003a)) is, however, not such as
to suggest that the author does not identify with him at all, as has been claimed by B. Effe, Das
poetologische Programm des Simichidas: Theokrit. Id. 7, 3741 WJA 14 (1988) 8791; see also Simon
(1991) 7782.
1 Theocritus and the realism of everyday life 135
the author himself. Simichidas presents himself as a town poet (cf. vv. 2,
24), who appears to be invested as a bucolic poet by the expert, perhaps semi-
divine, poet Lycidas; he undoubtedly demonstrates that he has thoroughly
mastered the magic of the countryside when he enthusiastically describes
the locus amoenus at the end of the poem.9 The implicit self-reference in the
first-person narration led many ancient scholars into fanciful biography
some went so far as to imagine that Theocritus was a native of Cos, the
island where the Idyll is set,10 in spite of the fact that elsewhere he makes
two distinct references to his Syracusan origins.11 Be that as it may, if the
I of Idyll 7 is interpreted as an ideal image of the poet (and one which at
least evokes Theocritus himself ), we discover that Simichidas/Theocritus
chooses to present himself (vv. 3941) as one who was previously a town
poet, and as such owed a poetic debt to, or was at least full of admiration
for, Asclepiades of Samos, who is most famous for erotic epigrams, and the
scholar-poet Philetas of Cos; the setting of the idyll on Cos is probably an
act of homage to Philetas native island, and it is important that Philetas
too wrote love poetry. Furthermore, the example of song that Lycidas offers
to Simichidas appropriates for the bucolic world the motifs of sympotic
love poetry:
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10 Cf. Suda 166 (II p. 687.189 Adler) <$Q%, e ' % =I from Syracuse; but some say
from Cos.
11 In Idyll 28 Theocritus uses the term compatriot for the Syracusan wife of his friend Nicias (cf. vv.
1618), and he jokingly calls Polyphemus the Cyclops from our area (11.7).
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Ageanax will have a good sea-crossing to Mytilene, even if the south wind drives
the moist waves, while the Kids are in the west, and if Orion places his feet on
the Ocean if he frees Lycidas, burnt by the fire of Aphrodite, for I am consumed
by a hot love for him. The halcyons will calm the waves and the sea, and the
south and south-east wind, which ruffles even the deepest sea weeds, the halcyons,
favourites of the sea-green Nereids and of all who catch their food in the sea. May
every moment be propitious for Ageanax in his navigation to Mytilene, and may
he arrive at the port after a good voyage. On that day, I will wear a garland of anise
and roses and white stocks around my head, and lying beside the fire, I will draw
some wine of Ptelea from the bowl, while someone toasts the broadbeans over the
fire. I will have a bed padded with fleabane and asphodel and curly celery, one
cubit high, and with the memory of Ageanax, I will drink the wine longingly to
the dregs, pressing my lips to the cups. Two shepherds will pipe for me, one from
Acharnae and the other from Lycope, and close by, Tityrus will sing of the time
when the cowherd Daphnis fell in love with Xenea, and the mountain suffered for
him, and the oak-trees lamented him, etc. (Theocritus 7.5274)
Lycidas song begins with what appears to be a propemptikon to his beloved
Ageanax, but already in the fourth line we discover that this propemptikon
is subject to a rather unusual condition: Ageanax is to arrive safe and sound
at Mytilene only if he frees (BQ%) Lycidas from Aphrodite (vv. 556).
The meaning of this condition has been much discussed: does Ageanax
have to free Lycidas from his passion by gratifying him, or by leaving him
for ever (perhaps the likeliest alternative),12 or at least for a long enough
period for his love to die down? Even if, however, BQ% is taken to mean
satisfies, it is a fact that the song that Lycidas looks forward to is no longer
dedicated to Ageanax: once the latter has gone, Lycidas will be able to devote
himself to the serene joy of a symposium in the countryside, where the sweet
memory of his beloved will undoubtedly remain in his cups (vv. 6970),
but the beloved, or Lycidas passion for him (whether still burning or now
finished), will no longer be the theme of the song. To the accompaniment
of two shepherds pipes, Tityrus will sing of Daphnis and Comatas, semi-
mythical heroes who were the founders of bucolic poetry; he will sing a
song somewhat similar to the one that Thyrsis sings in Idyll 1 about the fate
of Daphnis, and then he will evoke the happy lot of Comatas, a mythical
12 So Y. Furusawa, Eros und Seelenruhe in den Thalysien Theokrits (Wurzburg 1980) 3640; in this case,
the chronological details of vv. 534 would communicate the idea that Ageanax should leave as soon
as possible. Contra, with equal vigour, Stanzel (1995) 27075, for whom vv. 534 offer Ageanax the
possibility of delaying his departure as long as possible, without any consequent problems.
shepherd who had been saved from death by poetry, because the Muses had
arranged for him to be nourished with honey by bees when his cruel master
had closed him inside a chest to die of hunger. The stories of Daphnis and
Comatas take the place of the amorous discourse on the beloved which
the first section of Lycidas poem had led the reader to expect. Thus, after
starting as a love poem a propemptikon for his beloved, rich in allusions
to the atmosphere of archaic poetry13 Lycidas song puts aside the theme
of love as a subjective experience,14 even if it subsequently resumes the
traditional sympotic framework of archaic love poetry and describes it with
a skill and a wealth of detail worthy of Xenophanes descriptions of the
symposium.15
Simichidas song, which is characterised by a looser structure and the use
of lower iambic models than the poetry to which Lycidas alluded,16 moves
in the same direction: the opening proclaims his happy and contented
love for Myrto, and contrasts it with that of his friend Aratus, to whose
unhappy love the rest of his song appears to be dedicated. Simichidas,
however, does not appear to be very interested in the question of love itself:
he does not even know who the object of Aratus desire is: whether it is
the delicate Philinus or someone else, v. 105. What Simichidas wants, right
from the beginning, is to release Aratus from his situation of erotic distress:
consequently, instead of the love poem that we might have expected, we
find a magic prayer to the god Pan, in an attempt to obtain the love of
Philinus for Aratus.17 After trying to eliminate Aratus sufferings by using
magic, the simple mention of Philinus (vv. 118121) leads Simichidas to
solve his friends suffering in a different, more radical way. The traditional
appeal to the beloved to yield, because youth is not eternal (vv. 1201)
becomes in Simichidas song the starting-point for the final refusal of eros
and the poetry associated with it: Philinus is passing his prime, it is no
longer worthwhile courting him, and it is time to stop freezing in the cold
in order to offer him paraklausithyra; instead we should only seek /%$!
tranquillity (vv. 12227).18 At the end of the poem, Simichidas describes,
in terms of an idealised locus amoenus, the natural riches of the symposium
organised by Phrasidamus, which seem to exemplify this same need for
serenity, materialised in a rustic form, and to be the first real performance
of the new bucolic poet.19
13 Halcyons are a favourite theme of archaic erotic poetry, cf. Krevans (1983) 215.
14 As Stanzel (1995) 275 also admits (for his interpretation see above n. 12).
15 See vv. 6370; cf. e.g. Xenophanes fr. 13 Gent.Prato.
16 Cf. Hunter (2003a) 2259. 17 On this point, see below, pp. 15860.
18 The pastoral element in Lycidas song is seriously underestimated by Halperin (1983) 12025. Both
Lycidas and (more superficially) Simichidas appropriate erotic motifs for their bucolic poetry.
19 Cf. below, pp. 1458.
The poetic choices of Simichidas/Theocritus and his bucolic master
Lycidas enact some of the choices by which Theocritus constructs his
bucolic poetics in other idylls. Thus, the whole of Idyll 3, for example,
is made up of a parodic adaptation of a paraklausithyron,20 while the song
of the Cyclops in Idyll 11 and the song of Bucaeus in Idyll 10 (vv. 2437)
are parodies of serenades; a more serious dramatisation of love in the
manner of the subjective love poetry of archaic lyric and elegiac poetry
is to be found in the urban poems 2 and 14.21 Moreover, the celebration
of a semi-mythical singer who is the example and prototype of the bucolic
poet, analogous to the song of Lycidas, is the theme of Idyll 1, and the ideal
of hasychia and rural beauty as prerequisites for bucolic poetry are among
the most basic and pervasive themes of Theocritus bucolic works.22 This
is not, of course, to say that when Theocritus elaborated the possibility of
hexameter bucolic mime, taking off from the pre-existing literary mime, he
realised that he was inventing a new literary genre; nevertheless, he was
bound to be aware that few, if any, precedents existed for his combination
of rustic contents and epic metre, and thus some of his poems do indeed
inaugurate the pastoral genre.23
In the second chapter of the Poetics, Aristotle distinguishes three possi-
ble levels at which the objects of artistic imitation are situated, in terms of
moral worth, with respect to our daily experience: such objects are better,
or worse, or exactly the same. Hexameter poetry offered him both subjects
which are more serious than daily life (the heroic epics of Homer) and sub-
jects worse than daily life, such as the parodies of Hegemon and the \ #(
of a certain Nicochares. The little that we know of Nicochares depicts him
as a comic poet; almost nothing is known of the \ #( (the Viliad?), but
20 Both ancient and some modern scholars have wished to link the %
protagonist of Idyll 3 to
Simichidas in Idyll 7; cf. e.g. C. Meillier, Theocrite, Idylle VII et autour de lIdylle VII, in Arrighetti
Montanari (1993) 10810.
21 The characters of Idyll 14 are plainly townspeople, even if their party is held in the country, cf.
Stanzel (1995) 1921.
22 Cf. below, pp. 1457.
23 Ancient scholarship identified pre-Theocritean bucolic in the popular song which characterised
rustic rituals for country divinities (above all, Artemis, cf. schol. Theocritus, Proleg., pp. 2 and 79
Wendel); mythical bucolic poets were also found: Daphnis (cf. Diodorus Siculus 4.84, who may
have been influenced by Timaeus, FGrHist 566F83; Hermesianax, CA fr. 2; Diomedes, Gramm. Lat.
1, 487.810 Keil); Diomus (cf. Athen. 14.619ab), a character already mentioned by Epicharmus
(PCG 4 and 104), and Menalcas, for whom Eriphanis, a lyric poetess who was in love with him,
is supposed to have written poems (Athen. 14.619cd). Aelian (Var. hist. 10.18) suggests that the
initiator of bucolic # was the Sicilian poet Stesichorus, to whom Crates of Mallos had
already ascribed a short poem about Daphnis: PMGF 27980. Whether or not this attribution is
reliable (cf. L. Lehnus, SCO 24 (1975) 1916, O. Vox, Belfagor 41 (1986) 31117), the very fragility of
this tradition shows how widespread the reputation of Theocritus was as the initiator of the genre.
the title itself, with its pun on C@#(, suggests a parodic contrast between
grand Homeric language and low subject-matter: we may perhaps compare
the gastronomic poetry of Matron of Athens. As an example of poetic works
which represent objects exactly the same as us, Aristotle is only able to a
name a single author, Cleophon, a tragedian who inappropriately lowered
the level of his works by using words and/or characters that were too hum-
ble and common, thus obtaining an effect bordering on comedy (Poetics
1458a1820, Rhetoric 3.1408a1015). The representation of daily life is thus
reduced, in the Aristotelian system of literary genres, to little more than a
faux pas of tragedy, consisting in the use of the wrong lexical register by a
single author. Any suspicion that this Cleophon might have gone consider-
ably beyond the well-known bourgeoisification of language and of certain
tragic situations, initiated by Euripides, is quashed by a consideration of
the titles that are listed in the Suda, which are almost all of a mythological
nature (TrGF 77T1). Aristotle himself does not seem to pay much attention
to this apparent one-off: at the end of the second chapter of the Poetics,
when he moves from theoretical discussion to the subject of drama, which
is of course his principal preoccupation, he completely ignores the middle
term of his trichotomy and limits himself to speaking about tragedy (with
subjects that are higher than everyday life) and comedy (with subjects that
are lower than everyday life).24
Poetry in hexameters, on the other hand, even in the time of Aristotle,
had never witnessed accidents of this kind: there was epic poetry, which
represented characters and situations of the utmost seriousness, the glorious
deeds (#) of heroes or the acts ( ) of heroes and gods (cf. Iliad 9.189
and Odyssey 1.3378, 8.73),25 and there was parody which used heroic lan-
guage for non-serious subjects, such as the gastronomic poetry of Matron
and the pseudo-Homeric Margites, with its buffoonish anti-hero. Poetic
contents could be related to the real world in a variety of ways (
),
and some Hellenistic thinking on the matter is probably available in a
scholium to Iliad 14.34251. According to this text, one possibility is that
poetic subject-matter imitates reality ( , &#) another
24 It is a great pity that we cannot be sure of the origin of the definition of mime as an imitation of life
which includes both lawful and unlawful things (schol. Aristophanes, Proleg. xxiv.3.167 Koster).
If it really goes back to Theophrastus, as is often claimed, this would have important consequences
for the scholastic background to Theocritus mimes.
25 One of the specific aims of epic poetry, according to scholars, was #M astonishment, and
the relations between gods and men were crucial to this effect; cf. scholia on Homer, Il. 15.695,
16.459, 20.612, and Feeney (1991) 4256. On the hexameter as a particularly suitable verse-form
for mythical-heroic, or at least sublime, material, cf. Aristotle, Poet. 1449a267, 1459b3437, Rhet.
1404a345, Demetrius, Eloc. 5 and 42.
is that subject-matter derives from imagination based on reality (
% &# ), and a third one is achieved by going beyond
reality and by imagination (C 2 % &# %); this
last is exemplified in the scholium by means of characters like the Cyclopes
or the Laestrygones and facts about the gods ( ). shere are
undoubtedly traces of all three categories in Homer (as the scholium to
Iliad 2.4789 reminds us), but the extraordinary world of heroes and gods
remains by far the most dominant in epic poetry, and this separates it rad-
ically both from the imitation of daily life which we find, for example, in
New Comedy, and from fiction, in the sense of % based on the
real world. Epic remained the vehicle for the transmission of the stable,
structural truths to be found in the mythical deeds of gods and heroes,
truths which transcended the precarious, non-permanent truths of every-
day life.26 The everyday world of humble people, very largely excluded
from epic, had found expression almost exclusively in the mime and in
Sicilian comedy. Moreover, the mimes of Sophron, who, as we have seen,27
supplied Theocritus with models for two of his urban mimes, were com-
posed in a kind of rhythmic prose which was so marginal in the system of
literary genres that it did not even deserve a name to distinguish it from
prose.28
If Theocritus did not specialise in any particular genre, his poetry as a
whole in some ways challenged the traditional system of genres, in which
the hexameter had regularly been combined with high subjects and heroic-
divine protagonists (or, for parodic purposes, with their exact opposite). It
has, for example, long been noted that Theocritus mythological epyllia
tend to humanise or normalise the mythical heroes who are their protag-
onists.29 Moreover, the two poems dedicated to encomium (Idylls 16 and
17) both begin with forceful proems, in which the traditional gesture of
mythological recusatio in the face of the limitations of human knowledge
(cf. Ibycus, PMGF S151.1031, Simonides, IEG 11.1522) is reshaped with
a new pride in the dignity of hexameter poetry about human subjects.
Idyll 16.14 is particularly striking:30
* \, Q # ) *X &'5)
2 5 &($) 2 5 & # &'.
05% X ) b & 'U
. 'X 9 l' ) 9b 9 & ' .
26 For the kind of truth to be sought in myth cf. Diodorus Siculus 4.8. Aristophanes, Wasps 117480
is enlightening here.
27 Cf. above, n. 4. 28 Cf. Aristotle, Poet. 1447a28b13.
29 Cf. e.g. Horstmann (1976) 5779, Effe (1978) 6476. Cf. also below, pp. 20110, 25566.
30 Cf. Fantuzzi (2000b) and (2001b).
It is always dear to the heart of the daughters of Zeus and always to poets to
celebrate the immortal ones, to celebrate the deeds of valiant men but the Muses
are goddesses, and goddesses sing of gods; we who are here are mortals, and as such
let us mortals sing of mortals!
This proud confidence in a division of domains between the Muses and
the poets who are inspired by them, on the one hand, and the class of
poets in which Theocritus includes himself, on the other, is in perfect, and
perhaps programmatic, harmony with the spirit of his bucolic and urban
poems, which take the hexameter in quite new directions.
In creating a new kind of hexameter poetry as an alternative or comple-
ment to high epos,31 Theocritus succeeded in creating an organic, coher-
ent structure, a possible world, for the characters and the settings of his
poetry, which stand halfway between the imitation of the real and imag-
ination based on the real world (cf. above), and are therefore inevitably
more precarious and unstable than those of the mythical world, which were
traditionally seen as offering paradigmatic models for the understanding
of the real world.32 This new and coherent world which his poetry cre-
ates, a world which, for all its differences, is no less coherent than the
heroic-mythological world of epic, is Theocritean bucolics most notice-
able difference both from the mime, which was based, in all probability, on
the more or less direct mirroring (and of course distortion) of the real world,
and from the simple imagination based on the real world of comedy, with
its paradoxical internal logic which changed from play to play.
2 verisimilitud e and coherence

The search for internal coherence is most obvious in the bucolic poems,
perhaps because the urban mimes already had well-developed models in the
long para-literary tradition of the Sicilian and other contemporary mimes
(cf. above pp. 1334). Theocritus bucolic poetry is based on the unrealistic
presupposition that the professional requirements of a shepherds life,
connected with the activity of looking after the flock, are but a minor
distraction from the principal pastimes of music and singing, particularly
song contests.33 This same selective stylisation34 is enshrined in the use
of the verb 9$#(%', which never means I am a cowherd (or
a shepherd),35 but always and only I sing bucolic songs, mainly in the
31 Cf. Halperin (1983) 21748.
32 On this difference between the world of mythology and the possible worlds of fiction cf. Th. G.
Pavel, Fictional Worlds (Cambridge, MA 1986) 3942.
33 Cf. e.g. Griffin (1992) 1989. 34 Cf. Stanzel (1995) 11518.
35 Properly speaking, the term 9$
# designated the cowherd, but the broader meaning is already
presupposed in Homer (Il. 20.221).
context of an agonistic or friendly exchange of songs (5.44 and 60, 7.36);36
so too, the adjective 9$#
is found in Theocritus only as an attribute
of the words &'( song and 05% Muse.37 This stylisation has its
roots in a traditional vision of the shepherd and of rustic life, familiar in
literature as early as the archaic age;38 besides the shepherds on Achilles
shield, who already delight in playing the syrinx (cf. below), in the Philoctetes
of Sophocles, the Chorus says of someone who has been heard making a
noise, but whose identity they do not know: He does not have the melody
(#4) of a syrinx, like the shepherd wandering through the fields (ll.
21314). The modern suggestion that 9$#%
was a term going back
before Theocritus, and one which specifically indicated a form of popular
singing said to have been invented by a certain Diomus, a Sicilian shepherd
already referred to by Epicharmus (see above, n. 2339 ), is therefore not
unreasonable.
This same transference is seen in the description of the boy guarding the
vine in the ekphrasis of the cup in Idyll 1 (ll. 4554). The boy is regularly
seen as an image of the bucolic poet:40 he is so taken up with weaving
reed-cages (or traps) for grasshoppers that he neglects both the vine and
his own lunch, in an ideal opposition to the psychological and physical
suffering of the protagonists of the other two scenes depicted on the cup
(the lovesick men and the toiling fisherman):41
$, 'C V%% . /#Q
5% %$#5% #, 99 &#()
]# C e%5% $#(%%
w U & ' 'Q C &#Z ) X & C A!
% ZM) 'C 4
( '
# Q!% , ' &% 5
36 Even the song of Thyrsis in Idyll 1 is presented as a re-performance of a song already sung by Thyrsis
himself in a competition with Chromis of Libya (vv. 234).
37 Cf. 1.20, 7.49, and the refrains of Thyrsis song.
38 For the status of the shepherd in Greek culture before Theocritus, cf. Griffin (1992) 1945 and
Gutzwiller (1991) 2379.
39 Cf. Nauta (1990) 12629 (for a different view cf. Halperin (1983) 7884).
40 As Hunter (1999) 82 notes, the boy is the image of the bucolic poet because, just like the latter, he
constructs something beautiful from natural materials. It should not come as a surprise that the
boy is a guardian of a vineyard, and not a shepherd: the cup is not a simple representation of the
bucolic world there are, e.g., no flocks because the ecphrastic relation here constructed between
a described object and the poem in which it occurs is not that of original and copy (Hunter
(1999) 77). This image is taken up by Longus in Daphnis and Chloe, where, on the contrary, its
pastoral value is made explicit: Chloe was gathering some branches of asphodel and was weaving
some cages, and as she was wholly taken up by this work, she lost sight of her lambs (1.10.2).
41 The three scenes on the cup are presented in such a way as to form a priamel that brings out the
superiority of the life of the pastoral poet, as a life concentrated on a
, which is at the same
time the greatest delight; cf. F. Cairns, Theocritus First Idyll: the Literary Programme WS 18 (1984)
1035.
v &(% M5% M" .42
V C & % # # &'4 (v.l. &'4)
%!"
%'U # ' e 3 4
3 $ %% V% # 5.
A little further on from the old man worn by the sea, there is a vineyard laden with
dark bunches of grapes, guarded by a boy sitting on a little wall; beside him there
are two foxes, one of which is prowling between the rows of vines to steal the ripe
grapes, while the other is plotting all kinds of attacks against the boys lunch-bag,
thinking that he will not leave the boy without (?) stealing his lunch from him (?).
But the boy is weaving a pretty trap (var. lect. cage) for crickets, using asphodels
combined with reeds, and he has less care for the lunch-bag or the vines, than the
joy he takes in his weaving. (Theocritus 1.4554)
Like the bucolic poet who weaves a web of words and sounds,43 the boy
is totally dedicated to his task, capable even of disregarding the most basic
need for food. Theocritus may here have been borrowing from a famous pas-
sage in Platos Phaedrus, the dialogue which foreshadows so many bucolic
motifs;44 the passage in question is the aetiology for the love for singing
and the peculiar diet (i.e. dew) of cicadas, whose chirping characterises the
natural music of the countryside, in the Phaedrus no less than in Theocritus
and the poetic tradition.45 At a certain point of their conversation beside
the Ilissos, Socrates and Phaedrus start discussing how people write well, or
otherwise, both in poetry and in prose (cf. 258d), and Socrates finds it par-
ticularly suitable that they are dealing with this difficult subject under the
auspices, and also the protection, of the cicadas. The cicadas would mock
them if they let themselves fall asleep in the afternoon heat, like sheep or
slaves seduced (#$$) by the insects song; on the contrary, if the
cicadas saw that they were wide awake and ready (like them) for a dis-
cussion, they would be pleased to give them what it is their prerogative
to give to men (258e259b), in other words the inspiration of the Muses
(259bc):46
42 The text of this verse is quite uncertain, but the sense seems to be that the fox will not stop its attacks
until it has eaten the boys food.
43 As Hunter (1999) 77 has already noted, that the art of poetry is expressed through an image (a boy
weaving a cage) is itself a manifestation of how poetry works. On the metaphor of weaving for
poetic creation cf. e.g. J. M. Snyder, The Web of Song: Weaving Imagery in Homer and the Lyric
Poets CJ 76 (1981) 19396 and chapter 5 of J. Scheid and J. Svenbro, The Craft of Zeus: Myths of
Weaving and Fabric (Cambridge, MALondon 1996).
44 Cf. C. Murley, Platos Phaedrus and Theocritean Pastoral TAPhA 71 (1940) 28195, Hunter (1999)
145.
45 Cf. DaviesKathirithamby (1986) 11619.
46 For understanding Theocritus use of Plato, the attitude of the Platonic Socrates to the cicadas is
of secondary interest; for different views, cf. G. R. F. Ferrari, Listening to the Cicadas: a Study of
Platos Phaedrus (Cambridge 1987) 2530 and A. Capra, Il mito delle cicale e il motivo della bellezza
sensibile nel Fedro Maia 52 (2000) 22547, pp. 2279.
It is narrated that the cicadas were once men, in a period when the Muses had not
yet been born; when the Muses were born, and singing was invented, some men
of that time were so overwhelmed by the pleasure that derived from it, that they
started to sing, disregarding food and drink, and thus without realising it, brought
about their own death. The race of the cicadas was thus born from them, and
they received this gift from the Muses: from their birth, they do not need to feed
themselves, but immediately start singing, without eating or drinking until they
die; afterwards, they go and tell the Muses which of the men down here venerate
each of them.
In Theocritus too, &' crickets/grasshoppers, which are traditionally
connected with music no less than were cicadas,47 and cicadas are
the habitual accompaniment of the shepherds song, and also the standard
term of comparison both for the song itself and, in general, for the sounds of
the world of nature.48 If the boy guarding the vine is an image of the bucolic
poet, then there might be a particular significance also in the imminent
loss of his lunch, due to his lack of attention for the material necessities of
life, compared with the pleasure ( 5, v. 54) that he derives from weaving
cages; we might compare, on one hand, the little attention for the external
world shown by the shepherds depicted on Achilles shield in Homer, Iliad
18.5256 (. . . they were followed by two shepherds who were taking their
delight in the syrinx, without suspecting an attack) and, on the other, the
shepherds accused by Hesiods Muses (Theogony 26) of being %
L pure stomachs, that is to say, oblivious to anything apart from their
simple need for food. Theocritus boy is an example of the total dedication
to singing which Plato had used as an aetiological explanation for the frugal
diet of the cicada,49 a diet known to the poetic tradition at least since the
pseudo-Hesiodic Shield (vv. 39395) and one which appears to have been
extended at times also to crickets (&' ).50
The Platonic link between the cicadas love for singing and their special
diet has another importance for Theocritus image. The habit of catching
crickets and keeping them in a cage in order to listen to their singing is well
attested in Hellenistic epigram,51 but in light of the fact that it was not rare
47 Cf. e.g. Anyte, AP 7.190.1 = HE 742, Leonidas, AP 7.198.34 = HE 20867, Meleager, AP 7.195.12 =
HE 40589. [Aristotle], audib. 804a had already linked &' with cicadas and nightingales as
animals that were endowed with a # $
resonant voice.
48 Cf. 1.148, 5.289, 7.41, 7.138. In this last passage, Theocritus speaks of the cicadas song as a

toil, a word resonant in Theocritean and Hellenistic poetics, cf. above, p. 5 n. 15, Berger (1984)
1820.
49 Cf. Aristotle, Hist. anim. 532b1114, Theocritus 4.1516 etc.
50 As the unfortunately corrupt text of Meleager, AP 7.195.78 = HE 40645 suggests, cf. E. K.
Borthwick, A Grasshoppers Diet CQ 16 (1966) 1056.
51 Cf. DaviesKathirithamby (1986) 1378.
for the origins of poetry to be traced to the imitation of bird song,52 and
in particular in the light of Platos comment that the cicadas had received
from the Muses the prerogative of mediating between men and the Muses
themselves, it is tempting to imagine that this complete absorption in
catching crickets is a sort of metaphor for the birth of bucolic poetry itself.
The myth of the Phaedrus and the Iliad s shepherds, who pay no attention
to their surroundings but concentrate on their musical activity,53 lead us
into this image and help us to interpret it.
Equally idealised is the Theocritean countryside. It is never a really wild
countryside, a place of dangers and hardships, one quite inhospitable to
humans; on the contrary, the Theocritean countryside is always peacefully
under human control.54 Furthermore, there is, for the most part, sympa-
thetic harmony between the countryside and the shepherds. The beauty of
the countryside reflects and guarantees the sweetness of the music of the
syrinx55 and of the context in which the shepherds listen.56 The opening of
the first Idyll has a particular importance,
/'Q , :Q% / $) *
# ) 4)
/ 5 5% #%' ) /'b 'X Q
%$%' ) #.
O goatherd, sweet is the murmuring created by that pine-tree over there, near the
springs, and sweetly do you play the pipe . . .
Note also the rival places for singing suggested by Lacon and Comatas in
Idyll 5, vv. 314 and 459 (respectively):
x' &"%
5'C 2,
.#% M.
:$!, [' $ # 9 U H' Q
) !& %9 x' ) &' H' ##
...
! +: . $ 'Q ) H' Q )
H' #, 99 %( %% #%%)
C [' :$! T 'Q) 'C ''
A! ## ) / % 'X
T U 9(## 'X / $ 2:
Z) #.
You will sing more sweetly here, sitting under the oleaster and these trees: here the
water gushes cool, here the grass grows, and there is this place to lie down, and here
52 Cf. e.g. Alcman, PMGF 39, Democritus, VS 68B154; Gentili (1988) chapter 4.
53 For the history of this cultural paradigm cf. Gutzwiller (1991) 2379.
54 Cf. A. Perutelli, Natura selvatica e genere bucolico ASNP 5 (1976) 76375. A dangerously wild
countryside would obviously not be conducive to bucolic /%$! tranquillity (cf. 7.126); cf. further
Segal (1981) 21527, H. Edquist, Aspects of Theocritean otium Ramus 4 (1975) 10114.
55 Traditionally 1'Q: cf. e.g. Euripides, El. 703. 56 Cf. Schmidt (1987) 2936.
the crickets are chirruping [. . .] I will not come there. Here there are oak-trees,
here there is galingale, here the bees buzz sweetly round the hives, here there are
two springs of fresh water, the birds are twittering on the tree, and the shade is
totally different from what you have got around you; the pine-tree sheds its cones
from on high, as well . . .
Theocritus will certainly have found more than one parallel in previous
literary tradition for the sympathetic sweetness of the countryside as a
premise for song, and he undoubtedly found at least one in another passage
from Platos Phaedrus (230bc):
A lovely place for us to stop! This plane-tree is very leafy and tall; the height and
the shade of the agnus are ideal, and fully blossomed as it is, it fills the place with
fragrant scents. And then under the plane-tree flows a beautiful spring, with very
cool water, as you can feel with your foot. From the images and the statues, it
looks like a place sacred to certain Nymphs and to Achelous. And, if you like, feel
how pleasant and gentle the breeze is in this place. A summer murmur answers the
chorus of the cicadas. But the sweetest thing of all is this grass, which slopes gently
down, and is made for one to lie down on, resting the head very comfortably.
In Theocritus, however, descriptions of the pleasures of the countryside
normally remain within the bounds of the plausible. In only one case do
we find an extensive description of a locus amoenus which culminates in a
radically idealised, and therefore unrealistic, representation of the sympa-
thetic participation of the world of nature; the passage comes at the end of
Idyll 7:
## 'C . [ , ' 135
K # U , 'C Q e , ['
W$T M . 9
#($_ .
'X %5 ]'% *#
## !
U / 'C ]##$ Z
#
$5% 9( Q_ % &(U 140
. '
$' &' ) % $ Z)
M$ ' & #%%.
(C %' (# ) %' 'C ]Z.
A! X %%) # $5% 'X T#
':# /5 $#' ) 'C !$ 145
A 99#% 9 _ .
Many poplars and elm-trees were swaying over our heads, and nearby, there was
the babble of the sacred stream, which flows down from the grotto of the Nymphs.
On the shady branches, the smoky-coloured cicadas toiled at their chirping; the
tree-frog could be heard in the distance among the close-packed briar thorns; larks
and finches were singing, the turtle-dove was moaning, and the bees were buzzing
around the springs. Everything smelled of a rich harvest and ripe fruits: pears at
our feet, apples rolled plenteously alongside us, and boughs laden with sloes hung
down to the ground. (Theocritus 7.13546)
In this single case, a primitivistic idealisation suggestive of the Golden
Age, in which the fruit automatically dropped off the trees for the men, is
achieved in the ritualised atmosphere of a rural harvest festival. The ideal-
ising imagination grows from rural reality there is indeed a superabun-
dance of fruit in the season of the harvest and from the logic of religious
thought. Phrasidamus and Antigenes were descendants of the noble family
of Merops, the legendary king of Cos, who were said to have given hospi-
tality to Demeter, while she was wandering in search of her lost daughter;
the story is reported by one scholiast on vv. 59, and had probably already
featured before Theocritus in Philetas Demeter.57 The exceptional nature
of this setting is emphasised by the narrating Simichidas, who in all proba-
bility wants to present the setting created by Phrasidamus for the Thalysiae
as equal to the one where Phrasidamus forefather, Chalcon, had performed
the natural miracle of opening up the Bourina spring with a kick (ll. 47),
in a sort of parallel to Hesiods Hippocrene.58 Theocritus intention, then,
would be to contrast a modern miracle of the bucolic world, of which
Simichidas has just been appointed the singer, with a true miracle of the
mythological past; the countryside, which Phrasidamus has organised into
an idealised locus amoenus, then enters into competition with the mythical
deeds of his forefathers.59 Moreover, the enthusiastic interpretation that the
town poet Simichidas gives of the closing locus amoenus is a demonstra-
tion of the positive influences exerted on Simichidas, both by his meeting
with Lycidas and, more generally, by the landscape and the presence of
the Nymphs:60 the place celebrated by Simichidas appears to be conse-
crated to the Nymphs, and Simichidas had acknowledged their inspiration
(vv. 9193), in offering himself as a new Hesiod, but one taught by Nymphs,
not Muses (see below, p. 154).
In the Phaedrus, too, the spot on the banks of the Ilissos, where the
dialogue between Socrates and Phaedrus took place, was sacred to the
57 Cf. Sbardella (2000) 1768.
58 Cf. Krevans (1983) 20912. The Bourina spring may be identical with the spring of the Nymphs
at the end of the poem, cf. Puelma (1960) 162 n. 58, Sbardella (2000) Appendix I. Nevertheless,
there is no clear indication of this, and the different symbolic values connected with the two springs
(mythological characters versus living figures; Hesiodic influences versus bucolic poetry; Muses
versus Nymphs) suggest rather that they embody an opposition between two different atmospheres.
59 Cf. Berger (1984) 289 and Hunter (1999) 192, for whom the technique is similar to that whereby
Pindar suggests that the achievements of his victor-patrons recall and replay the achievements of
their ancestors [. . .] the legendary past is not merely replayed in the near past of Simichidas memory,
but that near past is already itself mythic.
60 Cf. Pearce (1988) 209304.
Nymphs (230b), as was the spring overlooking that locus amoenus; Socrates
himself stated several times that he was inspired by the Nymphs (cf. below,
pp. 1512). Moreover, Phaedrus put down the naivety of Socrates descrip-
tion of the locus amoenus to the sense of initial discovery of the countryside
by the town-dwelling philosopher (230cd):
O most excellent Socrates, you seem to me to be a truly odd man. As you say, you
are like a stranger led by a guide, and not like a native of this place. It seems to me
that you never go beyond the limits of the town, or even outside the walls.
The Phaedrus allows us to understand that Simichidas unrealistic idealisa-
tion of the locus amoenus is motivated by the enthousiasmos generated by
the Nymph-controlled environment on the first performance of this new
bucolic poet, or, in more prosaic terms, by the enthusiasm of the town
poet on first discovering the countryside as a theme of poetry.
Selective, rather than complete, idealisation, is then Theocritus preferred
mode, even in the locus amoenus of Idyll 7. Not uncommonly, however, this
is combined with more realistic elements drawn from the bucolic world of
the shepherds, often indeed to make the artifice of selection and partiality,
the fictional character of his bucolic world, less evident. Thus, for example,
there are exchanges between pairs of shepherds, in which the one who is
about to sing or play is careful to ask the other one to look after his flock
in the meantime, or sometimes the companion who declares his readiness
to do so in advance, or again, before singing, both shepherds take care to
leave their animals in a safe place, so as to have more freedom for their
song.61 So too, when the song is over, the shepherds may remember their
flocks and their individual duties, and sometimes they start to speak again
in crude, concrete language.62 It is this selective mixture of idealisation and
reality that distinguishes Theocritean realism from the idealised and/or
imprecise description63 of the countryside and pastoral life that we find
in the poems of his Greek imitators and in Virgils Eclogues: for them, the
world of shepherds is merely an apparatus of objects, images and forms
of expression, codified, for the Greek poets, in a now recognisable literary
genre, and, for Virgil, as a sentimental alternative to town life.
61 Cf. 1.1214, 3.15. On the contrary, the Cyclops, a parody of the shepherd, entirely forgot his flock
while he serenaded Galatea (11.1213).
62 Cf. e.g. 1.1512, recalling the crude naturalness of animal sex, immediately after the conclusion of the
drama of Daphnis, 4.4449, and 5.14150, where the allusion to the Homeric Melanthius reminds
us that these shepherds are Theocritus shepherds, who know their Homer; for such mixed effects in
Theocritus, cf. W. G. Arnott, Lycidas and Double Perspectives Eclas 26 (1984) 33346.
63 On imprecision and scarce attention to realism in the spurious works of the corpus, cf. Rossi (1971b),
and in general W. Elliger, Die Darstellung der Landschaft in der griechischen Dichtung (BerlinNew
York 1975) 31964.
Just as there is at least one case in which Theocritus describes an ide-
alised locus amoenus for the ritualised, mythologised atmosphere of the
Thalysiae so there are some exceptional cases in which he suspends the
selective realism with which he habitually presents his characters, and
allows the world of nature and the world of human activity and suffering
to flow into each other. The exceptions are Daphnis (7.727 and 1.64145)
and the divine Comatas of 7.7885,64 both of whom are figures belonging
to the mythical past of bucolic poetry, and are in a certain sense its hero-
founders. They therefore have a special claim to the highly mythologised
atmosphere which Theocritus creates for them. Nature is humanised by
the pathetic fallacy which attributes to it a sentimental participation and
interaction with human affairs: the bees feed Comatas, who is closed inside
a chest; all nature mourns for Daphnis,65 both tame animals and wild ones,
including a highly improbable Sicilian lion, in a scene which breaks down
the otherwise habitual separation between wild nature and domesticated
herding (cf. 1.715 and 11517). Moreover, as in heroic epic, in the story of
Daphnis a direct participation in human affairs is imagined for the gods,
both Olympian (Hermes, Aphrodite) and other (Pan, Priapus). The gods
seem to have been part of the legend of Daphnis before Theocritus (accord-
ing to Diodorus Siculus 4.84.34, Daphnis was a member of the musical
entourage of Artemis), but otherwise they have no interaction with his
herdsmen, who are imagined as Theocritus living contemporaries.
The coherence of Theocritus bucolic world can also be seen in the
different characterisation of the contemporary Daphnis of Idyll 6 and the
mythical Daphnis of Idylls 1 and 7. The relationship between the Daphnis
of Idyll 6 and the mythical figure has been much debated, but whether or
not he is a different character, called Daphnis as a tribute to his poetic
ability,66 the Daphnis of Idyll 6 is undoubtedly presented in a realistic
environment, in which the everyday needs of pastoral life make themselves
felt.67 He engages in a singing competition (%' , v. 5) with a shepherd
friend of his, in terms that are perhaps more amicable, but otherwise not
very different from those of the realistic shepherds of Idyll 5.68 In both
64 It is not clear whether these verses all refer to the goatherd Comatas, or first to a goatherd who
suffered the same fate as Comatas and then to Comatas himself; cf. Hunter (1999) 1756.
65 Diodorus Siculus 4.84.1 describes the region of Sicily where Daphnis lived (the Heraean mountains)
as a lush locus amoenus, in terms which may themselves be influenced by the myth of Daphnis.
66 Cf. Legrand (1898) 151.
67 Verses 12 they gathered the herd together in a single place allude to the harmony of the two
shepherds (cf. Bernsdorff (1994) 41), but also has an obvious effect of realism for two shepherds
about to engage in a song contest; cf. 1.13, where Thyrsis asks the goatherd to play his syrinx,
assuring him that he will pasture his goats in the meantime.
68 On the parallelism between the boukoliasmoi of Idylls 5 and 6, cf. Serrao (1977) 18994.
poems, there is sally and riposte, though these are multiple in Idyll 5,
whereas there is only a single exchange of lengthier songs in Idyll 6; in
this latter poem, Daphnis imagines that he is the friend and advisor of
the Cyclops, and Damoitas, Daphniss companion, assumes the role of the
Cyclops to answer Daphnis. Much of the irony of Idyll 6 derives from the
fact that this living Daphnis69 warns Polyphemus not to be too difficult
with Galatea by ignoring her, because in that way he would be destined
to be unhappy in love ('Q% 70 ); in other words, Daphnis warns him
about the very unhappiness of which Priapus accused the mythical Daphnis
in 1.828871 . However, the Cyclops, as interpreted by Damoitas, seems to
adopt the stubbornness of the mythical Daphnis, although he interprets
this in his own way: he pretends to ignore her, so he claims, as part of a
strategy to win Galatea as his wife (cf. vv. 323).
Idyll 6 is thus an interpretation in a facetious key of the tragic story of the
Daphnis of Idyll 1, and at the same time an interpretation in a more or less
serious key of the comic clumsiness of the Cyclops of Idyll 11; it is as if the
representation of the stories by two living, contemporary shepherds, and
the assimilation of those stories to their own rustic scheme of logic, could
moderate the tragic or parodic dimensions implicit in the two heroes of the
bucolic world par excellence, Daphnis and Polyphemus. How far Theocritus
(and his Damoitas) took the Cyclops marriage strategy seriously, or whether
the whole of the Cyclops song in Idyll 6 is a cruel manifestation of the self-
deception suggested at the end of Idyll 11 (ll. 769), depends, in part, on the
question of whether Theocritus knew and expected his audience to know
the version of the myth which included the birth of a son to the Cyclops
and Galatea, and thus the consummation of the Cyclops dream of love.72
Be that as it may, the bucolic mask of the lovesick Cyclops in Idyll 6 has
none of the parodic features which characterise the versification of Idyll
11; the hexameters of the Cyclopss love song in Idyll 11 are as clumsy as
the song itself, but the hexameters of Idyll 6 are fully in keeping with the
69 As the introductory scholium b to Idyll 1 already calls him, to distinguish him from the mythical
character.
70 In 1.85 and 6.7 this term, whose precise meaning is controversial, probably implies an inability to
love the persons who could actually reciprocate the love, cf. R. M. Ogilvie, JHS 82 (1962) 10610
and F. W. Williams, JHS 89 (1969) 1223. For a different view, i.e. deeply affected by the bitterness
of love, cf. Schmidt (1987) 5766.
71 Alternatively, the Daphnis of Idyll 1 falls into the error of which the Daphnis of Idyll 6 invites him
to beware, cf. Bernsdorff (1994) 45. On the Cyclops of Idyll 6 as another Daphnis, cf. Stanzel (1995)
18690.
72 The version was known already to Timaeus (FGrHist 566F69). For later references cf. Propertius
3.2.910 and Nonnus 39.25764, 40.55357.
principles of harmony to which Theocritus other bucolic poems, like the
hexameters of Callimachus, aspire.73 Analogously, the Daphnis of Idyll 6,
the pragmatic advisor in questions of love, whose advice is not to play hard
to get but rather to seize the opportunity and who lives in perfect (perhaps
even erotic74 ) harmony with his shepherd friend Damoitas in a natural
realistic setting, is to be seen as an exemplary contrast to the Daphnis of
Idyll 1, who was the victim of his tragically 'Q% character and who was
in contact with the gods in an unreal, mythologised setting.
Theocritus bucolic world not only has its specific natural setting and its
specific heroes, but it also has its specific gods. One of the important ways
in which Theocritus gives coherence and credibility to the setting and to
the bucolic characters is through the specialisation of their pantheon. For
the Greeks, there was of course a real division in the areas of responsibility
and competence among the various gods, and this was true of rustic deities,
no less than any others. In his Cynegeticus (chap. 35), Arrian explicitly notes
that different activities require the attention of different gods:
those who sail the seas commence from the gods whose concern is human safety,
and when they are rescued, they offer thanksgiving sacrifices to the sea gods,
Poseidon, Amphitrite and the Nereids; those who till the land offer sacrifices to
Demeter and her daughter and to Dionysus; those who practise crafts, to Athena
and Hephaestus . . . so also keen hunters must be sure not to neglect Artemis the
Hunter, and Apollo, and Pan, and the Nymphs, and Hermes, god of journeys, and
Hermes the Guide, and all the other divinities of the mountains.
Long before Arrian, and before Theocritus, this specialisation of the rustic
pantheon is clearly seen not only in the two writers of epigrams who pay
the greatest attention to the rustic world of humble people, Leonidas and
Anyte,75 but also in Platos Phaedrus and Menanders Dyskolos, in which
the rural setting plays a prominent role. In the Phaedrus, Socrates explains
his choice to hold the discussion in the first real locus amoenus of Greek
literature (230bc, cf. above) by pointing out that the place is sacred to the
Nymphs and to Achelous (230b89) and that Pan and the Nymphs, the
daughters of Achelous, are the divinities who will inspire the discussion76
73 Cf. Fantuzzi (1995b), and above, pp. 347.

74 Cf. E. L. Bowie, Frame and Framed in Theocritus Poems 6 and 7 in HarderRegtuitWakker
(1996) 91100.
75 For Leonidas, the recipients of the veneration of farmers, shepherds, etc. are Pan, the Nymphs and
Hermes. Cf. AP 6.334 = HE 1966ff., Nymphs, Hermes, Pan; 6.188 = HE 1972ff., Pan; 9.326 = HE
1979ff., Nymphs; 9.329 = HE 1984ff., Nymphs; 6.13 = HE 2249ff. and 6.35 = HE 2255ff., Pan;
POxy. 662 = HE 2277ff., Pan and Nymphs. For Anyte cf. APlan. 291 = HE 672ff. (dedication of a
shepherd to Pan and the Nymphs), and APlan. 231 = HE 738ff. (Pan presented as a shepherd).
76 Cf. Gutzwiller (1991) 767.
(cf. 238d, 241e, 263d). At the end of the dialogue, Socrates addresses his
salutation and final prayer to Pan and the other gods of the place (279b).
A few decades later, in the Dyskolos, a comedy by Menander which is, most
unusually, not set in town but in the countryside, the god who presents
the prologue is Pan and the chorus might be composed of followers of
Pan.77 At the centre of the stage, moreover, there is the door of the temple
of Pan and the Nymphs;78 the action will come to a head during a sacrifice
at this temple, and Pan plays a very important role throughout the whole
drama. It is Pan who causes Sostratus to fall in love with the daughter of
Cnemon while she is paying honour to the Nymphs (vv. 3952), and he
also causes the mother of Sostratus to have a dream, in which he reveals
indirectly to her what he had already told the spectators in the prologue
(vv. 40718).
Theocritus bucolic mimes carry the specialised narrowing of the rustic
pantheon even further, but in other poems too he pays particular attention
to the specialisation of the divinities that inspire poetry. The Muses had
been the most common divine inspirers of poetry in all literary genres, but
for the archaic hexameter epos of Homer and Hesiod they have a particular
importance; as divinities, they can function as particularly trustworthy
witnesses of stories about the deeds of gods or heroes in a remote past
(cf. e.g. Iliad 2.48486 and Odyssey 8.48791) and as guarantors of the
ethical and theological truths presented by Hesiod.79 In his two encomiastic
poems, Theocritus too appears to make a distinction between the Muses
and other divinities who inspire song, based on the status of the protagonist
of the song. In the case of the semi-divine laudandus of Idyll 17, Ptolemy
II Philadelphus a 9
mortal (v. 4), who is also a contemporary
&8 &
, namely a contemporary hero80 Theocritus contrasts his
personal choice of this theme with the habitual thematic choice of the
Muses (the gods) and the habitual choice of the ancient bards inspired by
the Muses (the heroes); he thus adopts as a term of comparison both
for similarity and difference archaic hymnody and epic. In the course
of the poem he explicitly presents encomiastic poetry for Ptolemy as a
new possibility for inspiration by the Muses: the spokesmen (2)
of the Muses celebrate Ptolemy for his benefactions (vv. 11516). In Idyll
16, however, which is a promise of an encomium for a laudandus whose
77 If we accept the emendation of %(, which is metrically difficult, to %(, v. 230.

78 The combined worship of Pan and the Nymphs was widespread, cf. above n. 75, Ch. M. Edwards,
Greek Votive Reliefs to Pan and the Nymphs (Diss. New York 1985) 207.
79 Cf. e.g. Finkelberg (1998) 713.
80 Cf. O. Vox, & , #: poeta e committente nelle Cariti Kleos 7 (2002) 193209, pp. 1968.
virtues fall entirely within the field of human characteristics and capacities
(Hieron II of Syracuse), Theocritus at times evokes the Muses (vv. 13, (for
the polemical tone here, see above, p. 1401), 29, 58, 69, 107), and at times
the Graces (vv. 612, 1089); in this way, he continues a tradition typical of
epinician poetry, which saw the Muses and the Graces united as guarantors
of the beauty which enhances the deeds of the laudandus and attracts the
favour of the public for the song, thus ensuring a lasting continuity for the
latter and glory for the laudandus himself.81
In Idylls 1 and 37 by Theocritus, which we may call the serious bucolic
idylls (in opposition to the agricultural Idyll 10 and the bucolic-parodic
Idyll 11),82 we find that the Muses play an utterly marginal role. Rather, it
is the Nymphs who, as the inspirers of pastoral poetry, very often occupy
the place which in poetic tradition had always been occupied exclusively
by the Muses; it is as if the Muses can no longer be up-to-date and effec-
tive witnesses for the new bucolic world, which is, if anything, now the
realm of the Nymphs. Thus, for example, the Muses are almost com-
pletely absent from the perspective of the two herdsmen of Idyll 5, the most
realistic of Theocritus song competitions; on the contrary, they believe
that they owe their inspiration to the Nymphs, to whom they gratefully
offer sacrifice at the end of their songs (cf. vv. 140, 149). The opposition
between the Muses and the Nymphs is also very clear in Idyll 7. At the
beginning of the poem, the protagonist, Simichidas, presents himself as a
town-dweller (v. 2) and as an &'
whom public opinion considers to
be a resonant mouth of the Muses (v. 37); unlike Simichidas, Theocritus
shepherds never call themselves &', though Komatas in Idyll 5 applies
the term to the mythical Daphnis (5.801, cf. below, p. 1546), nor do they
ever describe their singing as & ' , a verb perhaps a little too closely
associated with heroic epic, the poetry of the Muses par excellence. In his
first speech, Lycidas speaks of Simichidas as a person tied to the urban
world and its habits (vv. 245: are you hurrying off to a dinner without
being invited, or are you racing to some townsmans winepress?), though
Simichidas explains that he considers himself currently to be on loan to
the pastoral world, on the occasion of the journey which he is making to
take part in the rural celebration of the Thalysiae for Demeter (vv. 3136);
this authorises him to think that he can vie with Lycidas in singing (v. 30)
and, specifically, in pastoral song (vv. 356). Later, however, in the spirit of
81 For the combination of the Muses and Graces in a poetic context cf. e.g. Pindar, Nem. 9.535;
Bacchylides 5.314, 9.15; Euripides, HF 67386; B. MacLachlan, The Age of Grace (Princeton 1993)
87123.
82 Further evidence for considering Idylls 1 and 37 as a group is metrical, cf. Fantuzzi (1995a).
the rustic song that Lycidas had introduced in vv. 501 (see, my friend, if
you like this little song that I composed recently on the mountainside), it
is to the Nymphs that Simichidas makes reference as his teachers (vv. 913)
in an obvious rewriting of Hesiods inspiration (Theogony 223) by the
Muses:
. . . ?$' # ) ## X .##

WQ -X ''M & C N 9$#
%#() #.
My dear Lycidas, the Nymphs have also taught me many other good songs, while
I was herding on the mountains . . .
The turn to Hesiod perhaps suggests the tradition in which Simichidas

places not only his own poetry, but bucolic poetry as a whole.83 Finally,
when at the culmination of the description of the locus amoenus, which
sets the seal on the idealisation of the pastoral world, he seeks inspiration
in order to magnify by means of mythological paradigms the excellence
of Phrasidamuss wine, Simichidas does not invoke the Muses, even on a
mythological subject; rather, he invokes the Nymphs Nymphs of Castalia,
you who inhabit the cliffs of Parnassus (v. 148) where it is not by chance
that he chooses to name, as the home of the Nymphs, a mountain and
a spring which were already (or were in the process of becoming) closely
connected with the Muses. Moreover, he also chooses to imitate the Iliadic
epithet with which Homer had regularly invoked the Muses, C>#Q
'ZC !$% whose habitation is on Mount Olympus, whenever he
had to ask for their help at points of particular difficulty.84
The Muses resume the full exercise of their function as witnesses of a
remote past, unattainable for men of the present, and as goddesses with the
task of singing of the gods (cf. Idyll 16.3), when the scene does not present
shepherd-singers imagined as living, contemporary figures, but rather when
the singer or the theme of the song is one of the semi-mythical hero-founders
of bucolic poetry, or at least one of its leading exponents, who is therefore
in a certain sense mythologised (like Lycidas). For this reason, both the
divine Comatas, whose feats as a bucolic hero are sung by Lycidas in Idyll 7
(cf. v. 82: the Muse poured sweet nectar on to his lips), and Daphnis, who
appears to have been celebrated as a hero-founder of bucolic poetry at least
83 Cf. Hunter (1999) 1789.

84 Cf. Il. 2.484, 11.218, 14.508, 16.112. The first certain reference to a connection between the Muses and
Parnassus is in a fragment of one of the epigraphic Hymns from Delphi (p. 71 Crusius); cf. further
J. Schmidt, RE 18.16548.
as early as Stesichorus85 and thus already had a place in literary tradition
and mythology before Theocritus, are connected with the Muses. This is
consistent with the fact that, unlike Theocritus ordinary herdsmen, these
two heroes of bucolic poetry are placed in a fable-like setting outside
time, characterised by the pathetic fallacy (cf. above, p. 149) and by the
participation of the gods in human affairs. The Daphnis of Idyll 6, however,
remains untouched by the inspiration of the Muses, and his world has not
the slightest trace of the mythologised or the unreal; so too, the Comatas
of Idyll 5 is not the mythical hero of bucolic poetry, but rather is presented
in a low, hyper-realistic manner, and it is only momentary hyperbole that
leads him to claim that the Muses love me much more than Daphnis, the
singer (vv. 801), for he too has the Nymphs and Pan as leading figures
in his pantheon (vv. 17, 58, 70, 149). By way of contrast, the Muses are
at the heart of Thyrsis song about the mythical Daphnis in Idyll 1: the
goatherd states in his opening encomium of Thyrsis that Thyrsis song
will be second only to that of the Muses (v. 9), though on the contrary
Thyrsis himself compares the goatherd to Pan, in view of his ability at
playing the syrinx (v. 3); so too, the refrains that punctuate Thyrsis song
are addressed to the Muses, as are the envoi and promise of libations which
close the song (vv. 1445).86 As for Lycidas, he is a semi-divine singer, who
has the authority to invest Simichidas as a pastoral poet, or perhaps even a
god in disguise: Pan, a satyr, and Apollo Lykios have all been suggested.87
Simichidas introduces his song by calling Lycidas dear to the Muses (v. 95),
and subsequently he says that the stick given to him by Lycidas was a gift
of friendship from the Muses (v. 129), just as the encounter with Lycidas
was, as he tells us, with the Muses (v. 12); these details are recognitions
of the higher nature of Lycidas himself and reinforce the idea that we
are witnessing a poetic investiture of a Hesiodic kind.88 This counterpoint
between the Nymphs and the Muses finds expression also in the description
of Daphnis in Idyll 1.141 as the man dear to the Muses, and not hateful
to the Nymphs: the semi-divine Lycidas is dear to the Muses (7.95),
85 Cf. above n. 23.
86 Myrinus, AP 7.703 = GPh 2574ff. has Thyrsis asleep and besieged by Eros; the epigram attributes
to the Nymphs, not to the Muses, the task of taking care of Thyrsis safety, presumably as a result
of the importance of the Nymphs in Theocritus bucolic poems, cf. Bernsdorff (2001) pp. 1523.
87 For the divine characteristics of the epiphany of Lycidas cf. Puelma (1960), Archibald Cameron,
The Form of the Thalysia in Miscellanea di studi alessandrini in memoria di A. Rostagni (Turin 1963)
291307, Hunter (1999) 147 with further bibliography. Among the very few voices who dissent from
this interpretative koine are B. M. Palumbo Stracca, Lironia di Teocrito nella polemica letteraria
delle Talisie Boll. Class. Lincei 27 (1979) 6978 and Horstmann (1976) 15960; for the position of
Effe, see also above, n. 8.
88 Cf. Pearce (1988) 2901.
but Daphnis is a mythical hero-poet of the past (and, as such, a follower
of the Muses), but also one in whose story the Nymphs played a major
role.89
The internal coherence of the Theocritean system is not only revealed
in his choice of the divinities that haunt the landscape and inspire pas-
toral poems, but there is also a more general specialisation of the bucolic
pantheon. Apart from the omnipresent Nymphs, the pastoral idylls feature
almost exclusively Pan90 , Apollo Paean91 , and Priapus92 , and this speciali-
sation is in fact dramatised by Theocritus in Idyll 1. Whatever might have
been Daphnis behaviour towards Aphrodite, about which Theocritus is
notoriously elusive, the opposition between the two is an essential element
in the heroic stature given to Daphnis in this poem that celebrates him;
nevertheless, Thyrsis creates a sharp contrast between the, at least initially,
hostile Aphrodite and the series of rustic gods Pan, Hermes, Priapus
who come to offer advice and mourn for Daphnis. Hermes even echoes
the famous words of Aphrodite (!) to Sappho in a scene (fr. 1 Voigt) of
epiphany and consolation: Aphrodite had appeared to Sappho with her
usual divine smile, '%C &(" %Z" with a smile on her
immortal face (l. 14), whereas she comes to Daphnis /' 5 . . . #(%) |
#( X #(%) 9b 'C & $, !% rejoicing sweetly, rejoic-
ing internally, but displaying grief (ll. 956).93 Sapphos Aphrodite (vv. 18
20) had asked 'c | .: % C . % #
%C |
(C &'4 ; who shall I persuade to lead you back to her love? Who is
wronging you, O Sappho? In Theocritus, on the contrary, it is Hermes who
proves to be a %Q! of Daphnis (cf. Sappho vv. 278), and asks him,
in the reverse order, \() | $ Q! ) | )
%%
%; Who is tormenting you, Daphnis? With whom are you so in love?
(vv. 778). Thus, Theocritus inverts the role of Aphrodite, and Hermes
plays for Daphnis the role that the benevolent Aphrodite had played for
Sappho.
Theocritus shepherds are equally coherent in swearing only by Pan94 ,
the Nymphs95 , or Apollo Paean96 ; there is hardly a place for the tradi-
tional guarantors of oaths in Greek literature, such as Zeus and Heracles.
89 According to the best-known version of the legend, both Daphnis mother and lover were Nymphs;
Diodorus Siculus 4.84 has him also brought up by the Nymphs.
90 1.3, 1.16, 4.63, 5.58, 7.103, 7.106.
91 5.79, 6.27. 92 1.21, 1.81.
93 For this passage, whose meaning is much disputed (cf. G. Tarditi, Il sorriso di Afrodite in Filologia
e forme letterarie: studi offerti a F. Della Corte (Urbino 1987) I.34753), I follow the interpretation
offered by G. Zuntz, Theocritus I, 95f., CQ 10 (1960) 3740.
94 4.47, 5.14 and 141, 6.21. 95 1.12, 4.29, 5.17 and 70. 96 Cf. above, n. 91.
The few exceptions are placed in the mouth of rather dubious characters.
In Idyll 4.50, the character who utters an oath by Zeus is Battus, who
throughout that poem is repeatedly ridiculed for his pathetic excesses, and
who is also characterised linguistically by exaggerated, para-tragic forms
of expression:97 his interlocutor Corydon, the example of the good shep-
herd who possesses a clear sense of reality, swears by the Nymphs (v. 29)
and Pan (v. 47). When Lacon swears by Zeus at 5.74, this must be read
against Comatas immediately preceding oath by the Nymphs (v. 70) and
immediately following exclamation: O Paean! (v. 79); Comatas will win
the song contest, and it is easy to understand whose form of oath is the
more correct. So, too, the parodic Cyclops swears by Zeus (11.29), but by
Pan and Paean in 6.21 and 6.27, in a scene in which he is being represented
by the shepherd Damoitas and thus now conforms to bucolic norms (cf.
above, pp. 1501).
A certain specialisation, aimed in this case at an effect of realism, can
be observed also in the way in which religious celebrations are presented.
The great traditional celebrations for Demeter and Adonis which dominate
respectively the final parts of the bucolic Idyll 7 and the urban Idyll 15 become
central to and emblematic of the poetic contexts in which they are presented.
Thus, the Thalysiae of Idyll 7 become the opportunity for a mise en abme of
the broader, idealised locus amoenus of Theocritus bucolic poetry, and the
Adonia raises to its highest peak of magnificence the urban setting which
had been presented at the beginning of the poem in the parodic tones of
mime. Prayer is another area in which traditional practice involving the
Olympian gods gives way to expressions invoking good luck and forms of
popular superstition like the apotropaic spitting of 6.39 and 7.126798 or
the sieve-divining of the %
Agroio in 3.312.99 It is magic,
not with few exceptions, such as the Thalysiae the traditional Olympian
religion, which now dominates, whether it be the song of Simaitha in the
urban Idyll 2, or that of Simichidas in the bucolic Idyll 7. Magical practice
had, of course, featured occasionally in high literature before the [
'% binding song of Aeschylus Erinyes (Eumenides 30796)100 is an
obvious example but it is in Sicilian mime and Menander that we should
look for Theocritus immediate forebears. Sophron is claimed by the ancient
scholiasts as the model both for the magical rite of Idyll 2 and, specifically,
97 Cf. Segal (1981) 95106.

98 Cf. D. E. Gershenson, Averting 9% in Theocritus: a Compliment CSCA 2 (1969) 14555.
99 Cf. W. G. Arnott, Coscinomancy in Theocritus and Kazantzakis Mnemosyne 31 (1978) 2732.
100 On which cf. Ch. A. Faraone, Aeschylus [ '% (Eum. 306) and Attic Judicial Curse Tablets
JHS 105 (1985) 1504.
for the character of Thestylis (cf. above, n. 4); the reference may be to
the mime The women who say that they are driving out the goddess (s
$5 t
M #T, PCG frs. 3 9),101 and this same rite
also occurred in the k (#, Thessalian Witch, of Menander (PCG 170
5). Sophron and Menander show how magic was represented as an integral
part of daily life, as indeed it was: the large corpus of curse tablets, tabellae
defixionis, suggests that the prominence of magic was in fact increasing,
and this importance finds clear expression in Theocritus.
Idyll 2 is a magical & 4, a spell to draw the beloved one into ones
arms.102 So, too, though of a rather different kind, is the request to help
Aratus which Simichidas addresses to Pan in Idyll 7:

) J() 6>
# , ' V% ## !)
.# 4 # ! 5 %
KC %C } `#5 #, K .##. 105
* X C ') J # ) 4 $ 5'
C;' %##% 2, # $( N
%_ ) V $ U
* 'C .## Q% X !
(C ]Q! %%
'
(% '% Q') 110
K 'C C7' X N % ! %%") #.
O Pan, you who have received by lot the lovely plain of Homole, press him [the
beloved], without the need for any invitation, into the loving arms of that man
[his friend Aratus] whether it is really the delicate Philinus or another. If you
do this, dear Pan, may the boys of Arcadia never scourge you with squills on your
sides and your shoulders, when there is insufficient meat. But if you do not give
your consent, may you scratch the bites all over your body with your nails, and
sleep among stinging nettles and stay out on the mountains of the Edonians in
mid-winter . . . (Theocritus 7.10311)
The combination of prayer and threats is typical of the prayers found in
magical texts;103 particularly close to Simichidas poem is the following
magical text, in which the practitioner threatens to throw the demons
that he invokes into the flames, if they do not bring his beloved into his
arms: If you bring Euphemia to me [. . .] I will give you Osiris Nophriot
101 For this magical practice: Hipp., Morb. Sacr. 4, Plato, Gorg. 513a, Ar. Clouds 74950, Lucian,
Dial. Mer. 1 and Philops. 14, PGM 34 Preisendanz. For discussion cf. C. Preaux, La lune dans la
pensee grecque (Brussels 1970) 1212, R. van Compernolle, Faire descendre la lune in Grec et latin
1982: Etudes et documents dedies a la memoire de G. Cambier, (Brussels 1982) 537, and the note of
P. Fedeli on Prop. 1.1.19, p. 79.
102 Cf. Ch. A. Faraone, The Performative Future in Three Hellenistic Incantations and Theocritus
Second Idyll CPh 90 (1995) 115.
103 Cf. R. W. DanielF. Maltomini, Supplementum magicum, I (Opladen 1990) 169 on 45.14, and
FantuzziMaltomini (1996).
[. . .] and he will revive your spirits. But if you do not do what I am
asking you, Eonebyoth will burn you. I swear it to you, demons that are
here present (Suppl. mag. I, 45.1115 DanielMaltomini). It is obvious that
Egyptian traditions had an important influence on the practice and spread
of magical prayers, but there was, in all probability, already an example of
a threatening prayer in an erotic situation in Greek literary tradition. In
a fragment of Anacreon (PMG 445), the poet apostrophises the naughty
Erotes (insolent and irresponsible, you who do not know who you will
strike with your arrows), and Himerius (Or. 48.4) introduces his quotation
of this fragment as follows:
Now I would have needed the songs from Teos [Anacreons birthplace], now I
would have needed the lyre of Anacreon, which he knew how to use even against
the Erotes themselves, when he was spurned by pretty boys . . . Perhaps I, too,
would have pronounced the threat (- #% 8 & #4) that Anacreon uttered
against the Erotes: once when he had fallen in love with a beautiful youth and saw
that the youth was not interested in him, he tuned his lyre and threatened (- # )
the Erotes that if they did not strike the youth at once, he would never again sing
a song in their praise ( # 3 * b &Q%%).
Himerius might, of course, have exaggerated a merely playful gesture by
Anacreon, under the influence of the magical practice of the Hellenistic and
late antique worlds.104 Nevertheless, in Poem 11 of the Anacreontea, which
expands or varies Anacreons themes and language, the poet has bought a
wax statue of Eros from a boy in the street and therefore imagines that he has
the god under his control (Now light the fire of love for me immediately! If
you do not obey, you will melt amid the flames); it is therefore reasonable
to suppose that the song from which Himerius quotes, or some other song
by Anacreon, really was a magical prayer, or at least could be interpreted as
such, and not only by Himerius.
One echo of Anacreon may be heard in Simichidas request to the Erotes
to strike (9(## ) the boy that Aratus loves (vv. 11719): this invitation
might recall the exhortation to the Erotes to Z% wound the
unwilling youth with love, which Himerius leads us to suppose was present
in Anacreon. If so, the literary operation is of a particularly sophisticated
kind. Theocritus writes for Simichidas a realistic prayer-threat, but bucol-
icises it by having him apostrophise one of the most important gods of the
bucolic pantheon, Pan, and by describing him as a shepherd (cf. v. 113: and
in spring may you pasture your flocks among the Aethiopes) who sleeps in
104 On possible affinities between the fragment of Anacreon and the magical prayer, cf. G. Azzarello,
=;@ <=>s>< ^<s;@: la minaccia nella preghiera magica (Diss. University of Pisa 1996).
the open air (v. 110). Pan is also the homosexual god par excellence, and he is
therefore the ideal recipient for this homosexual prayer;105 the two aspects
of the god, the bucolic and the sexual, are thus seen as mutually comple-
mentary, just as Callimachus (fr. 689) united the two specialisations of the
god by calling Pan Maleietes Q *#
goatherd screwer.106
By referring to the Erotes immediately afterwards, Theocritus may cap the
magical prayer with an allusion to one of the very few literary precedents
for such a prayer; moreover, as this precedent comes from the world of sym-
potic lyric, it appropriately matches Lycidas song and his bucolicisation
of the symposium.107
Mythology, too, plays its part in Theocritus creation of a coherent
bucolic world. Mythological exempla, the stories of gods and heroes, were
the vehicle of positive and negative paradigms for human behaviour in
archaic and classical literature of all levels, and Theocritus wrote against
the background of the popularity in the fourth and third centuries of
mythological catalogue poetry. In such poems, episodes from the stories
of gods or heroes were presented as exemplary portraits with an application
to the real world and the situation of the poet; we know of such poems on
love, both heterosexual (Lyde by Antimachus, Leontion by Hermesianax,
and perhaps Apollo by Alexander Aetolus) and homosexual (Erotes or the
Beautiful Ones by Phanocles), for which the principal (real or claimed)
archaic models were Mimnermus Nanno and the Hesiodic Catalogue of
Women, and also curse poems, catalogues of exemplary sufferings and
terrible fates, to be used as paradigms with which to curse ones enemies
(the Arai Curses by Moiro, the tattoo poem (cf. Huys 1991), the Ibis
by Callimachus, and the Thracian, the Cup stealer and the Chiliads
by Euphorion).108 For the characters of Theocritus, however, paradigms
of comprehensibility and truth are to be found rather in everyday, rus-
tic proverbs. In Idyll 5 alone, where the effect of pastoral realism is per-
haps strongest, we find five proverbs which are identified as such by the
scholia;109 at least three also occur in the opening dialogue of Idyll 10 (The
harvesters), which is the other poem where realistic effects are most strongly
felt.110 In this second case, all the proverbs are in the mouth of Milon,
the hard-working labourer whose Hesiodic perspective leaves little space
for erotic fantasy; the lovesick Bucaeus, poet of a very clumsy serenade
105 As the schol. on v. 103a already noted.

106 It is possible that the ritual mentioned by Theocritus was connected with hunting, as some ancient
scholars thought, cf. schol. on vv. 1068a.
107 Cf. above, pp. 1357. 108 Cf. Fantuzzi (1995b) 29, 35 and Cameron (1995) 3806.
109 Cf. scholia on vv. 23, 267, 31, 38, 65. 110 Cf. scholia on vv. 11, 13, 17; also vv. 545.
(cf. Milons ironic comment, vv. 3840), can no more utter rustic proverbs
than he can concentrate upon his work: his proverbial truth, one which
he himself should heed, is rather about the unpredictability and injustice
of Eros: Wealth is not the only blind god, blind also is reckless Eros
(vv. 1920).111
The use of proverbs is mimetic of the illiterate simplicity typical of
the logic and language of bucolic characters,112 and is thus a technique of
rustic realism. Aristotle, perhaps the first thinker to give serious attention
to proverbs, considered them as residues of ancient philosophy which
had been lost in the great catastrophes of humanity, saved thanks to their
brevity and acuteness (fr. 463 Gigon),113 a very noble origin, and one
analogous to the one offered for the traditional belief of ancient thinkers
in the divine character of nature (cf. Metaph. 12.1074b114).114 Aristotle
designated farmers as the social group most inclined to use proverbs (they
are Q: Rhet. 2.1395a67); so too, the use of proverbs was suitable
for the old, but not for the young or those lacking in experience, for
whom proverbial speech revealed a lack of culture (&' $).115 It is
thus significant that proverbs are wholly naturalised in the language of the
characters of the bucolic or rustic idylls, without ever being signalled by
the context, whereas they are often introduced by expressions which mark
them as proverbs (as the saying goes etc.) in the urban mimes, Idylls 14
and 15.116
Theocritus humble characters, whether bucolic or urban, employ
mythological paradigms only sparingly. The only mythological passage of
any extent the exempla in the song of the goatherd of Idyll 3 (vv. 4051) is
marked by errors, which betray both the limited familiarity of this charac-
ter with the world of mythology, and a certain lack of faith on the part of the
111 Cf. V. Buchheit Amor Caecus C&M 25 (1964) 1301.
112 Cf. the use of proverbs by the characters of Herondas, discussed by W. G. Arnott, G&R 18 (1971)
1301.
113 Aristotles attention to proverbs was an attitude which aroused perplexities in some quarters (cf.
Aristotle fr. 464 Gigon) which may perhaps suggest its novelty.
114 One must regard this as an inspired utterance, and reflect that, while probably each art and science
has often been developed as far as possible and has again perished, these opinions, with others, have
been preserved until the present like relics of the ancient treasure (Metaph. 12.1074b 913, trans.
Ross).
115 On proverbs as an element of popular ('
) knowledge, cf. also Demetrius, Eloc. 232. There
was a lively interest in paroemiography in the fourth and third centuries, in the wake of Aristotles
collection J (frs. 4634 Gigon), on the part of both the peripatetic school (Theophrastus,
Dicaearchus, Clearchus) and Chrysippus (SVF III p. 202). The scholia show that the identification
of proverbial expressions was one of the subjects that received most attention from the ancient
commentators of Theocritus, cf. Wendel (1920) 1427.
116 Cf. 14.43, 14.51, 15.77. In Idylls 11, 13, and 29 an opening proverbial maxim is presented as an opinion
shared by the author, which motivates the following narration.
author in the security of meaning of mythological paradigms (cf. below).
In Idyll 7 Simichidas, a character with whom Theocritus at least partly
identifies, cites a couple of mythological paradigms when he magnifies the
sublime nature of the locus amoenus at the end of the poem (vv. 14855).
The song of the lovesick Cyclops in Idyll 11 is presented as a exemplum for
the truth that singing brings healing from love (vv. 12), and the alleged
love of Galatea for the Cyclops is said by the cowherd Daphnis in Idyll 6
to illustrate the truth that love often considers beautiful that which is not
so (vv. 1819). In all of these paradigms, there is a kind of breakdown of
exemplarity: the stories offer an excess of meanings, some of which are
far from exemplary, and which therefore subvert the univocal paradigmatic
value for which the story itself is quoted. This phenomenon was, of course,
already known to fifth-century tragedy, which made a serious, genuinely
paradigmatic use of mythological exempla,117 but in Theocritus this break-
down represents the form in which mythological paradigms are regularly
presented: mythologicalheroic material is radically foreign to the literary
world created by bucolic poetry, even when it is apparently functioning as
exempla.
In the course of the paraklausithyron of Idyll 3, the goatherd believes
at a certain point, on the basis of a rustic omen, that Amaryllis is about
to yield to him; he thus tries to facilitate her surrender to love by listing
a series of mythical stories in which a period of courting finally led to
marriage. However, in virtually every case the happy end was followed by
wretched fates for one or both partners (Atalanta and Hippomenes, Adonis
and Aphrodite, Endymion and Selene, Jason and Demeter), and in the
case of Bias-Melampus-Pero (vv. 437), the love relationship was sealed,
not in favour of the one who had carried out the courting (Melampus), but
rather a third party (Bias) who enjoyed the fruits of the sacrifices that the
courting had involved.118 The validity of these exempla therefore depends on
whether we share the limited perspective of the goatherd and are prepared
to forget a large part of the meaning that the exempla would have had as
complete stories, or not to consider alternative versions which did not have a
happy ending. Neither ancient nor modern readers will, however, ignore the
gap between the story as a whole and the specific narrative segment (or the
specific version) which the goatherd chooses; this gap might underline
the clumsiness of the goatherd in his inability to master the polysemy of
117 Cf. S. Goldhill, The Failure of Exemplarity in I. J. F. de Jong and J. P. Sullivan (eds.), Modern
Critical Theory and Classical Literature (Leiden 1994) 5173, G. Nagy, Mythological Exemplum in
Homer in R. Hexter and D. Selden (eds.), Innovations of Antiquity (New York 1992) 326.
118 Cf. Fantuzzi (1995b).
mythical stories,119 or it might suggest an (unconscious) pessimism about his
hopes of success, for his exempla are overshadowed by an aura of death.120
We may also wish to fall back on the explanation of authorial irony at
the expense of the characters;121 but it may rather be that mythological
paradigms and the secure interpretations which classical poetry had offered
for them are simply foreign to the new world of bucolic poetry.
A similar conclusion may be drawn for Idyll 7, not as a result of the rustic
clumsiness of any character, but rather from the astute rhetorical questions
of Simichidas himself, which explicitly raise the issue of the relevance of
mythological paradigms. The locus amoenus of vv. 13546, which, as we have
seen (cf. above pp. 1378), represents the idealisation of bucolic /%$! and,
partly by means of the extreme refinement of the figures of speech used in
it, emblematises how the poetics of Theocritus superimposes itself on the
real world of shepherds and the countryside to create a new poetic world,122
leads to a sublime finale of almost Pindaric grandeur:
( 'X & #Q , .# .
WQ =%#' J(% L !%)
}(
' `
# #( .
C 67# %(% G 150
}( , , C C;(")
, , J#Q) p N % T 9## )
5 % C 3# %% ! %)
P '8
' (% ) WQ)
9 \( /#'
He took the four-year-old seal off the top of the wine-jars. O Nymphs of Castalia,
who inhabit the peak of Parnassus, did ever old Chiron offer Heracles such a cup
in the rocky cave of Pholus? Was ever that shepherd who lived close to the Anapus,
the mighty Polyphemus who flung mountains at ships, persuaded to dance in his
sheepfolds by a nectar like the drink that you mixed for us, O Nymphs, beside the
altar of Demeter of the Threshing-Floor? (Theocritus 7.14755)
Simichidas apparently calls on the testimony of goddesses who inspire and
preserve the memory of mythic material, as if exhuming the traditional
119 Cf. e.g. G. Lawall, Theocritus Coan Pastorals (Cambridge, MA 1967) 401 and Dover (1971) 118.
120 For detailed analyses cf. R. Whitaker, Myth and Personal Experience in Roman Love-Elegy (Gottingen
1983) 4952, Stanzel (1995) 1317, M. P. Pattoni, Il III Idillio di Teocrito AevAnt 10 (1997) 18799,
though all appear to take too positive a view of the goatherds first pair of exempla.
121 Against a pan-ironic interpretation of Theocritean poetry cf. Stanzel (1995) 10444, who, however,
goes too far in the other direction.
122 Cf. Hunter (1999) 193: the overt artifice of the passage matches the artifice of the locus which
Phrasidamus and his family have created; both pleasures are man-made [. . .] this passage thus
establishes the dialectic of art and nature which was to dominate all subsequent pastoral literature,
which claims to describe the natural, but does so in overtly artificial ways.
gesture of calling the Muses to ones aid at the beginning of a particularly tax-
ing mythological telling (cf. Iliad 2.4846, Ibycus, PMGF S151, Apollonius
Rhodius, Arg. 1.202 etc.). Here, however, we have not the Muses, but the
pastoral Nymphs, and the myths that follow have settings and characters
that are clearly pastoral; the Nymphs, therefore, here offer a guarantee of
reliability equal to that which the Muses traditionally offered. Elated by the
excellent wine served during the rustic symposium, Simichidas-Theocritus
seeks, in the finest Pindaric manner, a parallel in myth for this wine, and
so he asks the Nymphs if the wine mixed with the water that poured from
their spring (v. 154; cf. also v. 137) was the same as the wine of two famous
episodes of the mythical past. This passage raises this rustic symposium to
the sublime level of myth.123 Every ancient and modern reader, however, also
knows what it meant for Polyphemus to drink the extraordinary wine124
that Odysseus offered him, and the reference to the Cyclops who flung
mountains at ships (v. 152) skilfully evokes the whole Homeric episode,
including the monsters blinding. Chiron too got no joy from offering the
marvellous wine of the Centaurs to Heracles:125 in this story, the Centaurs
swarmed towards the bouquet; in the following skirmish, poor Chiron was
wounded (accidentally) by Heracles poisoned arrows and died a horrible
death. Thus, whereas the traditional use of mythological paradigms would
have suggested an affirmative answer to Simichidas questions, knowledge
of the whole story of the Cyclops and of Heracles and Chiron suggests a quite
different answer: Lets hope not, for the sake of Phrasidamus guests . . .
The contrast between the bloody consequences of these two mythical sym-
posia and the peaceful atmosphere of Phrasidamus celebration emphasises
once again the ideal of bucolic /%$!.
As for Idylls 6 and 11, the very existence of the two poems undermines
any alleged univocality of meaning in the story of the Cyclops love. Parallel
to the inversion of Daphnis in this poem (cf. above p. 149), Idyll 6 presents
a sort of overturning of the tragicomic Cyclops of Idyll 11 with his delirious,
passionate love. Leaving aside questions of the relative chronology of the
two poems, it is clear that each casts humorous light on the paradigmatic
nature of the other. In Idyll 11 the song of Polyphemus is supposed to
123 Cf. G. B. Miles, Ramus 6 (1977) 158: [the rhetorical questions of vv. 14855] express the narrators
heady exaltation, his feeling on this occasion of being something more than his normal self a
feeling which is in keeping with the Golden Age setting.
124 Cf. Odyssey 9.3579 .
125 The story was familiar in Sicilian literature before Theocritus, in the Geryoneis of Stesichorus
(PMGF S19), a comedy of Epicharmus (Heracles, PCG 67), and another Sicilian comedy of uncertain
authorship, the Chiron ([Epich.] PCG 289 95); Aristophanes dramatised the myth in Dramata or
the Centaur, PCG 27888.
illustrate the maxim that singing is the medicine for love (vv. 13), but was
it really in the Cyclops best interests to cure himself? Might it not have
been better for him to wait for a while, particularly if we remember the
version of the myth already described by Timaeus,126 according to which
Polyphemus succeeded in making Galatea fall in love with and marry him?
Was he, in any case, really cured (cf. vv. 7579)? As for Idyll 6, are we really
to believe that Polyphemus is an example of the fact that even the ugliest
person may appear desirable to someone in love (vv. 1819)? Did Galatea
really consider the Cyclops handsome? Is this statement not rather in tune
with the Cyclops self-deception (vv. 348, cf. 11.759)?127 The Cyclops is
used as a paradigm in so many different ways that any attempt to impose
univocality of meaning is doomed to failure. Moreover, the whole of Idyll
11 is coloured by an irony arising from the ambiguous definition of the
Cyclopss song as a ( for his love (v. 1); the apparent therapeutic
effect of the song, visible when the Cyclops realises that he had better take
up his work again (vv. 724),128 is immediately dimmed by the final self-
deception in which he claims himself the centre of the attentions of many
girls (vv. 768). The song was in fact a kind of poison or love philtre
working on the Cyclops psychology, rather than a real medicine against
love itself;129 ( notoriously had both meanings.
Moreover, ( also meant spell (cf. e.g. Pindar, Ol. 13.85), and
Callimachus explicitly calls the Cyclops therapeutic song an "'4 mag-
ical charm (AP 12.150 = HE 1047ff., below pp. 3434), probably with ref-
erence to the Cyclops of Theocritus rather than that of Philoxenus (PMG
822).130 Thus, this song-spell of the Cyclops may truly have dispelled love,
but it may also have propelled him towards the far more terrible drama of
his blinding, which is clearly evoked by vv. 303, 503, and 602:
Z%) ! %%
) [ Q U
[ ( #% X ]b Z"
M |, Z ()
P 'C ]#, [ %) # 5 'X B ! #
126 See above, p. 150 and n. 72.
127 The schol. on 11.78 already commented that perhaps the girls laugh at him.
128 Cf. Stanzel (1995) 1629.
129 On the ambiguity of in v. 80 cf. e.g. Goldhill (1991) 2545. The suggestion that the
performance of the Cyclops is a serious demonstration of the idea that love poetry is a do-it-
yourself catharsis of love (cf. A.-T. Cozzoli, Dalla catarsi mimetica aristotelica allautocatarsi dei
poeti ellenistici QUCC 48 (1994) 95110) finds little support in the ambiguities of the last part of
the poem: cf. Hunter (1999) 2201.
130 Cf. G. Pasquali, Epigrammi callimachei (1919) = id., Scritti filologici, I (Florence 1986) 31416, HE
II 157. On the motif of magic in Philoxenus and Theocritus 11 cf. M. Fantuzzi, Philodemus AP
5.107 (GPh 3188ff.; 23 Sider) HSCP 102 (2004).
* ' , O ' #%Z D )
'$, MQ# 2, %' &( U

'C 2, :$! & !
, E C ]#
) #$ Z '
()
) 5 )
K ( %b # M H'C &)
F *' !C /'b 5 , 9$, 3.
Fair maiden, I know why you flee from me: because along my forehead there is
one long shaggy eyebrow, which stretches from one ear to the other, and beneath
this there is only one eye, and the nose above my lip is broad [. . .] If you think that
I am too hairy, I have got oak logs and ever-burning fire under the ashes: I would
put up with being burnt by you, even in my soul, even in my single eye, which is
the most precious thing I have . . . But now straightaway, my girl, I want to learn
how to swim, if some stranger arrives here with his ship, so that I can understand
what pleasure you take in living in the depths of the sea.
No reader will be unaware that the Cyclops desire for the arrival of seafaring
M was indeed satisfied (cf. Odyssey 9.2525, 273), as was his claim that
he could endure having his eyebrow thinned by undying fire beneath the
ashes, for it was indeed in his own fire in the cave that Odysseus hardened
the stake to put out the Cyclops eye (cf. Odyssey 9.3756 and 38990).
Polyphemus song was thus not only a dubious protection against love,
but also a disturbing anticipation of, and thus in magical terms, a dangerous
invitation to, the far more dramatic mishaps described in the Odyssey. The
use of Homeric expressions as formulas for spells is in fact well attested
in the Roman imperial period: for example, to combat gout, Iliad 2.95
4! 'C & 4) 2, 'X % !_ 5 (sc. # e_
) the
assembly was astir and the earth resounded beneath them (as the people sat
down)131 had to be written on a tablet made of gold; as a $(! spell
against anger, Empedocles is said to have recited, to the accompaniment
of a relaxing piece of music, Odyssey 4.221: ( * L 9(# ()
C .!#
) # /( (he served the wine, a
medicine) which puts pain and anger to flight, and causes all troubles to be
forgotten,132 and so forth. The danger for the Cyclops in even mentioning
his eye was understood by those who praised the Cyclops of Philoxenus for
the skill with which, in singing of the beauty of Galatea, he had praised
various parts of her (a pretty head, golden locks, a graceful voice), but
had avoided mentioning her eyes: speaking of the eyes of the loved one,
131 Cf. Alexander of Tralles, II p. 581 Puschmann.

132 Cf. Iamblichus, Vita Pythag. 25 (113). For other examples, cf. Fantuzzi (1995b).
3 Bucolic poetry after Theocritus 167
comments a character in Athenaeus (13.564ef = PMG 821), is normal, but
for the Cyclops this would have meant a premonition of his blinding.
3 bucolic poetry af ter theocritus: bet ween imitation

and st ylisation
The distinction between the real contemporary herdsmen called Daphnis
and Comatas of Idylls 5 and 6 and the mythical Daphnis and Comatas
of Idylls 1 and 7 is, as we have seen, central to the nature of Theocritus
bucolic poetry. It seems, however, that this distinction was not always fully
appreciated, and we can see in the post-Theocritean Idyll 8133 a move towards
a more radically sentimental idealisation of the bucolic countryside.134 The
clearest sign of this is the long elegiac pathetic fallacy of vv. 3352:
(0^) . ) 5 ) K 0 (#
4!C %$ %#X }% #)
9
%C :$!T &('U v ' C "
\( ! '(#) 'X #%% !.
(\;) T 9() #$ , $
) K 5
$%%' \( 5% &'%)
, 9$
# U i 0 (#
5'C & ( ") ! . ( .
(0^) C A) C L ''$
) #%%
%4 #%) 'Q 2: )
C #, 0# 9 %U * 'C &")
!| 8 M,
!* 9(.
(\;) T ) T 'X ) T 'X (#
3 '%) ( )
# W %% U * 'C &")
!| 9 9
% !* 9

.
(0^) ( ) T # $T * . ) H 9( [#
$ e % ' C C ['
4" U KC)
# ) # ) 0#)
J b Z , .
(Menalcas) Valleys and rivers, O divine race, if ever the syrinx-player Menalcas
played a melody that you appreciated, give sustenance graciously to his lambs;
and should Daphnis come here with his heifers, may he find no worse a welcome.
(Daphnis) Springs and pastures, sweet plants, if Daphnis is equal to the nightingales
133 Against the poems authenticity cf. esp. G. Perrotta, Teocrito e il poeta dellIdillio VIII (1925) =
Perrotta (1978) 932 and Rossi (1971b); the only recent dissenting voice is F. Scheidweiler, Theokrits
achtes Idyll und die zeitliche Folge seiner Gedichte AIPhO 11 (1951) 34160. Metrical arguments
may be added to those of Perrotta and Rossi, cf. Fantuzzi (1995a) 22932.
134 Cf. Schmidt (1987) 11223.
in music, fatten this herd; and if Menalcas should drive a flock of animals here,
may he pasture them joyfully in all plentifulness. (Me.) There do sheep, there do
goats bear twins, there are bees that fill their hives and the oak-trees are tallest there
where the handsome Milo passes. But if he goes away, both the shepherd and his
flock are parched. (Da.) It is spring everywhere, there are pastures everywhere, the
udders are bursting with milk and the young animals grow fat, where the beautiful
Nais moves; but if she goes away, both the cowherd and his cows are wasted. (Me.)
Billy-goat, husband of the white goats, go where the forest is thickest here, flat-
nosed kids, to the water for hes in there: go in, broken horns, and say: Milon,
Proteus, who was also a god, pastured seals!
It is difficult to say whether the author of the poem is aware that he is altering
the balance of realism implied in the distinction that Theocritus maintains
between his two Daphnises, or whether he (wrongly) felt authorised by the
identity of name to synthesise the countryside and the animals that take
part in the mourning for Daphnis in Idyll 1 with those that surround
the contemporary herdsman Daphnis in Idyll 6.135 Certainly, the extensive
pathos of the participation of nature in the mourning and love life of the two
shepherd-singers sounds a new, non-Theocritean note, even if the passage
could indeed be considered little more than a light-hearted and positive
version of the participation of nature in the tragic mourning for Daphnis
in Idyll 1 (cf. esp. vv. 715, 11518), perhaps filtered through a sentimental
reading of the end of Idyll 6 (vv. 445):
3# \) %Q%' 'X \( 9Q)
|! C #T
.
Damoitas played the aulos, Daphnis the oxherd played the syrinx, and immediately
the heifers jumped on the soft grass.
Athenaeus explicitly observed (1.21a) that the word ]! 5% was used for
any kind of movement, whether physical or of the mind,136 and Theocritus
|! may simply have meant jumped, in a sense not very different
from %T in 1.152 ( 8 %% stop jumping around);137 the
heifers jump around happily while Damoitas and Daphnis play, not neces-
sarily because they are playing. Nevertheless, taking his cue from at
once, the author of Idyll 8 may have read the end of Idyll 6 as meaning that
135 The present chapter borrows various points from Fantuzzi (1998). The poet of Idyll 8 also misunder-
stands, or bends, the rules of the game of Theocritean song contests, with important consequences
for Virgil, Eclogue 7, cf. Serrao (1977) 1956.
136 As confirmation, Athenaeus quotes a passage from the tragedian Ion (TrGF 19F50), where the verb
refers to movements of the heart.
137 The two verbs are found together to describe dancing movements in Aristophanes, Pl. 761: ]! 5%
%T ! Q dance, jump and form choruses.
3 Bucolic poetry after Theocritus 169
the heifers literally danced to the sound of the music, just as Longus in
Daphnis and Chloe imagines that Daphnis goats % %%

danced around snorting when they joyfully celebrated their owners safe
return (1.32.3); for Longus as well, these animals are, after all, $%
(4.14.3). Thus the requests to nature which Menalcas and Daphnis make
in Idyll 8 may be based on a sentimental reading of the end of Idyll 6 as
showing how readily nature responds with joy to the sound of music; the
precedent of Theocritus would be made to offer a textual guarantee for the
plausibility of this appeal to nature to share human emotion.
The poet of Idyll 8 would have found a further legitimisation for the sym-
pathy of nature with man in Idyll 4. In this poem, the departure of Aegon to
follow the famous athlete Milon is seen as the cause of the demoralisation
and decline of Aegons herd: these heifers that are bellowing here miss him
[. . .] poor things, and they dont want to eat any more (vv. 1214). That
Idyll 4 was well known to the author of Idyll 8 is clear from the use that he
makes of the character of Milon, which is the name he gives to Menalcas
lover in Idyll 8. The choice of name opposes Menalcas, a paradigm of a
good herdsman, to the Aegon of Idyll 4, presented as the wicked, wretched
herdsman ((#, v. 26), who abandons his animals and his syrinx in order
to follow Milon to the athletic games; Menalcas Milon, on the contrary,
seems in the past to have come to him, rather than vice versa, and now
Menalcas tries to repeat Milons entry into the bucolic world through the
agency of the billy-goat (vv. 4752). The historical figure of the athlete
Milon also connects Idylls 4 and 8 in another way.
The scholiast on Idyll 4.6 had already identified the Milon of that poem
as the famous athlete from Croton (a town within the setting of the idyll),
who had been victorious some thirty times in the Panhellenic games of
the sixth century. In fact, it would be more precise to speak of a histor-
ical allusion to, rather than an identification with, the athlete, because
Idyll 4 is set in the Hellenistic present, as witness the mention of Glauce, a
female aulos-player loved by Ptolemy II (v. 31). Nevertheless, after a series of
observations about the shameless malice with which Milon has convinced
Aegon that he possessed athletic talent, Battus sarcastically comments
(v. 11): 5% (Ahrens: codd.) 0# O #Q #$%%
Milo would even convince wolves to go rabid in a moment. The verse
and its relevance to the context have been very variously explained,138 but
we should probably see here a sarcastic allusion to a detail in the life of the
138 As (respectively) by Ameis, Ahrens, Gow and Dover: this is the moment when Milo should unleash
rabid wolves on the herd (because now there is no-one to protect it); now Milo would cause
the wolves to become rabid (for hunger, because the herd is reduced to nothing); Aegons athletic
historical Milon, recorded as early as Aristotle: Milon is said to have been
savaged to death by dogs or wolves in a wood when, in a demonstration
of his strength, he used his hand as a wedge in a split tree-trunk and was
trapped fast.139 Battus is thus wishing that as a punishment for the harm he
has done to Aegons herd his Milon as well may end up savaged by rabid
wolves there and then. As for Idyll 8, in vv. 4951 Menalcas asks
the billy-goat to carry his message of love for Milon H 9( [# $
where the forest is thickest [. . .], 4" for hes in there. The
verses are puzzling,140 but perhaps the poet of Idyll 8 understood Battus
allusion to the fate of the historical Milon, and was not to be outdone. All
the sources for Milons death place it in the woods, and one source (Strabo
6.1.12) notes explicitly that the idea for his fatal act of bravado came to him
while he was walking 'C [# 9 through the thick of the wood. With
a kind of intertextual foresight, therefore, Menalcas is anxious to attract his
Milon to the peaceful world of shepherds, which is not to be disdained (cf.
vv. 512), and away from the heart of the forest, which Milon loves, but
which carries terrible dangers for a person with his name . . .
4 bucolic and non-bucolic love

For the writers of bucolic who came after him, the text of Theocritus
offered a philological pretext, that is to say, a repository of ideas which
could be codified into substantially new patterns. Of particular interest
is the development of the Theocritean pattern141 of bucolic song in its
function as mythological paradigm in the erotic poetry of Moschus and
Bion.
The mythological songs of Idylls 6, 11, and 13, the last two both addressed
to Nicias, are introduced by brief frames, which both provide the poems
with the fiction of a real performative context and introduce the songs
as illustrations of maxims exchanged between friends; this pattern places
ambitions are madness, and have incidentally inflicted as much damage on his fathers flocks (namely
the loss of twenty sheep) as if the wolves in the neighbourhood had been seized with rabies and run
among them; if Aigon has been persuaded by Milon to go off in pursuit of a useless ambition,
taking twenty sheep, Milon might persuade wolves as well. . . .
139 Cf. Aristotle, fr. 523.1 Gigon, Strabo 6.1.12, Pausanias 6.14.8, Aulus Gellius 15.16.34, Valerius
Maximus 9. 12.9, schol. on Ovid, Ibis 609, Suda 1066 Adler.
140 Gow on 512, for instance, sceptically commented: Milon . . . is not a goatherd; what he is doing
in the wood we are left to conjecture. For a recent but unconvincing explanation cf. White (1981).
141 As Zanker (1987) 14 noted, the basic rationale of some of the Alexandrian poets in their deployment
of love seems to have been that love is the emotion which everybody can experience and wants
to and that the judicious use of it will interest people and help them to relate to the world of
poetry from their own experience of life.
Theocritus in the tradition of archaic lyric, iambic and elegiac poetry, which
then continues in Hellenistic epigram.142 As we have seen, the clumsy love
song of the Cyclops illustrated the maxim that poetry heals the sufferings
of love; Heracles loss of Hylas, on the other hand, illustrated the idea that
it is not only mortals who are struck by love for the beautiful. In both
cases, the initial statement of the maxim in v. 1 (repeated at the end of Idyll
11) and the apostrophe to the friend in v. 2 suggest an informal setting,
which emphasises the occasional nature of the composition. This pretence
of an occasional character could not be created by the statement of the
maxim itself, and so it is the apostrophe, not the maxim, which was the
basic element of Theocritus compositional structure. This is confirmed by
Idyll 6, where a variation of this strategy isolates the apostrophe by itself in
the narrative frame at the beginning of the poem (v. 2), which is addressed
to one Aratus, possibly the same person mentioned by Simichidas in Idyll 7
(v. 102). It is then not the author in the frame, but rather one of the
shepherd-singers, Daphnis, who at the end of his song pronounces what
is, in effect, the maximtheme of the poem: O Polyphemus, love often
considers the not beautiful beautiful (vv. 1819).
The extant fragments of Moschus and Bion develop this Theocritean
pattern in non-Theocritean directions. Gone is the critical-ironic approach
to the very use of a mythological paradigm, replaced now by a straight-
forward emphasis on the positive correspondence between opening maxim
and mythological illustration, as in Idyll 13, a poem which certainly has
bucolic touches, but which does not adopt the attitude of distance from
myth which we have seen to be central to Theocritus bucolic poems.143
Neither Moschus nor Bion use Theocritean apostrophe, and thus they do
not present their poems as stories told by chance to a friend. Furthermore,
while Moschus does make use of two short mythological stories as illustra-
tions of aspects of love, and Bion too does something similar at least once,
both of them promote Eros (generally in company with Aphrodite) to the
protagonist of short epyllia about the nature of love. Theocritus shows
nothing comparable, and the new form is to be connected with erotic epi-
gram (cf. below, pp. 1734). Moreover, Bion reflects an approach to love
and love poetry, which is at least partly in opposition to bucolic poetry
and is substantially different from what we find in both Theocritus and
third-century epigram.
142 For a different interpretation of Idylls 11 and 13, as contaminations between the poetic epistle and,
respectively, the bucolic genre and the epyllion, cf. L. E. Rossi, LIla di Teocrito: epistola poetica
ed epillio in Studi classici in onore di Q. Cataudella (Catania 1972) II 27993.
143 Cf. Hunter (1999) 262.
Moschus fr. 2 lists a series of unrequited and painful loves between
mythical-bucolic figures (Pan loved Echo, Echo loved a satyr, the satyr
loved Lyde) and then concludes: This is the lesson that I expound to all
those who are resistant to love: love those who love you, so that, when you
fall in love, your love will be requited. Fragment 3 tells how, for love of
Arethusa, the river Alphaeus opened up a pathway through the sea to bring
his gifts to his beloved spring; the poets final comment is that rascal of
a boy, the wicked teacher of terrible actions, Eros, even used his charms
to teach a river how to swim. Bion fr. 12 is analogous to Moschus fr. 2,
though its ambitions are much greater. The maxim A#9 e #
8 K% & (, Fortunate are those who love, when their love
is returned in the same measure, introduces exempla of three reciprocated
homosexual loves, in which the mythical lovers were fortunate, even in the
most painful situations: Theseus was fortunate because Pirithous stood
beside him, even when he descended into Hades; Orestes was fortunate,
even among the savage Taurians, because Pylades had chosen to share his
journey with him; Achilles was fortunate because he died shortly after
Patroclus, as he desired. Bions maxim appears to overturn the exclama-
tion %!# e # , wretched are those who love, with which
the poets voice had sententiously intervened during the description of the
sad wanderings of Heracles in search of the lost Hylas (Theocritus 13.66).
With a more idealised and romantic conception of love, Bion not only
overturns Theocritus specific exclamation at the beginning of the frag-
ment, but at its end he overturns Theocritus exemplum (Heracles) by three
(probably already topical)144 mythological exempla appropriate to this more
positive view. What Bion stresses, the perfect mutuality and inseparability
of lovers,145 had also been applied by Theocritus to the original happiness
of Heracles and Hylas (13.1015). In actual fact, however, Bion corrects
Theocritus radically, for his point is that anyone who is requited in his love
is happy in any situation, because not even death can destroy the good for-
tune of a pair of lovers who are really united: Achilles, who had been (
happy when Patroclus was alive (v. 6), continued to be fortunate, even
after his friends death, because he was able to satisfy the desire for death that
he had famously expressed in the Iliad. Indeed v. 7 A#9 D (% V e

*, .$ he was fortunate to die, because he had not averted
144 The same triad was already present in Xenophon, Symp. 8.31.
145 Bions exempla are found several times in Ovid once the same three as in Bion (in Pont. 2.3.416),
more often with the Latinising addition of the further couple, Euryalus and Nisus (Tr. 1.5.19
24, 1.9.2734), and always with a certain emphasis on the element of inseparability. See also the
simplified versions of Tr. 5.4.236 and Pont. 2.6.256.
the sad fate from him146 is to be interpreted in the light of Iliad 18.989:
) .C ## +" | "
may I die immediately, because I was not destined to defend my compan-
ion when he was killed. It is, of course, possible that, in the complete poem
from which this fragment comes, this romantic position was sarcastically
overturned by an interlocutor who reverted to the traditional unhappiness
of lovers, as expressed in Idyll 13.66. Nevertheless, we will see that fr. 12
is in harmony with idealising attitudes that Bion also expresses elsewhere,
whereas nowhere does Bion seem to express ironic or negative comments
about love.
One important novelty of Moschus and Bion are micro-epyllia about
Eros, which seem to combine the Theocritean custom of talking about love
by means of exempla with the ever more common technique of dramatising
the unforeseeable and irresistible quality of love through its personifications,
Eros and the Erotes; these powerful, but capricious little boys both confirm
the power of love, and also partly exorcise it by miniaturising and reducing
it to small fragments.147 This practice of speaking about love by speaking
of Eros and the Erotes had been widespread ever since the lyric poets, and
in particular Anacreon, though it is above all in Hellenistic epigram and
the Anacreontea where these figures triumph.
The pseudo-Theocritean Idyll 19 and Moschus 1 fit comfortably into this
tradition. Idyll 19, The honeycomb thief , describes the reactions of Eros
to being stung by a bee while stealing honey; he protests to his mother
that even if it is a tiny insect, the bee still produces painful stings, where-
upon Aphrodite answers that he himself is tiny, but he provokes terrible
sufferings. This poem of only eight verses finds a fairly precise parallel in
Anacreontea 35,148 but the topos of the arrows and wounds of Eros occurs
throughout Greek epigram. In Poem 1 by Moschus, Eros the fugitive,
Aphrodite announces a reward on the head on Eros, who continues to be
naughty and disobedient; she now cannot find him, and so she must give a
detailed identikit of the boys physical appearance and character. The poem
can be considered a compilation of the best-known cahiers de doleances of
146 Meinekes correction of V e

to V e
is unavoidable, despite the rather clumsy
sound and prosody which result. Reed (1997) 179 defends the transmitted text by interpreting
.$ as avenged, but when .$ is constructed with the accusative and dative, it means
idiomatically to avert something from someone, whereas in the meaning of to avenge/to punish
(for which the middle voice is almost always used), the verb takes the accusative of the person and
the genitive (with or without preposition) of the thing.
147 Cf. Rosenmeyer (1992) 184.
148 Cf. Rosenmeyer (1992) 1737. The comparison of Eros and his arrows to the bee and its sting might
go back to archaic lyric poetry, as suggested by B. MacLachlan, Phoenix 43 (1989) 959 .
Aphrodite about Eros,149 and in particular it is perhaps to be understood as
presenting the facts preceding the scene of Eros in chains, a well-known
epigrammatic (cf. APlan. 19599), Anacreontic, and iconographic topos (cf.
LIMC iii.1, 88f.).150 Another work which is close to the tradition of poems
in which the description of the behaviour of Eros leads to reflections about
the peculiar nature of love is Bions micro-epyllion fr. 13. As he is wander-
ing through the wood, a young fowler finds Eros perching on the branch
of a tree and sets to work with his birdlime, thinking that his prey is a large
bird; as he does not succeed, he runs to the old ploughman (& b
%9$) who had taught him the techne of bird-catching to ask for help;
the old man tells him to stop hunting the bird and not to chase after it any
more, but rather to keep at a distance from it: You will be lucky, as long as
you do not catch it; but if you arrive at adulthood (v 'C &
#"), this same bird that now flees and hops away will come to you of his
own initiative, and will settle on your head. The emphasis is clearly on love
as a fact of life, but a term like !, with all its metaliterary significance,
or the figure of the old master-ploughman may suggest that the opposition
between the different occupations of the two periods of the boys life may
also be interpreted as a statement of poetics: love poetry belongs to matu-
rity, and it follows a phase of bucolic poetry which is alien to the theme
of love. Be that as it may, both in this fragment and in the apostrophe to
kind Aphrodite in fr. 14, another passage in which Bion inveighs against
the reprobate, dangerous child Eros, Bions main emphasis is on the idea
of the inevitability of Eros, and this is the idea, as we shall see, which is the
keystone of reflections about love poetry in his poetry.
More original and ambitious is the metaliterary micro-epyllion of Bion
fr. 10:
/ (# =Q C 2Z %
! , h ^ #T ! , . %
!
$%(_)
% ' % U
# ) # 9) #9O , h ^ ''% .
o # U ! X &# ) O 'C V% 9$#%') 5
4 F # 5) , h ^ ''%)
149 Cf. Apollonius Rhodius, Arg. 3.9199, Meleager, AP 5.1778 = HE 4190ff.

150 Cf. F. Lasserre, La Figure dEros dans la poesie grecque (Lausanne 1946) 1924, Rosenmeyer (1992)
1845, W. Fauth, Cupido cruciatur GB 2 (1974) 3960. It is impossible to establish whether the
idea of Aphrodites proclamation or the scene of the imprisonment took shape first; one of the
epigrams that present Eros in chains is attributed by the Planudean Anthology (196) to Alcaeus of
Messene (second century bc), but Cameron (1993) 42 n. 37 points out that the epigrams APlan.
19597 all begin with the same letter (), and may thus correspond to the alphabetical criterion of
anthologisation followed in Philips Garland; he therefore emends the attribution of Alcaeus to of
Alphaeus (Alphaeus of Mytilene, first century ad; however, cf. HE ii 7).
F # $# J() F #, C;()
F !#$ 6^() F /'b C;
##.
( M ''%U p ' C (_ Q)
&##( , . ' Q#) ''% 10
&(
.
- O #
X V% , h ^ ''%)
V%% 'C h ^ ''M Q# ( ''(!.
The great Cypris came close to me while I was still sleeping, leading with her
beautiful hand the little child Eros, whose head was hanging down, and said to
me: Take my Eros, dear herdsman, and teach him to sing. Thus she spoke. She
went away and I taught all my bucolic songs to Eros, foolish as I was, thinking that
he wanted to learn them: how Pan invented the flute, Athena the aulos, Hermes
the lyre, and sweet Apollo the cithara. These things I taught him, but he paid
no attention to what I said, but he was the one who sang love songs to me, and
taught me the passions of mortals and immortals and the deeds of his mother.
So I forgot what I was teaching Eros, and learnt all the poems of love that Eros
taught me.
This fragment belongs to the Hesiodic tradition of divine initiation into
poetry, and may be compared to the dreams of Callimachus at the head of
the Aitia (frs. 34 Massimilla, cf. above pp. 67) and of Ennius at the head
of the Annales (frs. 210 Skutsch, cf. below, pp. 4623). Aphrodite, leading
the child Eros by the hand, appeared to the narrator while he was still
sleeping, and she asked him to teach Eros how to sing. Eros is described
as ! a little child or an infant (v. 2), whereas it was in fact the
narrator, as he himself admits in v. 6, who was 4 naive, the same
epithet which Hesiod had repeatedly applied to Perses, the addressee of
the oldest and best-known Greek didactic poem, Hesiods Works and Days.
The narrator tries to teach Eros how to compose the bucolic songs that he
himself usually composed, starting ab ovo from aetiological stories about
the relevant musical instruments, as Hesiod had started from myths about
the origin of pain, good and evil, and so forth in order to teach Perses
about proper behaviour and social morality. Eros does not, however, pay
the slightest attention, but rather himself starts to instruct his supposed
teacher all about love, with the result that the narrator forgets what he had
tried to teach Eros, i.e. bucolic poetry, and allows himself to be instructed
in Q# love poems.
We cannot, of course, assume that this fragment is to be interpreted auto-
biographically, as marking Bions passage from bucolic to erotic (or, rather,
erotic-pastoral)151 ; nor can it be established with certainty to what kind
151 As I argued in Bion , fr. 10 Gow MusCrit 157 (19802) 15960; also cf. e.g. E. A. Schmidt, Poetische
Reflexion: Vergils Bukolik (Munich 1972) 879 and Nauta (1990) 134.
of erotic poetry Bion refers, whether perhaps bucolic-erotic poetry with
pastoral protagonists (as in Bion frs. 9 and 11 and the pseudo-Theocritean
Idylls 20 and 27), or erotic-mythological epyllia with an extremely limited
pastoral frame, like the Epithalamion of Achilles and Deidamia (= [Bion]
2).152 What is clear, however, is the opposition between poetry concerning
bucolic inventions (cf. fr. 5) and poetry with an erotic-bucolic content
(cf. fr. 9); for the short poem with erotic content, for which no previous
generic definition is attested, Bion uses the term Q#, and his witness
to the overwhelming, irresistible nature of love poetry also finds very few
parallels in Greek literary tradition; we may, however, compare Anacreontea
1, which opens with a visit of Anacreon and Eros to the poet in a dream,
and terminates with a declaration of faithfulness to love and to love poetry
( ' .! $ and truly until now I have
never abandoned love).
Love is one of the themes that Theocritus shepherds discuss most fre-
quently,153 and the contrasting opposition between unhappy, tormented
love (and love poetry) on the one hand and bucolic life (and poetry) on the
other could be read as already present in his poetry. Thus, the ekphrasis of
the cup in Idyll 1 had contrasted the restless distraction of a womans two
lovers with the peacefulness of rustic life,154 and in Idyll 7, the invitation of
Simichidas to Aratus to abandon for ever his desperate passion and opt for
/%$! (vv. 12227) is immediately followed by Simichidas description of
the locus amoenus (above pp. 1378), with the implicit effect of contrasting
the song of unhappy love with the bucolic serenity which involves the aban-
donment of love. Moreover, Bucaeus clumsily parodic song of love in Idyll
10 (vv. 2437) is contrasted with Milons work song, and the opposition
between love and rustic life is made explicit in the concluding verses155 (vv.
568):
!8 ! /#" .' & ' )
, 'X
) a$5 ) #,
$%' T C ] $%.
Men who toil in the sun should sing songs like this. As regards your starveling love,
Bucaeus, you should tell it to your mother when she gets up at dawn.
152 The Epithalamion takes off from Idyll 11: the shepherd Myrson exhorts Lycidas to sing a sweet,
melodious love song (# [. . .] e
#$Q$
), like the one the Cyclops
Polyphemus sang on the beach to Galatea, but then Lycidas sings of the attempt by Achilles to
seduce Deiadamia a story with mythological characters and an urban setting. For the Epithalamion
and Idyll 11 cf. E. Sistakou, 7 (% $ $ (Athens 2004) chap. n4.
153 Stanzel (1995) offers an innovatory analysis of the idea of sexuality and love in Theocritus pastoral
poetry.
154 See above.
155 The ancients were uncertain about the attribution of the last three verses: cf. schol. on vv. 568.
The opposition between the pastoral life and the life of love was
explicitly thematised in a fragment of the (? fourth-century) lyric poet
Lycophronides (PMG 844), where a shepherd dedicates his work tools to
a god because his mind is now utterly given over to love; it can also be
found in various later epigrams which either contrast love with the rudely
elementary nature of the world of shepherds and their flocks156 (familiar, of
course, from Theocritus)157 or assert, as Theocritus had never clearly done,
a separation between pastoral life and love. In AP 7.196 (= HE 4066ff.),
Meleager revives the old topos of poetry and music as a medicine for love,
but specifies bucolic music in this role:
&!4 M) '% 5 %
%% $%
&
# % #(#U
. 'C _
(# Z' % Z#
* #(_ ! #% #Q.
&##() #) $ ' 'Z' % WQ
) &"', J #')
A $ O , h ^ %9, [ & Q%
('C 2, % # #(".
O chirping cicada, you who get intoxicated by the dewdrops, you sing the rustic
Muse of those who dwell in solitary places, and sitting high amidst the leaves with
your rough-edged legs you produce from your sun-baked body a music like that of
the lyre. But now, my dear, sing a new song for the Nymphs of the trees, playing
a music which will act as a counterpoint to that of Pan so that, having escaped
from Eros, I may come and seek my rest at midday, lying here under a shady
plane-tree.
Relevant also is the matching epigram AP 7.195 = HE 4058 ff.:
&) &(
) Q [$)
&) &$ 0% # $$ )
$X #Q) ,
Q$% # %% #(#$ $ )

BQ% Q )
&) %
#( #.
O cricket, you who beguile my passions and lead me to sleep; O cricket, rustic
Muse with your resonant wings, a natural imitation of the lyre, sing me a song
of desire, striking your chattering wings with your legs, so as to drive away from
me the anxiety of sleepless nights, O cricket, creating a tune that will turn love
away . . .
In these poems, there is a clear opposition between the song of the cicada
and the cricket (&
% #(#, a clear metaphor for
156 Cf. e.g. Mnasalcas, AP 9.324 = HE 2663ff. and Myrinus, AP 7.703 = GPh 2568ff.
157 Cf. e.g. 1.1512, 4.623, 5.4143, 11617, Bernsdorff (2001) 15571.
pastoral poetry) and the love that this music allows the poet to escape
($ O , h ^), and between the rest that this same music allows for
those who escape from Love and the tormented vigils ( Q
) which were traditionally, and often in Meleager himself, the lot
of those in love.158
These passages of Bion and Meleager, who were probably contempo-
raries and lived not long before Virgil wrote the Eclogues,159 demonstrate
the poetic currency in the first century bc of an opposition between the
bucolic and the erotic, and it may be that we should also interpret in
the light of Greek precedents the recurrent concern with the relationship
between love (poetry) and bucolic poetry and life, which runs through
Latin poetry of this period. Virgil attributed considerable importance to
the precedent of Meleager, AP 7.196 (cited above), for he echoes this epi-
gram twice in the opening verses of Eclogue 1, patulae recubans sub tegmine
fagi <2, % # #(" . . . siluestrem tenui musam med-
itaris auena <&
# %.160 The contrast in Bion and
Meleager between bucolic poetry and love also helps us understand why in
Eclogue 10 Virgil imagines that his friend, the elegiac poet Gallus, sees the
possibility of pastoral life (and poetry) as the only alternative to his love
for Lycoris, as well as to his previous mythological or erotic poetry. The
wreck of his love (cf. vv. 22f.) leads Gallus to regret that he had not joined
the shepherds previously, to find in their world the love of some Phyllis
or Amyntas who would have yielded without the dramatic rejections and
unfaithfulness of elegiac loves, or that he had not enjoyed the love of Lycoris
herself in those pleasant rustic places (vv. 3543). Gallus seems to be going to
decide to change his life and his poetry, or rather to rework in Theocritean
style his previous poetry (written in the verse of Chalcis, vv. 501),161 and
to reformulate the idea of love and love poetry in a bucolic manner (teneris
[. . .] meos incidere amores arboribus crescent illae, crescetis, amores to carve
my loves on the tender trees: the trees will grow, and you loves will grow,
vv. 534).162 In the meantime, Gallus dreams of distracting himself by
hunting in the mountains and thus finding the medicina for his furor
158 Cf. e.g. Plato, Phaedrus 251e; Theocritus 10.10, 30.6; Crinagoras, AP 5.119 = GPh 1773ff. etc.
159 Although the relative chronology remains uncertain, it appears probable that Virgil alluded explic-
itly, at least once, to a bucolic epigram: see Ecl. 7.4 and Erycius, AP 6.96.2 = GPh 2201, on which
cf., most recently, Bernsdorff (2001) 93f., with references.
160 Cf. Gutzwiller (1998) 3201.
161 It cannot be established whether Chalcidico . . . uersu evoked Gallus love elegy (from Theokles
of Naxos or Eretria, a town close to Chalcis, who was credited with the invention of elegy) or his
mythological-erudite poetry in the manner of Euphorion of Chalcis; cf. Citroni (1995) 267.
162 See also o mihi tum quam molliter ossa quiescant, | vestra meos olim si fistula dicat amores Oh, how
sweetly my bones could rest, if one day your pipes sang of my loves, vv. 334; amores indicates
(vv. 5561).163 Subsequently, however, the dream collapses: the new idea
of a pastoral life (and love) gives way in the face of the inescapable labores
of elegiac love (and elegiac poetry), to which in the end Gallus is forced
to surrender (Love triumphs over everything: we, too, must surrender to
Love),164 as Propertius was later to yield to the servitium amoris.165 It is
not that bucolic love is weaker than elegiac love, but that Gallus fails to
understand the rhetoric of pastoral erotic discourse;166 so, too, in Eclogue
2, Corydon tries to transform the beloved in accordance with the vision of
the bucolic world, but the radical separation between love and pastoral life
makes this impossible.167
For the motif of bucolic love in Latin elegiac poetry, Ovid, Heroides 5
is particularly important. In this poem the Nymph Oenone remembers
the tender moments of love spent in the countryside with Paris before his
departure for Greece and Helen;168 she contrasts Pariss new and danger-
ous love for the adulterous Helen with the alternative possibility of a love
without risks (tutus amor) (v. 89) with her, who had only ever belonged
to him. The connection of Eclogue 10 with Heroides 5 is clear, though both
also look back to the lovesick Acontius rustic roamings in Callimachus
Acontius and Cydippe (above pp. 606)169 and both reflect also the ideal-
ising and escapist longings for rural /%$! and tranquil reciprocated love
which are a prominent feature of late Hellenistic thought. Oenone unsuc-
cessfully begs the ex-shepherd Paris to go back to doing what the Virgilian
Gallus had briefly dreamed of doing, but Ovid appears to suggest that the
erotic and bucolic worlds are reconcilable only in a past that is now forever
gone, or in the unachievable Utopia of Oenones imagination, and so he
attributes to his female character a despair not very different from the final
situation of Gallus. For the possibility of a satisfied bucolic love in which
erotic pathos is regulated and controlled, we must look rather to Tibullus,
though even here this optimism concerns the future, not the present (see
in particular 1.1 passim and 1.5.1936).
The relative optimism of the Roman poets that a happy pastoral love
was possible may have had precedents in post-Theocritean bucolic. Greek
primarily Gallus love elegies rather than his experiences of love, cf. F. Skutsch, Aus Vergils Fruhzeit
(Leipzig 1901) 234 and Ross (1975) 89.
163 Phaedra in Euripides Hippolytus (vv. 21522) is here an important model, cf. G. B. Conte, Virgilio:
il genere e i suoi confini (2nd ed., Milan 1984) 323.
164 For the contrast between Theocritus Daphnis and Virgils Gallus, cf. Citroni (1995) 237.
165 Cf. Ross (1975) 1023. 166 Cf. Papanghelis (1999) 59.
167 Cf. esp. Papanghelis (1999). 168 Cf. esp. vv. 1324.
169 Cf. fr. 73 Pfeiffer; in Propertius 1.18 the poet identifies with both Callimachus Acontius and the
Gallus of Eclogue 10. Tree-carving also occurs at the close of Idyll 18, but the context is there not
erotic.
erotic poetry is regularly about love that is unhappy because not (yet)
reciprocated, but the pseudo-Theocritean Idyll 27 represents an exception,
in that it seems to marry the sentimental approach to the countryside typical
of post-Theocritean bucolic with the long poetic tradition of the rustic locus
amoenus as the ideal setting for scenes of seduction and sexual satisfaction.170
The poem takes the form of an amoebean exchange, in which Daphnis
seeks to seduce a country girl, who does eventually consent to their mutual
pleasure; it is in fact a literary version of a form of popular literature which
was later to lead to the Provencal pastourelles and the Italian villanelle.171
Features of language and versification, however, lead the majority of scholars
to consider the poem a very late work, quite possibly from the imperial
period, and so we must suspend judgement about the possibility that it was
known to Augustan poets. More promising signs, however, may perhaps
be found in Bions poetry. There seems to be, for example, an obvious
joyfulness in the way in which Bion speaks about his composition of love
poetry for Lycidas in fr. 9, and the name of the beloved leaves no doubts
that this must have been bucolic-erotic poetry. This fragment includes an
explicit generic choice in favour of love poetry, but there were at least two
contemporary traditions of love poetry familiar to Bion erotic epigram
and the Anacreontea which had taken very different positions on the
possibility of a peaceful relationship between the Muses and Eros. Bion
appears to distance himself clearly from the former of these two positions,
and to be rather in agreement with the optimism of the Anacreontea.
Hellenistic erotic epigram shared with many contemporary philosophers
an intellectualising condemnation of the passion of love (cf. below, pp. 341
9); poets composed erotic poetry, in which they also declared that love was
a sort of illness, a fall into the irrational. In particular, Posidippus and
Callimachus explored, with a new intensity and frequency, the paradoxical
fact that intellectuals, such as themselves and their friends, could fall prey
to the irrational passion of love, thus suggesting that they shared the view
that the intellectual could or should be less exposed than others to the risks
of love. They were thus forced to confront the contradiction that they were
both poet-intellectuals and love poets who were in love, and to seek ways
around this double bind. Among the most obvious was the plea that poetry
cures love, most familiar from Theocrituss Idyll 11 (above pp. 1647) and
Callimachus, AP 12.150 = HE 1047ff.:
170 Seduction in such scenes usually, of course, means what we would call rape, cf. A. Motte, Prairies
et jardins de la Grece antique (Brussels 1973) 20811, and J. M. Bremer, The Meadow of Love and
Two Passages in Euripides Hippolytus Mnemosyne 28 (1975) 26880.
171 Cf. W. Theiler, Untersuchungen zur antiken Literatur (Berlin 1970) 4426.
F & J#Q & Q '(
|"U nT) &8 =Q#:.
e 05% , %!) `# U
D X ( ( / %) #.
What a fine charm Polyphemus found for people in love: yes, by the Earth, the
Cyclops was not stupid. The Muses, O Philippus, reduce love to size: poetry is a
medicine which cures all evils . . .
This ideology of love as something to be cured (and which is cured by talking
about it) continues to dominate the erotic epigram of the first century bc,
and so it may be this from which Bion wishes to distance himself, by an
allusion at the head of fr. 9 to the manifesto in v. 3 of this epigram of
Callimachus:172
05% , h ^ , . 9)
$ 'X # ', E.
v X . :$!( ! &% & '")
2 Q # ''(% U
v 'X
h ^ ' Q /'b #%'")
(# T%
.
($ O V V'C # T% &#4U
v X 9, .## v &( #)
99 #%% F ( C & ' U
v 'C cC , h ^ ?$' #%')

!% ' %
B '(.
The Muses are not afraid of the wild Eros, but love him with all their heart and
follow him closely. And if someone sings with a soul that knows not love, they
flee away, and refuse to act as teachers for him. If, on the contrary, someone sings
sweet songs with his mind set awhirl by Eros, lo, they all hurry towards him in
great haste. I am a witness of the fact that this affirmation is true for everybody: if
I sing of another mortal or one of the immortal gods, my tongue stutters and does
not sing like before; but if I sing a song for Eros or for Lycidas, then my voice runs
joyously through my mouth. (Bion fr. 9)
By this same opening, Bion may also have taken a position against another
text, Moschus Eros the Fugitive (above pp. 1734) which began / =Q
, h ^, and which offered a compendium of topical motifs of invective
against Eros; however that may be, another defence of Eros, Anacreontea 19
(below p. 183), certainly begins with another variation on this formula.
The Muses weaken love, Callimachus had said, and both he and
Theocritus had followed Philoxenus in presenting poetry as a (
172 Reed (1997) 159 recognises the parallel with Callimachus, but denies that it carries programmatic
force in the debate about the relation between poetry and love.
medicine against love. The relationship between the Muses and Eros as
presented by Bion is different: if we accept, as all modern editors do, the
emendation of v 9 to 9 in v. 1, Bion would be claim-
ing that the Muses are not afraid of Eros, not because they are like a drug
that weakens love (as Callimachus had said) or because the soul of a person
who has endured the labours of the Muses is better prepared to face Eros
courageously (as Posidippus had said, cf. below, pp. 3423), but because,
on the contrary, they love Eros and always accompany him everywhere.
If, however, we keep the transmitted text,173 the Muses would always be
close to Eros, either because they have a reverential fear of him, or because
they love him. The remainder of the poem stresses the positive influence of
love on poetry, and does so by revisiting two of the most famous passages
in Greek poetry which had placed the emphasis, rather, on the disturbing
power of love. In v. 5
. . . h ^ ' Q his mind set awhirl
by Eros recalls, though with a positive connotation, Sapphos destructive
Eros: h ^ 'c C ] #$%# '
Eros who relaxes the limbs sets
me whirling again (fr. 130.1 Voigt). On the other hand, 99
#%% F ( C & ' my tongue stutters and does not sing
like before (v. 9) attributes to the absence of erotic inspiration that inability
to speak which Sappho (fr. 31.79) had described as the effect rather of the
presence of the beloved, | <> %C K' 9
! C) N Z- | %C
'X C K ) | &## X #Z%% as soon as I look at you
for a moment, I can no longer speak, but my tongue is broken (?). Bions
positive evaluation of love is also strengthened by an echo of Theognis:
($ O V V'C # T% &#4 I am a witness that
this story is true for everybody (v. 7) derives from Theognis 12256, ')
=QC) & #$ Z % $
. | ($ Z) %b 'C
$ &#%Q there is nothing sweeter than a good woman: I am a
witness, and you acknowledge this truth.
Bions poem concludes with a recusatio of any poetry in praise of any
man or god except the beloved Lycidas or Eros himself, because it is only
in these cases that !% ' %
B '( my voice runs
joyfully through my mouth. In the Theogony Hesiod had stated that in the
case of those who were loved by the Muses, #$ 4 e &, %

B '4 his voice runs sweetly from his mouth (v. 97), and Hesiods
Muses inspired their proteges to sing of # 5 &Z [ . . .]
(( Q the glorious deeds of the men of the past . . . and the
blessed gods (vv. 1001), that is to say, roughly the themes that the Bion of
173 Cf. Reed (1997) 159.

fr. 9 rejects.174 Bions affirmation of the impossibility of composing poetry
which is not erotic becomes, as is well known, a very common motif in
Latin elegiac poetry of the first century bc,175 but it is not at all widespread
in Greek poetry. Perhaps the only real parallel is Anacreontea 23:
# # C; ')
# 'X =(' .' )
9(9 'X !'5
-! 5.
i : Z
8 #Q x%U
& O X D'
.#$
67#$) #Q '
& Z .
! #, 15)
w U 1 #Q (

$ .' .
I want to sing of the Atreidai, I want to sing of Cadmus, but the barbitos with its
strings only plays love for me. Yesterday I changed the strings, and even the whole
lyre, and I started to sing of the deeds of Heracles, but as answer the lyre gave back
love. So, farewell, heroes. My lyre sings only of love.
Relative chronology cannot be established, as very few of the Anacreontea
are datable, but we may surmise that the Anacreontea poets recognised a
kindred spirit in Bion. Bions programmatic opening to fr. 9, 05%
, h ^, reappears as the introduction to Anacreontea 19, another text
which defends the compatibility of Eros and the Muses: the Muses have
chained Eros and handed him over to the custody of Beauty, and even
when Aphrodite goes to free him with a ransom, Eros does not want to
leave, because he has learnt how to become a slave ('$# Q ' '')
of the Muses themselves and of Beauty. For the poet of this poem, the
Callimachean (and Bionean?) tag was already a crucial programmatic
marker, which has been decisive on the very shape of the poem. Rhyth-
mically, the phrase, which occupies the opening of a hexameter up to the
feminine caesura, is very rare in the hemiambics or anaclastic Ionic dime-
ters of the Anacreontea, but here it conditions the versification of the whole
poem, which is entirely composed of such stichic lengths and therefore in
clear contrast with the polymorphous metrics of most of the Anacreontea.176
174 Cf. Fantuzzi (1980b).
175 It is sufficient to refer to the opening lines of 1.1 or to 2.18.118 of Ovids Amores. For a recent
discussion cf. J. P. Sullivan, Form Opposed: Elegy, Epigram, Satire, in A. J. Boyle (ed.), Roman
Epic (LondonNew York 1993) 14561.
176 Cf. Fantuzzi (1994).
Another passage of Bion also seems to look forward to Latin elegy. Fr. 16
picks up the Theocritean theme of the love of the Cyclops for Galatea,
but it presents a new kind of behaviour and a new psychology. Here, the
Cyclops declares:
O 9% ', , (
:(
&
:$%')
#%%
n#( &U 'X #$
#' 2% ! 4 &# :.
But I will go along my way towards the slope down there to the sandy beach,
murmuring a song and pleading with cruel Galatea: I will not abandon my sweet
hopes until extreme old age. (Bion fr. 16)
This short fragment presents incurable passion in an innovatory way: the
Cyclops proposes to go down to the seashore and to whisper his love song
for Galatea to the sea; here, the lover never abandons hope, and love poetry
nourishes, rather than extinguishes, that hope.177 What followed this frag-
ment we do not, of course, know another Cyclopean serenade and more
self-deception perhaps 178 but, in itself, this declaration of eternal faithful-
ness to hope and to the courting of only one woman finds very few parallels
in Greek poetry. Of irony there is no obvious sign,179 and this Cyclops
appears very different from the grotesquely parodic monster of Theocritus;
if anything, Bions Cyclops seems closer to the earnest Corydon of Eclogue 2,
whose principal model is, of course, the Cyclops of Idyll 11. Indeed, Bions
Cyclops, at least in this fragment, is even more earnest than Corydon,
because Corydon, far from expressing undying faithfulness, echoes the
Theocritean model with an attitude that is anything but elegiac: inuenies
alium, si te hic fastidit, Alexin you will find another Alexis, if this one does
not accept you (v. 73).
The attitude towards love of fr. 16 finds a parallel at the level of poetics
in fr. 3, which has sometimes been thought to belong to the song of the
Cyclops and Galatea:180
0% h ^ #) 05% , h ^ U
# 05% & ''5 )
#$ #() T ( x' '.
177 Reed (1997) 1901 detects a connection between the last line of our fragment and Theocritus 2.164
O 'C *% , ,
% 2% but I will endure my passion, just as it has come
upon me. If Bion did have this passage in mind, then he has substituted the positive idea of eternal
hope for the endurance of a burdensome passion.
178 Cf. Reed (1997) 191.
179 W. Arland, Nachtheokritische Bukolik bis an die Schwelle der lateinischen Bukolik (Leipzig 1937) 467
already insisted on the greater seriousness of Bions Cyclops.
180 Cf. G. R. Holland, De Polyphemo et Galatea, Leipziger Studien zur klass. Philologie 7 (1884) 250.
Let Eros call the Muses, and may the Muses bring Eros. May the Muses give
me to me, always in love181 the sweet song, than which there is no more
pleasant medicine. (Bion fr. 3)
Here, Bion combines two traditional topoi, Eros the teacher of poetry (cf.
Euripides, fr. 663 etc.) and poetry as a cure for love (Philoxenus, PMG 822,
Theocritus, Idyll 11 etc). The two motifs had probably already been com-
bined by Nicias in the verses (SH 566) which, according to the Theocritean
scholia, he wrote as an answer to the Cyclops of Theocritus:
D .C &#X ) k
U e h ^
##b ''M b &Q%$.
This then was true, Theocritus: the Erotes have taught many to be poets, who
knew not the Muses before.
Bions declaration is not only more resolutely serious than Nicias, but also
more explicit in its opposition to the motif of poetry as a ( against
love: Bion wants both love poetry and love both the medicine and the
illness and thus he establishes the causal (and reversible) nexus between
poetry and love which is at the basis of Latin elegiac poetry, but which is
quite new in Greek tradition.182
One significant parallel to the attitudes of Bions love poetry in foreshad-
owing Latin elegy may come from a pseudo-Theocritean poem, Idyll 23 The
Lover, which is generally considered to be the work of an author belonging
to the school of Bion.183 In the face of the beloveds cruel refusal, a lover
kills himself at the beloveds door, but before committing suicide he asks
his lover to write on his tomb the epitaph:
U '
) 8 ' Q%")
&## %
' #MU & L! +5.
Eros killed this man. Traveller, do not pass-by, but stop and say: He had a cruel
friend. ([Theocritus] 23.478)
This passage, which is related to, though different from, the epigram-
matic motif of the inscription left on the door of the beloved at the
end of the paraklausithyron (e.g. Meleager, AP 5.191.7f. = HE 4384f.,
181 This seems the most likely meaning of & (cf. Theocr. 12.2); some understand always
desiring (to receive the song).
182 Given the absence of context, other interpretations can, of course, be imagined: Reed (1997) 146,
notes sceptically the possibility that might mean to bring (love) to my beloved, and not
to the poet.
183 U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Die Textgeschichte der griechischen Bukoliker (Berlin 1906) 812;
P. Radici Colace, La tecnica compositiva dell C ^%4 pseudoteocriteo GIF 23 (1971) 32546,
R. Hunter, The Sense of an Author: Theocritus and [Theocritus] in R. K. Gibson and C. S. Kraus,
The Classical Commentary (Leiden 2002) 89108.
AP 12.23.3f. = HE 4526ff.),184 is a very rare Greek example (however, cf.
Meleager, AP 5.215.5f. = HE 4276ff.) of the elegiac motif of the lover who
asks for his tomb to have a tombstone immortalising his commitment to
love (e.g., Ovid, Trist. 3.3.716, [Tibullus] 3.2.2730, Propertius 2.13.316).
With the hoped-for epitaph we may also compare Propertius 2.1, another
dream of death, where Propertius imagines that Maecenas, as he passes the
poets tomb, plays the traditional epigrammatic role of the wayfarer who
comments on the dead mans fate (v. 78):
huic misero fatum dura puella fuit.
It is, of course, difficult to say to what extent Bions poetry for example,
the love poems for Lycidas and that of his school were really forerunners
of, or parallels to, Latin elegy. Bion and the poets of the Anacreontea do share
a conception of love quite different from the tormenting illness which the
intellectualism of Theocritus and the epigrammatists had seen in passion
and the poetry devoted to it, and from which not even Meleager could
free himself completely. This liberation comes from defining themselves in
terms which are not in fact very different from those subsequently used by
the Latin elegists: love poetry is an inevitable choice which excludes all
other kinds of poetry, and there is a clear and inevitable connection between
this choice and the actual experience of love in ones own life. Furthermore,
as we have seen, Bions Cyclops appears to dedicate his life to courting
his beloved with song, and he declares that he will never abandon hope:
both ideas are very common in Latin elegy. Nevertheless, we must be very
cautious here. Stobaeus, the anthologist to whom we are indebted for almost
all the fragments of Bion, is mainly interested in collecting gnomic maxims,
and thus most of the passages by Bion that we have are programmatic verses
about love or love poetry; apart from frs. 11 and 16, we have very little that
can be considered to put those programmes into practice. The protagonists
who use I in frs. 11 and 16 are not the poet, but, respectively, a shepherd and
the Cyclops, and the majority of the speculations about love that we find
in Bions fragments may be supposed to have a bucolic setting and to have
been spoken by pastoral masks (just as all the authors of the Anacreontea
were masked as Anacreons at a symposium). It would thus appear that the
subjectivity whether real or literary which had been at the basis of lyric
poetry, of some archaic elegy, and of the erotic epigram, and which was to
become the basic perspective of Latin elegiac poetry,185 remained foreign to
Bions poetry, just as it did to Hellenistic erotic-mythological elegy.
184 Cf. F. O. Copley, TAPhA 71 (1940) 61.
185 For this distinction, cf. the first chapter of A. A. Day, The Origins of Latin Love Elegy (Oxford 1938),
and the last chapter of Cairns (1979).
An important demonstration of both this difference and of the impor-
tance of Bion as a model for the elegiac poets is offered by Propertius 2.13,
which in the past was regularly considered a conflation of two distinct
poems, though its unity has been asserted by most modern critics.186 The
poet presents himself as a man who has been wounded several times by love
and is dedicated to the love poetry which will please his beloved Cynthia;
his hope is that she may come to love him until (and even after) death and
weep for him in a funeral ceremony, which the poet wishes to be without
any pomp, but marked by Cynthias most sincere grief and followed by a
constant veneration of his tomb (vv. 1742); the poet has suffered greatly,
and it would have been better for him to have died at birth, above all because
Cynthia will not be able to call him back to life, even if she invokes him after
death (vv. 4358). The description of the poets funeral and the mourning
for him have an important debt to Bions Epitaph for Adonis,187 a poem
which describes the mourning of Aphrodite for her beloved Adonis, who
has just been killed by a wild boar. It is Propertius himself who announces
the relationship with this mythological and textual paradigm at the close
of the poem (vv. 518):
tu tamen amisso non numquam flebis amico:
fas est praeteritos semper amare uiros.
testis, cui niueum quondam percussit Adonem
uenantem Idalio uertice durus aper;
illis formosus iacuisse paludibus, illic
diceris effusa te, Venus isse coma.
sed frustra mutos reuocabis, Cynthia, manis:
nam mea qui poterunt ossa minuta loqui?
But you will weep many a time for your lost friend: it is right always to love men
who have died. She is a witness of this, who suffered when the snow-white Adonis
was killed by a cruel boar, while he was hunting on Mount Idalium: they say that
the handsome youth lay in those marshes, and that you, O Venus, arrived there
with your hair trailing. But you, O Cynthia, will call back in vain my mute spirit:
how will my bones, reduced to dust, be able to speak?
The description of Adonis as niueus snow-white points specifically to
Bions telling of the myth. This is a rare poetical term, and here it seems
to pick up !
, which itself is very rarely used in Greek to describe the
colour of the skin, but which is used twice in this way in Bions Epitaphios:
! %
through his snow-white skin (v. 10) and _ |
!
snow-white breasts (vv. 267). The detail of Venus wandering with
186 Cf. Papanghelis (1987) 5079, L. P. Wilkinson, The Continuity of Propertius 2.13 CR 16 (1966)
14144, W. A. Camps, Propertius. Elegies, Book II (Cambridge 1967) 115.
187 Cf. Papanghelis (1987) 6470.
her hair unbound (v. 56), a typical gesture of grief, perhaps recalls specifically
vv. 1920. of Bions poem, / 'C ; C ' | #$% #5' &
'$O &#(# and Aphrodite wanders through the woods with her
hair unbound188 ; diceris they say that you (v. 56), with which the detail is
introduced, is a very familiar kind of Alexandrian footnote denoting the
existence of poetic sources.189 So, too, some of the details of the funeral rites
and Cynthias imagined mourning (vv. 212, 2730) find striking parallels
in Aphrodites mourning for Adonis (vv. 24,190 77, 1114191 ).
Relevant also is Propertius 2.19. Here, as in 2.13, there is a kind of dream,
this time about a possible stay of Cynthia in the countryside; the poet
too will dedicate himself to the worship of Diana, putting aside that of
Venus (me sacra Dianae / suscipere et Veneris ponere uota iuvat), and he will
hunt, directing the dogs himself (audaces ipse monere canis), but with all
due caution:
non tamen ut uastos ausim temptare leones
aut celer agrestis comminus ire sues.
haec igitur mihi sit lepores audacia mollis
excipere et structo figere auem calamo.
Not, however, to the point of having the courage to challenge powerful lions, or,
with a rapid movement to close with wild boars. May this, then, be my courage, to
catch timid hares with a net, and to hit birds with arrows. (Propertius 2.19.214)
Here, we may be reminded of the rebuke that Aphrodite pronounces over
the corpse of Adonis in vv. 601 of the Epitaphios, () #)
$( | #, O % 4 # ; but why do
you recklessly give orders to the dogs? You who are handsome, why did you
long to fight against a wild beast? Perhaps, too, there is also an anticipation
of the more detailed warning which Ovid, in the wake of both Bion and
Propertius, attributes to the goddess when, in Metamorphoses 10.53352 at
188 Cf. Papanghelis (1987) 66, following J. Andre, Etude sur les termes de couleur dans la langue latine
(Paris 1949) 375. The word reuocabis may also recall the Greek &# $% (v. 94); Adonis wishes
to reply to the mourners ( # , v. 96), but Kore does not let him go, and the tone of
the rhetorical question in v. 58 in Propertius may suggest an analogous impossible desire to answer
Cynthia.
189 On the use of this kind of allusive footnote cf., most recently, Hinds (1998) 15.
190 The adverbial neuter ##( is an emendation of Hermann, for the transmitted 5' or
'.
If we accept the variant 5', the meaning will be shouting in the Oriental manner, and calling
her husband and her son, cf. Reed (1997) 208.
191 The last kiss is repeated also in vv. 459, acted out in Aphrodites appeal to Adonis, rather than
narrated: she believes that he is still alive and can therefore transmit his last breath to her. As such,
this second passage of Bion appears less close to the perspective of Propertius v. 29: osculaque in
gelidis pones suprema labellis, where the coldness of the lovers lips is a fact that is perceived without
any illusions, as in Ad. ep. 1314.
the height of her love for Adonis, she, like Propertius, submits to hunting
as a kind of seruitium amoris; she dresses like Diana and gives orders to the
dogs, but she hunts only animals that can be hunted without danger, such
as hares (also mentioned by Propertius), and a fortibus abstinet apris | rap-
toresque lupos armatosque unguibus ursos | uitat [. . .] te quoque, ut hos timeas
[. . .], Adoni, monet fortisque fugacibus esto | inquit, in audaces non est
audacia tuta.| parce meo, iuuenis, temerarius esse periclo, | neue feras, quibus
arma dedit natura, lacesse . . . she refrains from facing up to sturdy boars,
rapacious wolves, bears with their dangerous claws [. . .] and she exhorts
you, too, Adonis, to be prudent with them [. . .], and she says: Demonstrate
your strength against those animals which easily run away, but with those
that are aggressive, courage is dangerous! Avoid being reckless (cf. Bions
#), and running a risk that is mine, and do not provoke beasts
which nature has supplied with arms, etc..192 Ovid thus correctly reads
Propertius as having presented himself as a prudent Adonis, who does not
commit the sin of recklessness, of which Bions Aphrodite had accused her
beloved.
Certain of Bions images, like that of the last kiss for the beloved who
is already dead, or that of Adonis who is to be placed, even if disfigured
by death, on the bed where he had spent his nights of love with Aphrodite
(cf. vv. 723), are extremely rare in Greek erotic poetry and mythology, but
are in tune with the dominant atmosphere of Latin elegiac poetry. Such an
extreme manifestation of the ideal of eternal faithfulness is certainly not far
from a poem like Propertius 2.13, where the motif of eternal commitment
to a single love is intertwined with the thought of death and, in particular,
with the changes that death imposes upon eternal love.193 Propertius may
have seen in Bion not just a precedent for a particular kind of romantic
Stimmung which combined love and death in highly sensual terms,194 but
also a precedent for his ideal of an eternal singer of a single love and his
utopian dream of a pastoral love. Be that as it may, Bions mythological
material is subsumed by Propertius into a serious first-person reflection
on life and death,195 with a transformation of the objective mythological
192 Theocritus Daphnis too taunted Aphrodite with Adonis rashness (1.10910): cf. Fantuzzi (1995b).
What unites the texts of Bion, Propertius and Ovid is their emphasis on the distinction between
animals that are not dangerous and those animals to be avoided.
193 This poem is not an isolated episode in elegiac poetry: cf. Propertius 1.17.1924, 3.16.2130, Tibullus
1.1.618, 1.3, Ovid, Am. 3.9.
194 Cf. Papanghelis (1987) 6570. Another demonstration of the influence of Bions Epitaph for Adonis
and the pseudo-Moschean Epitaph for Bion (which imitates the former) in Latin elegiac reflections
on death can be seen in the fact that Ovid, Amores 3.9 alludes to these two poems: cf. J. D. Reed,
Ovids Elegy on Tibullus and its Models CPh 92 (1997) 26069.
195 Cf. Papanghelis (1987) 78.
into the subjective, which is analogous to, though perhaps more radical
than, the transformations of, say, Propertius 1.18196 and Catullus 68.197 The
extant poetry of Bion thus suggests that the gap between the ideology of
love found in Latin elegiac poetry and that found commonly in Hellenistic
Greek poetry, particularly the epigram, was considerably reduced in the
second and first centuries bc. The combination of Bions erotic values and
the coincidence between persona loquens and author, which had existed
in archaic lyric poetry and in epigram, would render more credible and
immediate the exclusive, eternal faithfulness to the beloved and to love
poetry which is claimed by Latin elegists.
196 Cf. F. Cairns, Propertius 1.18 and Callimachus, Acontius and Cydippe CR 20 (1969) 1314.
197 Cf. C. W. Macleod, A Use of Myth in Ancient Poetry CQ 24 (1974) 828.
chap t e r 5
Epic in a minor key
1 the epyllion
Small-scale hexameter narratives on mythic subjects have always been
regarded as a special feature of Hellenistic poetry. Even if the term epyllion
has no ancient authority,1 there has seemed to be a phenomenon which can-
not be ignored. Modern discussion has, however, been bedevilled by the
grouping together of poems so diverse as to render that grouping almost
meaningless, however many individual points of contact they may share.2
Two very broad groups may in fact be identified. On one side are ambi-
tious poems of considerable length, such as Callimachus Hecale and the
lost Hermes of Eratosthenes (cf. SH 397) which ran to well over a thou-
sand verses; on the other are shorter narratives of, roughly speaking, between
one hundred and three hundred verses, best exemplified for us by Moschus
Europa.3 Although the term epyllion is sometimes used to refer to both
groups, it is in fact the second, shorter group which proved to be of greater
subsequent significance for the more familiar tradition of Latin epyllion. In
seeking to draw formal distinctions between poems, three possible criteria
may be singled out for special notice.
A first criterion is scale. Theocritus narrative of Heracles loss of Hylas
(13.2575) has many points of technique in common with the poems that
will be considered in this chapter, but its fifty-one verses offer a significantly
more compressed narrative than, say, the account of Polydeuces and Amykos
(22.27134), which otherwise seems closely related to it, at least in structural
terms. Where are boundaries to be drawn, and is there any point in drawing
them?
1 Cf. W. Allen, The epyllion: a chapter in the history of literary criticism TAPA 71 (1940) 126.
Further bibliography in G. Most, Philologus 125 (1981) 11112, 126 (1982) 1536, C. U. Merriam, The
Development of the Epyllion Genre through the Hellenistic and Roman Periods (Lewiston NY 2001).
2 Cf. Cameron (1995) 44752, to which the following discussion owes much.
3 The length of Eratosthenes famous Erigone cannot be accurately established, cf. A. Rosokoski, Die
Erigone des Eratosthenes (Heidelberg 1995) 26.
191
192 Epic in a minor key
A second criterion is poetic form. The common once upon a time
() opening for Hellenistic narratives4 including the elegiac narrative
of Callimachus, Hymn 5 (vv. 57, 70) 5 establishes a narrative starting-point
from which the story is told, almost always in linear chronological sequence,
until its appointed end. Such a style differs both from Callimachus Acon-
tius and Cydippe, which begins with one of the lessons to be drawn from
the narrative, Eros taught Acontius when he was in love with Cydippe . . .
(fr. 67.12), before returning to their fateful meeting,6 and from the tem-
poral inversions and boxed narratives of the neoteric Latin tradition. We
may also consider here the presentation of the narrative. [Theocritus], Idyll
25 and Moschus Europa are presented as unframed narratives told for their
own sake, whereas the Hylas narrative of Theocritus, Idyll 13 is preceded
by a structurally complex introduction (vv. 124) to a named addressee and
is explicitly told to exemplify a truth about eros.7 The narratives of Idyll 22
appear within an explicit hymnic frame, whereas the hymnic character8 of
Idyll 26, clear in the final envoi (vv. 338), emerges with almost shocking
suddenness only after a marked narrative closure (through word-play and
allusion to the opening A to the mountain):
k49 ' C & $ l T%)
M A J %.
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_) #.
[The women] returned to Thebes, all smeared with blood, bringing from the
mountain a grief, not Pentheus.9 I do not care. Let no one else concern themeselves
with one hateful to Dionysus . . . (Theocritus 26.258)
A broken papyrus suggests that the much lengthier narrative of Idyll 24
was also followed by a hymnic conclusion.10 Distinctions between poems
set within a layered context and those which are free-standing are thus
possible, but their utility is open to considerable doubt.
Certain episodes within Apollonius Argonautica may be thought very
close to epyllia, and this epic illustrates these same trends in narrative on a
large scale; the fateful story of Cyzicus and Kleite, for example, moves from a
scene-setting of recognisable epic type, Inside the Propontis there is a steep
4 For hexameters cf. e.g. Theocr. 18.1, 24.1; Callimachus fr. 230 (Hecale v. 1); Moschus, Europa 1; notice
how the form is carried over into indirect speech at Theocr. 7.73, 78. On the origins of the form cf.
W. H. Race, YCS 29 (1992) 14 and below p. 194.
5 Notice, however, that the address to the 5' at the head of v. 57 sharply distinguishes the tone
from the corresponding hexameter narratives. At fr. 75.4 Callimachus apes the style, as he pretends
to be going to tell the story of Zeus and Hera making love as children.
6 Cf. above, p. 60. 7 Cf. Hunter (1999) 262. 8 Cf. Cairns (1992).
9 There is an untranslatable pun on penthema and Penthea. 10 Cf. below, p. 201.
1 The epyllion 193
island . . . (1.936), to a closural aetiology which links the distant past to the
present of the reader (1.10757). Such an apparently self-contained narrative
is, however, set within a wider context upon which the interpretation of
the narrative partly depends, and this tension between closure and open-
endedness is exploited too in certain shorter poems which end with a
kind of narrative QED, bringing a final closure to the narrative, and thus
provocatively blocking, while actually inviting, our desire to read further,
to carry the narrative beyond its textual boundary. The apparently firm
closures of Moschus Europa and Theocritus Idyll 13 well illustrate in
different ways this exploration of the nature of narrative limits.11
A third criterion is metre. The Hellenistic age knew elegiac, as well as
hexameter, narratives on mythical subjects,12 but, if we discount the narra-
tives of Callimachus Aetia, no elegiac poem which is purely narrative has
in fact survived. The narrative section of Callimachus Hymn to Athena (vv.
56136) does not, however, differ radically from the linear sequence of the
hexameter narratives, though it is framed by addresses to the audience of cel-
ebrating women (5' 57, #!
134). Whether it is significant that
the narrative section of the hexameter Hymn to Demeter (vv. 24117) does
not include such addresses to the celebrants may be debated; in both poems,
the central narrative is formally introduced as such (h. 5.556, h. 6.223),13
and the close of both narratives is again strongly marked: in the Hymn to
Athena by an assertion of the divine order, as demonstrated by the preced-
ing narrative, and in the Hymn to Demeter by the sudden intrusion of a
first-person address to the god (vv. 11617). We may suspect that, on the
whole, shorter hexameter poems, unlike Apollonius Argonautica,14 more
strictly preserved an epic discretion in severely limiting authorial intrusion
into the narrative, but not enough survives to confirm these suspicions.
Two narrative modes were of primary importance in the genesis of the
Hellenistic tradition of narrative.15 The first is the epic tradition itself, not
so much the Iliad and the Odyssey as a whole, but the shorter narrative units
of the rhapsodic tradition or the shorter poems of the Hesiodic corpus. The
introduction to Demodocus song of the Wooden Horse resembles the way
some Hellenistic narratives begin:
5 ' C &'4)
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)
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11 Cf. below, pp. 21524; Griffiths (1996) 11415.
12 Cf. E. Magnelli, Alexandri Aetoli testimonia et fragmenta (Florence 1999) 1517.
13 The text is unfortunately broken in the latter passage. 14 Cf. Hunter (1993a) 10119.
15 Some of what follows reuses material from Hunter (1998).
[The bard] began his utterance of the lay, taking it up where the Argives had set
their huts aflame, had boarded their ships and were under sail already, while the few
left behind with great Odysseus . . . (Homer, Odyssey 8.499502, trans. Shewring)
If we transfer this into the direct speech of Demodocus imagined song,
he will have begun The Greeks had sailed away, after firing the huts, but
Odysseus men [who will be the subject of the narration] . . .; this offers a
very brief contextualisation, followed by the subject of the narrative proper,
in a way which is reminiscent of how some Hellenistic narratives begin
(cf. e.g. Theocr. 22.279).16 No less interesting is the progress of Demo-
docus song. Trojan deliberations as to what to do with the Wooden Horse
are handled at some length (8.50413), whereas once the Greeks pour forth
from the horse, the potentially much richer (from a narrative point of view)
sack of the city hurries to completion (8.51420). Such a narrative struc-
turing seems to look forward to, say, the expansive treatment of Europas
abduction, followed by the swift conclusion once Zeus reveals himself.17
Odysseus has precisely asked for the song of the Wooden Horse (8.4923),
and that is what he gets. The concentration upon a single dramatic moment
within a larger mythic pattern (in this case the Trojan War) was to become
standard in later epyllia.
The second important tradition is that of lyric narrative,18 for, as with
the rhapsodic tradition, lyric narrative had long focused upon one moment
selected from an extended story. An example such as Bacchylides 5.56175,
which tells of Heracles fateful meeting with Meleager in the Underworld,
begins in the familiar once upon a time manner, claims traditional author-
ity as its source # $% they say (cf. Catullus 64.12) , is told to
illustrate a gnome (vv. 535, cf. Theocritus 13), proceeds in a chronologically
linear fashion, and makes an extensive use of direct speech. Such a narra-
tive could very easily be transposed to the hexameter mode of later epyl-
lia. So, too, abrupt beginnings and endings are common to both archaic
lyric and Hellenistic narrative.19 Archaic lyric poetry knows, of course,
more complex narratives: the enfolded tales of Proitos and his daughters
at Bacchylides 11.40112 illustrate one kind of complexity, as the selectiv-
ity, ellipse, swift transition, and temporal dislocation (Medeas prophecy)
of Pindar, Pythian 4, illustrate another. Such complexities emphasise the
poets control of narrative time and theme, and as such find their true heirs
in Callimachean narratives, such as the Hecale and the Victoria Berenices,
16 Some Homeric book-openings themselves are suggestive in this context; Iliad 22 is a good example:
So the Trojans in terror . . . but the Greeks . . .. Cf. the remarks of Wilamowitz, Timotheos. Die
Perser (Leipzig 1903) 1023.
17 Cf. below, pp. 21524. 18 Cf. esp. Perrotta (1978) 3453. 19 Cf. Bacchylides 15, 17, 19.15.
1 The epyllion 195
and later in the elaborate patterns of Catullus 64, rather than in the shorter
Hellenistic epyllia.
In the use of direct speech, also, there is innovation as well as continuity:
the boundaries of mimesis and diegesis are breaking down.20 Theocritus
even includes a passage of stichomythia in Idyll 22. This is a particularly
complex effect, as conversation should be a naturalistic mode which serves
to break down the formality of hexameter poetry; in Idyll 22, however, the
paraded artificiality of hexameter stichomythia reinforces the special and
separate nature of poetic discourse, no less than do the mannered ekphrases
of a locus amoenus and of Amycus (vv. 3752) which immediately precede.
The breaking down of boundaries between mimesis and diegesis is thus often
accompanied by a self-conscious experimentation which depends upon the
familiarity of those boundaries.21 Some distinctions between poems may
in fact be drawn largely on the basis of how extensive is the use of direct
speech. Direct speech is almost (cf. v. 52) totally avoided in Theocritus
Hylas poem, perhaps in part as a contrast with the Cyclops song in Idyll 11,
a poem which otherwise has much in common with it.22 On the other hand,
the anonymous Megara23 consists almost entirely of a hexameter conversa-
tion between Heracles wife and mother; the two speeches of roughly equal
length are separated by a mere six verses in the voice of the narrator. Drama
was clearly a determinative influence on the form of this poem. The combi-
nation of an opening in medias res with an enquiry about what is distressing
Alcmena (cf. Eur. IA 34ff., Men. Heros 1ff., Plaut. Pseud. 1ff.) and a conclu-
sion with a disturbing dream which forebodes ill suggests the suspenseful
opening of a drama (cf. perhaps Eur. IT ). Like the poet of Idyll 25,24 the
Megara poet plays with the identity of the characters in a manner which
evokes the mimesis of drama, rather than the diegesis of narrative.25 If the
character of Megara seems to owe a debt to Sophocles Deianeira,26 it is
rather the Sophoclean models which all but certainly lie behind the very
20 Cf. below, pp. 2089 on Theocritus 24.

21 Cf. Rossi (1971a) on the broader, but related, question of genre.
22 Observe also that the opening frame is recalled at the end in Idyll 11, but not in Idyll 13.
23 Cf. T. Breitenstein, Recherches sur le poeme Megara (Copenhagen 1966), J. W. Vaughn, The Megara
(Moschus IV) (BernStuttgart 1976) .
24 Cf. below, pp. 21015.
25 Cf. Perrotta (1978) 3740. Note v. 1 (mother, but she is really mother-in-law); v. 4 (your glo-
rious son endures countless griefs); v. 5 (like a lion . . ., cf. Theocr. 13.62 of Heracles); v. 11
(no one is more cursed by fate); v. 13 (the bow . . .); vv. 1516, the killing of the children.
Verses 1720 (With my own eyes I saw . . .) may also allude to dramatic presentations of the
myth.
26 Cf. esp. vv. 415 with S. Tr. 315 (from the prologue).
similar interview of Medea and Chalciope in Argonautica 3.673741 that
may have been decisive in shaping this intriguing poem.
The dramatisation of narrative looks in two ways, which might at first
seem contradictory. On the one hand, there is the Hellenistic practice of
anthologising, i.e. copying and/or performing bits of plays or long nar-
ratives, rather than whole texts.27 In one sense, this is merely extending
to dramatic performance the rhapsodic treatment of epic poetry, but an
increasingly shared performance mode brought some forms of narrative
and drama closer together. On the other hand, there is the increased cir-
culation of written texts and an ever-growing reception through reading.
Some certainly not all poets reflect these tendencies by exaggerating
those features of the text which plainly evoke dramatic presentation. We
may see here one more facet of the large-scale exploration of the creative
tension between modes of reception; in this respect, some epyllia have much
in common with, on the one hand, Theocritus bucolic and urban mimes
and, on the other, Callimachus mimetic hymns to Athena and Demeter.
2 callimachus h e c a l e
The Hecale, a hexameter poem of uncertain length (? c.1200 verses),28 told
the story of how Theseus, on his way to fight the bull of Marathon, was
entertained in the Attic countryside by a woman called Hecale, when he
took shelter in her hut from a storm; on returning after his triumph over
the bull, the hero found that Hecale had died, and so he gave her name to
the local deme and founded a shrine of Zeus Hekaleios. Callimachus clearly
used Attic chronicles for many of the details of the story, and the poem
seems to have been replete with allusions to Attic antiquities and customs,
and was marked by a vocabulary with a subtly archaic Attic flavour;29 a
third-century interest in Attic antiquities is visible also in the Erigone of
Eratosthenes and the Mopsopia (Attica) of Euphorion. The aetiological
focus of the Hecale is reminiscent of the Aitia, and, as with the Victoria
Berenices, which opened the third book of that poem,30 a great heroic feat
is here used as a frame to foreground material of a much more humble kind:
the description of Hecales rustic life and the traditional peasant fare she set
before Theseus was for later antiquity the most famous part of Callimachus
27 Cf. Gentili (1979); below, pp. 43940 on the Alexandra. 28 Cf. Hollis (1990) Appendix II.
29 Cf. Cameron (1995) 4434. For the possibility that Callimachus was personally acquainted with
Attica cf. also G. J. Oliver, Callimachus the Poet and Benefactor of the Athenians ZPE 140 (2002)
68.
30 Cf. above, pp. 835.
poem, and Ovids tale of Baucis and Philemon (Met. 8.626ff.) is only the
best known of many later reworkings. The chief epic model for Hecale
was the Odysseys Eumaeus, a character with a rich Nachleben in Hellenistic
narrative. Whereas, however, Eumaeus was an important, but not central,
character in Homer, it is Hecale who clearly held centre-stage in her poem
(as did Molorkos in the strikingly similar narrative of the Victoria).31
The length of the Hecale, roughly that of one book of Apollonius Argo-
nautica, was, as we have seen, not unparalleled in the third century, but
we know very little about its nearest literary relatives.32 If we set the Hecale
against Aristotelian prescriptions for epic poetry, it will be seen that it
both avoided the linear narrative of the rejected cyclic epics (among which
Aristotle specifically names Theseids), and presented a single praxis of
some kind; moreover, the devices of flashback, foreshadowing and stories
within stories, which are so prominent in Callimachus poem, all have
abundant Homeric precedent. If much about the Hecale recalls other areas
of Callimachus oeuvre, the generic resonance is clearly that of epic.33 This
is suggested by the metre, the use of epic similes (which are otherwise very
rare in what survives of Callimachus poetry), the extensive use of direct
speech, with its consequent implications for the ethical presentation of the
characters, the rarity, if not in fact total absence, of the intrusive authorial
voice so familiar in the Aitia and the Hymns,34 and a verbal style which is
closer to Homer than is the style of the Hymns.35 The following fragment,
describing Theseus victorious return, is perhaps as close to unelaborated
narrative as anything that survives from Callimachus pen:
*
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31 For an instructive comparison of the Hecale and the Victoria Berenices cf. A. Ambuhl, Entertaining
Theseus and Heracles: the Hecale and the Victoria Berenices as a diptych in HarderRegtuitWakker
(2004) 2347.
32 On the implications of the length of the Hecale cf. esp. Lynn (1995) 90117.
33 Cf. in general Cameron (1995) 43747.
34 Cf. Cameron (1992) 31112; Hunter (1993a) 11516; Lynn (1995) 712. The state of preservation of
the text obviously enjoins caution, but enough survives to allow some confidence in this argument.
Hollis and DAlessio note frs. 15, 65 and 149 as probable or possible examples of authorial apostrophe
to a character; this type of intervention had, of course, good Homeric precedent.
35 Cf. Hollis (1990) 12.
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. . . with one horn, for the club had crushed the other one. As soon as they saw,
they all shrank back, and no one dared to look straight at the great man and the
monstrous beast, until Theseus called out loud to them from afar: Have courage
and stay, and let the swiftest among you carry this message to my father Aigeus in
the city and thus lift many cares from him: Here is Theseus, not far away, bringing
the bull alive from well-watered Marathon. So he spoke, and when they heard
they all raised the cry of Hie Paieon and stayed where they were. The south wind
does not pour down such a torrent of leaves, nor the north wind not even in the
month when leaves fall as the countryfolk threw all over Theseus . . . surrounding
him, and the women . . . crowned him with their girdles. (Callimachus, Hecale
fr. 69 Hollis)
This passage poses difficulties for the reconstruction of subsequent events,36
and the speed with which events are narrated is perhaps more reminiscent
of Pindaric than Homeric narrative, but as a whole the text seems to avoid
the stylistic games and allusive (and elusive) ironies so familiar elsewhere
in Callimachus poetry. On the other hand, analysis reveals a passage full
of half-quotations from and allusions to Homer, which creates a striking
effect of similarity and complete difference;37 the human terror we associate
with martial conflict and the weapons of war is evoked by a man dragging
a huge38 bull (which has lost a horn), and the phyllobolia of the peasants,
itself an implicit aition for a later custom, outdoes all the forces of nature.
The poem began, in the familiar style, with the structural simplicity
of a fable (cf. also fr. 2 Hollis), but with a learned vocabulary and word
order that marks it as anything but simple:
C; C^ ! $
Once upon a time an Attic woman lived in the hill country of Erechtheus (Calli-
machus, Hecale fr. 1 Hollis39 )
The programmatically creative tension in the verse between matter and
manner40 appears indeed to have been the most prominent stylistic
36 Cf. Hollis (1990) 3557. 37 To Hollis commentary add Lynn (1995) 3640.
38 The tone of .' #Z is hard to catch exactly; the phrase is not without a
certain light humour, but the second noun and adjective both mark a move away from the civilised
to the wild and uncouth.
39 For a possible continuation of fr. 1 cf. A. Hollis, ZPE 115 (1997) 556. 40 Cf. Lynn (1995) 710.
hallmark of the Hecale. The elegantly modern word order plays off against
the (learnedly) local colour of a woman of Akte [believed to be an archaic
name for Attica] and the name of the legendary king Erechtheus to sug-
gest a new telling of an old tale. The second half of the verse alludes to
Odyssey 11.323, where Theseus is said to have tried to bring Ariadne
$, C;( e (, to the hilly area (?) of holy Athens;41 this
is Theseus only appearance in Homer, and thus Callimachus can both
acknowledge his affiliation with the epic poet par excellence and also assert
that his will be a very different kind of poem, on a subject which Homer
ignored.
In a familiar device of epic, Theseus questioned Hecale about her life (fr.
40 Hollis) and she replied at some length. We learn that she was once rich
(fr. 41 Hollis),42 had a handsome husband and two sons, who shot up like
aspens beside a winter torrent (fr. 48 Hollis), words which pathetically recall
Thetis anxious description of Achilles, who would die young (Iliad 18.56,
437). One, or possibly both, of Hecales sons were killed by the monstrous
Kerkyon, and she expresses her hatred in words which inevitably call Hecabe
to mind:
$[ ] _Z &'% 4M
%Z#$ ]#5% ) * ) | %
May I myself stick thorns into his shameless eyes while he still lives and, if it is
permitted, eat them raw . . . (Callimachus, Hecale fr. 49.1415 Hollis)
The apparent gulf between the epic and tragic queen, whose life is brought
to ruin by the death of so many sons and who put out an enemys eyes
in Euripides Hecabe, and the nearly synonymous Hecale, an obscure bit-
player in a minor corner of the mythical pageant, is thus collapsed for a
powerful emotional effect.43
A major episode44 in the poem was an account by a crow to another bird
of the legend of Erichthonios and a prophecy that one day the raven would
be changed from white to black because it brought bad news to Apollo.
It has been very plausibly suggested that the purpose of this speech was to
41 Erechtheus was particularly associated with the area around Marathon, but his name is also evocative
of Athens and her countryside more generally.
42 Hollis suggests joining this fragment with fr. 158 (= 682 Pf.), '($ ' whereas
Livrea (1993) 1334 prefers to place fr. 694 Pf., & ' C ! %, before fr. 41H.
43 There is a good discussion of the use of the figure of Hecabe in Hutchinson (1988) 579. For Hecales
epic kleos cf. C. McNelis, Mourning Glory: Callimachus Hecale and Heroic Honors MD 50 (2003)
15561.
44 The length of this episode is indicated not merely by the reconstruction of the surviving fragments,
but also by the echo in vv. 223 of Od. 15.4935, which follow the lengthy conversation of Odysseus
and Eumaeus. On this episode, see, in addition to Hollis commentary, Livrea (1993) 1413 and
below, pp. 2525.
attempt to dissuade the other bird from carrying the news of Hecales death
to Theseus, but how precisely the transitions from the central narrative to
the chattering birds and back again were handled remains unclear. No
appreciation of Callimachean poetry could, however, pass over the magical
verses which follow immediately after the crows speech:
'' ' C ##, !
[]) L: D#
%94 . !$) V C ! 5
#U i' + #Q! )
& ' Q &8 2' , e5)
C ! #
* .M
O 2 C .M) &(_$% 'X $
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. . .
They fell asleep, but not for long, for soon came the frosty early dawn, when thieves
hands no longer seek booty. Already the lamps of morning were shining, a man
drawing water was singing the well song, the axle creaking under the wagon woke
the man whose house lay beside the track, many feel annoyance . . . blacksmiths
seeking fire . . . (Callimachus, Hecale fr. 74.228 Hollis)
Here the avian world of very specific gossip and Schadenfreude the crows
pleasure at the prospect of the ravens discomfiture is pointed by an almost
parodic reworking of Achilles prophecy of his own death, delivered to the
hapless Lykaon just before the latters death (Il. 21.11113) gives way to a
universalised picture of men stirring as dawn comes. As we would expect,
it is a universal picture made Callimachus own by his inimitable verbal
style: if the business of early morning is the same the world over, only
in the poetic world of Callimachus is that early morning called %94
. !$.45 The impression is not, however, of arcane obscurity, but of
the poets absolute control over what at first glance claims to be a natural
picture which writes itself. It may be that the poetic focus was not upon
the paradoxical fact that birds are woken by human activity it is birdsong
that we most expect to hear at this hour 46 but upon a contrast between
the very ordinariness of the actions described and the unique grief which
lay in store for Theseus when he learned of Hecales death. It is indeed the
aetiological perspective which sees the particular and the significant against
the background of the everyday.
45 Cf. Hollis ad loc. The Homeric model (Od. 15.495) has -O . . . Q, cf. below, p. 255.
46 H. Lloyd-Jones and J. Rea, HSCP 72 (1967) 145, observe that there is no necessary con-
nection between the site of the birds conversation and the description of noises which
occur everywhere. This is true, but the poetic juxtaposition clearly gestures towards such an
interpretation.
3 theocritus lit tle heracles

Theocritus Idyll 24 tells the story of how Heracles strangled the snakes
which Hera sent to destroy him as he slept in his cradle, how Tiresias
prophesied to Alcmena the future divinity of her son, and of how the
young hero was educated in all the arts of civilisation by a series of tutors.
The final section of the poem is preserved only in the scantiest fragments
in the great Antinoopolis papyrus of Theocritus, but it would appear to
have ended, in a manner familiar also from archaic hymns,47 with a prayer
to Heracles to grant the poet victory; if this is interpreted strictly, Idyll 24
was performed in a poetic competition, although we may of course rather
be dealing with a literary imitation of a traditional, performative mode.
Tiresias advice to Alcmena (and hence the first part of the poem) concludes
with an instruction to sacrifice to Zeus and to pray that she and her family
should be ever superior to their enemies, just as the poem as a whole ends
with the poets prayer for victory. Heracles, the very epitome of struggle and
ultimate triumph, is to reward the poet who has struggled on his behalf.
Heracles and the poet are, however, significantly different. Whereas it would
seem that the final prayer stressed the poets mortality,48 Heracles ultimate
divinity plays over the whole poem and makes particularly pointed the
apparent ordinariness of his education.49 The repeated insistence, which
to some extent structures the sections of the poem (cf. below), on youth
and old age (vv. 12, 1023, 133) foreshadows Heracles triumph over the
natural process of ageing.50 In another reuse of traditional ideas, the poet
may have asked for the immortality of his songs as compensation for the
mortality of his life.
Another earthly manifestation of Heracles is also relevant. It is now
generally accepted that the young Heracles evokes the young Philadelphus,51
who, like all the Ptolemies, was to be (officially, at least) superior to his
enemies.52 As the divine ancestor of the Macedonian royal house and a
paradigm particularly dear to Alexander, Heracles was a very significant
figure for the Ptolemies (cf. e.g. Theocr. 17.1333); the fact that he sleeps
47 Cf. Hom. Hymn 6 (Aphrodite) 1920, grant me victory in this contest, and guide my song.
48 Cf. v. 171 ], with the marginal explanation, O , 4 . . .
49 Cf. J. Stern, AJP 95 (1974) 360, and (more generally) M. Sanchez-Wildberger, Theokrit-
Interpretationen (Zurich 1955) 1821.
50 Cf. the similar use of the motif at 17.245, which may help to confirm the Ptolemaic reading offered
below.
51 Cf. Koenen (1977) 7986; F. Griffiths (1979) 918; Zanker (1987) 17981; Weber (1993) 2412;
Stephens (2003a) 12346. For criticism of some of the detail of Koenens argument cf. Zanker (1989)
989.
52 Cf. Koenen (1977) 83.
in a shield has often been connected with a story found in late sources53
that the infant Ptolemy Soter was exposed by Lagus in a bronze shield
and was protected and fed by an eagle. The date and origin of the story
is unknown, but it is not improbable that the story circulated already in
Soters lifetime.54 The lullaby which Alcmena sings (vv. 69) reworks the
famous song of the Simonidean Danae, in which she addresses the sleeping
Perseus, another son of Zeus, as they drift on the open sea (PMG 543).55
By recalling Perseus, who was Heracles great-grandfather, in the context of
Heracles own childhood, Theocritus thus emphasises dynastic continuity
and the repetition of virtue from generation to generation, themes which
were particularly dear to Ptolemaic ideology (cf. esp. Theocr. 17.567). So,
too, the catalogue of Heracles tutors has plausibly been connected not just
with a subject of traditional interest (cf. Apollodorus 2.4.9), but also with
the education of the young Philadephus (or indeed of any royal child).56
The prominence of Alcmena in the narrative of Idyll 24 does not merely
reflect Amphitryons ambiguous status with regard to Heracles, but is also
on a par with the often remarked prominence of royal women in the
poetry of the Ptolemaic court. It is Alcmena who wakes first on the fateful
night (v. 34), and who later takes the lead in summoning Tiresias while
her husband is apparently asleep again; this latter act is given particular
emphasis by the fact that, in the Pindaric text which is Theocritus main
model (cf. below), it is Amphitryon who summons the prophet (Nemean
1.60).57 Whereas Alcmena both initiates action and comforts the frightened
Iphicles, her husband is ineffectual (beyond rousing the slaves), because
there is nothing for him to do in the presence of his extraordinary son. The
sense of delay which surrounds Amphitryons response to Alcmenas alarm
(vv. 3545) is created both by the absence of any equivalent for Pindars !Q
quickly to describe the arrival of the Theban leaders (Nemean 1.51),58 and
by Theocritus own textual detail. First, there are Alcmenas words to her
husband:
.%C) C;QU X ' K%! ]
U
.%) 'X
' %% 5 2, %('# ) #
Get up, Amphitryon! Im very afraid! Get up! Dont put shoes on your feet . . .
(Theocritus 24.356)
53 Aelian (fr. 285 Hercher) from the Suda. 54 Cf. RE 23.16034.
55 Cf. Hunter (1996b) 267 and below, pp. 2601.
56 Cf. F. Griffiths (1979) 92, Weber (1993) 2412, Thomas (1996) 231, Hunter (1996b) 17; for the
education of the Ptolemies in general cf. Eichgrun (1961) 18393.
57 Alcmenas leading role is made clear through a sequence of verbs denoting the various shouts heard
in the house that night (345, 47, 50).
58 Theocritus may in fact deliberately misread Nem. 1.513 as suggesting a slower response on the part
of Amphitryon than of Alcmena.
The repetition of get up (like the endearment #C &' dear husband
with which Alcmena concludes) suggests, without labouring the point, that
it took a little effort to rouse a reluctant husband. As for the injunction
not to put his slippers on, Gutzwiller ((1981) 17) well observes: Alcmene
knows the customary dressing procedure of Homeric heroes and fears that
her husband will waste too much time following this routine. We have to
do, however, not with a full-blown arming scene, but with a version of
how epic characters get up. Menelaos rising in Sparta may serve as an
illustrative example:59
D ' C - ( B''($# C7Z)
N$ C . C M 98 & , 0 #
l +%%( ) 'X M ]Mb C N")
%% 'C 2, #5% '4% # '#)
9 'C K #( # .) #.
When rosy-fingered dawn appeared, then did Menelaos, hero of the war-cry, put
on his clothes and rise from bed; around his shoulder he slung a sharp sword,
under his glistening feet he bound fair sandals, and went out of his room, like a
god to behold . . . (Homer, Odyssey 4.30611)
Whereas Menelaos hurried from his bed (and the Pindaric Alcmena herself
rushes from her bed on the fateful night, Nem.1.50), Amphitryon got out
of bed, in obedience to his wife. Secondly, as this Homeric example shows,
delay is evoked by the manner in which Theocritus describes his reaching
for the sword:
''(# 'C % M) V e [
# '$ %%(#" *X ..
i V C | T #Z%$ #)
$_ + #
) #Z ) #.
He reached for his intricately decorated sword, which always hung from a peg above
his cedarwood bed. Then he grabbed his newly woven belt and, with his other
hand, picked up the scabbard, a great lotuswood work . . . (Theocritus 24.425)
The sword is a traditional element of this scene in both art and literature,60
but the remarkably ekphrastic concentration upon a realistic detail usually
passed over in such scenes (just how do you take a sword down from a
wall?), creates a brief narrative delay of a kind very familiar in Hellenistic
poetry, but one which serves a specific purpose in this particular narrative.
Moreover to anticipate a later argument 61 the sense of delay is heightened
59 Gutzwiller (1981) 17 notes that, in Homer, such scenes take place at dawn, and in Theocritus
Amphitryon gets up at a false dawn (cf. v. 39).
60 Cf. Pind. Nem. 1.52, and below, pp. 2589. 61 Cf. below, p. 209.
by the expectation, shaped by our knowledge of previous texts and aroused
by the description of the sword as ''(# intricately decorated, that
the poet will describe this sword, its sheath or its belt in a fuller ekphrasis; we
may think of the description of the belt ( #Z) of Heracles quiver in
the Underworld (Od. 11.60914). It may therefore be that it is Theocritus,
not Amphitryon, who moves slowly,62 but it is our experience as listeners
and readers which constructs and interprets the passage of time within the
narrative. It thus comes as no great surprise that the supernatural light is
extinguished (46) the moment Amphitryon is ready for action.
The amused tone of the treatment of Alcmena and Amphitryon, indeed
of the whole poem,63 has something in common with the handling of Alci-
nous and his young wife Arete as they appear, in another bedroom scene, in
the fourth book of the Argonautica. Just as the Apollonian characters may
well have evoked the Ptolemaic ruling family,64 so Amphitryons household
offers one image of the domestic side of the rulers. Whether or not we
accept Ludwig Koenens suggestion that the poem was performed at the cel-
ebration (both Basileia and Genethlia) in 285/4 when Philadelphos became
co-regent with his father,65 the cumulative case for placing Idyll 24 in a
Ptolemaic context seems very strong. As Frederick Griffiths puts it, double
parentage and gradually emergent divinity are . . . themes of immediate
interest to the Ptolemies.66
The structure of Idyll 24 shows little of the complexity associated with
later Latin epyllia. The events of the miraculous night (vv. 163) are framed
by the movements towards bed of the babies and, at the end, of Amphit-
ryon, and the Tiresias section begins with an announcement by the cocks
of a new day and the arrival of the prophet, and it concludes with his
departure. The principal break in the poem, which also articulates, as in
Idyll 22, a distinction in the manner of writing, comes in fact after v. 102,
where Tiresias, weighed down with many years, gives place to Heracles,
like a young plant in an orchard. Verse 103, like the opening verse of
the whole poem, begins with Heracles name and juxtaposes the hero to
his mother; this second part of the poem, like the first, falls into two
well-defined sections, with a transition effected through v. 134, H' X
67# # ' Q% (, thus did his dear mother educate
62 G. Perrotta, A&R 4 (1923) 2445.
63 I have not dealt with this at length, as it has been discussed many times, cf. e.g. Horstman (1976)
5771.
64 Cf. above, p. 127.
65 Cf. Koenen (1977) 7986, Weber (1993) 165, Stephens (2003a) 1257. For the political significance
of the time indication at 1112 cf. also Gow ad loc.
66 F. Griffiths (1979) 95.
Heracles, which rounds off the description of Heracles education begun in
v. 103.67
Idyll 24 offers an excellent opportunity to observe a Hellenistic poets
creative exploitation of the literary heritage.68 Despite our ignorance of
the epics on Heracles by Peisander of Rhodian Kameiros (seventh to sixth
centuries), who is celebrated in an epigram of Theocritus (22 Gow) and is
said to have written a Herakleia in two books, and by Panyassis of Halicar-
nassus (early fifth century) who wrote a Herakleia in some nine thousand
verses and fourteen books,69 it seems safe to regard Theocritus version
of the strangling of the snakes and the prophecy of Tiresias as a specific
reworking of Pindar.70 Pindar told the story at least twice, in Nemean 1 and
Paean 20 (= POxy. 1792, 2442. fr. 32), and the correspondences between
the two poets are many and detailed,71 as also are clear cases of Theocritean
uariatio. Theocritus narrative follows the Pindaric order, but (unsurpris-
ingly) Pindar has nothing to match the use of a shield as a cradle, Alcmenas
lullaby, the detailed indication of time (with its appeal to Alexandrian astro-
nomical interest), the use of Iphicles as a foil to his greater brother,72 or the
lengthy bedroom scene with Alcmena and Amphitryon. Though Pindar
also exploits the fear of the household at large (Nem. 1.489, Paean 20.16ff.),
there is nothing in the lyric poet to match the domestic detail of vv. 47
53. Theocritus stylistic mimesis is particularly visible in the details of the
narrative. Thus, for example, whereas the Pindaric Alcmena leaps from her
bed . # without her robe (Nem. 1.50, Paean 20.14), in Theocritus
she tells her husband not to bother getting his sandals on; in Theocritus, it
is the snakes whose eyes blaze (vv. 1819); in Pindar, it is the baby Heracles
eyes (Paean 20.13). Whereas the Pindaric Heracles throws off his covers
and reveals his nature (Paean 20.1112), in Theocritus, Iphicles kicked off
his woolly blanket in his desire to flee (vv. 256), thereby also (we are to
understand) revealing his nature. Theocritus reworking thus contami-
nates Nemean 1 both with material of his own and with details drawn from
Paean 20; such a manner of working finds parallels not only in other poetry
67 For a radical solution to dissatisfaction with the final section of the poem cf. A. Griffiths (1996)
11315 who argues that the poem originally finished with v. 104.
68 Cf. also below, pp. 25566. 69 Cf. below, p. 214.
70 We must, of course, always bear in mind the possibility that Theocritus will have included details
from what he regarded as Pindars source, by the familiar technique of double allusion or window
reference; Pindar himself appears to allude to a source at Nem. 1.34 &!5 ]Q #

(cf. Braswell ad loc.).
71 Cf. G. Perrotta, A&R 4 (1923) 24852, Gows notes passim, Dover (1971) 2512, Rutherford (2001)
4001.
72 The delay in naming Iphicles in 25, two verses after the verb cried out, is a noteworthy narrative
effect.
of the third century, but also in how Roman poets were to handle their
Greek models.
As in Nemean 1, the extraordinary night is followed by the summon-
ing of Tiresias, who prophesies Heracles future greatness. Whereas, how-
ever, it is the Pindaric Amphitryon who summons his neighbour, the
excellent prophet of Zeus on high, Tiresias the straight seer (]
)
(Nem. 1.601), in Theocritus, it is Alcmena. In Nemean 1, there is no indi-
cation of the time relation between the strangling of the snakes and the
summoning of Tiresias, but we are perhaps to imagine that one followed
immediately upon the other. In Theocritus, Amphitryon puts Heracles
back to bed and then retires himself, while Alcmena comforts the terrified
Iphicles (vv. 603); in 64 we learn that the cocks were announcing dawn
when Alcmena summoned the prophet. We can, if we like, imagine that
Alcmena herself has gone back to bed but, in her worry, has called for the
prophet at the earliest opportunity;73 more probably, however, it has taken
Alcmena a long time to calm her younger son down since the events of
midnight (v. 11) she herself never went back to bed. The concern with the
passage of time is thus a device which marks the realistic mode of Theocri-
tus narration against his lyric model, but also ironises that very realism. If
realism of this kind demands that we apply standards of probability to poetic
narrative, then both narratives are equally improbable, and differ only in
mode. So, too, the fact that Heracles performs his miraculous feat when ten
months old, rather than almost immediately after being born, as in Pindar,
may go back to archaic sources other than Pindar,74 but is often ascribed
to Theocritus concern with realism, whatever it might also have to do
with Ptolemaic chronology and the rapid development of divine babies;
it is, however, a curious kind of verisimilitude which considers the stran-
gling of snakes appropriate to a ten-month-old baby, but not to a neonate.
The very imposition of probability-structures upon mythic material does
not in fact ironise the myth itself,75 but rather dramatises the inappropri-
ateness of such strategies of reinterpretation. This is the equivalent at the
level of theme of the stylistic and verbal contrasts with which the poem is
filled: Alcmenas lullaby is concluded by the Homeric o , thus
she spoke, and the servants , &$ 5, masters calling, mixes a collo-
quial pronoun with a verb of high poetry and is followed by the Homeric
73 So, apparently, H. White ad loc.

74 Cf. Pherecydes, FGrHist 3 F69b (one year), Apollodoros 2.4.8 (eight months), Braswell on Pind.
Nem. 1.3372.
75 As argued in Effe (1978); for Id. 24 cf. pp. 539.
D B she spoke.76 Such phenomena both gesture towards and openly reject
realism as a dominant mode of reading.
In Pindar, the summoning of Tiresias and his prophecy are public mat-
ters of concern to all the leading men of the state (Nem. 1.61); in Theocritus,
however, Tiresias words are heard by Alcmena alone, and there is no
indication that either he or she ever repeats them to Amphitryon, who
thus remains in (blissful) ignorance throughout Heracles upbringing.77
In Nemean 1, Tiresias speech is given in indirect speech and suggests, as
befits the encomiastic context, that the prophet gave a full, catalogue-like,
account of Heracles future labours (619); he finishes with Heracles final
peace and ultimate marriage on Olympus to Hebe. Idyll 24 may have
contained an allusion to these final happy events in its lost conclusion, but
the speech of the Theocritean prophet moves in a quite different direc-
tion. Hellenistic epyllion seems to have favoured direct speech even more
than did Homer, and it is no surprise that in Theocritus we hear Tiresias
himself: it is direct speech which reveals ethos, and this is a persistent interest
of Hellenistic literature. Tiresias now foreshadows Heracles future in gen-
eral terms, with unexplained allusions to Trachis (v. 83) and a clear refusal
to reveal his knowledge of the god responsible for the snakes (vv. 845)
as gestures towards the traditionally obscure manner of seers. This is not
unlike Pindar, whose straight seer lives up to his epithet not only by the
accuracy of his prediction, but also (apparently) by the clear manner in
which it is spoken. When, however, Tiresias comes to give instructions for
the purification ritual which Alcmena is to follow (24.88100), his tech-
nical knowledge of magic replaces, and to some extent offers an ironised
rationalisation of, the traditional riddling language of prophecy. Tiresias
thus becomes an epicised version of the experts familiar from the corpus
of magical papyri; Alcmenas consultation is thus assimilated to the real
practice of magic, but the fact that that practice operates in the realm of
the imagination and exploits a self-conscious difference from the everyday
suggests just how complex a phenomenon Theocritean realism is.
The literary texture of Idyll 24 is by no means exhausted with Pin-
dar. The terrifying events in the Theban palace owe an important debt
to the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, an archaic text which is echoed time
and again in third-century poetry.78 Like Heracles, the young Demophoon
76 Cf. Zanker (1987) 177.

77 The pointed C; $ # C ;Q, called the son of Argive Amphitryon (104),
immediately after the prophecy seems to confirm this narrative irony; Gows note misses the point
entirely, cf. S. Radt, Mnemosyne 24 (1971) 2589.
78 Cf. Whites commentary p. 40, Gutzwiller (1981) 16, Hunter (1996b) 12 n. 45.
is a late-born (]: ) child (h. Dem. 165) and the events in Keleus
house are marked by the eery light of divine epiphany and a mothers ter-
ror (h. Dem. 2469). So, too, the events in Odysseus palace of Odyssey
19 and, in particular, the early part of Book 20 are an important model:
Odysseus asks Zeus to send both a 4 and a (20.92101); Zeus
replies with thunder and the 4 of an old mill-woman, a verse explicitly
recalled by Theocritus in v. 51; the servants gather (&
) to light fires
(20.1223), although in a variant version they wake up (
) to do
so, which would bring them close to the sleeping servants of Amphitryons
household; Telemachus too gets up and puts on his clothes (and his shoes!),
and then asks Eurycleia about the reception which the stranger received;
Eurycleia also issues instructions to the other servants about cleaning and
preparing the house (20.14858, cf. Tiresias in Theocritus).79 In both the
Homeric Hymn to Demeter and these books of the Odyssey, disorder and
confusion are eventually revealed as part of a plan sanctioned by Zeus for
the establishment of a new moral order. In Theocritus 24, therefore, inter-
textual allusion confirms the coherence to be found in the narrative itself.
Two further matters of technique have broader implications for Hellenis-
tic narrative. The first is the use of various patterns of interplay between
speech and diegetic narrative, as when Alcmenas worried distress when she
hears Iphicles crying out is marked by the ellipse of a verb to introduce her
words:
C;#4 'C .$% 9T (U
.%C) C;QU X ' K%! ]
U
.%) #.
Alcmena heard the cry and was the first to wake; Get up, Amphitryon! Im very
afraid! Get up! . . . (Theocritus 24.345)
Her words break into the expected addressing her husband, she spoke
as follows. So, too, at v. 68 we have both an unusual mode of speech
introduction, almost an unmediated move from the indirect to the direct,
and an urgent speech which does not begin at the start of a hexameter:
C;#4 #%% ! # M !
)
2 % V # % ##
-Z U ' C K
)
*'

Q ) #.
79 Interesting points of detail include: Od. 20.132, the hapax #4 ' with the variant #4 '
(cf. Id. 24.56, though Pind. Nem. 1.478 may also be relevant); Od. 20.138 &## C V '8
[$ 4% (cf. Id. 24.63); Od. 20.154 K% T%% *% (cf. Id. 24.48).
Alcmena summoned [Tiresias] and told him of the strange event and urged him
to interpret how it would end: Do not, if the gods have some trouble in mind,
conceal it from me out of respect . . . (Theocritus 24.669)
Even more striking than this mimetic technique for conveying Alcmenas
worry is the sequence at vv. 4751:
' '8
C .$% [ 9b $%U
K% V T%% & C %! +#
)
' ) %9b 'X $T &
: C ]!.
.% ) ' #% U , &$ 5)
D B $ `%% Q# 5 !$%.
Then he called to the slaves who were breathing out deep sleep: Bring fire from
the hearth with all speed, my slaves, release the stout bolts from the doors! Get
up, long-suffering slaves! Masters calling!; thus spoke the Phoenician woman who
had her bed by the mill. (Theocritus 24.4751)
Amphitryons words are given a verse of introduction (v. 47), but the cry
of the servant woman follows immediately, and , &$ 5, masters
calling, at the end of v. 50 comes as no less of a surprise (somewhat con-
cealed if the text is read silently, rather than heard) than when Amycus
answers Polydeuces without narrative introduction at Idyll 22.55. Whether
we ultimately decide to give .% ) ' #% , get up, long-
suffering servants to Amphitryon, as a continuation of his speech, or to
the servant-woman,80 the passage is both itself dramatic and dramatises
the fluid relation between oral and written reception. Alexandrian scholars,
themselves reflecting this transition, paid particular attention to apparently
aberrant phenomena in the Homeric text, such as abrupt changes from indi-
rect to direct speech, or speeches which were not introduced in one of the
standard, formulaic ways;81 the latter phenomenon seems, in fact, to have
led at times to the interpolation of normalising verses.82 The Hellenistic
fondness for experimenting with such devices is not to be dismissed as
merely a way of varying Homeric practice. It is also part of a gradual and
far-reaching exploration of the broad division of poetic representation into
mimesis and diegesis which these poets inherited from Plato and Aristotle. A
80 Cf. Legrand (1898) 414. If spoken by Amphitryon, #% would be an amusingly epicised
version of (# used as an abusive address; if spoken by the servant, it would express the shared
solidarity of the downtrodden. With either speaker, pause after v. 49 suggests that Amphitryons
words of vv. 489 have had no effect on the deeply sleeping (v. 47) slaves.
81 Cf. Fantuzzi (1988a) 5164, Hunter (1993a) 13843. For Callimachus cf. McLennan (1977) 1449.
82 Cf. G. M. Bolling, CP 17 (1922) 21321, M. J. Apthorp, The Manuscript Evidence for Interpolation in
Homer (Heidelberg 1980) 1502. Although most of the material is post-Aristarchan, we can hardly
doubt a third-century interest in these matters.
later text, such as Bions Lament for Adonis, shows where such exploration
was to lead.
The description of Heracles strangling of the snakes (vv. 2633) starts
from a fairly close reworking of at least one Pindaric model (Nem. 1.447),
but moves beyond this to a vivid, ekphrastic narration of the snakes trying to
escape from the powerful infant. There is a rich tradition of Heracles and the
snakes in Greek art:83 fifth-century red-figure vases, roughly contemporary
with Pindars poetic treatments, show the full cast of characters Heracles
and the snakes, Iphicles,84 Alcmena, Amphitryon with his drawn sword
and Pliny reports that Zeuxis (late fourth century) painted the baby Her-
acles strangling [? two]85 snakes while his terrified mother Alcmena and
Amphitryon look on (NH 35.63). The originals of extant statues of the
grinning baby holding the writhing snakes were presumably of Hellenistic
date. Pindar and Theocritus need have no specific works of art in mind,
but the audiences experience of such art serves to confirm the narrative of
this wondrous, non-real event; this is a device of enargeia, of allowing the
audience to envision what is taking place. A related, but quite different,
effect is the refusal to describe, as happens with Amphitryons sword of
vv. 42586 and the shield in which Heracles and his brother sleep (v. 5).87
The denial of ekphrasis marks Theocritus narrative as one of exclusion and
discrimination, in contrast to the all-embracing archaic narratives.
4 heracles the lionsl ayer

Idyll 25 (? late third century), which is very probably not by Theocritus, falls
easily into three sections.88 In the first (vv. 184), an old ploughman tells
Heracles (who is not named) about the extensive estates of King Augeias,
and then leads him to the stalls to find the king himself; in vv. 85152,
Augeias vast herds return to their stalls and Heracles overpowers a large
bull which attacks the lionskin he is wearing; in vv. 153281, Heracles tells
Augeias son, Phyleus, the story of his conquest of the Nemean lion, as the
two of them are journeying together from the countryside into the town.
In the printed edition of Callierges (Rome 1516), a note following 24.140
asserts that both the end of Idyll 24 and the beginning of the following
poem (Idyll 25), here given the name 67# #
, are missing.
83 Cf. LIMC I .1, p. 554 s.v. Alkmene, iv.1., pp. 82832 s.v. Herakles; C. Watzinger, JOAIW 16 (1913)
16675; J.-M. Morets appendix to Braswells commentary on Nemean 1.
84 The vases show Iphicles precisely as Theocritus describes him, kicking off his woolly blankets in his
desire to flee (24.256).
85 The text is uncertain. 86 Cf. above, p. 203. 87 Cf. below, pp. 25860.
88 This section is an abbreviated (and somewhat revised) version of Hunter (1998).
The discovery of the Antinoopolis papyrus, which showed that verses have
indeed been lost from the end of Idyll 24, may seem to have confirmed the
first half of this statement, which will all but certainly have been based
on a literary judgement, not on manuscript evidence.
The three sections of the traditional division all revolve around Heracles
cleansing of Augeias stables, a labour which is never mentioned in the
course of the poem, but which must shape our reaction to the whole.89
Why, for example, would stout-hearted Heracles marvel at the vast herds
(v. 114)? Is it because he is going to have to clean up all that dung? The
three sections can be fitted, easily enough, into the outlines of the story
familiar from our main sources (Apollodorus 2.5.5, Pausanias 5.1.910), but
whether or not that is the reading strategy which the poem actually invites
is a more difficult and interesting question.
The three sections are defined by familiar opening and closural markers,90
in such a way as to suggest that Idyll 25 presents an exploration of narrative
continuity and disjunction, which is quite different in effect from the
articulation and structure of the different scenes of Idyll 24. There are,
of course, considerable uncertainties: what survives may be merely a set
of three extracts from a larger whole, and we cannot tell how much, if
anything, has been lost before v. 1.91 Nevertheless, there is no real parallel, in
either archaic or Hellenistic poetry, for a linear narrative in which narrative
time seems always to progress, but we are merely given excerpts from the
full story; this is quite different from a concentration on the apparently
peripheral at the expense of the traditionally central, such as we find in
Callimachus Victoria Berenices and the Hecale. We can assume (if we
wish) that the fact that Heracles accompanies Augeias on his inspection
(vv. 11011) implies that in the meantime (that is, presumably between v.
84 and v. 85) he has explained who he is and why he has come. So, also, at
vv. 162ff. Phyleus addresses Heracles first as M 5 and then as w (v. 178),
while asking him whether he is the person who killed the great Nemean
lion, for Phyleus had heard an account of this deed from someone who
was unable accurately to identify the hero in question. Phyleus thinks he
remembers that the informant identified the hero as a descendant of Perseus
(Alcmenas grandfather). Heracles admits that he indeed was the slayer of
89 Cf. I. M. Linforth, Theocritus XXV TAPA 78 (1947) 7787, Zanker (1996).
90 For a detailed analysis cf. Hunter (1998) 11819.
91 The ' in v. 1 of Id. 25 should not be given excessive weight in considering whether or not the text
is lacunose; it is imposed by the epic form of the verse, and indeed the poet could hardly have
chosen a better way of marking the relation between his poem and the inherited epic tradition. For
initial ' in other texts cf. D. A. Campbell, Greek Lyric Poetry (London 1967) 1401, H. Jacobson,
The Exagoge of Exekiel (Cambridge 1983) 70, Kerkhecker (1999) 102 n. 91.
the lion, for this was the first task laid on me by Eurystheus (vv. 2045).
There is nothing here which makes the inference that Phyleus does not
know Heracles name inevitable, and the reference to Eurystheus can easily
be fitted into the traditional story, in which Heracles only revealed the
kings role after he had cleaned the stables.92 Nevertheless, such features of
poetic technique must be understood within a consideration of the nature
of the poem as a whole.
Ignorance, identity, recognition and epic kleos are central to the concerns
of this poem. Whereas Odysseus comes to the court of Alcinous, to the hut
of Eumaeus, and to his own palace in disguise, that is in clothes which are
not his own, and is not recognised, in Idyll 25 Heracles is outfitted in the
manner which proclaims his identity at all periods (lionskin and massive
club, v. 63), and yet he too is not recognised. What price then kleos or,
rather, when does kleos begin? Idyll 25 confronts us with a world in which no
one has ever heard of Heracles, and in which Heracles himself seems unclear
of certain familiar facts of his life (cf. vv. 197200). The rustics observation
that Heracles arrival is due to the planning of some god (v. 52) says, of
course, more to us than it does to the characters. The poet has thus chosen
to present the story of the labours in a way which is related to a familiar
technique of Hellenistic poetry: we are pushed back before kleos, here not
to witness the youth of a famous literary character,93 but rather to observe
Heracles before poetic storytelling has gone to work on him and when the
meaning of the labours on which he is engaged is quite obscure. In such
circumstances, it might be unwise to enquire whether we are supposed
to imagine that the killing of his children has already taken place. The
elaborate play in the poem with Heracles identity and whether and at
what stage it is revealed may be seen as reinforcing this concern to create a
world before kleos. The poet teases us with our expectation that, at some
stage, Heracles will utter the equivalent of I am Odysseus, son of Laertes,
known to all men for my guile, and my kleos reaches heaven (Od. 9.1920),
but Heracles himself does not yet know, or at least understand, his own
identity (v. 50 is again important here); for all the characters in the poem he
remains utterly nameless, as the Homeric Alcinous asserted that no man
could be (Od. 8.552).
It is not merely in the links between the three sections that the poets
concern with variety and contrast is visible, but also in the nature and
subject of the scenes. In the first, Heracles asks questions and receives a
long and full answer; in the second, there is no direct speech, and the third
92 Cf. Gow on vv. 162, 173, Zanker (1996) 419. 93 Cf. Barchiesi (1993).
is largely a narrative by Heracles himself, who takes over the role of epic
poet, similes and all. Each of the three scenes ends with a confrontation
between Heracles and animals first, there are dogs, who might have come
off second best in a confrontation with Heracles, son of Amphitryon
(v. 71), whereas their Homeric relatives would have done dreadful things to
Odysseus (Od. 14.32), then a marvellous bull, and finally a truly epic lion.
The obvious crescendo of the sequence is another sign of the poets concern
with similarity and difference.94
In the opening section it is Odyssey 14, Odysseus meeting with Eumaeus,
which is particularly important; structural similarities to Books 68, how-
ever, also prepare for Heracles narration, just as Odyssey 68 prepare for
Odysseus narration. In the second section, although the subject is cattle
of Helios, it is the Iliadic manner which predominates. Whoever bestowed
the title C^Z#% on this section realised the importance of Iliad 4,95
and beyond Agamemnons review of his troops, it is the similes of that
book which are of particular importance. At 4.2749 the mass of armed
men around the two Ajaxes is compared to dark storm clouds, driven over
the sea by the Zephyr,96 which cause a goatherd to bring his flocks under
cover. In Idyll 25 it is the # of cattle, which come numerous as rain-
clouds;97 as these cattle are to be, in one sense, Heracles opponents, the
martial resonance of the Iliadic simile is appropriate. So too, at Il. 4.4226
(which immediately follows the conclusion of the Z#% proper), the
movement of the Greek army into battle is compared to a vast wave crash-
ing on the seashore.98 Whereas, however, Homer draws a contrast between
the roaring breaker and the silence of the Greek advance (4.42931), the
poet of the Idyll suggests a contrast between the soundless sweep of clouds
and the noise ($
) of the cattle. Here, we may feel the influence of
Il. 4.4335, where the noise of the Trojans is compared to the bleating of
countless ewes in the yard of a very rich man, as they wait to be milked. The
Homeric simile, which moves beyond the world of war to that of peaceful
pastoralism in order to characterise (presumably unfavourably) the Trojans
94 Cf. the appreciation by H. Herter, Kleine Schriften (Munich 1975) 4612.
95 For this cf. A. Kurz, Le Corpus Theocriteum et Homere. Un probleme dauthenticite (Idylle 25) (Bern
Frankfurt 1982) 356.
96 Given the appearance of the Zephyr here and at 4.423, it may be significant that v. 91 lists only the
south and north winds: deliberate avoidance?
97 #$
in v. 90 is perhaps a word more appropriate to flocks (cf. 16.36), which has here
trespassed into the simile. For the notion of trespass in general cf. R. O. A. M. Lyne, Words and
the Poet (Oxford 1989), esp. 929.
98 Q%% is shared by the Iliad (4.424) and the Idyll (v. 94), but it is common enough to make
inferences difficult. So too, it might be tempting to associate vv. 11517 with Il. 4.42930, but little
seems to hang upon this.
as they await the Greek onslaught, is here expanded into a full genre scene
of bucolic activity (vv. 96107).
The life of Heracles was an obvious subject for epic narration (cf. Aristo-
tle, Poetics 1451a16ff.),99 and both Peisander of Rhodian Kameiros (seventh
to sixth centuries)100 and Panyassis of Halicarnassus (early fifth century)
wrote long poems on this subject. The story of the labours lent itself readily
to cyclic treatment, and we can hardly doubt that there was a rich tradition
of such poems, now largely lost to us; in the later third century Rhianus
of Crete wrote a fourteen-book Herakleia, but we know next to nothing of
how he treated the subject. Aristotle singles out the poets of epics about
Heracles or Theseus, and such poems for unfavourable comparison with
Homer because they think that because Heracles was a single individual
( P) the mythos [concerning him] ought also to be unitary ( P) (Poetics
1451a 202). For Aristotle, oneness in a tragic, and probably also an epic,
mythos implied the mimesis of a single praxis in which the individual events
followed each other by a close causal nexus of necessity or probability.101
Idyll 25 gestures towards a praxis the cleaning of the Augean stables
but offers us none. A labour (the Nemean lion) is indeed narrated, but
within the context of another story. The cyclic ab ouo mode is thereby both
suggested and rejected. As the opening verse assumes prior narration, the
relation of the unity of the text to the unity of the mythos it tells becomes
a central issue of interpretation; in the light of similar phenomena seen in
other texts of the Hellenistic period, we may be more inclined to see here
the concerns of a poet than the accidents of textual transmission.
Idyll 25 certainly offers a oneness of some kind. Heracles occurs in all
three scenes; Augeias is named in two and appears in one; Phyleus is named
in one and appears in two; the poem apparently begins with Heracles arrival
at Augeias estate and ends with his departure; the crescendo of animal
challenges clearly invites a unified reading. Nevertheless, this poem has no
real praxis; its silences are deafening.
The structure of Idyll 25 is often understood through the model of rhap-
sodic recitation. As Homers Demodocus sings a particular extract from
a larger narrative continuum, so Idyll 25 would, on this view, offer three
samplers from a large whole. It is plain also that the scenic structure of
Idyll 25 must be seen together with the general tendency of the age towards
the dramatisation of narrative. Nevertheless, the particular shape of this
narrative experiment is determined by the themes of the poem as a whole.
99 Cf. the testimonia gathered in EGF pp. 1423; Bond on Eur. HF 359ff.
100 Cf. EGF pp. 12935; G. L. Huxley, Greek Poetry from Eumelos to Panyassis (London 1969) 99112.
101 Cf. Hunter (1993a) 192.
Idyll 25 suggests not merely the breakup of literary epic into constituent
parts on the rhapsodic (or anthologising) model, but also pre-epic, a
form in which the silences wait for 4 to fill them. Its generic
consciousness is as historical as that of Theocritus bucolic poetry or the
Alexandra of Lycophron.102 As with the play with Heracles identity, we are
offered a world before kleos or, rather, before # &'. The Hellenistic
fondness for childhood and beginnings has now been extended to generic
form.
5 the e u r o pa of moschus
Roughly a century separates Theocritus from his fellow Syracusan Moschus,
whose Europa has often been used as the base from which generalisations
about Hellenistic narrative are made.103 In fact, there are significant differ-
ences between the manner of this poem and the third-century narratives of
both Theocritus and Callimachus.
The Europa tells how Zeus, in the shape of a bull, carried Europa from
Phoenicia to Crete where, as Zeus tells her, she is to conceive his glorious
sons, who will all hold the sceptre of power among men (vv. 1601). Never-
theless, the double aetiological focus of the narrative the founding of the
Cretan royal house and Europa giving her name to Europe is given little
prominence in the poem. The second theme plays over the narrative of a
dream, in which Europa saw herself being fought over by two women, who
were in fact continents (the mainland opposite Asia is still nameless, v. 9),
but the relative unimportance of the theme is clear from a glance at the
contrasting prominence of the motif in Horaces lyric version of the story
(c.3.27). The non-teleological nature of the narrative is of a piece with the
central character of the story which Moschus tells. Zeus desire for Europa
is not part of a grand plan, but (apparently) merely one of Aphrodites
games (vv. 1, 76);104 we are perhaps to see the Europa story as one example,
among many possible ones, of how Aphrodite deceives the subtle mind of
102 Cf. below, pp. 43743. It is very tempting to associate the form of Idyll 25 with the belief that,
after Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey were preserved by rhapsodes in scattered or broken form,
until put back together again at the behest of Peisistratus; for the evidence cf. R. Merkelbach, Die
pisistratische Redaktion der homerischen Gedichte RhM 95 (1952) 2347, pp. 437. Merkelbach
would date this theory as early as the fourth century, though few have been inclined to follow him.
103 For the Europa cf. esp. Buhler (1960), Campbell (1991), Hopkinson (1988) 20015; on the sources
for the myth in both literature and art cf. W. Buhler, Europa (Munich 1968), and for the reception
of the myth in Western art cf. Il mito di Europa da fanciulla rapita a continente (Florence 2002).
Whether there is any significance in Moschus, whose name means bullcalf , writing the story of
Europa carried off by a bull, I do not know.
104 Horace made this same motivation much more explicit (cf. c.3.27.6673).
Zeus whenever she likes, and easily mates him with mortal women, without
Hera knowing (h. Aphr. 3840, cf. Europa 778); the Europa is, as it were, a
single episode from the Hesiodic Catalogue treated in the modern manner,
and it is indeed the Catalogues version of the story of Europa which seems
to have been a principal influence upon Moschus (cf. Hesiod frs. 1405
M.-W.).105 Nevertheless, Aphrodites role is also given no particular
prominence: does Aphrodite know that Zeus will be on hand to see Europa
on the beach on this particular day? The question is, of course, a silly
one, but it points to the very deliberate planlessness which Moschus has
imposed on the first part of his poem. The dream unlike those of Nausicaa
and Medea does not lead to some action or resolve which furthers the
narrative (except in so far as it is seen to make Europa receptive in erotically
charged situations);106 Europa indeed seems to dismiss her fear rather
nonchalantly (27) and then go about her everyday pastimes. Aetiology,
teleology and narrative consequence are thus replaced by the portrait of a
(paradoxically) universal experience. What dominates the poem is Europas
own awakened sexuality and her naive innocence.
The didactic detail (v. 5) with which the dream is introduced dreams
just before dawn are true is no mere learned footnote. Europas dream
is sent by Kypris, but we may be surprised to find that Kypris is bound by
the patterns of natural science. In fact, the dream is also clearly a function
of the kind of sleep she is enjoying a sweet sleep described in erotic
language and the hour of the night; a further explanation for the dream is
suggested by the description of her as still a virgin (v. 7) this is the kind of
dream that young unmarried women must have. Such double motivation,
divine agency working alongside the realism of natural science, is a familiar
feature of epic narrative, but in the present case it has a special purpose.
The Europa narrative is full of the supernatural; at the level of plot, the
story is only possible with a god in the role of abducting male. By giving
such prominence to parallel causation at the head of the poem, Moschus
forces us to read the mythical story as that of a universal pattern; the once
upon a time of the opening verse gives way to the timeless repetitions and
truths of vv. 25.
The principal techniques for the universalisation of Europas experi-
ence are the confirmatory use of models from previous epic particularly
Homers Nausicaa and Apollonius Medea and a constant interplay
105 For Moschus debt to the Catalogue narrative cf. Campbell (1991) 13, Hunter (forthcoming); for
the Europia of Eumelos cf. M. L. West, JHS 122 (2002) 1268.
106 For dreams prompting the dreamer to action cf. (outside high poetry) Arist. On Prophecy in Sleep
463a 2732.
between the language applicable to animals and that applicable to men.
As with Medea, sexual awakening is presented as a choice: in Apollonius
Argonautica the choice is between parents and lover, but also between
Colchis and Greece; for Europa also there is a choice between continents
(vv. 815), and in both poems the choice will result in a westward move-
ment towards Greek culture. Europa dreams that two continents struggle
for possession of her, and in her dream she has a clear preference (v. 14) to
go away with the nameless one dressed in foreign garb, thus abandoning
the one who had given her birth and nourished her (v. 12). It is not merely
that leaving home and parents is the experience of any Greek girl getting
married, but the language used to describe the actions of the nameless
woman clearly evokes rape by a male:
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The other lady, using the strength of her powerful arms, was trying to drag [Europa]
off not against her will . . . (Moschus, Europa 1314)
In the almost paradoxical tension between the need for force and Europa
being not unwilling (contrast Persephone at h. Dem.19) lies precisely a
familiar feature of the male view of female sexuality.107 So, too, Europas
subsequent account to herself of her dream seems rather at odds with the
narrators account of the dream:
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Who was the foreign woman whom I saw in my dream? How desire for her seized
my heart! How gladly she welcomed me and looked upon me as her own child!
(Moschus, Europa 246)
This misrepresentation may be read as a marker of her feelings of arousal,108
but like the apparent paradox of vv. 1314, it exploits a doubleness in the
Greek male view of female sexuality, both in the context of marriage and
rape or abduction. In the former case, the girl passes willingly into a new
family, which welcomes her and treats her as its own child; in the latter,
the sense of disgrace occurred by the female obscures nice questions of
107 Cf. Buhler (1960) 59; Toohey (1992) 106; Campbell (1991) 6, The single most striking feature of
Moschus treatment is the subtle and oblique way in which the question of [Europas] consent is
made to dominate the poem; for the matter in general cf. e.g. C. Sourvinou-Inwood, Reading
Greek Culture (Oxford 1991) 6870 (with the bibliography cited there).
108 Cf. Campbell (1991) 7; ibid. 24 she blatantly twists the facts.
responsibility, so that, whatever the circumstances, the woman is made to
feel and comes to feel herself guilty. Social codes are constructed such
that no woman is raped or abducted unwillingly.109 Both descriptions of
the behaviour of the nameless woman are focalised by Europa to make
this doubleness clear; despite the fact that the first description is third-
person narrative, it carries no authorial seal of truth,110 except in so far
as both descriptions are true. This is not so much an exploration of the
shifting relationship between dream experience and dream recollection,111
but a presentation of the crucial doubleness which runs through the whole
poem.
Europas willingness and desire (
) is stated explicitly in the dream
and her recollection of it, for it is in dreams (both real and literary) that the
unsayable can be spoken. So, too, it is in a dream that Medea makes a posi-
tive choice for Jason over her parents (Arg. 3.62831), whereas in the narrative
proper it requires Heras intervention to make the terrified girl abandon
Colchis (4.1123). Behind both dreams lies Nausicaas dream (Od. 6.2540),
in which the disguised Athena explicitly foretells her imminent marriage
and urges Nausicaa to make preparations. Nausicaas eagerness is displayed
in the subsequent narrative (she goes straight off to her father), rather than
expressed directly by Homer, but later poets saw the matter clearly enough.
Moschus central concern with the passage from girlhood to womanhood
is confirmed by the fact that it ends with Europa becoming a mother (of
sons), for it is precisely in the bearing of a son that a womans transition is
completed.112
The force which holds both Nausicaa and Medea within the realms of
propriety is *'Z, the sense of proper limits. Nausicaa is restrained by
aido s from mentioning fertile marriage to her father (Od. 6.667), and
it is aido s which restrains Medea from action which will bring her closer
to Jason (Arg. 3.64953, 6812); for both characters aido s acts as a check
upon speech. In this matter, Moschus heroine is quite different. Not only
is she forward in responding to the bulls attentions (vv. 95109), but it is
silence which is used to characterise her ambivalent attitude towards what
is happening to her. As the bull carries her off she calls to her friends and
109 It is these social codes which make Men. Epitr. 914 Charisios comes to realise that his wifes rape
was a misfortune to which she did not consent so interesting a text.
110 A partial exception must be made for vv. 89: only the narrator can know that these women are
really continents.
111 For a related phenomenon cf. Arist. On Dreams 458b 1626.
112 The last verse is a notorious textual and interpretative problem, but I do not think the point made
here is affected.
stretches out her arms to them (vv. 11112), but there seems no distress.113
During the first part of the sea-voyage, which is also her (and every womans)
wedding procession,114 Europa says nothing, and her billowing dress even
functions like a sail to speed them on their way (vv. 12930). When she
does finally speak, it is not to express any sense of shame for the position
in which she finds herself, but rather surprise at the apparent adunaton
of an aquatic bull; what self-pity there is (vv. 1468) does not conceal her
responsibility for what has happened, even though this is hardly fair on
herself, and evokes the pattern, applicable both to marriage and elope-
ment, of abandoning the fathers house and following a man [or, in this
case, bull];115 the speech ends with a brief prayer for Poseidons protection,
for it is not without the gods that I am making this watery journey.116
In presenting herself as having chosen to leave her home with the bull,
she may be acknowledging her less than reluctant role in the foreplay on
the beach,117 and/or striking a rhetorical pose which will provoke a positive
response from her divine abductor,118 but she also certainly articulates the
familiar double standard of Greek views of sexual behaviour; she repre-
sents what has happened as it will be represented: no woman is carried off
unwillingly.
As for the second technique of universalisation, Greek poetry standardly
denotes young girls as heifers or fillies, and their first sexual experiences as
a taming or breaking in by a man;119 the Europa turns such language into
a mythic system by giving it tangible form. The man is now a bull,120 who
can be caressed and kissed and who can caress back (vv. 936), precisely
because he is an animal, rather than a human male, and as such not bound
in the decencies and proprieties of high literature (to say nothing of real
life).121 The sensual language of such descriptions requires us to assimilate
these physical acts to human sexual behaviour; what cannot be described
in the decent language of epic narrative is (paradoxically) made possible
113 Note the pointed contrast again with Persephone (h. Dem. 201).
114 Cf. Buhler (1960) 163; K. Gutzwiller, CA 11 (1992) 200.
115 Strengthened by echoes of the Apollonian Medea, cf. Arg. 4.3609 (a much more bitter complaint),
Buhler (1960) 1857.
116 We know that Poseidon will indeed be propitious (cf. v. 120), but not perhaps in the way Europa
expects. Poseidon himself was to make Europas future daughter-in-law, Pasiphae, fall in love with a
bull; Bacchylides dithyrambic narrative of that
(fr. 26 Maehler) may have had some influence
upon Moschus.
117 Cf. Buhler (1960) 187. 118 Campbell (1991) 114.
119 So already Europa is \, ' 5% '
#% in Hesiod (fr. 141.2 M.-W.).
120 Cf. the rare &Q of Aesch. Ag. 245 (Iphigeneia) and Ar. Lys. 21617. Apollonius Medea
struggled with bulls in a dream which evokes both her assistance to Jason and her nascent sexual
desire (and coming loss of virginity), Arg. 3.6234 (with Hunters note on 61632).
121 Cf. English petting from pet.
by the strategy of presenting a woman in love with a bull, something
normally reserved for pornographic fantasy.122 Even if some features of the
description of the bull are as appropriate to a handsome human hero as to a
bull,123 Europas dealings with the finely horned bull124 are indeed, at one
level, a salacious treat for Moschus readers, but the very salaciousness, not
unlike the realism of Theocritus Idyll 24,125 is a technique which outlaws
all literalist reading strategies; the poem dramatises how myth means. So,
too, the importance of apparent paradox points in the same direction: from
the erotic sleep which both releases and binds (v. 4) to the bull which runs
on water, the poem takes place in a kind of topsy-turvy wonderland which
focuses our attention (and belief) on the underlying narrative pattern,
rather than on the mythical details per se. As such, the Europa is a significant
text for the history of Hellenistic literary myth.
The structure of the Europa126 is clear and linear Europas dream (vv. 1
27), expedition to the beach and description of Europas basket (vv. 2862),
picking flowers (vv. 6371), Zeus desire and appearance on the beach in
bull-form (vv. 72107), Europas abduction (vv. 10830), Europas mono-
logue (vv. 13152), Zeus reply (vv. 15361), arrival in Crete and marriage
(vv. 1626) though various patterns of theme and imagery may be traced
across the individual sections.127 There is a pervasive verbal debt to Homer128
and Apollonius (sometimes both together), covering both vocabulary and
specific, contextualised echoes,129 and the authorial voice remains largely in
the background, not insistently present as in (say) Callimachus Hymns and
elegiac narratives and in the Argonautica of Apollonius.130 The one striking
exception131 but an exception sanctioned by Homeric practice (e.g. Il.
10.3367) is the transition from the flower-picking to the appearance of
the bull-Zeus:
122 Cf. Campbell on v. 95.

123 Note the bulls fair hair (84), the erotic gleam in its eyes (86) etc. Euripides Pasiphae argued that
her passion for a bull must have been a god-sent madness, because she would hardly have fallen in
love with a bull: [Did I fancy] the gleam of its flaming hair and eyes? (fr. 82 Austin).
124 For the double entendre in (both horn and penis) cf. R. Pretagostini, =^;<. Nascita e
storia di una metafora in Lirica Greca da Archiloco a Elitis (Padua 1984) 5160.
125 Cf. above, p. 206. 126 Cf. Buhler (1960) 445.
127 R. Schmiel, Moschus Europa CP 76 (1981) 26172, Hopkinson (1988) 202, C. Cusset, Le
jeu poetique dans lEurope de Moschos Bulletin de lAssociation Guillaume Bude (2001). 62
82, M. Paschalis, Etymology and enargeia: re-reading Moschus Europa (vis-a-vis Hor. C.
3.27) in C. Nifadopoulos (ed.), Etymologia. Studies in Ancient Etymology (Munster 2003)
15363.
128 Cf. L. M. Raminella, Mosco imitatore di Omero Maia 4 (1951) 26279.
129 For Homer, the most striking is perhaps 79 Od. 11.235 (the wave hiding Poseidon and Tyro as
they made love).
130 Cf. Campbell (1991) 8, Hunter (1993a) 11415.
131 Less striking exceptions include the opening (cf. above, p. 192), you would say . . . (978).
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Not for long was she to delight her heart with flowers, nor keep her virgins girdle
long unravaged. For the moment the son of Kronos saw her, his heart was tortured
as he yielded to the unexpected arrows of Kypris, who alone can subdue even Zeus.
(Moschus, Europa 726)
This seems to be an echo and variation (note the quite different roles played
by Hera!) of a similar foreshadowing at Argonautica 3.11326:132
%! #U X ', &4% % ##
6^##(' ( U H
4' g 7)
A , J #" e 8 C@#, l
;* 04' #%C . ' 5.
Poor girl! Not for long would she refuse to live in Hellas! So was Hera planning,
that Medea of Aia should abandon her native land and reach holy Iolkos to bring
disaster upon Pelias. (Apollonius, Argonautica 3.11336)
Whereas Medeas flight to Greece will bring misery on a large scale and
enormous suffering to Medea herself (%! #), Europas fate seems an
altogether more minor matter, one in which, as we have seen, Europa herself
is constructed by the narrative as at least complaisant; the immediately
preceding simile in which she is compared to Aphrodite, rather than
Artemis, as in the Homeric and Apollonian models confirms this picture.
Whereas, in both Homer and Apollonius, the x was not destined . . . type
of foreshadowing is predominantly used for negative happenings, Europas
attitude to what is to happen to her has already been seen to be at least
ambivalent. The poet signals his foreknowledge and (unusually) emphasises
narrative consequence at this point because the entrance of male desire
into the poem is the hinge around which the whole narrative swings; Zeus
desire (even when Aphrodite has mastery over him) is narrative coherence,
(cf. v. 162. Thus he spoke, and it was accomplished in just the way he had
spoken.)
The description clearly set off by ring composition (vv. 37, 61) of
the marvellous golden basket which Europa carries to the beach is a most
important text for the history of ekphrasis technique.133 It is in ekphrasis, the
132 For the technique in general cf. Hunter ad loc.
133 Cf. esp. A. Perutelli, Linversione speculare: per una retorica dellekphrasis MD 1 (1978) 8798.
Moschus Io fashioned of gold (v. 44) goes back to the cattle depicted on the Shield of Achilles (Il.
18.574), but it is at least curious that Bacchylides too refers to her as !$% 9 (19.16); Campbell
(on Europa 44) believes that Bacchylides too was influenced by an artistic representation.
description of works of art (which may or may not have some relation to real
artefacts in the contemporary world), that poets could explore the limits of
narrative freedom and interpretation, for a work of art seemed to present a
fixed catalogue of presences which could be directly told. Hellenistic poets
(like their Roman successors) never tired of exploring the inadequacies of
such a view; what was crucial was, in fact, the series of selections imposed
by the controlling poet. As such, ekphrasis is to some extent analogous to
the way in which poets dealt with the inherited body of myth, an analogy
actually activated when, as here, the described work of art depicts a story
from myth.
For the description of the basket, Moschus may well have had specific
works of art in mind,134 but his ekphrastic technique must be understood
against the inherited traditions of the form. Whereas the Homeric Shield,
the cloak of Jason in the Argonautica, and the cup of Theocritus, Idyll 1,
all present discrete scenes, whose interconnections and relations to each
other and the framing narrative are implicit and shifting, Europas basket is
decorated with three scenes which depict moments from the myth of Io
Io metamorphosed into a cow (vv. 449), Zeus touch impregnating Io in
Egypt (vv. 504), Hermes and Argos (v. 55 vv. 612). The ekphrasis itself
has now become a narrative, and a narrative quite different from that of the
framing poem, which is focused on one specific incident (the abduction of
Europa); the scenes on the basket offer an alternative poetics from that of the
epyllion.135 Moreover, there is a clear, but shifting set of verbal analogies
and parallels between the basket description and the framing narrative.
In the first scene, Io is introduced as daughter of Inachos, still a heifer
(v.45), as Europa was first introduced as daughter of Phoenix, Europa, still
a virgin (v. 7). Europa is to be abducted by Zeus in bull form, whereas Io
was changed into a cow (also 9, v. 52 v. 153) in order that Zeus
could satisfy his lust, and Zeus impregnation of Io by touching (50) returns
as Europas caressing of the bull (v. 95). The amazement at a seafaring bull
of the men depicted on the basket (vv. 489) foreshadows Europas own
wonderment (vv. 13545).136 Whether or not the rising of the peacock from
the blood (4 &C l) of Argos evokes Europas own father
Phoenix, who shared his name with a famously mythic bird, has divided
134 For the myth of Io in art cf. N. Yalouris, LIMC V s.v. Io I.
135 Cf. Barchiesi (1997a) 2747 on the Shield of Aeneas as an alternative structure to that of the Aeneid,
in which it occurs.
136 Cf. Campbell (1991) 545. More uncertainly, vv. 489 may echo Il. 13.1213 (of Poseidon),
immediately before the marine procession which is the primary model for Europa 11530;
if so, ekphrasis and subsequent narrative will be linked by allusion to the same Homeric
passage.
critics of the poem; at the very least, the killing of the watcher suggests
the removal of parental guardianship, which must be associated with every
abduction story. Be that as it may, at one level the lesson is an obvious one:
Europas basket belonged to her grandmother Libye, who was raped by
a god and gave her name to Libya; and it depicted the rape by a god of
her grandmother Io, eponym of Ionia. Europa inherits not only the basket,
but also the experiences depicted on it (Hopkinson (1988) 206).137 The
paraded avoidance, however, of any neat or exact parallelism once again
forces us to turn from the details of any particular telling to the meaning
which unites the stories; as such, the technique of the Europa has important
features in common with other Hellenistic mythic narratives. The ekphrastic
description itself now functions as a rhetorical figure, a kind of simile writ
large; a better analogy, perhaps, might be from tragic choruses (or some odes
of Pindar), which often delve into the sea of myth to sing narratives which
are, often obliquely, parallel to the framing events. Meaning emerges from
patterns, not from the correspondence of individual details. This technique,
which was to have such significance in Latin poetry, was the result both of
developments in mythic thought in the Hellenistic period and of specific
reflection by poets and scholars on the inherited form of the ekphrasis; as
Hopkinson ((1988) 201) well notes, the stress on lineage and pedigree [of
the basket] provides an interesting parallel with the self-conscious literary
ancestry of the ekphrasis itself.
Europa and the bull was a very common theme of pictorial art,138 and
vv. 11530 (the marine procession) may be directly indebted to artistic
representations; by juxtaposing the narratives of Io and Europa, the one
portrayed in art and then reinscribed into literature, the other a literary
description which evokes known works of art, Moschus directs our atten-
tion not merely to the relationship between the myths, but also to major
questions concerning the interpretation of art and narrative. The scenes
of Io as a cow and of Zeus impregnation are described in the chronolog-
ical sequence of the myth, and therefore imply or create a narrative. The
placing of the killing of Argos in a separate field and the fact that it is
described last, although in virtually all accounts of the myth it preceded
Ios crazed journey, is not to be ascribed merely to the fact that Moschus
was following archaic practice in describing the outer boundary last,139 but
137 The history of the basket here perhaps stands in for the golden necklace which, in other versions,
Zeus received from Hephaistos and gave to Europa, who gave it to Cadmus who gave it to his
wife Harmonia (Hes. fr. 141 M.-W., Apollod. 3.4.2)). The necklace would have commemorated the
lovemaking of Zeus and Europa, just as the basket foreshadows it.
138 Cf. M, Robertson, LIMC IV s.v. Europe I. 139 Cf. Il. 18.6078, Buhler (1960) 104.
rather draws attention to the fact that art requires an authorised viewer for
its interpretation; the role of the poet in the organisation of material is here
foregrounded in a novel way which leads directly to the experiments of the
Latin neoteric poets.
6 the p h a i n o m e n a o f arat us
6.1 Aratus and didactic poetry

Through the Latin translations of (inter alios) Cicero and Germanicus, and
because of Virgils extensive use of the poem in the Georgics, Aratus Phain-
omena forms a genuine bridge between Greek and Latin poetic traditions.140
It is not, however, merely its extraordinary Nachleben which makes the
Phainomena one of the more remarkable products of third-century poetry.
In its striking combination of science and wit, creative engagement with
tradition, and innovative experimentation with poetic voice, Aratus poem
is a primary witness to the responses of the period to the need to find new
modes for poetic expression.
The Phainomena was probably composed in the period c. 280260 bc,
perhaps at the court at Pella of Antigonos Gonatas, whose patronage Aratus
is known to have enjoyed. The 1154 hexameters fall broadly into two sec-
tions,141 an astronomical account of the poles and constellations (vv. 19757)
and a guide to weather signs in nature (7581141); the latter has often been
considered, by both ancient and modern scholars, as a separate poem (the
Diosemeiai), but the two sections clearly belong together Aratus was
not the first to bring astronomy and weather lore together 142 and the
structure of the whole, in which the repetition of ideas and words, rather
than neatly signposted transitions, acts as a unifying force, is part of Aratus
140 For Ovids partial translation see frs. 12 Courtney. On the ancient reception of the Phainomena
see E. Maass, Aratea (Berlin 1892), J. Martin, Histoire du texte des Phenomenes dAratos (Paris 1956),
Kidd (1997) 3668, M. Fantuzzi in Der neue Pauly s.v. Aratos, E. Gee, Ciceros astronomy CQ
51 (2001) 52036. Some of the present chapter offers a revised and abbreviated version of Hunter
(1995c).
141 The structure of the poem has been much discussed; a major break after v. 732 was diagnosed very
early in its reception, (a papyrus text of the first century ad places a coronis before v. 733). For surveys
of this problem and the evidence cf. Erren (1967) 22733; Ludwig (1963) 42939; id., Gnomon 43
(1971) 353; id., RE Suppl. 10. 301; J. Martin, Les Phenomenes dAratos. Etude sur la composition
du poeme in Lastronomie dans lantiquite classique (Paris 1979) 91104; Kidd (1997) on 73357.
142 Cf. C. Wessely, Bruchstucke einer antiken Schrift uber Wetterzeichen SWAW 142, 1 (1900), cf.
O. Neugebauer, Uber griechische Wetterzeichen und Schattentafeln SOAW 240, 2 (1962). The
relation of the text published by Wessely to Aratus poem remains, however, disputed, cf. Martin
(1998) cxvcxxi.
mimesis of the archaic manner of Hesiods Works and Days.143 The whole
is preceded, again like the Works and Days, by a proemial Hymn to Zeus
(vv. 118),144 and vv. 75877 form a second proem and transition to the
weather signs, both echoing the Hymn to Zeus and looking forward to
the final conclusion of the whole (vv. 114254). So, too, the broad shift from
the grandeur of astronomical patterns to the lower and smaller signs in
nature (mice are the last weather sign, vv. 113241) evokes the passage from
the moralising and mythical first part of the Works and Days to the more
everyday material of the farming and calendar sections. The Phainomena
closes with a programmatic assertion of the poems usefulness:
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If you have watched for these signs all together for the year, you will never make
an uninformed judgement on the evidence of the sky. (Aratus, Phainomena 11534,
trans. Kidd)
Aratus here picks up the close of the Works and Days, which he reads
creatively as a makarismos of the man who has heeded Hesiods advice
(i.e. read the Works and Days with attention):145
( ' A#9 p (' (
*'O (_ & &(%)
A 2 9% &# .
Happy and blessed is that man who knows all these things and works blameless in
the eyes of the gods, judging the flight of birds and avoiding transgression. (Hesiod,
WD 8268)
Both poets, of course, lay great store on reading bird signs and avoiding
transgression. Hesiods poem ends with an affirmation of the power of
knowledge to overcome uncertainty, an uncertainty that is a central princi-
ple of mens lives (WD 4834); that knowledge, and the power to offer it to
others, is precisely what the poet claims for himself.146 Aratus poem carries
this claim further by eliminating uncertainty not only from the poem, but
also from the world itself.
143 Kidd (1997) on 1153 notes an echo there of the proem (v. 11). Fakas (2001) offers an excellent account
of Aratus large-scale mimesis of Hesiod.
144 Cf. below, p. 231.
145 Whether or not WD originally closed with these verses is not material here.
146 Who better fits the prescription of the final three verses of WD than the poet himself? Notice the
echo of these Hesiodic verses in Archestratus didactic culinary poem (SH 169.45 = fr. 39.45
OlsonSens).
Although Hesiod is the principal didactic model in the Phainomena, the
material of the poem is largely drawn from prose sources. For the constella-
tions, Aratus was principally indebted to the Phainomena of the pioneering
astronomer Eudoxus of Cnidus, written perhaps as much as a century
earlier; the debt was identified by the second-century bc astronomer,
Hipparchus, whose commentary (M4 %) on the works of Eudoxus
and Aratus survives.147 Although Hipparchus alleges that Aratus debt to
Eudoxus was generally doubted before his own work,148 there is no reason
to believe that Aratus intended to conceal his debt to technical sources or
to doubt that Aratus first readers understood the nature of what they were
reading. Moreover, Hipparchus severe criticism of Aratus astronomical
errors did nothing to affect his fame as a poet. The second section of the
poem, on weather signs, is in parts very close to a surviving epitome, prob-
ably in fact later in date than Aratus, of a peripatetic treatise of the fourth
century, perhaps by Theophrastus (= Theophrastus fr. vi Wimmer); this
is certainly the milieu in which Aratus ultimate source for the section on
weather signs is to be sought.149
The heavy dependence upon, and partial versifying of, written prose
sources has standardly been taken to show that the Phainomena, and Hel-
lenistic didactic poetry in general, is in essence a virtuoso literary exercise
with no real didactic purpose.150 The only other view of the Phainomena
which is at all common is to see the astronomy not as an end in itself, but
rather as the vehicle through which Aratus promulgates a Stoicising view
of the cosmos and of divine beneficence.151 The ancient biographies indeed
147 The standard edition is the Teubner of C. Manitius (Leipzig 1894). Martin (1998) xxxvicii offers
a radical reappraisal of this literary history: the text which Hipparchus claims was Aratus model,
far from being a work of Eudoxus (so already Boker and Erren), was itself incompetently derived
from Aratus, and pre-Hipparchan discussion must have concerned the relation between Aratus and
other, perhaps genuinely Eudoxan, texts. On this theory, Hipparchus motives remain (at best)
unclear.
148 1.2.1 ' , '%(_ % 5 ##5. These many presumably include the many
others who, according to Hipparchus (1.1.3), wrote commentaries on Aratus poem before him.
The story in the Lives that Antigonos Gonatas told Aratus to versify Eudoxus work is probably a
post-Hipparchan fiction, although the kings bon mot 'M
5 , ^3'M might just
be a contemporary joke. Cf. Cameron (1995) 194202 and, for the narratives of patronage presented
in these Lives, Hunter (2003b) 412.
149 For a discussion of the problems cf. O. Regenbogen, RE Suppl. 7. 141215, Kidd (1997) 213,
Martin (1998) ciiicviii. D. Sider and W. Brunschon are to argue that Aratus source was in fact
an abbreviation by Eudoxus of Aristotles work on weather signs, cf. D. Sider, Pindar Olympian
11 and Greek weather lore in AccorintiChuvin (2003) 16772, p. 167 n. 2. If correct, this would
have important implications for the structure and nature of the Phainomena.
150 This is the underlying position of Fakas (2001). There is a helpful survey of ancient and mod-
ern views of classical didactic poetry in K. Volk, The Poetics of Latin Didactic (Oxford 2002)
chapter 2.
151 So, e.g., Effe (1977) 4056.
associate Aratus (and Antigonos) with well-known Stoics; later Stoics are
known to have taken a particular interest in the Phainomena, and a Stoic
reading of the Phainomena as a poem about a unified kosmos reflecting
divine ordering (kosmos) has proved fruitful.152 The sequential progress of
the poem mirrors the sequential certainty of the fixed stars and constella-
tions (cf. vv. 4513), put there by gods benevolence, which also allows us
to read them and to act upon our reading. How exclusively Stoic is Aratus
conception of an ordered and divinely governed universe, in which every
part is in some kind of sympathy with every other part, may however be
debated, and the alleged Stoicism of the poem, and even of the proemial
hymn in which some allusion to Stoic ideas (as part of a captatio beneuolen-
tiae to Antigonus?) is hard to deny, has indeed been overstated in modern
criticism.153 What is clear, however, is that throughout the poem Aratus
reads Hesiod through the lens of later cultural and literary developments,
thereby constructing Hesiod as the forerunner of those developments: the
Stoic Zeus becomes one of these natural developments from Hesiodic
thought.
Aratus use of written sources raises a fundamental question about the
nature of didactic poetry. The fourth-century explosion in scientific and
philosophical prose meant that information was now stored in books, as
well as handed down through more traditional channels, including poetry.
Recourse to those books was not only natural, but inevitable for one
writing a poem on a technical subject. The social function and prominence
of poetry had certainly changed, but the versification of prose treatises is
not inevitably (just) a literary exercise, because those treatises were now
themselves part of tradition. The use of expertly written sources was in
fact the only way in which the poet could claim respectable authority for
his work. Like Callimachus, Aratus can still appeal to the Muses (vv. 1618),
but the Muses now embraced written texts and professional knowledge.154
Hesiod too, no doubt, drew upon a very long tradition of wisdom poetry
in composing the Works and Days,155 but his use of this heritage tells us little
about the purpose, as opposed to the origins, of his poem. If, moreover,
the way a text is used can shed any light upon the original nature of that
text, the rapid adoption of the Phainomena as a school text suggests that
152 Cf. Hunter (1995c), E. Gee, Ovid, Aratus and Augustus: Astronomy in the Fasti of Ovid (Cambridge
2000) chapter 3.
153 So, rightly, Fakas (2001) 538, who instructively compares the very different hymns to Zeus of
Cleanthes and Callimachus.
154 Cf. Bing (1988). 155 Cf. M. L. West, Hesiod, Works and Days (Oxford 1978) 330.
ancient pedagogues were not so wary of the poems didactic status as some
of their modern counterparts have been.
Aratus was not, nor pretended to be, an expert astronomer; he was an
expert, professional poet (a sophos), and part of his expertise lay in acquiring
knowledge, from whatever sources, and the exploitation of that knowledge
in poetic modes. Moreover, it is far from Aratus purpose to claim special,
privileged scientific knowledge; that indeed would run counter to a central
theme of the poem. The grouping of stars into figural constellations was, in
his account, devised long ago by an unnamed man of high intellect, as a way
of overcoming the impossibility of naming and recognising each individual
star (vv. 37382). Behind this account lies the same structure of wonder and
curiosity as the origins of philosophy, to which Callimachus makes more
ironic appeal in the Aitia;156 we no longer need to greet the rising of a new
star with thauma (v. 382), because the thauma of the unnamed namer has
provided a structure of knowledge for us. This unnamed deviser does not
merely take his place within the familiar Greek habit of assigning everything
to a first inventor, but seems also to evoke a specifically didactic tradition
of praise for a great forerunner. Empedocles praise of Pythagoras, who
is not explicitly named in the passage, and Lucretius praise of Epicurus,
which reworks the Empedoclean text,157 are the most familiar examples:
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(%"% ]M ' %%)
B 5C V A ( # Q%% % E%
'C &Z C K% *Z %%.
And there was among them a man of surpassing knowledge, master especially of
all kinds of wise works, who had acquired the utmost wealth of understanding: for
whenever he reached out with all his understanding, easily he saw each of all the
things that are, in ten and even twenty generations of men. (Empedocles fr. 129
DK, trans. KirkRavenSchofield)
humana ante oculos foede cum uita iaceret
in terris oppressa graui sub religione,
quae caput a caeli regionibus ostendebat
horribili super aspectu mortalibus instans,
primum Graius homo mortalis tollere contra
est oculos ausus primusque obsistere contra;
quem neque fama deum nec fulmina nec minitanti
156 Cf. above, pp. 5960.

157 Cf. D. Sedley, Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom (Cambridge 1998) 2930.
murmure compressit caelum, sed eo magis acrem
inritat animi uirtutem, effringere ut arta
naturae primus portarum claustra cupiret.
When the life of man lay foul to see and grovelling upon the earth, crushed by
the weight of religion, which showed her face from the realms of heaven, lowering
upon mortals with dreadful mien, it was a man of Greece who dared first to stand
forth to meet her: him neither the stories of the gods nor thunderbolts checked,
nor the sky with its revengeful roar, but all the more spurred the eager daring of his
mind to yearn to be the first to break through the close-set bolts upon the doors
of nature. (Lucretius, DRN 1.6271, trans. Bailey)
Thanks to the achievements of the namer of the constellations, in whose
wake Aratus follows, like Empedocles after Pythagoras and Lucretius after
Epicurus, everyone can have relatively easy access to the signs which Zeus
displays.158 The Phainomena is itself one more witness to this openness.
Aratus indeed inscribes the process of decipherment within his poem, as
most famously in the acrostic passage discovered by J.-M. Jacques:159
? 8 X 4 D %
^3' C K) # 8 'X c (# C $4
J $U ! 'X &9# "%
s (
& , !$%
C7X
$ &9#Q C v [' b
.
If the moon is thin and her light pure on the third day, there will be fine weather;
if thin and her light very red, there will be wind; if, however, she is on the large
side and her horns are dull and her light weak on the third and fourth nights, she is
being dulled by the approach of the South Wind or of rain. (Aratus, Phainomena
7837)
The acrostic follows very closely upon a passage which seems to invite us
to look for such things:
( 3
\, . Z% ) &## C ##(
$) K #" %$ 'Z%
d QU c 8 &' &', ]##
( *'
) ( 'C V %4 .
158 Fakas (2001) 17880 stresses the (unHesiodic) absence of Zeus from this passage, an absence which
Fakas sees as part of Aratus preference for aesthetics over religiosity. The protreptic force of the
passage, however, lies precisely in its encouragement to us to imitate the first person to make
proper use of the gods beneficence (vv. 1011).
159 Sur un acrostiche dAratos (Phen., 7837) REA 62 (1960) 4861. For further possible acrostic games
in this area of the poem cf. W. Levitan, Plexed Artistry: Aratean Acrostics Glyph 5 (1979) 5568,
and M. Haslam, Hidden Signs: Aratus Diosemeiai 46ff., Vergil Georgics 1. 424ff. HSCP 94 (1992)
199204. C. Fakas, Philologus 143 (1999) 3569, detects a telestichon at vv. 2346.
For not yet does Zeus allow us to know all things, but much remains hidden; if he
wishes, Zeus will grant us this too presently, for he openly brings aid to the race
of mortals, appearing on every side, and everywhere revealing his signs. (Aratus,
Phainomena 76872)
The successful searching out of acrostic patterns by the reader recreates the
activity of the anonymous discoverer of the constellations, who perceived
the usefulness of joining together those stars which would make meaningful
figures, when distinguished from a surrounding cloud of other stars, or in
this case letters of the alphabet (vv. 37382). Just as the discoverer revealed
patterns which had always been there, and were put there by an all-creating
god, so a reader discovers meaningful signs placed by the poietes (maker)
in the apparent randomness of the first letters of a succession of hexameters.
The pattern of Zeus universe is reflected in the pattern of Aratus poem.
Here, there is an obvious and pointed contrast between the theology of
the Phainomena and that of the Works and Days. Hesiods poem presents
us with an all-powerful and all-seeing Zeus (cf. e.g. vv. 2679), who is
concerned with justice, but whose mind (
) is changeable and hard-to-
know (vv. 4834), and who has hidden from men the means of a life free
from toil (v. 42 Q: !$% 9 &Z%).160 The
themes of concealment and hiddenness are, of course, most prominent in
the myths of Pandora and the Five Ages. The Zeus of the Phainomena,
however, while also being all-seeing and concerned with justice, openly
assists mankind through the omnipresence of signs:
, ( %4 C %4M
.% ') %: 'C * $

&% l (#% $ %
&'(% F() AC ' ( Q.
Zeus himself set signs in heaven, marking out the constellations, and for the whole
year he thought out which stars should most of all give men signs of the seasons,
so that all things should grow without fail. (Aratus, Phainomena 1013)
Much remains hidden, and further progress depends upon Zeus bene-
volence (vv. 76871), but the situation is much more promising than that
which Hesiod offered:
c 8 &' &', ]##
( *'
) ( 'C V %4 .
For Zeus openly brings aid to the race of mortals, appearing on every side, and
everywhere revealing his signs. (Aratus, Phainomena 7712)
160 The classic discussions of the theme of hiding in Works and Days are those of J.-P. Vernant; cf. e.g.
R. L. Gordon (ed.), Myth, Religion and Society (Cambridge 1981) 4379.
The open visibility of the sky above us carries its own persuasive force. In a
sense, no argument is needed to support Aratus exposition: we must merely
look around. Zeus, moreover, now actually speaks (# ) to men.161 One
such speech act, and thus a sign of Zeus benevolence, is the Phainomena
itself; the poem comes as a 4 (evidentiary sign) from the Muses
(v. 18), whereas the Works and Days presents itself as the necessary product
of hard times.
Hesiods authority in the Works and Days stems from the authority
invested in a traditional poetic form and voice, from the autobiograph-
ical mode employed through the figures of his father (vv. 63340) and idle
brother, Perses,162 and from the Muses. Aratus does not emulate the Hes-
iodic use of autobiography as an authorising mode, perhaps in part because
of his Stoicising stress on the fixed order of nature, in which every individ-
ual is offered similar opportunities. A colourless second-person addressee,
whom every reader will interpret personally, conveys the universality of
Aratus message.163 The apparent exception to this universality may also be
traced to the Hesiodic heritage. Aratus sometimes speaks directly to farmers
or sailors, or speaks as though he is one of them; although everyone needs
to pay attention to Zeuss signs (cf. 4 ( 'X \, !4 ( ),
that is, to read the Phainomena with attention, farmers and sailors are of
course particularly interested in the information to be derived from stars
and weather signs. More is at stake here, however, than merely practical
considerations. The reception of the Works and Days within Greek culture
had established farming and sailing as paradigmatic for all human activity,
and all readers of Hesiodic didactic poetry, however remote their daily lives
might be from farming and seafaring, are aligned with these occupations
by the very act of sympathetic reading: Virgils Georgics represent the most
complete exploitation of this idea.
The three elements of Hesiodic authority come together in an unexpected
way when the archaic poet turns to instructions about sailing:
cC C : & % $

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' M '4 #$#%9 #(%%)
3 $# % %% 3 .
( Z C #
)
* 8 ^39 M ;#') z C C;!
161 Cf. vv. 78 (in programmatic position), 732; weather signs, as part of Zeus system, also speak
(vv. 1048, 1071).
162 Cf. esp. M. Griffith, Personality in Hesiod CA 2 (1983) 3765; G. Most, Hesiod and the Textual-
ization of Personal Temporality in Arrighetti-Montanari (1993) 7392.
163 Cf. Bing (1993), Fakas (2001) 94100; below, p. 233.
! #b %b #, .
6^##(' M e s ## Q.
' C O C . # ' C;'(
G#' C *% %U 'X ' ##(
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[" 4% 'C |Z .
, X O 0Q%"% C 6^#(' %%C &
, # $ 9% &'.

%% #$
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&## o d,
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!U
0% ( C ''M &% [ & ' .
When you want to escape debt and joyless hunger by turning your blight-witted
heart to trade, I will show you the measure of the resounding sea quite without
instruction as I am in seafaring or in ships; for as to ships, I have never yet sailed
the broad sea, except to Euboea from Aulis, the way the Achaeans once came when
they waited through the winter and gathered a great army from holy Greece against
Troy of the fair women. There to the funeral games for warlike Amphidamas and
to Chalcis I crossed, and many were the prizes announced and displayed by the
sons of that valiant; where I may say that I was victorious in poetry and won a
tripod with ring handles. That I dedicated to the Muses of Helicon, in the original
place where they set me on the path of fine singing. That is all my experience of
dowelled ships, but even so I will tell the design of Zeus the aegis-bearer, since the
Muses have taught me to make song without limit. (Hesiod, WD 64662, trans.
M. L. West)
Here is an explicit claim for the didactic role of the poet in areas where the
poet has no personal expertise.164 Hesiod has been taught by the Muses and
authorised by them to act as a medium of instruction; these are the only
references to the Muses in the Works and Days, other than in the opening
verse, and their significance seems clearly to reinforce the poets authority in
an area where it could reasonably be challenged: Hesiod, as if anticipating
the attack of the Platonic Socrates in the Ion, is indeed competent to instruct
us in sailing qua poet. Moreover, in the nautical instructions which follow
(vv. 66394), the predominant mode is that of the imperatival infinitive, an
impersonal mode which does indeed fashion the poet as merely a channel
of instruction. In the farming section of the poem, by contrast, Hesiod does
not make a special effort to establish his authority; the close links between
it and the opening moral sections of the poem, which assume an audience
engaged in agriculture, are sufficient.
164 For a different interpretation cf. R. M. Rosen, Poetry and Sailing in Hesiods Works and Days CA
9 (1990) 99113. The passage has been much discussed; for some interesting speculations about its
possible links with the Boeotian cult of Hesiod cf. R. Lamberton, ICS 13 (1988) 498504.
Even in the instructions on sailing, however, Hesiod can speak in the
first person, as though from his own experience. Here are his thoughts on
sailing in springtime:165
3
K C) $ !% %U
/
U !# Q
U &##( $ (
. B_$% &' "%
U
!4 :$!8 # ' #5% 95%.
I do not praise this, for my heart does not like it. It is a snatched sailing, and you
will do well to avoid disaster. But in their ignorance men do this, for wealth is
where wretched mens soul is. (Hesiod, WD 6826)
The lament for human greed ties the passage to the earlier, moralising
sections, bestowing upon it a similar authority. Here again, Aratus followed
suit, this time in describing the season of the hot etesian winds:
#(' % {
"
&
$%) 'X #
Z
U 5 &%
)
* . ' ' $9 ! .
This is the time when the whistling etesian winds sweep strongly across the broad
sea, and it is no longer seasonable for ships to be under oars. Then let broad-
beamed ships be my pleasure, and let helmsmen hold their steering-oars into the
wind. (Aratus, Phainomena 1525, trans. Kidd)
Whether the use of the first person is interpreted as a genuine claim to
experience, or as a conventional voicing of authority, it is clear that, as
early as Hesiod, the question of the poets knowledge of the subjects with
which he dealt had no simple or single answer; the implications for the
subsequent didactic tradition were, of course, immense, as the questions
of what the poet knows and how he knows it go to the very heart of the
nature of didactic poetry.166
What didactic poetry is and what claims it makes for itself are, however,
areas in which misconceptions persist. On the one hand, within the tonal
range of ancient factual poetry, stylistic poikilia, wit, variability of voice,
irony and so forth are often alleged to show that the poet is not serious
about his material and expects us to be similarly playful. In a particular
case this may be so, but as a generalisation it is unhelpful, because such
165 West may (or may not) be right that here, if anywhere, Hesiod parrots his father, but what is at
issue here is how the subsequent didactic tradition read Hesiod.
166 Good remarks in A. Schiesaro, The boundaries of knowledge in Virgils Georgics in T. Habinek
and A. Schiesaro (eds.), The Roman Cultural Revolution (Cambridge 1997) 6389.
phenomena are ordinary features of the poetic mode, and poetry, no less
than science, has its own conventions. Secondly, lack of completeness, for
example, has always presented a problem for any simple understanding
of poetic didaxis. Thus, for example, Malcolm Heath167 has adduced the
astonishingly lacunose information in the Works and Days as an argu-
ment against seeing it as seriously intended to instruct. Now, if a poet
tells us how to make a plough, it would of course be foolish to believe
that we can extrapolate from this to the detailed carpentry necessary for
a wagon. Nevertheless, the plough, the work involved in making it, and
the moral conditions which make it necessary, can stand, pars pro toto,
as exemplary of the total working conditions of the farmer.168 Didactic
poetry does not have to be comprehensive to be didactic. It gives us exam-
ples, exemplary signs, to guide us as we move beyond the confines of the
poem.
If we do want full and complete information, there are plenty of treatises
and handbooks to which we can have recourse.169 Thus, for example, the
fourth-century Rhetoric to Alexander begins by sub-dividing the topic to be
discussed, in order to convey a sense of the completeness of the knowledge
being offered; the author then undertakes to discuss the sub-divisions one-
by-one (C u E%). In On Horse-riding, Xenophon notes that he will
cover much the same ground as an existing treatise by one Simon, but he
will also fill in all the gaps (I shall attempt to illuminate all that he has
omitted, 1.1), and in On Hunting, he undertakes to give a full account of
each piece of equipment needed (2.2). This rhetoric of completeness in
the handbooks may be compared with Thucydides claim (5.26.1) to give
a fully detailed account of the Peloponnesian war, F E% , a
claim which is clearly of a piece with the presentation of his work as seri-
ous history, in comparison with the entertaining display pieces of others
(1.22), and Hipparchus uses precisely the same rhetoric of completeness
in the introduction to his account of the failings of Eudoxus and Aratus
(1.1.911). In one sense, in fact, it is the task of didactic poetry to draw out
the general truths (
#$) which underlie collections of individual
facts ( E%). Aratus himself makes this clear with a form of prae-
teritio to explain the lack of comprehensiveness in his account of weather
signs:
167 Hesiods didactic poetry CQ 35 (1985) 24563.

168 For a related account (independent of Hunter (1995c)) cf. S. Nelson, The Drama of Hesiods Farm
CP 91 (1996) 4553; Nelson sees Hesiods description of farming as intended to capture not how
farming looks, but how it feels (48).
169 For a more detailed comparison of the Phainomena with fourth-century technai cf. Hunter (1995c).
# V%% #
%4 C C &Z$
Why should I tell of all the signs available to men? (Aratus, Phainomena 10367)
On one hand, there are so many signs in nature that it would be impossible
to tell them all, and in any case Aratus wants us to observe for ourselves
and to find our own signs; on the other hand, there is no point in trying
to be exhaustive, both because the general truth the availability of signs
has already been more than adequately established and because this is not
the way in which Aratus conceives of the reception of his poem. Whereas
systematic philosophy and the technical handbook seek to close down
options, didactic poetry can offer multiple readings which draw on diverse
traditions and emphasise the role of the reader, rather than that of the
omniscient teacher. Here again, Aratus points the way very clearly towards
Virgils Georgics.
It is, in fact, of the greatest importance that Aratus is not a Eudoxus (or a
Hipparchus), and therefore is (in principle, at least) available to all who are
able to read him.170 The poem thus continues in a new mode the age-old
position of the poet as communal repository of wisdom. One passage which
stresses our universal need is vv. 10941103:
'X X ] & # -
&4)
4% V ## #4%%% &Q
!$ ) ! U ' ' 'C *
&) 4 e , &!Q #"
! & . ! ' $ *
# &4
5 ] %%) 8 K%)
#
#$ # $.
[ &#4 .## .##
_Z .U 'X % ( +5
%4 C 4%%.
The mainland farmer does not like flocks of birds, when from the islands in
large numbers they invade his cornlands at the coming of summer: he is terribly
alarmed for his harvest, in case it turns out empty ears and chaff, distressed by
drought. But the goatherd is rather pleased with the same birds, when they come
in moderate numbers, because he expects thereafter a year of plentiful milk. So it is
that we suffering mortals make a living in different ways; but all are only too ready
to recognise signs that are right beside us, and to adopt them for the moment.
(Aratus, Phainomena 10941103, trans. Kidd)
170 Cf. above, p. 231, on the second-person addressee. I hope that it is not necessary to stress that we
are here dealing with the poems rhetoric, not its real reception by a literate elite.
The constellations move in many different directions through the sky, but
their changing movement is eternally regular and predictable, year after
year (vv. 1920 .##$' .##
. . . (C i %$ !X * ); we,
however, roam in our wretchedness as we eke out our living in different
ways (vv. 11012),171 and our only hope of stability is to give intelligent heed
to the obvious signs which Zeus in his kindness has provided, by using, as
do the farmer and the goatherd, experience of the past to be better prepared
in the future.172 The point is marked by the quasi-pun on &#4 and
'X %. Though elsewhere the poet recognises that foolish men
are often caught unawares because they have not looked for available signs
(cf. vv. 42230), it is the readiness to do just this which binds humankind
together in need, and offers a kind of conditional optimism. The motif of
types of life, which in Hesiod illustrated the competitiveness inherent in
the society he depicts (WD 1726), becomes in Aratus a cohesive, rather
than a fracturing, force.173 That not many of Aratus original audience will
have been farmers or goatherds is, of course, not without a gentle humour,
but in fact this strengthens, rather than undercuts, that cohesive force. The
chosen examples in vv. 1094103 resemble the similes of the Iliad which
illustrate a narrative of heroic warfare by analogies drawn from the more
peaceful life of humbler folk; so also, here, our social distance from the
Aratean characters paradoxically forces us to recognise our basic similarity
to them.174
It is striking that the Hymn to Zeus of the Stoic Cleanthes also uses the
types of life motif in a passage about the universal logos, which similarly
goes back to Hesiod on eris:
H' * u ( %$4 %# 5%)
% C E % ( #
*X
)
p Q % V% *%)
'Q%) l C & X & %
3C %% ,
3 #Q$%)
H
%b 9 %#, ! U
'C cC % . , .## C .##)
171 The full meaning of &#4 should not be diluted, as already in the scholiast (cf. restless Kidd,
instables Martin, unstaten Erren etc.); the image is prepared by the figure of the goatherd, who is
indeed a roamer, cf. further Ap. Rhod. Arg. 2.5412, 4.11657. Despite the clear Homeric flavour
of these verses (cf. Kidd (1997) and Martin (1998) ad loc., Fakas (2001) 1445), there is probably an
echo of Solons types of life passage: % Q' ' C .## .##U X
&#T #.
(fr. 1.43 West). Aratus has thus generalised Solons sailor into the roaming of all mankind.
172 So I would gloss vv. 11023, cf. the scholiasts paraphrase and Martin ad loc. I cannot agree with
Kidd that there is a satirical edge to these verses, i.e. men are all too ready to look for (and put an
interpretative twist upon) weather signs.
173 On this motif in general cf. Nisbet and Hubbards Introduction to Hor. c. 1.1.
174 Cf. above, p. 231.
t X 2X '
M %$'8 '$%% ! )
t 'C '%Q '
%")
.## ' C * . % %Z 1'
. . . C .## ' C .## )
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For you have so welded into one all things good and bad thay they all share in
a single everlasting reason. It is shunned and neglected by the bad among mortal
men, the wretched, who ever yearn for the possession of goods yet neither see
nor hear gods universal law, by obeying which they could lead a good life in
partnership with intelligence. Instead, devoid of intelligence, they rush into this
evil or that, some in their belligerent quest for fame, others with an unbridled bent
for acquisition, others for leisure and the pleasurable acts of the body . . . <But all
that they achieve is evils,> despite travelling hither and thither in burning quest
of the opposite. (Cleanthes, Hymn to Zeus 2031, trans. Long and Sedley)
Cleanthes proceeds to pray that Zeus will save men from their own folly;
(Stoic) philosophers, such as Cleanthes, are clearly excluded from this
prayer, as they have already seen the light.175 Aratus rhetoric, however,
is rather one of shared weakness and need.
That weakness is nowhere more evident than in the passage describing
shipwreck:
##(
" % Q%
WbM 4) 5% !_ Q"%.
e 'C * % %Q%")
L: 'X ( ( . 4%)
C #
#
U * '
2:
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[ &
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.## X ( 2
9$! $##)
.## ' C) K \, %% Q!%
!
) 9 'X ( C &%(:" &)
## (#C ]#4% V (# %:
&##4#$ .
'C %4 Q"
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For Night herself frequently contrives this sign also for a southerly, showing favour
to sailors in distress. And if they give heed to her timely signal, and promptly make
everything ready and shipshape, in due course their trouble is easier; but if a terrible
squall of wind falls upon the ship from on high quite unexpectedly, and disorders
all of the canvas, sometimes they sail on entirely submerged, sometimes, if they
find Zeus coming to help them as they pray, and there is lightning in the north,
in spite of their many travails they do look again upon each other on board ship.
175 Cf. Lucr. 2.713 on the pleasures of beholding the vain wandering (errare) and rivalry of men from
a position of philosophic security.
With this sign fear a southerly, until you see Boreas flashing lightning. (Aratus,
Phainomena 41830, trans. Kidd)
The introduction to this passage generalises human misery to include all
mankind, not just those who sail the sea, cf. &Z . . .
(v. 409)
and #$$ &Z$ (v. 412). The help that Night offers does
not differ in kind from that which is elsewhere ascribed to Zeus himself, but
Aratus stress on Nights tearful pity (409) perhaps exploits her feminine
gender; it is not an adequate account to see Night as merely synonymous
with Zeus,176 for Aratus suggests a plenitude of powers who wish to aid
mankind. From a philosophical, or indeed specifically Stoic, perspective,
all such powers may be merely different ways of describing a single cosmic
system, as indeed Zeus coming to their aid (v. 426) suggests, but that is not
the only perspective of the poet. That the rhetoric of poetry is thus different
from that of philosophy is confirmed by the pathetic fallacy of Nights
weeping, a fallacy enacted in language which describes heavenly phenomena
in terms applicable to the struggling sailors themselves ($
% v. 416, #9 C v. 417); here, nature moulds herself to mans
plight. Night, the kindly time,
, acts in accordance with her
name.
6.2 The justice of the stars

The Works and Days is a protreptic to just dealings with ones fellow man
(dike), because only thus do all men have a chance to enjoy the agricul-
tural prosperity which Zeus otherwise keeps hidden (WD 22537). The
moralising dimension of the Phainomena is less explicit, but nonetheless
important. Zeuss justice is reflected in the eternal order and pattern (kosmos)
of the heavens; as for men, whereas the Works and Days emphasises both
vertical (ordinary people v. basileis) and horizontal (competitiveness for
resources) divisions within society, the Phainomena presents a consistent
picture of universal need in the face of the same problems and opportu-
nities. This shared fate carries an implicit message preaching mutual help
and the pointlessness of seeking unfair advantage: we are all covered by
and can all see the same stars. Nevertheless, in one famous passage Dike
does make an explicit appearance in Aratus poem, and here it is indeed in
a reworking of Hesiods Myth of Ages.177
Hesiods strongest argument for the practice of justice is the impossibility
of escaping Zeuss eye:
176 Kidd on 408, Martin (1998) 318. For other aspects of this passage cf. Fakas (2001) 10912.
177 Cf. Fakas (2001) 14975 with further bibliography.
9%#) 2 5 'X (_ %
4' 'U b &Z%

&( (_ V% %#% '"%
&##4#$ 9$% A &# .
Q *% ! $#$9 "
&( d, Q# &Z)
l B $#(%%$% ' %!#
- +%%( ) ( C L.
1 ' % \) \, $5)
$'4 C *' 5 t h>#$ !$%)
BC
C . 9#(" %# ](_)
\ _ =
Q C &Z &'
) A C & %"
' &%# 9%# t #$
.##" #% ' %# .
You too, my lords, attend to this justice-doing of yours. For close at hand among
men there are immortals taking note of all those who afflict each other with crooked
judgements, heedless of the gods punishment. Thrice countless are they on the
rich-pastured earth, Zeus immortal watchers (Q# ) of mortal men, who watch
over judgements and wickedness, clothed in darkness, travelling about the land on
every road. And there is that maiden Right (Dike), daughter of Zeus, esteemed and
respected by the gods in Olympus; and whenever someone does her down with
crooked abuse, at once she sits by Zeus her father, Kronos son, and reports the
mens unrighteous mind, so that the people may pay for the crimes of their lords
who balefully divert justice from its course by pronouncing it crooked. (Hesiod,
WD 24862, trans. M. L. West)
Hesiods Myth of Ages presents a five-stage progression (or regression)
towards the present misery, which will result in the abandonment of men
to their fate by Aidos and Nemesis. The ages are structured by a reciprocal
alternation between dike and hybris, and the similarities between life in the
Golden Age and the blessedness of the city in which men practise justice
(vv. 11219 22537) make the message of this whole section very clear.
Aratus writes the maiden Dike into his own Myth of Ages, in which
it is she who left the earth long ago (Phain. 96136). Between Hesiod and
Aratus lie many different reconstructions of human history. The positing
of a time when gods and men mixed freely (cf. Hesiod fr. 1.67) is a
common feature of such accounts, and some of these will have influenced
the later poet: his myth cannot be interpreted solely as a confrontation with
Hesiod.178 Nevertheless, it is Hesiod to whom we are primarily directed. The
178 The scholiast on Phainomena 104 identifies the proem of the Hesiodic Catalogue as the origin of
the idea of the free mixing of gods and men. Of particular importance will have been Empedocles
account of the Golden Age (cf. fr. 128 DK). Cf. further Dicaearchus fr. 49 Wehrli, Feeney (1998)
1045 on Catullus 64.
Maiden carries an ear of corn, marking a traditional association between
this constellation and Demeter and her daughter, Kore (the Maiden).179
As in Hesiod the Just City is blessed with a fruitful earth, whereas famine
and pestilence (#, #
) are the punishment of the unjust
(WD 22547), so in Aratus Dike was responsible in the Golden Age, along
with or working through agriculture, for the self-sufficiency of the
land; here, Dike fulfils a function very like Demeter Thesmophoros.180
An echo of the prologue in v. 106 (cf. vv. 23) does not allow us to forget
that everything is part of Zeus system. So, too, the Prologues emphasis
on agriculture (79) is now seen not merely to mark the most obvious
sphere in which Zeus signs may be exploited and to evoke the Works
and Days as primary model (cf. WD 22), but also to privilege agriculture
as a model for the right ordering of the world: honest toil is rewarded
with the earths plenty. Despite his striking departure from Hesiod here,
such a reciprocal model has very deep roots in traditional Greek ideas:
Aratus placed agricultural labour in the Golden Age not just in deference
to Stoic doctrine,181 but because agriculture is itself a manifestation of divine
ordering and justice. When the men of the Bronze Age kill and eat the
ploughing oxen (v. 132), much more is destroyed than just animal life.
Aratus restricted himself to the first three of Hesiods five ages, thus setting
his myth of Dike before recorded history: the present world order was thus
already established immemorially long ago, and a message of progressive
decay would in fact hardly suit the rest of the poem. Nevertheless, all three
of Aratus ages are, in contrast to those of Hesiod, recognisably like us:
this is particularly marked by the fact that, in contrast to Hesiod, Aratus
gives us no information about the fate after death of the men of each
age. Whereas the people of Hesiods Golden Age became after death holy
spirits . . . watchers over mortal men (WD 1223), Dikes catasterism is the
only post-terrestrial event of which we hear in Aratus. Moreover, whereas
Hesiods Golden Age knew no wretched old age, figured as a time of
disabling weakness (WD 11314), in Aratus, Dike summons a council of
the old men to make judgements; here, old age is, by contrast, figured
as a time of political and social wisdom.182 In keeping with this human
179 Cf. Erren (1967) 38.
180 'Z ' in v. 113 does not just look back to Dikes quasi-judicial role in v. 107 (so Kidd);
rather, the play between Dike as a personification and Dike as an immortal figure means that 113
refers primarily to the just dealings of men and women with each other which, as in Hesiod, lead
to agricultural plenty, cf. Martin (1998) ad loc.
181 Cf. Kidd on v. 112; other relevant considerations in Schiesaro (1996) 1314.
182 For this theme cf. above, p. 74. Behind this passage seems to lie Iliad 18. 496508, the legal scene
presided over by the old men in the city at peace depicted on the Shield of Achilles. There, too,
code in the myth, Dike successively suggests, first in the Golden Age, the
Just King of the Theogony (vv. 8193), and then in the Silver Age, an
itinerant poet or preacher such as were very common in the Hellenistic
Age who lives at the margins of society (the mountains) and acts as
a chastiser and moral reformer; her voice as she warns the Silver Age of
the trouble ahead resembles indeed that of Hesiod himself, speaking to the
men of his own day. In this myth, therefore, Aratus explores the relationship
between kingship and poetry which is so fundamental to the Theogony; by
these techniques, the resonance in the present of this story of the distant
past is clear, long before we discover that Dike is now in the heavens as a
permanent reminder of what happened in the past, and as a protreptic to
justice.183
If Dike is indeed a star, then perhaps Aratus read Hesiods countless
immortal watchers clad in air (WD 2525) as the countless stars of heaven.184
If this suggestion is correct, it would not mean that this is what Hesiod
actually meant, or that Aratus necessarily understood Hesiod in this way;
rather, as often happens, an older text is read as foreshadowing a later. In
the Works and Days, the men of the Golden Age with whom Aratus Dike
is so closely associated after death become ' / !
. . .
%#) &# M) Q# &Z | #$'
, divine
and revered spirits on the earth, good spirits, protectors from evil, watch-
ers (phulakes) over mortal men, givers of wealth (WD 1223, 126). They
become daimones who guard, keep their eye on mortal men; there is no
reason to believe, as Wilamowitz did,185 that Hesiod identified these dai-
mones with the countless immortal watchers/guardians of WD 2525, but
the similarity of wording might suggest this easily enough, and indeed
WD 2545 seem to have been interpolated back into the passage on the dai-
mones. Just as, therefore, Aratus may have constructed Hesiods countless
guardians as the stars, so the Dike myth perhaps shows us Aratus reading
Hesiods Golden Age as the origin of the stars. Hellenistic didaxis is at base
the interpretation of prior texts; as such, it is merely a special instance of
the most prominent feature of the poetry of this period as a whole. The
dike is to prevail, but the fact of a 5 concerned with murder marks the scene as far from that of
Aratus (contrast Phain. 108 3 # $ #$
-%). The relation of the Shield
to various Ages narratives would repay further attention: note the killing of cattle with bronze
weapons (18.527ff.).
183 On the political potential of Aratus myth cf. Schiesaro (1996) 1724.
184 Relevant also may be Theogony 9013 where the Horai, Eunomia, Dike and Eirene, C | Q$%
5% 95%. The verb is something of a mystery, but the ancients glossed it as $#(Y
(cf. West ad loc.), and this might aid the idea of Dike as a guardian or watcher.
185 Hesiodos Erga (Berlin 1928) 70, 140.
purpose of a poets interpretation of a predecessor is only rarely to establish
what that predecessor meant.
What would a Stoic have made of Aratus myth? We are told that Chrysip-
pus held that men are changed into gods and that the stars are gods,186
but at least one recent analysis has noted that Aratus myth hardly seems
a model of Stoic pronoia and has labelled it a foreign body in the other-
wise optimistic Phainomena.187 What such an analysis misses is the kind of
optimism which Aratus promulgates. It is an optimism based on the bene-
volence of the guiding cosmic principle, which hymnal style calls Zeus.
This is a benevolence evidenced by the signs which the god offers to man as
a help, not by a particularly optimistic view of mans current situation or
of human morality. We should all do the best we can and use what the god
offers us, but without particular expectation (cf. Phainomena 11013). We
live in corrupt times, Hesiods Fifth Age, but nature works towards what
is good, and we must seek to discover that and to live in accordance with
it. Knowing about the stars and weather signs can only help us; neither
stars, nor weather signs, nor the myth of Dike, however, offer any kind
of guarantee. If for the Stoic, then, all human beings are, and inevitably
remain, bad and unhappy,188 when allowances have been made for the
different meaning of moral terms, Hesiod and the Stoics to some extent
come together, or and this is crucial for Aratus can be read as coming
together.
6.3 Didactic myth

Aratus night sky is never dull.189 Within the overall fixedness of eternal
patterns there is constant motion and change in a very overcrowded sky:
g@ ' C 6'!
% ##
%% # & #%% U & ' C g @$
M =$ # &% QM.
&## C 3 e 'Q #8 'C N$
%b Z !' 5) &## C K 6'
! ( % ( .
186 Cf. SVF II 81011, 81315, 10767.

187 E. Pohlmann, Charakteristika des romischen Lehrgedichts ANRW I.3 (BerlinNew York 1973)
813901, at p. 883.
188 F. H. Sandbach, The Stoics (London 1975) 44.
189 The best appreciation of Aratean drama is Hutchinson (1988) 21436. On aspects of Aratus style
see also V. Citti, Lettura di Arato Vichiana 2 (1965) 14670, Ludwig (1963) 4425, van Groningen
(1953) 7980, M. L. B. Pendergraft, Euphony and etymology: Aratus Phaenomena Syllecta Classica
6 (1995) 4367, the commentaries of Kidd (1997) and Martin (1998) passim.
When the waist of the Water-pourer rises, the Horse with feet and head comes
coursing up. Opposite the Horse starry night draws the Centaur down tail first,
but cannot yet find room for his head and broad shoulders together with the actual
breastplate; but she does bring down the fiery Hydras neck coil and all its head
stars. (Aratus, Phainomena 6938, trans. Kidd)
Paradox indeed is central to Aratus construction of the nightly drama of
the heavens, and nowhere more forcefully than in the section (vv. 559732)
devoted to the simultaneous risings and settings of the constellations: this
is a world in which rivers rise out of the sea (vv. 7289), rather than flow
down into it, and the endlessly pursued hare survives to go down with
all its limbs intact (( v. 678). There are, on the other hand, strange
dismemberments:
X
%) *
&## )
X ( M! .##)
$5( _Z %4 (
' M %b ! U ( ' C + !

M" &! sM
" &##.
As for the figure on his knees, since he always rises upside down, the other parts
then emerge from the horizon, the legs, the belt, all the breast, and the shoulder
with the right hand; but the head with the other hand comes up at the rising of
the bow and the Archer. (Aratus, Phainomena 66973, trans. Kidd)
Such detailed description proves yet one more exploitation of notions of
poetic enargeia.190 The challenge to visualisation (! (; v. 733) is
perhaps the central poetic tension within the Phainomena: Zeus signs are,
it is repeatedly claimed, openly visible to all, but a failure to visualise patterns
which are often complicated and/or composed from stars which are only
faintly visible to the naked eye confronts readers with their own weakness
in the face of divine grace.
One aspect of this tension is that between the evidence of our eyes, to
which Aratus makes constant appeal, and the evidence of inherited myth.
This tension is thematised in the account of the Pleiades:
' C (# ##, /(%
! ! ) 'C %:% &$.
+( '8 C &Z$ 2')
uM L %
: ]#5%.
&
## & $8 \, &%4)
M &Q ) &## (#C [
K U + 'C 5 4' #
190 Cf. below, p. 443, on Lycophrons Alexandra, Fakas (2001) 99100.

C;#$
0
= #Z C C7#
<
s$
05.
It is not a very large space which holds all of them, and they themselves are faint
to observe. Men tell of the seven Pleiades, though only six are visible to our eyes.
No star has disappeared from Zeus sky without a trace in all the time of which
we know, but the story is told. By name those seven stars are Alcyone, Merope,
Celaeno, Electra, Sterope, Taygete and revered Maia. (Aratus, Phainomena 255263)
Aratus explicitly denies191 the truth of the story of the loss of the seventh
Pleiad a story which the scholia tell us he himself treated in a now lost
poem 192 by asserting again the fixed pattern of the kosmos established by
Zeus himself; \
does not just mean from the sky. Myth (),
of course, is a primary technique, not just of explanation, but also of
visualisation: it is a powerful tool with which to organise (or construct)
the evidence of the skies into recognisable patterns. Throughout the poem,
the movements and appearance of the constellations are described in terms
which appeal to their myths, which thus aid visualisation: the sea monster
rushes towards Andromeda (v. 354), the hare is hunted (v. 384), the limbs
of Andromeda are weary (v. 704), and so forth. Nevertheless, myth is a
system partly in competition with other explanations, notably that of a
first inventor of the constellations (vv. 37385).193 Unlike that aetiology
for the figural constellations, mythical explanations (including catasterism)
claim to tell the origin of the stars themselves, not just their organisation
into shapes, and as such always threaten to destabilise the central project of
the Phainomena. Aratus, however, has various techniques which allow him
both to make use of such quintessentially poetic material and to refuse it
clear authority. One of these is to draw attention to its mistakes, its failures
to offer a clear account, as in the Pleiades passage. The real utility of myth,
on the other hand, lies not in its truth, but in its moral or symbolic value
(as in the story of Dike): in this attitude, Aratus clearly reveals himself as
heir to a long tradition of poetic exegesis.
Mythical material is in fact marked as such in various ways. Thus,
the group of Cepheus, Cassiopeia, Andromeda, Pegasus and Perseus is
introduced as the long-suffering family of Cepheus, of the race of Io,
= , C @%' (v. 179). Not only the affective adjective
but also the stress on descent and the family group, with its suggestions
of Attic tragedy, point to material of a mythic (and specifically dramatic)
191 The meaning of the passage is in fact disputed (cf. Hunter (1995c) 21, Martin (1998) ad loc.), but
the interpretation adopted here seems very likely.
192 This was a consolatory poem To Theopropos (SH 103), cf. E. Maass, Aratea (Berlin 1892) 2334.
193 Cf. above, p. 230.
kind.194 Within this grouping, further attention is called to the mythic
status of the account when, after a description of how to identify Cassiopeia,
the poet adds you would say that she was mourning her child (v. 196).195
The evocation of the myth and the explicit refusal to countenance it is a
further product of the tension we have been exploring.
One final passage which might be thought to confirm, rather than
weaken, the explanatory power of myth is the story of the (now reduced)
Horse:
'C V ( %U &C ]# .$
%%
1 #8 ## e , g @.
5 '8 % C 2:# 6^#
#, [' & 5 #' 6 @$4.
( 6^#O . # 9 5U
&## C g @ $: U , 'C &

['
M!$ # $ '
U e 'X
5 , ' 4% 6 @$4.
&## , X &# 9 ) '
k % &' + A: U V C g @

\, e# 5) ( 4%%.
But it is no quadruped; at its navel edge the sacred Horse is halved in the middle
as it goes round. This was the Horse, they say, that from the heights of Helicon
produced the good water of fertilising Hippocrene. The summit of Helicon was
not then flowing with streams, but the Horse struck it, and from that very spot a
flood of water gushed out at the stroke of its forefoot; the shepherds were the first
to call that draught the Horses spring. So the water wells out of a rock, and you
can see it never far from the men of Thespiae; but the Horse revolves in the realm
of Zeus and you may view it there. (Aratus, Phainomena 21424, trans. Kidd)
The visibility of the spring in Boeotia and the Horse in the Heavens seem
mutually reinforcing. On the other hand, the truth of the account is called
into question not merely by the usual % (216),196 but by the ascription
of the names invention to (illiterate) shepherds. The parallel visibility of
Horse and spring in fact lays bare the very mechanics of mythical expla-
nation, by revealing how primitive aetiology works.
194 Cf. C. Fakas, Arat und Aristoteles Kritik am Lehrgedicht Hermes 129 (2001) 47983.
195 For other related uses of in Hellenistic poetry cf. Hunter (1993a) 1323.
196 Cf. vv. 98, 100, 163, 216, 637, 645.
chap t e r 6
The style of Hellenistic epic
1 introduction
One of the protagonists of the Phoenicides of Straton, a Middle Comedy
poet of the second half of the fourth century, had a terrible experience
one day with a cook whom he had hired (Straton, PCG 1). The cook did
not speak like normal people, but expressed himself in Homeric language,
with the result that when he asked his employer how many people he had
invited to dinner, he did not use the everyday Greek words for men, such
as . or .' , but the rare epic-archaic (and occasionally also
tragic) term , whose etymology was as obscure for the ancients as
it is for us; for the guests, he used the rare word '$
those who
receive/bring their portion. His confused employer could only interpret
these as proper names. So too, when he asked the cook about dinner, the
cook reeled off another list of rare glosses or Homeric words (# for
sheep, #!Q for barley, etc.), together with a few (to us) new forms,
perhaps borrowed from some post-Homeric epic. Thus, an ox became
BM! . . . $ wide-browed [. . .] soil-breaker (vv. 201), in
which the second epithet is Homeric, whereas the first, though analogous in
structure to the second, appears here for the first time, perhaps as a virtuoso
novelty of the erudite cook. All these B4 new words (v. 3) and
# artificial terms (v. 35), which were in contrast to the /#
clear communication of everyday life, understandably seemed to the poor
host to belong to the language of an &
# madman (v. 35), when
used one after another by a cook speaking about food. Nevertheless, the
sense of , M
strangeness that they create was in fact an integral part
of the poetics of hexameter epic, the solemn, high poetry par excellence.
Aristotle, a contemporary of Straton, noted the links between the hexameter
and rare words (glosses) and between rare words and solemnity (Poet.
1459a911 and 1458a224); he also noted, however, that one must avoid
an excessive use of such forms, in order not to fall into 99%

246
1 Introduction 247
(1458a301), a non-Greek way of speaking, which is exactly what Stratons
cook does.
One of the most striking phenomena of Greek literary history is that
the heroic epic, and hexameter and elegiac poetry in general, continued
to make use of the artificially hybrid Homeric language, with its rare
words, alternative forms, dialectal variety and almost infinite metrical-
prosodic richness, for more than a thousand years from (at least) the sev-
enth century bc through to Nonnus and his successors. The aesthetics of
regularity, which the Homeric texts could be seen to proclaim through
their obvious formularity, was imitated and amplified by any poet who
wrote in a dactylic metre. As early as the fifth century, there is evidence
that the formulaic repetition of the Homeric poems was perceived as a
peculiar characteristic of epic poetry, and might be sufficiently irritating
to arouse the humour of comic poets. Cratinus at any rate (PCG 355)
made fun of Homer for his excessive use of the formula , 'C & 9
Y
% answering him, he said, which recurs at least a hun-
dred times in the Iliad and the Odyssey. We cannot, of course, know to
what extent Cratinus, who seems to have specialised in Homeric parody,
here reflects a popular attitude to Homeric formularity, but, for what it
is worth, , 'C & 9
(%) is in fact very rare in post-
archaic epic.1 One of the exceptions occurs in fact in Antimachus of
Colophon, who in certain other respects anticipated erudite Alexandrian
poetry; nevertheless, the longest extant fragment of Antimachus elegiac
Lyde, the critical evaluation of which was a matter of (brief ) dispute between
Hellenistic poets (Asclepiades, Hermesianax, and Posidippus were for,2
Callimachus against3 ), has rightly been called practically a patchwork of
Homeric expressions.4 We have very little of Antimachus epic Thebaid,
but it is extremely difficult to imagine that this revealed a greater taste for
linguistic innovation.
1 Only in Antimachus fr. 90 Matthews and [Theocr.] 25.42; note also the phrases appearance as an
acrostic in a late poetic exercise (cf. G. Agosti, P.Oxy. 3537R: etopea acrostica su Esiodo ZPE 119
(1997) 15). Martial 1.45 (cf. Citroni ad. loc.) and Straton, AP 12.4 both cite the phrase as a typical
example of epic repetition.
2 Cf. respectively AP 9.63 = HE 958ff.; CA 7.4146; AP 12.168 = HE 3086ff. In later periods, Antipater
praised Antimachus Thebaid (AP 7.409 = HE 638ff.), and the grammarian Crates of Mallos preferred
it to Choerilus poem (AP 11.218 = HE 1371ff.); Aristophanes of Byzantium awarded Antimachus
second place in the canon of epic writers, after Homer. On the Nachleben of Antimachus and
Callimacheanism at Rome cf. Citroni (1995) 5759 and 1001.
3 Cf. fr. 398 Pfeiffer: Lyde is a heavy, unclear work (!b (
). For different views
of the meaning of this judgement cf. D. Del Corno, Acme 16 (1962) 67, G. Serrao QUCC 32 (1979)
9198, Krevans (1993).
4 Wilamowitz (1924) I 101.
248 The style of Hellenistic epic
At the heart of the new poetic language of the Hellenistic age lies the
removal of the solemn heaviness of Homers formulaic expressions, so as
to achieve the commonly shared ideal of #
,5 and embellishment
through a controlled use of rare words, Homeric and otherwise. This is true
for each of Callimachus, Apollonius Rhodius and Theocritus, for all the
differences of their poetry and poetics. They confront and explore Homeric
formularity; for them, formularity is not an unfortunate necessity inher-
ent in hexametric poetry, but rather a new allusive opportunity in com-
parison with other, non-formulaic, genres. The novelty of their approach
should not be underestimated, nor itself considered an inevitable product
of an increasingly book-based culture, for contemporary with them we
find other poetry which continued to follow the old ways of formularity:
texts such as SH 946 or 947, perhaps by Rhianus, show us what we might
otherwise miss.6
Centuries after Callimachus, the Callimachean style was still the
paradigm directly opposed to hexametric versification based on formulaic
repetition. Pollianus, an obscure epigram-writer of the first or second cen-
tury ad, suggested an equivalence between the formulaic reuse of Homer
and literary theft (AP 11.130): I hate these cyclic poets7 who use
[but then afterwards, an expression which recurs about fifty times
in Homer alone], thieves of other peoples words. For this reason, I rather
dedicate myself to elegiacs; in this way, I do not have the possibility of
stealing from Parthenius or Callimachus. I would become similar to the
long-eared beast [ X
, i.e. the donkey, cf. Callimachus fr.
1.31 Massimilla] if I were ever to write yellow celandines from the rivers
[ !# ! #'
, Parthenius 32 Lightfoot = SH 644]. But
these people continue to steal so unashamedly from Homer, that they still
write O goddess, sing of the wrath. The words of Callimachus were
thus perceived as not stolen from Homer, and at the same time, not
stealable by subsequent poets, unless they wanted to run the risk of being
accused of the most shameless plagiarism; less tendentiously, the point is
that the phrases of Callimachus and Parthenius could not easily be trans-
formed into repeatable, quasi-formulaic expressions.8
5 Both Leonidas and Callimachus give his #
as the reason for their appreciation of the work of
Aratus (cf. Leon., AP 9.25 = HE 2573ff.; Callim., AP 9.507 = HE 1297ff.), and Ptolemy Philadelphus
appears to have called Aratus # #
(SH 712.4). In the Prologue to the Aitia (above pp. 66
76), Apollo advises the poet that the Muse should be # #, whereas !Q is a positive
quality for a sacrificial victim (fr. 1.23f. Massimilla = Pfeiffer).
6 Cf. Bing (1988) 506. 7 Cf. Callimachus, AP 12.43 = HE 1041ff.
8 Lightfoot (1999) 187 gives a different interpretation: Pollianus was equally critical of Callimachus and
Parthenius, and preferred them simply because they have nothing worth stealing.
2 Callimachus 249
Callimachus, Theocritus and Apollonius Rhodius can both activate and
disguise the sense of formularity which Homeric expressions (and their
contexts) triggered in any learned reader of the Hellenistic world; they thus
set up the dialectic between formularity, allusion, and innovation which
characterises their work and distinguishes them from the more unimagina-
tive imitators of Homer. As has been said, their way of following Homer
was to be as non-Homeric as possible.9
2 callimachus
The regrettably few well-preserved fragments of Callimachus Hecale (above
pp. 196200) present a relatively high concentration of Homeric imitations,
the highest in fact in the extant works of Callimachus.10 The numerous,
though brief, fragments preserved by the indirect tradition which concern
the hospitality offered by Hecale to Theseus reveal, for example, various
highly amusing echoes of the Odyssey,11 but the absence of context makes
it impossible to evaluate them from a stylistic viewpoint, in relation to
the nature of the character speaking and the poetic situation. Nevertheless,
certain fragments, particularly those preserved on a famous wooden tablet in
Vienna (frs. 6974 Hollis),12 are extensive enough to allow us to appreciate
Callimachus allusive art in this poem.13 Fr. 69 (above pp. 1978) contains
the last part of the description of the struggle between Theseus and the bull,
and the reactions of amazement that this aroused. This description was
probably fairly brief,14 and the disproportion between the space dedicated
to this feat and both the extensive description of the hospitality offered to
Theseus by Hecale and a mythological conversation between two birds in
frs. 7074 (see below) is an indication of the fact that Callimachus focuses
on the marginal, less important moments of the myth, rather than the
heroic and more traditional subjects of poetic attention. This same fragment
shows, however, that the brief narration of Theseus heroic feat certainly
used allusion to archaic epic poetry, appropriate for the epic-sublime level
of the feat itself, in spite of the wholly untraditional nature of a struggle
with a bull. Thus, for example, to describe the action of Theseus club, a
weapon obviously foreign to conventional epic warfare, in crushing one
of the bulls horns, Callimachus chooses a Homeric hapax, &#%
9 Cf. H. Herter, Kleine Schriften (Munich 1975) 371. 10 Cf. Hollis (1990) 170.
11 Fully catalogued in Hollis (1990). 12 Cf. above, pp. 1978.
13 Cf. esp. Lloyd-Jones (1990) 13152, Hollis (1990). Most of the Homeric echoes discussed here have
been identified already by these scholars, though often without full analysis.
14 Cf. Hollis (1990) 215.
(v. 1), which had appeared in a scene in which one warrior kills another
by crushing his bones with a rock (Iliad 4.5212: & 'X
]% #T &'4 | .! &#% the cruel rock completely
crushed both tendons and bones). Reminiscence of archaic epic continues
in the following verses (23):
F K') F[] x ( 2 %) ' #
.' #Z . *'% . . .
On seeing this, they immediately drew back in fear, and no-one had the courage
to fix his eyes on the great man and the monstrous beast.
These verses are indebted to Homer, Il. 19.1417 0$'
'C .
( E#
) ' # | . *%' ) &##C %.
C;!## b | F L'C) T## '$ !
#) #. All the Myrmidons were
overtaken by trembling, no one dared to look directly at them [Achilles
weapons], and they drew back. But as Achilles saw, so anger entered him
more deeply etc. Both passages emphasise the isolated greatness of the
heroes and the amazement of those around them.
. . . %
trembling [. . .] they started quivering suggested the 2 % they drew
back all trembling of Callimachus (in turn, however, supported by another
more precise formal model, Iliad 15.636: e ' T% 2 % and
they all drew back trembling), and ' # | . *%' no one
dared to look across at them suggested the Callimachean ' #| . . .
. *'%. An ancient reader would very naturally have connected this
passage of the Iliad with the situation described by Callimachus, for in both
passages F L' ) #. as soon as I/they saw it, I/they immediately etc.,
introduces an expression of the strength and the determination of a hero
compared to the amazement of those around them; other instances of this
phrase (Iliad 14.294, 20.424) have no comparable contextual link with this
passage of the Hecale.15
Verse 4 of this passage opens with the rare conjunction %C V , which is
attested before Callimachus only as a variant in two passages of the Odyssey
(19.223 = 24.310), where, instead of looking forwards (as in Callimachus
and regularly in all the uses of simple %), the reference is to a past
fact, and the expression is equivalent to M , which is in fact the best
attested variant in the manuscripts in these two passages of the Odyssey.16
If he found %C V in Homer, as is probable,17 Callimachus may have
15 Cf. Matro fr. 1 OlsonSens = SH 534, v. 89, with OlsonSens (1999) 1245.
16 M. van der Valk, Textual Criticism of the Odyssey (Leiden 1949) 50 argues unconvincingly that % C
V in Homer has a colloquial colouring, cf. Rengakos (1993) 1501.
17 Cf. Rengakos (1993) 151.
2 Callimachus 251
imitated the form here, in Hecale fr. 70.5 and in HArt. 195 while using it
with a different meaning from the one which it must have if it is accepted
in the two Homeric passages. This technique implies a rejection of these
variants in Homer, where the Callimachean meaning, and hence the form
itself, would have been impossible. The same verse closes with an equally
Homeric verse-ending, , .$% gave a loud shout. , &Q%
having given a loud shout occurs some fifteen times at verse-end in the
Iliad (with , .$% also found five times before the trochaic caesura);
this phrase was not only used for the battle-cry, but it was specialised for
the appeals of commanders to their soldiers,18 and thus it is perfectly at
home in a context like that of Callimachus.
So, too, the speech in which Theseus asks someone to take a message to
reassure his father a message which does not contain anything particularly
heroic, but rather reflects the somewhat bourgeois concern of a solicitous
son who does not want his father to be worried contains at least one
markedly Homeric expression, |% b ! + 19 this Theseus is
not far away (v. 8). This solemn announcement of his victory sounds exactly
like a sentence of Telemachus in Od. 2.401, | ! +
&4[. . .]| p #, i Old man, the person [. . .] who convened the
assembly is not far away. Telemachus employs deixis to refer to himself, even
though he is speaking about himself in the third person; Theseus
could not be self-deictic, however, because the expression is presented as it
will be pronounced by a messenger. This difference could be perceived by
the reader as a sort of inversion of the procedure according to which the
speeches of messengers in Homer are often all but literal quotations of the
message they have been given;20 what is clear, however, is that it acts as a
marker of poetic difference and autonomy.
From the end of v. 10 the style of the narration rises to a clearly Homeric
level. At the end of the line c 'X and they stopped there recalls
the four Homeric verse-ends c
.
Then, in preparation for the long simile that follows, Callimachus creates
a suitably epic atmosphere by citing the archaic epic, both in the second
hemistich of v. 11 where !Q% ! Q Q##| poured a pile of
leaves harks back to Homers !Q% 'C ! Q Q##| pulled a pile
of leaves over himself (Od. 5.487) and in the final phrase of v. 12, where
$##!
leaf-shedding month is an explicit quotation of Hesiod
18 Cf. M. Schmidt, LfgrE s.v. 3.
19 Henceforth an upright divider before or after a Greek quotation indicates the beginning or the end
of the verse.
20 Cf. Fantuzzi (2001a) 1767.
(fr. 333); so, too, the multiple negative comparison, X does not possess so
much . . . nor does Y possess so much . . . as Z, brings to mind a typically
Homeric construction (e.g. Il. 14.394401, 17.203).21
The following fragments appear to come from a long discussion between
a raven and another bird, about the danger of being a ( # bearer
of bad news. The first proof of this danger is the story of the ravens who
were banned from the Acropolis because they told Athena that the mon-
strous nature of Erichthonius had been revealed. Erichthonius was the child
born when Hephaestus sperm came into contact with the earth, after he
had unsuccessfully tried to rape Athena; the goddess had done her best to
keep the secret by entrusting Erichthonius to the daughters of Cecrops (frs.
703). The second illustration was the story of the crow that became black
rather than white, because it informed Apollo of the unfaithfulness of Coro-
nis (fr. 74). Even if it is not clear at what point in fr. 70 the first exemplum
was introduced, it is certain that in v. 8 the birth of Erichthonius has already
been mentioned, and the adverb at the beginning of v. 9 $( 'C 1 )
#. in that period, she etc. marks the beginning of an important narrative
section. The ravens mythological narrative clearly aims for stylistic heights.
The birth of Erichthonius, for example, F ' 2C 67%" n5
how then truly Earth bore to Hephaestus, is presented with a strongly
Homeric ring (cf. Iliad 2.714, 2C C;'4" '5 $| the
divine woman bore to Admetus; 2.820, 2C C; !%" '5C C;'|
the divine Aphrodite bore to Anchises). Nevertheless, the detachment of
the author, both from the contents of the myth and from the lofty Homeric
tone, is signalled by the relative inappropriateness of that solemn formula
for the union from which Erichthonius had been born; 2
in such phrases
probably indicates the physical possession of the woman by the man,
whereas in the case of Earth and Hephaestus the conditions had been highly
anomalous. Moreover, ' truly is an affirmative adverb commonly used
with an ironic connotation;22 though apparently confirming the truth of
the ravens tale, it actually arouses suspicion of it.
In the following verse, the aim of Athenas journey outside Athens, to
obtain a protection for her land, uses an expression, $ !
, which
is probably an analogical variant of the epic $ !
,protection for the
skin, used in the same verse-position by Homer (Iliad 4.137) and Hesiod
(WD 536); as for the solemn specification that the city of Athens had recently
become the possession of the goddess as a result of the vote of Zeus and of
the twelve other immortal gods, the formulaic coupling Zeus . . . and the
21 Cf. Hollis (1990) 223.

22 Cf. J. D. Denniston, The Greek Particles (2nd ed., Oxford 1954) 265 and Hollis (1990) 235.
2 Callimachus 253
other immortal gods (which occurs a dozen times in Homer) is expanded
by the specification (never supplied by Homer)23 of twelve, thus wittily
emphasising the pedantic character of the ravens erudition. From here
until fr. 74.12 we have, together with a series of very fragmentary verses,
some ten well-preserved hexameters in which there is only one certain
Homerism (a single word)24 ; at the end, therefore, the bird puts aside all
lofty epic embellishments, and relates its own ravens existence in its own
words, before turning to the story of Apollo and the crow.
Together with the emphatic tone of the prophecy which begins in v. 10,
the style rises again:

( C i , B

%
) , ''

i' B$
.M $(M
-# '$% K%
' ( !$%)
' # &##C v bM v ' v % C -Z
c
M) p Q% _
(# !8 Q ." &Z")
$( 8 %% , #, EM )
& # ! ) ( l `59 ](%% )

`# Q =' & $

h @%!${ #M" %
Q.
Yes, by for not yet have all the days yes, by my shrivelled skin, yes by this tree
though it is dry, not yet have all the suns disappeared in the West with a broken
pole and axle. But it shall be evening or night, or noon, or dawn, when the raven,
which now might vie in colour even with swans, or with milk, or with the finest
cream of the wave, shall put on a sad plumage, black as pitch, the reward that
Phoebus will one day give him for his message, when he learns terrible tidings of
Coronis, daughter of Phlegyas, that she has gone with Ischys, the driver of horses.
(Callimachus, Hecale fr. 74.1020 H, trans. Trypanis (adapted))
The oath sworn by the withered tree in v. 11 evokes the sceptre over which
the harsh warning-oath about the future of the Greeks in the Trojan war had
been pronounced by Achilles at Iliad 1.2345; .M $(M having
broken the axle (v. 12) recalls Hesiod, WD 693, .M $(M (if ) you
break the axle. Most memorably, v. 14, ' # &##C v bM v ' v % C
-O | c ) #. but an evening, or a night, or an afternoon, or a dawn
will come, when etc., is a very powerful allusion to the famous prophecy
of Achilles about his own death at Iliad 21.11112, %% v -O v ' #
v % D|
) #. a dawn will come, or an evening, or a
23 Cf., however, Ovid, Met. 6.723.
24 #Z oily, used in fr. 71.3 to describe a gymnasion, suggests that Callimachus favoured
#
I am not shiny at Homer, Od. 19.72 (where the majority of manuscripts have '8 B$

I am truly dirty), cf. Rengakos (1993) 150.
noontide, when someone etc. In another gesture of superior pedantry, the
raven improves on Homers list by adding a fourth period (night), thus
making the list of parts of the day more complete. If the Homeric allusion
links the ill-fated destiny of crows to that of Achilles, the actual contents of
the prophecy are expressed in a language that is not significantly indebted
to Homer, and the one Homerism is in fact another piece of philological
polemics. In the expression $( 8 %% like dark pitch (v. 17),
Callimachus uses 4 with the meaning of F, as authorised by Zenodotus in
two passages of Homer, Iliad 2.144 and 14.499, and adopted by Antimachus
(fr. 156 Matthews); he also alludes to #( -Q %% blacker
than pitch/blacker like pitch (Iliad 4.277), but by substituting -Q by 4
he shows that, besides using 4 in the same way as Zenodotus, he also
interprets the Homeric -Q in the sense of in the same way as, and not
as a conjunction introducing the second term of a comparison, as it was
explained by some scholars at Iliad 4.277.25 This is a further sign of the
ravens pedantry, but it is also an ironic wink by the learned poet-scholar
who shows that his birds share his tastes.
The ravens narration occupied at least eighty verses. The poets voice
then takes up the tale again and this shift is marked by a stylistic device
of great literary complexity: one of the most conspicuous and extensive
imitations of Homer found in Callimachus is immediately followed by
two rare words which are not only unparalleled in Homer, but remain
extremely rare in Greek poetry of any period (vv. 224):
'' ' C ##, !
[]) L: D#
%94 . !$) V C ! 5
#U
But they did not sleep for long. Quickly came the frosty dawn-hour, when thieves
hands no longer go hunting . . .
Verse 22 is a slight modification of the two Homeric verses which conclude
the conversation between Odysseus and Eumaeus in Odyssey 15:
'' ' C ##, !
) &## $U
L: C7O D# ) #.
They did not sleep for long, but only for a short time, and suddenly Dawn, with
her beautiful throne, arrived . . . (Odyssey 15.4945)
25 As suggested by Aristarchus defence of the usual sense (cf. scholia ad loc.). Apollonius takes a position
on the meaning of the conjunction at Arg. 1.269, &'Z -Q Q, commonly understood
as a simile, (weeping) more loudly, like a girl etc., but possibly a comparison, more loudly than a
girl etc.; cf. Homer, Od. 16.216, &'Z i C *, var. lect. -Q C * more loudly than
the birds, Rengakos (1993) 801 and (1994) 967.
3 Theocritus 255
Like the ravens, Eumaeus story had lasted late into the night (and for
nearly a hundred verses). Callimachus avoids repeating &## $ but
only for a short time, which might have appeared to his taste pleonastic
after ##, !
, and he brings forward the beginning of the
periphrastic indication of time; in this way, he obtains a different structure
for the verses, but one which sounds equally Homeric, cf. Odyssey 12.4078,
1 'C (# ##, !
U L: D# / # O _$)
#. and she (the ship) did not speed ahead for long: for suddenly the west
wind came howling etc. If v. 22 varies easily recognisable Homeric pat-
terns, the following verse is radically innovative. For the Homeric formula
Dawn with her beautiful throne (six times in Homer), Callimachus sub-
stitutes %94 . !$ frosty hour close to dawn; %94 frosty is
a neologism and a Callimachean hapax, based on %9 frost, which is a
Homeric dis legomenon referring specifically to the cold that precedes the
dawn. As for . !$, this is not only very rare (Cypriot, according to
Hesychius 922 Latte), but also grammatically ambiguous, because it could
be taken as an adjective (cf. Apoll. Rh. Arg. 4.11011, Q | . !$),
even if Callimachus uses it here as a noun. Long periphrastic indications
of time have their roots in Homeric formulas for the time of day or the
seasons, but they are, on the whole, as foreign to archaic epic as they are
dear to Hellenistic poets.26 Callimachus perhaps acknowledges this when
he juxtaposes the very Homeric v. 22 to the marked linguistic innovation
(in enjambement) of v. 23, a striking shift which is matched by the sudden
intrusion of a typically Hellenistic description of the time of day, drawn
from the daily life of humble people, which places en abme the dominant
taste of the Hecale as a whole.
3 theocritus
The opening section of Idyll 24 (vv.163), in which the baby Heracles stran-
gles the serpents sent by Hera to kill him, is well suited to an investigation
of Theocritus epic style, because of the survival of two previous Pindaric
treatments of the same theme, which Theocritus undoubtedly knew (Nem.
1.3359 and Paean 20, fr. 52u Maehler = S1 Rutherford), and because it
is likely that the very amount of previous poetry about Heracles (there
were at least three pre-Theocritean hexameter Heracleids)27 threw down a
challenge to any Hellenistic poet; Pindar already displays an awareness of a
long pre-existing tradition, defining the myth as &!5 #
, ancient
26 Cf. Fantuzzi (1988a) chapter 4. 27 Cf. above, p. 205.

history (Nem. 1.34).28 Moreover, the prominence of the myth in Pindar
testifies to its heroic-sublime significance, and this too represented a poetic
challenge for a poet of the humble, like Theocritus.
The briefest comparison with both Pindaric versions will reveal the inno-
vative emphasis in Theocritus on the description of the agitated awakening
of Alcmene and the rather more sluggish awakening of Amphitryon (vv.
3453). Moreover, Theocritus is totally silent about the only martial detail of
any significance in Nemean 1, namely the attempted armed counter-attack
against the serpents by the Theban nobles, who rush to the palace to help
the royal family, and by Amphitryon, who bursts, sword in hand, into the
room of his two little sons, vv. 5153:
!b 'X =' & !#-
%b V# ' &
)
! ' C C;Q #
$, (%% <(% >
l C) ]M &% $ .
Quickly there came at a run the leaders of the Kadmeians in a body with bronze
weapons, and Amphitryon, brandishing in his hand a sword bare of its scabbard,
arrived smitten with keen anguish. (Pindar, Nemean 1.5153, trans. Braswell)
In place of this decidedly epic clash, in Theocritus it is anxious servants
who burst into the boys room with lamps in their hands (vv. 523)29 , while
Amphitryon concerns himself with getting the doors open in the dark
and never actually brandishes the sword with which he has just equipped
himself in a scene which owes more to scenes of epic awakening30 than
to traditional arming scenes. No human weapons could, in any case, have
prevailed against Heras serpents, only the divine strength of Heracles. In
Nemean 1 the moment of greatest interest was the strangling of the serpents
by Heracles:
. . . ' C ]
, X . () T 'X (!)
'%%5% 'b !
(: &Q ! % +5 A.
& ! 'X !

:$! & $% # &(.
28 On the meaning of the verb in Pindars &!5 ]Q #

, (Nem. 1.34), cf. G. A. Loscalzo,
QUCC 58 (1988) 72, B. K. Braswell, A Commentary on Pindar, Nemean One (Fribourg 1992)
57.
29 The phrase used in v. 52 to indicate the movements of these servants (e ' C L: )
reworks a Homeric description of the clumsy, irregular movements of a herd of oxen (Il. 18.525).
30 Cf. above, p. 203.
3 Theocritus 257
But he lifted his head up straight and for the first time made trial of battle seizing
the two snakes by the neck with both his inescapable hands. As they were being
throttled time caused them to breathe out their life from their monstrous bodies.
(Pindar, Nemean 1.437, trans. Braswell)
Theocritus, however, deals rapidly with the strangling (vv. 269), and
almost rationalises Heracles success, rather than emphasising his heroism,
by the quasi-didactic specification of vv. 289, 'M( ($ )

( #$ $ | # ] %% taking them by the throat,
where the deadly venom of poisonous snakes is situated. This reworks the
detailed descriptions of the Iliad of the point on the body where a warrior is
struck, but it also suggests that the success of Heracles was at least partly due
to a particular grip which neutralised the venomous bite of the serpents:31
it was not just a question of strength who knows how things would have
gone if the child had taken hold of the serpents at some other point . . .?
At the thematic level, then, Theocritus both blurs the superhuman
elements of this tale of extraordinary, precocious heroism and exagger-
ates the all too human reactions of the characters; as far as possible, this
heroic tale becomes a story of everyday domestic reality.32 Theocritus allu-
sions to archaic epic reinforce this narrative strategy, for these are used
to suggest, with subtle irony, the differences between the archaic heroic
world and the less heroic attitudes and situations of Theocritus char-
acters, other than Heracles and his extraordinary feat. Thus, for exam-
ple, weapons and armour had been at the heart of traditional epic, but
in Idyll 24 the only serious arms are Heracles hands, whereas tradi-
tional arms, and the motifs connected with them, figure in entirely non-
traditional ways; there is an almost programmatic instance at the start
of the poem.33 The shield taken from Pterelaus by Amphitryon is rele-
gated to the role of a cradle where Alcmene lays Heracles and Iphicles
down to sleep:
!# &%') J #($
C;Q #, V# & %Q# $% %

She laid them down in the bronze shield, the fine piece of armour that Amphitryon
had taken from Pterelaus when he fell. (Theocritus 24.45)
31 For the analogous case of the reasons for Europas dream in Moschus cf. above, p. 218.
32 Cf. above, pp. 2067.
33 For Ovids exploitation of the idea of improper arms cf. M. Labate: Un altro Omero: scene di
battaglia nelle Metamorfosi di Ovidio in Metamorfosi (Proceedings of the Conv. Internaz. di Studi,
Sulmona 1997) 14265 and Tra Omero e Virgilio: strategie epiche ovidiane in Posthomerica II (Genoa
2000) 1939.
That Heracles and Iphicles sleep in a shield was not attested by Pindar,
and might be Theocritus own idea. The shield may well have Ptolemaic
significance34 and is certainly related to Heracles remarkable character, but
it is also a relic of the heroic sphere,35 here downgraded to a rather homely
function. Moreover, Theocritus will also be alluding to the beginning of
another famous poem about Heracles, the pseudo-Hesiodic Aspis, most
of which is a description of the dread decoration on the shield used by
Heracles against Cycnus. Many aspects of this late archaic poem its
length, its taste for the elaborately decorative and the marvellous, a final
aition were such as to arouse great interest among Hellenistic writers,
and Theocritus may have seen his poem as somehow complementary to it.
The Aspis had begun, like Idyll 24, with the success of Amphitryon against
the Taphians/Teleboans led by Pterelaus (vv. 1427), but then moved to
events presupposed, but completely omitted, in Theocritus poem the
passion of Zeus for Alcmena, their night of lovemaking, the return of
Amphitryon, and the conception of two brothers with different fathers
(vv. 2756); moreover, the Aspis concerned a thoroughly traditional duel
of Heracles and was largely dedicated to the description of his armour,
with the ekphrasis of the shield occupying almost half the poem. The Aspis
thus functions as an avoided model, underlining the fact that Theocritus
was overturning, through a kind of aposiopesis of ekphrasis, the ekphrastic
grandeur of Pseudo-Hesiod. The description of the shield-cradle as a #,
V# fine piece of armour both evokes and, through its very concision,
denies the possibility of ekphrasis.36
Epic arms usually have a special history or reputation, which is often
related by the poet when the arms are first mentioned, and such descrip-
tions sometimes begin halfway through the verse, as with Theocritus shield;
we may think of Nestors shield in Iliad 8.1923, the breastplate that Cinyras
had given to Agamemnon in Iliad 11.1928, the sword that Euryalus gives
to Odysseus in Odyssey 8.4035, or in a structure very like Theocritus
the breastplate that Achilles gives to Eumelos in Iliad 23.5602, 'Z% e
Z) , C;% 5 &Q | !(# ) #. I will give him
the bronze breastplate that I took from Asteropaeus, etc. The numer-
ous dedications in temples of panoplies demonstrate that their status as
trophies plundered on the battlefield gave such arms a unique prestige and
34 Cf. above, pp. 2012. 35 As Effe (1978) 55 calls it.
36 Cf. above, pp. 2034, for other ekphrastic possibilities in this poem. In Plautus Amphitruo, con-
siderable importance is attached to the fact that Amphitryon obtained, as booty from Pterelaus, a
gold cup (vv. 2601, 41819, 76097), cf. Athen. 11.498c, and at Thebes there was a tripod, dedicated
in a temple, which was said to be part of the spoils that Amphitryon took from the Teleboans
(cf. Herodotus 5.59). It is thus possible that both Theocritus and Plautus reflect a lost work which
contained an ekphrasis of one or more of the objects taken by Amphitryon from Pterelaus.
3 Theocritus 259
importance.37 Pride of place among the arms dedicated to celebrate a vic-
tory was most frequently given to the shield, perhaps because its possession
demonstrated the final defeat of the enemy. A hoplite was loath to give
up his shield, as is confirmed by the shame that fell upon the B:%
shield-abandoner, often mentioned in ancient comedy and oratory,38 and
by the fact that the poetic topos of the abandonment of the shield has
often to be justified by the statement that only thus could the poet save his
life;39 the two handles inside the hoplites shield guaranteed indeed that the
soldier whose shield was taken was either dead or captured.40 Thus, after
the shield which . . . (v. 4) we expect a glorious story like, for example,
that of the shield given to Eumelos by Achilles; moreover, %
hav-
ing fallen has, of course, many Iliadic parallels (e.g. 3.289, 8.476, 11.250,
15.427816.499500),41 the last two of which explicitly connect death in
battle with the plundering of arms.
Besides reports of Amphitryons expedition against the Taphians which
do not appear to indicate that his victory was obtained in an unconven-
tional manner,42 there also existed a different version,43 perhaps referred
to in Callimachus Victoria Berenices (above pp. 835),44 according to
which the body of Pterelaus, the son of Poseidon, was invulnerable, but
for one golden lock of hair, on which his life depended; he could therefore
not be defeated in a duel, but the lock was snipped off by his daughter
Comaetho, who had fallen in love with Amphitryon or one of his men,
a certain Cephalus, and thus was Pterelaus fate sealed.45 In this version,
37 Cf. A. H. Jackson, Hoplites and the Gods: the Dedication of Captured Arms and Armour, in V. D.
Hanson (ed.), Hoplites: the Classical Greek Battle Experience (LondonNew York 1991) 230.
38 Cf. Th. Schwertfeger, Der Schild des Archilochos, Chiron 12 (1982) 25480.
39 Cf. e.g. Archilochus, IEG 5 and perhaps also 139 (cf. A. Kerkhecker, ZPE 111 (1996) 26); Alcaeus
fr. 428 Voigt; Anacreon, PMG 381; Aristophanes, Wasps 592 and Peace 1186; Hor., Carm. 2.7.910.
On this topos cf. F. De Martino, Scudi a rendere, AION (filol.-lett.) 12 (1990) 4564.
40 Cf. R. Lonis, Guerre et religion en Grece a lepoque classique (Paris 1979) 15860.
41 Cf. Gutzwiller (1981) 12.
42 Cf. [Hes.], Aspis 1527; Pherecydes, FGrHist 3F13; Pindar, Nem. 10.1415; Hdt. 5.59.; Eur., HF 1078
80; Strabo 10.2.24; Pausanias 1.37.6. There is no sign in these texts that Amphitryons victory over
Pterelaus was in any way unusual; they are, however, extremely brief reports.
43 Cf. Lycophron, Alex. 9334, Euphorion, SH 415.ii.1517, [Apollodorus] 2.4.7, and SH 964.1112.
This last passage is usually considered to belong to the late Hellenistic-Roman period (thus e.g.
Lloyd-Jones and Parsons), but it might have been a part of the Leontion of Hermesianax, cf. J. L.
Butrica, Hellenistic Erotic Elegy: The Evidence of the Papyri, PLLS 9 (1996) 297322, pp. 3045
and 318 n. 24.
44 SH 257.8 undoubtedly refers to the victory of Amphitryon over the Taphians, and E. Livrea, Gnomon
57 (1985) 593 has pointed out that the feminine participle 5% in this verse might refer to
Comaetho, who was changed into a bird after causing her fathers death.
45 The only source that quotes this myth at length, [Apollodorus], Bibl. 2.4.7, makes clear that the
death of Pterelaus was caused by Comaetho, and that it was only after this that Amphitryon took
possession of the islands (J #($ # $4% ! Z% 4%$ after the death of
Pterelaus, Amphitryon subjugated the islands, cf. Theocr. 24.45).
Pterelaus certainly fell, but not in a duel with Amphitryon, who will have
simply plundered his body once he was dead or weakened by the action
of Comaetho. We do not know how early this alternative version was,
but Lycophron alludes briefly to towers of Comaetho, and it is therefore
not unreasonable to suppose that the version with Comaetho was familiar
before Lycophron. If Theocritus knew, and expected his readers to know,
this alternative version, then & %Q# $% plundered (v. 5) is ironically
ambiguous: was the shield taken in battle, or merely stripped from a dying
or dead man by Amphitryon, taking advantage of Comaethos infatuation
for him? With this reading, Theocritus refusal to be explicit about the dif-
ferent paternity of the two boys (vv. 12) would fit the same ironic strategy.
Just as & %Q# $% in v. 5 may, but need not, refer to spoils taken after a
heroic duel, so also $ Z used to describe Iphicles in v. 2 reminds
us, not just of the boys different birthdays, but also of the fact that Alcmena
slept with Zeus and Amphitryon on consecutive nights (cf. [Apollodorus]
2.4.8); Heracles and Iphicles would both appear from the text to be sons
of Amphitryon, but all readers knew that this was not the case, and The-
ocritus finds subtle ways to remind them. The opening of the poem thus
establishes alternative stories, in which the natural meaning of the text is
destabilised by a more subversive version: we may believe that the shield
was booty taken by Amphitryon in a heroic duel and that the two babies are
his sons, but we are tempted by the thought that the shield was not taken
in normal fighting and only one of the babies is Amphitryons son.46
The lullaby of vv. 79 also combines the everyday and realistic the
rhythmical repetition and the cumulative synonyms may be presumed typ-
ical of such songs with Homeric memories which raise the tonal level, or
rather establish a witty alternation of tones: it is, after all, a lullaby sung by
Alcmena, and in heroic hexameters . . . Stroking the babies heads while
singing a lullaby was no doubt the behaviour of any real mother, but it
is unlikely that an ancient reader, faced with the sequence / 'X
$ #T $4% 'U [' C) #. touching her childrens
heads, the woman said: Sleep, etc., would not recall the typical Homeric
dream-scene, as at Iliad 2.5960 % 'C .C 2X # ,
U| [' ) #. He [the god Oneiros] stood over my head
46 At Plautus, Amph. 252 Sosia states ipsusque Amphitruo regem Pterelam sua obtruncavit manu and
Amphitryon personally killed King Pterelaus, with his own hands, thus turning Amphitryon into
a Roman general deserving of the spolia opima. It is at least tempting to believe that Plautus knew
of the alternative version, which would then colour Sosias parodically exaggerated account. Sosias
description of the Teleboan troops nimis pulcris armis praeditae (v. 218) may perhaps be indebted to
Theocritus (cf. v. 5 #, V#): beautiful is not a common epithet for arms, either in Greek or
in Latin poetry. For a different interpretation cf. G. Pascucci, Scritti scelti (Florence 1983) 5545 n. 1,
who sees a topos of moralistic historiography excessive riches hide cowardice.
3 Theocritus 261
and addressed me: You are sleeping . . . (cf. Iliad 23.689). Of particular
interest is the variation at Odyssey 23.45: % 'C .C 2X #
, U | ) J #
) # ) #. [Eurycleia]
stood over her head and said to her: Wake up, Penelope, dear daugh-
ter, etc.47 , where the speaker is a human being trying to wake a sleeper
up; Eurycleias jussive wake up is analogous to, and reversed by, Alcmenas
Sleep . . . So, too, the end of Alcmenas lullaby is again decidedly Homeric:
& l% may you arrive at the dawn shows a striking use of the simple
accusative for a figurative movement to a place, the only parallels for which
are two passages of the Odyssey, both of which have something in common
with Alcmenas wish. In Odyssey 19.319, the subjunctive - l may
he arrive at dawn expresses, exactly as in Theocritus, the temporal limit
of the long, sweet sleep that the maids must allow the disguised Odysseus;
Odyssey 17.497, . Q Q - l none of these
would arrive at dawn with her beautiful throne, also has the character
of a wish, though a negative one, for it expresses the curse of the pantry-
maid in Odysseus house, who hopes that the life of the suitors will be short.
Moreover, Alcmenas % [ sleep from which one awakes care-
fully exorcises the potentially disastrous implications of the Homeric dis
legomenon 4 without waking up, which is applied to sleep in
Odyssey 13.80 (cf. also 13.74, and HHom. Aphr. 178).48 The tone remains
strongly Homeric also immediately after the lullaby: F picks up
a very frequent Homeric formula, used above all for female characters;49
%( large shield recurs five times in Homer, always at this same
point in the line, and in three of these cases the reference is to the Shield
of Achilles, the subject of the most famous example of that ekphrasis which
Theocritus denies to Amphitryons shield;50 finally, b 'C E# [PAnt.:
#9C codd.] [ might recall [ E# in Iliad 22.502,51 describing
the very moment when the infant son of Hector, Astyanax, fell asleep in
the arms of his nurse.52
47 Other examples: Od. 4.8034, 20.323, Il. 24.6823. Much less likely is an echo (cf. Gow ad loc.) of
HHom. 5.27, where Aphrodite swears /: #
.
48 The use of 4 for the sleep of death is not attested before the beginning of the first century
bc ([Moschus], Bion. Ep. 104).
49 o six times; o ( once (Il.) and o ( once (Od.). Apollonius too uses the
phrase only once, again in the female gender and at the beginning of the line (2.291).
50 Cf. Il. 18.478, 609, 19.373; at 16.136 the phrase is used of Achilles earlier shield, the one which
Patroclus lost, and at 3.335 of the shield of Paris.
51 This is uncertain, given the existence of other examples of this and related phrases, cf. Od. 9.3723,
15.7 19.511, 20.52, Il. 10.1923, 24.45.
52 #9 C would make this allusive suggestion much less probable, but it is likely to be a trivialisation
created by the very common use of [ with #9( ; for a (not very convincing) defence of
the text of the manuscripts, cf. H. White ad loc.
The opening of the lullaby itself, however, contrasts with the epicisms
surrounding it. 9 is not a common word in epic poetry, and on its
only appearance in archaic epic (Iliad 23.266) the meaning was not child
but embryo (of a horse), a difference from later ordinary usage which
was already noted by the scholia. As child, 9 was by the time of
Theocritus widely used in common language,53 and its colloquial character
made it appropriate for the domestic nature of the scene. Nevertheless,
in this sense it first appears in three lyric texts of the early fifth century,
which might have attracted Theocritus both because lyric was the most
natural form for a lullaby54 and because two of the passages in question
are contextually relevant. The earliest attestation is in the famous poem by
Simonides about Danae adrift with Perseus on the waves (PMG 543); the
mother concludes her apostrophe to her baby with # 'C) ' 9
I beg you: sleep on, child (v. 21),55 which is then followed by 2'
'X
) 2' 'C .
let the sea sleep, let the boundless
suffering sleep, with the same verbal anaphora as in vv. 78 of Idyll 24.
There are also parallels of content: the lullaby in Simonides, like that in
Theocritus, introduces a night which looks as though it will bring the babys
death, but of course it does not;56 Perseus, like Heracles, is destined to have
a glorious future as a killer of monsters; neither Danae nor Alcmena knew
that Zeus was the father of her child; both Perseus and Heracles have close
links to the dynasty of the Ptolemies.57 After Simonides, 9 reappears
in two passages of Pindar, and one of these is Paean 20 concerning Heracles
and the snakes, where Heracles is 9 $
the child of
heavenly Zeus (v. 9).
When the story of the snakes begins, we seem to be entering an epic
episode, though this too is to prove tonally more complicated than at
first appears. The structure } ' . . . T when . . . then (vv. 1113)
suggests epic, and the image of the Bear that [ . . .] % CS C

rotates opposite Orion (vv. 1213) recalls Iliad 18.4878,
C, [. . .] w C % C CS ' Q the Bear that
rotates at the same point, and keeps its eye on Orion (= Odyssey 5.2734).
53 Cf. Aristophanes of Byzantium fr. 37 Slater.

54 Cf. I Waern, Greek Lullabies, Eranos 58 (1960) 12. 55 Cf. Gutzwiller (1981) 11.
56 According to O. Vox, Lo scudo di Eraclino, Aion (filol.-lett.) 12 (1990) 67, as Alcmena puts her
children in a shield-cradle to sleep, it almost seems as if she is not putting them to bed, but placing
them in a tomb, repeating the gesture of the mothers of Sparta, who gave a shield to their sons
leaving for the war, telling them to come back either with it, or on it; in so doing, it almost seems
that Alcmena intends to expose them, and thus she repeats, albeit at a symbolic level, that exposure
that their forefather Perseus had suffered in the ark, together with his mother.
57 Cf. Hunter (1996b) 267 and above, p. 202.
3 Theocritus 263
This Homeric passage comes of course from the ekphrasis of Achilles shield,
and the constellations of that ekphrasis became so memorable as to be
emblematic of the whole, as in Anacreontea 4 work your silver, Hephaes-
tus, but for me, you must make not a panoply, but rather a cup as deep
as possible. And do not put the stars, or the Bear, or sad Orion on it:
what do I care about the Pleiades, or Bootes? Put some vines and bunches
of grapes on it. Theocritus specifies that the Bear can be seen 'Q%
towards sunset (v. 11), whereas the Homeric passage (v. 489) defined the
Bear as the only one that never takes part in the Oceans washing, that
is to say, that never goes below the horizon; Theocritus thus invites the
reader to understand that it was not a question of a real setting ('Q%)
because, as Homer says with truth, the Great Bear never disappears over
the Mediterranean sea but that the Bear was simply in a particularly low
position above the horizon.58 The allusion to the Iliad further evokes the
possibility of that ekphrasis which Theocritus refuses, because in his poem
the stars are closely connected with the main narrative and not simply
part of a digressive ekphrasis; Theocritus precise details are intended to
indicate a very specific time and period of the year during which the ser-
pents attack takes place.59 Theocritus in fact transforms Homers ekphrastic
image into a descriptive indication of the time of day, of a kind which was
quite foreign to Homer; such descriptions, familiar also in Apollonius, offer
a narrative pause which arouses the readers attention, warning him that
something particularly important is about to happen.60 A further glance at
epic ekphrasis may be seen in $( (v. 14). Before Theocritus, both prose
and poetry seem to have used this adjective almost exclusively for ekphrastic
serpents,61 that is to say for those made of Q (a sort of blueish glaze);
such creatures are found on the breastplate of Agamemnon in Iliad 11.26,
on the strap of his shield in Iliad 11.39, and on the shield of Heracles in
[Hesiod] Aspis 1667. In all three cases, as in Theocritus, $( appears
in an emphatic position at the beginning of the verse, and the serpents
58 The Homeric scholia show that it was well understood that the Great Bear never disappears from
the sky at the latitude of the Mediterranean. A greater puzzle was what Homer meant by saying that
the Bear was the only such constellation, for there were other 8 'Q, cf. Massimilla (1996)
on Callim. fr. 19.10.
59 Precise only for the ancients, as modern reckonings vary between February (Gow) and October
(White); contrast Anacreontea 33: at the midnight hour, when the Bear already rotates beside the
hand of Bootes, etc., which does not specify the position of Orion. For some hypotheses about
why Theocritus may have wanted to be so precise about the period of the year when the serpents
attacked the infant Heracles, cf. Gow ad loc. and above, p. 204.
60 Cf. above, p. 255.
61 Cf., however, Posidippus 57.3 AB for the $( #' coat of bluish scales of a (real) cobra;
for post-Theocritean instances cf. Anacreontea 17.11 and Nicander, Th. 438, 729.
are always designated by the term '( . Here, too, then, Theocritus
reminds us that his '( $( had precedents in archaic ekphrasis,
but he has integrated them into the body of his narration.
Echoes of archaic epic texts litter the narrative of the serpents attack,
establishing a series of high analogies or, more commonly, ironic differences
between Homeric heroes and the protagonists of Theocritus. The analo-
gies, however, concern the snakes, not Heracles; this is not a generic pursuit
of irony, or a destruction of the myth, but part of a set of textual strate-
gies which contribute to the effect of a realistic description of an utterly
unrealistic myth.62 Both the menacing threat of the serpents and their
character as agents sent by a divinity are suggested by % #b
'
pushed towards the high threshold (v. 15, the subject is Hera, the
object the serpents), which is based on two Homeric models. %
(with anastrophic tmesis) is used once in the Iliad and once in the Odyssey
for the divine action of raising up something against men; at Iliad 9.539
it is the angry Artemis who unleashes a boar on the fields of Oeneus, and
at Odyssey 12.313 Zeus triggers a terrible storm at sea. In modifying these
models, Theocritus may have been influenced by the pattern of Odyssey
22.2, }# 'C '
he [Odysseus] jumped on to the wide
threshold, at the very beginning of the most famous domestic slaughter
in Greek poetry, the killing of the suitors; the parallel between Odysseus
revenge and the attempted revenge of Hera is marked by the Odyssean
epithet #$4! (v. 13) applied to the goddess, but otherwise very rare
for divinities. The gleaming eyes of the serpents, &C ]# 'X ,
| ! #( % a sinister fire flashed from their eyes as they
advanced (vv. 1819), perhaps recalls the eyes of the terrible boar to which
Idomeneus is compared at Iliad 13.474, ]#O 'C . e $ #(
truly his eyes flashed with fire. Unlike Homers fearful boars, or Odysseus
about to slaughter the suitors, Heras serpents are to be nonchalantly exter-
minated by a child, and so the Homeric allusions are coloured by gentle
humour. In Pindar, it was the heroic child himself whose eyes flashed
(Paean 20.13, ]]( . %# '% a gleam rotated out
from his eyes).
The reactions of the terrified Iphicles also make humorous use of heroic
allusion. Thus, for example, the warrior who protects himself with his
shield usually looks at his enemy from over the edge of the shield itself, in
order to frighten him with his fierce gaze (cf. e.g. [Hes.] Aspis 24) or to take
62 On the poetics underlying the realistic presentation of highly unrealistic contents, cf. above,
p. 2067.
3 Theocritus 265
aim (cf. e.g. Euripides, Phoenissae 13845). In the same way, Iphicles caught
sight of the evil beasts over the curved edge of the shield (#$ 2X
%( ) and saw their merciless fangs (vv. 234) though Iphicles is not
holding the shield, but lying inside it, and he is certainly not taking aim! His
shout in v. 23, i V C b .$% immediately he gave a shout repeats
and overturns the Homeric formula , .$% : the Iliadic battle-cry
or exhortation to fight63 becomes the sudden cry of fear of an infant. So
too, when Alcmena asks her husband (v. 37) & ' Z
V%% &$ 5, Cant you hear the younger child screaming?, &$ had
been typically used for the battle-cry of Homers heroes.64
A similar technique is used with Iphicles parents. Alcmenas worried X
' K%! ]
a troubling fear grips me (v. 35) overturns the
proud denial of Diomedes in Iliad 5.817, 3 ' K%! &4 3
A neither base fear nor any anxiety inhibits me (cf. also Idomeneus
at Iliad 13.2245); the synonyms ' and A are not found together in
poetry, apart from in these three passages.65 Diomedes is indeed likely the
point of comparison here, for Alcmenas urgent address to her husband
(vv. 357) also echoes the words with which Nestor had woken Diomedes
in another famous night scene of epic poetry, the agonising vigil of the
Greeks in Iliad 10 ( ) s$' $eU Q! [ & 5U |
& #. Wake up, son of Tydeus! Why do you sleep all night? Do you
not hear . . .? vv. 15960). As for Amphitryon, the humour of his clumsy
groping in the dark is sharpened by the detail that his sword was always
hanging on a nail over his bed (vv. 434); is this so that it would be always
ready in case of need, or because Amphitryon made little use of it? *X
. (v. 43) is a Homeric clausula used in Iliad 3.272 and 19.253 to refer
to a knife ((!) which always hung, not in a bedroom, but next to
the sword worn by Agamemnon on the battlefield.66
These Homeric allusions also connect events in the palace of Amphitryon
with the representation of daily life in the Odyssey; here it is similarity to,
not difference from, the Homeric model which is suggested, as though
Theocritus is acknowledging that his nocturnal mime had roots in the
illustrious tradition of archaic epic poetry. Thus, for example, the eery
63 Cf. above, p. 251.
64 For the mixed stylistic level of v. 50, where this verb reappears, cf. above pp. 20910.
65 Even if this combination of ' and A was probably idiomatic in later everyday language
(cf. Plut., Virt. Mor. 444c3; Flav. Jos., Bell. Iud. 7.165; Appian, BC 2.69 and 2.104), a Homeric echo
is guaranteed in Theocritus by the added reuse of K%! .
66 Elsewhere in the Iliad the place where a sword was to be hung was not the bedroom wall, but at a
warriors side: cf. 22.3067 (% ]Mb) |
e 2, #( %9
his
sharp sword, which always hung, large and heavy, at his side.
divine light of vv. 212 may recall67 the divine light provided by Athena
to illuminate the transfer of arms by Odysseus and Telemachus in Book
19 of the Odyssey, vv. 3140; if so, Alcmenas words, Cant you see that
the walls are all illuminated as if it were daybreak? And yet it is dead of
night! Theres something strange in the house, my husband (vv. 3840),
would be analogous to those of Telemachus, Father, this is a great miracle
that I can see with my eyes: the walls of the house, the beautiful arches,
the pine-wood beams, [. . .] all look as if there were a fire burning inside
them. There is a god in there (Od. 19.3640). The presence of light is, of
course, an ubiquitous marker of the divine (cf. e.g. HHom. Dem. 1889,
Eur. Bacch. 1083),68 and so this allusion should not be regarded as certain.
Less doubt surrounds the case of the Phoenician woman whose bed is close
to the millstone (v. 51) who first hears Amphitryons call and who wakes
the other servants (cf. above p. 208). The epithet with which she calls her
fellow-servants, #% , was extremely common of Odysseus, but
is rare outside the Odyssey,69 and it is the Odyssey which is, of course, in play
here. At 20.98121, Odysseus had asked for confirmation of divine support
and Zeus had sent a clap of thunder; this was heard and understood by a
servant-girl in charge of the millstone (&# ), who was C . e Q#
l # where the millstones of the shepherd of peoples were
situated(v. 106) and the only servant still awake as the rest slept. Theocritus
offers us another &# who stays awake in another house pervaded by
an atmosphere of magic and miracle.
4 apollonius rhodius
The Argonautica, the only extant third-century epic, provides the most
significant example of the paired Hellenistic techniques of analogical vari-
ation from the Homeric model, and partial dissimulation of that debt.
Apollonius uses repetition with great care, both internal, quasi-formulaic
repetition, and repetition of Homer or of archaic epic more generally, and
it is variety, not faithfulness, which is sought.70 Thus, for example, there are
only two formulas for the Argonauts as a group which occupy the whole
of a hemistich, and only two examples of each of these: &' 1Z
5 %
# (1.970) | &'. 1. 5 %
# (2.1091) for the first half of
the verse up to the bucolic caesura (with a shorter variant up to the trochaic
67 As suggested by Gow on v. 22. 68 Cf. Dover (1971) on v. 21f. 69 Cf. above, p. 209, n. 80.
70 For what follows cf. Fantuzzi (2001a).
caesura: 1Z V# 3.1166), and &%4 %
# &' (2.458,
2.958) or &%4 V# (1.109) for the second half of the verse. For the
central part of the verse, from A1 or A2 71 to the bucolic diaeresis, there is a
group of flexible variations of these phrases, all different from one another:
&%4 &' %
# (3.1006), 1 &' (1.548: var.
lect. ) and &% ,72 ( (4.1773). The same discretion
is found in terms of external formularity, that is to say, imitation of archaic
epic: only the genitive &' 1Z at the beginning of the verse (1.970,
2.1091) exactly repeats an archaic pattern (four times in the Odyssey, and
four times in Hesiod), but then the noun that accompanies this genitive
is a non-Homeric word, %
#, as the Homeric 1 &'
(Iliad 12.23) is formally varied in the Apollonian 1 &'
(1.548).
The Golden Fleece occurs fifteen times in the Argonautica, and it is
not easy to imagine that poetic language offered many different ways to
say fleece; moreover, golden was only !Q% (). Apollonius succeeds,
however, in achieving a level of internal formulaic expression that avoids
repetition as far as possible, by making use not only of a careful alternation
between fleece and ' skin (the former eight times, the lat-
ter seven times) and between !Q% (eleven times) and !Q% (four
times), but also of hyperbaton: and ' are regularly separated from
their adjective.73 Hyperbaton is, in fact, an important weapon in Apollo-
nius avoidance, and echoing, of a formulaic style; in the proem of the
first book, out of five noun + adjective or noun + apposition combina-
tions, four are found in hyperbaton, and one in enjambement. Apart from
expressions introducing direct speech,74 the only phrase which approaches
the frequency and fixedness of a Homeric formula is 4 swift ship
(seven times), though it behaves more like a movable formula, as defined
by Hainsworth. In three cases, it takes the form 4 at the beginning
of the line, but in all other cases it occupies different positions and/or is
divided by hyperbaton. Moreover, Apollonius favoured verse-initial posi-
tion for this formula is found only once in the Iliad and once in the Odyssey
(compared with the thirty or so occurrences of 4 at other points in
71 For the structural scheme of the hexameter, cf. above, p. 36, n. 143.
72 I accept Frankels emendation of the transmitted &%4, which is however defended by Livrea
ad loc.
73 !Q% [. . .] or [. . .] !Q% (): 1.4, 2.1193, 3.13, 4.162, 4.341, 4.439, 4.1035, 4.1142;
!Q% () ' [. . .] or ' [. . .] !Q% : 1.889, 2.1224, 3.88, 3.180, 3.404, 4.87, 4.1319.
74 For which cf. Fantuzzi (1988a) 6585.
the line), almost as if Apollonius deliberately avoids combining an internal
formula with the echo of a well-established Homeric external formula.75
The same may be said for the most frequent expression for swift feet,
1.539, 5% (trochaic caesura) . . .
' %% (end of line), and 2.428
(= 4.79), b (penthemimeral caesura) . . .
' (bucolic diaere-
sis), which never use either the order or the metrical position of either of
the two terms in the Homeric formula (%)% 5% (six times in
the Iliad after a penthemimeral or trochaic caesura). In both cases, then, the
echo of words previously used by Homer is not combined with a noticeable
echo of their Homeric structure.
Apollonius para-formulaic style, which satisfies both an aesthetics of reg-
ularity based on repetition and echo effects and the need to avoid Homeric
heaviness, is based on an alternation between internal and external formulas;
in the following cases, repetition never involves more than two elements.
The phrase |# % with sails unfurled in 4.299 and 4.1623,
for example, is found in a different position in 4.122930 ( % |
# %), and in a different case, though in the same position, in 2.903
(|# ): this expression, which is never attested before
Apollonius, and is not borrowed from everyday language, is subsequently
found only in hexametric poetry, where it might be an imitation of Apollo-
nius.76 The same may be said for the case of 1.967 $# C #|
1.1124 $# #|,they took care of the sacrifices, where the
noun $# activity of sacrificing is attested for the first time in Apol-
lonius (and the corresponding verb only from Aeschylus onwards). Another
example is the purely and typically Apollonian (2.225) an
effective expedient, with its positional and case variations in 2.1050, 2.1068,
and 3.184, and a verbal variant, # cunning expedient in
3.781 and 3.912, where the phrase occupies different positions in the two
verses; in Homer, both and # referred only to people
or divinities (though Hesiod, WD 67 has # D cunning char-
acter). 9(# | C 7 4 the daughter of the morning sent lightat
3.8234 is varied by C 7O - 8 9(# Dawn, daughter of the
morning, sent light at 4.981; the phrase as a whole has no precedent, and
appears in archaic epic only in HHom. Dem. 278. #
75 The extreme rarity in Homer of the only position which Apollonius uses as many as three times
escaped the attention of M. Parry, The Making of Homeric Verse (Oxford 1971) 29, who therefore
underestimated the formularity of the phrase in Apollonius.
76 Oppian, Hal. 1.222; Greg. Naz., Carm. mor., PG xxxvii, col. 543.10 and de se ipso, ibid. col. 1376.1;
Nonnus, Dion. 36.409; Iohann. Geom., PG cvi, col. 950, carm. 108. Apart from these texts (and the
glosses on the first of them), the expression is found only in Byzantine scholia on Hesiod, WD 169
(p. 121 Gainsford).
]'
full of sharp teeth describes Jasons helmet in his fight against
the bulls (3.1281, 1321), and this unusual role for a helmet is marked by
the use of
; the meaning sharp is foreign to Homer, who uses the
word only in the sense swift. A final example in this category is . "
.$' silent and speechless before the trochaic caesura at 3.503, 967,
and 4.693; .$' here probably functions as an explanatory gloss, by
means of which Apollonius assumed a position on the disputed Homeric
. versus . " in silence (the former to be interpreted as an adverb,
the latter as an adjective).77
Beyond these scattered examples, the two levels of repetition, external
(allusion) and internal (reuse of internal formulas), tend not to coincide,
and the effect is the avoidance of accumulation. In particular, there are
many cases in which the first time (or the first few times) that a phrase
from archaic epic enters the Argonautica, it carries with it an allusion to
its original context (Homeric or Hesiodic), but in subsequent reuses it has
become an organic element of Apollonian diction, without alluding to any
earlier Homeric or Apollonian instance.78 This technique may be readily
illustrated from the opening verses of the epic.
2%Q advice occurs twice in Homer, in the form
2%Q"% C;4 thanks to the advice of Athena (Il. 15.412,
Od. 16.233); the first two occurrences in Apollonius refer to advice given
once again by Athene (1.19, 112), but in three further passages there is no
connection with the goddess (1.367, 2.1146, 3.1246). In 1.202, Apollonius
proclaims the subject of his poem: $% | '#!
$ /#,
V%% C M | #_
I would like to tell [. . .] both of the path-
ways over the great sea and of all the exploits they accomplished during
their journey. The expression
$ /#
pathways over the sea before
the bucolic caesura occurs only once in Homer (Od. 12.259), as an isolated
alternative to the more common 2 # $ watery courses, and in
a context which is very similar to that of Apollonius: Odysseus says that
his meeting with Scylla and Charybdis was the most fearsome ()
V%%C
%
$ /#, M of all the sufferings I encountered
while exploring the pathways over the sea.
$ /#
, combined with
V%% C M imitating Odysseus V%%C
%, points clearly to this
77 Cf. Rengakos (1994) 51 and 165.

78 This kind of allusion does not come as a surprise in epic poetry, where the use of analogical formulas
as a mechanism for the formation of new expressions always existed. It is not limited to Apollonius:
for an example, in Nonnus, of the repetition and variation of the Callimachean , ' of
Hecale fr. 68 Hollis, cf. A. S. Hollis, CQ 26 (1976) 1423 and D. Gigli, Tradizione e novita in una
ricorrente espressione nonniana GIF 32 (1980) 10717.
passage of the Odyssey; Apollonius thus creates an analogy between himself
as a narrator of the sea voyages of the Argonauts and Odysseus, the greatest
of all such narrators. After this first use, this Homeric hapax legomenon
becomes an internal and variable formula for Apollonius, who reuses it
without any reference to the context of the Odyssey (cf. 1.361, 1.986, 4.335,
586, 1556). Another example is the rare nomen agentis, '4, expert.
On its first occurrence, it is specified by %$( in prophecies (1.80
'4 %$(|), a combination which will probably have created
an echo of one of the (few) Homeric occurrences of '4, Od. 16.253
'4 '%$(| experts in carving. '4 is subsequently used
twice more (2.874 and 887), and it is also exploited to coin a new word,
'%Q experience (2.175, 1260, 4.1273): it becomes an element of
Apollonian diction without any evocation of Homeric models.
One of the most common HomericHesiodic periphrases to indicate
Heracles had been 9 67# strength of Heracles (seven times in
Homer, always at verse-end, against eight occurrences of Heracles; in
Hesiod, the periphrasis occurs as many as eighteen times, always at verse-
end, and Heracles only ten times). The first time that Heracles is men-
tioned in the Argonautica (1.122, 9
67# stout-
hearted strength of Heracles), Apollonius creates a kind of combination
between the traditional periphrasis, its isolated adaptation at Il. 18.117 9
67# strength of Heracles with the penthemimeral caesura after 9
and the genitive of the name instead of the adjective, and finally the rar-
ity 67#
stout-hearted Heracles (Il. 14.324, [Hesiod],
Aspis 458), with respect to which Apollonius inverts the order of the words,
while leaving the epithet in front of the bucolic diaeresis, as it was in Homer
and in the Shield. The archaising periphrasis with 9 does not, however,
appear again in the Argonautica, where only the non-periphrastic Hera-
cles is subsequently found. This name is always placed at the end of the
line (12 times), thus creating, as already in 1.122, a spondaic clausula totally
unknown to Homer and Hesiod, but one which becomes very popular with
Hellenistic poets.79
For Apollonius, Homer was not just the model and source for the re-
creation of a limited degree of formularity a langue of epic poetry, to which
ones parole should always make (moderate) reference but, as for every
post-Homeric poet, Homeric language can lend particular epic colour to
new poetic contexts, whether for elevation or parodic debasement. Jasons
79 After the isolated cases of Meropis, PEG 2.4 = SH 903A.6 and Antimachus fr. 118.6 Matthews, cf.
Callim., HArt. 108; Theocr. 17.27, 24.16 and 54, 25.110, 143 and 191; epic. adesp. CA p. 76 no. 3.8;
p. 80 no. 6.10; p. 81 no. 8.7.
aristeia at the end of Book 3 offers a particularly nice example. This passage
clearly offers more heroic potential than much of the rest of the poem,
but this potential is activated in non-traditional material the taming of
the bulls, the sowing of the dragons teeth, the fight against the men born
from the earth and in non-traditional ways: Jason succeeds through
Medeas magic, and thus the final result of his aristeia is, in a certain sense,
a foregone conclusion. His antagonists are not other heroes, but monstrous
bulls and men born from the earth, and his weapons too are put to novel
uses: the helmet serves first of all as a bowl for the dragons teeth, and
then as a drinking vessel, and in the clash with the men born from the
earth, it is never even mentioned; Jasons spear is used as a goad for the
bulls. Archaic epic will have offered Apollonius only a limited number of
precedents here, and we may imagine that certain of these situations were
not easy to express in Homeric language. On the other hand, it is also
reasonable to suppose that in the only real aristeia of the poem, Apollonius
was potentially more interested than elsewhere in measuring himself against
the Iliadic heritage. Such a linguistic shortfall, together with the need to
exploit the epic opportunities of this episode, led Apollonius to develop a
complex series of strategies of epicisation.80
One of these strategies consists in emphasising the Homeric quality
of the scenes which can most easily be traced back to traditional models
and de-emphasising the role of magic.81 Thus, for example, vv. 127887
describe the arrival of Jason and his companions and the initial preparations
for the battle; these verses abound in Homeric linguistic detail, which
creates the effect of a typical scene. In v. 1278, $4% '% they
attached the forward hawsers, repeats a phrase from Il. 1.436 and Od.
15.498, which Homer had used for brief periods ashore, not involving the
operation of pulling up the ships onto the beach; Apollonius may have used
this Homeric expression precisely because Jason and his companions were
not expecting to stay long.82 In v. 1279, Mb '$ &%' 95 he went
with his spear and sword has a long history,83 which, however, starts with
Il. 20.407, 9 %b '$ and 5.297, %b &%' '$ ; in v. 1280 |,
&Z jumping out of the ship imitates |, &Z%
80 Most of the parallels to be discussed are listed in Campbell (1981), and some of the analysis has been
anticipated by Campbell (1983) and Hunter (1989a).
81 Cf. Campbell (1983) 78: From the moment (Jason) begins his task magic recedes into the back-
ground with only two curt and matter-of-fact references to Medea [. . .] Most of the items
of weaponry required by Jason (1279f.) are going to be used in unconventional, unheroic
ways.
82 Cf. 4.244, a brief stop for a sacrifice.
83 Cf. Hunter (1989a) 241. Cf. particularly Achaeus, TrGF 20F29 Mb ' Mb &%'.
of Il. 16.748 or |, &Z% of Il. 2.702; E#
%|
he took his shining (helmet) in v. 1280 imitates E# Z| he
took the shining (bowl) of Il. 23.613 and Od. 19.386; in v. 1282 M &C
N (he took) his sword on his shoulders imitates the formula (five times
in the Iliad) & 'C .C N% 9(# M he put his sword on his
shoulders. More generally, every weapon or object between v. 1280 and v.
1287 receives an epithet, in the Homeric manner,84 even if hardly any of
these epithets was the one used by Homer for the same object.85 Just when
we might be wondering what has happened to Jasons breastplate, for this
is an inevitable element of Homeric arming scenes, Apollonius describes
Jason as $, ') .## X ; h | K #) .## ' $ !$%
"
C;
## naked in his body, similar in some ways to Ares, but in others
to Apollo with the golden sword (vv. 12823). This is not un-Homeric
(see below), even though the difference from conventional epic clashes is
here clearly marked, but it establishes a link with one of Apollonius most
important models, the narration of the same events in Pindar, Pythian 4.
The Homeric model is Il. 2.4789:
A #8 K # Q")
;
h { 'X _Z) % 'X J% '(.
In eyes and head he was like Zeus who delights in the thunder-bolt, in waist like
Ares, in chest like Poseidon.
This passage describes Agamemnon commanding the Greeks in the first
(and most famous) review of the Greek army on the battlefield that we
find in the Iliad. Jason, however, is a leader who is accompanied by his
comrades-at-arms to the place of his trial, but then he must face his battle
alone; he faces it, moreover, not armed with a breastplate (which would be
no use), but naked, as is appropriate for a sower (cf. Hesiod, WD 3912,
which instructs the farmer to carry out certain activities, including sowing,
$
naked, and Aristophanes, Lysistrata 1173). Furthermore, the gods
that Jason is said to resemble are Ares and Apollo,86 that is to say, the two
gods to whom the crowd immediately compared him when he arrived at
Iolcus in Pindars version (Pyth. 4.8892).
Jason looks around carefully (vv. 12846):
4 ' C & , K' _$ !(# Q

$
C 5 %9 &'( .U
!: ' C Z) #.
Looking around the ploughland, he saw the bronze yoke for the bulls and next to
it the plough of tough adamant, all in a single piece. He drew close to them . . .
84 Cf. Hunter (1989a) 241. 85 Cf. Campbell (1983) 79. 86 Cf. Campbell (1983) 81.
Jasons gaze recalls how Homeric heroes surveyed the battlefield before
identifying the chosen enemy. We may compare Il. 17.8487 (
'C .C %!) 'C [. . .] 9 #. he looked
around through the ranks and immediately spotted [. . .] he went etc.
or 12.33335 ( 'C & Q C;! K C K' 1

[. . .] 'C
%C ;K 'Q) #. he looked around, along the wall,
to see if he could spot any of the leaders of the Greeks [. . .] he saw the
two Ajaxes, etc., though it should also be noted that Jasons subsequent
movement is indicated by means of a verb, !, which is not attested
before the fifth century. Jason is, however, not eyeing the enemy ranks, but
a field to be ploughed, and he is not trying to find individual enemies,
but rather farm tools. The alternating references to Homer and Hesiod
are symptomatic of the alternation between the two environments, martial
and rustic. As in the formula for Homers warrior, Jasons ! spear
is A9 mighty, even if it remains totally idle at first, used only as
a prop for the helmet-container (cf. v. 1287); it is indeed used later on,
but only as a goad for the bulls during ploughing (cf. 13234). As for the
plough itself, it is described by means of a rare technical word,
$,
with the beam all a single piece, a word authorised by its appearance in
Hesiod (WD 433), but not found subsequently until Apollonius; through
the linguistic strategy discussed above, this rare word has been integrated
into one of the very few Apollonian formulas:
$
[. . .] %9
&'( . (v. 1285) with the beam all a single piece, made of the
hardest steel repeats the first reference to the plough at 3.232,
$
%9 &'( ..
Despite its obvious non-conventionality in epic terms, the following
scene, in which Jason follows the bulls tracks and the bulls come out of
their underground stable, also evokes archaic epic. The fire-breathing bulls
are presented in vv. 1292 and 1327 (respectively $, %# & |
breathing a flame of fire and |#(9 $, %# breath-
ing on him a violent flame of fire) in terms that recall another flame-
throwing monster, the Hesiodic Chimera, |' , & $% $,
breathing out a terrible power of fire (Theogony 324). The Argonauts
amazement, '' % 'C w V K' the heroes were frightened when
they saw (v. 1293), echoes the reactions of the companions of Odysseus at
the sight of Circes beasts, 'C '' %) K' * # and they
were frightened, when they saw the horrendous monsters (Od. 10.219).87
Jason stands firm, c '9( four-square on his legs (v. 1294), repeating
87 Homers expression is also reused in a similar context by Callimachus, HArt. 51 e Q ' C '' %)
V K' * # the Nymphs were frightened, when they saw the terrible monsters
(the Cyclopes).
a phrase of Homer (Il. 12.458) and Tyrtaeus (fr. 7.31 Gent.Prato); Y
[. . .] he waits for the attackers (vv. 12945) imitates Il. 13.836,
. . . they waited for the attackers, even if the transfer of
inside the simile creates a sort of anacoluthon in Apollonius main
clause; the simile in vv. 129395 repeats in a concise form Il. 15.61821 (cf.
below);
% ' e %( %! in front of him he held his
shield in v. 1296 reworks Il. 5.300 (= 17.7),
% ' e '
$ C %!
&%' in front of him he held his spear and his shield, even if this echo
once again underlines the paradox that Jason fights without using a spear;
, 'C . '4 K a fighting heat enshrouded him in v. 130488
takes up Hesiods b 'C . , &$4 a burning fire enshrouded
them (Theogony 696), and varies it by two words that are typical of the
language of Attic tragedy.89
In the description of the peira itself, Apollonius epicises both by echo-
ing epic-archaic expressions for epic objects and situations (1) and also by
adapting Homeric expressions to the radically new context of Jasons trials
(2); the effect is both to mark difference and to maintain, sometimes only
at the level of phonic memory, a sort of epic tone for situations which in
themselves are thoroughly non-conventional from an epic point of view.
Let us consider only a few examples.90 First, some cases of technique (1):
v. 1311 b . . . %( wide shield = Il. 11.527 (same position), and
here and there is found some twenty times in this position in
Homer; in v. 1312 " " on one side and on the other = [Hesiod],
Aspis 210; in v. 1314 % & the mans strength = Il. 21.308 (same
position); in v. 1315 '8 ( % (# ' D for it had
in fact been decided for some time with them suggests Od. 16.280 '8 (
% for in fact with them (same position), together with Il. 22.301
D ( B (#
# D truly this had been for some time
the most acceptable thing and Hesiod, WD 655 ' decided
(same position). In this last case, we have a sort of traditional editorialising
comment by the author, of a kind which we find in the more Homerising
voice of the Callimachean Hecale (cf. above pp. 196200). Secondly, some
cases of technique (2): v. 1306 ' M 5 9, the horn of the bull
on the right Il. 24.81 & Q# 9, the horn of the rustic bull
(same position); 1307 P# he pulled with all his strength
(at the bulls horn) Il. 23.863 D he shot (an arrow) with
all his strength (same position); 1308 _ Q #" !# " to the yoke of
88 If Merkels . for the transmitted & is correct. 89 Cf. Campbell (1983) 83.
90 For further parallels see in particular Campbell (1981) 634.
bronze ! !# " to the spear of bronze (seven times in the Iliad,
same position), and *!8 !# the tip of bronze (ten times in the
Iliad, same position); 1308 () ! (99# he toppled (the bull) to
the ground [Hesiod], Aspis 462 ( 'X) ! (99# he toppled
(the enemy warrior) to the ground (same position).
Furthermore, the large number of similes in this section of the poem,91
often clearly indebted to the Homeric model, creates a strong impression of
the already-heard. In the use of similes, Apollonius moves in two different
directions, both emphasising Jasons courage in fighting and exploiting
the similarity between the often rustic character of the martial similes in
Homer and the quasi-rustic elements that characterise Jasons deeds; by
means of Homeric allusions, Apollonius guides our understanding of the
far-from-Homeric feat which Jason performs.
Jasons resistance as the bulls butt against his shield is truly epic-heroic:
Q%
c '9
x %# * /#
& %"% ' Q QC &##
But Jason planted his feet firmly apart and withstood their charge as a rough
rock in the sea withstands the waves whipped up by ceaseless storms. (Apollonius,
Argonautica 3.12935)
Here, Apollonius contracts into the space of one and a half lines a simile
(Il. 15.61821) describing the resistance of the Greek ranks to the attacks of
Hector and the Trojans:
K%! $ ', &
) -
-#9 (# # /#, b %)
w # & #: # $
Q(
) ( % Q &"
They closed wall-like against him and stood their ground, like a huge sheer cliff
at the edge of the grey sea, which stands against the shrill winds on their rapid
pathways and the waves that swell large and burst on it. (Iliad 15.61821, trans.
Hammond)
Practically all the lexical components of Homers image are systematically
varied, though the Homeric backbone remains the subject, , the
verb , and one of the objects, Q; note too the extreme
brevity of Apollonius, which is emphasised by the syntactic complexity of
, functioning both inside and outside the simile.
91 Cf. Hunter (1989a) 240, Apollonius portrays Jasons deed largely by means of simile. See also Fusillo
(1985) 33033; Reitz (1996) 87100.
The strong Iliadic flavour of this simile recurs in vv. 13503:
. . . ' C #4% $

&#) Z %$ K #) V B( C ]'

4 $%
C &'(%) & 'X ##

&, &, %
!(' B !.
. . . he filled his great heart with martial spirit. He was eager for the fray, like a wild
boar which sharpens its tasks against men who hunt it and streams of foam flow
to the ground from its angry mouth. (Apollonius, Argonautica 3.13503)
We may compare Il. 22.31213 'C #4% $, | & $ he
filled his soul with violent strength, and Z eager was already found
in this same position at Il. 15.742. Apollonius combines more than one
epic-archaic boar simile to characterise Jasons new-found power: most
important is [Hesiod], Aspis 38690: as the long-tusked boar, difficult to
track down in the mountain gullies, contemplates attacking the hunters
(&'(% $") in its mind, and sharpens its white tusks (4 '
# $, ]'
) turning sideways, and the froth runs down from its
mouth as it gnashes etc., but both Il. 13.4715 and Il. 17.2813 (&#4) have
also made contributions. Already in vv. 12568 Apollonius had underlined
that Jasons &#4 strength was in reality a gift of the ointment obtained
from Medea, then Jason rubbed the ointment on his body, and a terri-
ble, immense, intrepid strength entered into him (' ' &#4)92 ; his
arms throbbed, emanating energy, etc.; moreover, by virtue of this magical
strength, Jason was, if anything, like the successful hunter rather than the
hunted boar.93 At this point in the story, Apollonius wants us to forget
about magic94 and to think of Jason as a strong and brave warrior, but the
very inappropriateness of the simile marks the difference in situation: this
is a very unusual aristeia, because Jason does not fight on equal terms.
In the following simile, Jasons attack on the men born from the earth
is compared to the speed of a bright star:
P ' C
$
&(## &%4
#, 2$ (_) &'(% l K'
$ % 'C - &M
5 .C ;K% $e, %%$ %%) #.
As a fiery star quivers upward in the heaven trailing a furrow of light behind it
a wondrous sight to men who see it shoot through the dark air with a brilliant
92 There is a memory of Hector, possessed by a warlike fervour of divine origin at Il. 17.21011, ' '
h; '
terrible Ares ran him through; cf. Knight (1995) 100.
93 Cf. Effe (1996) 308. 94 Cf. Campbell (1983) 86.
gleam just so did the son of Aison rush upon the earth-born . . . (Apollonius,
The only Homeric parallel has a shooting star, a portent sent by
Zeus, as the term of comparison for Athenas swift crossing of the sky:
P ' C &% z =
$ ({ & $#4
v Q"% -X % { #
#
U ' ## &, % l U
{$5C i{M !
J## C;4) #.
Like a star that the son of devious-minded Kronos sends down as a sign to sailors
or to an armys broad encampment, a bright star with sparks of light streaming
thick from it: that was how Pallas Athena came shooting down to earth . . . (Iliad
4.7578, trans. Hammond)
The Homeric model underlines the fact that Jason descends on his antago-
nists like a god thanks to the superiority created by Medeas pharmakon.95
If Jasons exploits are elevated by Homeric allusion, Apollonius also aims
to have him surpass his epic predecessors. In vv. 13667 the stone which
Jason hurls into the midst of the earthborn is described:
3 .'
*_ %$ . $, .
four strong men would not have been able to lift it even an inch from the ground
(Apollonius, Argonautica 3.13667)
In Homer, such stones were of a size that not even two men could carry
[them], at least not the men of nowadays (Il. 5.3034 = 20.2867; cf. also
12.4479); Apollonius, however, raises the number of men from two to
four and avoids any qualification of those men, such as men of nowadays.
By connecting the speed of Jasons armed attack with that of a divine
portent-star and with the movements of Athena, and by suggesting the
more-than-heroic level of Jasons strength, Apollonius reminds us of the
magical powers that Jason possesses and prepares us for the slaughter to
come.
The relationship with the Homeric model is very different in the case
of Jasons antagonists, the bulls and the men born from the earth; the
unheroic difference of these non-traditional creatures is signalled by the
marginal role they play in the model Homeric similes. In vv. 12991303,
the fire from the mouths of the bulls is compared to the fire that comes out
from furnaces, as blacksmiths ply the bellows; this has no specific Homeric
95 Cf. Effe (1996) 309.

model, even if the image in itself was not absent from epic poetry. Bellows
and furnaces had already been mentioned in Il. 18.4701, in connection with
Hephaestus forge, and in Hesiod, Theogony 8623 the !
furnace
was described as 3 well vented, picked up in the Apollonian
5% . . . !(% in the vented furnaces. As this first simile combines
the two terms &$4 wind and 9
roar (vv. 13012), so in the
following simile the fiery &$4 that emanates from the bulls is compared
to a 9
, the booming blast of the wind that falls on a ship and forces
the sailors to strike the sails:
e 'C i l X Z% $ %)
#(9 $, %#) ' C &$4
-Q 9$( & 9
) [ (#%
' '
#5 /## % #.
At first the bulls showed their savage anger by exhaling a fierce blast of glowing fire;
their breath arose like the groan of buffeting winds which cause terrified sailors to
take in the great sail. (Apollonius, Argonautica 3.13269)
In Book 15 of the Iliad, near to the image of the rock exposed to the winds
which had been exploited for the first simile referring to Jason in his aristeia
(above p. 275), a simile describes Hectors furious attack and the strenuous
resistance of the Greeks:
' C %C F V %"%
#(9 2 & U ~ ' T%
.!" 2 Q) & 'X ' , &4
e%" 9 ) $% '
' '
U $, 2C ( U
o '_ $, %4 %% C;!.
He fell on them as when a wave, wind-fed to high fury under the clouds, falls on
a fast ship and shrouds it wholly in foam: the fearful blast of the wind roars in the
sail, and the sailors hearts tremble with fear, as they are carried only just out of
the grip of death so the Achaians spirits were troubled in their breasts. (Iliad
Homer and Apollonius thus share a nexus of images: Hector = bulls =
forces of the sea; Greeks = Jason = rock/sailors. In the passage of the Iliad,
however, the simile was centred around the image of the wave, and not so
much on that of the winds and their roar; in Apollonius, it is the winds
which hold centre-stage, because the fiery blasts are, in reality, the arms
of Jasons antagonists, whereas, in Homer, the winds and the waves had
only been metaphors for Hectors fierceness. Furthermore, only the roar of
the wind against the mast was mentioned in Homer, whereas the sailors
action of striking the sails is described explicitly in Apollonius, in order
to underline the extreme danger of the bulls fiery blast. This dissonance
between model and imitation is signalled already in v. 1327, when Apollonius
transforms a highly formulaic expression from the Iliad, 'C &$4 the
battle-cry rose up into 'C &$4 the blaze rose up, thus underlining
the peculiar character of Jasons encounter:96 his enemies do not react with
the typical battle-cry, but with bursts of fire from their mouths.
This complex pattern of similarity to and difference from the Homeric
model is also clearly seen in the following image, the appearance of the
warriors born from the earth:
e 'C i' T% &%!Q % .$
U 5M 'X %95 % %%
'Q% C & Q Q %% #"%
h; %9
$) l ' C K #

>3#$
' ' C - &%($%.
F ' C
C) 5 # 5 %
)
: &, ! # '%% . ##
#$ " 2, $) 'C &
( (
#
' U H .
#( &#'4% 2X !
) #.
The earth-born were now springing up all over the ploughed field. The enclosure
of Ares the man-destroyer bristled with stout shields and sharpened spears and
shining helmets; the gleam flashed through the air, reaching all the way from the
earth to Olympus. As when, after a heavy snowfall, wind gusts suddenly scatter the
wintry clouds in the gloom of night, and all the stars of heaven shine brilliantly
in the darkness; just so did the earth-born shine as they rose from the earth . . .
(Apollonius, Argonautica 3.135463)
Of particular importance is the description of a battlefield at Iliad 13.33943:
M 'X (! %9 ! "%
)
L! %!U A%% ' C . '
8 !# Q . # (
4 %4 %
! .$') #.
The murderous battle shivered with the long spears they held to cut through flesh:
their eyes were blinded in the flash of bronze from shining helmets and new-
polished corselets and bright shields as the men came on in their masses . . . (Iliad
96 Cf. Knight (1995) 112, the density of similes, along with other similarities to Homer, constructs
Jasons aristeia as a perverse kind of battle scene; the exaggeration of Homeric elements and their
appearance in new contexts shows the contrast with Homer.
The virtuosity of Apollonius reworking is underlined by the repetition, at
the beginning of the description, of the keyword 5M ; this verb, which
had been used metaphorically in Homer to indicate the upright position of
spears, is used by Apollonius in terms very close to its primary meaning, the
bristling of hair (often due to trembling). Ancient scholars already noted
the fact that %% at Iliad 13.339 was a metaphor close to a simile for the
upright position of the spears, seen as something similar to the movement
of ears of wheat (cf. the schol. ex. ad loc.); Homer in fact uses %% in
this primary, concrete meaning at Il. 23.5989:
. . . F K %!Q %% %)
#$ &#'4%) V %%$% .$) #.
. . . like the dew on a grain-field, as the crop grows, and the fields bristle . . .
Apollonius divides up, between the first and the last verses of his description
of the bristling earthborn men, the two verbs that Homer had combined
in the same line of this last passage of the Iliad (5M < %%$% and
&#'4% < &#'4%). He thus underlines, as he does again in
the simile of vv. 138691, to which we will return, that while the image of
the ears of wheat, which stand for spears in Iliad 13, is indeed reused, it is
so for warriors who are in fact born, like ears of wheat, from the earth; the
verb that indicates this growth in v. 1354 is &%!Q , to grow up like
an ear of corn, in what is actually both a battlefield and a true .$,
just ploughed and sown.
The agonistic spirit underlying the attitude of Apollonius towards the
Homeric model is seen also in the detail that the glint (K #) of the arms
of the earthborn l . . .
>3#$
' 'C - &%($%
flashed through the air, reaching all the way from the earth to Olym-
pus. This image is based on two Homeric passages, in which the K #
of arms
% 'C * , P arrived gleaming in the
sky (Il. 2.458, cf. 19.362), but it substitutes Olympus for the sky, appar-
ently presupposing their identification; whether or not Homer accepted
this identification was a problem discussed by philologists before and
after Apollonius, though it is undoubtedly presumed in some fifth-century
poetry.97 As for the simile which accompanies this description, vv. 135963,
this borrows from several images which appear in Homeric similes (cf. Il.
8.55559, 12.27883, 19.35760), but it cannot be closely connected with
any of them. The effect is a simile which sounds very Homeric, but at
97 Cf. M. Noussia, Olympus, the Sky, and the History of the Text of Homer in F. Montanari (ed.),
Atti del convegno internazionale Omero tremila anni dopo (Rome 2002) 489503.
the same time it is not really Homeric, but rather a truly autonomous
synthesis.
Most instructive of all perhaps are the last two similes for Jasons antago-
nists, in which the earthborn are literally mown down by Jason as a farmer
might prematurely harvest his crop:
F ' C
C) & !Q% $ #)
' %
4 e ( &Q)
x ! % Z
|, % Q' %(!$) 'X 9#%
F %4 - #
H V 5 %(!$U
As when there is war between neighbouring peoples and a farmer fears that the
enemy will ravage his fields before the harvest: he snatches up his well-curved sickle
which has just been sharpened and hurriedly cuts the crop before it is fully ripe,
not waiting until harvest-time for it to be dried by the rays of the sun; just so did
Jason cut the crop of the earth-born. (Apollonius, Argonautica 3.138691)
Such slaughter had already been compared to the reaping of wheat in
Il. 11.6771:
t 'C) C & &##4#%
A #Q% &', ( C .$
$ v U 'X '( U
o s C;! C &##4#%

'4"$) #.
As bands of reapers work towards each other on a rich mans land, cutting their
swathes to meet across a field of wheat or barley: and the crop falls handful after
handful to the ground. So the Trojans and Achaians leapt at each other and cut
men down . . . (Iliad 11.6771, trans. Hammond)
As was obvious to the ancient scholiasts,98 the core of this very long-lived
image99 is the functional analogy between arms and scythes. For Apollonius,
however, the common ground is much larger: the earthborn have, after all,
just sprung up like ears of wheat, and this allows Apollonius to reconstruct
a much more precise correspondence between the image and the narrative
context; moreover, Apollonius emphasis is specifically on the fact that the
reaping is premature, rather than on the reaping tout court, as it had been
in Homer.
A comparable intensification of an image occurs in the following simile.
Apollonius imagines the bodies of the earthborn, which have only partly
98 He compared the fighters, with their swords and spears, to the reapers with their scythes.
99 Cf. e.g. Aesch. Suppl. 638, Ag. 536; Virg. Aen. 7.5206; Hor., Epist. 2.2.178.
developed when they are cut down by Jason, as out of proportion, with
big, heavy heads which they cannot support (#'5% 4% with
drooping heads: v. 1398); he thus changes the image for the earthborn from
ears of wheat to shoots on a vine, which are battered down prematurely by
a violent rainstorm sent by Zeus:
( $ ) , .% ]94%)
$#
Q$% _
#% B_ ) &#4
&')
, 'X #, .# e(
#4$ % $
H
C .
;*4 9 5 2, D# &5.
It is no doubt like this when a fierce storm from Zeus causes young shoots in
the vineyard to bend to the ground, broken at the roots. The labour of the farm-
workers is wasted, and the farmer who owns the land is seized by despair and
bitter grief. Just so then did grievous pain grip King Aietes mind. (Apollonius,
In this case also, Apollonius had two Homeric precedents behind him, a
comparison between the deaths of warriors and plants that fall under their
own weight (Il. 8.3068) and a comparison between the deaths of warriors
and shoots battered down by the violence of natural elements (Il. 17.5360).
Apollonius makes a complex use of these images, as he employs them both
to describe in greater detail how the earthborn are killed and collapse,
and to describe Aietes subsequent grief. A very brief mention in Iliad 17
of the farmer whose olive shoot is destroyed becomes the focal point of
Apollonius simile: the men born from the earth really are the shoots that
King Aietes had made Jason sow shortly before.
Jasons extraordinary exploits, which fit neither into Homeric narrative
patterns nor the Homeric lexicon, thus become a sort of rustic epic, based
on a repertory of, mostly agricultural, images drawn from the similes with
which Homer had amplified his battle-narratives. The significant analogy
between Jasons martial trials and ordinary agricultural activities motivates
and justifies this reuse of these images and allows a closer match between
simile and narrative than we find in Homer.100 Thus could Apollonius be
both original and Homeric, or even more correct than Homer himself.101
100 This motivation emerges openly at least once, in vv. 1340ff., when a periphrasis for the time of day
introduces a true ploughman, beside Jason who had himself just finished ploughing with the bulls.
101 Effe concludes in a recent study of Apollonian similes that they reveal an awareness that Homerus
non nisi imitando vincitur (Effe (1996) 312).
chap t e r 7
The epigram
1 in scription and epigram: the prehistory of a genre

In accordance with their common derivation, and 4
were originally almost synonymous: both referred to engraved writing on
a material which had not been specially constructed to receive writing,
such as a waxed tablet, parchment or papyrus. Even as late as the early
Hellenistic age, there is no indication that the idea of the epigram, as
a specific genre of short poems usually in elegiac couplets, ever existed.1
Moreover, it is probably only from the end of the fourth century that
we can trace a tradition of literary epigrams, that is to say poems not, or
not necessarily, designed for public inscription; when it did appear, this
new form took up the two main earlier traditions of short poetry, namely
epitaphic or dedicatory inscriptions, usually in hexameters or, increasingly
from the end of the sixth century, elegiac couplets, and shorter lyric poetry
and erotic elegy (represented most notably by Mimnermus and the second
book of the corpus of Theognis). At the heart of this new form was the
quest for concentrated expression and the acuteness of a final pointe, rather
than specific and generically determinative subject-matter; consequently
we find, in our corpus of literary epigrams, sad epitaphs alongside both
serious and parodically solemn dedications, and playfully erotic anecdotes
alongside moral maxims, witticisms, and convivial banter.
From the earliest days, epigrams had two different origins and two dif-
ferent aims: they were both graffiti engraved on cups or vases which were
never meant to last and were linked to particular social circumstances,
and also monumental texts, devised with eternity in mind, and there-
fore fixed for ever on a durable substance, such as stone. In both cases,
the exceptional nature of this writing and the limitations imposed by the
requirement of public inscription determined the limited scope and size
which subsequently remained a peculiarity of the literary .
1 Cf. Puelma (1996).
283
284 The epigram
The role of public inscriptions in the development of the literary epigram
of a funerary or dedicatory nature has long been familiar, but occasional
inscriptions may also have contributed to Hellenistic erotic epigram. Most
of the occasional epigrams known to us are engraved on cups or vases of
the second half of the sixth century. Like the objects on which they are
engraved, these graffiti are mainly connected with sympotic life: music,
singing, drinking and, above all, eros. These short texts are, with few excep-
tions, all in prose, and some function as captions to the figures represented
on the vases, often musicians or poets, but mythical characters also appear
in such contexts. Sometimes these graffiti express, as in cartoons, rhythms
and words of songs or dialogue, or expressions taken from the poetic texts
that the depicted figures are imagined as reading or singing;2 sometimes,
too, the graffiti are independent of the representations on the vase, and they
are situated between the figures, offering sympotic advice and exhortation
such as (%b) !5 ( c) good health, and drink up. By far the
largest group, however, at least from the middle of the sixth to the third
quarter of the fifth century, is made up of inscriptions proclaiming the
beauty of a young man, in the standard form: G #
G is beautiful;
these inscriptions, and the cups on which they appear, thus served as pub-
lic avowals of love, designed to spread the kleos of the beloved among the
symposiasts. There survive also other, more generic, graffiti of the kind
5 #
this boy is beautiful, which could be used as professions of
love or admiration for any boy who took a symposiasts fancy.
These texts transformed the objects on which they were inscribed into
something more than simple vessels for the symposium: they acted as substi-
tutes for more polished verbal compliments (in the case of the #
inscrip-
tions), or as incentives for discussion and comment among the symposiasts.3
The banality and absence of any clear aesthetic ambition show that these
texts were not so much complete messages in themselves, but rather stim-
uli or aides-memoire to oral sympotic performances, which would often
be in verse, whether extemporised compositions or recitals or adaptations
of earlier lyric or elegiac poetry. A symbiosis between, on the one hand, the
2 Poetic texts are in fact extremely rare among inscriptions of this kind; most examples depict poetic
quotations written on a papyrus resting on the knees of boys learning to read and write, cf. J. D.
Beazley, Hymn to Hermes AJA 52 (1948) 33640.
3 Cf. N. Slater, The Vase as Ventriloquist in E. A. Mackay (ed.), Signs of Orality: the Oral Tradition
and its Influence in the Greek and Roman World (Leiden 1999) 14361; F. Lissarrague, Publicity and
Performance in S. Goldhill and R. Osborne (eds.), Performance Culture and Athenian Democracy
(Cambridge 1999) 3657. The compilation by W. Klein, Die griechische Vasen mit Lieblingsinschriften
(2nd ed., Leipzig 1898) is still useful.
composition and reading of brief erotic and sympotic inscriptions and, on
the other, literary performance, whether of new or old poetic texts, was
therefore probably already a reality in the archaic Greek symposium. Many
erotic epigrams of the third century dramatise avowals of love or comment
appreciatively on the aesthetic qualities of boys and girls, and this form
is more prominent than our remains of archaic lyric and elegiac poetry
would have led us to expect; it may therefore be that the first generation
of literary epigrammatists in the first half of the third century, who had
behind them not a fixed genre with its topoi and conventions, but rather
the unlimited cultural and literary heritage of the past, thought of their
texts as a meeting-point between the sympotic practice of composing and
reading graffiti on vases and the refined literary forms elaborated in the
sympotic genres of archaic poetry.
Moreover, although there are very few non-epitaphic or non-dedicatory
inscriptions of the archaic period to which it might perhaps be possible to
attribute aesthetic ambitions, there are nevertheless some metrical graffiti
which reveal a literary spirit foreshadowing that of the Hellenistic epigram.
These include the hexameter scratched during the last part of the eighth
century on a proto-geometric oenochoe (the Dipylon vase), apparently
to personalise the vase as a prize in a dancing contest (CEG 432): h,
]! % ( &#
_ of all the dancers, the one who
dances most sweetly.4 Apart from the metrical form, the word &#Z
leaves no doubt about the aesthetic ambition of the graffito. &#
is an
uncommon Homeric and poetic word, used three times in archaic epic
in the neuter plural, as on the oenochoe, but always combined with the
verb I think5 in the sense think childish thoughts or think
things typical of young people;6 on the oenochoe, however, &#Z is
combined with the verb _ (I amuse myself , or more specifically, I
dance), and the whole expression must mean dances the sweetest dances or
dances in the sweetest way. This is not merely a change from the formulaic
combination of epic, but seems also to allude to Iliad 18.567 (the Shield
4 The verse was followed by the dactyl

' this is his, and by an apparently meaningless series
of letters (##), cf. G. Annibaldis and O. Vox, La piu antica iscrizione greca Glotta 54 (1976)
2238.
5 Cf. Hom., Il. 18.567, Hes., Th. 989, HHom. Dem. 24. It has been conjectured that this adjective
arises from an erroneous division of &#, cf. M. Leumann, Homerische Worter (Basel 1950)
13941.
6 On the meaning of &#
, cf. C. Moussy, &#
) &(##) &(## in Melanges de linguistique
et de philologie grecques offerts a P. Chantraine (Paris 1972) 15768.
286 The epigram
of Achilles), where the young people who danced at a harvest festival were
described as &# .7
Another eighth-century text which is certainly a product of the world
of the symposium8 is the famous inscription on Nestors cup, found at
Ischia and dated to between 735 and 7209 (CEG 454):
W%
[*] 3[] .
h, ' C ' % []
h h% ##% [(] j' .
I am the cup of Nestor, easy to drink from. Whoever drinks from this cup, the
desire of fair-garlanded Aphrodite will seize him at once.
It is very likely that the first line, which is more probably prose than a
trimeter composed of a choriamb and two iambic metra, regardless of the
choice between / * and %/, alludes to the Nestor of the Iliad
(perhaps a namesake of the cups owner), whose monumental cup had
been made famous by the description in Iliad 11.6327, which concluded:
any other person could hardly have lifted it up from the table when it
was full, but old Nestor picked it up without any difficulty.10 With this
allusion, the first line makes clear that, unlike the unwieldy vessel of the
heroic symposium, the little cup that bore the inscription was 3
convenient for drinking, an adjective foreign to epic language and perhaps
a technical term from symposia (cf. Athenaeus 11.482b); analogously, in
view of what follows, 4 was perhaps drawn from the language
of magical practice.11 Be that as it may, the two hexameters which follow
first lead us to expect a curse of a familiar kind which threatens severe
consequences for anybody who misuses the object on which the curse
is engraved;12 this expectation is, however, defeated in a closural pointe
7 The Dipylon vase may have originated in the world of the symposium cf. Powell (1991) 1612 and
1723 but a public feast cannot be excluded as a possible context: cf. e.g. FriedlanderHoffleit
(1948) 55.
8 Cf. Powell (1991) 165.
9 Cf. O. Vox, Bibliografia in G. Buchner and D. Ridgeway, Pithekoussai I: la necropoli (Rome 1993)
7519.
10 For a survey of the views which have been held about the Nestor of the cup cf. A. Bartonek and
G. Buchner, Die Sprache 37 (1995) 1534.
11 Cf. C. Faraone, Taking the Nestors Cup Inscription Seriously: Erotic Magic and Conditional
Curses in the Earliest Inscribed Hexameters, CA 15 (1996) 77112, p. 105. S. West, ZPE 101 (1994)
915 had also maintained that the inscription on Nestors cup descends from a Peloponnesian epic
tradition and is not connected to our Iliad; contra A. C. Cassio, = 5) ##%, e la
circolazione dellepica in area euboica in Aion (archeol.) 1 (1994) 5568.
12 The roughly contemporary lekythos of Tataies, also from Magna Graecia, bears the inscription
s #f$U h, ' C . #% $#, % I am the lekythos of Tataie: anyone who
steals me will go blind, cf. L. H. Jeffery, The Local Scripts of Archaic Greece (2nd ed., Oxford 1990)
409 no. 47.3.
foreshadowing the technique of Hellenistic epigram: far from being cursed,
whoever drinks from the cup will be overcome by uncontrollable desire, a
very familiar (ancient and modern) result of too much to drink. The joke
would have been even funnier if, as has been suggested, the inscription also
alluded to an episode of the Cypria, in which Nestor gave hospitality to
Menelaus after Helen had eloped with Paris and tried to console him with
a series of mythological paradigms (PEG p. 40.269 = EGF p. 31.369);
it was probably on this occasion that Nestor declared (PEG fr. 17 = EGF
fr. 15): O Menelaus, in wine the gods have devised an excellent way for
mortal men to scatter their cares (cares of love, of course). The wine in
the Ischia-cup was no longer (as the heroic Nestor had claimed) a remedy
against the sufferings of love, but rather an aphrodisiac for the easy love
affairs of the symposium.13
This common interpretation of the inscription on Nestors Cup14 has
been challenged as too modern, and it has been suggested that the verses
may simply be a kind of magical formula asserting the effectiveness of
aphrodisiac potions which were to be drunk from the cup.15 In any event,
even if it was truly epigrammatic ante litteram, Nestors Cup remained an
isolated example. With every allowance for the impermanence of pottery
in comparison with stone, verse inscriptions linked to the symposium and
other types of social occasion seem to have been very rare; verse is, however,
much more common for funerary and dedicatory inscriptions, and it is
likely that verse was thought the appropriate mode, as stone the appropriate
material, for inscriptions which were intended to offer eternal kleos.
Another exception which confirms the clear separation between lyric
and elegiac poetry which was largely oral, addressed to a particular indi-
vidual or group, and arose from particular social and performative con-
texts and written inscriptions which were intended to be read for ever
by a general public is offered by the didactic herms of the Athenian
tyrant Hipparchus (late sixth century), one of which is extant (CEG 304).
According to the account of [Plato], Hipparchus 228d229b, Hipparchus
wanted to make provision for the instruction also of those who lived in
the countryside, and so he had herms erected along the roads connect-
ing the towns and the single demes, on which were inscribed couplets
containing the name of Hipparchus himself (
'C 6 @(!$ this
13 Cf. W. Kullmann, Die Quellen der Ilias (Wiesbaden 1960) 257; G. Danek, Der Nestorbecher von
Ischia, epische Zitiertechnik und das Symposion WS 1078 (199495) 2944.
14 Cf. P. A. Hansen, Pithecusan Humor: the Interpretation of Nestors Cup Reconsidered Glotta 54
(1976) 2543 and Powell (1991) 1637.
15 Cf. Faraone (n. 11 above).
288 The epigram
is a monument of Hipparchus) and brief maxims, such as % 5! '
go forward on the basis of just thoughts, or 8 # M(
do not deceive a friend; according to Pseudo-Plato, these maxims were
supposed to act as an alternative to Delphic wisdom, creating the desire in
countrymen to seek a more comprehensive education in town.16 In this way
(contravening the principle of anonymity, which is a constant of all other
epigraphic texts of the archaic period and the fifth century, and borrowing
from sympotic elegiac poetry, such as that composed by Phocylides and
Theognis, both the custom of the % seal and the taste for apho-
ristic maxims), Hipparchus exploited the epigraphic medium to reach the
wider non-aristocratic public with easily-digestible pills of wisdom and to
familiarise them with that ethical knowledge which had previously been
the prerogative of the speculations (and poetry) of aristocratic symposia.
This, however, remained an isolated exception. The history of the archaic
and early classical inscribed epigram is the history of a lesser literature,
more subordinated to, than operating in parallel with, orally transmitted
verse. Such poems are satisfied with anonymity: they convey a limited
number of messages in relatively standardised forms (see further below,
pp. 2967).17
Not long after Hipparchus, Simonides began to write short poems in ele-
giac couplets, in which the ( # #
for which Simonides became
famous anticipated the taste for the witty quip and the humorous anecdote
typical of the later literary epigram. Furthermore, Simonides was perhaps
the first to link his name to sympotic epigrams and to clearly fictitious and
witty dedicatory and funerary texts, the most famous of which is the sarcas-
tic epitaph for his rival, Timocreon of Rhodes (AP 7.348 = FGE 831f.). He
was also credited with the authorship of real epitaphic and dedicatory epi-
grams, and thus continued the tradition which we have already surveyed.
There are, however, considerable uncertainties surrounding Simonides epi-
grams and their publication,18 and not just because his taste for the witty
quip and brevity of expression might have led subsequent compilers of
anthologies to attribute to Simonides epigrams about contemporary fig-
ures or events, or to imagine that some epigrams attributed to otherwise
unknown poets were actually by Simonides. Herodotus (7.228.3) attributes
16 Cf. A. Aloni, Lintelligenza di Ipparco QS 10 (1984) 10948.
17 The metrical form too is standardised: initially we find only hexameters, but from the middle of
the sixth century the elegiac couplet becomes popular; inscribed epigrams in iambics or trochaics
appear at about the same time, but they are rare and disappear almost completely during the fifth
century.
18 Cf. B. Gentili, Epigramma ed elegia in LEpigramme Grecque (1968) 412; but cf. FGE pp. 11923
and Puelma (1996) 125 n. 8.
an epitaph for the fortune-teller Megistias to Simonides (AP 7.677 = FGE
702ff.), but it is significant that in citing the epigram, Herodotus, who lived
a generation after Simonides, observes that Simonides composed it because
he was united to Megistias by a bond of xenia; this perhaps suggests that
Herodotus received the information about Simonides authorship from an
oral source and not from some form of written anthology, created by, or
based on, the authors wish to assert his authorship. The extreme variability
between witnesses in recording the authorship of Simonides points in the
same direction: many poems are disputed between Simonides and another
poet, or are claimed by some as Simonidean and by others as anonymous.19
The large number of epigrams referring to characters or events of the sixth
and fifth centuries, some of which may be ancient but many of which
are clearly Hellenistic compositions falsely attributed to Simonides, Plato,
Anacreon, and a host of other authors whose interest in the epigram is
otherwise unattested (Sappho, Bacchylides, Empedocles, etc.), shows that
the custom of anonymity continued to be observed for a long time, and
gave rise to the Hellenistic practice of assigning anonymous poems to the
great figures of the past.
Before the Hellenistic age, we simply cannot know whether an author
deliberately decided to link his name to an inscribed text, which will thus
also have had a non-epigraphic transmission where the name of the author
was preserved. As for the idea of compiling an anthology of ones own
epigrams or those of others, it is important to remember that collections of
inscriptions in book form must have been in circulation from the beginning
of the fourth century, and it is very tempting to hypothesise20 that these
collections of inscriptions, both before and alongside the great editions of
archaic lyric and elegiac poetry prepared by the Alexandrian philologists,
acted as models for the collections of epigrams that a Leonidas or a Calli-
machus probably conceived for themselves (or others conceived for them,
shortly after their death).21 What is certain is that in the fourth century,
which was the crucial period for the development of the literary epigram,
there are at least two clear examples of inscribed epigrams which include
the name of the author in the text (CEG 819 and 88822 ); in one of these two
cases, moreover, the epigrams of Ion of Samos (CEG 819), the affirmation of
authorship is found, together with an element of literary innovation; this
raises doubts about the standard historical account, according to which
19 Cf. FGE pp. 11920. 20 Cf. Meyer (forthcoming) chapter A.5.1.
21 On the circulation and collection of inscriptions in the fourth century, cf. H. T. Wade-Gery, Classical
Epigrams and Epitaphs JHS 53 (1933) 71104, pp. 80 n. 35 and 8895.
22 The cases of 700. 3 and 889.78 appear more uncertain; see, however, CEG ii.283.
290 The epigram
(anonymous) inscribed epigrams were characterised by a relative roughness
and conventionality, and were then replaced by the literary epigram, bring-
ing with it greater refinement and a new importance for authorial identity.
The epigrams of Ion, on the contrary, suggest that verse inscriptions had
already followed their own autonomous course towards literary pretension
and an authorial awareness, when the high period of the literary epigram
dawned.
CEG 819 consists of a triptych of three epigrams of two couplets each,
inscribed on the plinth of a group of bronze statues for the sanctuary
of Apollo at Delphi; the statues represented the Dioscuri, Zeus, Apollo,
Artemis, and Poseidon crowning Lysander, who had defeated the Atheni-
ans at Aegospotami, and also included images of twenty-eight other com-
manders of the Spartan fleet (cf. Pausanias 10.9.710).23 Both the better
preserved epigrams (CEG 819.ii and CEG 819.iii) include the name of the
author, Ion of Samos, and the text is not presented as the voice of the ded-
icator or of the statues (as is usual in dedicatory inscriptions), but rather as
the voice of the poet who comments on the statues, in a manner familiar
from Hellenistic deictic epigram:
[5 \
) ] J#Q' $[] h @ [? 5%]' C # []
[?#{] 'C % (%[ ? ])
[&!, ] )
[ ' C ] ' $([!$]
[?% / ]
6^##(' [$!]
$.
(CEG 819.ii)
[Child of Zeus], Polydeuces, [with these] elegiacs Ion crowned [your stone] base,
because you were the principal [commander], taking precedence even over this
admiral, among the leaders of Greece with its wide dancing-places.
*
+ & [] " '
V
$% 5 % = []'T 'Q
?Q%') ? ' &
% Z%[]
6^##(' &
#[) ]##! '.
M( &Q[] M # 5 h @.
(CEG 819.iii)
Lysander set up this image of himself on this monument when with his swift ships
he victoriously routed the power of the descendants of Kekrops and crowned the
23 In view of the script, these epigrams may be dated very close to the event that they commemorate;
cf. J. Bousquet, BCH 80 (1956) 5801; more commonly, however, they are dated to the late fourth
century, cf. R. Meiggs and D. Lewis, A Selection of Greek Historical Inscriptions (rev. ed., Oxford
1988) 290.
2 Funerary and dedicatory epigrams 291
invincible Lacedaimon, the citadel of Greece, the homeland with the beautiful
dancing-places. Ion of sea-girt Samos composed these elegiacs.
In the poem for Polydeuces, the author displays a highly developed self-
consciousness: as composer of the epigram, he has crowned (% (% )
the plinth () of the statue, and the verb % raises Ion himself
to the same level as Lysander, who, as the other epigram says, had brought
glory to invincible Sparta (a metaphorical meaning which %
often has), or even to the level of the gods, who were represented crown-
ing Lysander quite literally. As Lysander himself seems to have fostered a
personality cult and even accepted divine honours, so the poet magnifies
his own role. Here, then, is perhaps the earliest literary epigram, and it
is in fact an engraved monument-inscription, and one with a definitely
practical purpose.
2 funerary and dedicatory epigrams: epigraphic

con ventions and epigrammatic variat ions
2.1 The importance of the name

Hellenistic funerary and dedicatory epigrams are a favoured sphere for the
investigation of the literary character of Hellenistic poetry, and in particular
for its relationship with earlier literary genres. There is a relatively large
amount of comparative material, i.e. anonymous inscriptions, both metrical
and not, which have been found on tombs and monuments and against
which we can judge the literary versions of these forms.
Funerary and dedicatory inscriptions had certain clear facts to commu-
nicate. Dedications commemorated, in most cases, both the donor of the
votive offering and the recipient god, and usually also the reason for the
dedication; the identity of the god, however, was often of course supplied
by the monumental context in which the inscription was placed. Funer-
ary inscriptions identified the dead person on whose tomb they stood; the
identification normally included certain details, established by social con-
ventions which sometimes varied from one region to another, or depended
on the sex and the age of the deceased. Thus, for example, the name of
the dead is generally the only detail in the sepulchral inscriptions of most
of central Greece and Boeotia,24 as well as of Sicyon,25 whereas in Attica
24 Cf. P. M. Fraser and T. Ronne, Boeotian and West Greek Tombstones (Lund 1957) 92101.
25 Cf. Pausanias 2.7.2.
292 The epigram
the demotic and the fathers name are almost always present in the case
of a male, or the name of the parents in the case of children; in the case
of a woman, the name of her husband is added to that of her father, but
it was considered to be excessive if the epitaph also specified her place of
birth and the name of her mother.26 Hellenistic literary epigrams, which
were funerary or dedicatory, gradually moved ever further from any nec-
essary basis in the contexts of real life and became fictional works of the
imagination. Such distance from a real context encouraged the technique
of variation among literary epigrammatists, but at the same time the high
degree of conventionality and the repetitiveness of inscribed archaic epi-
gram created a precedent which, in a certain sense, authorised the highly
topical character of literary epigram, perhaps indeed the most topical genre
of all Greek poetry.
2.2 Tombs without names

The most basic element in the commemoration of the dead was the record-
ing of the name; on the tomb of Petosiris was written: pronouncing a
mans name means bringing him back to life again.27 Funerary inscrip-
tions which do not record the deads name fall into more than one class:
non-metrical inscriptions for infants who had probably never been named
survive;28 so, too, some of the few surviving verse-inscriptions which omit
the name of the dead29 were for infants or young people, who in all proba-
bility had not yet achieved anything worthy of commemoration.30 Among
26 Cf. Theophrastus, Characters 13.10 (with Diggle ad loc.), E. L. Hicks, JHS 3 (1882) 1412.
27 Cf. G. Lefebvre, Le Tombeau de Petosiris (Cairo 1954) i p. 136 no. 81, already quoted by Nicosia (1992)
17. On the general subject cf. also A. Stecher, Der Lobpreis der Toten in den griechischen metrischen
Grabinschriften (Diss. Innsbruck 1963) 1419, H. Hausle, Einfache und fruhe Formen des griechischen
Epigramms (Innsbruck 1979) 10913 and S. Georgoudi, Commemoration et celebration des morts
dans les cites grecques in Ph. Gignoux (ed.), La Commemoration: Colloque du centenaire de la section
des sciences religieuses de lEcole pratique des hautes etudes (LouvainParis 1988) 77. This section is
based on Fantuzzi (2000a).
28 Cf. IG vii, 690722, 29001, 3118 (Boeotia), and IG ii/iii (2nd ed.): ii.2, 13184, 13185 (Attica): cf.
Pfohl (1953) 150 and 289 n. 53; M. Guarducci, Lepigrafia greca dalle origini al tardo impero (Rome
1987) 387.
29 According to the data given by Page (1976) 169, out of the 711 pre-Christian sepulchral inscriptions
in GVI, 66 certainly omit the name. In most of these cases, however, it is difficult to know whether
the name of the dead person was completely omitted, or appeared in a non-metrical section of the
inscription, which was subsequently lost.
30 For example, GVI 89 (second century ad), 503 (second/first century bc), 790 (third century ad),
793 (third century ad), 869 (after 150 ad), 977 (second/third century ad), 1012 (first century ad),
1124 (second/third century ad), 1280 (second/third century ad), 1663 (third century bc). As for CEG
718 (400350 bc), Hansen is surely correct to explain that caput defuncti animum corpusque suum
lamentari dicitur.
literary epigrams, the absence of the name is found almost exclusively (a)
in epitymbia for sailors found dead on the seashore, in which anonymity
underlines the exceptional bitterness of death at sea;31 and (b) in a few
epigrams two by Leonidas, two by Antiphilus, and two in imitation of
the latter which develop another aspect of the lack of funeral honours,
namely the theme of the neglected, desecrated or defaced tomb and of
sacrilegious behaviour towards dead bodies, or in a few other anonymous
epigrams, which describe the criminal concealment of corpses.32
There are, however, also a few literary epitymbia which do not name the
dead, but do not fit into these classes. One of the earliest of these is a poem
of Asclepiades (AP 13.23 = HE 962ff.):
*O )
) K & 5) .$%
a
$ %% ' 4')
p %9$ ] 'ZC , :
i' ! %, # .
,
) 'X %) a
$ # 5)
V% . 1' &Z# $.
Ho! Passer-by, even if you are in haste, give ear to the grief of Botrys that passes
measure. An old man now of eighty years, he buried his child who already from
boyhood spoke with some skill and wisdom. Alas for your father and alas for you,
dear son of Botrys: with how many joys untasted have you perished! (trans. Paton,
adapted)
This clearly funerary epigram does not appear in Book 7 of the Palatine
Anthology, which is dedicated to epitymbia, but its uncommon metrical
form (couplets composed of catalectic iambic tetrameters and trimeters) led
to it being placed in Book 13, which contains epigrams written in unusual
metres. Even the most recent commentators, Gow and Page, fail properly
to appreciate its epitaphic character: according to them, it is in spite of
the form, rather a poem of mourning than a genuine, or epideictic epi-
tymbion.33 The epitaphic form to which they refer is primarily the initial
apostrophe to the wayfarer and the invitation to stop and read, which are
31 Cf. AP 7.264 (Leonidas), 265, 268, 269 ([Plato]), 270 and 496 ([Simonides]), 276 (Hegesippus), 279
(adesp.), 282 (Theodoridas), 288 (Antipater Thess.), 350 (adesp.), 400 (Serapion), 404 (Zonas), 636
(Crinagoras), 651 (Euphorion). See S. Georgoudi, La Mer, la mort et les discours des epigrammes
funeraires AION (Archeol.) 10 (1988) 58.
32 Leonidas, AP 7.478 and 480 = HE 2421ff. and 2427ff.; Antiphilus, AP 7.175 and 176 = GPh
929ff. and 935ff.; Heraclides, AP 7.281 = GPh 2390ff.; Isidorus, AP 7.280 = GPh 3887ff.; adesp.
AP 7.35660.
33 HE ii.139.
294 The epigram
very familiar features of sepulchral inscriptions and funerary epigrams.34
One formal reason which in all probability led Gow and Page to consider
this epigram as a poem of mourning was the form of its presentation.
Compared with the most frequent forms of archaic sepulchral inscriptions,
where the persona loquens was the tomb or, later, the deceased, there has
been a tendency to consider fictitious those funerary epigrams in which an
external I mourns for the dead even more so if this external I sympa-
thises with and consoles the father of the dead no less than the deceased
himself, as happens for example in some epigrams by Callimachus.35 Thus
scholars have considered epideictic-consolatory texts such as [Simonides],
AP 7.511 = FGE 1006f., % 0 # cC K') |
* % ) (# =##) P C whenever I see the tomb of the dead
Megacles, I pity you, poor Callias: what distress you suffered!, in which an
external I sympathises with the sorrow of one of the dead persons near-
est and dearest, rather than mourning for the deceased, and addresses the
bereaved in the second person; such poems are not far from the manner
in which the external I mourns for Botrys and his son in the epigram by
Asclepiades (above p. 293). More recently, however, the anonymous first
person mourner has been acknowledged as an important epitaphic form
of presentation,36 and the epitaphic nature of the poems of [Simonides]
and Asclepiades has been properly appreciated. Inscribed examples include
CEG 470 of 550/540 bc, ;# '
' % % & )
#. when I see this tomb of Autokleides, I am distressed, etc., CEG 51 of
about 510 bc, * % [] ',
' %
| <Q[]
h
# A# % #C & .37 I weep to see this tomb of a boy,
Smikythos, who has died, destroying the fine hopes of his dear ones, and
CEG 43.35 of about 525 bc, ]# h
' [. . .] ]#Q h
C
.h[] . . . . kles, whose mother this (tomb?) [. . .] I pity because
untimely . . .
34 This opening address is relatively more common in the metrical sepulchral inscriptions of the
sixth to the fourth century bc, cf. CEG 49 (sixth century bc), 556 (350 bc), 686 (fourth century
bc?), GVI 1670 (sixth century bc) and 1671 (sixth century bc), and the inscriptions from Selinunte
nos. 26, 28, 3034 (550450 bc) in R. Arena, Iscrizioni greche arcaiche di Sicilia e Magna Grecia. I:
Iscrizioni di Megara Iblea e Selinunte (2nd ed., Pisa 1996). See also Mnasalces, AP 7.488 = HE 2639ff.
and 7.491 = HE 2636ff.; [Simonides], AP 7.515 = FGE 986ff.
35 Cf. e.g. AP 7.517 = HE 1193ff., AP 7.519 = HE 1241ff.
36 Cf. D. M. Lewis, Bowie on Elegy: A Footnote JHS 107 (1987) 188; A. C. Cassio, I distici del
polyandrion di Ambracia e l io anonimo nellepigramma greco SMEA 33 (1994) 10617. See also
J. W. Day, JHS 109 (1989) 20 n. 31 and 26; R. Scodel, SIFC 10 (1992) 70.
37 For the text, cf. D. M. Lewis and A. C. Cassio (previous note); see also W. Peek, ZPE 23 (1976) 93 n.
1. The emendation of the initial indicative * into the imperative K<> was proposed
by Willemsen and accepted by Hansen.
Gow and Pages view of Asclepiades epigram was also explicitly influ-
enced by the absence of the dead persons name: a significant fact, but if
this is a poem of mourning, it is possible that Asclepiades did not know
it. In fact, however, there is an alternative explanation: Asclepiades poem
might have been conceived as the metrical part of an inscription, in which
another non-metrical part, below, beside or beneath the verses, indicated
the name of the dead. This type of inscription is first found in the fifth
century, but becomes common from the fourth century, particularly, but
not exclusively, in Attica.38 There are over one hundred and fifty Attic verse
inscriptions of the fourth century, of which more than twenty belong to
this type.39 From the fifth century, however, only two inscriptions of this
kind are extant, CEG 77 and 89, both from Attica. In the earlier of the two,
CEG 77 (500475 bc), a couplet for the Spartan J# %, the absence
of the name was very probably made necessary by the difficulty of fitting
the name into dactylic verse. The later CEG 89 (late fifth century) honours
C;, which would fit the metre, and so must be considered as an
anticipation of the practice of the fourth century.
Two fifth-century Attic texts offer the earliest evidence for the difficulty
that could be encountered when composing dactylic verse to contain the
name of the honorand. The earlier inscription, dated by Hansen to 477/476,
was engraved on the pedestal of a monument to the tyrant-killers, perhaps
the one erected in their honour during the last decade of the sixth century.
As C;% could not fit into a hexameter, the name was divided
between the end of the hexameter and the beginning of the pentameter; such
division was common for lyric cola, but hardly ever attested in recitative
poetry, let alone hexameters or elegiac couplets, C C; %

<>C C j%| h! h
' truly a
great light shone forth for the Athenians when Aristogeiton and Harmodius
killed Hipparchus (CEG 430). Another solution to the metrical problem
was found by Critias at the end of the century; when he had to name
Alcibiades, which, with its run of three successive short syllables, does
not fit dactylic verse, the poet composed an iambic trimeter in place of a
pentameter and added an apology for the intrusion of a different metre:
=# $ $e, C;5 % Z% | C;#9(' % 24%

U | ( D 3C
_ # ") | 'C *9 "
% & and now I will crown the Athenian Alcibiades, son
38 CEG 684, e.g., is from Samos, the home of Asclepiades, CEG 724 from Macedonia.
39 Cf. CEG 472 (?), 477, 486, 490 (?), 495 (?), 497 (?), 499 (?), 512, 531, 532, 533, 534, 537, 544, 557, 558,
560, 564, 570, 571, 582 (?), 585, 589, 590, 594, 595, 596, 613, 615 (?), 620 (?), 621 (the question marks
indicate uncertain cases).
296 The epigram
of Clinias, singing of him in new ways. It was not possible to adapt his name
to the elegiac couplet, and so now it will be in iambics, but not without
measure (fr. 2 Gent.Prato).40
The practice of placing the name of the dead, usually together with
patronymic and nationality, on the tomb but not in the metrical epigram
thus offered a solution to the problem of fitting certain proper names into
the hexameter, in a period when the elegiac couplet had almost completely
replaced the metrically more flexible iambic trimeter as the ordinary form
for sepulchral inscriptions.41 During the fourth century, however, the divi-
sion of sepulchral inscriptions between the metrical epigram in one part
and the name of the deceased (with patronymic and deme or tribe) in
another was not limited in Attica to the tombs of those whose names were
difficult for the hexameter. An example is CEG 532, which also bears very
clear witness to the conscious division of the space of the inscription into
two parts. This inscription, which is perhaps from the latter part of the
first half of the fourth century, concerns a certain JM5, a name which
could fit into the hexameter perfectly well; the epigram, however, dwells
rather on the deceaseds nickname and refers the reader for the name of the
dead to a separate space on the monument:42
[A] X ], , & Q[ ]
[%4]# (U % 'X E %![]
[J%] $) %( &' $! .
The stele tells the names of myself and my father and our homeland. Because of
my faithful deeds I acquired the nickname Trusty a rare honour.
It is likely that private funerary monuments of the fourth century developed
a taste for this layout, not simply to solve the problem of difficult names,
but also in imitation of the bipartition of inscriptional space between met-
rical and non-metrical elements which had already been practised for some
time on polyandria, i.e. the public funerary monuments, on which lists of
those who had fallen in war could only appear separately from the metrical
40 Another solution was the hyper-Ionic spelling of j!# as j!# in a pentameter attributed
to Sophocles: cf. fr. 1 Gent.Prato: Thus it was possible to speak of him in a metrical form.
41 For examples from later periods, cf. SH 615, EG 805a, GVI 278 and 1326. For discussion, cf. Page
(1976) 1678 and W. Lapini, I frammenti alcibiadei di Crizia: Crizia amico di Alcibiade? (I parte)
Prometheus 21 (1995) 212.
42 References to the naming titulus in the metrical text are found also in later metrical inscriptions: cf.
GVI 632 (third century bc), 1260 (second century bc), 650 (first/second century ad), 1087 (second
century ad). At Rome, there are clear cases of a functional differentiation between the prose part of
inscriptions, which contain the information about the persons name and life, and the comment
of the epigram in verse; cf. CIL i.2 (2nd ed.) 11 for Lucius Scipio (c. 16050); CIL i.2 (2nd ed.) 15
for Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio Hispanus (c. 135 bc), on which see M. Massaro, Epigraphica 59 (1997)
97124.
commentary provided by an epigram.43 Such an influence from public
funerary inscriptions to private ones is seen also in the conventional greet-
ing between passer-by and deceased; it is a polyandrion, CEG 4, which first
attests an address by the living to the dead, a form which was to become
very common, whereas in the archaic age it was the dead who greeted
passers-by.44
The Attic practice in which the funerary epigram did not necessarily
contain the name of the deceased was guaranteed a wider circulation,
towards the end of the fourth century or the beginning of the third, by the
C^ ( C;( Attic epigrams, a collection compiled by Philocho-
rus, the Attic historian;45 this is one of the earliest collections of inscriptions
known to us, and may have offered a convenient catalogue of real mod-
els to Hellenistic epigrammatists. Philochorus readers, whether Attic or
Alexandrian, may well have gained the impression that this practice of sep-
arating the name of the dead from the poem in their honour was a modern
technique worth imitating; (we do not know of any other collections of this
kind for another century, until the J
# (
On epigrams, town by town compiled by Polemon of Ilium, early second
century bc). Asclepiades, AP 13.23 is not in fact the only literary epitymbion
without the name of the dead person which does not fall into one of the
two categories considered above, namely epitymbia for shipwrecked sailors
and those on desecrated tombs. Nevertheless, epigrams of this kind are
decidedly rare, at least until halfway through the first century bc: all of the
surviving examples seem close in time to Asclepiades.
Let us start with the two epitymbia composed by Callimachus for his
father Battus and for himself, respectively AP 7.525 = HE 1179ff. and
AP 7.415 = HE 1185f.:
V% , %
') =##(!$
K% =$$ 5'( .
*' ' C . U ' V#
DM ) 'C i % %% 9%.
%U 0% () V%$ K' A 5'
8 #M) #b & #$.
43 A titulus nomina praebens, obviously not in metrical form, is either preserved or postulated regularly
by editors for the polyandria, mostly from Attica, which are extant from the fifth and fourth centuries.
44 Cf. Sourvinou-Inwood (1995) 180217 and 3689. For other indications of the influence exerted by
public funerary monuments on private ones in classical Attica, cf. Clairmont (1970) 436.
45 We do not know the contents of this collection, but it is reasonable to expect from an author like
Philochorus, who is credited with a passion for collecting oracles in verse (FGrHist 328T6), that he
did not limit himself to collecting only historical inscriptions in prose: cf. FGrHist iiib (Suppl.) 1
p. 375.
298 The epigram
You who walk past my tomb, know that I am son and father of Callimachus of
Cyrene. You must know both: the one led his countrys forces once, the other sang
beyond the reach of envy. No marvel, for those on whom the Muses did not look
askance in boyhood, they do not cast off when their hairs are grey. (trans. Nisetich,
adapted)
a(' %
' c X &'4
*'
) c 'C K" %$ #(%.
You are walking past the tomb of Battiades, well versed in the art of song, and also
of mixing wine and laughter seasonably. (trans. Nisetich, adapted)
It is plausible that the two epigrams were devised as a complementary pair:
the first verse of the epitymbion for the father calls the son =##!,
while the first line of the one for Callimachus calls him a('; the
two verses complement each other, thus forming the complete name; fur-
thermore, the name of the son and of the grandfather, Callimachus, is only
found in the epigram for the father [. . .] the name of the father, on the con-
trary, which is not mentioned in the epigram for his death, appears in the
epigram for his son, included in the patronymic.46 This literary game may
have had an extra-literary motivation, such as, for example, Callimachus
could not write much about his father, because there was not much to say
about him,47 or he may have preferred not to speak about himself in his
own epitaph, trusting that his verses would be sufficient for people to recog-
nise him.48 What we have, in fact, is a somewhat paradoxical epitymbion
by a son for his father, in which the father is not named, and the epitaph of
a poet for himself, which named him only by means of his own patronymic
(unless a(' is an epithet derived from the name of the founder of
Cyrene).49 This is, however, not just another Alexandrian variation on the
standard practices of real sepulchral inscriptions, nor need we suppose that
it was impossible to fit the name of Callimachus father into a hexameter.50
Onomastic similarity may in fact have pointed to the complementarity of
46 G. Pasquali, Epigrammi callimachei (1919), now in id., Scritti filologici (Florence 1986) i.307. The
complementary relationship between the two epigrams would be a bit looser if we accept, with
Cameron (1995) 8 and 789 and White (1999), that Battiades is not a patronymic, but refers to the
founder of Cyrene.
47 Pasquali loc. cit. (previous note). The exegesis of Wilamowitz (1924) i.175 n. 2, followed by Pfeiffer,
is very similar; cf. also Meillier (1979) 1423;Walsh (1991) 934; Bing (1995) 126. The final couplet
of AP 7.525, which is identical to fr. 1.378 Massimilla, is, I believe correctly, often viewed as an
interpolation.
48 Cf. White (1999) 170.
49 See above, n. 46. Similarly, J. Larson, Astacides the Goatherd CPh 92 (1997) 1317, argues that the
C;%' of Callimachus, AP 7.158 = HE 1211ff. is not a proper name, but a poetic pseudonym
formed from the name of the town of Astacus in Bithynia.
50 Cf. Gow and Page ad loc. (HE ii.186).
the two characters: the obvious allusion in the final couplet of the epigram
on Callimachus the father to the famous verses of Hesiod (Theogony 815)
on the protection of the Muses for just kings51 might suggest that both the
poet and his grandfather, who had led the army of the city, had operated in
the sphere of the Muses, though in very different fields. The Callimachean
epigram might be seen as a meeting-point between the Hellenistic taste
for Erganzungsspiel, in which the poet leaves his reader the task of working
out important details from allusive hints in the poem, and the tradition
of sepulchral inscriptions of the fourth century, in which the name of the
deceased was not included in the metrical epigram. This necessity for recip-
rocal reading between the two inscriptions might have been influenced by
real examples of inscriptions that stood over the tombs of two deceased rel-
atives, placed side by side.52 An example of the kind, once again from Attica
and once again from the sixth century, has come down to us,53 CEG 512
, & 4%$ %C & T T% # | # , !C
.'
| % # $. ( 'C ' M()
) | 5 % # &#
Oh, you who won fame
and glory among your fellow-citizens by reason of your virtue, which will
never be forgotten, you who are sorely missed by your children and your
dear wife. I lie to the right of your tomb, mother, and am not separated
from your love. In this case, the name of the dead person, which is not
supplied in the metrical text, is given in a separate inscription, extra metrum,
on the same tombstone (s#! <$'( `#$ Q); the name
of the mother, however, who is mentioned without being named, must
be found from the nearby tombstone of the mother herself, which was
fortunately found in situ: 0 # <'( $8 `#$ (IG ii/iii2 :
iii.2, 7695).
Another example may be found on the Milan papyrus of Posidippus,
Poem 56 AB (ix.714 Bast.Gall.):
X |' %% 4
M C^# $Z)
'5 Q) % e% # !U
E ' C M |'5 &Z# ) , %, %9
+9'(" 4 - #"
%, % !) -'X %$

'($ C & i#$ $9!
U
X c) C;% Q) ( %% #4%
) u ' C %5 Q% %b 5.
51 In the light of this Hesiodic allusion E. Livrea, Lepitafio callimacheo per Batto (1992), now in
Livrea (1993) 10717, even suggested that this final couplet should be referred not to Callimachus
the poet, but to Battos the father.
52 Cf. Bing (1995) 1278. 53 Cf. Bing (previous note).
300 The epigram
For five labours Eleutho raised her bow, O noble woman, and stood beside your
bed. After the sixth labour you died and your infant child passed away on the
seventh day still seeking the swollen breast, and combined tears fell from the eyes
of both undertakers. Of five of your children, Asiatic woman, the blessed ones will
take care, and one of them you too will tend as it lies on your knees. (trans. Austin)
If we accept the interpretation of C;% Q proposed by the first
editors,54 Asian woman, the dead person remains without any name.55
Another epigram of this kind is by Carphyllides (AP 7.260 = HE 1349ff.),
a minor author usually dated to the third century:
8 :" O 4( $) '5U
'X ! 4 .M 'X Z.
##U &#$% $

%$ 4$U %%5 % ' ($)
M H ##( 5' 5 %
#)
' , *ZM
%) (U
l % % &4 , #$b [
T% !Z : C % 9.
Find no fault with my fate, traveller, in passing my tomb; not even in death have I
aught that calls for mourning. I left childrens children, I enjoyed the company of
one wife who grew old with me. I married my three children, and many children
sprung from these unions I lulled to sleep on my lap, never grieving for the illness
or loss of one. They all, pouring their libations on my grave, sent me off on a
painless journey to the home of the pious dead to sleep the sweet sleep. (trans.
Paton)
Yet another example might be AP 7.662 = HE 3410ff., an epigram which
the bucolic manuscripts attribute to Theocritus, but the Palatine and
Planudean anthologies to Leonidas:
1 5 N! C . +9'
" w' C $
* C;' ## 1# )
' #) $% , *%( &' #
)
4 &%
$ $%( ($.
*5 # % J %) F +"
&Z ' #$
.
The girl is gone to Hades before her time in her seventh year, before all her many
playmates, hapless child, longing for her little brother, who twenty months old
54 BastianiniGallazzi (2001) 1789.
55 C;% may, however, be a proper name. It is not otherwise attested, but related male names are
certainly known. C;% and C;%( are two of the readings suggested in IG xiv. 1421 (cf. SEG xxx.
1211 and xxxv. 1049), and C;% was the name of one of the daughters of Themistocles (and is also
attested in Attic inscriptions of the fifth and fourth centuries bc: cf. LGPN ii.723). For the name
with Q, cf. GVI 411.1, <
&4 (second/third century ad).
tasted of loveless death. Alas, Peristera for your pitiable fate! How has Heaven
decreed that the saddest events come all too easily to human beings. (trans. Paton,
adapted)
J %, the proper name in the penultimate line, is standardly taken
as the name of the mother, and not that of the young girl who has died; it
is, however, more likely to be the name of the dead girl.56
Among all the other epigrams of Book 7 of the Palatine Anthology which
can be attributed to poets from the third century to the first half of the first,
there is not one epitymbion which does not include the name of the dead
person, usually with patronymic and nationality.57 Immediately after this
group, we have a small group of such epigrams by poets who lived between
the mid-first century bc and the mid-first century ad, which seem to testify
to a sort of relatively short-lived fashion for such poems: Apollonidas of
Smyrna, AP 7.180 and 389, Heraclides of Sinope, 7.281, Erycius of Cyzicus,
7.368, Antonius Thallos, 7.373, Leonidas of Alexandria, 7.547, Crinagoras
of Mytilene, 7.638. Apart from this small group, the signed epitymbia
without the name of the dead are very few and very late (sixth century):
Julianus of Egypt, AP 7.32 and 603, Macedonius the consul, 7.566, Agathias
Scholasticus, 7.5689. All other epigrams of this kind, some fifteen in total,
are anonymous,58 and it is reasonable to suppose that most are transcriptions
of actual sepulchral inscriptions,59 where the name of the dead would have
occurred elsewhere on the stone.
For Callimachus, Posidippus (if C;% is not a proper name) and
Carphyllides, the unsuitability of the name of the dead person for the hex-
ameter might be argued to explain its absence, but this is less convincing for
Asclepiades, given that his epigram is iambic. The most plausible hypoth-
esis is that these poets, three and perhaps all of whom were born towards
the end of the fourth century or the beginning of the third, followed the
example of the bipartite inscriptions of the fourth century, in which, as we
have seen, it was not only names that were difficult which were placed
56 Cf. Laura Rossi, The Epigrams Ascribed to Theocritus: a Method of Approach (Leuven 2001) 26577.
57 AP 7.472 by Leonidas of Tarentum (HE 2443ff.) does not belong here, as it is a philosophical diatribe
about the fragility of human life. As regards Callimachus, AP 7.728 = HE 1255ff., the name of the
priestess of Demeter to whom the epitymbion is dedicated is presumably concealed in the lacuna in
v. 3.
58 AP 7.48, 157, 323, 324, 325, 331, 332, 335, 336, 339, 342, 349 (attributed probably wrongly to
Simonides, cf. FGE p. 253), 361, 474, 734.
59 Cf. Weisshaupl (1889) 801. The lemmas which are sometimes placed before epigrams to record the
name of the dead person and/or the geographical location of the original inscription (see e.g.
AP 7.3304) demonstrate beyond all doubt that some of the epigrams of the Anthology were
transcriptions of inscriptions: cf. F. Chamoux, Epigraphie et litterature: Meleagre de Gadara fut-il
un plagiaire? REG 109 (1996) 3543.
302 The epigram
outside the metrical text. This is a phenomenon of no little cultural signif-
icance. The poets mostly (to us) anonymous who entrusted their verses
to stone could count on the fact that the stonecutter would divide the text
into a non-metrical part (with the names) and the metrical epigram. The
writers of literary epigrams, whose names were preserved through personal
editions or the various anthologies which eventually merged together in the
Palatine Anthology, were high poets who thought of a circulation of their
texts in book form, whether or not they were also actually inscribed. These
poets will hardly have been able to take for granted the continuity of this
double space in the course of tradition; there was no guarantee that some-
thing equivalent to the space on an inscription for the name of the deceased
would be available in a book. Both the ancient papyri (above all, the Milan
papyrus of Posidippus) and the obvious improvisation of the headings in the
Palatine Anthology raise the suspicion that, during the Hellenistic age, the
custom of placing supplementary headings in front of single epigrams was
far from standard. Thus, Asclepiades and Callimachus, and perhaps also
Posidippus and the obscure Carphyllides, testify to an early phase in which
the presentation of real inscriptions could still influence the presentation
of literary epigrams, shaping the latter in accordance with requirements
and possibilities that are typical of inscriptions, but foreign to the literary
text.60 The later development, in which the monumental context is no
longer taken for granted, finds a precise parallel in the history of the ded-
icatory epigram. As mentioned above, the dedicatory inscriptions of the
sixth and fifth centuries often omit the name of the god to whom the ded-
ication is addressed, in all probability because the place where they were to
be set up (a temple or other place consecrated to the god)61 or a reproduc-
tion of the figure of the god on the same votive monument (cf. e.g. CEG
286) guaranteed knowledge of the name. On the contrary, with very few
exceptions, the dedicatory epigrams of the Palatine Anthology hardly ever
omit the name of the god.62
The exceptional nature of funerary inscriptions without the name of the
dead person is clear also from a group of epigrams of the third century
bc, which take the form of self-epitaphs for the misanthrope Timon. The
earliest are a poem disputed between Leonidas and Antipater, but usually
attributed with some confidence to Leonidas63 (Leonidas, AP 7.316 = HE
2569ff.),
60 Cf. Bing (1998) 349. 61 Cf. Lazzarini (1976) 59.

62 Cf. GPh ii.149, with important modifications in FGE p. 139.
63 Cf. J. Geffcken, Leonidas von Tarent (Suppl. Jahrb. Class. Philol. 23) (Leipzig 1896) 919 and
HE ii.395. The uncertainty of the lemmatist is justified, according to Geffcken, by the frequency of
the imitations of Leonidas in Antipater of Sidon.
8 C %4# 9 4 !
*O 4C V%) 8 M (%U
v 4) 8 &Q ) #% '
. v 'X #"
% ) ' C [) ~ &Q ) #%.
Pass by my monument, neither greeting me, nor asking who I am and whose son.
Otherwise may you never reach the end of the journey you are on, and if you pass
by in silence, not even then may you reach the journeys end. (trans. Paton)
and a parallel poem attributed to Callimachus (AP 7.318 = HE 12712):
8 ! K" ) , ) &## ( # U
L% ! % , 8 %X #T (Graefe: #T cod.)
Wish me not, well, evil-hearted one, but pass on. It will be well with me if I get
rid of your presence
Close in time to these poems must be two hexameters which the bio-
graphical tradition presents as really engraved on Timons tomb: ('C
&4M :$!8 9$' 5U | 3 'C Q% % ,
'X &
#% Here I lie, after breaking off a life oppressed by ill
fortune. My name you will not know: may you come to a sticky end, you
evil ones (= adesp. AP 7.313). This might, of course, be a late and ficti-
tious text, but expressions like &4M :$!4 and 9$' appear
closer to the tragedy of the fifth century than to the Hellenistic age,64 and
the metrical form (two hexameters, and not the elegiac couplet which had
became practically the canonical metre for sepulchral inscriptions by the
fourth century) might suggest an early date.
Epigrammatists naturally followed the biographical tradition in their
representations of this terrible misanthrope. In his Life of Antony (chapter
70), Plutarch recounts the misanthropy of Antony during the last few
years of his life: he believed that his friends had shown ingratitude to him,
nourished a distrust and a hatred for all men, and consequently he said that
he could see analogies between the life of Timon and his own. The historian
seizes the opportunity to narrate several anecdotes about this bad-tempered
individual, and he also describes Timons tomb, which, partly by chance
and partly in accordance with the dead mans intentions, was a symbolic
monument to misanthropy. It had been built on the seashore at Halai, on
a spur of land, but as a result of erosion it was now out at sea and could no
longer be reached, or even approached, by other human beings. Plutarch
informs us that on Timons tomb stood the hexameters cited above, and
moreover: They say that he composed this himself, while he was still
alive. The epigram that circulates, however, is the one by Callimachus,
64 Cf. A. Wifstrand, Von Kallimachos zu Nonnos (Lund 1933) 161. See also Schmid (1959) 165.
304 The epigram
s %( . &## ( # | *Z_ K ##()
( #
(I, Timon the misanthrope, dwell here. Be on your way
after heaping curses on my head just be on your way). The verses, which
Plutarch erroneously attributes65 to Callimachus, are in fact the second
couplet of an epigram by Hegesippus (AP 7.320 = HE 1931ff.):
]M 5 (" , ( *% .

%
# U 9#(: b
') v %".
s %( . &## ( #
*Z_ K ##() ( #
.
All around the tomb are sharp thorns and stakes; you will hurt your feet if you go
near. I, Timon the misanthrope, dwell here. Be on your way after heaping curses
on my head just be on your way. (trans. Paton, adapted)
In view of their emphasis on the anonymity of Timons tomb, the epigrams
of Leonidas (7.316) and Callimachus (AP 7.318) may be compared with
another variation of Timons original inscription by Ptolemy, AP 7.314
(FGE 470f.):
8
* (" 'C 3U #8 V 4%
b C 8 %4# !$ #.
Learn not whence I am nor my name; know only that I wish those who pass by
my monument to die.
Hegesippus epigram, however, belongs with one by Zenodotus or Rhianus
(AP 7.315 = HE 3640ff.):
! C ) :8
) B( +#%%
( v %# . # 9($)
F C 'C A K '
K!) (_ 'C w%$! #.
D %() ' C &%5% #
s) 'C C;'" 4%
* $.
Dry earth, grow a prickly thorn to twine all round me, or the wild branches of a
twisting bramble, that not even a bird in spring may rest its light foot on me, but
that I may repose in peace and solitude. For I, the misanthrope, Timon, who was
not even beloved by my countryman, am no genuine dead man even in Hades.
(trans. Paton)
The epigrams of Hegesippus and Zenodotus/Rhianus distinguish them-
selves by imagining Timons tomb as isolated by a prickly tangle of
65 For hypotheses about the origin of Plutarchs error, cf. HE ii.304 ad loc.
brambles,66 and by giving the name of the dead, as though the tomb-
stone was not anonymous.67 They thus differ from both Plutarch and, at
least in part, his source, the On famous men of Neanthes of Cyzicus, a
historian of the third century bc, which presented the tomb as isolated
inside the sea (cf. FGr Hist 84 F35).68 The variant version which these poets
followed perhaps came from Aristophanes, Lysistrata 80615 or another
similar text; Aristophanes chorus report that Timon was a vagabond who
showed his face surrounded by unapproachable thorn-bushes (&9(%
%Z#%
% ), an Erinys come to life. This
Timon had withdrawn into solitude, out of hatred for wicked men . . .
after pronouncing many curses on them (## %( ).
Zenodotus/Rhianus and Hegesippus might have taken such a tradition
of the misanthropic hermit69 and extended it to his tomb. Such anti-social
habits had, however, long since become part of the standard characteri-
sation of any misanthrope, which itself, of course, was largely based on
the rich Timonlegende.70 Monotropos (Hermit), the protagonist of the
comedy of the same name by Phrynichus, a contemporary of Aristophanes,
had claimed to live the life of Timon, a man &
%' and &'(# ,
impossible to approach or converse with (PCG fr. 19)71 , and our fullest
picture of such a Timon-like hermit is, of course, Cnemon, the central
figure of Menanders Dyskolos.
Hegesippus (first half of the third century bc) and Zenodotus/Rhianus
differ principally from the original self-epitaph of Timon and the epi-
grams of Leonidas (7.316), Callimachus (AP 7.318), and Ptolemy (7.314) in
66 The epitaphic topos of the blissful luxuriance of nature around tombs appears first at a later date,
cf. Philodemus, AP 7.222 = GPh 3320ff. = 33 Sider; GVI 1409 (second century ad), 2027 (first
century ad), 2005.349 (first/second century ad). Curiously, the first three of these all include the
absence of those 9( which made Timons tomb unapproachable; see also Prop. 4.5.1: terra tuum
spinis obducat, lena, sepulcrum.
67 Callimachus too seems to be thinking of a tombstone with a name in another epigram (AP 7.317 =
HE 1269f.). This poem is, however, closer to the interview with the dead person about the afterlife
(below, p. 327).
68 Cf. Piccolomini (1882) 25157 and F. Leo, Die griechisch-romische Biographie nach ihrer litterarischen
Form (Leipzig 1901) 11415.
69 So Piccolomini (1882) 258.
70 Cf. F. Bertram, Die Timonlegende (Diss. Heidelberg 1906); Schmid (1959) and id., Menanders
Dyskolos, Timonlegende und Peripatos RhM 102 (1959) 2636; P. Photiades, Le type du misanthrope
dans la litterature grecque CE 34 (1959) 30526; A. M. Armstrong, Timon of Athens a Legendary
Figure? G&R 34 (1987) 711; T. Hawkins, Seducing a Misanthrope: Timon the Philogynist in
Aristophanes Lysistrata GRBS 42 (2001) 14362.
71 In Posidippus 102 AB Menoitios the Cretan asks passers-by not to disturb him with the usual
questions, but this may not be pure misanthropy: cf. M. Gronewald, ZPE 99 (1993) 289, E.
Voutiras, ZPE 104 (1994) 2831, Gutzwiller (1998) 1989. Menoitios later provides full information
about his identity.
306 The epigram
removing the anonymity, which had either been a real characteristic of the
tombstone and its epigram or a creation of a biographical tradition which
may be reasonably supposed earlier than Leonidas and Callimachus. They
thus belong to the same series of self-epitaphs of Timon, but would both
appear to derive from a different tradition, one more concerned with the
ekphrasis of the tomb and its isolation, and one in which Timons name
was openly displayed. In the face of the uncertainty of the attributions and
of the relative chronology of some of the poets, any attempt to establish
a sequence for the various epigrammatic motifs is destined also to remain
uncertain. Nevertheless, the development of these epigrams in the first half
of the third century confirms that the idea of a tombstone for an unknown
dead person was something atypical and exceptional; on the other hand,
however, it could be taken as a real sign of recognition for an atypical,
exceptional character like the inventor of misanthropy, a true disrupter of
the common social values celebrated in sepulchral inscriptions, which for
the normal dead included the presence of the name.
2.3 Dialogues with statues

Omission of the name of the dead was a radical departure from the conven-
tions of funerary epigrams, and perhaps it is not surprising that such a tomb
should arouse so much interest among epigrammatists of the third century.
The very repetitive information contained in classical funerary and dedica-
tory inscriptions and epigrams put the search for variation at the centre of
poetic concerns. As has already been observed for archaic sepulchral inscrip-
tions, one of the most frequent variations consisted of adopting, not the
common narrative form, but a dialogue form which dramatised the passage
of information from the inscription to the passer-by; this was a natural out-
come of the widespread practice of making the tomb, or the monument,
the speaker of the epigram (talking inscriptions), thus transforming the
person who observes the tombstone from its reader into its interlocutor.72
Epigrams in dialogue form which have come down to us in the Anthologia
Graeca have regularly been considered to be typical products of Hellenistic
affectedness, and their origin has been sought in the dialogic literature of the
fourth century,73 or both in it and in the dialogic element of Theocritean
bucolic poetry.74 Thus, for example, an epigram ascribed to Simonides
72 As Meyer (forthcoming) chapter A.2.5 points out, at the end of a perceptive survey of the forms of
presentation in archaic inscriptions.
73 Cf. R. Hirzel, Der Dialog: ein literarhistorischer Versuch (Leipzig 1895) i.398401.
74 Cf. W. Rasche, De Anthologiae Graecae epigrammatis quae colloquii formam habent (Diss. Munster
Westf. 1910) 1321.
(Anthologia Planudea 23 = FGE 808f.) is in dialogue form, as a question
put to the tombstone by a passer-by about the identity of the dedicator and
the reasons for the dedication, followed by the answer of the tombstone:
L) ) %%) ') 'X

=%Q# ^
$) JQ QM) 6
'.
Say who you are, whose son, from what country, and in what a victor. Casmylus,
son of Evagoras, victor in boxing at the Pythian games, a Rhodian.
Not only is Simonidean authorship, as almost always, uncertain, but so is
a date for the poem. The boxer from Rhodes, Casmylus, was the subject
of a lost Isthmian by Pindar (cf. frs. 23 Maehler), and as it is difficult to
imagine that he was important in subsequent periods, the most obvious
hypothesis is that the poem celebrating him was contemporary with him.
Page, however, pointed to the dialogue form of the epigram as an indica-
tion of Alexandrian ingenuity and hence of a Hellenistic dating.75 Such
ingenuity is, however, not in fact a prerogative of the Hellenistic age. A
dialogue between the passer-by and the dead or the dedicator, about the
monument erected for him or by him, occurs already in the comic dia-
logues with statues of the fifth century (Aristophanes, Clouds 147885; Plato
Com., PCG 204, Phrynichus, PCG 61)76 and is perfectly understandable in
the light of the strong archaic tradition in which inscriptions speak in the
first person.77 After all, reading a funerary or dedicatory inscription meant
first of all, in anthropological terms, performing a kind of ritual to com-
memorate the dead or the dedicator. Inscriptions in dialogue form express
the questions that the reader/passer-by is to put to the monument; they
offer precise instructions, by which the person who had the monument
set up guides the passer-by, point by point, in the execution of the ritual,
often taking precautions against an imperfect ritual by a hasty passer-by,
through admonitions not to hurry, but to take ones time to read. Such
instructions are very common in sepulchral inscriptions of all periods.78
There are at least two other metrical inscriptions which are closely parallel
to that for Casmylus, and which can be dated in all probability to roughly
75 Cf. FGE p. 245; against, U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff and G. Karo, AthMitt 45 (1920) 15960
and Kassel (1983) 11.
76 Cf. Kassel (1983).
77 Cf. M. Burzachechi, Oggetti parlanti nelle epigrafi greche Epigraphica 24 (1962) 354; A. E.
Raubitschek, Das Denkmal-Epigramm in LEpigramme grecque 926; Svenbro (1993) 2643.
78 Cf. J. W. Day, Early Greek Grave Epigrams and Monuments JHS 109 (1989) 227 and Interactive
Offerings: Early Greek Dedicatory Epigrams and Ritual HSCPh 96 (1994) 436. As Meyer (forth-
coming) chapter A.1.3 observes, an essential distinction between the reception of a literary text and
that of an inscription is the discretional character of the latter: a guest at a banquet will rarely go
away when the bard starts singing, but the passer-by may not stop to read.
308 The epigram
the same period. One is a dedication from Halicarnassus, dated to the first
half of the fifth century79 (CEG 429 = SGO 01/12/05):
'8 !4 %% #) #
' C .[ #]
%% C;
## 9, #[%.]
JQ $e, =%9Z##) K C [Q ]
M ) ' ( 4'C & [].
80
Artful voice of stone, tell me who set up this dedication and decorated the altar of
Apollo. Panamyes, the son of Kasbollis if you urge me to speak out dedicated
this tithe to the god.
Another funerary inscription from Thessaly, dated about 450 bc (CEG

120), is engraved on the plinth of a column which evidently supported a
sphinx81 ; in the first two verses the passer-by addresses the sphinx, and the
second couplet must have contained the answer:82
%M) h'[] Q) C [. . . .][. . $]#(%
h [ . .][. . . . . .]'[.] &<>[];
M 5[( ) () &][() () ]
[ ]
Sphinx, deadly dog, whose corpse do you sit and guard . . .? Stranger . . . of the
dead . . .
Together with these epigrams,83 we should place other inscriptions of the

late fifth and fourth centuries, which, so to speak, imply dialogue: they
suggest the possibility of a question or at least a comment by the passer-
by, but they express only the answer. The earliest is an Attic dedicatory
inscription of the beginning of the fifth century, CEG 286:
T% K%C &
h$ h
% []T
h
C & C &' U C;( ' ( .
To all men I answer the same, whoever asks which man dedicated me: Antiphanes,
as a tithe.
79 Cf. H. J. Rose, CR 37 (1923) 1623. Panamyes also appears in an inscription from Halicarnassus
which can be dated between 465 and 450: cf. R. MeiggsD. Lewis, (n. 23), no. 32.
80 Cf. Svenbro (1993) 5662. The paradoxical nature of the voice of the tombstone is also noted in SCO
05/01/42 = GVI 1745, of the third century bc: () &
" %
(stone)
that speaks with a voiceless mouth.
81 For the frequent representation of the sphinx on a stele as the guardian of the tomb, cf. E. Vermeule,
Aspects of Death in Early Greek Art and Poetry (Berkeley 1979) 171; Woysch-Meautis (1982) 837.
82 The opening of v. 3 has been variously interpreted as M 5 (Peek) or as the genitive of a proper name
(e.g. q ( , Friedlander).
83 Cf. Kassel (1983) 11.
Parallel to this is AP 6.269 = FGE 672ff., whose origin as an inscription is
clear both by the heading in the anthology, F <, in the manner
of Sappho,84 and by the obvious exploitation of a monumental context:
5' ) . 5% ) K )
&( , 'U
;*
? & C;%

C^# <{(')
%
#) '% $U %b ! 5%

/ #% (.
Children, though I am a dumb stone, if anyone asks, then I answer clearly, having
set down at my feet the words I am never weary of speaking: Arista, daughter
of Hermocl- (?) the son of Sauneus, dedicated me to Artemis Aethiopia. Your
ministrant is she, sovereign lady of women; rejoice in this her gift of herself, and
be willing to glorify our race. (trans. Paton)
A question by the passer-by is also implicit in the second couplet of an
Attic inscription of about 350 bc (CEG 545): The earth has the bones and
the flesh of the sweet boy [. . .] if you ask my name [. . .], I am Theogeiton,
etc., and we may also note another Attic sepulchral inscription of the late
fourth century (CEG 596), where a bilingual (Greek-Aramaic) metrical
titulus, containing the personal information about the dead, together with
the depiction of a lion and a figure, half-human, half-prow of a ship, is
accompanied on the tombstone by an epigram:
&Z $_ *
4' )
F #) 'X C I C * ($%U
D# *!# & # %(%U
&## # C i$ $ % ( [
# #) e T &, , *
U
` ' C #) 5' ! % $.
Let no one wonder at this image, that on one side a lion stretches out, on the other
the prow of a ship. A hostile lion came, wishing to tear me apart. But my friends
fought for me and buried me here, the friends whom I most wanted, coming from
the holy ship. I left Phoenicia, and my body is buried here in the earth.
Here the opening anticipates and answers the surprised question of the
passer-by about the meaning of the figures (cf. further below, pp. 329
30).85
In the inscriptions discussed so far, the epigraphic text acts to com-
plete the message of the tomb, which is transmitted in part symbolically
84 Cf. FGE pp. 1812.
85 Another Attic inscription of the fourth century, CEG 512, also has a dialogic form, but the dialogue
is not between the reader and the statue or the tombstone, but between the figures of two dead
people, mother and son, who are buried next to each other and portrayed on the stele.
310 The epigram
by a statue, by an object that the inscription accompanies, or by a figure
engraved on the tombstone. These inscriptions, however, do not perform
their didactic function descriptively that is to say, they do not describe
what the passer-by/reader can see; they presuppose the inscribed mon-
ument, which either speaks in the first person, or is indicated briefly by
means of a deictic pronoun or adjective. They thus transform the act of
vision (of the monument) and of reading (of the supplementary verbal
message) into an act of verbal dialogue, which, even if fixed in writing,
creates a typically oral situation of communication between the ignorant
passer-by/reader and the stele or the dead person. In only one case, which
also displays an unconventional metrical structure,86 do we find a change
in these roles, and the person who seems at the beginning of the epigram to
have the role of the passer-by turns out to be very well informed, with the
result that he can anticipate the self-description of the stele, which depicts
a bearded man and a woman (Onesimos and Melite), CEG 530:
!5 ( 0 #U !%8 $8 (' 5U
#87 &#% , .' C>4% D% %U
5 %( % ) D% !%8 $4.
%b !5 #C &') &## b b # .
Hail tomb of Melite: a good woman lies here; returning the love of your husband
Onesimos, you were the best of women. Therefore in death he misses you, for
you were a good woman. And you too, hail, dearest husband, and cherish my
children.
Even if he received the !5 of the dead woman which is usually addressed
to the passer-by (v. 4), and even if he speaks of himself and of his own image
on the stele in the third person (v. 3), the speaker of the first three verses
must be Onesimos, as is confirmed by Melites final exhortation: Love my
dear ones, and as the ancient reader of the inscription will have understood
at once from the depiction of a man standing up and talking to a woman.
The speaker is thus the person who had the stela set up, who is obviously
as well informed as the stele itself, even if he here assumes the role which is
usually played by the uninformed passer-by.88
Dialogic inscriptions survive in their traditional forms into the Hellenis-
tic age (cf. e.g. GVI 1833 and 1850, of the second century; 1851, 1859, of the
86 Two hexameters and two catalectic trochaic tetrameters, a sequence for which no parallels are known
to me in metrical inscriptions.
87 The participle is an addition extra metrum to the text, probably requested by someone (perhaps
Onesimos) who was interested in recording Onesimos feelings. It has also been suggested (e.g.
Pircher (1979) 39) that the second verse is an imperfect hexameter.
88 Cf. Walsh (1991) 867.
second/first century; 1882, of the first century), and appear to have become
a real fashion under the Roman Empire (GVI 18351849; 18601872; 1883
1887), to the point that they generated a parody by Paulus Silentiarius,
AP 7.307:89
>3( . . . s 'X ; J ' . . . C^ 'X
;
=# ' C * $. ^* &$($;
d4% ' C '
M # 9. ^* &'
M;
= 5 ' C (' . s # ;
My name is . . . What does it matter? My country is . . . And what does that
matter? I am of noble race. And if you were of the very dregs? I quitted life
with a good reputation And had it been a bad one? And I now lie here. Who
are you and to whom are you telling this? (trans. Paton)
From the third and second centuries bc on, however, we also find a different
form of dialogic dramatisation, which does not transform the moment of
vision and reading into a dialogue between the passer-by and the dead,
but merely translates the act of reading by the passer-by into an act of
listening; the message written on the monument is now pronounced by the
monument itself. This form of presentation presupposes and, as it were,
transforms into a narrative monologue the previous convention of true
dialogue, leaving the responsibility for the message still with the inscription
and/or the dead: cf. e.g. GVI 1620.13 (third/second century bc): Q9
.%) / ' | , ( % 5, |
C;' 99 ) #. the tomb is not without signs, and the stone will
reveal the dead person: who, and the son of whom, has gone to Hades, etc.,
1745.3f. = SGO 05/01/42 (third century bc): M % 'X Q
& Q | , $ &
" %
, #. above, the
smooth stone announces the dead, speaking with a mouth without sounds,
etc., 1621.3 (second century bc) & ]# 5 4) #. the
inscription will announce, etc..90
Inscriptions like those discussed so far are, more or less explicitly, words
that the convention of the speaking , whether dedicatory or funerary,
lends to the stone, or to the dead person, or to the object to which the stone
refers. As such, they presuppose that the passer-by/reader had in front of
his eyes the monumental context of the dialogue, which was of course also
89 Kaibel (1893) 51 rather fancifully hypothesised that the occasion (real or imaginary) for the epigram
was the discovery of a fragmentary inscription in which a homo insipidus supplied foolish answers.
90 Many other examples in GVI 16221635. This compendious form of dialogue is not common in
literary epigrams, but cf. Callimachus, AP 7.447 = HE 1209f., the pseudo-Theocritean AP 7.262 =
HE 3504f., and Antipater Sid., AP 7.425.3 = HE 382.
312 The epigram
the subject of the dialogue: the passer-by was expected to ask about the
monument, not about anything else. When epigram-writers began to link
their names with the text of single epigrams, and to consider a circulation
for texts separate from inscription on stone, and hence a reception which
did not involve actual vision of a monument, it was to be expected that
this would affect the character of the dialogue itself.
In fact, literary epigrams of the third and second centuries present a
mixed picture. Some very faithfully follow epigraphical traditions, with the
presupposition of a monumental context: a passer-by asks questions and
a tombstone or monument explains itself. Examples of this kind include
Leonidas, AP 7.503 = HE 2355ff. and AP 7.163 = HE 2395ff.,91 Phalaecus,
AP 13.5 = HE 2939ff.,92 Theaetetus, AP 6.357 = HE 3342ff., Theodori-
das, AP 6.224 = HE 3524ff., Philetas of Samos, AP 7.481 = HE 3028ff.,93
[Theocritus], AP 7.262 = HE 3504ff.94 There are, however, also other more
ambiguous epigrams which play on the absence of the monumental context.
An interesting case is Nicias, AP 6.122 = HE 2755ff.:
0 C^$#$) # '
) ( )
Q % T" ' %(!;
04U D #( .
y %
(! C>'Q% '4 '.
Maenad of Ares, sustainer of war, impetuous javelin, who now has set you here, a
gift to the goddess who awakes the battle? Menios; for by springing lightly from
his hand in the forefront of the fight I wrought havoc among the Odrysae on the
plain. (trans. Paton, adapted)
This dedication of a javelin contrasts its present immobility with its past
violent speed. This was probably a common type of dedicatory epigram by
91 Leonidas was imitated by Antipater Sid., AP 7.164 = HE 302ff., who even copied the name of the
dead person (!); see also the further variations of Antipater or Archias, AP 7.165 = GPh 3658ff., and
of Amyntes, SH 43 = FGE 13ff. (cf. also Agathias, AP 7.552). A later dedicatory parallel is offered by
Philip of Thessalonica, AP 6.259 = GPh 2789ff.
92 The text is corrupt and the division of lines controversial. In all probability, the epigram is in the
form of a dialogue between a passer-by and the four characters on a monument; so, most recently,
Gow-Page and Buffiere. The exegesis of Kaibel (1893) 501, followed by Beckby, according to which
the dialogue is between only two characters commemorated by the statue or the relief, is much less
likely.
93 Here, the dialogue is not between the dead person and the passer-by, but between the father of the
little girl, who will have been depicted on the stele, and the girl herself, likewise portrayed on the
stele: cf. CEG 512 (above, p. 299).
94 The inscription will say which tomb it is, and who lies beneath it: I am the tomb of the famous
Glauce, which finds a precise parallel in GVI 1625 (first century bc)The stele will tell you of my
destiny, and the letters engraved on it will tell of my death and the name of my parents [. . .] my
name is Ploutos, and at the age of three I arrived at the threshold of Hades, etc. For Glauce, however,
seeing that she is ]_ famous, no other details are necessary, as Walsh (1991) 87 observes.
Nicias time; its roots lie perhaps in Alcaeus description of an arms-room
(fr. 140 V.),95 and other examples are found in [Simonides], AP 6.52 =
FGE 932ff., Mnasalces, AP 6.125 and 128 = HE 26112620, and Antiphilus
of Byzantium, AP 6.97 = GPh 909ff. There is a close parallel in Anyte,
AP 6.123 = HE 664ff.:96
g ^% T"' ) ( 9
) ' C #$

!(# & C A$! %(_
'U
&## C & ( '
1 *b C;()
. ## C & =, C^! '.
Stand here, you murderous javelin, no longer drip from your brazen barb the
dismal blood of foes; but resting in the high marble house of Athena, announce
the bravery of Cretan Echecratidas. (trans. Paton)
Anyte, perhaps writing before Nicias, gives greater prominence to her rela-
tionship with the lyric-archaic model of Alcaeus: !(# [ . . .] (
'
picks up 'X '
!(#" the great hall sparkles
with bronze etc. in Alcaeus.
Anyone who read Nicias epigram in its monumental context, next to
the dedicated javelin, will not have had any doubts about its interpretation.
The visible dedication will have made clear that Maenad of Enyalius was
a metaphor for fury of Ares, a metaphor of a common kind in which
Dionysus and Ares were often involved.97 The reaction of a reader of the
epigram in book form will have been different, and Nicias may have wanted
to suspend understanding by means of the metaphorical ( and the
ambiguous C^$(#, which was both one of the names of Ares and (less
commonly) an epithet of Dionysus.98 Anyone who encountered the epi-
gram without its monumental context, however, might until the clear sig-
nals of v. 2 have been led to suppose that the apostrophe was addressed to
the statue of a Maenad of Dionysus, and that Enyalius was to be inter-
preted in its secondary, less common meaning; the uncertainty would only
95 Cf. M. B. Bonanno, Lallusione necessaria: ricerche intertestuali sulla poesia greca e latina (Rome 1990)
12546.
96 The standard view, deriving from Reitzenstein (1893) 1235, is that Anyte is the model for Nicias. This
has recently been denied by Bernsdorff (2001) 11314, in the course of a detailed survey, which lowers
the chronology of Anyte, traditionally considered to be an authoress of the very first generation of
Hellenistic epigram-writers. The use of ( in the sense javelin is found only in these two
poems and would seem to guarantee a relationship between them. The ambiguity of Nicias opening
might point to the priority of Anyte.
97 Timotheus had called the shield the drinking-bowl of Ares (PMG 797) and cup of Ares to mean
shield or shield of Dionysus to mean cup are typical examples of a metaphor by analogy, according
to Aristotle, Rhet. 3.1407a1415; cf. also Rhet. 3.1412b34 and Poet. 1457b201.
98 Cf. PMG 1027b, Macrob., Sat. 1.19.1: Bacchus has the name of C ^$(#, which is also one of the
names used for Mars.
314 The epigram
be increased by ( , which normally means cornel tree, but here is
used for a spear made from cornel-wood. Someone, of course, who knew
Anytes poem, if it was indeed the earlier of the two, will have understood
from the end of v. 1 that the subject was a javelin, and that the starting-
point for the initial metaphor was the Homeric custom of personifying
lances and the hands of warriors who brandish them through the use of
the verb %.99 Nevertheless, initial misunderstanding will have been
even more likely if, at the beginning of the third century, the ekphrasis of
statues in dialogue form was already a common epigrammatic form. An
example from the late third century was inscribed on the plinth of a statue
of Lysippus the Younger:100 Z ) ()
) %C #% L
5) | & ) K % #%(%) ##$) #. tell me truly, little
boy, who formed you and whose child you are, if your young tongue is
loosened up, etc.. Other examples involving statues of Bacchants include
[Simonides], APlan. 60 = FGE 914f., s x' a(!. s ' M%
<
. | s 'C M ) a(! v <
<
Who is this?
A Bacchant Who sculpted it? Skopas. Who inspired the passion,
Bacchus or Skopas? Skopas, and the non-dialogic Glaucus of Athens,
AP 9.774, 775 = GPh 386974, Paulus Silentarius, APlan. 57 and adesp.
APlan. 58.101 Thus Nicias epigram, with its metaphorical use of ( ,
perhaps in competition with Anytes, fully exploited the ambiguities cre-
ated in dialogues between passer-by and inscription, when these epigrams
could be read without the monumental context to which they refer.
Other epigram-writers too used the absence of the monumental context
to problematise, while pretending to adopt, the dialogic conventions of the
epigraphical tradition, which continued to be followed faithfully by many
literary epigrams. Consider Dioscorides, AP 7.430 = HE 1657ff.:
%Q# $ '$ T"' T:
; # \ & ( ;
#( k$ T 2C l x' #!T)
!&X & C C; 'Q #
.
( $ (% $ ' '$
) 4 C $
#
<( ' #:
.
K%! 9(%. C &%' H' ?Z
5
9 l C>$(')
99 For lances that rage, cf. Iliad 8.111 and 16.75; for the hands of warriors, cf. 16.2445.
100 Text of R. Herzog, Epigramm der Kinderstatue eines Lysippos in Kos in Schumacher-Festschrift
(Mainz 1930) 2078; see also J. D. Beazley and A. S. F. Gow, CR 43 (1929) 1202.
101 The epigrams attributed to Simonides are notoriously difficult to date; Glaucus of Athens would
appear to be later than Nicias.
!|
' !4% % #. }
d )
%QM &( %Q9# $#
'.
Who hung the newly-stripped arms on this oak? By whom is the Dorian shield
inscribed? For this land of Thyrea is soaked with the blood of champions and we
are the only two left of the Argives. Seek out every fallen corpse, lest any left alive
illuminate Sparta in spurious glory. Nay! Stay your steps, for here on the shield
the victory of the Spartans is announced by the clots of Othryadas blood, and he
who wrought this still gasps hard by. O Zeus our ancestor, look with loathing
on those tokens of a victory that was not won. (trans. Paton, adapted)
This epigram was included by mistake in Book 7 of the Palatine Anthology,
but, despite its opening, it is not a votive offering. After the first couplet,
which clearly recalls dialogic dedications, the reader, who is unaware of
the fact that this epigram could never be connected with any monument,
expects an answer. The poem develops, however, as a mimetic-dialogic
re-evocation of the night following the battle of Thyrea.
The Argives and the Spartans had decided to solve the question of the
possession of Thyrea by staging a fight between three hundred Spartans
and three hundred Argives. At the end, the two Argives who were left
alive thought that they were the only survivors and therefore considered
themselves the winners (cf. Herodotus 1.82.5: thinking that they had won,
they ran back to Argos); but one Spartan, Othryades, had also survived,
and he seized the arms of the fallen Argives and took them to the Spartan
camp as a sign of victory. Already by Herodotus time, the story of this battle
was subject to romantic variations: according to some people, the historian
informs us, Othryades committed suicide from guilt at being the only one
who returned home, while his fellow-soldiers had fallen on the battlefield.
Dioscorides is our earliest datable witness to a version in which Othryades,
with the arms he had taken from the Argives, erected a formal trophy
and inscribed on it in his own blood a declaration of Spartan victory.102
This battle was, however, very popular with Hellenistic epigrammatists, and
Dioscorides will not have invented his version; an epigram of uncertain date
ascribed to Simonides (AP 7.431 = HE 3334ff.) mentions the shield, stained
with the manly blood of Othryades, and Nicander, AP 7.526 = HE 2723ff.
describes Othryades as the one who had inscribed the spoils captured
from the Inachidai (i.e. the Argives). Instead of offering the usual dialogic
reading of the dedicatory inscription, as the opening appears to announce,
Dioscorides expands on the story of the origin of the inscription itself,
102 This version, which enjoyed great fortune in the early imperial age, is also adopted by the two
historians Chrisermus and Theseus, FGrHist 287F2 and 453F2: cf. P. Kohlmann, Othryades
RhM 29 (1874) 46380.
316 The epigram
told in dialogue form through the words of the two Argives; moreover, the
perspective from which Dioscorides organises the aition of the inscription
reverses what a reader expected for dedicatory inscriptions, whether dialogic
or otherwise. The ordinary point of view in such poems was, of course, that
of the person making the dedication, but here it is that of the enemies of the
dedicator; the value of the victory celebrated by the trophy of Othryades is
thus denied and, instead of containing the usual prayer to the god to accept
the dedication, the end of the poem consists of a prayer not to accept it. In
this way, Dioscorides overturns the conventions of the dedicatory epigram
and the expectations of readers.
It is Callimachus who plays most openly and frequently with the dialogue
form in dedicatory and sepulchral epigrams. In at least two of his dedicatory
epigrams, Callimachus exploits the epigraphical convention of the talking
monument, as the spokesman of the person who had it set up.103 These
two epigrams are AP 6.147 = HE 1157ff.,
, ! F &! ) C;%#) , , $

\' C;% N # M( )
Z% U v ' C } #(" <'> &)

% M % $ M.
Acknowledge, Asklepios, that the vow Akeson made for his wife Demodices recov-
ery is hereby Paid in full. If you forget and bill me again, this tablet says it is my
receipt. (trans. Nisetich)
and AP 6.149 = HE 1161ff.:
% V %4% ^ (
Z%) & *'
& 5% !(# &# s$''"%U
% Q `'$ ' `#M ' .
Euainetos put me here, saying (I dont know myself ) that he dedicates me to the
sons of Tyndareus, a bronze cock in return for a victory I won. Just so: the son of
Phaidros, grandson of Philoxenos, has spoken. (trans. Nisetich)
In both cases, the truth of the traditional information presented in the first
person by the inscription, namely the reason for the dedication, is ironically
problematised. In the first case, the authors point of view attributes to the
inscription the somewhat comic desire to act as a sort of formal receipt,
guaranteeing Akeson against the possibility of a second request for thanks-
giving from the god: nothing could be farther from the usual devout tone
of dedications. In the second case, the point of view is indeed that of the
103 Cf. Meyer (1993a) 166; Gutzwiller (1998) 1923.
talking monument, but it is a monument that expresses itself very idiosyn-
cratically. The epigram underlines the paradox of a bronze object which
speaks,104 while the parenthetic I dont know myself stresses both that a
bronze object cannot have a perception of facts105 and, in particular, cannot
know about a victory alleged to have taken place before it was created. The
talking cock monument is indeed prepared to credit the affirmations of the
dedicator, but it also humorously makes clear that if an object speaks, it
can only be the spokesman of the dedicator.
In another poem of Callimachus (AP 6.351 = HE 1151f.), it is not the
passer-by who apostrophises the dedicated monument, but rather we see a
preliminary phase, in which the dedicator presents his gift for acceptance
by the god:
s ) # ( ! C %$
) 4 A_
. s C;!5U J5 6> =4U \!.
For you, Lord, Lion-strangler, Boar-slayer, I, an oak club, from Who? Archi-
nos. Of? Crete Got it. (trans. Nisetich)
The novelty of the speaker is increased by the further ambiguity of the
manner and the tone in which the divine interlocutor expresses himself:
the gesture of impatience with which he interrupts the pompous words of
the dedicator, together with the almost monosyllabic brevity of his ques-
tions, do not suggest so much the benevolent majesty of a god receiving a
gift, as the rudely imperious haste of a Ptolemaic official, to whom a hum-
ble citizen has offered a small present.106 Rather similar is Callimachus,
AP 7.277 = HE 1265ff.:
s) M $ ; ?
! ('

C * #) !% 'X '
("
'Q% +, 9U 'X

w%$!) *$" 'C L% #%% 5.
Who are you, shipwrecked traveller? Leontichos found your corpse here on the
beach, and piled this grave with a tear for his own hazardous life: he too, without
peace, like a gull, roams the sea. (trans. Nisetich, adapted)
The opening four words suggest the usual question about the identity of
the dead, but this question remains unanswered. In the nineteenth century,
attempts were made to emend the text, so as to obtain a request about the
104 Cf. Meyer (forthcoming) chapter B.3.4.

105 That written discourse can be endowed with reason is denied in the passage of Platos Phaedrus
quoted below, p. 322.
106 Cf. G. Luck, Witz und Sentiment im griechischen Epigramm in LEpigramme grecque 3923.
318 The epigram
identity of the person who had buried the dead, but the transmitted text
lends itself, in fact, to two interpretations, both of which are plausible and
presuppose a frustration of the expectations aroused by the tradition of the
dialogic inscription. Callimachus may simply have left the initial question
suspended, eliminating any answer at all. It is, however, more likely that
Callimachus plays on the ambiguity created by the ellipse of the verb in the
first hemistich. The ancient reader expected the ellipse of L (Who are you,
shipwrecked stranger?), but Callimachus also suggests and favours the pos-
sibility of the ellipse of !% (Who buried you, shipwrecked stranger?).107
With either interpretation, the poem draws attention to the fact that there
is no answer to the traditional question it is unnecessary to force the
epigram into a dialogue structure, by emending to C at the
beginning of v. 2.108 On the more likely reading, however, Callimachus
inserts his own reflection in place of the answer to the conventional ques-
tion, thus challenging the reader to understand why there was no answer;
the reason is, in fact, that the convention of question and answer about the
identity of the dead person clashed with another convention, attested only
in literary epigrams and only from the third century onwards, namely that
epitaphs for the shipwrecked were anonymous.109
Another epigram, once again by Callimachus (AP 7.522 = HE 1227ff.),
is a sort of mise en scene of the act of reading and recognition, or better
lack of recognition, of the monumental context. This, however, is not
the reading of an uninformed passer-by, but a highly personalised reading
by a far from generic figure, one who is so well informed as to rival the
monument itself and to be able to fill out its message:110
s
. 'C %%; ') 3 %C )
* 8 s$ , A
%4#" 04$ 8
#. D
! &T% %,
% ^$.
Timonoe. Which Timonoe are you? By the gods, I would not have known you, had
not the name of your father Timotheus come next on the stele, and Methymna,
107 Other exegeses have been attempted: cf. P. Waltz, vol. iv of the Bude Anthologie, p. 174.
108 As T. L. Agar, CQ 17 (1923) 83 does, followed by Gow-Page.
109 Cf. above, pp. 2923; for a different interpretation, see Gutzwiller (1998) 2089. The same logic
might lie behind Serapion, AP 7.400 = GPh 3404ff.: Whose skull is this? That of a man who
worked hard. Then you will have been a merchant or a fisherman in the blind wave. Tell mortal
men that they take pains to accomplish other hopes, but this hope here is the one that we have
access to.
110 Cf. Meyer (1993a) 166; Walsh (1991) 97103. Pace P. Kunzle, RFIC 11 (1933) 76, GVI 1845 is not
parallel to Callimachus poem, for that poem has a traditional generic passer-by.
your city. Euthymenes, your widowed husband, is full of grief: thats for sure.
(trans. Nisetich, adapted)
The implication that the figural representation, whether iconic111 or ani-
conic,112 by which the tomb indicated the identity of the dead woman was
inadequate suggests a sort of historical and metaliterary reflection on the
nature of sepulchral inscriptions, underlining the indispensability of the
verbal element for a correct understanding of the iconic element.113 At
the same time, however, the passer-by/reader of the inscription (in actual
fact, the author) also occupies the space of the standard epitaphic com-
ment, and, together with the essential personal information, he includes
his own highly personalised message. The inscription does not give any
answer, on behalf of the dead woman, to the usual question of the passer-
by/reader about her identity; Callimachus literally denies the inscription
the right to speak, by substituting for the comment of the inscription the
process of decoding what he sees engraved on the stele.114 As a result, the
initial 'C %% unexpectedly proves to come from the soliloquy that
follows the reading of the name of the dead woman in the inscription,
and not from a dialogue between reader and tomb. Moreover, in the final
sentence Callimachus comments emotionally himself, instead of repeating
the standard phrases by which the spouse or the parents, who had set up
the monument, expressed their mourning for the dead;115 it is as if he were
saying, I, Callimachus, am telling you this; I knew Timonoe well, so this is
not the usual rhetorical and generic expression you might find on a funer-
ary stele.116 The emotional reactions of the poet, not those of the person
who commissioned the work, remain in the foreground from beginning to
end; together with the process of reading, the poets gradual discovery and
his own feelings are dramatised, and we recognise here the Callimachus we
know, the shrewd detective and psychologist of the erotic epigrams. It is
in fact difficult to say whether this epigram is closer to dialogues between
111 Cf. Weisshaupl (1889) 956. Sepulchral portraits, could be not only badly executed but also generic,
paying little or no attention to the specific physiognomy of the dead: cf. Clairmont (1970) 62.
112 Cf. E. Livrea, Tre epigrammi funerari callimachei (1990), now in Livrea (1993) 923.
113 Iulianus Aegypt., AP 7.565 The painter has portrayed Theodota perfectly (8 k '

_ (). Ah, if only his art had betrayed him! He would have granted oblivion to us, who weep
for her represents a contrasting use of the same motif, and perhaps an imitation of Callimachus.
114 Cf. Meyer (1993a) 166 and Meyer (forthcoming) chapter B.3.5.
115 Some examples from the fourth century: CEG 477, 485, 503, 511, 585.
116 As W. Kullmann, Kallimachos in Alexandrien und Rom in Candide iudex: Beitrage zur augusteische
Dichtung. Festschrift fur W. Wimmel (Stuttgart 1998) 170 observes, the reader of this epigram has the
impression that he is not dealing with the usual captatio benevolentiae, but rather acknowledging
the reactions provoked in a reader by a successful reading of the epitaph.
320 The epigram
passer-by and monument or to erotic epigrams like AP 12.71 = HE 1097
1102 (below p. 338): O Thessalian Kleonikos, poor, poor you! By the bright
sun, I didnt recognise you. Poor wretch, what has happened to you? Only
your bones and hair are left. Are you possessed by the same daimon that
dominates me? Have you had this ill fortune? I understand. Euxitheos has
enchanted you, too, etc.
A narrativised and contracted variant of the dialogue form, which is to
be interpreted in the light of typically Hellenistic inscriptions such as GVI
1620 (above), is Callimachus, AP 7.447 = HE 120910:
%Q D M 5U p %! #M
k C;%$ =8 C '#!
.
The stranger was short, his epitaph verse will also not be long: Theris son of
Aristaios, of Crete is long on me.
The future tense of #M in v. 1, about which doubts have been expressed,117
has in fact many inscriptional parallels: the act of proclaiming a message is
almost always in the future (the stone will indicate who the dead person is,
the inscription will announce etc.),118 and this is perfectly understandable,
given that the passer-by would see the inscription before reading the mes-
sage (i.e. the name) itself. The exegesis of the couplet is still controversial,
but whatever the explanation of the excessive length of the truly short
k C;%$ =4 the physical length of the inscription, compared
with its stone, which was short because Theris was not tall, or perhaps
rather its long-windedness, compared with the laconic Theris119 the voice
of the poet, well informed about the dead, imposes itself on what remains,
only formally, the voice of the tomb (C ); the poem once again prob-
lematises the suitability of the sepulchral message in the light of the superior,
personal knowledge of the author. The epigram probably also alludes to
the taste for ]# %!, an aesthetic preference which is typical of this
poet in particular.120
117 See most recently HE ii.193 (with a survey of previous opinions) and P. Karpouzou in Pagonari-
Antoniou (1997) 136. For # long-windedness as the opposite vice to %$,
cf. Celentano (1995) 734.
118 Cf. also [Theocritus], AP 7.262.1 = HE 3504 and Antipater Sid., AP 7.425.3 = HE 382.
119 Cf. Celentano (1995) 756.
120 Cf. Celentano (1995) 745. This does not mean, obviously, that this celebration of concision did
not have precise contextual reasons; F. Cairns, The New Posidippus and Callimachus in Worte,
Bilder, Tone. Studien zur Antike und Antikerezeption B. Kytzler zu ehren (Wurzburg 1996) 778
supposes that this virtue was particularly appreciated in a Cretan, seeing that the Cretans had a
terrible reputation as liars.
Let us now consider Callimachus, AP 7.725 = HE 12337:121
;K ( %b H' ) 0 U $#Q
D%;122 % ) M #% )
(%;
D B , =$; V [
D# ) 'X #4 L !
%.
Menecrates of Ainos (you here, too!) were you not still in the prime of life? What
destroyed you, O best of guests? Maybe what killed the Centaur too? The sleep
came which was destined to me, but insolent wine provides the reason. (trans.
Nisetich, adapted)
Here Callimachus-the-reader is not a generic passer-by, but a close friend
of the dead, and thus better informed, or at least more objective, than the
inscription itself. Callimachus had imagined that Menecrates was still alive,
because he was in the prime of life ( $#Q); as soon as he discovers
that he is dead you here, too! (i.e. in a cemetery) the poet needs no
inscription to guess what has happened. The poet himself has witnessed the
sympotic excesses of this very dear guest of his: Menecrates was as $#Q
imposing as a Centaur, but wine destroyed him, just as it had destroyed
the Homeric Centaur.123 The inscription itself adds nothing to the poets
hypothesis, except for the self-justification which could be expected from
the dead,124 following in the wake of Elpenor in the Odyssey, who was led
to his death by too much wine:125 the fatal day came for Menecrates, and
excessive drinking was no more than the contingent reason for his death.
That wine !
% (v. 4) is open to different interpretations. If the
words are given their usual meaning, then wine is justified/has an excuse
for itself , i.e. it is to be forgiven, because fault is not to be attributed to
it, but to inescapable destiny (cf. e.g. Demosthenes, Adv. Leptinem 140);
alternatively, the phrase may be interpreted as wine supplies destiny with
an excuse (cf. e.g. Plato, Rep. 5.469c9), or wine provides the occasion for
destiny (cf. e.g. Herodotus 4.79.1).126 On any interpretation, Menecrates
disagrees with Callimachus assessment of the cause of death,127 and the
121 I print the text and share the exegesis of M. Gronewald, Kallimachos Epigramm 42 G.-P. (61Pf.)
ZPE 100 (1994) 224.
122 For the sequence . . . D%, suspected, in my opinion wrongly, of being corrupt, cf. E. A.
Barber, CR 4 (1954) 230 and G. Giangrande, Hermes 91 (1963) 1546.
123 Cf. Od. 21.2956, Alcaeus Mess., AP 11.12 = HE 24ff., Nicarchus, AP 11.1.
124 Cf. Hutchinson (1988) 73: Menecrates is indeed sensitive to the disreputable appearance of his
decease.
125 In the Underworld, Elpenor explains to Odysseus: }% ' L% 8 &%
L the ill fortune of destiny and too much wine blinded me (Od. 11.61).
126 Cf. L. Pearson, Prophasis and Aitia TAPhA 83 (1952) 20523.
127 This is demonstrated by the highly probable imitation in [Virg.], Cat. 11.14: Quis deus, Octavi,
te nobis abstulit? An quae | dicunt, a, nimio pocula dura mero? | Vobiscum, si est culpa, bibi; sua
322 The epigram
epigram turns on the contrast between the diplomatically softened truth
of the presumed traditional inscription which Callimachus imagines that
he observes, and the objective voice of Callimachus-the-author which
suggests a message similar to that of other epigrams for those who died of
drink128 (such as Callimachus, AP 7.454 = HE 1325f.).129 Here again we
recognise the experienced psychologist familiar from the erotic epigrams.130
A different mode of variation of dialogic conventions is found in three
other epigrams by Callimachus. Ideally, inscriptions should formulate the
information that they wish to display in an articulate message, but the stone-
cutters of archaic inscriptions were well aware of the limits of such messages.
Inscriptions did not allow any possibility of feedback between the dead per-
son and the passer-by; inscribed messages were unchangeable, and therefore
remained deaf to the request of any future passer-by/interlocutor,131 as can
be seen very clearly from CEG 286 (quoted on p. 308). A famous passage
of Platos Phaedrus (275d) makes this a characteristic of all writing:
There is one strange element which truly unites writing and painting. The figures
that are the fruit of painting stand in front of you as if they were alive, but if you
ask them a question, they remain solemnly silent. The same thing happens in the
case of written discourses. You might get the impression that they speak as if they
had some sensible thoughts, but if you ask them about something that they have
said, in order to understand it better, they continue to say one and the same thing.
The messages of archaic inscriptions remained limited either to information
about the dead (identity, virtues, kind of death) or, something particularly
common in Attic inscriptions from the late fourth century on, to the expec-
tations of the relatives concerning the afterlife that awaited the dead as a
result of their virtues. In three epigrams, however, Callimachus converses
with the tomb to elicit from the dead information about the quality of
(non-) life after death, a theme no less important in Hellenistic philosophy
quemque sequuntur | fata: quid immeriti crimen habent cyathi? What god, Octavius, took you away
from us? Perhaps, as they say, the cruel cups of too much undiluted wine? If it is an offence to
drink, I shared it with you. Everyone has his own destiny: why accuse the cups of a fault that is
not theirs? On the meaning of
%, cf. H. R. Rawlings III, A Semantic Study of Prophasis to
400 bc (Wiesbaden 1975) and A. A. Nikitas, Zur Bedeutung von J>`;<@< in der altgriechischen
Literatur (Wiesbaden 1976).
128 Leonidas, AP 7.455 = HE 2385ff. imitated by Antipater Sid. 7.353 = 356ff.; Dioscorides 7.456 =
1647ff.; Ariston 7.457 = 786ff.; Antipater Thess. 7.398 = GPh 423ff.; Marcus Arg. 7.384 = GPh
1469ff.; adesp. AP 7.329; adesp. FGE 1624ff.
129 For this passage, I follow the interpretation of E. Livrea, Due epigrammi callimachei (1989), now
in Livrea (1993) 95100. The reading 9b) #. attested by Athenaeus (and defended most
recently by G. Giangrande, Platon 50 (1998) 310) is, however, tempting; Callimachean irony can
never be ruled out.
130 Cf. below, pp. 33841. 131 Cf. Svenbro (1993) 2831.
than in Plato.132 The motif of the dead person/tomb that transmits messages
which are more wide-ranging than the conventional topics is developed by
Callimachus also in the Aitia (fr. 64 Pf.) and the Iambi (11, cf. fr. 201 Pf.),
though in both of these cases it is not the afterlife about which the dead
instruct us, but rather their final moments on earth.
Let us begin with AP 7.524 = HE 1187ff.:
R 7 BC 2, % G' &Q ; ^* , C;
=$$ 5' # ) 2C .
R S G') J#b %
. ;e ' C .'
'. 6> 'X J#Q 0. C;#
.
> , #
3 &#
U * 'X , 1'Q
9Q# ) J ##$ 9 * C;'".
Tell me, is Charidas buried here? If it is the son of Arimmas of Cyrene you mean,
he is here. Charidas, how is it down there? Very dark. What of return?
A lie. And Pluto? A myth. We are done for, then. I have given you the
truth. If you prefer a pleasantry, beef is a penny a pound in Hades. (trans. Nisetich,
adapted)
The poet first apostrophises the tomb (2, %) and then the deceased
himself, whereas the talking tomb conventionally spoke either in the first
person or in the voice of the dead. Here a conventional dialogue between
passer-by and tomb leads into a conversation with the deceased Charidas;
as the epigraphic tradition had so frequently imagined that not only the
tomb, on behalf of the dead, but also the dead person himself could speak
in the first person through the inscription, why should it not be considered
legitimate to ask him for some more information, besides the usual details
of identity, particularly as the tomb itself had already taken care of these
details in the first couplet?
The second epigram in this group is AP 7.520 = HE 1199ff.:
v '_" s! h ;{') A Q
i :$! v (# % )
'_ % $# J# ' $e

J$%$U '4 ' C , % 9.
If you search for Timarchus in Hades, to find out anything about the soul, or how
you will exist again, search for the son of Pausanias of the tribe Ptolemais: you will
find him among the pious. (trans. Nisetich, adapted)
The poem starts off in a similar manner to the second couplet of CEG 545:
the earth has the bones and the flesh of the sweet boy, but his soul has
132 Cf. Callimachus, AP 7.471 = HE 1272ff., on Cleombrotus, who committed suicide after reading
the Phaedo.
324 The epigram
gone to the chamber ((#) of the devout. If you ask my name ( * 'X
A _ 5), I who lie here in illustrious Athens am Theogeiton, the son
of Thymouchos, a Theban by birth; this and other epigraphic occurrences
demonstrate that this conditional clause was a part of epitaphic formulaic
language,133 just as you will find him in the area of the devout ('4 'C
, % 9) also alludes to such repetitive assertions. In CEG
545 and other inscriptions, however, if you ask my name etc. refers to
the usual curiosity of the uninformed passer-by about the name of the
dead person,134 but in Callimachus the addressee already knows who he is
looking for, and the investigation in which he is imagined to be engaged
from the beginning (v '_") is completely different. Timarchus personal
details (v. 3) seem to be introduced only as necessary to trace him in Hades,
together with his new address (v. 4); the information that the passer-by
would like to receive is not of the traditional kind about the deceaseds
identity, but rather first-hand information about the quality of life beyond
the grave, and the whole epigram is centred on the possibility of such
an extraordinary interview at this new, and highly unlikely, address in the
Underworld.135 By starting in the same way as sepulchral inscriptions, which
elicited the conventional request from the passer-by about the identity of
the dead person, and finishing with the equally conventional dwelling-
place of the blessed, Callimachus makes the tomb itself speak the whole
poem: an interview with the dead about life after death, which may be
supposed to be a motif invented by Callimachus, is introduced within
traditional epigraphic conventions, as if tombs could learn to speak with
the intellectual voice of Callimachus, as the bronze cock of Euainetos had
done (above pp. 31617).
Thus far the primary meaning of the epigram. But if Callimachus
Timarchus was the Alexandrian Cynic philosopher, who was a disciple
of Cleomenes,136 and who, as a Cynic, will not have believed in life after
death and may even have written, as other Cynics did, against mythical
beliefs regarding Hades,137 then the epigram acquires a high degree of irony.
133 Cf. GVI 1260.11 (second century bc) and 1163.3 (second/third century ad); the first century
ad inscription in J. G. Milne, Catalogue general des antiquites egyptiennes du Musee du Caire
(Greek Inscriptions), Oxford 1905, 61 no. 9253.46; SGO 05/01/57 (third century ad), and 18/01/19
(second/third century ad).
134 Cf. CEG 535, 558, 593, which are all parallel to the funerary monument for the fallen at Potidea
(CEG 10) and reflect the same religious conception as, e.g., Euripides, Supp. 5334: cf. A. Skiadas,
^J@ s0aS@ (Athens 1967) 812, J. D. Mikalson, Athenian Popular Religion (Chapel HillLondon
1983) 77; R. Garland, The Greek Way of Death (London 1985) 75 takes a different view.
135 Cf. P. Karpouzou in Pagonari-Antoniou (1997) 1312.
136 Cf. Livrea (1993) 7884, Gutzwiller (1998) 2045, Meyer (forthcoming) chapter B.3.2.
137 We have the titles of two works of Antisthenes, J & 5 and J h ;'$ (Socr.
et Socratic. rell. VA.xxviii Giannantoni and cf. vol. iv. 2501); according to Diogenes Laert. 6.5 (176
Giannantoni), he argued that true immortality consisted of a devout, just life.
Callimachus, too, was probably sceptical, like the Cynics and Timarchus,
about life after death;138 it is, at least, likely that he conceived of the after-
life in a more sophisticated manner than contemporary popular opinion.
The poem thus not only pokes fun at Timarchus himself (an atheist in
Paradise . . .), but becomes a parody of the conventions of inscriptional
dialogues with the dead and of their remorselessly certain pieties (cf. CEG
545 cited above). We may compare the case of Hippo, a natural philosopher
of the age of Pericles, who affirmed that nothing existed except what can be
perceived by the senses (VS 38A9); he was mocked for his materialism by
Cratinus, PCG 167, and is regularly called the atheist in later sources.139
Nevertheless, he was credited with a self-epitaph which Clement of Alexan-
dria (Protrep. 4, p. 43 Stahlin) quoted as proof that Hippo had had a kind
of conversion, though modern scholars have normally seen it as satirical
(FGE 5645):
g @
' %) , &(% 5%
L% % 05 .
This is the tomb of Hippon, whom in death Fate made equal to the immortal
gods.
In Callimachus epigram, the exploitation of the stock expressions of sepul-
chral inscriptions is marked by the double specification in Hades/where
the devout are. We may fill out the translation as follows: If you want
to know what life after death is like, and therefore you are looking for
Timarchus in Hades but it must be Timarchus the Cynic, the son of
Pausanias of the Ptolemaic tribe of Alexandria you will find him (the very
one who denied immortality), obviously in the ! % 9 (as epitaphs
put it)! The idea of a !/'
/(# % 9 (or () for
those who have lived righteously can be glimpsed in its very early stages in
the Odyssey and is commonly attested in classical literature.140 There is, how-
ever, no epigraphical reference to any dwelling-place of the devout until
CEG 545 (above pp. 3234) of the fourth century, though this becomes quite
frequent in the third and second centuries,141 when sepulchral inscriptions
138 Cf. Livrea (1993) 83. 139 VS 38A4, 6, 8, 9 and B23.

140 Cf. E. Rohde, Psyche (4th ed., Tubingen 1907) i.30714 and ii.38185; P. Siegel, Untersuchungen zu
einigen mythologischen und eschatologischen Motiven in den griechischen metrischen Grabinschriften
(Diss. Innsbruck 1967) 22853; Sourvinou-Inwood (1995) passim but esp. 1756.
141 See, e.g., GVI 1572 (third century bc), GG 194 (third century bc), GVI 677 = SGO 03/02/62
(third/second century bc), 842 (third/second century bc), 2018 = SGO 01/20/25 (200 bc), 753 =
SGO 05/01/49 (second century bc), 805 (second century bc), 1154 (second century bc), 1346 (second
century bc), 48 (first century bc), 258 (first century ad), 531 = SGO 03/02/60 (first century ad),
1474 (first century ad), 1967 (first century ad), 973 (first/second century ad), 1719 (first/second
century ad), 1764 (first/second century ad), 1970 (first/second century ad), 2040 = SGO 06/02/32
326 The epigram
often express the comforting thought that the dead person is indeed in
Hades, but in the dwelling-place of the righteous and/or blessed.142 It is
thus very likely that the expression was fashionable in the formulaic sepul-
chral language of the third century, as Callimachus ostentatious irony also
suggests.143
Scepticism about life after death was an element of Greek culture existing
alongside ordinary belief in the afterlife (cf. e.g. Euripides, Troades 1248
50 and Helen 1421), but it is not until the late imperial age that we find
it clearly attested in sepulchral inscriptions.144 Callimachean scepticism as
regards the topoi of funerary inscriptions, however, would appear to find
an isolated parallel in an inscription of the third century bc, namely GVI
350, engraved on the stele of a tomb from Eutresis in Boeotia:145
C ^(' C O 5 6
'. #5 %
[] %#( A# # 5 x%.
* ' &# ) []9 ' C &# .
Here I, Rhodius, lie. I do not utter jokes and I leave the cursed moles throughout
the whole land. If anyone has a different view, let him come down here to express
it.
The absurdities which Rhodius146 proposes to pass over in silence are best
understood as the usual expressions about the virtues of the deceased and the
immortality of the soul, and the last verse points out that if anyone wants to
converse with Rhodius and answer him back, he will have to go down into
Hades; this may be an implicit criticism of the idea of an interview with the
(first/second century ad), 1871 (second century ad), 431 (second century ad), 1090 (second century
ad), 1162 (second century ad), 1776 (second century ad), 1289 (second/third century ad), 1562
(third century ad), 1772 (third century ad), 2061 (third/fourth century ad).
142 On this consolatory motif, cf. Verilhac (197882) ii 31332 and see, e.g., GVI 1128.56 (third
century bc); 1139.8 (second century bc); 1148.1720 (second century bc); 760.14 = SGO 05/01/35
(second/first century bc); 994.3 (second/first century bc); vv. 67 of the epigram (second/first
century bc) published by E. Atalay and E. Voutiras, ArchAnz 1979, 64; GVI 764 (first century bc);
642.46 = SGO 05/01/30 (first century ad). See also Carphyllides, AP 7.260.8 = HE 1355f. (above,
p. 300): &4 , #$b [ | T% !Z : C % 9.
143 For further discussion of this epigram cf. Gutzwiller (1998) 2045. In another poem, Callimachus
parodies the topical expressions of dedications to the Dioscuri, AP 6.301 = HE 1175ff.: by playing
on the ambiguity of x# as both sea and salt, he reduces the sea-storms after which survivors
made dedications to the Dioscuri to the storms of debts (v. 2), from which Eudemus saved himself
by eating only bread and salt.
144 See, for example, GVI 1905 (third century ad) and 1906 (third/fourth century ad), and the epitaph
from Side SGO 18/15/13 (third century ad).
145 Cf. W. Peek, AthMitt 56 (1931) 120 n. 1 and Nicosia (1992) 54.
146 Rhodius could, of course, designate the deads origin, but the proper name is occasionally attested
(LGPN i.398 and ii.391; SGO 01/20/21.6 = GVI 1344.6 of the third/second century bc; Nuova
silloge epigrafica di Rodi e Cos no. 267 Maiuri); the practice of giving only the name, with no further
details, was common in central Greece and in Boeotia (see above, p. 291).
dead, such as we have seen in Callimachus, or rather, more generally, of the
inscriptional convention of the dialogue between passer-by and deceased.147
The epitaph of this new Timon remains an isolated third-century example,
but it offers a precious parallel for the scepticism with which Callimachus
deals with the typical expressions of sepulchral inscriptions in general, and
his particular fun with the conventional dialogue form: what if someone
took seriously the convention of a dialogue between passer-by and deceased
and actually went looking for Timarchus in Hades . . .? Rhodius too foresees
the possibility that someone may want to answer the bitter affirmations that
he has left written on his tomb, but only in order to demonstrate his scornful
certainty that nobody will ever come down to give him an answer after
all, only a person who had descended into the nether world could know as
much as he knew about it . . .
Lastly, let us consider AP 7.317 = HE 1269f., one of the two epigrams
which Callimachus dedicates to the best-known misanthrope, Timon148 :
s ( C %%)) ) %
v () !
;
s, %
U 2 # * C;'".
Timon (I can ask you, now youre dead), darkness or light: which do you hate?
Darkness, for there are more of you in Hades. (trans. Nisetich, adapted)
From the outset, Callimachus knows and presents the name of the dead,
thus violating one of the basic conventions of sepulchral dialogues; he
abandons the traditional role of uninformed passer-by and assumes the
role of astute poet, who pretends to be carrying out a sort of reportage
on life after death by contacting those who are most directly qualified to
answer. Immediately afterwards, however, the parenthetic C %%
reveals a metapoetic awareness that he is exploiting that same convention
which the opening has violated: one who is no longer obviously cannot
really talk to a living person,149 but he can do so within the inscriptional-
epigrammatic structure of dialogues with talking monuments.
We would be wrong, however, to think that this insistent game of
provocative play with the conventional structures of sepulchral epigrams
147 The second line is very difficult. Rhodius is perhaps referring to his good fortune in not being
plagued by moles, a curse which he is happy to leave to the rest of mankind, rather than the more
usual epitaphic topoi. The reference to moles must reflect the paradoxographic tradition whereby
either the whole of Boeotia, or certain areas of it, were free from these beasts, cf. Aristotle, Hist.
anim. 8.605b31606a2, Aelian, Nat. anim. 17.10, Antigonus, Mir. 10. For earlier (less convincing)
attempts at interpretation, cf. H. Goldman, AJA 32 (1928) 17980 id., Excavations at Eutresis in
Boeotia (Cambridge, MA 1931) 27980; Peek and Nicosia (n. 145) and Peek, GG 3078.
148 See above, pp. 3026.
149 Cf. Hutchinson (1988) 72, for whom the expression underlines the impossibility of the conversation
before it begins.
328 The epigram
can be found in all epigram-writers. Rather, the epigrammatists seem to
divide between (principally) Callimachus, who exploits changes in the cir-
culation and reception of epigrams for humour and ambiguity, and other
poets Anyte, Leonidas, Phalaecus, Posidippus, Theaetetus, Theodoridas,
etc. who prefer broadly to maintain the traditional conventions of the
dialogue between passer-by and tombstone (or statue); the intervention of
their authorial voice is mostly limited to the heightening of poetic imagery
and linguistic expression. It is, perhaps, not surprising that authors like
Callimachus (or Dioscorides), who were also masters of the purely liter-
ary form of the erotic epigram, felt freer of the typical conventions of real
inscriptions, even when writing on the traditional subjects of inscribed
epigram.150
2.4 Puzzles and speculations

One extreme case of the didactic dialogue between the deceased (or the stele
on his behalf ) and the passer-by concerns the depictions of objects or ani-
mals that on funerary monuments sometimes accompanied, or more rarely
substituted for, the usual representation of the dead (and their relatives);
such depictions often had a role that was little more than decorative, but
at times they carried symbolic value, connected with the name of the dead
person, or the circumstances of his death, or his characteristics in life.151
This is an extreme case because this is half-information, i.e. non-verbal
messages which are not immediately clear, or are not to be interpreted in
their primary meaning, and depend on the passer-by for their decoding.
Symbolic depictions on sepulchral monuments go back at least as far as
the fifth century. For the most part, these were immediately understand-
able objects (arms, baskets, etc.) or animals (horses, birds, dogs, hares, etc.)
which recalled the name of the dead person, his rank, his merits, or his
favourite activities. Ambiguous cases undoubtedly existed: thus, for exam-
ple, a lion was often just a semi-decorative guardian of the tomb, but at
times it indicated the strength and warlike courage of a fallen soldier;152
on the tomb of ? of Sinope (Attica, fourth century bc), it marks the
150 Without wishing to return to Reitzensteins division into schools, it would thus appear to be
true that the authors usually attributed to the Peloponnesian school felt closer to the epigraphic
tradition than did the authors traditionally considered Alexandrian: cf. H. Beckby, Anthologia
Graeca (Munich n.d., but 2nd ed. 1966), i.32.
151 Cf. Weisshaupl (1889) 6894.
152 The lion was a frequent effigy on polyandria for those who died in war: examples include the
polyandrion at Cnidos for the Athenians who died at sea in 394, and that for the Greeks who fell
at Chaeronea against Philip in 338 bc (cf. below, p. 334); for later periods, cf. GVI 34 (second/first
century bc).
name of the dead,153 and on the memorial of ? ' and his compan-
ions who fell at Thermopylae154 it obviously carried multiple significance.
Another animal which frequently guarded tombs was the dog, but the dog
(Q) over the tomb of Diogenes of Sinope pointed to the Cynicism of
the man they called the dog,155 whereas the bitch over the tomb of the
Athenian ^ etymologised her name, good keeper, and/or marked
her gifts as a housewife;156 the hunting dog on the stele of Apollodorus and
?(, the sons of ?(, very probably recalled the well-known breed
of Laconian hunting-dogs.157 Such symbolic representations of names158
were, on the whole, very easy to understand: the idea that names had
meanings was widespread even in archaic Greece,159 and many words could
denote both a person and a category of objects or animals. Other symbols
were equally familiar and comprehensible: dogs, hares or horses evoked
the dead persons love of hunting (and therefore his aristocratic origins);
the wool basket recalled the diligence of a slave or a housewife, etc. The
straightforward comprehensibility of such depictions is shown by the fact
that there is no sepulchral or dedicatory monument of the classical period
in which an inscription explicitly refers to symbolic depictions on the mon-
ument, with the exception of the very unusual Greek-Aramaic stele CEG
596 (quoted above p. 309).
CEG 596 is on the sepulchral monument set up for Antipater the
Ascalonite by Domsalos of Sidon. The complex iconography of the monu-
ment consists of a dead person on a coffin (Antipater), a lion pouncing on
him from the left,160 and on the right a composite figure defending him,
153 A. Conze, Die attischen Grabreliefs III (Berlin 1906) 285 no. 1318. For [Simonides], AP 7.344 = FGE
1022ff., the lion on the tomb of ? had both meanings.
154 Cf. Herodotus 7.225 and Lollius Bass., AP 7.243 = GPh 1591ff.
155 According to Diogenes Laert. 6.78; see also adesp. AP 7.63 and 64.
156 A. Conze, Die attischen Grabreliefs I (Berlin 1893) 21 no. 66.
157 Cf. B. Freyer-Schauenberg, =SW ?;=SW><=SW ?;=;@W; AntKunst 13 (1970) 95
100. A particularly complex problem of ambiguity was created by figures which could, but need
not, allude to beliefs about death and the afterlife: e.g. birds, which were possible symbols of the
separation of the soul from the body, dogs, which were sacred to Hecate, and goats, which were
sacred to Dionysus and connected with mystery cults. The ancients will probably have solved these
ambiguities much more easily than we can; at any event, I do not know of any case in which this
kind of symbolism is reflected in a verbal text on the tomb.
158 Cf. T. Ritti, Luso di immagini onomastiche nei monumenti sepolcrali di eta greca ArchClass
2526 (197374) 63960.
159 Cf. M. G. Bonanno, Nomi e soprannomi archilochei MH 37 (1980) 6588.
160 It is difficult to imagine lions roaming freely in Attica in the fourth century: Antipater might have
been wounded by a lion in some other part of the Mediterranean and taken on a ship to the Piraeus,
where he died, or perhaps the lion escaped from a zoo in the Piraeus, or, more probably, the lion of
the relief may have been a Phoenician demon of death, which Domsalos and his companions had
driven away from Antipaters dead body before duly burying him: cf. Clairmont (1970) 11617 and
id., Classical Attic Tombstones (Kilchberg 1993) iii.315; Woysch-Meautis (1982) 767.
330 The epigram
human from the waist down, but the prow of a ship above (representing
Domsalos and his companions, who attended to the burial of Antipater).
The accompanying epigram, an explanatory caption for this sepulchral
depiction, is without parallel until the tomb of Menophila in the second
century (below pp. 3368), and the nationality of the dead and the dedica-
tor, the bilingual inscription in prose, and the narrative detail both on the
relief and in the inscription161 might suggest that this inscription was a one-
off, foreign to the Greek culture of the fourth century. On the other hand,
this same Oriental influence may well have been important for the sym-
bolism which characterised many Hellenistic sepulchral monuments from
Asia; moreover, the two principal composers of riddling funerary epigrams,
Antipater of Sidon and Meleager of Gadara, both came from Phoenicia,
like Domsalos of Sidon and Antipater of Ascalon. The analogy between
the first verse of CEG 596 let no one be surprised ( &Z
$_) at this figure and the opening of a riddling epitaph of Antipa-
ter, do not be surprised (8 (9 ) at seeing on the tomb of Miro, etc.
(AP 7.425 = HE 380ff., below, p. 333), might indeed suggest that the stele
for Antipater the Ascalonite is merely the only example from mainland
Greece of an Oriental tradition of symbolic sepulchral monuments, which
to some extent anticipates the custom of Hellenistic sepulchral enigmas.
Hellenistic epigrams which explained the riddling symbolism of (real or
fictitious) sepulchral representations probably developed alongside more
complex symbolic narrative in general. On the other hand, in the Hellenistic
age, portrayals of the dead gave less importance to the generic (and pre-
dictable) types of virtue privileged by Attic funerary monuments, in favour
of a greater emphasis on a whole series of minor details, which reflected
specific, individual characteristics of the dead and which therefore had a
greater need of illustration.162 This need for captions, created by the use of
a more complex figurative symbolism, was perhaps what in fact originally
gave rise to the Hellenistic epitaphic riddle. However that may be, it was
to be expected that games with complex symbolism would appeal to the
intellectualism of the period, and its taste for the Erganzungsspiel,163 which
soon created riddles for stelae which had never existed.164
The earliest such epigram offers a perfect example of the complex
relationship between such poems and the dialogue form, which had
161 Cf. Clairmont (1970) 117.

162 Cf. Schmidt (1991) 11741; B. Schmaltz, Griechische Grabreliefs (Darmstadt 1983) 23641.
163 For the concept and a rich series of examples, cf. Bing (1995) and G. Zanker, Modes of Viewing in
Hellenistic Poetry and Art (Madison 2003) chapter 3.
164 Cf. Goldhill (1994) 197215 and Gutzwiller (1998) 26571.
traditionally served to dramatise the transmission of information by the
verbal message on the stele. This epigram is by Leonidas of Tarentum,
AP 7.422 = HE 2092ff.:
%!%Z ( %$) J %% ) !5
#$, 2X Q9$ &%( #
D B 8 V G5; (. i B C V
D%( ) # 'C) | ) # %9
#
v X 'X %Q $) &4" 'X %9
G"; ') '
% % .
What shall we conjecture about you, Pisistratus, when we see a Chian die carved
on your tomb? Shall we not say that you were a Chian? That seems probable. Or
shall we say that you were a gambler, but not a particularly lucky one, my friend?
Or are we still far from the truth, and was your lifes light put out by neat Chian
wine? Yes, I think now we are near it. (trans. Paton, adapted)
Both signifiers, verbal and iconic, are presented in the first couplet. It is
from the inscription on the stele that Leonidas will have learned (or, better,
will have imagined that he has learned) the name of the dead, Pisistratus;
seeing the name on the inscription and knowing that the dead person was
called Pisistratus was one and the same thing. The stele, however, also
implies something else about this Pisistratus, by means of the figure of a die
in the Chian position.165 The poet does not appear particularly interested
in the explicit verbal information on the stele the name of the dead would
probably have been joined by other information, such as the patronymic
and his attempt to converse is solely concerned with the iconic signifier.
Dice were in fact a frequent sepulchral symbol, for example, on reliefs
of the Hellenistic age from Asia Minor; on the tombs of those who had
met a premature death, the ., they evoked the precarious nature of
human life, but the particular die that accompanies Pisistratus, lying in
the position of the least favourable throw, implies here a non-standard
meaning,166 and thus the poet has to %!(_ speculate. In spite of
the apostrophe of the poet, who asks to be guided, Pisistratus/the stele
does not answer, because the convention of inscriptional and epigrammatic
dialogue between passer-by and deceased presupposes that all conversation
will be one-way; Callimachus, as we have seen, takes pleasure in exploiting
this convention. The result is that instead of creating a dialogue between
the naturally well-informed deceased and the uninformed passer-by, who
165 See Gutzwiller (1998) 268 n. 82, with references to the various reliefs in PfuhlMobius (19779),
which include images of dice.
166 As observed by Gutzwiller (1998) 268.
332 The epigram
depends on the monument and/or the deceased for his knowledge, the
epigram focuses exclusively on the poet, here generalised by means of a
first person plural,the other readers of the stele and I, and dramatises the
various mental steps by which he finally arrives at the interpretation that
he considers most likely.167
Chronologically, the next sepulchral riddle in the sequence is AP 7.429 =
HE 96ff. by Alcaeus of Messene (end of the third century bc):
'_ $
) V$ !( / '5
'%%( 5 ( ## !
#Q %# #. } $
T" ! $ G# D A
& ## $Q * u &
.
v , X * ] &, # )
/ 'C *, $%
'C - # ` '
< , $ >*' %(.
* , 2 '%%5 O K Q)
X M$ 5) &M$ 'C 9.
I ask myself why this road-side stone has only two phis chiselled on it. Was the
name of the woman who is buried here Chilias [= Thousand]? The number which
is the sum of the two letters [i.e. 500 each] points to this. Or am I astray in this
guess and was the name of her who dwells in this mournful tomb Phidis [i.e.
twice phi]? Now am I the Oedipus who has solved the sphinxs riddle. He deserves
praise, the man who made this puzzle out of two letters, a light to the intelligent
and darkness to the unintelligent. (trans. Paton, adapted)
Alcaeus clearly imitates Leonidas at the formal level the opening uncer-
tainty, the presentation of different possible interpretations, the enthusiasm
and pride with which the most likely one is discovered but there is an
important variation in the form of the poem. Alcaeus does not see (or imag-
ines that he does not see) any name on the tomb, so there is no deceased
to question, no inscription that can speak; he has in front of him only
a symbolic signifier, to which he must attribute a meaning. There is thus
no dialogic apostrophe addressed to the dead person, as there had been at
the beginning of the semi-monologue of Leonidas, but rather we have an
absolute monologue which presents the poet in heroic isolation and silence
('_ $
, the poet searches inwardly), and which contrasts
him with the stele, a novel Sphinx, over which in the end he triumphs.
167 Why is the third interpretation, which appears to be the most abstruse of the three, also the most
certain? One plausible reason is that this exegesis is the most attractive precisely because it is the
least immediate and least obvious (cf. Gutzwiller (1998) 268). Perhaps, however, the truth of this
third interpretation suggests that Leonidas had personal knowledge of the dead.
Some decades later, the epigrams of Antipater of Sidon (late second
century) develop this now established tradition of symbolic interpretation
in new directions,168 by not giving undue emphasis to the gap between
the controversial signification of symbols and the univocal meaning of the
words of the inscription. As regards AP 7.425 = HE 380ff., we have already
seen its similarity to CEG 596 (cf. above pp. 32930):
8 (9 ) (% 0$ %( # Q%%)
#) 9
) ! !T) %Q#.

M X '(% Q / K$)
/ 'X Q 4% 'U
(%M ' C ]#() M ) ' %
) &##C & !
'%) #(% ' C ' &#U
! 'X '
$# # '4U ' C x< '(>
#M x' #$T J##(' &#.
5%' C & C % ( U V $
(' C T" %(# %Q9# M a.
Do not wonder at seeing on Myros tomb a whip, an owl, a bow, a grey goose and
a swift bitch. The bow proclaims that I was the strict well-strung directress of my
house, the bitch that I took true care of my children, the whip that I was no cruel
or overbearing mistress, but just a chastiser of faults, the goose that I was a careful
guardian of the house, and this owl that I was a faithful (?) servant of owl-eyed
Pallas. Such were the things in which I took delight, wherefore my partner Biton
carved these emblems on my grave-stone. (trans. Paton, adapted)
After forestalling the passer-bys surprise, by denying that there is any cause
for it, the epigram describes and explains the symbols themselves, as in
CEG 596. However, in order to do so, it adopts the structure of the now
familiar narrativised dialogue in which the message of the tomb is uttered
by the monument and listened to by the passer-by, as in the the stone will
tell you, the writing will give the message, the tomb will inform you
structures discussed above. Something analogous, but with an even greater
degree of confidence in the expressive possibilities of symbols, is found in
Antipater, AP 7.423 = HE 362ff.:
X & #Q$) & #(#) M ) %%
(% ) 'X %Q x' Q#M)
=%% 'X
M) 'C K #
)
.' ' C c #
U
(' %#! V' C $: a' Q9

#! $' .#!.
&## C) ) !5 *!% h ;'
Q c A_ !(.
168 Cf. esp. Gutzwiller (1998) 2716.
334 The epigram
The jay, stranger, will tell you I was ever a woman of many words, ever talkative,
and the cup that I was of a convivial habit. The bow proclaims the Cretan, the
wool a good workwoman, and the snood that tied up my hairs shows that I was
grey-headed. Such was the Bittis that this tomb with its stele covers, the wedded
wife . . . But, hail, good sir, and do us who are gone to Hades the favour to bid us
hail likewise in return. (trans. Paton, adapted)
Personal information about the dead, as conveyed by the traditional inscrip-

tion, had previously been supported in some cases, as we have seen, by
onomastic symbols. It was a different matter for the symbols to replace
written information. The polyandrion of the Greeks who fell at Chaeronea
against Philip was in the shape of a gigantic lion, and Pausanias (9.40.10)
comments: This might well refer to the courage of the fallen, but there is
no inscription, I imagine, because fortune did not reward this courage with
the result that they deserved; both the attention that Pausanias dedicates
to the absence of any inscription in this case and, above all, archaeological
evidence suggest that this inscriptionless practice was not common. In any
case, symbols unaccompanied by words offered true ainigmata, and for
Alcaeus of Messene, linking an abstruse symbol with a proper name had
been a success worthy of Oedipus. For Antipater, however, symbolic icons
and verbal signifiers are on an equal and complementary footing; here, one
of the usual details, the nationality of the dead (Cretan), is expressed by
the symbol of the bow, whereas the names of the dead woman and her hus-
band seem to have been imagined by the epigram, as indicated in a verbal
inscription elsewhere on the monument. Symbols, for Antipater, convey
clear meanings, as do words.
Another epigram by Antipater (AP 7.426 = HE 390ff.), even if it is
included among the funerary riddles of Book 7 of the Palatine Anthology,
is in reality only a slight variation on the ancient dialogue structure in which
the passer-by is unaware of the identity of the dead and asks the sepulchral
monument for the name. In this case, the monument is iconic a lion but
for Antipater this sepulchral symbol is so obvious that the poet/passer-by
does not ask the monument what its meaning is, but he knows already in
v. 2 that the dead must have been someone with the courage of a lion; this
does not, however, prevent the statue confirming the information:
*) #) ( &99)
9$( T %T .M D & T
$e, k $'Z s # $) p (
D) V%% O .
! ( E%) ' %Q9# &#T
&U D '8 '$% %% #.
Tell, lion, whose tomb do you guard, you slayer of cattle? and who was worthy
of your valour? Teleutias, the son of Theodoros, who was far the most valiant
of men, as I am judged to be of beasts. Not in vain stand I here, but I signify
the prowess of the man, for he was indeed a lion to his enemies. (trans. Paton,
adapted)
AP 7.427 = HE 396ff. works in a very similar manner:
/ %(#) C K') C ! $. &## ''
( X ' $ X [ #$)
' C &% (#$
) H %$
T C;# M('$ $$% 9
#)
e 'X , T
(# .) 9)
P ' C V Q G5 &$
.
D B
' C & ##U = %(% $!4
!| (## w9 , 'X !
v , X 3 ' 'X %, *b #(%%
*
) = b ]%9
#U
D O G5 ) C;# M('$ 'X # # !Z
3C) 9 " ' C N# C /#.
F c , . , $9 $
' C & L &% (#.
The stele, come on, let me see who lies under it. But I see no inscription cut on it,
only nine cast dice, of which the first four represent the throw called Alexander;
the next four that called Ephebus, the bloom of youthful maturity, and the more
unlucky throw called Chian. Is their message this, that both the proud sceptred
potentate and the young man in his flower end in nothing? Or is that not so? I
think now like a Cretan archer I shall shoot straight at the mark. The dead man
was a Chian, his name was Alexander and he died in youth. How well one told
through dice without a voice of the young man dead by ill-chance and the breath
of life staked and lost. (trans. Paton, adapted)
Faced with a tombstone which has no inscribed verbal text, but rather
depictions of three typical dice throws, the poet is by now so familiar
with the sepulchral symbolism as to be guilty, at first, of an excess of
imagination: the first, highly symbolic, interpretation Alexander means
powerful, the Ephebe means young, and Chian means nothing is
immediately discarded in favour of another one, which starts, correctly,
from the absence of a verbal message, and attributes an almost lexical value
to the symbols the dead person was called Alexander; he was an ephebe
and a Chian; here, the symbols are read as if they were univocal words, and
the . &%( # dice without a voice (v. 14) provide three of
the most basic pieces of sepulchral information: the name, the origin, and
the age of the dead.
336 The epigram
Two other epigrams by Antipater reveal his complete appropriation of
the traditional dialogue structure: AP 7.424 = HE 370ff. and AP 7.161 =
HE 296ff. The history of the enigmatic epitaph had begun with Leonidas
exploitation of the fact that the dead spoke only through the words of the
inscription and did not answer questions about the symbolic representa-
tions on the tomb, leaving their interpretation to the intelligent passer-by.
In the first of these two epigrams by Antipater, the passer-by/poet is uncer-
tain in front of the paradoxically non-female symbols169 that he finds on
the tomb of a woman, Lysidice, and he thus questions the dead woman; in
the second one, the uncertainty which Antipater displays is motivated in
all probability by a symbolic eagle, which appears to have been mainly used
elsewhere to indicate the survival of the soul and its separation from the
body after death.170 Both Lysidice and the eagle, unlike the Pisistratus of
Leonidas, answer promptly and explain themselves, as if to make clear that
Antipaters epigrams describe stelae, whether real or fictitious, containing
an inscribed caption for the figurative designs.
This is, in fact, exactly what happens also in the epigram at the base of
the stele of Menophila, which was found at Sardis, and is contemporary
with Antipater, or slightly later. The relief shows the dead womans head
surrounded by symbolic figures (a lily, the letter alpha, a roll of papyrus, a
crown and a basket), together with an inscription:171
: ! %% ' $%.
0$% Q (U 0#.
' C E C %(# #$, -'X .#)
9Q9# (#) 5 'C %
D %<> X 99#) ' C c
&! Q ) $
'X , E)
($ ' C & T (# ($) , 'C .
&() ' xC #%.
Q
&# ' Q%".
K) . 'X 5) 5 # '($.
The graceful stone reveals a pretty lady. Who is she? The letters of the Muses tell
you: Menophila. Why are a lily and an alpha carved on her stone, a book and a
basket, and above them a garland? The book points to her wisdom, the garland
worn around the head to her rule, the one [i.e. alpha] to the fact that she was
169 Cf. A.-M. Verilhac, Limage de la femme dans les epigrammes funeraires grecques in id. (ed.), La
Femme dans le monde mediterraneen (LyonParis 1985) 85112 and Pircher (1979) passim; on funerary
reliefs at Smyrna in the second century bc, cf. Zanker (1993) 21213.
170 Cf. adesp. AP 7.61, 62 and above, n. 157, for the sepulchral symbolism of the bird.
171 Text in accordance with SGO 04/02/11 (PfuhlMobius (197779) i.141 no. 418; GVI 1881).
an only child, the basket to her orderly virtue, the flower to her youthful prime,
of which fate robbed her. May the earth be light upon you, buried here. Your
parents, alas, are childless; to them you have left only tears.
The closest analogy between this inscription and Antipaters epigram lies
in the fact that both texts attribute the caption for the symbolic figures
to the voice of the monument. The passer-by, who does not know who is
buried in the tomb, is informed by the inscription that the dead woman
is Menophila (nine letters, the number of the Muses); then the passer-by
wonders what the meaning of the symbols may be, and in the following
lines they are explained by the monument (i.e. read on it), just as the
name had been read in v. 2. As had happened in the case of the assumed
inscription in the epigram of Antipater, here too the inscription includes
a caption for the figures, because these are figures whose meaning is, for
the most part, not the conventional one.172 A crown regularly (especially at
Smyrna) denotes the honorary crown that the deceaseds fellow-citizens had
conferred on him; for Menophila, on the contrary, the crown symbolises
that the dead woman had occupied the public position of stephanephoros.
The roll of papyrus is a symbol here, as frequently elsewhere, of wisdom
or culture, but elsewhere it is almost always exclusively an attribute of
men: in spite of the increased cultural level of women in the Hellenistic
age,173 cultural attainments are not usually among the virtues celebrated
in dead women; instead of a roll of papyrus, with very few exceptions,174
woman are usually accompanied by images of jewels or objects from the
dressing-table175 we may recall the observation of Antipater about the
strangeness of male symbols for Lysidice. Furthermore, the letter alpha, i.e.
one, indicating that Menophila was an only child, is another rather arcane
usage, appearing here for the first time.
The quite exceptional tomb for Menophila was commissioned by the
demos of Sardis, according to a separate titulus on the stele, and the designer
may perhaps have had Antipater and the whole tradition of sepulchral rid-
dles in mind; the result is an epitaph which is no less literary than the
172 Cf. Pircher (1979) 545; Schmidt (1991) 1401; differently, D. M. Robinson, Two New Epitaphs
from Sardis in Anatolian Studies Presented to Sir W. M. Ramsay (London 1923) 3501; Gutzwiller
(1998) 2667.
173 Cf. e.g. S. Pomeroy, Women in Hellenistic Egypt (New York 1984) 5972.
174 Cf. e.g. N. Firatli, Les Steles funeraires de Byzance greco-romaine (Paris 1964) 33, who points out that
the only exception among the stelae of Byzantium is that of Mousa, the daughter of Agathocles,
of the second/first century bc (no. 139), where, however, the papyrus was a professional symbol
denoting Mousa as a woman doctor.
175 As noted, e.g., by Zanker (1993) 222.
338 The epigram
epigrams of the Palatine Anthology. Its designers, Antipaters contempo-
raries, when faced with the problem of illustrating the many, exceptional
virtues of Menophila within the limited space of a relief, found it neces-
sary, like Antipater, to provide an explanation for symbols whose meaning
was far from fossilised. Whether life has here imitated art or vice versa, we
cannot say.
3 erotic epigrams
The need to interpret, to make sense of visible signs, is dramatised by
epigrammatists, above all Callimachus,176 also in the sphere of erotic epi-
grams. Callimachus here displays his cunning intelligence, not so much
in criticising and going beyond the conventional truths of inscriptions, as
in interpreting and bringing out the true meaning of social behaviour and
pretence. The detective who recognises Timonoe (above pp. 31819) and
who understands why Menecrates died (above pp. 3212) can also detect
love when he finds it (AP 12.71 = HE 1097ff.):
k %%#X =#
(#) (#U , ]MQ
w#) 3 %C . %!# )
]% % ! . D B( % '
2, ! ) !# 'C i $"
U ^M
% %$4% U %b #Z
, #
)
!C) 9# &.
Ah, poor, poor Cleonicus of Thessaly! By the suns rays, I could not recognise you.
Where have you been, wretched one? Nothing but bones and hair. Can it be that
the god I worship got you in his clutches and you have met a terrible fate? I knew
it: Euxitheos conquered you as well as me. Yes, when you came, you rascal, you
were looking at his beauty with no eyes for anything else. (trans. Nisetich, adapted)
Similar is AP 12.134 = HE 1103ff.:
E# ! M 5 #( U F &

' % L' & ( )
, 1C ) 'X B
' $##9#
|', &, % ( (C !U
N '4 ) 'U &, B$%
*(_) , 'C K! O .
The guest kept his wound hidden. How painful the breath he drew did you
notice? at the third toast, and the petals drooping from the mans garland littered
the floor. He is done to a turn. By god, I guess not at random: a thief myself, I
know a thief s tracks. (trans. Nisetich, adapted)
176 Cf. Walsh (1990).
In this second epigram, the motif of the symptoms of love is intertwined,
probably not for the first time, with that of drunkenness as the litmus
test of love. If, as seems likely, Asclepiades was an older contemporary
of Callimachus, Asclepiades, AP 12.135 = HE 894ff. will be earlier than
Callimachus version:
L # !U T & Q 15
i% e ## W

% U
'($% Q%%
9# ) !| % ! %.
Wine is the proof of love. Nicagoras denied to us that he was in love, but those
many toasts convicted him. Yes! He shed tears and bent his head, and had a certain
downcast look, and the wreath bound tight round his head kept not its place.
(trans. Paton, adapted)
The epigrams of Asclepiades and Callimachus present several similarities.

Though the physical symptoms of love vary, both poets have the detail of
the collapsed garland as a further symptom, perhaps here making its first
appearance in Greek literature,177 and in both poems drunkenness guar-
antees the truthfulness of the revelations, in Asclepiades explicitly (v. 1),
whereas Callimachus is less direct (after the third glass . . .).178 Both poets
also appeal to a proverbial expression,179 though Asclepiades at the begin-
ning and Callimachus at the end.180 The similarities between the two poems
are so great that we may suspect that the last sentence of Callimachus
epigram in fact announces its intertextual connection with Asclepiades.
The standard interpretation is that Callimachus has understood what is
happening to his friend not out of B$%
(i.e. B$
), because, as a
person who has been in love, he can recognise the sequential series (the
177 This is obviously not a strong argument, but Athenaeus (15.669d) did discuss the matter and had
the opportunity to cite pre-Callimachean poetry which he did not do.
178 Why the third glass, and not the fourth, or the tenth? According to G. Giangrande, Sympotic
Literature and Epigram in LEpigramme grecque 1202, Callimachus hints that his friend is so
smitten that he betrays his feelings after the last of the three ritual libations (to the Olympian
Zeus, to the heroes and to Zeus Soter), with which participants used to start the symposium.
This is possible, but there are many texts which point to the importance of the third round, but
no parallel for a link between drunkenness and the three initial libations. Relevant texts include
Panyassis, PEG 17 = EGF 13, ll. 59; Eubulus, PCG *93, and Callimachus fr. 178.1320 (above,
pp. 7880).
179 Cf. W. Ludwig, Die Kunst der Variation im hellenistischen Liebesepigramm in LEpigramme
grecque 313.
180 Both proverbs are already attested in Aristotle, Eth. Eud. 7.1235a69. The idea of sex, particularly
but not exclusively adultery, as something stolen is found as early as Homer (Il. 6.161) and Hesiod
(WD 329). That love is a furtum seems, however, to be a Latin idea, cf. Catullus 68.136, 140 etc.
340 The epigram
rhythmos181 ) of signs in a person who is in love. Perhaps too, however, Cal-
limachus suggests that, as a love poet, he knows how to follow the line of
interpretation (the traces) of an earlier poet, and as a result, his decoding
follows the same series of stages already followed by the latter; his specula-
tions were not outside the pattern.
Asclepiades, in his turn, has appropriated a traditional motif.182 The
contexts of Alcaeus fr. 333 Voigt, L &Z ' wine lets
you see into a man, and fr. 366 V., L, # 5, &#, #.
wine dear boy and truth, are unknown, but we must not assume that
these were necessarily erotic: wine is the mirror of the soul tout court, and
drunkenness is the state in which the symposiast reveals the truth on all
subjects, not just his erotic desires.183 A broad interpretation is suggested
both by the texts which quote fr. 366184 and by other instances of the
motif (e.g. Theognis 499502).185 Excess of wine and eros had, of course,
frequently been put together in sympotic lyric poetry, but the relationship
between the two was complex:186 as well as being the cause of sympotic and
erotic exuberance, wine could also be a remedy for the pangs of love,187
and for sufferings in general.188 Just, then, as drunkenness as the revealer of
love draws out hints from the poetic tradition, rather than simply taking
over the motif wholesale, so also the theme of the hiding of love, and
the discovery of its symptoms, suddenly becomes prominent in Hellenistic
epigram, but is not exclusive to it. Descriptions of the symptoms of love
181 B$
, which appears to be a technical term in the field of music or medicine, had already, since
Archilochus, IEG 128.7, denoted the predictable seriality, or orderly succession of the events of
human life in general, which must be learnt ( % ) in order to avoid making wrong evaluations
of the successes or failures of ones life.
182 Cf. O. Knauer, Die Epigramme des Asklepiades vom Samos (Diss. Tubingen 1935) 12.
183 Cf. Rosler (1995).
184 Both Athen. 2.37e and schol. Plato, Symp. 217e speak of this as a text which proves that wine leads
people to tell the truth not specifically the truth about feelings of love.
185 The speaker of Theocritus 29 adopts the expression of Alcaeus to justify his regrettable criticism of
his beloved. See also Aeschylus, TrGF 393; Ion, fr. 1.12 Gent.Prato; Plato, Laws 649a-b; Ephippus,
PCG 25; Eratosthenes, Erig. fr. 6 Rosokoki = CA 36; Calleas Arg., AP 11.232.34.
186 Cf. Theognis 8735 Ah, wine, I praise you in part, and I criticise you in part, and I cannot either
hate you or love you completely: you are both a blessing and an evil, etc. See also the scientific-
medical ratification of this opinion by Mnesitheos ap. Athenaeus 2.36ab (PCG adesp. 101); Horace,
Carm. 1.18.
187 Cf. e.g. Anacreon, PMG 346 fr. 4; Propertius 3.17.36.
188 Cypr., PEG fr. 17 (see above, pp. 2867); Alcaeus, frs. 335 and 346 Voigt; Theognis 87984; Pindar,
frs. 52d.256 Maehler = D4.256 Rutherford, 124ab and 248 M.; Sophocles, TrGF 758; Euripides,
Bacch. 27883. The best analysis of the ambivalence of wine and drunkenness from Homer to the
classical age remains G. A. Privitera, Dioniso in Omero e nella poesia arcaica (Rome 1970) chapter 3;
but see also J. Garzon Diaz, Vino y banquete desde Homero a Anacreonte Helmantica 30 (1979)
6396 and S. Darcus Sullivan, The Effects of Wine on Psychic Entities in Early Greek Poetry Eirene
33 (1997) 918. For a different perspective, cf. E. Belfiore, Wine and Catharsis of the Emotions in
Platos Laws CQ 36 (1986) 42137.
are common in archaic and classical poetry;189 Sappho fr. 31 V. is the most
famous example, with the parodos of Euripides Hippolytus not far behind.
Neither the character who conceals his love nor the poet (or a character)
who sits in judgement as an expert and revealer of symptoms of love appear,
however, before the early fourth century.190 Even in a passage of Antiphanes
(fourth century bc), concealed love and drunkenness are not connected in
a causal relationship, but simply appear in parallel, as the two conditions
which it is most difficult to hide: a person can succeed in hiding everything
else, Phidias, but in two cases it is not possible: when he is a wine-drinker
and when he is in love. Both are revealed in the gazes and in what is said,
and consequently those who deny these conditions are exposed most of all
(PCG 232).191 There is in the fourth century, however, at least one certain
example of the expert who is able to interpret the symptoms, even when
the lover tries to conceal his love. This is Platos Socrates, who tells the
blushing young Hippothales: in other things Im of little use, Im a good-
for-nothing, but this is a gift that Ive received, perhaps from the god: Im
quick to recognise a person who is in love, and a person who is loved (Plato,
Lysis 204bc), and in Menanders Misoumenos the motifs of concealed love
and revelatory drunkenness appear in the form familiar from Hellenistic
epigram: 5 C .'# 5 %$% 8
% | '$4[%.][. . .]
& 5 , (#%
$ | #( 9$#

1 I shall be able to conceal the disease from those around me
[. . .] sooner or later, drunkenness will take away this bandage, even if I
want to keep my wound hidden (vv. 3612 and 3645 Sandbach = 7623,
7656 Arnott).
There was a very long tradition of philosophical and rhetorical specula-
tion about, and mistrust of, eros; all the Hellenistic philosophical schools
concerned themselves with the topic.192 Philosophers had also tried various
ways of saving eros as a force for good: the Stoics in effect neutralised
the charge of loves passion, by making it equivalent to friendship or spiri-
tual love, or by emphasising its educational aspects,193 but Epicurus attack
upon sexual desire was very influential, and even Cicero, who gives a careful
account of Stoic spiritualised love (Tusc. Disp. 4.702), affirms Epicurus
189 For archaic epic poetry, cf. M. S. Cyrino, In Pandoras Jar: Lovesickness in Early Greek Poetry (Lanham
London 1995).
190 Cf. Pasquali (1964) 514. The motif is common in Latin poetry: cf. Catullus 6; Propertius 1.9.58
and 3.8.178; Tibullus 1.8.16; Horace, Ep. 11.810.
191 Cf. P. Kagi, Nachwirkungen der alteren griechischen Elegie in den Epigrammen der Anthologie
(Diss. Zurich 1917) 545.
192 Cf. F. Lasserre, C ^ #
MH 1 (1944) 16978.
193 See, e.g., SVF i frs. 2478 for Zeno, iii frs. 71622 for Chrysippus; cf. D. Babut, Les Stociens et
lamour REG 76 (1963) 5563.
342 The epigram
position. Love was, on this view, the most violent of the perturbationes
animi, not only because it leads at times to rape or incest, but also because
of the reprehensible mental alteration that it creates (perturbatio ipsa mentis
in amore foeda per se est, 4.75). Love was indeed standardly considered as
a sort of irrational passion. Theophrastus could not be clearer in fr. 557
Fortenbaugh (love is the excess of an irrational desire, which is quick in
its attack, but slow in its solution), but even Epicurus saw sexual desire
as a pleasure which is natural, but not necessary (cf. fr. 456 Usener), and
thus placed it one level below the necessary pleasures; Aristotle, on the
contrary, had put sex and eating on exactly the same level (EN 3.1118b8
12). Epicurus also emphasised the disruptive irrationality of love, which he
defined as %Q A M &'% K%$ &'
an intense appetite for sexual intercourse, with obsession and frustra-
tion (fr. 483 Usener), and as something # contemptible (ibid., cf.
fr. 574), rather than divine.194 According to Diogenes Laertius (10.118), the
Epicureans do not accept that the wise man falls in love and the same opin-
ion, according to Stobaeus (4.20.31), was also maintained by the Megarian
philosophers Menedemus and Alexinus, who thus provoked the acrimo-
nious opposition of Chrysippus (SVF iii fr. 720). Antisthenes too had taken
part in the debate: while maintaining that love was a defect of nature (
Q% ), and those worthless souls who are not capable of coping with it
consider this illness divine (Socr. et Socratic. rell. VA.123 Giannantoni), he
also affirmed that the intellectual must fall in love, because he is the only
one who knows who he must love (SSr VA.58).
Some of the earliest writers of erotic epigrams show considerable interest
in the paradoxical fact that the intellectual elite (i.e. themselves and their
friends) could fall prey to the passion of love, which was of course a disease
of the reason.195 Both Posidippus and Callimachus, for example, appear to
suggest that the intellectual could or should be exposed less than others to
the risks of love. From Posidippus there is AP 12.98 = HE 3074ff. = 137
AB:
, 0$% J
'4% C &(
_ # 2, # $ 9#ZU
1 'X 9Q9# .## C & _ 196
:$!8 & ' .
194 Cf. R. D. Brown, Lucretius on Love and Sex (Leiden 1987) 10818.
195 Cf. J. G. Griffiths, Love as Disease in id., Atlantis and Egypt with Other Selected Essays (Cardiff
1991) 607.
196 This is Jacobs suggestion for the transmitted .## _ gathers other harvests; other suggestions
include .# _ Wilamowitz, -# _ Peppmuller. # in v. 2 (as Gow and Page already
noted) suggests that the poets resistance is more or less victorious: passion would like to kill
him/reduce him to silence, but . . .
Desire, having bound the Muses cicada on a bed of thorns, wishes to silence it by
throwing fire under its sides. But my soul, previously exercised in book-lore, has
no care for other things, laying the blame on the troublesome god. (trans. Austin,
adapted)
More ambiguous in tone is AP 12.150 = HE 1047ff., in which Callimachus

combines the boast of the intellectuals strength of mind with a dignified
consciousness of poverty:197
F & J#Q & Q '(
|"U nT) &8 =Q#:.
e 05% , %!) `# U
D X ( ( / %.
) ') !& #, !
(
|
)
#
'
%.
% C / ! C % & ' , h ^
C LU = $ () '(U
'C V% &(
$ ' ' U e "'
K !# Q &
.
How fine a lovers charm Polyphemus hit on! By god, that Cyclops knew his stuff.
The Muses, Philip, shrink a lovers swelling, poetry is a drug for every ill. Only
hunger good for nothing else in difficult circumstances is as good at rooting
out the craze for boys. . . . to Eros when he comes on strong, I say: You might as
well clip your wings, sonny! I am not afraid of you. I have at home both charms
against your cruel wounds. (trans. Nisetich, adapted)
If, of course, poets did not fall in love, there would be no love-poetry,
and two centuries after Callimachus, Bion of Smyrna showed that he had
realised this, by beginning a declaration in favour of seruitium to love poetry
(fr. 9 Gow) with a quotation and correction of v. 3 of this epigram of
Callimachus.198 Callimachus and Posidippus, however, sought to explain
how they could both be intellectuals and not only in love but also love
poets. One of the strategies by which Callimachus, in particular, justified
his situation is implicit in his frequent detection of the symptoms of love
itself; in this way, he reaffirms his psychological insight into, and hence
control of, the irrationality of passion, both that of others and his own.
Another of his strategies is the one that we have seen in action, in an ironic
form, in AP 12.150: love poetry is a ( against love, a palliative
which, according to Callimachus, reduces the suffering, but which also, as
we readers perceive, is the exclusive prerogative of the poet-intellectual (with
197 The same synthesis is also present in Callimachus, Iambus 3 (above, pp. 1213), and cf. also the
opening of Theocritus 16.
198 Cf. also adesp. AP 12.100.4 (= HE 3667) , %, 0Q% =Q %
Cypris
alone struck the wise friend of the Muses. See above, pp. 1801.
344 The epigram
the rather grotesque exception of the Cyclops), and thus allows him again
to exhibit and enjoy his superiority.
Another more widespread strategy consisted of searching for an excuse
for love; Attic drama, in particular, sometimes excused offences committed
under the impulse of eros, by celebrating the great, even if negative, power
of love.199 Epigram-writers found an excuse for love in the drunkenness
which removes self-control, by stating that desire arose from the same lack
of intellectual self-control which was often regarded as its consequence.
Homers Odysseus had already introduced a somewhat boastful story by
saying: I will tell you a rather boastful story. I am urged on by wine,
which makes people mad, and prompts even the wise man to sing and
laugh foolishly, or loosens him up for the dance, inspiring words which it
would be better not to say (Od. 14.46366; cf. also Il. 8.22932); Theognis
too had emphasised the fact that too much wine makes even the wisest of
men lose their self-control (47983; cf. also 499502, quoted above), and
Plato (Republic 9.573c) had made a close connection between the absence
of self-control of the person in love and that of the person who is drunk: a
person becomes despotic when he is subject to drunkenness, love or mad-
ness ( $%
, # !#
). Epigram-writers
exploited this tradition to present their fall into the irrationality of passion
as a not very serious mistake, something almost justified by circumstances.
We have already seen AP 12.135 by Asclepiades (above pp. 33941). From
Posidippus comes AP 12.120 = HE 3078ff. = 138 AB:
# , %X !4%) ' C &
, ZU %b 'C) h ^)
% .
i #(9" Q C) . C 'U .! 'X 4)
, M( , %X # %, !.
I am well armed and will fight with you and not give in, though I am a mortal.
And you, Love, attack me no more. If you catch me drunk, carry me off a prisoner,
but as long as I stay sober, I have reason drawn up in battle against you. (trans.
Austin)
With this epigram we may contrast Anacreon, PMG 396 and 346 fr. 4: in
these poems, wine gives Anacreon the recklessness to face up to Eros or
to accept him without a fight but it also consoles him for the sufferings
caused by Eros; the possibility raised by Posidippus of facing up to Eros
and actually defeating him is not contemplated at all. Another instance of
the theme in Posidippus is AP 5.134 = HE 3054ff. = 123 AB:
199 Cf. J. de Romilly, LExcuse de linvincible amour dans la tragedie grecque in Miscellanea tragica
in honorem J. C. Kamerbeek (Amsterdam 1976) 30921.
= ) B5 ) #( $ ) #Q'% *(' a(!$)
B5 ) '%_% %$9#8
%.
% (% d4 %, Q x =# ($
%U # 'C 15 #$Q h ^.
Cecropian jug, pour out the dewy moisture of Bacchus, pour it out: let the toast we
all share be refreshed. Let Zeno the wise swan be silent, and the Muse of Cleanthes.
Let our concern be with love and the bitter-sweet. (trans. Austin)
This poem has recently been interpreted as a plan by Posidippus, who
had previously been a student of Stoic philosophy at Athens, to give up
philosophical activity in favour of a career as an erotic poet;200 it might,
however, be interpreted simply as one of the various statements of the
suspension of rationality in favour of drunkenness and therefore of love (and
love poetry). In the Anacreontea (cf. above, pp. 180 and 183) and elsewhere,
we find related, though distinct, choices in favour of the erotic-sympotic
life; another example is Antipater of Thessalonica, AP 9.305 = GPh 267ff:201
[' &4$ " . ! %(
!_, # ! a(! # M (' U
[' .M [ & ! C;'".
* ) 4) Q 6 @#Q$
(9 4 (" # . o X *Z
N"! C) ' C &, , ['.
I had drunk my fill of unmixed water, when Bacchus yesterday, standing by my bed,
spoke thus: You sleep a sleep worthy of them whom Aphrodites hates. Tell me,
you sober man, have you heard of Hippolytus? Fear lest you suffer some fate such
as his. Having so spoken, he departed, and ever since then water is not agreeable
to me. (trans. Paton, adapted)
Callimachus and Meleager frequently use the motif of the sympotic
custom of drinking to the name of the beloved with undiluted wine (cf.
e.g. Theocritus 2.1503, 14.1819); this motif almost triggers a distortion
of the normal sequence, and instead of introducing the toast as the effect
of love, the toast becomes the starting-point, and is presented as the cause
of the more or less irrational manifestations of love. In AP 12.118 = HE
1075ff., for example, Callimachus remembers a manifestation of his passion
for Archinus:
* X +Z) C;!5C) Z%) $ $U
* 'C . w) 8 .
. h ^ C -( %U H X
200 Cf. Gutzwiller (1998) 15761.

201 On the waterwine opposition in this poem cf. below, pp. 4489.
346 The epigram
P# ) 'C K 8 T.
#O ' C 9
%) v ) &##C #%
8 #4U * C % C &' C) &'.
If, Archinos, I came carousing on purpose, load me with ten thousand reproaches;
but if I am here because I could not help it, pass over my temerity. Wine at full
strength and love forced me. Love dragged me and drink prevented me from laying
aside my temerity. I did not shout: it is so-and-so, son of so-and-so, but I kissed
the doorpost. If that is a crime, I am a criminal.
It has been noted that epigram-writers of the Hellenistic age never break a
door down, and never kidnap a girl, as happens regularly in New Comedy
(and as probably happened in reality).202 Here, Callimachus appears to
apologise even for the most innocuous and mildest of komastic gestures,203
simply because it was an irrational consequence of drunkenness.
There is a close parallel between the insistence of Callimachus on the
aetiology (wine) of the komos as the culminating manifestation of the irra-
tionality of eros and, two centuries later, the disjointed dialogue between
the poet and his own soul, which we find in Meleager, AP 12.117 = HE
4092ff.; there is some uncertainty about the division between speakers, but
it is clear that the opposing interlocutors are the rational intellect, with its
desperate appeal to hard study, and the $
, the soul in the grip of the
irrationality of alcohol and eros:
a 9#4% Q9U x U Q%. C 7'
#)
*9. C ! ' =(%)
(% J5) $) " s ' C # %

x (!. J ' C 1
% #
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Try the hazard! Light torches! I will go. Come, be bold! You drunkard, what do
you have in mind? A revel I will hold, a revel. Mind, whither do you stray?
What is logic to love? Quick, light a torch! And where is all your old study of
reasoning? Away with the labour of wisdom! I know this only, that Zeus too by
Love was brought to naught. (trans. Headlam, adapted)
Similar is another poem of Meleager, AP 12.119 = HE 4098ff.:
K%) %) a(! ) , %, (%U / ) Z
.! U , /
! 'U
202 Thus D. H. Garrison, Mild Frenzy: a Reading of the Hellenistic Love Epigram (Wiesbaden 1978)
46. Menanders Demeas assumes that Chrysis seduced Moschion when the latter was in a state of
drunkenness (Samia 3402 Sandbach): Undiluted wine and youth produce many foolish deeds,
when they find an accomplice close at hand.
203 This extreme, exaggerated courtesy, from which the first two couplets had led us to expect the bit-
terest consequences, is obviously the pointe of the epigram: cf. G. Giangrande, Sympotic Literature
and Epigram in LEpigramme grecque 127.
$ % #
h ^
(# '4% , %, . e.
D '
.% $) 'C A Q
' & %b # .
Bacchus, by you I swear, I shall bear your boldness. Lead on, begin the revel: you
are a god: govern a mortal heart. Born in the flame, you love the flame love has, and
again bring me, your suppliant, in bonds. Really you are a traitor and unreliable:
while you bid me hide your mysteries, you would now bring mine to light.
This last poem includes the now familiar motifs of the person in love who
hides his feelings out of shame, and of wine which frees a person from that
shame, thus causing him to display the symptoms of love; in his complete
subjection to wine, to which he has abandoned himself in the hope of
consolation (vv. 34), the poet cries out that he has been betrayed, when
the wine does away with his restraint and causes him to reveal the object
of his erotic desire.
This same motif is also found in Callimachus, AP 12.51 = HE 1063ff.:
! (# *: \#. ' C C;! #

$ e *%( $(.
#, 5) C;! # )
# #
U * ' !
%) % O #(.
Pour in the wine, and again say: To Diocles! And Achelous does not have to touch
the ladlefuls hallowed to him. Beautiful is the boy, Achelous, passing beautiful;
and if any say No, let me alone know what beauty is. (trans. Paton, adapted)
Here, the close of the poem leaves somewhat unclear whether the affirma-
tion of the extraordinary beauty of Diocles accounts for the poets falling
in love (and hence the toasts), or whether it is the toasts which excite
Callimachus and allow him to be so sure that he is not making a mis-
take about Diocles, in spite of the fact that others (who are sober?) may
think differently. On either interpretation, there is probably an amusing
ambiguity behind the mention of the river god, Achelous. On one hand,
Achelous was a relatively common metonymic usage for water, and one
which was particularly suitable here, because this god was considered to
be the first inventor of the habit of mixing wine with water (cf. Sappho
fr. 212 V.);204 on the other hand, this same river god was famous for his pas-
sionate love for Deianira, which led him to fight with Heracles for her.205
Ostensibly, then, Callimachus apologises for not allowing Achelous to
204 Cf. S. R. Slings, Callimachus, Epigr. 29 Pf. = V G.P. Mnemosyne 26 (1973) 285.
205 For the metonymy, cf. G. Bond, Euripides. Hypsipyle (Oxford 1963) 86. The metamorphic exploits
of Achelous in his fight against Heracles had been narrated several times, cf. Archilochus, IEG 287,
Pindar, fr. *249a Maehler, Sophocles, Trach. 921.
348 The epigram
take part in the toasts for Diocles: this was a love-toast, which must be
carried out with unmixed wine. At a second level, however, Callimachus
suggests that, in view of the irresistible beauty of Diocles, it is better if
Achelous does not notice him, because he might go mad with love once
again and challenge Callimachus to a fight; Achelous is thus a potential
rival, a role which Zeus often assumes in epigrams where the beauty of
the beloved is compared to that of Ganymede.206 In the case of Achelous,
this risk might have seemed even more plausible, seeing that a widespread
symbolic interpretation considered the death of youths by drowning to be
a form of kidnapping for love by water divinities (most commonly, the
Nymphs).207
The alibi of drunkenness was not only a justification for irrational
love, but it could also carry complex metapoetic implications. Poets who
were in love Posidippus, Callimachus or Meleager could thereby con-
nect the love that they described as a first-person experience specifically
with the occasion for poetic performance at a symposium, which was indeed
the primary context for which the erotic epigram was (more or less fic-
titiously) conceived:208 the poets seem to declare: I, Callimachus (or I,
Posidippus, or I, Meleager), even if I have been brought up to make use
of my intellect under the guidance of the Muses, I, too, sometimes get
drunk, and therefore I fall in love, but only because I am/I want to become
a sympotic poet. Drunkenness at a symposium had also been explicitly
marked by love poets such as Asclepiades or Callimachus as a justification
for speaking about other peoples love, even if this was hidden; as writers
of erotic epigrams, they wore the mask of symposiasts, and they therefore
placed themselves in that state of parrhesia, i.e. complete liberty to speak
about anyone or anything, which both Plato (Laws 1.649ab) and Philo-
chorus (FGrHist 328F170) considered to be natural in drunkenness.209 For
these epigrammatists, drunkenness was the litmus test which confirmed the
discovery of other peoples symptoms of love, and this gave their poems
about love an intellectual edge. As in all epistemological models based on the
conjectural analysis of individual cases and circumstances, the investigation
of symptoms of love was open to the risk of looking like purely speculative
206 For this topos, cf. Taran (1979) 751.
207 Hylas is the most famous case, but the motif is found also in sepulchral inscriptions, cf. GVI 952
(first/second century ad) and 1897 (second century ad); V. Raimondi, Gli epigrammi per Isidora:
una ripresa del mito di Ila in ambito egiziano Appunti romani di filologia (1998) 93120.
208 Cf. Cameron (1995) 71103.
209 That the person who goes to excesses in drinking wine loses control of his tongue and his mind
was also, of course, a very common poetic thought: cf. e.g. Theognis 47980 and Meleager, AP
12.119.56 = HE 4102f.
serendipity, and of course the more that individual traits were considered
pertinent, the more concrete this risk was, and the possibility of attaining
exact scientific knowledge diminished.210 By pointing to specific conjec-
tural paradigms, namely to specific sets of symptoms, Hellenistic poets
demonstrated not only psychological perspicacity in identifying them, but
also a rational clear-sightedness in their evaluation.
In Platos Symposium, the participants decide to deliver encomia of love,
because this was the only god who had not yet been celebrated appropriately
by a poet (177ad); they take this decision immediately after agreeing that
they will drink as they like, but in moderation, so that nobody will get drunk
(176ad). Love as an earthly, material passion bursts in, of course, towards
the end of the party, in the figure of Alcibiades, and here already that passion
is firmly linked to drunken excess. In Platos brilliant representation, and
in archaic and classical sympotic culture generally, we can see the origins of
the justification that epigram-writers of the beginning of the third century
bc present for being in love and writing love poetry. We must not, however,
underestimate the novelty of this complex of the guilt of love and its excuse
in drunkenness. The elaboration of these ideas was a precise, more or less
conscious, choice, which distinguishes the emphatic self-awareness of these
epigram-writers as learned poets; from Philetas on (cf. fr. 12 Sbardella,
CA 10), these poets are only too conscious of the intellectualism of their
aesthetics, and their repeated affirmations of superiority as spirits brought
up by the Muses keep them removed from those who were not.
210 See on this C. Ginzburg, Clues: Roots of an Evidential Paradigm (1979), now in id., Clues, Myths,
and the Historical Method (Turin 1986, trans. BaltimoreLondon 1989) 10525.
chap t e r 8
The languages of praise
1 callimachus h y m n s and the hymnic tradition

Four hymns to Isis of the early first century bc by one Isidorus were inscribed
on the temple of Isis-Hermouthis at Medinet Madi in the southern Fayum;1
two are in hexameters, and two in elegiac couplets. The content of the poems
suggests a mixture of Greek and Egyptian religious conceptions, expressed
in Greek hymnic forms and a language which, on the one hand, harks
back to the Greek epic-poetic tradition2 Homeric words and echoes are
frequent and, on the other, has many elements in common with the
surviving Isiac aretalogies (i.e. descriptions of the goddess powers and
benefactions) of the late Hellenistic and Roman periods. The promise of
1.25, ' %
) #4M (# 'Q %$ & ', Lady, I shall not
cease from singing of your great power, is of a kind familiar to any reader of
the Homeric Hymns, and the first three poems end with traditional requests
to the goddess for health, happiness, and prosperity (cf. e.g. Callimachus,
Hymn to Zeus 967, Posidippus 101 AB etc).3 The first part of the third
hymn concentrates upon Isis role, equivalent to that of the Greek Demeter
with whom she is identified in v. 2 (cf. 1.3, 22), as giver of (particularly
agricultural) wealth:4
2:% '$% ) 6^ .%%)
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1 For the hymns cf. IMEGR 6312, Vanderlip (1972), M. Totti, Ausgewahlte Texte der Isis-und Sarapis-
Religion (HildesheimZurichNew York 1985) 7682; further discussion and bibliography in L. V.
Zabkar, Hymns to Isis in her Temple at Philae (HanoverLondon 1988) 13560.
2 Vanderlip (1972) 6.
3 Cf. BastianiniGallazzi (2001) 2278. On the endings of Isidorus hymns cf. below, p. 362.
4 Minor textual problems in this passage do not affect the argument here.
350
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Ruler of the highest gods, Queen Hermouthis, Isis, pure, holy, great, great-named
Deo, most reverend giver of good things to all mortals, to the pious you give
great favours and wealth, a sweet life, the best form of happiness, prosperity, good
fortune, and a wisdom which is free from pain. Those whose lives are most blessed,
the best of men, sceptre-bearing kings and men of power, all these rule until old
age, if they heed you, and they leave behind prosperity, gleaming and rich in great
quantity, to their sons and their grandsons and to those who come after. He whom
the Queen holds most dear of rulers rules over Asia and Europe; he brings peace,
under him the crops are heavy with good things of every kind and bear marvellous
harvest. Where there are wars and countless slaughter, your strength, your power
wipes out the countless enemy throng and gives courage to the few. (Isidorus 3.118)
The Hellenistic world was full of sceptre-bearing kings, but the most
fortunate among them (vv. 1215) is obviously the reigning pharaoh/king,
here favoured by Isis as the just basileus in Hesiod is favoured by the Muses
(Theogony 8093); that Hesiods king is a speaker of gentle words and
a settler of disputes, whereas Isidorus rules over continents, is a marker
of the shift both from the local settlements of the archaic period to the
geographical enormity of the Hellenistic world and from mainland Greece
to Egypt. For those approaching this passage from Greek tradition, however,
there is indeed a striking similarity between Isidorus formulations and
some very well known passages of early Greek poetry. In Book 19 of the
Odyssey, Odysseus compares Penelope to a good and just king under whose
leadership the earth and the seas provide their bounty and the people
prosper (vv. 10814). Such a conception of the link between the goodness
of the ruler and the prosperity of his land and people is traditional in many
ancient cultures, and is perhaps most familiar in Greek from its inversion by
Sophocles at the opening of the Oedipus Tyrannus. It was given a particular
twist by Hesiod in the Works and Days in a passage which, together with
Theogony 8093, it is very tempting to think was in Isidorus mind:
352 The languages of praise
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As for those who give straight judgements to visitors and to their own people
and do not deviate from what is just, their community flourishes, and the people
blooms in it. Peace is about the land, fostering the young, and wide-seeing Zeus
never marks out grievous war as their portion. Neither does Famine attend straight-
judging men, nor Blight, and they feast on the crops they tend. For them Earth
bears plentiful food, and on the mountains the oak carries acorns at its surface
and bees at its centre. The fleecy sheep are laden down with wool; the womenfolk
bear children that resemble their parents; they enjoy a continual sufficiency of good
things. Nor do they ply on ships, but the grain-giving ploughland bears them fruit.
(Hesiod, Works and Days 22537, trans. West)
Here, peace and agricultural prosperity depend not on a single just ruler,
but on the justice of the inhabitants of a town; war is an evil which Zeus
spares the just. In Isidorus poem, war rather is an (unfortunate) fact of life,
but one which confirms the power of the goddess and her earthly favourite
(vv. 1618). It may be that specific troubles or rebellions in Egypt lie behind
these verses,5 but they are certainly also a version of a very familiar topos
of Egyptian royal ideology, namely the pharaohs ability to smite countless
foes in wars of conquest. The contrast between peace (v. 14) and war (v. 16)
will thus also be a contrast between home and abroad.
Both this structure and a shared heritage of Hesiodic themes, such
as the god-given wealth (#) A#9) which is the reward of just
behaviour (WD 22537, 2801, 31213 etc.), bring this passage of Isidorus
hymn very close to Theocritus hymnic praise of Ptolemy Philadelphus
in Idyll 17; vv. 77120 of the Encomium recount the wealth of Egypt, the
peaceful prosperity which reigns there, and the extent of Philadelphus
Mediterranean empire, enforced by his ships and his soldiers. Both poems
clearly reflect both traditional Greek ideas and aspects of Egyptian royal
5 Cf. Vanderlip (1972) 545.
ideology,6 and they shed light upon a kind of lingua franca of praise which
turns up in many different guises all over the Hellenistic world, not just in
Egypt. Callimachus six hymns are not only rewritings of archaic poetry,
principally of the major poems of our collection of Homeric Hymns, but
they also mark themselves off against this lingua franca, requiring us to
notice both similarity and difference.
Callimachus rewrote this same passage of Hesiod in his hymns to both
Zeus and Artemis. In the Hymn to Zeus, Callimachus combined, as Isidorus
appears to have done, the flourishing Just City of the Works and Days with
the basileus beloved by the Muses of the Theogony:
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But from Zeus are kings, for nothing is more divine than the rulers of Zeus;
therefore you chose them as your own portion. You gave them cities to guard,
and you yourself took your seat on the citadels, watching to see who direct their
people with crooked judgements, and who differently. You gave them flowing
wealth, and propserity in abundance; all received, but not equally. One can judge
by our ruler, for he outstrips all by far. By evening he brings to fulfilment the
thoughts of the morning; by evening the greatest thoughts, lesser ones as soon as
they are conceived. Others accomplish some things in a year, but others not in one;
the fulfilment of others you yourself utterly frustrate, and break off their desire.
(Callimachus, Hymn to Zeus 7990)
Both poets use Hesiodic reminiscence to confirm the very close link between
the basileus here on earth and his heavenly protector; whereas, however, in
Poem 3, Isidorus maintains a clear distinction between the heavenly queen
(v. 12) and the ruler she most favours, Callimachus all but runs the heavenly
and earthly Zeuses together.7 The virtual simultaneity of thought and
deed in the case of Ptolemy (vv. 878) picks up a theme of both Greek
and Egyptian divine praise.8 In the Hymn to Artemis, Callimachus uses the
6 For Idyll 17 cf. Hunter (2003b), Stephens (2003a) 14770. 7 Cf. HunterFuhrer (2002) 169.
8 Cf. Theocritus 17.1314 (the divinised Soter) with Hunter (2003b) 109.
Hesiodic passage to describe the different effects which Artemis favour and
disfavour create:
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The fourth time you no longer shot (?) at a tree, but at a city of unjust men, who
commit wicked acts against each other and against strangers. Wretched are those
on whom you impress your bitter anger. Plague feeds on their cattle and frost on
their crops, old men cut their hair in mourning for their sons, and women are either
struck down and die in childbirth or, if they survive, bear children who cannot
stand on upright ankle. But those upon whom you look with favouring smile,
their fields yield crops, and their animals and house prosper. They do not go to the
tomb except to bury the very aged. Strife, which lays waste even to well-established
houses, does not wound their race: the wives of brothers and sisters-in-law set their
chairs around one table. (Callimachus, Hymn to Artemis 12135)
The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite lists a city of just men among the things
in which Artemis takes pleasure (v. 20), and Callimachus here exploits the
special relationship between Artemis and her father, which the opening of
his poem has established and which will be confirmed at its end by the echo,
in the armed dance of the Amazons in honour of Artemis (vv. 2407), of the
dance of the Kouretes by which the infant Zeus was protected (cf. Call. h.
1.524);9 Artemis plays a role assigned to Zeus in Hesiods poem, or rather
she embodies the Hesiodic Dike, another virginal daughter of Zeus who
sits with her father and tells him of the outrages of unjust men (WD 256
62).10 Callimachus typically inimitable rewriting of Hesiod11 in Artemis
9 Q# |!4% fills the second half of a (spondeiazon) verse in both passages, a very rare
repetition within our corpus of Callimachus, cf. F. Lapp, De Callimachi Cyrenaei tropis et figuris
(Diss. Bonn 1965) 68; the adverb c# is also common to both passages.
10 Cf. M. Erler, Das Recht (\@=7) als Segensbringerin fur die Polis SIFC 80 (1987) 536, with the
remarks of Hunter in HunterFuhrer (2002) 1823.
11 Cf. Reinsch-Werner (1976) 7486; on p. 75 she notes the possible influence of the Hesiodic Hecate.
honour is an excellent illustration of how he distinguishes his verse from
the lingua franca of praise which we have identified, but it also shows how
firmly rooted his hymns are in traditional religious ideas and language. His
all-powerful Artemis may owe something to the widespread syncretism of
Artemis-Demeter-Isis, such as we find it, for example, in Isidorus hymns,12
but both here and in Isidorus 3 (above pp. 3501) we may also be reminded
of the remarkable praise of Artemis cousin Hecate in Hesiods Theogony
(vv. 41152). In this passage, Hecate is honoured above all other gods by
Zeus, whose power hers comes to resemble, and she herself bestows honour
and prosperity (A#9) upon whomsoever she chooses; she is powerful in
lawcourts (beside reverend basileis, v. 434) and at public gatherings, grants
victory in war and athletic contests, and is responsible for the success of
fishermen and the increase of herds. Such multi-faceted power, combined
with the gods repeatedly emphasised discretion in its use (vv. 419, 429, 430,
432, 439, 443), strongly foreshadow features of divine encomium which are
often claimed to be distinctively Hellenistic. As so often, it is Callimachus
mode of expression and imagery, not his matrix of ideas, which turn out to
be poetically radical.
Another case where we may trace Callimachus relation to a particular
language of praise comes from the Hymn to Delos.13 In this poem, a prophecy
of the foetal Apollo stops his mother giving birth to him on the island of Cos,
for that is reserved for another god (v. 165), namely Ptolemy Philadelphus;
the prophecy, which functions as a positive rewriting of the negative not
Telphousa, but Delphi episode of the Homeric Hymn, occupies the centre
of the poem and is one of the most direct passages of royal encomium
surviving from Callimachus. With courtly wit, the poet makes the god
link his miraculous intervention in 279, which saved Delphi from being
sacked by Gauls coming down from the north, to Ptolemys crushing of a
short-lived rebellion of Gallic mercenaries in Egypt in c. 275:
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12 Cf. also Orphic Hymn 36 to Artemis, which concludes with a prayer for fair crops, lovely peace,
fair-tressed health.
13 On the relation of the Hymn to Delos with the Homeric Hymn to Apollo and various Pindaric texts cf.
esp. Bing (1988) 91146, Depew (1998), G. Most, Callimachus and Herophilus Hermes 109 (1981)
18896.
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But to her is due from the fates another god, highest offspring of the Saviours.
Under his power, quite willing to be governed by a Macedonian, shall come both
land masses and the islands in the sea, as far as the western horizon and from
where the swift horses bear the sun. And he shall know the ways of his father.
One day in the future, a common struggle will come upon us, when the late-born
Titans raise barbarian sword and Celtic war against Greeks, rushing down from
the furthest west, like snowflakes or equal in number to the stars, when they cluster
most thickly in the heavens . . . (Callimachus, Hymn to Delos 16576)
Callimachus has thus enfolded a Pythian hymn within a Delian one,
in an artful variation of the structure of the archaic Hymn to Apollo; the
destruction of the late-born Titans at Delphi replaces the gods killing of
the Pythian serpent, which had (inter alia) reared Typhoeus, Heras dread
child which she had conceived after invoking the Titan gods (h. Apollo 335
6). Both killings mark the imposition, or re-imposition, of Olympian order
upon rebellious chaos. The Gallic sweep into the Mediterranean seems in
fact to have inspired a considerable body of poetry with its own conventions
and stock phrases,14 and Callimachus will not have been the only panegyrist
to make the link between the two victories over the Gauls. Cos had in
fact close links with both the main Apolline centres. From the late 280s
at least it had regularly sent theoroi to Delos,15 and very shortly after the
Gauls were forced to abandon the attack upon Delphi, Cos had declared
sacrifices of thanksgiving in Delphi and sacrifices to Pythian Apollo, Zeus
Soter, and Victory, and a public holiday on Cos to celebrate the gods
intervention against the barbarians on behalf of the safety (%) of
the Greeks (SIG 398);16 the island was thus inextricably tied to both the
Delphic Apollo and his Alexandrian counterpart (i.e. Philadelphus). The
Delphians themselves instituted a festival, the Soteria, to celebrate their
deliverance from the Gauls,17 and the Callimachean Apollos designation
14 Bing (1988) 129 n. 66. There is a full treatment in Barbantani (2001) and cf. also Weber (1993) 30811;
I have left the poems with which Barbantani is concerned (SH 958, 969) out of account here, because
of the uncertainties which surround them, but they do, I think, confirm the general picture which
is offered.
15 Cf. Bruneau (1970) 97101, S. Sherwin-White, Ancient Cos (Gottingen 1978) 912.
16 For this text cf. also Nachtergael (1977) 4013. The link between the Coan celebrations and
Callimachus hymn was made by, e.g. Fraser (1972) I 660.
17 For a full study cf. Nachtergael (1977).
of Philadelphus as highest offspring of the Saviours (v. 166) thus looks to
a traditional Greek rhetoric as well as to Philadelphus parents, the Saviour
gods.
The Coan decree makes plain (as does virtually all the evidence, both epi-
graphic and literary (Pausanias), for the Gallic invasions) that the rhetoric
generated by the resistance to the Gauls was modelled upon the rhetoric
through which Greek resistance to the Persians in the early fifth century
had long been remembered and/or imagined. In setting Greeks against
the barbarian sword, the prophetic foetus thus both apes and inaugurates
what was to become the standard language of public celebration of the
Gallic defeat, seen for example in the many surviving decrees connected
with a reorganisation of the Delphic Soteria in the middle of the third
century.18 In extant Callimachus, v. 173 of the Hymn to Delos offers the only
example of 99
(there are none of 9(9), and the only other
example of g ^## is in a brief fragment also about the Gallic invasions:19
a & C +% #(%%
i 6^##4 C &(%%) #.
whom Brennos brought from the western sea to destroy the Greeks. . . (Callimachus
fr. 379)
The language of Callimachus Apollo thus gestures towards the prosaic,
though emotionally charged, language of public documents, but is also
utterly transformed from it. The gods extraordinary zeugmatic expres-
sion, raising barbarian sword and Celtic Ares [i.e. war], illustrates this
transformation very clearly; barbarian sword both refers specifically to the
strange Gaulish weapons which made such an impact upon the Greeks, as
can be seen from the prominence given to the enemy shields as trophies
of war (vv. 1857), but seems also to vary the poetic habit of using '
$
sword in the transferred sense of army or war.20 So, too, the gods use of
Ares may reflect a poetic language that developed at an early date around
the Gaulish invasions:21 thus, an epigram ascribed to Anyte tells of three
18 These texts are gathered by Nachtergael (1977) 43547.
19 Cf. Hunter (1991) 846; the fragment is assigned by Pfeiffer to the Galateia of Callimachus. G. Petzl,
Kein Umsturz beim Galater-Uberfall auf Delphi ZPE 56 (1984) 1414, notes that 6^##4 C
&(%% in fr. 379 may be paralleled by a fragmentary decree from Smyrna of 2465 concerning the
Gallic invasions and the Delphic Soteria (Nachtergael (1977) 444). Unfortunately, only %[
survives at the crucial point of the decree, but the context certainly fits; if this is right, it may be that
fr. 379 also reflects official public language.
20 Cf. LSJ s.v. II 2. Relevant too is the idea of spear-won land, which is so important in the ideology
of Hellenistic kingship.
21 Cf. Bing (1988) 129 n. 66, Barbantani (2001) 1089. Plutarch uses the phrase
# &%
(with accusative), Coriolanus 21.
Milesian virgins who killed themselves rather than submit to the lawless
outrage of the Gauls who have no sense of right, an act forced upon them
by the violent Ares of the Celts (AP 7.492 = HE 7527). Of particular
interest is the fact that barbarian Ares and Ares of the Gauls occur in
references to Apollos defence of his Delphic shrine in two Athenian paeans
to the god from the late second century bc;22 how far back the clearly
traditional language and images of these poems go we cannot say, but it is
certainly tempting to believe again here that Callimachus unborn god was
inaugurating a language which did not merely allude to official expres-
sions of thanksgiving for the shrines deliverance, but also in fact had a
contemporary life in the cultic poetry celebrating that deliverance.
The oddity of Apollos language is, of course, in part a reflection of the
fact that he speaks in the riddling language of Delphic oracles: if a Mace-
donian for Ptolemy23 and late-born Titans for the Gauls are designations
which would not keep oracle-interpreters puzzled for long, particularly
given the familiar equation of Ptolemy not just with Apollo but also with
Zeus, the description of Philadelphus empire in vv. 16870 has caused
modern readers enormous problems; here, the oracular god has done his
job of mystification wonderfully well. In general, the pairing of oppo-
sites, dry land islands, west east, suggests the all-embracing world
rule familiar from both Egyptian and Hellenistic royal rhetoric;24 in des-
ignating the western horizon by a disputed Homeric hapax legomenon,
(,25 Apollo shows (once again) that when he speaks, he sounds very
like Callimachus.26 & %
(v. 168) has caused particular prob-
lems. The traditional interpretation as Africa and Asia is at least not totally
at variance with the catalogue of Philadelphus lands in Theocritus 17,27 and
may take some colour from the passage of Isidorus third hymn which we
have already considered: there, the pharoah rules Asia and Europe (v. 13),
a phrase which is clearly meant to suggest universal rule and in which
Egypt/Africa may be omitted as being self-evident.28 What is at issue, of
course, is not the historical reality of Philadelphus dominions at the time
22 Cf. CA 14159, FurleyBremer (2001) i 12938, ii 84100, A. Belis, Les Hymnes a Apollon (Corpus
des Inscriptions de Delphes iii, Paris 1992).
23 For the ideological importance of this designation cf. below, pp. 3767, 394.
24 Cf. Hunter (2003b) 1678. 25 Odyssey 23.2436, cf. Rengakos (1994) 1278.
26 Cf. above, p. 63, on the Delphic Apollos speech in Aitia fr. 75.
27 Cf. Hunter (2003b) 1601.
28 Cf. Dionysius Periegetes division of the world into three i , Libya, Europe, and Asia (v. 9).
A similar conception lies behind Ap. Rhod. Arg. 4.2723, in which Sesoostris travels from Egypt
through Europe and Asia.
the poem was composed, but the language of panegyric and the meaning
of %
. More recently, the phrase has been interpreted as Upper and
Lower Egypt, the division of the land which is a regular part of Egyptian
royal titles;29 such a reference to Egypt certainly sits well with the paradox-
ical idea that the land is not unwilling30 to be ruled by a Macedonian, and
it has also been suggested that the mitra of v. 166 is not (just?) the royal
diadem of Hellenistic kings but also the Egyptian royal crown, which com-
bined the symbols of the two Egypts. The matter, appropriately enough
for an oracle, cannot be finally resolved, but in one of the new poems
on the recently published Milan papyrus, Posidippus prays to Poseidon
to keep the land and shores of Ptolemy, together with the islands free
from earthquakes (20.56 AB), and if Posidippus phrase is a way of say-
ing the Ptolemaic empire, then perhaps the unborn Apollos phrase may
indeed be seen as an oracular version of this; here, too, we may glimpse
a fragment of Ptolemaic rhetoric adapted in different ways by different
poets.31
However this phrase is to be interpreted, traditional modes of praise were
clearly adapted to meet changed political rhetoric and changed poetic tastes.
Thus, the archaic Apollo (speaking in central Greece) expects his new oracle
to be consulted by all who inhabit the rich Peloponnese, and Europe, and
the sea-girt islands (h.Apollo 2501, 2901), where Europe is presumably
Greece north of the Peloponnese. From a quite different perspective, and
one which might be thought very Hellenistic, Isidorus, up-country in first
century bc Egypt, sees the human race (Isidorus 1.14 all mortals who live on
the boundless earth), all of whom worship Isis, as composed of Thracians,
Hellenes, and barbarians (with Egyptians either as a fourth category, or
as a subgroup, along with Syrians and Lycians, of barbarians) (1.1424), a
catalogue which may reflect contemporary demographic practices, as well,
perhaps, as Isidorus own local environment in the Fayum. For Isidorus,
the goddess might be anywhere: west, south, north, east, in the heavens,
or here in the Arsinoite nome (3.1933). When Callimachus must express
the four corners of the earth, perhaps indeed as his version of the words of
the archaic Apollo quoted above, he does so with typically greater variety
of expression:
29 Cf. Koenen (1983) 187, Mineur ad loc.; some objections in Weber (1993) 3089.
30 For this hymnic motif cf. Cleanthes Hymn to Zeus v. 8,
% . . . +O 2, % 5 5.
31 Relevant too may be Posidippus 118.1516 AB, the Macedonians, both those on the [? islands] and
the neighbours of the whole Asian shore where, however, mainland Greece is omitted presumably
because the author is there already (H. Lloyd-Jones, JHS 83 (1963) 89).
l , - l C E% l C & %%
#4$ %4%) t Q 9
* , !$%) #$!Z P.
[All the cities] which have cast their lots to the east and towards evening and those
in the south, and those who have their houses above the northern shore, a very
long-lived race. (Callimachus, Hymn to Delos 2802)
The opening verses of Isidorus fourth hymn may be taken as an expres-

sion of the poets wonder at the dimensions of the temple at Medinet Madi
and/or as a script for any viewer of the temple; Isidorus proceeds to answer
his own questions:

' / , ' C e , 6^ %";
5 , 4% (;
F *b .'$ %Z%C h >#$
\5 2:%" h @%' %
")
C; !
" $e ' & <)
&( V '
.
;* Q$ ( % % 5 .)
p (% !Z Q M ()
#Q%) % 9) '$( (%" %")
p # & 8 %! *%$(.
Who built this holy sanctuary for Hermouthis, the greatest goddess? Which god
was mindful of the most holy of the blessed ones? As he designed a steep and
unapproachable Olympus for Deo the highest, Isis the lawgiver, and for her son
Anchoes and for Sokonopis, the good spirit, he found a refuge most appropriate
for the immortals. Men say that there was a divine ruler of Egypt, who proved
himself master of every land, rich, pious, possessing ultimate and greatest power,
whose fame and virtues reached the heavens. (Isidorus 4.110)
Isidorus closes by declaring that his knowledge derives, not from the Muses
or any other form of divine inspiration, but from his enquiries among
men who know (we may here be reminded, as we often are when reading
Callimachus Aitia, of Herodotus):
&%# 'X Z C &' e%Q

, O C & :(
14$%C g ^##% 'Q .
F 9, ' %! K% 'Q.
Having learned in certainty from men who have investigated, and myself having
written up all these things, I have transmitted to the Greeks the power of the god
and ruler; no other mortal man had such power. (Isidorus 4.3740)
In Hymn 3, Isidorus seems to be present again at a holy site, but this
time while celebrations are in progress; Isidorus scripts the words of the
celebrants:
# ) C; 4 Q!) e$ %$) .%%
...
* 'X H' ( ) *' & 8 %)
Q%) #95% -'X $#5
&'
<Q!$ , C;% 30
Q# ) V%% C ( %
*(' J!O kb ' ( % .
C; !
") <) 5 / %) +4.
$ !) #
R @% #4)
2 5) (# k %Q xC ) 35
:C JT C) &! *4 (.
Hear me, when I supplicate you, Good Fortune, mistress . . . And if you are present
here, looking upon mens good deeds, delighting in the sacrifices, libations, and
offerings of the men who dwell in the nome of Souchos, the Arsinoites composed
of all races, who come each year on the twentieth of the month of Pachon and
Thoth, bearing a festival tithe for you and for Anchoes and Sokonopis, the holy
gods. You who hear prayers, dark-robed Isis the merciful, and you Great Gods who
share a temple with her, send Paean to me, the healer of all griefs. (Isidorus 3.19,
2836)
Much here may remind us of Callimachus Hymns, for the Hymns to

Zeus, Apollo, Athena, and Demeter open with the poetic voice apparently
engaged (at different levels) in worship of the god, as is the voice of Isidorus.
The opening questions of Isidorus 4 (cited above) have in fact moved away
from traditional rhapsodic style in the direction of the excitement of, say,
the opening of Callimachus Hymn to Apollo:
P |
## % % '( VM)
P ' C V# , #U + + V% &#
.
How the laurel branch of Apollo shook! How did the whole building! Away, away,
whoever is a sinner! (Callimachus, Hymn to Apollo 12)
There are, of course, also crucial differences between the passage of cere-
monial time in Callimachus Hymns to Apollo, Athena, and Demeter, and
Isidorus festival descriptions, and between the Callimachean poetic voice,
which seems to lead the celebrants in worship, and Isidorus more descrip-
tive voice (cf. below), but the gulf between those poems of Callimachus
and certain other hexameter hymnic practice is one of degree, rather than
kind.
The verses cited above from Isidorus third poem probably all refer to
the one particular celebration specified in v. 32 (on the twentieth of the
month of Pachon and Thoth), though one might consider vv. 2931a as
what is happening now and vv. 31b3 as a reminder to the god of a great
annual festival. This same festival is clearly at issue in 2.218:
% 'Z % ) V% #
C &'
!( (# %( ! ' C V#$)
Q % 5 ' ( & x )
! C % $",
L '4% ##$ $ 25
5 J!O T% %Q.
' C * L
$% 9%
4) #4 % $.
Remembering your gifts, those to whom you have given wealth and great benefits
to possess all their lives set side a tenth portion of these things, rejoicing each year
in your festival. You have granted all of them, as the year rolls round, delight in the
month of Pachon, and when they have had their fill of festival pleasure they return
home reverently, full of the satisfaction which comes from you. (Isidorus 2.218)
According to the most recent editor,32 both Hymns 2 and 3 were written
for this harvest festival in the month of Pachon, but the situation is clearly
more complex than that. Hymns record celebrations (cf. below on the
Homeric Hymn to Apollo), and the verses (aorist tenses and all) would be
suitable for recitation and for the god to read both during the festival and at
other times of the year; when one is not actually bringing the god gifts, it is
useful to remind her that this does in fact happen on a regular basis. Isidorus
functions as in some senses a communal spokesman for the inhabitants of
the nome, but he is also an outside observer of their festivities, and one
whose descriptions of the festivities conclude with personal, not communal,
prayers: grant me health, prosperity, and so forth. We may compare the
singer of the Homeric Hymn to (Delian) Apollo, who, as a Chian (at least,
a self-proclaimed one), has a personal vested interest in the Ionian festival
on Delos which he describes and whose glories he promotes and advertises,
both to the wider world and to Apollo himself; the hymn-singer remains,
however, like Isidorus, an outsider, whose focus is ultimately personal,
not communal, unlike the poetic voice of Callimachus Hymns to Athena
and Demeter. In concluding with personal prayers for his own health and
prosperity,33 rather than the promise of further song, Isidorus picks up a
strand of hymnody visible in the collection of Homeric Hymns (cf. 11.5, 15.9,
32 Cf. Vanderlip (1972) 45, 61. 33 Cf. in general Hopkinson (1984) 1823.
20.8, 30.18), as well as in the lyric tradition, but quite literally signs his
poems (Isidorus wrote this) in a way which is, of course, utterly foreign
to archaic hymnody, with the exception (again) of the Homeric Hymn to
(Delian) Apollo.
Of particular interest in this context are those shorter Homeric Hymns
which are either clearly communal or could be taken as such. Hymn 13
to Demeter ends with a prayer to the goddess to save this city, which is
very probably the origin of the same request (by the poet? by a participant
in the festival?) in Callimachus Hymn to Demeter (v. 134); the requests to
Heracles (15.9) and Hephaistos (20.8) to give arete and prosperity (cf. Cal-
limachus, h. 1.96) script prayers available to anyone; Hymn 22 to Poseidon
ends with a request to the god to aid those at sea, and a short narrative
hymn to Dionysus (26), perhaps written for an annual festival, ends with
the request that the god allow us to return again in happiness at the appro-
priate time, and time after time for many years. The ambiguity, or perhaps
flexibility, of where the hymnic voice positions itself with regard to the
community/audience is therefore a feature of the style of non-lyric hymns
from the earliest period through to Isidorus and beyond.
The description of parts of the ritual with which the song is associated,
a description which often involves reflexive self-reference by the singers,
is one of the most persistent features of Greek cultic song. In one of the
Athenian paeans to Apollo at Delphi (above p. 358), for example, the chorus
describes the lavish offerings the city has provided:
/
'X 95% g ;% K Q
U ' h ;: &, h >#$ &
'U # b 'X #, 9 *
#
# % |' U !$% 'C /'Q$
[% &# U
On holy altars Hephaistos burns the thighs of bullocks; with the flames the smell
of incense wafts to heaven; high and clear the reed pours forth intriguing melodies
and the sweet-voiced golden lyre resounds to our hymns. (Athenian Paean to
Apollo vv. 914, trans. Furley-Bremer)
When such passages are read away from their original performative context,
they make demands upon and appeal to an audiences cultic imagination;34
such must have been the experience for Callimachus and his contemporaries
34 For a fuller discussion and bibliography cf. HunterFuhrer (2002). The existence of that article has
led to this very abbreviated treatment here. On the separation of poetry from a specific performative
context cf. above, Chapter 1.
when reading the great cultic lyric poetry of the fifth century, such as the
religious poetry of Pindar. That imagination will have been shaped by
experience of contemporary cultic practice, by classical poetry itself, and by
prose chronicles on local practices and cultic history; Callimachus interest
in these matters is very obvious from the Aitia. The Hymns to Apollo,
Athena, and Demeter feed the readers imagination by greatly elaborating
the importance of deixis and of (self-) reference to the festival and its
choruses; the hymns actually script a context for performance, whereas
such a context needed no such script when the poem was indeed part
of a real performance.35 As for the long Hymns to Artemis and Delos,
these poems construct an audience crucially interested in sacred spaces,
rites, and their history as practised by others often very remote others;
imaginative religious experience now required no sacred context other than
that of reading or listening. Sometimes the effect can be disorienting, as
the text pays little attention to the boundaries and categories with which
we are familiar; we may feel, as in the Hymn to Artemis, overwhelmed by a
body of disparate ritual experiences drawn from all over the Greek world,
and never before gathered together. So, too, sacred places are evoked across
time, not just as they are at particular moments, for the cultic imagination
of the reader is fed on an excess of information, not on too little. The Delos
of the end of the Hymn to Delos is identified by the many different rituals
which take place there at different times of the year (278324), and whereas
in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo all Delos was laden with gold at the sight
of Apollo (v. 1356), in Callimachus Hymn to Delos the sacred geography
of the island is catalogued for us in its detail:
!Q% (
( # \# )
!$% 'X !
%% 4 #)
!Q% 'C
% # #)
!$% 'X #4$ 9b C @, +#! .
Golden then, Delos, were all your foundations, with gold the circular lake flowed
all day, golden the leaves of your birthday olive, and with gold flowed the twisting
Inopos in full flood. (Callimachus, Hymn to Delos 2603)
The distinction between Callimachus mimetic and non-mimetic
hymns may be broken down in several ways,36 but the Homeric Hymn
to Apollo, which Callimachus reworked three times in the Hymns to Apollo,
35 Cf. e.g. Fantuzzi (1993c), M. Depew, Enacted and Represented Dedications: Genre and Greek
Hymn in DepewObbink (2000) 5979.
36 Cf. M. A. Harder, Insubstantial Voices: Some Observations on the Hymns of Callimachus CQ 42
(1992) 38494.
Artemis, and Delos, occupies a place of particular importance. In the clos-
ing section of the Delian part of this hymn, the poet tells Apollo that, of all
his cult places, it is Delos which is dearest to him, and he then describes the
Ionian festival on Delos and, in particular, the amazing performances of the
choir of Delian maidens (vv. 14464). It is not improbable that this poem
was originally composed for a Delian festival,37 but, away from a performa-
tive context at least, these verses would most naturally be read as addressed
to a non-Delian audience which was not familiar with the festival: Anyone
who went there would say . . . (vv. 1512, cf. vv. 1634). The relatively full
description of the festival is precisely part of the fulfilment of the poets
promise to spread the kleos of the maidens, far and wide. In the famous
envoi to the Delian section (vv. 16676), however, the poet addresses the
maidens directly and claims to have visited Delos; it is indeeed the natural
interpretation of the verses that they are addressed directly to the Delian
maidens, who may have just performed. In this mixture of third-person
description of cult and an empathetic involvement with it by the poet,
Callimachus found the seeds of some of his most striking experiments with
poetic voice. Moreover, if we can believe the tradition that the Homeric
Hymn to (Delian) Apollo was inscribed for public view on Delos (cf. Con-
test of Homer and Hesiod 18), the effect of these verses becomes not unlike
Isidorus descriptions of the annual festival in his village: a reminder to the
god and a script for the cultic imagination of anyone who reads.
In the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, the performance of the Delian choir
is clearly (though implicitly) the earthly re-enactment of the Oympian
mousike which the god leads; the origins of the festival are nowhere explic-
itly suggested. So, too, the exchanges between Leto and the island before
the birth (vv. 5188) explain why Delos is at the time of the song a great
cult centre, as the narrative of Apollo leading the Cretans, to the accompa-
niment of music and paean-singing, from Krisa up to the new site of his
temple (vv. 51419) was constantly celebrated and re-enacted in Delphic
cult, a fact presumably known to the hymnists audience; these aetiological
links between past and present are not, however, explicitly drawn, although
v. 518 comes very close to pointing to the narrative we have just heard as
an explanation for the association between Crete and the paean.38 More
37 For the now favoured view of the origins of this poems doubleness cf. W. Burkert, Kynaithos,
Polycrates, and the Homeric Hymn to Apollo in G. W. Bowersock, W. Burkert, M. Putnam (eds.),
Arktouros. Hellenic Studies presented to Bernard Knox (BerlinNew York 1979) 5362; A. Aloni, Laedo
e i tiranni (Rome 1989); id, La performance di Cineto in Tradizione e innovazione nella cultura greca
da Omero alleta ellenistica (Rome 1993) 12942.
38 Cf. Rutherford (2001) 245.
generally, the hymn as a whole maps out Apolline sacred space (cf. e.g.
vv. 1618), and in doing so tracks not just the origin of cultic practice but
also, quite explicitly, of divine names (Pythios, vv. 36374; Telphousios,
vv. 3857; Delphinios, v. 495). An even stronger historical effect is created
by the poet of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, who moves from Demeters
establishment of her mysteries to their effect in the present day:
. . . % () ( C 3 % M 3 $%)
3 C &! U ( %9 *%!( '4.
A#9 p ('C A ! &ZU
p ' C & #8 e ) V C .) 3 C
L% !
2, _
" Z .
. . . the solemn mysteries which one cannot depart from or enquire about or
broadcast, for great awe of the gods restrains us from speaking. Blessed is he of
men on earth who has beheld them, whereas he that is uninitiated in the rites, or
he that has had no part in them, never enjoys a similar lot down in the musty dark
when he is dead. (Homeric Hymn to Demeter 47882, trans. West)
In this hymn, the past is used to explain the present, often (as inevitably
happens with aetiological myth) by retrojecting the present into the past.
The poet may occasionally choose explicitly to signal his aetiological focus
(cf. e.g. vv. 205, 2657), but the meaning of the poem does not depend
for its audience upon such effects.
The aetiological focus of Callimachus Hymns, both explicit and implicit,
is indebted to that of the Homeric Hymns, but now becomes even more
prominent.39 It is the aetiological focus which links the past to the present,
the myth to the ritual. In the Hymn to Zeus, it is explicitly (v. 11) because
Zeus was born on Arcadian Parrhasia that the place is holy and no female
creature may give birth there; in the Hymn to Delos it is explicitly (v. 275)
because the island nursed Apollo that it is called holiest of islands; in the
Hymn to Apollo the origin of the cry e8 e8 is framed by two explicit
markers of aetiology (98 Z%) 104 M 5 ). This pattern of
thought is by no means limited to the scholarly Callimachus. In Limenios
paean to Apollo at Delphi (above p. 358), the choir offers a different aetiology
to that of Callimachus Apollo first went to Athens after his birth and
inaugurated his music there but the aetiological style is very similar, as
a result of that from that beginning all we autochthonous Athenians call
him Paieon (vv. 1718).
39 Cf. M. Depew, Mimesis and Aetiology in Callimachus Hymns in HarderRegtuitWakker (1993)

5777.
The aetiological focus does not, of course, have to be explicitly marked
in this simple way. Here, for example, is the description in the Homeric
Hymn of Apollos birth and the ololyge from the assembled goddesses which
greets it:
& 'X 9(# 4! ) ' C %
# #) '% 'X C 2 U
'C ,
') 'C ]#
#$M x%.
She clasped her arms around the palm tree, and braced her knees against the soft
meadow grass, and the earth beneath her smiled: out he sprang into the light, and
all the goddesses gave a yell. (Homeric Hymn to Apollo 11719, trans. West)
As every hearer of these verses would know and needed no spelling out, the
phoinix was still to be seen on Delos in the poets day. Callimachus too sees
no need to labour the point (h. 4.210), but his description of the actual
birth outdoes the archaic account:
1 X U Q 'X # &'
0"
J#, $#Z% #
250
+9'( \#) 4 % 'X #! "
0$%( A ) &'
U
5 %%(%' #Q" '4% !'(
[% ) %%( Q C |' %% . %U
A ' C . %) 'C ) e ' C
255
Q \#(' ) &!)
L C^# $ e , #) 'C *4
!(# &4!% '$% ]##$ 4.
She spoke, and the musical swans . . . left Maionian Pactolus and circled seven times
around Delos singing over the child-birth, the birds of the Muses, most songful
of flying creatures. For this reason the child in later times put the same number
of strings on his lyre as the number of songs of the swans at his birth. They did
not sing an eighth time, but he leapt forth, and the Delian nymphs, offspring of
an ancient river, sang the holy song of Eleithyia; at once the bronze sky re-echoed
the far-sounding yell. (Callimachus, Hymn to Delos 24958)
Verse 255 directs our attention to v. 119 of the Homeric Hymn by actually
citing what amounts to a fragment of it ( 'C ), which, however,
is moved to the middle of the verse to emphasise the speed of the gods
epiphany. The divine ololyge is, moreover, transferred to the song of the
Nymphs in verses which clearly offer an (implicit) aetiology for contem-
porary performances of Delian maiden-choirs (cf. h.Apollo 157) at a festi-
val in honour of Eileithyia.40 Our expectation of aetiology has, however,
40 Cf. Mineur on v. 256, Bruneau (1970) 21516.
been aroused by the strikingly parenthetic aetiology of vv. 2534, which
interrupts an otherwise almost lyric succession of short narrative phrases.
We are being reminded that every detail has its story to tell. Moreover, the
alleged anachronism41 of \#(' in v. 256 both mingles past and present
and points to an important pattern in the poem.
In vv. 514 Callimachus explains the islands change of names:
1 'C C;
## # c' 2%! )

% &9, /## 3 C )
[ C .'# # ) &## C
$
Q% ;* ' 4 B_.
When you offered your earth for the birth of Apollo, sailors changed your name
in this way, because no longer did you float unseen (adelos), but you put down
the roots of your feet amidst the waves of the Aegean sea. (Callimachus, Hymn to
Delos 514)
Sailors called the island Clearly seen because she no longered wandered
around .'# obscure, and the reason for her change of state was her
encounter with Leto (cf. vv. 3940); Asterie is thus clearly associated with
the islands wandering status, Delos with the time after she has become
stationary. The most natural implication of vv. 514, however, is that this
name-change followed some time after Apollos birth; it was not instanta-
neous at the moment of the gods appearance. Alongside this purely human
explanation, therefore, runs another tale of divine planning. The unborn
Apollo tells his mother to take him to a small island appearing (' ')
in the water, wandering over the seas (vv. 1912); Apollos choice of words
hints at the name Clearly seen which is to come,42 just as wandering over
the seas points (cf. vv. 514) to the current name Asterie. When the poet
immediately after apostrophises the island as Asterie, this is not just to
show that he has command of the narrative chronology of his tale, but
it also prepares us for the important fact that, at a level higher than that
of the sailors, the level at which learned poets operate, the island never
lost her old name; she simply added a new one to commemorate the god
(cf. vv. 300, 316); Pindar, after all, knew that the island had two names,
one (Delos) used by mortals, and one (far-seen star (.%) of the dark
earth) used by the gods (fr. 33c.46 M., from the Hymn to Zeus). When
41 Mineur on v. 256.
42 Commentators note that Callimachus principal Homeric model here is the description of the island
Asteris at Odyssey 4.8447, an island which later scholars normally identified with an C;% , cf.
Strabo 1.3.18, 10.2.16, Steph. Byz. s.v.; Callimachus reworking thus contains a more sophisticated
allusion to the other name of Delos. There is some similarity to the naming of the tiny island of
Anaphe, so called in Apollonius because Apollo revealed it to the Argonauts (Arg. 4.171118); the
episode was treated by Callimachus in the first book of the Aitia.
the island sees the suffering Leto, she stopped (if the damaged text of
v. 200 is correctly read), and if we are concerned to identify a moment
when Asterie became Delos, this moment of drama has as good a claim
as any; now is the time of the change, as foretold in the poem, when golden
Leto comes to ( % ) the island (v. 39) and the island offers Apollo
ground on which to be born (v. 51). Certainly, the swans announce the
gods imminent birth by circling around Delos (v. 251), the first time that
name has been used since the moment of transition was foreshadowed in
v. 40,43 the nymphs which greet the birth are Delian, and the island itself
knows what has happened: from me will Apollo be called Delian (vv. 268
9). The islands last words, no longer shall I be a wanderer (273), are, as
we have seen, tantamount to no longer will my name be Asterie.
More explicitly explanatory is the account in vv. 27895 of the offerings
of the Hyperboreans sent to Delos, which commemorate the first offerings
brought by three maidens and some accompanying young men (2914).44
Callimachus is here following Herodotus (4.335), though not very closely,
for he has telescoped two theoriai into one and changed the names of those
involved; he may well have other prose sources also (and there was clearly no
canonical version), but the effect is of sacred history and geography seen
from a distance, without the involved empathy of the archaic hymnist.
Callimachus remains the scholarly collector of names and places. In both
Herodotus (4.33.2) and Callimachus, the Hyperborean offerings are first
received by the people of Dodona; Callimachus seizes the opportunity to
rework a famous Homeric passage and to refer to a remarkable oracular
method using sounds from a bronze cauldron at Dodona:
d . \'5 J #% ) #
)
\'Z ' '$%! $) & 'X < ##
% $%C 2 &
' ! .
Zeus, Dordonan lord, Pelasgian one who lives far away, ruler of wintry Dodona,
around you live the Selloi, prophets with unwashed feet who sleep on the ground.
(Iliad 16.2335)
\'Z J #%
#
9 #b Z% '!)
# ! ( &% 4 #9.
The Pelasgians of Dodona first of all receive [these offerings] which come from far
away, they who couch on the earth, servants of the unquiet cauldron. (Callimachus,
Hymn to Delos 2846)
43 Cf. Bing (1988) 125. On the change of name cf. also Depew (1998) 17980.
44 Cf. Bruneau (1970) 3848 for an account of the various traditions. Callimachus also treated the route
of the Hyperborean offerings in the Aitia (fr. 186 = 97M); this broken text seems quite close to the
version of the Hymn, but unfortunately not enough survives for what would be a most interesting
comparison.
The very mannerism of the rewriting # ! is clearly invented to map
exactly on to the Homeric ! ; in Callimachus, the offerings come
to Dodona from far away, whereas in Homer, Dodona itself is far away
establishes poetic !, which is, after all, Apollos gift, as the focus of our
interest. A related instance concerns the passage of the offerings through
Euboea. Herodotus has them crossing the Melian Gulf and then being
relayed from city to city until they reach Karystos at the far south of the
island; Callimachus has them crossing from Malis to the fertile Lelantian
plain of the Abantes [the aboriginal inhabitants of Euboea], which lay
between Chalcis and Eretria on the western side of the island. Callimachus
may be taking this as the first stop on the Herodotean route, but he clearly
wants us to recall that Apollo himself had stood on this plain (h.Apollo
21920), which thus acquires special significance in Apolline geography.
Moreover, the principal Homeric source for the Abantes is Iliad 2.53645
from the Catalogue of Ships, a passage which actually lists the principal
cities of Euboea. Callimachus is thus more suo glossing Herodotus account
by reference to Homer.
The principal difference between Callimachus hymns as a group and
most other hymns (in all metres) which survive from the Hellenistic period
lies in the importance to the former of extended mythic narrative. Whether
it be Isidorus hymns to Isis or the Egyptian hymns to her at Philae,45
Cleanthes stoic Hymn to Zeus, the brief Epidaurian hymn to Pan,46 or even
a Greek hymn to the sun in stichic lyrics from ancient Iran (SGO 12/03/01),
the principal focus is always upon asserting and celebrating the gods powers
and marvellous deeds, affiliations with other gods, and benefactions to
mankind. Even the rather different hexameter representation of a lyric
festival song in honour of Aphrodite and Adonis in Theocritus 15 has no
narrative to speak of.47 This is not, of course, to say that narrative is
absent from cultic poetry of the Hellenistic period we have already noted
the quite extensive narrative of Limenios paean to Pythian Apollo (above
p. 358) but rather to stress that there is no real point of departure in what
survives of contemporary cultic poetry for Callimachus complex and witty
narratives; that the world was, however, full of hexameter compositions in
honour of gods, places, and great men is something which we cannot doubt.
The double impulse to Callimachus extended hymnic narratives comes
from the longer Homeric Hymns and the great religious lyric poetry of the
classical period, notably that of Pindar. The only principal exceptions to the
45 Cf. Zabkar (above n. 1) 46 Cf. FurleyBremer (2001) ii 1928.

47 On this song cf. Hunter (1996b) 12338.
general position outlined in the previous paragraph are the longer mythic
hymns of Theocritus, Idylls 22 and 24, and it is striking that here too the
Homeric Hymns and Pindar are among the foremost models.48 One may
indeed debate, as with Callimachus, just how untypical, say, Pindars hymns
and paeans themselves were for the classical age,49 but of their importance
for Callimachus there is no doubt. Although the Theogony is the principal
intertext for the Hymn to Zeus,50 it was Pindar whose collected Hellenistic
edition began with a hymn to Zeus. Pindar is, of course, a major source for
the narrative of the Hymn to Delos,51 and one which already showed one
way of rewriting the Homeric Hymn to Apollo; the very idea of a hymn *
\# derives indeed some of its substance from Pindars religious poetry,
in which (e.g.) C; * \# would be a standard Hellenistic title
for one of Pindars paeans.52 It is, in any case, in Pindars hymns and paeans
where Callimachus would have found extensive hymnic praise of islands,
and much of their mythology.53 When, at the beginning of his poem,
Callimachus declares that Delos wishes to receive pride of place (
%) from the Muses (vv. 45), this should (inter alia) be understood
as a generic assertion: hexameter poems on the glories and antiquities of
islands may have been nothing new, but a Homeric hymn was.
2 the dialect of kings

In Theocritus Idyll 15 Gorgo and Praxinoa, two Syracusan women resident
in Alexandria, visit the royal palace to see the festival of Adonis which is
being staged by Arsinoe, the wife and sister of Ptolemy II Philadelphus, in
honour of their dead mother, the now deified Berenice.54 When the women
reach the palace, their admiring comments about the displayed tapestries
celebrating the Adonis story are apparently overheard by another member
of the crowd, who makes his feelings plain; he, however, then gets more
than he bargained for:
J.
C C;) 5 :C
% )
5 _ ( &9 ( C :.
F $ C +%( F $C ' )
:$!C) $(. %
! C ..
48 Cf. Hunter (1996b) 1113, 4676, above, pp. 2057.

49 Cf. e.g. Rutherford (2001) 1768, FurleyBremer (2001) i 11213.
50 Cf. HunterFuhrer (2002) 1679. 51 Cf. Bing (1988) 96110.
52 Cf. Rutherford (2001) 1501. 53 Cf. Paean 4 (Keos), Paean 6 (Aegina).
54 Arsinoes death is variously placed in 270 or 268 by modern scholars, cf. Hunter (2003b) 4, with
bibliography, below n. 82; Idyll 15 is thus set in the late 270s.
, ' C F , C & $ (
#%) T K$# &, ( 9(##)
# h ;') - C;! # .
q^W>< Q%% C) 'Q%) &($ ##%)
$
U % # (%'% x.
J. T)
; 'X ) * # *;
%( %% U <$% (%% .
F *' ) = *X . )
F a ## . J #%% ## )
'%' 'C M %) ') 5 \ %%.
8 Q) 0 #' ) p / , K)
# +
. &# . 4 &(M".
(Theocritus 15.8095)
PRAXINOA Lady Athena, what workers they must have been that made
them, and what artists that drew the lines so true! The figures stand and turn so
naturally, theyre alive not woven. What a clever thing is man! And look at him;
how marvellous he is, lying in his silver chair with the first down spreading from
the temples, thrice-loved Adonis, loved even in death.
STRANGER My good women, do stop that ceaseless chattering perfect
turtle-doves, theyll bore one to death with all their broad vowels.
PRAXINOA Gracious, where does this gentleman come from? And what
business is it of yours if we do chatter? Give orders where youre master. Its Syra-
cusans youre ordering about, and let me tell you were Corinthians by descent,
like Bellerophon. We talk Peloponnesian, and I suppose Dorians may talk Dorian.
Lady Persephone, let us have only the one man in power over us. I dont care about
you dont waste your time on me.
In this remarkable passage,55 the annoyed gentleman seems, unless there has
been interference with the transmitted text on a large scale,56 to speak the
same kind of Doric-flavoured Greek as the women. In thus calling attention
to the possibility of unrepresented linguistic difference within the textual
representation of speech, the passage speaks directly (and self-reflexively)
to the kind of literary mimesis offered by the Syracusan Theocritus; as
the women admire the lifelike realism of the tapestries, we are forced to
confront our own interpretive models for dealing with the characters of a
lifelike mime.57
55 There is an acute discussion in J. Burton, Theocrituss Urban Mimes (Berkeley 1995) 5862, though
it will become clear that I differ radically from her interpretation (p. 61) of the linguistic problem.
Much recent bibliography on this poem can be traced through Burton, Hunter (1996b) chapter
4, and J. D. Reed, Arsinoes Adonis and the Poetics of Ptolemaic Imperialism TAPA 130 (2000)
31951.
56 Dover (1971) 207.
57 Cf. Hunter (1996b) 11719. On the linguistic nature of the womens speech cf. Hunter (1996a) 1527
and (1996b) 1203. How silly Praxinoas claim that she and her friend speak in the Peloponnesian
The story of the Greek language from the fourth century bc on is the
story of the steady spread of a common language (the koine), based upon
the dialect of Athens, accompanied by a corresponding decline in the use
of local dialects.58 The rapidity of this decline is difficult to gauge, as the
language of both public and private inscriptions, our principal source of evi-
dence, and that of real speech do not necessarily develop at the same speed.
Be that as it may, third-century inscriptions reveal, in fact, how strongly
Doric forms of all types held on against the common tide,59 and there is no
reason to doubt that Syracuse, in particular, and Sicily and Magna Graecia,
in general, were through the third century bc the sites of flourishing dialec-
tal culture and self-conscious pride about the Doric literary heritage. As for
Alexandria, it may be worth noting that inscriptions show a very marked
survival of dialect in Cyrene,60 for important members of the Alexandrian
intellectual elite, including Callimachus and Eratosthenes, came from this
flourishing kingdom to the west; so, too, Doric name forms persist both
among Cyrenean communities and the Alexandrian socio-political elite
until a fairly late date.61 Nevertheless, Doric is clearly the marked member
of the linguistic set, i.e. where they appear, Doric features call attention to
themselves amidst the ever-rising tide of the koine. This passage of Theocri-
tus Idyll 15, which seems to bear (a special kind of ) witness to a contem-
porary consciousness of and self-consciousness about linguistic difference,
presumably fostered by the growth of the koine, perhaps then also hints at
what is otherwise largely unattested: although we have a lot of evidence for
third-century scholarly interest in dialectology and a growing recognition
of the broader groupings of types of Greek, we have no explicit witness
to a recognition by language-users themselves, however scholarly, of the
manner is supposed to sound is a difficult question: the dialectal differences between each Doric-
speaking city in the Peloponnese could still be remarked upon by Strabo (8.1.2), writing in the
time of Augustus. Praxinoas adverbial form in % apes the dialectological classificatory style, but
there is perhaps no more reason to grant authority to it than to her equally sweeping, and equally
stylised, condemnation of Egyptians as muggers in v. 48. Moreover, although Syracuse was indeed
originally a Corinthian foundation (cf. Thucyd. 6.3.2, 7.57), it is at best unclear whether anyone in
the third century would have observed an important similarity between the language of the two cities
(cf. Buck (1955) 14); our knowledge of the language of Syracuse is, however, exiguous.
58 For a helpful and brief account cf. G. Horrocks, Greek. A History of the Language and its Speakers
(London 1997) 3270.
59 Cf. V. Bubenk, Hellenistic and Roman Greece as a Sociolinguistic Area (Amsterdam 1989).
60 Bubenk (previous note) 78 claims that of seventeen third-century public and private inscriptions
from Cyrene, only one shows koine influence, whereas twenty-five out of forty-four public inscrip-
tions on Cos, the island where Philadelphus was born and with which Theocritus seems to have had
very important links, show some koine features. Cf. also C. Dobias-Lalou, Dialecte et koine dans
les inscriptions de Cyrenaique Verbum 10 (1987) 2950.
61 Cf. W. Clarysse, Ethnic Diversity and Dialect among the Greeks of Hellenistic Egypt in A. M. F. W.
Verhoogt and S. P. Vleeming (eds.), The Two Faces of Graeco-Roman Egypt (Leiden 1998) 113.
growth of koine and the concomitant weakening of the local dialects.62 It
is, however, not difficult to see the flourishing dialectological and glosso-
graphical industries of the third century i.e. the scholarly identification
and collection of words allegedly peculiar to a particular (usually relatively
small) area as themselves implicit witnesses to such a recognition.63
In asserting her right to speak Doric, Praxinoa makes her accent and/or
dialect a political issue: freedom of speech (parrhesia), one of the most
potent ideological banners of classical democratic Athens, that right of any
male citizen to say what they think and to address the sovereign assembly,
is here rewritten as the right, even for women, to keep their own dialect
and/or accent under the protective and benevolent absolute rule of Ptolemy
(the one). Here, Theocritus works through Homeric allusion. In Book 2
of the Iliad Agamemnons testing of the troops backfires spectacularly
when they take up his suggestion that everyone should go home with great
alacrity. Odysseus, however, saves the day, but only just. Here is how Homer
describes Odysseus intervention with the ordinary troops (demos):
p ' C c '4$ C .' K' 9
( C Q)
, %4" #(%% #4%% Q"
'
C) & z% .## .$ )
t % *%) %b 'C &
# .#)
3 C #" 3 C 9$#.
( 9%# Q% ' C C;!U
& , #$U P %)
P 9%# Q) H ' =
$ ( & $#4
%
C -'X %) l %% 9$# Q"%.
But whenever he saw a commoner and found him shouting, he would strike him
with the sceptre and berate him, saying: Friend, sit quiet and listen to what others
tell you, your superiors you are a coward and a weakling, of no account either in
war or in counsel. We cannot all be kings here, every one of the Achaians. Having
many masters is a bad idea; there must be one master, one king, the man endowed
by the son of devious-minded Kronos with the sceptre and the ways of law, to
make judgements for his people. (Iliad 2.198206, trans. M. Hammond, adapted)
In Theocritus, it is in the mouth of one of the ordinary people (very
ordinary indeed) that this justification of absolute rule resonates; Ptolemy
himself could not have put it better. The direct link which these Homeric
verses make between the power of Zeus and the power of the king picks up
62 The remarks of the Platonic Socrates at Cratylus 418bc on alleged changes within Attic speech
illustrate a rather different point, but suggest the kind of observations I have in mind.
63 Cf. in general K. Latte, Kleine Schriften (Munich 1968) 64966, and E. Dettori, Filita Grammatico,
Testimonianze e frammenti (Rome 2000) 1949. Theocritus 12.1016 is another important witness
here.
one of the most common ideas of Alexandrian encomiastic poetry (cf. above,
p. 353 on Callimachus Hymn to Zeus), but does so from the ironised distance
of the mime. Moreover, these Homeric verses precede the most famous
ancient scene of the denial of free speech, Odysseus physical and verbal
attack upon the hideously ugly Thersites (the Reckless One), who had
dared to criticise Agamemnon; in Theocritus, however, all that democratic
energy is turned to the service of the king, in a provocative display of willing
submission.64
The obvious humour of Theocritus Homeric rewriting should not stop
us asking about the place of language-marking at the Ptolemaic court itself.
For a dynasty which traced its ancestry back to the greatest Dorian hero
of them all, Heracles (cf. Theocritus 17.267), and (through the supposed
settlement of the Argive Temenids in Macedonia) to the Argive royal house,
Dorian traditions were crucially important. Thus, for example, in the
Encomium of Ptolemy Philadelphus the speech of the island of Philadel-
phus birth, Cos, establishes a link between the future king and the Dorian
pentapolis centred on Knidos; although the relevant verses (vv. 6670) are
unfortunately obscure and perhaps corrupt, it is clear that the importance
given to this Dorian centre in Theocritus Encomium replaces the Ionian
festival on Delos which is described in Theocritus principal model text,
the archaic Homeric Hymn to Apollo. Just as the Ionian traditions appealed
to the Delian patrons of the archaic singer, so Theocritus will have judged
his audience well in appealing to Dorian traditions, and in fact we find this
Dorian heritage of the Ptolemies still appealed to at the end of the third
century by Dorian Greek cities needing royal help.65
One of the poems on the Milan papyrus of Posidippus of Pella
(P.Mil.Vogl. VIII 309) celebrates the chariot victories of the Ptolemaic
house;66 the epigram is imagined as inscribed upon, and thus spoken by,
an image of Philadelphus:
[] 5 9%# C>#Q
/
x% ZU
P X O [J]# $ Z$) a
$e[
]) C^' ) 'Q 'X 5U
, , , #) &##C V (67
P# $ x) .
64 How provocative Theocritus rewriting of Homer is can be seen from the fact that Iliad 2.204 is the
only verse which Theophrastus oligarchic man remembers (Characters 26.2).
65 See the decree of Xanthos, SEG xxxviii (1988) 1476.
66 For Posidippus hippika in general cf. Fantuzzi (2003), (2005) and below, pp. 393403.
67 For the text cf. R. Fuhrer apud H. Bernsdorff, Gottinger Forum Altertumswiss. 5 (2002) 39, which
slightly modifies M. Gronewald, ZPE 137 (2001) 5.
We were the first three kings to win on our own the chariot race at Olympia, my
parents and I. I am one of them, Ptolemys namesake, son of Berenice, of Eordean
stock, and my two parents. To my fathers great glory I add my own, but that my
mother won a chariot victory as a woman, this is something great. (Posidippus 88
AB, trans. Austin (adapted))
This Philadelphus speaks with a markedly Doric flavour, as also do
Berenices horses in another of the new epigrams (87 AB). We have more
than enough poems on the royal house to show that royal themes did not
necessarily have to be Doricised (the surviving fragment of Theocritus
own poem on Berenice shows no Doric colour), and that, conversely, Doric
colouring does not necessarily mean a Ptolemaic resonance. Moreover, the
Doric colour of the epigram could be put down to a generic position-
ing within the tradition of epinician poetry for athletic victories (Pindar,
Bacchylides etc.), where the dominant dialectal colour was that of Doric
lyric, and we should, moreover, freely admit puzzlement as to why some
third-century poems are written in a Doricising language.68 Nevertheless,
Praxinoas linking of Doric speech and Ptolemaic power, within the setting
of the Alexandrian palace, begins now to look more complex than previ-
ously imagined; her comic right to speak the same language as the royal
family is itself a result of the blessings of Ptolemaic rule.
In the new epigram, Philadelphus proudly declares himself nursling of
Eordaia (an important province of central Macedonia), and it is this com-
bination of Doric language and Macedonian heritage which calls attention
to itself. Whether or not the Macedonian language for which we have
painfully little evidence was a form of Greek has been much discussed, but
it is clear that its Greek affiliations are to west Greek and Aeolian dialects.69
A recently published defixio (curse tablet) from Pella, from the first half
of the fourth century, is certainly in a Greek of west Greek (i.e. Doric)
type.70 We cannot, of course, be sure that this text, or its author, were
(in any important sense) Macedonian, but if we were to speculate for a
moment that some memory, if not in fact knowledge, of a believed affinity
68 Cf. the remarks of A. Kerkhecker, Zum neuen hellenistischen Weihepigramm aus Pergamon ZPE
86 (1991) 2734, and A. Sens, Doricisms in the new and old Posidippus in Acosta-Hughes-
KosmetatouBaumbach (2003) 6583.
69 Useful summary in J. M. Hall, Contested Ethnicities: Perceptions of Macedonia within Evolving
Definitions of Greek Identity in I. Malkin (ed.), Ancient Perceptions of Greek Ethnicity (Cambridge,
Mass. 2001) 15986.
70 Cf. L. Dubois, Une tablette de malediction de Pella: sagit-il du premier texte macedonien REG 108
(1995) 1907, E. Voutiras, \@>W<>`SWs>< n;0>@. Marital Life and Magic in Fourth Century
Pella (Amsterdam 1998) 2034, C. Brixhe, Un nouveau champ de la dialectologie grecque: le
Macedonien in A. C. Cassio (ed.), = \(# . Atti del III Colloquio Internazionale di
Dialettologia Greca (Naples 1999) 4169.
between the local dialects of Macedonia and Doric speech had survived
through to the Ptolemaic court, then, as the language of both Argos and
Macedonia, Doric would indeed have been marked in a particularly pow-
erful way at the court. Its otherness marks it as the preserver of genuine
Greek tradition, and in particular of the rightful claim of the Ptolemies to
be the heirs of Heracles and Alexander.
If this analysis is even remotely on the right lines, then we may see
reflected in Posidippus poem an act of historical reconstruction, operative
at the level of public ideology, which bears a significant resemblance to the
recuperative and historical operations which dominated the scholarship and
literature of third-century Alexandria. Whereas the Macedonian elite had
whatever the nature of their local dialects for at least a century adopted
the Attic koine in their push for international prestige and power, and it
was this standard language which Alexanders armies carried throughout
the world, when indicators of continuity and genuineness were needed, it
was to now fading linguistic markers that they and their poets turned. The
use of a Doricising language is thus a politically and culturally charged act
of repetition. It must be stressed (again) that this is not a matter of writing
in Macedonian. Posidippus Ptolemy speaks a language which subsumes
local traditions into a distinctive, but (as far as we can tell) not specifically
localised, linguistic mimesis of Greek heroic culture. Praxinoas claim to
share in such a culture may seem inherently absurd, and this would be in
keeping with the mimic context in which it is set, but in fact she reflects both
Ptolemys Macedonian heritage and his claims to be the standard-bearer of
Greek culture.
3 posidippus and the ideology of kingship

Our knowledge of the encomiastic poetry of the Ptolemaic period has been
greatly enriched by the recent publication of PMil.Vogl. VIII 309, contain-
ing some one hundred and ten new epigrams; it is now widely held that
these are all the work of Posidippus of Pella. Among other things, these
epigrams show ever more clearly how different poets carved out special
areas of encomium with which to support the claims to power and influ-
ence of different monarchs. For Posidippus, as seen both in the poems
already known and in the poems of the Milan papyrus, a very particular
area of specialisation seems to have been in themes connected with the
female figures of the Ptolemaic house, whose importance in contempo-
rary encomium was already known from Callimachus Victoria Berenices
(above pp. 835). Despite their importance in eastern kingdoms, with the
exception of a few important figures connected with archaic tyrants71 or
the recent history of the Macedonian royal house (Olympias and Eurydice,
both warrior queens), queens had hardly ever been crucial figures in the
theatre of Greek political power. If Hellenistic monarchs wished to rule
by qualities of character rather than position,72 then queens would appear
to be difficult subjects for encomium. Royal charisma was propagated and
understood mainly as martial or agonistic ', proven by success which
could be attributed to bravery and strength and cleverness and (of course)
the gods favour.73 Already in archaic and classical Greece, the principal are-
nas for the winning of personal kudos were in battle and athletic contests;
military victory was, of course, perceived as one of the most self-evident
proofs of the qualities and claims of Hellenistic royalty, but the arena of war
was, with very rare exceptions (such as, perhaps, Arsinoe and Berenice II),74
off limits for women. It is for this reason that victory in the races of the
great Panhellenic festivals assumed such importance for queens who wished
to spread their fame and prove their power.
Seven (7882 and 878 AB) of the eighteen Hippika (i.e. epigrams com-
memorating victories in equestrian contests) on the Milan papyrus are
dedicated to Ptolemaic victories, and all but one (88 AB) celebrate the vic-
tories of two female members of the royal house, Berenice I and another
Berenice who could be Berenice II, the honorand of Callimachus Victoria
Berenices, or perhaps more likely Berenice the Syrian75 ; victories of other
(past and present) members of the royal house are also mentioned in these
poems, but in the final hippikon Ptolemy II himself declares the agonis-
tic success of Berenice I to be a marvel exceeding all others. Beyond the
Hippika, four of the six Anathematika, i.e. dedicatory epigrams, concern
dedications to Arsinoe II, Ptolemy IIs divinised sister and wife, and two
of these (37 and 39 AB) refer to a temple of Arsinoe; this is certainly in the
71 Cf. C. Catenacci, Il tiranno e leroe: per un archeologia del potere nella Grecia antica (Milan 1996)
1608.
72 A. E. Samuel, The Ptolemies and Ideology of Kingship, in P. Green (ed.), Hellenistic History and
Culture (Berkeley 1993) 192; cf. also O. Murray, Aristeas and Ptolemaic kingship JThS 18 (1967)
3539. The definition of 9%# in the Suda (9 147 Adler) is commonly believed to derive from a
Hellenistic source: it is neither descent nor legitimacy which gives monarchies to men, but the ability
to command an army and to handle affairs competently (cf. Polybius 11.34.1516 on Antiochus III).
73 Cf. Kurke (1993) 132. 74 See below, pp. 3802.
75 The editors of the Milan papyrus proposed to identify the Berenice quoted at 78.13, 79.1, and 82.1
AB with Berenice II, the daughter of Magas of Cyrene and wife of Ptolemy III, whose Nemean
victory in a chariot race was celebrated by Callimachus. Dorothy Thompson, Posidippus, Poet of
the Ptolemies, in Gutzwiller (2005) has now argued attractively for Berenice the Syrian, daughter
of Ptolemy II and Arsinoe I and sister of Ptolemy III: after the Second Syrian War she was married
to Antiochus II and was killed when her husband died in 246.
case of 39 AB and very probably in the case of 3776 the temple of Arsinoe
Zephyritis, which is also the subject of two previously known poems of
Posidippus (116 and 119 AB). For Arsinoe, whose victories in three different
chariot categories at a single Olympic festival are briefly mentioned in one
of the Hippika, Posidippus chose an encomiastic strategy different from
that which he used for the two Berenices, but one which seems similarly
coherent and appropriate to what we know of Arsinoe as a political and
religious figure.
The first dedicatory epigram for Arsinoe (36 AB) is also the first of the
section of Anathematika on the Milan papyrus. This may be the result
of the fact that it includes a description of a dream and thus makes a
natural transition from the preceding section of Oionoskopika poems about
bird omens; moreover, the final oionoskopikon (35 AB) concerns favourable
omens for Alexander, and Alexander is also important for the understanding
of Poem 36. In this poem, Arsinoe, armed with a spear and shield, appears
in a dream to a Macedonian girl called Hegeso, and seems to want the
sweat from her ] ( busy toils wiped away with a linen cloth
(9Q%% 9 ); in response, Hegeso dedicates a strip (
%) of
white material, which is very probably to be understood as representing
the white diadem which is prominent in the iconography and the legend
of Alexander the Great:77
C;%
) % ' %#' & %
9Q%% . 9 C &, W$()
H" %Q) #) C A ]
M% #$b e'
i # ) ] $% (U
o () `#(' # ) ! 'Q *!4)

) 4! 5# !$% %(U
1 'X % * 5% , # $<!>
%
67 %O 0[.
To you, Arsinoe, to provide a cool breeze through its folds, is dedicated this scarf
of fine linen from Naucratis. With it, beloved one, you wished in a dream to
wipe the pleasant perspiration after a pause from busy toils. Thus you appeared,
Brother-loving one, holding in your hand the point of a spear and on your arm,
Lady, a hollow shield. And at your request the strip of white material was dedicated
by the maid Hegeso of Macedonian stock. (Posidippus 36 AB, trans. Austin)
76 Cf. below, pp. 3845.

77 This new interpretation of
% (and of 9 ) has been proposed by Stephens (2005).
The fact that the words used by Posidippus for the piece of material are hapaxes in this meaning,
and # $! (# $ on the papyrus;
' C W. Lapini, Lexis 20 (2002) 48) a complete
hapax, suggests a strong technical flavour, which might be justified as a reference to the garb of the
Ptolemaic monarchs; ]
in the sense of ]MQ is also attested here for the first time.
That the appearance of an armed Arsinoe refers to her personal interest in
the struggle of the cities of mainland Greece against Antigonos Gonatas,
an interest most famously associated with the so-called Chremonidean War
(cf. below, p. 381), was already suggested by the first editors of the Milan
papyrus.78
The image of a strong Arsinoe who was the real power behind the throne
of her weak husband, particularly in foreign policy, is a familiar one in
modern accounts of the early Ptolemies; that image is almost certainly at
least exaggerated,79 but behind it lies the reality of Ptolemaic propaganda
and image-making which did indeed give a significant role to the kings
sister-wife,80 and there is no reason to doubt that court-poets took up the
theme with enthusiasm. The most famous witness to this image-making
is SIG I.4345 (= Staatsvertrage des Altertums III.476 Schmitt), a decree
by the Athenian Chremonides of 268/7 which formalised the Athenian
alliances with Areus I of Sparta and Ptolemy II, and which in essence
amounted to a declaration of war against Antigonos. The decree states that
Ptolemy had undertaken the war, &#Q 5
5
&' # % in accordance with the intention of his ancestors
and his sister. It is not implausible that Arsinoe had in fact influenced
her brother-husband, particularly in a desire to secure Macedonia for her
son by Lysimachus (also called Ptolemy),81 but what is important here, of
course, is not what actually happened, but what image is projected by the
decree. That Ptolemy himself at least approved the wording of the decree
is clear, if from nothing else, from the fact that Arsinoe had been dead for
at least some months, if not for a couple of years, when the decree was
promulgated.82
If this indeed is the background of Posidippus epigram, then its political
subtlety emerges with great clarity. As it is divinities who normally appear
in dreams, the epigram confirms the divine status which Arsinoe probably
enjoyed even before her death. It is likely that the queen probably did not live
78 Cf. BastianiniGallazzi (2001) 151.
79 Cf. S. M. Burstein, Arsinoe II Philadelphus: a Revisionist View, in W. L. Adams and E. N. Borza
(eds.), Philip II, Alexander the Great, and the Macedonian Heritage (LanhamNew YorkLondon
1982) 197212. For the more traditional view cf. e.g. Hauben (1983).
80 Cf. R. A. Hazzard, Imagination of a Monarchy: Studies in Ptolemaic Propaganda (Toronto 2000)
81100.
81 So, e.g., W. W. Tarn, Antigonos Gonatas (Oxford 1913) 2903; G. H. Macurdy, Hellenistic Queens
(Baltimore 1932) 1120; G. Longega, Arsinoe II (Rome 1968) 935. Will (1979) I 222, seems unnec-
essarily sceptical of the possibility of Arsinoes influence on foreign policy, whereas Heinen (1972)
97100 and 1329 essays a middle path.
82 Arsinoes death is normally dated to 270 (cf. H. Cadell, A quelle date Arsinoe II Philadelphe est-elle
decedee?, in H. Malaerts (ed.), Le Culte du souverain dans lEgypte ptolemaque au IIIe siecle avant
notre ere, Leuven 1998, 13), but the alternative of 268 has been proposed (cf. E. Grzybeck, Du
calendrier macedonien au calendrier ptolemaique (Basel 1990) 10312).
to see even the outbreak of the war, in which in any case Ptolemy may well
have achieved very little, and thus her %, intention or strategy,
was not in fact realised in concrete action; for this reason, perhaps, her strat-
egy is expressed through the unreality of a dream appearance, in which the
pattern of ] ( busy labours followed by rest ($%),
which points to the certainty of victory, occurs only in the dream of a young
and pious girl. The epigram foreshadows this certain military success, for
divine appearances in dreams were considered auspicious (Arsinoes sweat
is sweet); in Poem 30 Posidippus himself uses the idea that in wartime one
should invoke the aid of sweating divinities, a statue that has perspired
what woe for the citizen and what a snowstorm of spears is on the move!
But summon the god who perspired, and he will push back the fire against
the dwellings and crops of the enemy. Hegesos prompt reaction to the
dream reciprocates Arsinoes prompt assistance.
Immediately after the reference to Arsinoes intention, the decree of
Chremonides presents Ptolemy as acting 2X 6^##4
# $ , for the common freedom of the Greeks. Control of the Aegean
and the Greek grain supply and fear of the ambitions of Antigonos were of
course rather more important motives,83 but here again we may see a crucial
theme of Ptolemaic propaganda, and one in which Arsinoe herself may
have been involved in the years before her death;84 her links to the Aegean
states went back to the years of her marriage to Lysimachus. The alliance of
Athens, Sparta, and Ptolemaic Egypt is presented by the decree as a defence
of the liberty of the Greek states parallel to that of Athens and Sparta
during the Persian Wars; moreover, Ptolemy I had invoked the freedom of
the Greeks in his struggles with Antigonos Monophthalmos in 315-314,85
and with him, Cassander, and Lysimachus between 310 and 308.86
War was, of course, the concern of men (Homer, Iliad 6.4903), and this
was true for gods as well, with the sole exception of Athena, who is normally
represented armed. A late source ascribes martial feats to Berenice II, who is
said to have saved her father Ptolemy II,87 and Olympias and Eurydice per-
sonally directed Macedonian military operations in the latter years of the
fourth century,88 but the dream of the armed Arsinoe, who is normally iden-
tified with Aphrodite rather than Athena, is anything but expected. It is in
83 Cf. Will (1979) I 2201. 84 Cf. A. Stewart, Faces of Power (Berkeley 1993) 2569.
85 Cf. Diod. Sic. 19.62.1. 86 Cf. Diod. Sic. 20.19.34 and 20.37.2.
87 Cf. Hyginus, Astron. 2.24. Perhaps this is the reason why she probably was called something equiv-
alent to magnanima (Catullus 66.26) by Callimachus ( ($?). On the reliability of Hyginus
information, which has been challenged in the past, see Parsons (1977) 45 and Marinone (1997) 223
n. 28.
88 Cf. E. D. Carney, Women and Monarchy in Macedonia (NormanOklahoma 2000) 1212 and 1327.
fact no less unexpected than the reference to the queen, alongside the kings
ancestors whose cult is a common feature of Hellenistic monarchies in
the decree of Chremonides, but we may be able to discern Posidippus
intention here also. We learn from a papyrus of the mid-third century89
that Ptolemy had named various streets in Alexandria after his now divine
sister-wife, with epithets indicating her different spheres of influence; we
hear of streets named for Arsinoe Basileia, Arsinoe Eleemon (Goddess of
Pity), Arsinoe Teleia (who brings things to completion), and also Arsinoe
Chalkioikos (Of the Brazen House). The only other occurrence of this last
epithet is with reference to Athena Poliouchos (protectress of the city), who
was worshipped in a temple of bronze on the acropolis at Sparta (Pausanias
3.17.13). Moreover, apart from the few isolated instances from Macedo-
nian history noted above, the Doric culture of Sparta and Argos is the only
known context for an important role for women in warfare.90 A strong
interest in Spartan traditions is a known element of Ptolemaic ideology,91
and here we should perhaps see both Ptolemaic street-naming and Posidip-
pus epigram about Arsinoes dream-appearance against the background of
the alliance between Sparta and Egypt in the early 260s.92
The word & % in the opening verse of the epigram has suggested
that Hegeso makes her dedication in the famous temple between Canopus
and the Pharos, which was built by the admiral Callicrates for the divinised
Arsinoe as Arsinoe Aphrodite Zephyritis. This temple is the subject of
two other anathematika in honour of Arsinoe; the divinised queen is called
#_$ zephyr-loving by Hedylus (HE 1843), and the promontory on
which the temple was erected is called by Posidippus himself a wind-swept
(& Z' ) breakwater of Libya facing the Italian Zephyr (116.34 AB).93
In this temple, Arsinoe was above all Euploia, the protectress of those at sea,
but she was also worshipped as Ourania, under which title she probably
exercised power over the spheres of love and marriage; certainly, in another
epigram Posidippus summons both sailors and the pure daughters of the
Greeks to worship Arsinoe Aphrodite (116.710 AB, cf. below, p. 386).94 If
89 SB 10251 Preisigke, dated to 2521.

90 Cf. F. Graf, Women, War, and Warlike Divinities ZPE 55 (1984) 24554.
91 Cf. e.g. Hunter (1996b) 14966. 92 Cf. Fraser (1972) I 238, Heinen (1972) 99.
93 That Hegesos dedication was made in the temple of Arsinoe Aphrodite was suggested by Bing
(20023) 2589. It was from the same temple that the lock of hair of Berenice II ascended through
the agency of the Zephyr, according to Callimachus fr. 110.518.
94 Cf. K. Gutzwiller, The Nautilus, the Halcyon, and Selenaia: Callimachuss Epigram 5 Pf. = 14 G.-P.
CA 11 (1992) 194209, pp. 1989. It has been attractively suggested that while sailors came to the
shrine to pray for fair sailing, the young women came in the hope of a smooth voyage on the sea of
love and marriage . . . could it be that the maiden was thinking about an armed Arsinoe Aphrodite,
even dreaming of her, because she cared about someone involved in a war, a prospective husband
perhaps?, Bing (20023) 25960, and cf. already E. Lelli, ARF 4 (2002) 22.
this very feminine goddess seems hard to reconcile with the armed Arsinoe
of Hegesos dream, we might think again of Sparta, where the temple of
Athena Chalkioikos/Poliouchos was very close by the temple containing
the statue of Aphrodite Areia95 or Aphrodite Enoplios; this striking Spartan
mixture of the female with the martial attracted the attention of more than
one Hellenistic epigrammatist,96 and perhaps it was Sparta which again
provided the model for an Arsinoe who combined a role as Aphrodite, pro-
tector of sailors, with Athenas epithet Chalkioikos and the martial bearing
which went with it.
Ptolemaic championing of the freedom of the Greeks may also help
with the third of the anathematika (38 AB), in which a freed slave-woman
dedicates to Arsinoe the cup from which she made her first libation as
a free woman; Arsinoe is here called # $ [ '$% guardian of
freedom97 or perhaps # $ [ '% who shared the freedom
(with me):98
C;%
" C [&] C ^ H' C [ [']
(# [ ] # $)
L U [. . . . .] !5 C) # $ [ '$%)
'M[ . . . .] ' C ^'[.
Epicratis thus dedicated me to Arsinoe, after she had first [drunk] from a cup [the
water] of freedom. And she said: [ ] and rejoice, [guardian?] of freedom, and receive
[. . .] as a gift from Epicratis. (Posidippus 38 AB, trans. Austin (adapted))
Of itself, there is nothing particularly striking about this dedication or its
recipient: as we have seen, Arsinoe was indeed Eleemon, she who pities;
so, too, Callimachus describes Sosibius, a Ptolemaic courtier, as .
'4" | *'
#
friendly to the people and
not forgetting the humble (fr. 384.534). Callimachus is praising Sosibius
for his attitude towards the most humble free citizens (cf. '), and it
is rather more difficult to imagine that any member of the royal court
pursued a policy of slave-emancipation.99 If, however, there is anything in
the argument outlined above about Arsinoe and the freedom of the Greek
cities, here we may perhaps not merely see Arsinoe guardian of freedom or
sharer of freedom as taking some interest in social freedom, but also recall
the goddess concern for the political freedom of the Greek cities. Against
95 Cf. Pausanias 3.17.5, A. C. Villing, Aspects of Athena in the Greek Polis: Sparta and Corinth in
A. B. Lloyd (ed.), What is a God? (LondonSwansea 1997) 819.
96 Cf. HE ii 334, J. Flemberg, Venus Armata (StockholmGoteborg 1991) 2942, E. Magnelli on Alex.
Aet. fr. 9.
97 Supplement by C. Austin. 98 Supplement by W. Lapini, ZPE 143 (2003) 46.
99 The papyri suggest in fact that the emancipation of slaves was not very common in Egypt, cf.
R. Scholl, Corpus der ptolemaischen Sklaventexte (Stuttgart 1990) i 1445.
the background of a prominent theme of Ptolemaic propaganda, Poem 38,
following hard after Poem 36 AB, which, as we have seen, allows a very
political interpretation, can be easily read as a confirmation of Arsinoes
love for all forms of liberty.
At least one further anathematikon involves this same temple of Arsinoe
Aphrodite (39 AB), and Poem 37 AB is about a lyre which is rescued by a
dolphin from the sea and then dedicated by a temple-attendant in a temple
of Arsinoe:
C;%
) % 4[]' #Q 2, ! [. . . . . . .]
M[] ' # i C C;
[
E#C [. . . .] Q &## C V[ . . .]
5 [. . . .] # $ T #([
##[. . .] *
# [
[. . .] , &'[
. ' C) [ `#](' # ) , i#% [. . . . C;]

' '[!$) .]$%$ #
#[$.
To you, Arsinoe, this lyre, which the hand . . . made to resound was brought by
Arions dolphin. With the tail he raised . . . from the wave, but when . . . that one go
on his journey through the white sea composing many various songs (?) . . . with
voice the nightingales . . . new. As an offering, O Brother-loving queen, receive
this . . . whom Arion rode/composed (?), . . . a present from . . . the guard of the
temple. (Posidippus 37 AB, trans. Austin (adapted))
It is a natural inference that the temple is on a coastline, and the first editors
cautiously speculated that we might be dealing again with the temple of
Arsinoe Aphrodite Zephyritis;100 the case for believing this can be strength-
ened. The first dolphin of Arion rescued Arion and his lyre when the poet
was forced by the crew of his ship sailing from Tarentum to Corinth to jump
into the sea; the dolphin carried Arion to Cape Taenarum.101 According to
a presumably later tradition reported by Aelian (Nat. anim. 12.45), Arion
celebrated his rescue by dedicating at Cape Taenarum a bronze statue of
himself riding a dolphin; the inscription on the statue read:
&( 5% C; =$# $e

< # # %% A!
' .
Sent by the immortals this mount saved Arion son of Kykleus from the Sicilian
sea.
100 See now Bing (20023) 261.

101 For two hypotheses on the genesis of the legend (neither especially persuasive) see J. Schamp, Sous
le signe dArion AC 45 (1976) 94120 and De C. Steures, Arions Misunderstood Votive Offering
in R. F. Docter and E. M. Moormann (eds.), Proceedings of the XVth International Congress of
Classical Archaeology (Amsterdam, July 1217, 1998), Amsterdam 1999, 3979. For the different
ancient interpretations of the legend cf. L. Inglese, La leggenda di Arione tra Erodoto e Plutarco
SemRom 5 (2002) 5582.
Aelian also quotes the opening of a thanksgiving hymn (!%4) to
Poseidon as lord of the sea, allegedly composed by Arion (= PMG 939).102
The statue was to be seen at Cape Taenarum already in Herodotus time
(1.24, cf. Pausanias 3.25.7); the origin of the inscription and the hymn are
debated the latter is usually considered to date from the end of the fifth or
from the fourth century,103 but these two texts testify that the achievement
of the dolphin was a deed ascribed to the gods of the sea. There is in what
survives of Posidippus epigram no explicit connection between Arsinoe
and the dolphin,104 but the epithet Arionios suggests a parallelism with
the past miracle: the lyre is dedicated to Arsinoe, probably by the temple-
guardian,105 because like Poseidon she is a marine god, namely Arsinoe
Aphrodite Zephyritis. Miracles like the one which happened to Arion may
still take place, if on a rather smaller scale, under the new agency of the
new sea goddess.106
The prominent position of the temple of Arsinoe Aphrodite Zephyritis
turned the goddess into the protector of the Ptolemaic fleet and maritime
empire.107 This temple is the subject of two further epigrams of Posidippus,
both known before the publication of the Milan papyrus (116 and 119 AB),
and in all of these poems we hear the poets voice almost teaching his Greek
readers about this new member of the pantheon. All dedicatory inscriptions
are intended to bestow immortal fame upon the object dedicated and the
god honoured, but Posidippus seems not merely to publicise the new cult,
but also to suggest paradigms for how the goddess should be honoured in
102 Cf. M. Mantziou, A Hymn to the Dolphins Hellenika 40 (1989) 22937, FurleyBremer (2001)
I 3726, II 37781.
103 Mainly because of its resemblance to Eur. El. 43241: cf. C. M. Bowra, Arion and the Dolphin
MH 20 (1963) 12134, to be reconsidered in the light of E. Csapo, The Dolphins of Dionysus, in
E. Csapo and M. C. Miller (eds.), Poetry, Theory, Praxis: the Social Life of Myth, Word, and Image in
Ancient Greece. Essays in Honour of W. J. Slater (Oxford 2003) 747.
104 Cf. however, W. Luppe, APF 49 (2003) 23, who integrates [" ]
in v.5.
105 At the end of v. 7 we might consider, with Bastianini and Gallazzi, , i#% [. C h ;]
which Arion might have played, if . at the beginning of the verse is corrupt and conceals a
word for lyre, or, with Luppe (n. 104) 234, , i#% [ *
() or *O], followed by the name
of the artist who manufactured the effigy of the lyre. For a different approach cf. W. Lapini, ZPE
143 (2003) 412.
106 Bing (20023) 262 suggests that the coming of the lyre to Egypt parallels the arrival of Orpheus lyre
and head on Lesbos, a legend that provided a kind of aition of the poetry of Sappho and Alcaeus: by
describing how this lyre together with the tradition it evokes came to Egypt, the poet links the
third-century shrine of Arsinoe to one of the great figures of archaic poetry from the seventh century
bc, and with him to the rich tradition of Lesbian lyric including Terpander, Sappho, and Alcaeus.
This would be a confirmation of the Ptolemies claim to be the true inheritors and guardians of the
literary legacy of Hellas (Bing (20023) 263), and as Arion had been attached to the court of the
tyrant Periander of Corinth, Arsinoe is imaginatively positioned as the successor of earlier artistic
patrons, as now a lyre an emblem of the poets art has found its way to her temple (so Stephens
(2003b) 174.
107 Cf. Robert (1966) 49.
the future. In Poem 116, for example, the properly dedicatory part occupies
vv. 16, and the poet is clearly at pains also to give a careful and informative
description of the whereabouts of the temple; the following verses offer
guidance as to who should worship at the shrine of this goddess of the sea
and of love and marriage:108
%% O ` & %

=Z$
" Q ! !)
4' #$4$ ?9Q & Z' !#4)
8 & * C @#, d$)
=##( e'Q% 9%#%%
e , C;%
=Q' |
% .
&## C 8 d $5 &$% C;')
6^##4 / ) 9 ) $ )
l C /#, ( .' U Q! $M
C e , , Q # .
Midway between the shore of Pharos and the mouth of Canopus, in the waves
visible all around I have my place, this wind-swept breakwater of Libya rich in
sheep, facing the Italian Zephyr. Here Callicrates set me up and called me the
shrine of Queen Arsinoe-Aphrodite. So then, to her who shall be named Zephyritis-
Aphrodite, come, ye pure daughters of the Greeks, and ye too toilers on the sea.
For the captain built this shrine to be a safe harbour from all the waves. (Posidippus
116 AB, trans. Austin)
It is as though the poet is here carefully prescribing (&$%) v. 7) the
names of the divinity (Arsinoe, Kypris, Aphrodite, Zephyritis). The nature
of the cult of the new divinity, when and by whom both professional
sailor and occasional traveller 109 she is to be venerated, is also indicated
in the rather similar Poems 39 and 119 AB.
## x# T 5% (
! %
) #" 6!5 C ', C;%
")

] #
) ~ a%$
$! <( 4 =##()
$# ) % (#%U C 3# 'X 'Z
%' !4I _ ## .## &4U
l ! %5 * x# '5 &
! 24% 8 $%.
Whether you are about to cross the sea in a ship or to fasten the cable from the
shore, say greetings to Arsinoe of fair sailing, invoking the reverend goddess from
108 Cf. above, pp. 3823.
109 E. Livrea, however, has suggested that 3# is rather to be understood of the voyage of life, cf.
Critica testuale ed esegesi del nuovo Posidippo in II papiro di Posidippo un anno dopo (Florence
2002) 6177, p. 73.
her temple, which was dedicated by the Samian captain Callicrates son of Boiscus,
for you, sailor, especially. And in pursuit of a fair journey other people too often
address a demand to this goddess. And that is why, whether you are heading for
dry land or the divine sea, you will find a Lady ready to listen to your prayers.
(Posidippus 39 AB, trans. Austin)

" ! `#'#$
=Q' e#(% %C e , C;%
)
~ &$% d $' &
Q! 4 =##(U
1 'X # 'Z% ! %%"
#b #%% # 5 # .
Both on land and sea make offering to this shrine of Aphrodite Arsinoe Philadel-
phus. She it was, ruling over the Zephyrian promontory, whom Callicrates, the
captain, was the first to consecrate. And she will grant safe sailing and in the midst
of the storm will make smooth the wide sea for those who entreat her. (Posidippus
119 AB, trans. Austin)
It is not only with regard to the temple of Arsinoe Aphrodite Zephyritis
that Posidippus seems to have acted as a guide to the new realities of Egypt.
Poem 115, also known before the Milan papyrus, describes the Pharos,
the famously high lighthouse erected to the west of Alexandria, between
Canopus and the city, to protect ships wishing to enter the harbour:
6^##4 %) `($ %
) . J )
<Z% %% \ M($ ='U
;* Q" % 3 P C 4%
&## ! !#8 Q#! .
!( 5( A *
Q V' C &#( C &, %'
i) Q! 'X Q Q
A: $
)
C , '( sQ$ =) ' C /(
<) J ) d, ' #.
As a saviour of the Greeks, this watchman of Pharos, O lord Proteus, was set up
by Sostratus, son of Dexiphanes, from Cnidos. For in Egypt there are no look-out
posts on a mountain, as in the islands, but low lies the breakwater where ships
take harbour. Therefore this tower, in a straight and upright line, appears to cleave
the sky from countless furlongs away, during the day, but throughout the night
quickly a sailor on the waves will see a great fire blazing from its summit. And
he may even run to the Bulls Horn, and not miss Zeus the Saviour, O Proteus,
whoever sails this way. (Posidippus 115 AB, trans. Austin)
As with the epigrams on the temple of Arsinoe, here too the poet
expresses himself in the traditional language of dedicatory inscriptions (v. 2
<Z% %% : cf. 39.4 4 =##() 116.5 =##(
e'Q%, 119.4 4 =##(), and the similarity between this
epigram and Strabos summary of the inscription on the lighthouse (17.1.6)
has in fact led to the suggestion that Posidippus epigram was actually
inscribed on the lighthouse.110 Be that as it may, here again Posidippus
adopts a didactic stance. Apart from the final couplet, which warns sailors
of the dangers of the shallow waters called the Bulls Horn, the poem jus-
tifies the lighthouse from the fact that the Egyptian coast is lower than the
Greek coastline and there are no steep mountains on which signals could
be placed. The opening and closing apostrophes to Proteus may also serve
didactic purposes. This marine divinity, who was imagined to live on the
island on which the lighthouse had been built, was a prominent example
of Greek-Egyptian interaction and appears as such (together with Helen)
in Callimachus poem for the royal courtier Sosibios; this role would be
particularly significant in a poem which otherwise appeals to the Greeks
of Egypt and draws attention to differences between Greece and Egypt
(cf. 6^##4 % at the head of v. 1111 and ;* Q"
at the head of v. 2). According to a version of the myth first found in
Lycophron (Alexandra 11527), this originally Egyptian king was believed
to have spent time in Thrace, where he married a local princess; he then
returned to Egypt in disgust at the murderous wickedness of his Thracian
children, who regularly killed visitors to the court, and settled on the island
of Pharos. The Ptolemaic court may have felt a particular sympathy for
this figure: Arsinoe herself had been born in Egypt, married to a Thracian
(Lysimachus), and finally escaped to settle in Egypt.112 Moreover, as a mas-
ter of metamorphosis, Proteus was a perfect figure under whose auspices
to describe the transformation or Hellenisation of the Egyptian coastline
into one protected by steep % and as safe for shipping as was the
Greek coast.
Principal responsibility for the lighthouse belonged to Sostratos of
Cnidos, though his exact role is unclear he may have dedicated the whole
lighthouse or just the statue of Zeus Soter, with which it was crowned.113
Sostratos was an important political figure, whose services to the islanders
110 Cf. F. Chamoux, Lepigramme de Poseidippos sur le Phare dAlexandrie, in J. Bingen, G. Cambier,
G. Nachtergael (eds.), Le monde grec. Hommages a C. Preaux (Brussels 1975) 21422, p. 221.
111 Cf. Bing (1998) 256. Choice between seeing this as a description of the whole lighthouse or merely
of the statue of Zeus on its top (cf. v. 10) remains difficult. On the first view, there will be an
aetiological flavour: the lighthouse is topped by a statue of Zeus Soter because it saves the Greeks.
112 Cf. further S. Stephens in Callimaque 2467. The island of Pharos and the temple of Arsinoe
Aphrodite were only a few kilometres apart, cf. Posidippus 116.1 AB, Fraser (1972) I 239.
113 Cf. Bing (1998) 219.
of the Aegean were not limited to the life-saving lighthouse. He received
proxenia from the Delphians, and two inscriptions in his honour survive
from Delos; the longer of these was erected because of Sostratos contin-
uous goodwill towards the islanders . . . doing and saying whatever he
could to help the islanders and his continuous good deeds and good-
will towards the islanders and King Ptolemy (OGIS 67). Sostratos is thus
a figure with more than a little in common with the admiral Callicrates
of Samos, another islander with close and continuing links to the Greek
motherland. Callicrates served as nauarch for roughly twenty years, and
received many honorific decrees and monuments in the islands;114 he was
part of Ptolemy IIs restricted circle of #, friends, and became the first
priest of the cult of the brother and sister gods.115 He had a very close
connection with Arsinoe, the protecting goddess of the Ptolemaic fleet,
and may be seen as a kind of missionary for her cult;116 this is shown not
merely by his building of the temple of Arsinoe Aphrodite, but also by
the fact that almost all the marble altar-plaques bearing the text C;%

`#'#$, and thus testifying to the diffusion of her cult, come from
Ptolemaic ports,117 and perhaps also by the fact that various new Ptole-
maic ports were named Arsinoe.118 In celebrating Callicrates and Sostratos
alongside Arsinoe, Posidippus was thus making a very political choice of
encomiastic strategy. Here again, we may sense in a way the background of
the Chremonidean War. The very low profile kept by Ptolemaic forces in
this conflict shows clearly that, despite the ringing claims to be protecting
Greek freedom, Ptolemaic interest was concerned with the maintenance and
strengthening of Ptolemaic control of maritime commerce: the proairesis
of Arsinoe for the freedom of the Greeks could then be considered as
a manifestation of her preoccupation with the maintenance of the Ptole-
maic naval empire. The Arsinoe of the decree of Chremonides is no one
other than Arsinoe-Aphrodite.119 These two manifestations of Arsinoe, we
may add, were also those which most interested Callicrates, Sostratos, and
Posidippus.
Posidippus, a native of Pella in Macedonia, seems to have retained close
links throughout his life with mainland Greece. An Asclepiades and a
114 Cf. Hauben (1970) 4650.
115 Cf. W. Clarysse and G. Van der Veken, The Eponymous Priests of Ptolemaic Egypt (Leiden 1983) 45.
116 Cf. Robert (1966) 208.
117 Cf. T. B. Mitford, Contributions to the epigraphy of Cyprus ArchPap 13 (1939) 1338, pp. 28
32. Robert (1966) showed that these plaques were very likely used to personalise the sand altars
prescribed in POxy. 2465, fr. 2.i. 1819 for the cult of Arsinoe; he also argued that these sand altars
symbolised the goddess role as Aphrodite Zephyritis.
118 Cf. Hauben (1970) 67. 119 So Hauben (1983) 117; cf. also Robert (1966) 2012.
Posidippus, perhaps the two epigrammatists, appear in a list of Delphic
proxenoi of 2765 or 2732, and a Posidippus appears as &! in
a Delian inscription to be dated after 279. The poet certainly appears
on a list of Delphic proxenoi on an inscription of the Aetolian League
from 2632,120 and his Macedonian homeland and the Greek mainland
and the islands are celebrated in the famous elegy (118 AB) which was
perhaps to act as a sphragis for a collection of his poems; in this poem,
the walls of Pipleian Thebes (vv. 78) are perhaps to be identified with
Macedonian Dion, or even with Pella, if the reference is not in fact to
Thebes in Boeotia.121 What is particularly striking, however, is the empha-
sis upon mainland Greece and Macedonia in poems honouring the Ptole-
maic house: Posidippus repeatedly refers to the Macedonian ethnicity of
Berenice II (or Berenice the Syrian)122 and of Berenike I in the context of
their victories at the Isthmian games and at Olympia (Poem 82.3 and 87.2,
respectively); he makes Ptolemy himself celebrate his Eordean stock (88.4,
cf. above pp. 3756), and the final apostrophe of the epigram summariz-
ing all Ptolemaic Olympic victories, & ' . . . 0[] celebrate,
O ye Macedonians (78.1314), seems to make all Berenices citizens into
Macedonians.123 This Macedonian note is neither so loud nor so tri-
umphalist in other Ptolemaic encomiastic poetry,124 and in Posidippus it
is accompanied by a poetic geography which is very focused upon Greece
and Macedonia, even where the subject is essentially Egyptian. There is
here, for example, a very striking contrast with Callimachus.125 When the
latter celebrates the Nemean victory of Berenice or the Nemean and Isth-
mian victories of Sosibios, he does not describe the contests themselves,
but rather concentrates on the reception the victors received in Egypt.126
Posidippus, on the other hand, describes details of the contest (79 AB),
repeatedly refers to the onlookers as Macedonians (78.14 AB) or Greeks of
the local area (87.2 AB: J%T), or even transports other members of the
royal family to the scene of a Ptolemaic victory, thus offering his readers
a sort of royal family photo in the traditional settings of the Panhellenic
competitions:
120 The relevant inscriptions are FdD iii.3, 192.9; IG xi.2, 226 B.5 and IG ix.12 , 17A24; for a brief
analysis cf. Fraser (1972) II 796, nn. 445.
121 Cf. H. Lloyd-Jones, JHS 83 (1963) 857; that the reference is to Pella has been suggested by Colin
Austin.
122 Cf. above n. 75.
123 Cf. J. Bingen, Posidippe: le poete et les princes, in Un poeta ritrovato: Posidippo di Pella (Giornata
di studio: Milano, 23 novembre 2001), Milano 2002, 58.
124 Of particular interest is Callimachus, Hymn to Delos 1668. 125 Cf. Stephens (2005).
126 Cf. Stephens (2005).
8 'X [. . .] 0 # C;[][][]$
5' , J [4 % ], Q%C ['
%b J[#] []".
[Pirenes] holy water admired the [. . .] Macedonian child near the citadel of
Corinth, together with her father Ptolemy. (Posidippus 82.35 AB)
There are other indications also of Posidippus particular focus. When
Hedylus of Samos (or Athens) wrote an epigram on the temple of Aphrodite
Zephyritis (HE 184352), his concern was a curious image of the Egyptian
god Bes; Posidippus, as we have seen, is rather concerned with connecting
the new cult to the traditional Greek cult of the marine Aphrodite. So, too,
though Posidippus devotes so much space to Callicrates of Samos and the
cult of Arsinoe Aphrodite Zephyritis, he makes no mention of the temple
of Isis and Anubis which the same Callicrates dedicated on behalf of (2)
Ptolemy II and Arsinoe.127 If Callicrates interest in Egyptian cult was not
shared by Posidippus, there is no doubt that admiral and poet were very
close in their support for the links between the Ptolemaic house and the
Graeco-Macedonian motherland; both not merely moved between Greece
and Egypt, but tried to bind them together, by integrating their adoptive
homeland into the cultural fabric of old Greece.128 Both attached great
importance, not only to the Ptolemaic thalassocracy, but also to the partic-
ipation of the royal family in the traditional Panhellenic contests, where a
', glory, was to be won which would add lasting lustre to Ptolemaic
dominion.
The longest hippikon on the Milan papyrus, other than those concerning
the royal family, celebrates the victory of Callicrates in the chariot race
at the Pythian Games (74 AB). The race itself was a dead heat between
Callicrates chariot and that of a Thessalian competitor, and the outcome
could not be decided by lot, perhaps because the judges were not sufficiently
numerous;129 One of Callicrates mares forced the judges hand by herself
picking up one of their rods from the ground, thus winning public acclaim.
Of particular interest is the final couplet (vv. 1314):
k 5% ' C C;'[ ]# 5 *O
C [& Z]
x[ 1]! !(# H'C .
To the Brother-Sister Gods as a clear sign of those [contests] he dedicated here a
bronze [chariot and] driver. (Posidippus 74.1314 AB)
127 For the text of the dedication cf. SB 429 Preisigke. The queen is very likely Arsinoe II, not Arsinoe I:
cf. Hauben (1970) 401.
128 Cf. Bing (20023) 246.
129 Cf. J. Bingen, La victoire pythique de Callicrates de Samos CE 77 (2002) 1889.
Victors in chariot-races regularly dedicated an image of the chariot and
driver to the god whom they held responsible for their victory; in the case
of the Panhellenic contests, this was usually the god in whose sanctuary
the victory occurred or another Olympian deity to whom responsibility
was assigned: as Pindar advises victors, it is important to set god over
all as cause (K) (Pythian 5.235). In choosing the &' # for
his dedication, rather than (say) the Delphic Apollo, who is invoked as
witness to the epigrams truthfulness (v. 4), Callicrates is thus not doing
anything extraordinary;130 nevertheless, we may still wonder why Callicrates
specifically chose the brother-sister gods as responsible for his victory,
unless this was simply the politesse of a courtier. It may be helpful here to
compare the analogous choice of King Magas of Cyrene made by a Cyrenean
soldier in the first half of the third century. On an inscription discovered
in 1954 on the front of a statue-base,131 a certain Eupolemus, on returning
from a military campaign, dedicates his shield and (# horse harness
to Ares (or perhaps merely declares that these are dedications appropriate
to Ares),132 but also dedicates to his king a statue of Nike, which specifically
celebrates his successful and safe return:
[C;%] C^$#" . (# l
#U W 'X & ^
#
0( 9%# #, ) A 2, T'
%( #b # %5.
To Enyalios a shield and decorated horse harness are a fitting dedication. But
Victory Eupolemus declares that he dedicated to King Magas, a fair honour, so
that under her patronage he may preserve his sceptres, peoples, and cities.
The victorious Eupolemus dedicates Victory to the king, as his rightful
and to ensure the kings future military success and the prosperity
of his subjects; the dedication of Victory133 acknowledges that military
130 This is particularly the case if the dedication was not at Delphi (improbable in view of \ #5
in v. 1) nor at Samos (improbable in view of &8 <( in v. 12), but in Egypt (so Bing (20023)
2489). Bing also notes that the Pythian Games of this epigram were perhaps those of 274, so that
Callicrates may have commissioned the epigram when he became eponymous priest of the cult of
the brother-sister gods, thus celebrating both this event and his earlier victory.
131 Cf. F. Chamoux, Epigramme de Cyrene en lhonneur du roi Magas, BCH 82 (1958) 57187 (SEG
xvii.817). Chamoux suggested an attribution to Callimachus, but this was rejected by A. Rostagni,
RFIC 87 (1959) 102 and P. M. Fraser, JEA 46 (1960) 1001.
132 A suggestion of Peter Bing (private communication).
133 This is normally understood as a statue of Nike, and the text certainly suggests that we are dealing
with a material object; for such effigies cf. W. H. D. Rouse, Greek Votive Offerings (Cambridge
1902) 1424 and R. Lonis, Guerre et religion en Grece a lepoque classique (Paris 1979) 1613. There
is, however, an obvious play between the material object and the divine personification of victory
(cf. 2, T' in v. 3).
success was owed to the king himself, not to an Olympian divinity, and
makes concretely manifest the justification which military victory confers
upon the power of the basileus.134 Glory could come from athletic as well
as military success, and Callicrates may well have wanted to make a similar
point: victory both depended upon and belonged to the Ptolemaic house.
If Callicrates used his Pythian victory to increase the charisma of the
royal house, Posidippus is for his part the most insistent encomiast of
Ptolemaic athletic victories known to us. His epigrams on this subject
show very clearly how literary epigrams could now perform (or claim to
perform) the practical, celebratory function which inscribed funerary and
dedicatory epigrams had always had, and would continue to have until the
end of antiquity.135 Nevertheless, it is a striking fact that some of Posidippus
epigrams for Ptolemaic equestrian victories seem to have been conceived
as inscriptions for commemorative statues of the horses and or chariot, or
even of the driver and victor himself; we have already noted 74.1 AB for
Callicrates, which presupposes that the living horses have become a statue,
and Poem 87 AB is also clearly deictic of a monumental context. Despite
this, neither archaeology nor Pausanias offers any evidence for celebratory
monuments in honour of victories by the Ptolemies or their leading officials
in any of the Panhellenic sanctuaries of mainland Greece.136 The reasons
for this may be complex. Chance is always an important factor in survival,
and perhaps Ptolemaic victory-inscriptions had simply disappeared by the
time Pausanias got there; alternatively, Posidippus is perhaps celebrating the
autonomous power of poetry, by evoking a purely fictitious monumental
tradition. The epigrams would, in normal circumstances, have been part
of the commissioning of monumental statues by the Ptolemaic victors, but
Posidippus may have constructed a kudos for the Ptolemies which did not
depend upon such commissions.
Equestrian events were the most expensive agonistic competitions of
ancient Greece, and therefore could provide good evidence of the financial
134 Cf. Chamoux, Epigramme (n. 131) 578.

135 We tend to make a rather uncertain distinction between poems preserved on papyri or in manuscripts
and those preserved only on stone, which are almost always (for us) anonymous; in this, we are
the heirs of the anthologisers to whom we owe the Palatine and Planudean anthologies (above all,
Meleager), who had no reason to be interested either in the poets or the very time-bound context of
these inscribed poems. As Bing has noted ((20023) 255), the epigrams of Callimachus, Posidippus,
and Hedylus on the temple of Arsinoe Aphrodite have all reached us by routes other than the
Palatine and Planudean anthologies, as also has Posidippus poem on the Pharos.
136 Callicrates did erect statues of Ptolemy II and Arsinoe II opposite the great temples of Zeus and
Hera at Olympia, to create an obvious parallelism (cf. e.g. Theocritus 17.1304), but the preserved
dedication shows that this monument had no connection with a specific victory. On this monument
cf. Bing (20023) 2525.
power which very often accompanied political power (in ancient times
no less than today).137 According to the Alexander Romance (18), when
Alexander the Great decided to participate in the Olympian games, both
his father and one Nikolaos king of the Acharnanians whom he had met at
Pisa advised him to compete in wrestling or in some other athletic speciality;
instead, he opted for the chariot race and, of course, won. Of the forty-five
epinician songs of Pindar known to us, almost one-third (fourteen) involve
monarchic figures, and of these, twelve deal with equestrian victories.
The founder of the Ptolemaic dynasty, Ptolemy I Soter, competed with
the %$ and won at Delphi in the Pythian games of 310 bc, as we
know from Pausanias 10.7.8. From the same source (6.3.1) we know that
in the inscription commemorating his victory, Ptolemy I called himself a
Macedonian, and he did the same when he dedicated a statue of himself in
the Altis of Olympia. The emphasis he placed on his Macedonian ethnicity
might be thought a reflection of the fact that he had not yet assumed the title
of king,138 or of the special bond of affection that this Macedonian general
may have felt for his Macedonian origins, and this ethnic may indeed
have meant more to the Ptolemies than it did to the other diadochoi.139
Nevertheless, Soters national pride finds, as we have seen, an intriguing
parallel in the remarkable emphasis that the Hippika of Posidippus devote
to the Macedonian ethnicity of Ptolemaic queens and kings, for whom
participation in the Panhellenic games was most probably part of their
support for the Greek poleis against Antigonus Gonatas. They could not
of course enter such games as kings of Egypt, since non-Greeks were
excluded, and entering as Macedonians may also have alluded to one of the
first occasions on which the Greekness of the Macedonians kings had been
acknowledged by Greeks: in 476 bc (?) Alexander I the Philhellene had
been admitted to participate in the Olympic games only after he could prove
his Argive origins as a member of the reigning Macedonian dynasty.140 The
assertion of Macedonian origin would also have strengthened the Ptolemies
persistent claim to be the real and legitimate successors of Alexander the
137 A classic statement is that of Alcibiades at Thucydides 6.16.13. The following pages use material
from Fantuzzi (2005).
138 Cf. G. Maddoli, M. Nafissi, and V. Saladino, Pausania. Guida della Grecia. Libro VI: lElide e
Olimpia (Milan 1999) 1856.
139 As remarked by Pausanias 10.7.8. Cf. C. Bearzot, J# 5 0 'Z: sentimento nazionale
macedone e contrapposizioni etniche allinizio del regno tolemaico, in M. Sordi (ed.), Autocoscienza
e rappresentazione dei popoli nellantichita (Milan 1992) 3953.
140 Herodotus 5.22. Alexanders claim most probably still implied a sense that his Macedonian subjects
were not Greek: cf. J. M. Hall, Contested Ethnicities: Perceptions of Macedonia within Evolving
Definitions of Greek Identity, in I. Malkin (ed.), Ancient Perceptions of Greek Ethnicity (Cambridge
MA 2001) 159186. In the fourth century, of course, the Hellanodikai were in no position to object
to the participation of Philip II.
Great by continuing the tradition of Alexander I and of Philip II, both of
whom had participated and won in the Olympic games (Philip in 356, with
the #). Last but not least, we should not forget that Posidippus too was
a Macedonian.
In Poem 87 AB, the first of the final pair of Hippika that focus on Berenice
I, Berenices mares, who are imagined to speak the poem, not only perhaps
mimic the poetic voice of the lock of Berenice from the major encomiastic
poem at the end of Callimachus Aitia,141 but explicitly point to another
model for the ' that the poem bestows upon Berenice I:
l[] C /X % C>#$[], a )
J[]%T[]) 0 & ( %)
p , []#$Q# ! #) H , =$%
<([] !
' & #
.
When we were still [mares] we won Macedonian Berenikes Olympic crown, [o
people of Pisa], which has the much-celebrated reputation of having eclipsed
Kyniskas ancient Spartan glory. (Posidippus 87 AB, trans. Austin)
A member of the royal dynasty of the Spartan Eurypontidai, daughter
of Archidamus II and sister of Agesilaos II and of Agis II, Kyniska won
at least twice with the four-horsed chariot at Olympia, most probably at
the Olympiads of 396 and of 392 bc,142 i.e. immediately after the end of a
twenty-year period during which Spartans had been banned from Olympia.
She was considered to have been the first woman to breed horses and to
enter and win a chariot competition in Panhellenic games (Pausanias 3.8.1,
3.15.1), and she had recorded the reason for her kudos in an epigram inscribed
on a round pedestal supporting a statue of Kyniska and her chariot team
by the Megarian sculptor Apelle(a)s; this was one of the two monuments
erected in Olympia to commemorate her success (cf. Pausanias 6.1.6). The
text of Kyniskas inscription (GESA 33 = CEG 820, also transmitted as
AP 13.16) reads:
<( X 9%# &' #U
x 'C |$
' l % =$%
*
(' C %%.
'C $
6^##(' (%
' #9 5 %.
My father and brothers were Spartan kings, I won with a team of fast-footed horses,
and I Kyniska put up this monument: I say I am the only woman in all Greece to
win this crown.
141 Cf. Fantuzzi (2003).

142 According to C. Robert, Hermes 35 (1900) 195. The most plausible alternative chronology of Kyniskas
victories is 380 and 376: cf. IAG p. 43.
As late as Pausanias day, the epigram for Kyniska was considered an excep-
tional event in the long and highly conservative story of the Spartan diarchy.
As Pausanias himself observed (3.8.2): the Spartans seem to me to be of all
men the least moved by poetry and the praise of poets; for, with the excep-
tion of the epigram upon Kyniska, of uncertain authorship, and the still
earlier one upon Pausanias that Simonides wrote on the tripod dedicated at
Delphi, there is no poetic composition to commemorate the doings of the
royal houses of the Lacedaemonians.143 The Spartans even heroised Kyniska
after her death, and built a posthumous heroon for her near the Platanistas,
the most important gymnasium of Sparta (Pausanias 3.15.1); these heroic
honours afforded to Kyniska were exceptional not only in Sparta, but more
generally in fourth-century Greece, since most of the heroised athletic vic-
tors known to us either won their events in the first half of the fifth century
or are eighth-century victors who did not receive cult honours until the
fifth century.144
If the queenly145 Kyniska received undoubted kudos from her victories, it
is not necessary to assume that all of the Lacedaemonians shared her plea-
sure. Her ostentatious pride about her agonistic success stood in manifest
contradiction to the egalitarianism of the Spartans and to their preference
for martial bravery and training over agonistic performance, a preference
that dates at least from the time of Tyrtaeus. According to Xenophon, even
Agesilaos is said to have contrasted the useful breeding of war horses to
the useless breeding of race horses, and to have encouraged the agonistic
career of his sister only in order to show through her victory that such a stud
marks the owner as a person of wealth, but not necessarily of merit, since he
believed that a victory in the chariot race over private citizens would add not
a whit to his renown (Agesilaos 9.67). Although a similar claim is ascribed
to Agesilaos by Plutarch (Agesilaos 20.1, cf. also Apophth.Lac. 212ab) and
well befits the #:$! that can be credited to this king,146 the words
he is made to utter may also represent Xenophons own reinterpretation
143 Not only were these two instances isolated episodes, but the Lacedaemonians had deeply regretted
the latter: the epigram in honour of Pausanias, ascribed to Simonides (FGE 7501), was immediately
deleted from the tripod and replaced by a list of the towns that had shared the anti-Persian alliance
of the second Persian war (cf. Thucydides 1.132).
144 Cf. F. Bohringer, Cultes dathletes en Grece REA 81 (1979) 518; Kurke (1993) 14955.
145 Kyniska was queenly not only in reality but also in the emphasis that her inscription places on her
origins, as do epigrams honouring Archedike, the daughter of the last Peisistratid tyrant of Athens,
Hippias (FGE 7889
&', &' # C c% $( | ' C her father
and husband, her brothers and children were tyrants) and Olympias, the wife of Philip II (%'
8 &8 5 9%# 5) &' #)
her father and husband and son
were kings, and the brothers, and the ancestors cited by Plutarch, Mor. 747f ).
146 Cf. P. Cartledge, Agesilaos and the Crisis of Sparta (London 1987) 14950.
of his views; elsewhere, Xenophon put these same views in the mouth of
Simonides (Hiero 11.56).147 Moreover, the scantiness of evidence for other
dedications for equestrian victories from Spartan sanctuaries148 may tes-
tify to a broader Spartan view that equestrian victories were less valuable
than victories in other athletic contests, since equestrian competitions did
not normally involve the personal participation of the owner/breeder of
the horses. If this view did exist, however, such a bias would clearly not
be relevant in the case of a woman, who could not personally enter any
Panhellenic contest, and in any case one king, Damaratos, had in fact par-
ticipated and won in the four-horsed chariot race of Olympia in 504; if
Agesilaos who, according to Xenophon (Ages. 11.7), generally opposed
this kind of self-advertisement really did have such a low opinion of his
sisters agonistic victories, he would hardly have allowed Kyniskas athletic
achievements to be memorialised as they were, and in particular he would
likely have opposed her heroisation and the erection of her shrine. In fact,
the timing of Kyniskas victories in the most important Panhellenic con-
test of Greece coincides with the period when Agesilaos was at his most
Panhellenic,149 and this perhaps suggests that Agesilaos himself exploited
Kyniskas victories in order to improve the international prestige of Sparta.
Kyniskas heroic honours must have seemed in the third century a clear
sign of the prestige that queenly individuals could win through agonistic
success in chariot-racing. Sparta, together with the Battiadai of Cyrene
and the Macedonian kings, also provided one of only a few instances of
constitutional monarchy (or, better, diarchy) inside the Greek-speaking
world; the attractions of Sparta for anyone looking for unambiguously
Greek parallels for the monarchs of the new kingdoms founded after the
death of Alexander were therefore obvious. Moreover, it was not just gender
147 What about the breeding of chariot horses, commonly considered the noblest and grandest business
in the world? By which method do you think you will gain most credit for that, if you out-do all
other Greeks in the numbers of teams you breed and send to the festivals, or if the greatest number
of breeders and the greatest number of competitors are drawn from your city? [. . .] Indeed my own
opinion is that it is not even seemly for a great despot to compete with private citizens ( O X
'X %4 &' $(" , *'Z & _ %). For your victory would
excite envy rather than admiration, on the ground that many estates supply the money that you
spend, and no defeat would be greeted with so much ridicule as yours.
148 Apart from Kyniskas, a single further such dedication is known, that of Damonon in the sanctuary
of Athena on the Spartan Acropolis: cf. S. Hodkinson, Property and Wealth in Classical Sparta
(London 2000) 3037. However, the Spartan elite was not an exception to the commonly high
aristocratic evaluation of success in athletic competitions, and from the 540s to the 360s all Spartan
equestrain victors bar two appear to have erected some kind of victory monument at the site of the
games. Cf. Hodkinson, cit., 30728 and id. An Agonistic Culture? in id. A. Powell (eds.) Sparta:
New Perspectives, London 1999, 14787.
149 Cf. Cartledge, Agesilaos (n. 146) 150.
which made the Spartan Kyniska an ideal term of comparison for the new
figure of a queen. Pindar also seems to have exploited connections between
the Spartan kingship and the absolute rulers of his age in order to establish
as legitimate the authority of the latter. In the opening of the tenth Pythian,
an ode written for a certain Hippokleas from Pelinna but commissioned by
the Aleuadai of Thessaly, Pindar stresses the analogy between Sparta and
Thessaly and between Spartan kings and the Thessalian ruling family, since
both royal families shared a common descent from the sons of Heracles
(vv. 15). Pindar made use of this Spartan guarantee of legitimacy also
in the first Pythian, a poem that celebrates Deinomenes, son of Hieron
and regent of the newly founded Aitnai, the town whose legislation was
modelled on the constitution of Sparta; after calling Deinomenes 9%# Q
of Aitnai (v. 60), Pindar devotes the fourth strophe to an exaltation of the
Doric constitution of Hyllos and Aigimios that institutionalised the diarchy
(vv. 626), and he represents Aitnai as a new Sparta, thus combining the
absolute power of the 9%# Q with the celebration of # $ (v. 61).150
Last but not least, in the particular case of Berenice I, who was the mother
of the Cyrenean king Magas, the future father of Berenice II, an allusion to
Sparta might also have reminded readers that Cyrene had been founded,
via Thera, by Spartans (cf. Callimachus, Hymn to Apollo 719, based on
Pindar, Pythian 5.7281).
The mention of Kyniska in Posidippus epigram offered Berenice a very
particular kind of kudos. Xenophons (or perhaps Agesilaos) observation
that it is not even seemly for a great despot to compete with private citizens
is also reflected in a saying ascribed to Alexander, who asserted his readiness
to run at Olympia provided that my adversaries are kings (Plutarch, Alex.
4); according to the Life of Alexander (19), Alexander would indeed have
competed at Olympia in the chariot race, as we have seen, and in his case
four of his nine competitors would have been sons of kings. Thus, the
epigrams explicit reference to Kyniska and the claim that the ' of that
queen had been eclipsed allows Berenice I to have entered and won not
so much a contest with the private citizens competing at Olympia, but
rather the diachronic competition that the queenly Kyniska, one of the few
peers of the queen Berenice to be found within previous Greek history,151
150 Cf. N. Luraghi, Tirannidi arcaiche in Sicilia e Magna Grecia (Florence 1994) 359.
151 That the reference to Kyniska formed part of a deliberate strategy of this sort is supported by the
fact that between Kyniska and Berenice I another woman, the Spartan Euryleonis, had won at
Olympia (cf. IAG 418) and had a statue erected to celebrate her victory (mentioned by Pausanias
3.17.6). Though de facto the kudos of Kyniska had thus already been eclipsed by Euryleonis, this
Euryleonis was not a queenly figure; Cameron (1995) 244 calls her another Spartan princess, but
had initiated by the unwary
, I alone, of her epigram. Kyniska was,
moreover, one of the few Olympic victors who had been heroised after
death and received a heroon. Not only was Berenice I also deified after death
with a shrine called the Berenikeion,152 but the process of her deification
probably resembled in some way traditional heroisation like that undergone
by Kyniska. Theocritus presents Berenice as a mortal whom Aphrodite
made immortal (&( &, T, 15.1068), thus attributing to
her a status that precisely mirrors that of some traditional Greek heroes.
Berenice lacked the divine lineage from Zeus that was ascribed to Soter
via Alexander (cf. Theocritus 17.1625)153 and later to both Ptolemy II and
Arsinoe as children of divinised parents, and she thus may have needed to
be deified, through the direct interest of a god (Aphrodite), as a result of her
own virtues, as happened to other humans who became heroes.154 We know
very little about the divinisation of Berenice I, though the comparison of
her to Kyniska appears to have had the effect of implying or supplying a
good reason for the divinisation. In the case of Berenice II, however, her
athletic victories came to be regarded as part of her heroic status: when
Ptolemy IV in 211210 brought her into the Alexander-cult to join Arsinoe
and his other divine ancestors, the eponymous priestess of Berenices cult
was designated athlophoros.155
More glory is won by an Olympic victor who comes of a family of
Olympic victors; more honourable is that soldier who comes from a fight-
ing stock; there is a keener pleasure in pursuits that have been followed by
ones fathers and forefathers. Though the author of these words, Philo-
stratus (Vit. soph. 611), is far later than the Ptolemies, the attitude he here
expresses was persistent throughout Greek history. Pindars odes provide
no evidence exists for her social status. We need not, therefore, regard her as a worthy opponent for
Berenice I, and there does not appear to have existed any memorial that presented her as a queenly
figure to be surpassed by the new Ptolemaic queen.
152 Cf. Callixenus, FGrHist 627F2(34). Another temple existed for her and Ptolemy Soter, erected by
Philadelphus: cf. Theocr. 17.123 and Lyc. Rheg. FGrHist 570F16.
153 Cf. S. B. Pomeroy, Women in Hellenistic Egypt (New York 1984) 30: the difference between the
deification of Macedonian Kings and the deification of the queens is that, for the kings, they were
bound to follow the example of Alexander. There was more to gain by association with this great
figure than could possibly be acquired by innovation. For the deification of women there were no
binding precedents, though the cult of Berenice could be used as an example, albeit on a much
smaller scale.
154 Cf. W. Meincke, Untersuchungen zu den enkomiastischen Gedichten Theokrits (Diss. Kiel 1965) 1012,
F. Griffiths (1979) 74; Egyptian kingship was based on mythical thinking, which was a thing of the
past for educated Greeks . . . the world of myth and mythical thinking had survived in poetry and
reappeared in the tales of Hellenistic poets . . . The hero of old was the thing closest to a divine
king on earth, Koenen (1993) 114.
155 Cf. Stephens (2003b) 170.
early evidence for the emphasis upon the continuity of success within a
single family. Thus, for example, the main subject of the first part of the
fourth Isthmian is the ( # # the ancient fame for
glorious deeds (vv. 223) of the equestrian successes of the family of the
Kleonymidai: the ode, which celebrates first an Isthmian chariot victory by
the same Melissos and then his previous victories in the pankration, opens
with a mention of Melissos, but the opening section (vv. 130) is largely
concerned with the original equestrian glory of the family, then with the
temporary slack period caused by the death of four members of the family
in war, and only finally with the resurrection of the family glory by Melissos.
The same emphasis can be found in the seventh Pythian, in which the pre-
dominant aim is to honour the whole C;#'T $% 8 4[ . . .]
l% the mighty race of the Alkmaionidai for their horses (vv. 24),
and the poet admits to being led to the celebration of the protagonist,
Megakles, by the several victories not only of the man himself but also of
his
ancestors. These victories are then listed all together as the
common property of the family (vv. 1216).
Another telling feature of the seventh Pythian is that the victor to whom
the ode is dedicated, Megakles, is only mentioned at v. 17, and the post-
poned naming of the honorand represents a remarkable point of contact
with Posidippus 78 AB, the programmatically placed first poem of the
Hippika for the Ptolemies as a family. Here, the winner of the victory being
celebrated, Berenice II or Berenice the Syrian, is not mentioned until v.
13, and the real subject of the epigram is the continuity of the aptitude
for victory of the e
sacred clan (v. 9), as seen through the long
list of winning ancestors, which includes Berenice I, as well as Arsinoe, her
grandfather Ptolemy I, and Ptolemy II:
]K ) ( &') , []#) [K] [ C &%
% # ) V '
M[ #
U
x X ( ([ J# ]5 [
J% #(% l %[')
4 a [
U x][] ' C c[
P# 8 9%#[] 9%[]# Q
, ! AU _ $[ ' C] M4 (%
C;%
5 +, M &[#$U
.[. . . . . . . . .] e , [. . . $]
[. . . . . . . . .] [. . . . . . .]
[][] X[ 3! C ] 5' C>#$[] [M +], K$
x% ' 5' & #
[$]U
$ 'X # $ & ' , a [ ][
9%# $Q%) 0[]) %.
Tell, all ye bards, of my fame, [if it ever please you] to speak of what is known,
because my glory [goes back a long way]. My grandfather [Ptole]my [won] with
his chariot, driving his team on the race-courses at Pisa, as did Berenice, my
fathers mother. Then again with his chariot my father was victorious, a king
son of a king with his fathers name. And all three victories for harnessed race
were won by Arsinoe in a single [competition]. [. . .] sacred clan [. . .] womens
[. . .] [. . .] as the virgin [. . .]. Olympia saw [these triumphs from] a single
house and the childrens children winning prizes with their chariots. Celebrate,
O ye Macedonians, Queen Berenices crown for winning with the full four-horse
team. (Posidippus 78 AB, trans. Austin)
For the image of the reigning dynasty this continuity was much more than a
mere record: rather, it provided more substantial evidence of the talismanic
divine favour which they enjoyed than a few isolated successes by solitary
representatives of the dynasty would have done. Furthermore, it served as
evidence of their identity as members of the same (ruling) family. As in
Theocritus Encomium of Ptolemy, in which the identity of father and son
is stressed through the identity of their names and martial qualities (%X 'C) |
*! J# 5 ) | *!T J# " &_# a , and you,
warrior Ptolemy, to warrior Ptolemy renowned Berenike (bore), vv. 567),
so in Posidippus 78, the main focus is on the continuity of the dynastic
capacity for victory (vv. 1112: [M +], K$ | x% ' 5'
& #
[$] and from a single house the childrens children winning
prizes with their chariots). This continuity is reflected linguistically both in
the repetition of the same words (before ' within v. 12, ) x)
9%#) and in the stress placed on the identity of the names and title:
see v. 3 x X<> ( ([ J# ]5 [ and vv.
57 x][] 'C c[ | P# 8 <> 9%#[] 9%[]# Q |
, ! A. The poem thus promulgates the idea that Ptolemaic
children bore a perfect likeness to their parents, a motif familiar also from
Theocritean and Callimachean poems for the dynasty: see Theocr. 17.567
quoted above, 634 p 'X O | 5 & , in his
fathers likeness was he born, the beloved child,156 Callimachus, Hymn
to Delos 170 'C K% i
and he will have the ways of his
father.
There is, however, an important difference between the practice of
archaic epinikion and the target pursued by the Posidippan Hippika.
Whereas in Pindar the hic et nunc of the specific victory celebrated by
each poem was always primary, in many epigrams the aptitude for victory
156 Cf. Hunter (2003b) 138: the Ptolemies are in fact a Hesiodic limit case, in which the son, who
(unusually) bears the same name as the father, is very like, perhaps identical with, the father.
of the Ptolemies almost overshadows the specific victory for which the poem
was composed. This change of emphasis finds a parallel in the epinician for
Sosibios by Callimachus, where the Nemean victory which is the occasion
for the poem is almost overshadowed, first by the memory of the more
important Isthmian victory previously gained by Sosibios, and then by the
enumeration of all his other victories.157 Archaic epinicians, even those for
monarchs, were commissioned and composed for one (or, at any rate, no
more than a few) performances, whereas Posidippus royal Hippika appear
to have been written advertisements for the permanent perpetuation of the
kudos of the ruling dynasty. There is in fact a twofold encomiastic strategy
in the Hippika. On the one hand, these epigrams emphasise the continuity
of the aptitude for equestrian victory of the Ptolemaic family; on the other,
they focus in particular on a series of female victories, which are treated
as a special case of this Ptolemaic aptitude. The two different sections of
the royal Hippika (7882 and 878 AB respectively) focus either on one
aspect or on the other: the first section on the successes of the whole family,
and the last two epigrams on female victories. The victory of Berenice I
(87 AB), for which the queenly Kyniska provided the sole precedent, has
been considered above. In the final hippikon (88 AB, quoted above p. 375),
Ptolemy II celebrates both his own glory and that of his parents, though
in this poem too Philadelphus not only states the continuity of his fam-
ilys achievement, but also stresses the primary importance of his mothers
achievement. This final epigram on the royal house thus draws together
both the main points of the encomiastic strategy of Posidippus.
If the number of family victories was important for royal kudos, the cases
of Eupolemus (above, pp. 3923) and Callicrates (74 AB) show that victories
won by loyal subjects could also add to the image of an aptitude for success
which was cultivated by Hellenistic monarchs. Though we do not know
that they were formally dedicated to the king, the victories of Sosibios and
of Bilistiche may also have been thought to contribute to royal kudos and
therefore to have been publicly advertised. For Sosibios, we depend upon
the surviving fragments of the elegy by Callimachus commemorating his
victories. As for Bilistiche, one of the most famous courtesans of Ptolemy
II, she won twice at Olympia, once with the quadriga (268 bc) and once
with the pair (264 bc), and a preserved official record for the former of
these victories (POxy 2082 = FGrHist. 257aF6) seems to call her J# Y
$ `#'#$ +][] hetaira of Ptolemy Philadelphus (her status
is textually uncertain, but the reference to a connection with Ptolemy is
157 Cf. Fuhrer (1992) 2034.

secure). Courtesans could be important people in Hellenistic courts,158 and
in Bilistiches case we have solid evidence that her relationship with the king
was openly celebrated: temples were erected to her as Bilistiche-Aphrodite,
apparently on the analogy of Arsinoe-Aphrodite, and if the identification
of this Bilistiche with a figure cited by Athenaeus (13.596e) is correct,159
some authors of Argive histories credited her with descent from the Argive
Atreids;160 this may mean that she claimed to be a scion of the Argead fam-
ily,161 from which Ptolemy Soter had claimed descent, for the Macedonian
Argead house claimed to have Argive origins.
It is perfectly plausible that the explicit tone of the record of Bilis-
tiches success in POxy 2082 was in accordance with the wishes of Ptolemy
Philadelphos, who may have encouraged the publicity of her successes, as
further evidence of the equestrian kudos of his dynasty. Her absence from
the Posidippan Hippika may, however, reflect the theme of family identity
which we have been tracing in these poems. In the Encomium, Theocri-
tus connects this motif with the idea of a strong mutual love of wife and
husband,162 and here Bilistiche was not an appropriate example.
158 See now D. Ogden, Polygamy, Prostitutes, and Death: the Hellenistic Dynasties (LondonSwansea
1999) Part II.
159 The identification was put in doubt by F. Jacoby, FGrHist. IIIb, p. 54, but strongly maintained by
Cameron (1995) 244.
160 FGrHist 311F1.
161 Cf. Ogden, Polygamy (n. 158) 245. 162 Hunter (2003b) 12830 on Theocr. 17.389.
chap t e r 9
Hellenistic drama
1 menand er and new comedy
1.1 The form of New Comedy

During the century following the death of Alexander the Great, hundreds
of comic plays were written and produced all over the Greek world, and to
this style of comedy later scholars gave the name New Comedy, to distin-
guish it from the Old Comedy of Aristophanes, Cratinus and Eupolis.1
The principal dramatists of New Comedy Menander,2 Alexis, Diphilus,
Philemon and Apollodorus all worked in Athens, which continued to be
considered the true home and origin of comic drama, although of these
poets only Menander seems in fact to have been an Athenian citizen by
birth.3 However local comedys associations had once been, it was to become
a kind of Panhellenic lingua franca which, apart from the popularity of
staged performances, was to play a very important role in rhetorical and
ethical education.4 Primary evidence for the performance of New Com-
edy is provided by very many surviving representations in paintings and
mosaics and by surviving written accounts, replicas and depictions of comic
costume and masks; since, however, as far as is known, no manuscripts of
New Comedy survived through the Dark Ages to be copied in the medieval
period,5 until the end of the nineteenth century knowledge of the texts of
1 On the scholastic division of comedy cf. Nesselrath (1990) 65187.

2 Plays of Menander are cited in this chapter by the numeration of F. H. Sandbachs Oxford Text.
3 To what, if any, extent Menanders drama was (in general) more Athenocentric than that of his rivals
is a fascinating question which the nature of the evidence does not permit us to answer. For Menander
and Athens in general cf. Giglioni (1984), Lape (2004), von Reden (1998), below pp. 40917.
4 Cf. further below p. 430. On the spread of Hellenistic theatre, the collection of papers edited by B.
Le Guen in Pallas 47 (1997) offers a helpful guide to the issues and bibliography, and see also B. Le
Guen, Theatre et cites a lepoque hellenistique REG 108 (1995) 5990.
5 For a survey and bibliography on this phenomenon cf. P. E. Easterling, Menander: Loss and Survival
in A. Griffiths (ed.), Stage Directions. Essays in Ancient Drama in Honour of E. W. Handley (London
1995) 15360.
404
New Comedy was restricted to a very large number of quotations (ranging
in length from single words to speeches of more than sixty verses) in later
moralists, grammarians, antiquarians and anthologists, and to the adap-
tations into Latin of Plautus and Terence (cf. below). The papyrological
revolution of the last century, however, has given us a complete play of
Menander (c. 342290),6 the Dyskolos, large parts of six others and intelli-
gible scenes from about a dozen more; the ocean of comic papyri, which
attests the extraordinary popularity of the genre, at least in Hellenistic
and Roman Egypt, shows no sign of drying up. The other poets of New
Comedy have unfortunately not benefited as Menander has done; there is,
however, a large corpus of fragmentary New Comedy texts, some of which
are certainly not by Menander, and so some cautious comparisons between
poets are not entirely out of the question.
The largest body of evidence for New Comedy is in fact not the now
substantial remains of Menander and the much less well preserved work of
other Greek poets, but the twenty-one wholly or partly preserved plays of
Plautus (fl. c. 220180 bc) and the six comedies of Terence, produced at
Rome between 165 and 160 bc. The evidence of the Roman comoedia palliata
(comedy in Greek dress) must of course be handled differently from that
of the Greek texts. Apart from the change into a different language, with
all the implications for meaning (particularly in the spheres of moral and
ethical evaluation, which inevitably accompany such a change), the Roman
plays are adaptations rather than straight translations and contain much
thematic material that is obviously owed to the Roman, not the Greek, poet.
On the whole, the Greek milieu is preserved and the plays seem to have been
thought of as still essentially Greek, but it is clear that Plautus, in particular,
makes dramatic capital out of the fact that the plays are adaptations and
are about a different society; the result is drama which both is and is not
like Greek New Comedy.7
There are a number of short fragments for which both the Greek original
and the Latin adaptation is preserved, but in only one case, some ninety
broken verses of Menanders Dis exapaton, The double deceiver, do we
have both a fairly lengthy and scenically articulated Greek text and its
6 Cf. H. de Marcellus, IG XIV 1184 and the ephebic service of Menander ZPE 110 (1996) 6976;
S. Schroder, Die Lebensdaten Menanders ZPE 113 (1996) 3548.
7 The relation between, in particular, Plautus and Greek Comedy has been the subject of renewed
interest in the last twenty years or so. The opposite tendencies of the Freiburg school and the work
of Otto Zwierlein have had the salutary effect of crystallising the important questions; for a brief
discussion and bibliography cf. R. Hunter in G. E. Duckworth, The Nature of Roman Comedy (2nd
ed. Bristol 1994) 4678.
406 Hellenistic drama
Latin adaptation (= Plautus, Bacchides 494560).8 A comparison of the
two reveals both that the Latin adaptations can differ in quite unexpected
ways from the Greek original and that current scholarly opinion about
how Plautus reworked his Greek originals or, rather, where one should
look for his most sweeping changes was, in this one case at least, broadly
accurate. Just as Terence in his adaptations chose on three occasions to
include material from a second Greek play and on three occasions (as
far as we know) did not, so it seems very unlikely (and can indeed be
demonstrated to be false) that Plautus always went about his task in a
uniform manner. If the very size and variety of the Plautine corpus has
at times proved (paradoxically) a hindrance rather than a help to those
whose primary interest is in Menander rather than in Plautus, so too have
assumptions natural enough for scholars whose training is in literature
rather than dramaturgy about the dramatic qualities of Plautus. Too often
it has been thought possible to recover a supposedly pure Greek play by
stripping off what is perceived as the garish Roman wallpaper placed over the
original Greek panelling. Such assumptions, whatever their Hellenocentric
failings, certainly mistake the nature of Plautine mimesis. As for Terence, his
striking difference from Plautus gives his evidence particular importance,
but also brings its own interpretative dangers; his similarity to Menander
merely makes the crucial differences harder to identify.
In general, it may be said that the dramatic shape of a play of Menander
is determined by the interaction of three structures which both comple-
ment and stand in tension with each other: division into acts, the internal
dynamic of the narrative, and the alternation between various modes, such
as monologue/dialogue, trimeters/tetrameters, farce/high comedy etc. As
far as we can tell, all of Menanders plays were divided into five acts, and
it is not improbable that this was true of New Comedy as a whole.9 This
division will have arisen from a gradual standardisation of the alternation
between actors and choral parts which we find in Aristophanes.10 The acts
are separated in our papyrus texts by the mark XOPOY, i.e. performance
8 Cf. E. W. Handley in Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Volume LXIV (London 1997) pp. 1442; id., Menander
and Plautus; a study in comparison (London 1968); C. Questa, Plautus: Bacchides (2nd ed., Florence
1975); D. Bain, Plautus uortit barbare in D. West and A. Woodman (eds.), Creative Imitation and
Latin Literature (Cambridge 1979) 1734; Hunter (1985a) 1618; S. Rizzo, Da Chrysalo a Siro: per
una ricostruzione del DIS EXAPATON di Menandro in Dicti Studiosus (Studi . . . Mariotti) (Urbino
1990) 948.
9 The comoedia palliata had no chorus and substituted continuous performance for the Greek five
acts; there may well, however, have been occasional solos by the piper (tibicen), cf. Hunter (1985a)
3740.
10 Cf. A. Sommerstein, Act Division in Old Comedy BICS 31 (1984) 13952 (with bibliography). For
the chorus in the fourth century cf. Hunter (1979).
of the chorus; the chorus is referred to only once, at the end of the first
act when the last actor to leave the stage announces the approach of some
drunken young men or similar revellers. The fact that the chorus is often
presented as under the influence of wine provides one link between this
late stage of comic history and the archaic komos, in which the origins of
formal komoidia should at least in part be sought.11 After this boisterous
and musical first entry of the chorus, the piper (auletes), who presumably
entered with them, will have remained in the theatre to accompany scenes
in metres other than spoken iambic trimeters.12 There is no evidence for
the nature of the performance which the New Comedy chorus gave, but
it is a reasonable guess that their songs usually had nothing to do with the
play which was being acted and were not specially written by the poets.
It would, however, be rash to assume that this was always the case, and
performances may sometimes have been broadly appropriate, even if not
specially composed (cf. the Pan-Singers or Paian-Singers of Dyskolos).
The metrical richness of fifth-century comedy is already much dimin-
ished in Aristophanes last two extant plays, and we can dimly follow
the continuing decline of comic lyric through the fragments of Middle
Comedy.13 Most of Menander, and almost certainly most of New Com-
edy as a whole, is written in unaccompanied iambic trimeters, the metre
which Aristotle says is closest to ordinary speech (Rhet. 3.1404a32).14 The
only other metre which Menander uses to any great extent is the trochaic
tetrameter,15 which Aristotle characterises as quick and lively (Rhet. 3.1409a1,
Poetics 1449a23). Tetrameters occur in scenes of rapid farce (Perikeiromene
268353, Samia Act 4 and 670737, the end of the play), but are also used
for Knemons long speech of self-justification in the fourth act of Dyskolos
(cf. below, p. 415); the fragments of Middle Comedy again allow us to see
how such speeches in part descend from the parabasis of Old Comedy, in
which the chorus spoke directly to the audience and explained or defended
their comic character. In general it seems that, for Menander, the change
11 On the komos in New Comedy cf. further below, pp. 41617.

12 The locus classicus is Men. Dysk. 880; for the entry of the piper with the chorus cf. Gelzer in
HandleyHurst (1990) 154.
13 Cf. Hunter (1979), R. Pretagostini, I metri della commedia postaristofanea Dioniso 57 (1987) 24565;
Nesselrath (1990) 24180.
14 On the trimeter in Menander see E. W. Handley, The Dyskolos of Menander (London 1965) 5673;
C. Prato et al., Ricerche sul trimetro di Menandro: metro e verso (Rome 1983). The language of Menander
awaits a comprehensive investigation, but important contributions may be traced through A. Willi
(ed.), The Language of Greek Comedy (Oxford 2002) 215.
15 For the iambic tetrameters at the end of Dysk. cf. below, pp. 41617. Other isolated metrical phe-
nomena include the anapaestic dimeters in the opening scene of Leukadia and the lyric dactylic
hexameters assigned, with some probability, to the Theophoroumene.
from iambics to trochaics could be important as a marker of a plays struc-
tural pattern, but that trochaics themselves were not necessarily marked in
any particular way.
In the last part of the fourth century, during Menanders career, a perma-
nent stone theatre with seating was constructed at Athens for the first time,
and its plan was soon to be copied all over the Greek world. The skene or
stage-building now had three openings which could represent the doors
of private houses or, as the poet wished, of a cave (Dyskolos) or temple (the
Greek originals of Curculio and Rudens). No play of Menander, preserved
in Greek, in fact represents more than two private houses. The stage-area in
front of the skene consisted of a low platform which in time was raised on
a stone colonnade and thus completely cut off from the orchestra usually
thought of as a street in the town, but easily adaptable to a country set-
ting (Dyskolos, the originals of Rudens and Heauton timoroumenos). There
is to date no example from New Comedy of a change of setting during the
course of the play, as is familiar from both Aristophanes and (less often)
Attic tragedy.
Whereas the actors of Old Comedy had been heavily padded, wore
grotesque, distorted masks and some at least were equipped with a long
artificial phallus, the standard male costume of New Comedy was an ordi-
nary Athenian tunic (chiton) worn over unpadded tights. People from the
country or those with a special task (e.g. cooks) will have been identifiable
by costume, but not in an outlandish way. The possibility of unusual cos-
tuming effects which have left no trace in any of our sources can never be
completely excluded and it would be particularly nice to know how the
prologising abstractions of Aspis and Perikeiromene were dressed but the
number of such cases is probably very small; we may take comfort from an
instance such as Aspis 3779, where the special clothing of the fake doctor
is actually described. As with language and metre, New Comedy generally
dressed its characters to create a standardised version of real life. Unreal-
istic in our terms, of course, is the continued use of masks, but even here
there was during the fourth century a gradual shift away from the grotesque
exaggerations of Old Comedy masks towards more lifelike, empty repre-
sentations, which culminated in a standard group of masks which would
fit the characters of any play.16
16 Cf. Wiles (1991), citing earlier bibliography, J. P. Poe, The Supposed Conventional Meanings of
Dramatic Masks: a Re-examination of Pollux 4.13354 Philologus 140 (1996) 30628, J. R. Green,
Deportment, Costume and Naturalism in Comedy Pallas 47 (1997) 13143. Of fundamental impor-
tance is the list of masks preserved by Pollux (4.14354) and a splendid collection of terracotta masks
roughly contemporary with Menander, found on the island of Lipari (cf. L. Bernabo Brea, Menandro
1.2 New Comedy and Hellenistic society

The central concern of Menanders drama is the continuity and stability
of the oikos, that is, broadly speaking, of the wider family unit and the
property which went with it. Success is thus registered by the promise
of marriage in the hope of children to perpetuate the oikos. Aristophanic
comedy, too, often concludes with sexual celebration, both within (Birds,
Lysistrata) and without marriage (Acharnians), but in New Comedy the
former pattern has been standardised in a further echo of the originary
komos of the genre.17 Thus, for example, the celebratory wedding procession
which concludes Misoumenos reverses and puts to rights the perverted
komos of the opening scene, in which Thrasonides places himself in the
role of the locked-out lover outside his own house; this role is familiar in
literature as the sequel to the lovers komos, and the opening scene thus also
dramatises the uncertain status of Krateia, for citizen women should not
be the object of such attentions.18 So, too, the soldiers claim that he could
be inside sleeping with19 the beloved (1 ), but chooses not to do
so, both marks him as worthy eventually to become a full member of the
citizen body and hints that the identity (both personal and civic) of the
beloved is to be crucial to the progress of the play. The girls father follows
her from Cyprus in a journey symbolic of how the oikos-directed narrative
overcomes even the dissolution of families through war.
In one sense, then, New Comedy is thus in the mainstream of classical
Greek literature. Homers Odyssey is, at least in part, concerned with the
defeat of threats to the oikos and the restoration of normal life; in the Iliad,
the fate of Hectors family and the fate of Troy are one and the same; Attic
tragedy (perhaps most famously, the Oresteia of Aeschylus) uses the oikos as
a pattern or microcosm of the state discord in one mirrors and illuminates
discord in the other; so, too, in Acharnians, Knights, Clouds, Wasps, Lysis-
trata, Ekklesiazousai, and Ploutos, problems within families reflect problems
within the state, and vice versa. What perhaps distinguishes New Comedy
in this regard is that the analogical relationship between oikos and polis
e il teatro greco nelle terracotte liparesi (Genoa 1981). This collection seems to confirm the relevance
of some of Polluxs list to Menanders time and also gives us a much clearer idea of the appearance
of Menanders characters.
17 The etymology from komos is attested at least as early as Arist. Poetics 1448a37; cf. A. Pickard-
Cambridge, Dithyramb Tragedy Comedy (2nd ed., Oxford 1962) 13262. For the use of the komos at
the end of Dyskolos cf. below, pp. 41617.
18 Cf. e.g. Isaeus 3 (Pyrrhus).14. That the komast is a soldier may also be significant, for at least in
later poetry (e.g. Roman elegy) the soldier and the exclusus amator could represent opposed types.
19 ! (v. 9) is familiar in sexual contexts. The slaves exasperated description of his master philosophis-
ing in the rain (v. 17) picks up for the audience Thrasonides reference to his sexual abstinence.
receives far less, if any, explicit emphasis; the success of the comic oikos
may be viewed as metonymic for the successful continuity of the polis, but
the inevitable nexus has been broken. Its replacement in New Comedy is
a close attention to the detailed social and legal structures which actually
underpin the oikos system.20 A striking passage from Perikeiromene (vv.
486510) illustrates this well.
In the third act, the soldier Polemon complains to Pataikos about his
mistress Glykera, who has sought refuge from his violent jealousy in the
house next door, which he imagines is the house of a rival lover, whereas
Glykera and we know that Moschion is in fact her brother:
[J] * C D) J#) P

2 5 ,
) 8 $( %$
[J] P # ) J( . [J] ' ' .
[J] O 8
Q. [J] 8 9
.
'C % 'Q [J] 4. [J] ($ #.
i % $!, K%) ' C
& #4#$ ' C
%$ !$
. [J]

$
( # #Q (#% C *Z. [J] TU
C L' C &9 % C X $ 5
&
#
%. 5 v
.M +$ % C $.
#, , ' "
C %. [J.] 'X ' O
&
8 &' 5 C [J] %C # 5
&' 5 % C 5) C # * #
$.
* 'C 9(% ) ' ]#4% U !
&' C) # '.
[J] ' C } [J] 'C } . [J.] L' C V
# ) 8 \4) #8 &( M.
n#$ ## ) ##
n#$) J(C. &##C K [ % ' 5
( %$4 D% ##(
# #(#!
#O '# $)
%9 $%) e Q % . . .
Pa. If what had happened was something of the kind you have described, and
she was your married wife Po. What a thing youve said, Pataikos! Pa. It makes a
difference. Po. I considered her my married wife. Pa. Dont shout! Who gave her?
Po. What? To me? She did. Pa. Fine. Perhaps she liked you then, but not any more.
She has left you because you did not treat her as you should have done. Po. What?
Not as I should have done? This is the most hurtful of all the things you have said.
Pa. You are in love thats for sure and so what you are doing now is crazy. She
20 Cf. Scafuro (1997).
is her own mistress: the unhappy lover must use persuasion. Po. But havent I been
wronged by the man who seduced her in my absence? Pa. If hes wronged you, you
must lodge a complaint against him, if the matter can be talked over. If you use
force, youll lose the case, for such a wrong does not call for vengeance, but for a
legal complaint. Po. Not even now? Pa. Not even now. Po. I dont know what to
say, by Demeter, except Ill choke to death! Glykera has left me, I have been left
by Glykera, Pataikos! If you think that this is what must be done you knew her
in the past and often talked to her please go and talk to her, carry my message, I
beg you! (Menander, Perikeiromene 486510)
Pataikos deflates Polemons indignation by reminding him of the legal
realities: Glykera was not the soldiers lawfully wedded wife ( 8
$4),21 because such a status requires the womans kurios to give her to a
husband, and therefore she is free to act as she wishes. So, too, in the Mis-
oumenos, though Thrasonides claims to have treated and considered Krateia
as his wife (vv. 3840), it is her fathers status as kurios which is crucial to the
happy end (cf. vv. 262, 294). Perikeiromene portrays a sequence of actions
in which Glykera is given (vv. 130, 1014) or gives herself; it is the weak-
ness of the female when in this latter position which the play dramatises,
and which the narrative device of recognition finally alleviates. Menanders
plays as a whole, in fact, present a world in which the socio-legal weakness
of women may be partly compensated for, within the economy of a play, by
their common sense and honesty and by the emotional and intellectual fail-
ings of the men around them. Polemon, a soldier and thus someone whose
attention is not directed towards civic life, must be instructed in the non-
violent dispute settlement which characterises polis life (vv. 5003). When
he is finally persuaded by Pataikos, he begs him to act as an intermediary,
a role which he assimilates to the military role of heralds (%9 $%)
510).22 Pataikos language is legalistic in flavour, but also general enough
to evoke a wide area of quasi-legal activity; the play was almost certainly
set in Corinth, but there is nothing in this scene, as far as we can tell,
which ties it specifically to diagnostic features of Corinthian (or, indeed,
Athenian) law. The detailed concern with legal status, together with the
absence of specific references to local circumstances and personalities, both
clearly distinguish this text from Aristophanic comedy.23 As for Polemon,
he opposes Pataikos legalism with an almost romantic idealism in which
21 The resonances of the Greek phrase are legalistic (cf. e.g. Lysias 1.31, Isaeus 3.14, 80; 12.9), even if it
is also found in more general contexts.
22 So, too, # in 506 probably has a military resonance, desert, abandon (despite its use by
Daos at 342). For this feature of Polemons language cf. also 985.
23 A similar point probably applies to Sosias allegations at 3757: GommeSandbach raise the question
of whether the partner of a pallake was her kurios, but it is likely that Sosias legal bluster (cf. 378
%$() rather than his legal exactitude is what is important.
he regarded Glykera as his lawfully wedded wife, even though she was
not, and in which the successful rival becomes he who corrupted/seduced
her (vv. 499500, ' Z), as if the situation was no different from,
say, the adultery narrative of Lysias 1.24 Here, the sympathetic portrayal of
Polemon, one strengthened by the fact that his rival Moschion is given
some of the conventional traits of the comic miles,25 is precisely dependent
upon the socio-legal context.
Alongside this recurrent narrative concern of New Comedy stands the
apparent rarity of explicit references to contemporary political and military
history; this too may be seen as a manifestation of the harshly selective filter
through which New Comedy imitates life. There are some exceptions,
and Menander may have been extreme in this regard for an Athenian poet;
the fragments of Timocles, whose career overlapped that of Menander,
show a serious engagment with the politics of the day. A few poets seem
themselves to have been politically active, and this engagement may have
been reflected in their plays;26 the great Hellenistic rulers are occasionally
mentioned (e.g. Alexis fr. 246 KA), and in the generation after Menander
Posidippus from Macedonian Kassandreia wrote an Arsinoe (if we can trust
a single ancient notice). Affairs in the outside world particularly war may
effect a characters personal history (e.g. Mis. 2334, Perik. 125), or social
and political tensions may surface in the course of the plot (Sikyonioi 150ff.),
but political and economic conditions in the wider world have usually only
the broadest relevance to the course and resolution of the play.
Old Comedy was tied to the life of Athens as a successful, imperial
power and to the parrhesia and isegoria, free and equal speech, which
lay at the heart of Athenian democratic ideology. During the early stages
of Menanders career, however, Athens was not free and independent in
the way it had been before Macedonian power, and the comic stage had
clearly long ceased to be a suitable place for the free-wheeling discussion
or mockery of public policy or the representation of real and important
people. The changes in comedy were, however, gradual rather than sudden;
24 For a more satirical presentation of such a scenario cf. Machon 21822 Gow (where Gows note misses
the implied focalisation of ! $). It is true that the language of moicheia appears elsewhere
outside the context of marriage in the strict sense (cf. J. Davidson, Courtesans and Fishcakes, London
1997, 1312), but Polemons use of this language clearly carries comic weight.
25 Cf. v. 295 (Moschion plans his affair like a military operation, cf. Ovid, Am. 1.9.1718), vv. 3024,
W. MacCary, AJP 93 (1972) 284.
26 Most notable are Philippides and Archedikos, cf. G. B. Philipp, Philippides, ein politischer Komiker
in hellenistischer Zeit Gymnasium 80 (1973) 493509; I. Gallo, Note a Filippide comico Sileno
10 (1984) 22536; C. Habicht, Athen in hellenistischer Zeit (Munich 1994) 2515. It is, however,
noteworthy that, apart from the famous fr. 25 KA, there is nothing in the scanty fragments and
titles of Philippides to distinguish his work from the mainstream of New Comedy.
they may be traced in outline through the fragments of Middle Comedy,
and Aristotle (Poetics 1449b5ff.) was aware of a type of social Old Comedy
which already closely foreshadowed the later style (Crates, Pherecrates). Loss
of political influence and/or autonomy or loss of an empire provide only
partial explanations; moreover, as we have seen, the narrative of citizenship
which is the basis of so many New Comedy plots could hardly be more
central to traditional Athenian concerns, and the apolitical nature of New
Comedy has too often been exaggerated through too narrow a view of what
constitutes the realm of the political.27 Inevitable changes in public taste
and the natural exhaustion of a particular literary style are factors which are
very hard to quantify, but which were undeniably important. More than
a century separates the first productions of Aristophanes and Menander,
and more than seventy years divide Ploutos from Dyskolos; it would be very
remarkable indeed if comedy had not changed greatly, even given constant
political conditions.
At some date in the late fourth century, the subsidies from the theoric
fund for going to the theatre were stopped, and this may have resulted
in a wealthier, more leisured, and essentially urban audience. If this is
correct, then the persistent concern of these plays with wealth and poverty
will have carried a more potent, less purely gnomic or moralising, charge
than may appear to us today. Between 322 and 307 Macedonian-supported
governments in Athens imposed a property qualification of first twenty and
then ten minae for participation in public life, and this may have resulted
in some alienation of the weaker and poorer classes from great public
occasions such as the Dionysiac festivals. In such circumstances, a passage
such as Daos observations at Georgos 7682 will have carried particular
resonance:
wM$% i' ' C) . % * & ,
8 #9Z. Q% % !
)
'$%$ 4" " '$%
#")
C .% . ' 5 v #$ 5 K%
v _ V 8 ($ '$%$! 5
##Q EM b . % 'X
& , * , C , w C .
Soon theyll come here and hell take her off to the farm with him. You will stop
fighting with poverty (penia), a headstrong and difficult beast, and that in the city.
27 Of particular importance are the differing (but in some respects complementary) views of Lape
(2004) and von Reden (1998). Cf. also S. Lape, The Ethics of Democracy in Menanders Dyskolos
Helios 28 (2001) 14172, R. Omitowoju, Rape and the Politics of Consent in Classical Athens (Cambridge
2002) 137229.
You should either be rich or live without many witnesses to see your misfortune.
The loneliness of a farm is just what you need in such conditions. (Menander,
Georgos 7682)
The slaves observations suggest a breaking apart of democratic solidarity,
translated here into spatial separateness; what, if any, purchase in reality
these verses had, we can hardly say.28 The principal virtues suggested by
what we know of the plot of Georgos and by Menanders plays in general,
# and
a kind of compound of generosity, self-
knowledge and compassion29 are essentially duties of the rich towards
those less well off, and it would be a mistake to deny genuine didactic power
to such narratives, however ironised their dramatic instantiation may be.
Thus, in the Dyskolos, Sostratos lectures his father on the proper use of
money because the latter seems reluctant to gain both a poor son-in-law
and a poor daughter-in-law on the same day (vv. 797812); coming from a
young man who has just had what we may take to be his very first taste of
real labour and delivered to his father whom we know to be a hard-working
and successful farmer, the speech indeed demands a complex response, but
it is not simply farcical. So, too, the self-description of the young Moschion
in his prologue to Samia well illustrates both the character and the values
of the social classes central to Menanders plots:
! 5 '
#U Q )
l$U $#(!% #U #
5 ' C 5 '$(.
' C 5 D .. &% ' C V
Q !( C & ''$U D
%.
My choregia was particularly distinguished, as were my acts of generosity. He
kept dogs and horses for me; I was a splendid phylarch; to those of my friends who
were in need I was able to give modest assistance. Thanks to him I was a man, and
I repaid him in a pretty way I was well-behaved. (Menander, Samia 1318)
When, by contrast, Knemon expresses surprise that Gorgias saved him from
the well, although he himself had never been willing to exchange a pleasant
word with the young man (Dyskolos 7249), the misanthropic hermits
calculus of reciprocity is best illustrated from the peasant society of Hesiod
(cf.Works and Days 34260, esp. vv. 3535); Gorgias noble act, on the other
28 If vv. 801 on the need to avoid having many witnesses to see your misfortune play with the
dramatic illusion (cf. Samia 7068, below pp. 4312), then this too will have had particular force if
those witnesses, i.e. the audience, were precisely drawn from the better-off groups.
29 Cf. K. J. Dover, Greek Popular Morality in the time of Plato and Aristotle (Oxford 1974) 2012; W. G.
Arnott, Moral Values in Menander Philologus 125(1981)21527; Giglioni (1984) 303.
hand, like his reluctance to grab the chance of a wealthy, but potentially
unstable marriage (vv. 82134),30 marks him as fit to join the social (and
socialised) class to which his marriage to Sostratos sister translates him.
Menanders plays work towards bridging the gaps between rich and less
rich31 and deal harshly with those who transgress the egalitarian values
foregrounded by the plots: Smikrines in Epitrepontes, whose developed
sense of his own importance allows him to call attention to social division
(vv. 22830), is mocked at the end of the play, and his namesake in Aspis,
who is characterised by greed and an unhealthy interest in the detail and
letter of the law,32 is unlikely to have come off well.
Of the plays which have survived, it is Dyskolos which seems most obvi-
ously concerned with social solidarity and cohesion. Through Knemon,
who shuns human society because of his distaste for what he sees as the
hypocrisy of human motives (cf. vv. 44753, 71920), Menander explores
the difference between being %
a hater of wickedness and
being %( a hater of men; in Knemon, the difference has col-
lapsed.33 The result, from one point of view, is a withdrawal which society
simply cannot tolerate, because such a withdrawal threatens society itself.
This standard reading of the play is well summarised by David Konstan:
Marriage . . . was part of the nexus of social relations that bound into
a community the discrete citizen households of which the city-state was
constituted . . . Because Knemon obstructs a marriage for his daughter (a
stance that reproduces his own estrangement from his wife), his isolation
cuts his household off from the network of connubial relations that under-
writes membership in the polity . . . The hilarity of the final episode may
be taken as a sign of the festive reintegration of Knemons family . . . into
the citizen community.34 At another level, the apparently bitter realism of
Knemons Weltanschauung is shown to be an inadequate response in the
face of communal strategies, such as festive sacrificing, which make up for
30 Behind Gorgias hesitations we sense echoes of familiar comic plots, such as Strepsiades disastrous
mismatch with a $% from the city in Clouds. Unfortunately, a break in the text leaves unclear
why Gorgias gives way so suddenly.
31 Cf. Giglioni (1984).
32 Cf. vv. 156, 1867, 2713, 3569; P. G. McC. Brown, Menanders Dramatic Technique and the Law
of Athens CQ 33 (1983) 41220, esp. pp. 41314.
33 On Knemons misanthropy cf. now K. Haegemans, Character Drawing in Menanders Dyskolos:
Misanthropy and Philanthropy Mnem. 54 (2001) 67596.
34 Greek Comedy and Ideology (New YorkOxford 1995) 979. Cf. Handley in HandleyHurst (1990)
315, If Knemon had been allowed to carry out his intention of absenting himself from the wedding
feast, the festive character of the komos would have been impaired in a manner highly displeasing
to Dionysos, not to mention Pan and the Nymphs, who are the tutelary deities of the action; R.
Hunter, Dioniso 57 (1987) 2978. For some philosophical considerations concerning the necessity
of (even limited) human intercourse cf. Cicero, De Amicitia 878.
in positive results what they may lack in self-analytical frankness. Comedy
itself is implicated in this noble lie, through the very deliberate fashioning
of a double end to the play.
At 86773 the two young men, Gorgias and Sostratos, take their leave
of Knemon and of the play,35 and proceed to join the party inside the cave:
[<.] 1 5 ' C K . [n.] <Z% C) 2 %!Q
$M [<.] #

* 5 C i' _ ( ' 5.
So. Lets go. Go. Sostratos, I feel very embarrassed there are women in there . . .
So. What nonsense! Get a move on. All of this is oikeion to you now. (Menander,
Dyskolos 8713)
The high comedy thus closes with an expression of properly decent man-
ners36 and an affirmation that the oikos has been preserved and broadened
(873 oikeia). The closing scene, in which Sikon and Getas tease Knemon
mercilessly, functions not merely as a reprise of the earlier door-knocking
scenes,37 but incorporates into the play a low or farcical version of the
plot, marked by the use of nearly unparalleled iambic tetrameters to the
accompaniment of the aulos.38 The use of music, the extravagant gesture
and dancing and the rare, perhaps old-fashioned metre seem something of
a throw-back to a livelier style of comedy, as though Menander was exploit-
ing his awareness (and that of his audience?) of the general drift of comic
history. The values promulgated by the high drama are almost parodied
by the self-serving plans of the slave:

$9
% ')
$%U *%4% C ' U , 'C V# % 15
x 1 U ' Q )
* 5 15 CU * 'C % & )
2 5.
Theres a lot of noise; theyre drinking no one will notice. The main thing is that
we must make this man tame. Were related to him by marriage, he is a member
of the family (oikeios). If hes always going to be like this, it wont be easy to put
up with. (Menander, Dyskolos 9015)
35 Note the strongly closural sense of 860ff. the establishment of a paradeigma (cf. the formulaic
endings of some Euripidean tragedies) and the familiar reference to the limits of dramatic time, in
one day I have achieved a marriage . . . The following discussion of the end of Dyskolos largely
reproduces Hunter (2002) 2013.
36 Gorgias hesitations replay those of his equally worthy half-sister (v. 198).
37 On these scenes cf. A. Traill, Knocking on Knemons Door: Stagecraft and Symbolism in the
Dyskolos TAPA 131 (2001) 87108.
38 Cf. Hunter (1985a) 160 n. 47.
Oikeios (904) picks up Sostratos closing words and marks the perverted
variation which we are about to witness. Knemon must be trained in the
ways of the symposium, because comedy had long used the correct conduct
of the symposium as the marker of correct social behaviour (cf. Ar. Wasps).39
What Getas and Sikon offer in fact is an extraordinary inversion of the komos
in which the paraclausithyron precedes the drinking; Knemon is forced to
witness socialised behaviour turned upside down and made ridiculous
(not the
#
(v. 8556) which the other characters enjoy), and the
values of comedy are both confirmed and lightly ironised by a scene which
derives a quite different kind of humour from an exploitation of the same
comic motifs. The sexual joking of v. 892 and (perhaps) v. 895 offer a low
life version of the formal marriage formula of vv. 8424 ( $ '
C &
" %) #.).40 It is tempting to compare the exploitation
of comic motifs and characters by both the literary (Herodas) and the
non-literary mime tradition;41 in mime too, the civilising attitudes of
New Comedy are replaced by an altogether more brutal way of viewing
the world. Knemons punishment in fact consists of his removal from the
realm of comedy into a different mode of performance, where parodic farce
stains the values of the higher mode.
1.3 The ethical horizon of New Comedy

Certain Menandrean titles suggest the depiction of a character who
took a common human trait to extremes, cf. Apistos (The distrustful
man), Deisidaimon (The superstitious man), Misogynes (The misogy-
nist). Knemon in Dyskolos, who translates his disgust with the human race
into the life of a virtual hermit, and (if the Greek original was by Menan-
der) the money-obsessed Euclio in Plautus Aulularia are clear examples
in surviving plays. Comedys persistent interest in such portrayals can be
traced back through the titles of Middle Comedy to Philocleon, the obses-
sive juror of Aristophanes Wasps. It is also clear from the Characters of
39 In Euripides Cyclops also, Odysseus plan depends upon persuading the Cyclops to reverse socialised
behaviour by drinking alone; cf. L. E. Rossi, Il Ciclope di Euripide come mancato Maia 23
(1971) 1038. For Knemon and the Cyclops cf. Hunter (1985a) 145, 173 n. 5, and for the symposium
in Old Comedy A. M. Bowie, Thinking with Drinking: Wine and the Symposium in Aristophanes
JHS 117(1997)121.
40 For &% in v. 895 cf. Hunter on Theocr. 1.152. There is perhaps a similar double entendre
(in the mouth of Daos) at Aspis 31011, * ) 5 | '$4% ' this is presumably not
merely a reference to Smikrines legal position. I am unpersuaded by E. Craik, Double-entendre in
Menanders Dyskolos in QUCC 69 (2001) 4751.
41 For discussion cf. Hunter (1995b).
Theophrastus (the leader of the peripatos throughout Menanders career
and who is linked with the dramatist by the biographical tradition) and
from the various ethical works of Aristotle and his school that interest in
character in the later fourth century was not limited to comedy; among
the titles of the Characters are four which are also titles of plays by Menan-
der, and a number of other parallels between these prose sketches and the
plays may be collected, though none are very striking.42 The possibility
of mutual influence between comedy and ethical writing, in particular the
question of whether Menanders characters conform to an Aristotelian view
of ethical behaviour, has rightly been a subject of considerable interest to
modern scholarship.43 It is easy enough to identify fragments of various
poets which make (often explicit and quite extensive) use of philosophers
and philosophic ideas as tools of humour,44 but specific debts in the field
of practical ethics require much more nuanced treatment.
For Aristotle, the correct or virtuous form of a mode of behaviour was a
mean between two extremes, a deficiency and an excess; thus, for example, a
correct attitude towards spending money will lie between being miserly and
being senselessly extravagant. Put in this simple way, it is hardly surprising
that Aristotle and Menander often find common ground; Aristotles views,
after all, start from received popular morality and find close analogies and
illustrations in the Greek literature of all periods. Nevertheless, the matter
cannot be left there. Some fragments of New Comedy do undeniably allude
to, mock, or reflect serious philosophy, and it is hardly rash to assume that
comic poets (and at least some of their audience) would know (and reflect)
something of the main intellectual movements of their day. A good case has
been made, for example, for seeing the influence of peripatetic discussions of
the nature of friendship in Philemons Thesauros, which survives as Plautus
Trinummus. Nevertheless, this is an area fraught with difficulty. Thus, in
the Perikeiromene, Polemon hacks Glykeras hair because he or his slave
misunderstood the reason why she allowed Moschion to embrace and kiss
her; the soldier acts under a misapprehension (as the prologising figure of
Agnoia emphasises) which leads to anger. Actions in such circumstances
42 Cf. Hunter (1985a) 1489, 1734.

43 The only full-length study is A.Barigazzi, La formazione spirituale di Menandro (Turin 1965), which
tends to emphasise possible links between comedy and philosophy at the expense of other factors;
a helpful survey of possibly relevant passages is K. Gaiser, Menander und der Peripatos A&A 13
(1967) 840. RiethGaiser (1964) is the classic example of an Aristotelian reading of one play, cf.
below, pp. 41925. For the Trinummus cf. E. Fantham, Philemons Thesauros as a Dramatisation
of Peripatetic Ethics Hermes 105 (1977) 40621. Further bibliography in A. DAngelo, Menandro e
Filodemo CErc 27 (1997) 13746.
44 Cf. esp. I. Gallo, Teatro ellenistico minore (Rome 1981) 15140 on Baton and Damoxenus.
are much discussed in the Aristotelian treatises, and one can easily imagine
the Menandrian situation as the subject for discussion in the peripatos.
It is also relevant that Menander wrote plays entitled Orge (Anger) and
Methe (Drunkenness), which presumably took their titles from prologising
abstractions like Agnoia and which probably dealt with the consequences
of acts committed under the influence of these two forces. Nevertheless, the
course of Perikeiromene itself does not develop the initial ethical situation,
and when the soldier explains his plight to Pataikos, the latter concentrates
on the legal, not the ethical, situation.45 Moreover, as far as the preserved
text allows us to judge, the play is structured around the contrast between
Polemons reaction to the physical violence he commits against Glykera
because of a misapprehension and Moschions silliness while he too is under
a misapprehension about Glykera; this is a dramatic, not a philosophical,
contrast. Whatever influences Menander felt while designing his play, the
text itself does not direct us towards an ethical interpretation of it, if by
this is meant an interpretation which depends upon or exploits knowledge
of a particular ethical theory.
Perhaps the play which most explicitly engages with ethical debates is
Terences Adelphoe, translated from a play of Menander of the same title.
The opening monologue by Micio, the indulgent parent, raises several
issues which are important in Hellenistic ethics regard for oneself, law
and equity, character as a matter of habituation, the educational role of
friendship and the very sharp contrast between the two fathers makes
tempting an Aristotelian interpretation in terms of virtue as a mean lying
between extremes. Micios educational theory foregrounds the teaching
of proper behaviour by accustoming (consuefacere) a young man himself
to choose to do the right thing, (presumably) because it is the right thing
rather than because he is afraid of paternal sanction if he does not. Here, it
is difficult not to recall the Aristotelian view that moral virtue is indeed a
matter of habit (), and that we acquire virtues by doing virtuous deeds
which we gradually come to recognise as such (Nicomachean Ethics 2 passim).
In order to be virtuous when we perform a virtuous act, we must have
knowledge . . . choose the acts, and choose them for their own sakes, and
thirdly the action must proceed from a firm and unchangeable character
(EN 2.1105a324, trans. Ross). Thus, according to Micio, the young man
who has not been habituated through friendly acts of generosity but who
behaves well only out of fear of punishment can never become virtuous.
When he thinks he can get away with something a natural tendency of
45 Cf. above, pp. 41011.

young men he will return to his ingenium, that is an untrained (rather
than a bad) disposition. Micios views are thus importantly dependent
upon a notion, conventional in the ancient world, that different stages of
life were characterised by particular forms of behaviour (cf. also vv. 830
5), but it is also very important that Micio characterises the behaviour
of the child brought up (as he sees it) sternly in ways which evoke the
behaviour of (comic) slaves, motivated by fear of a beating (malo coactus
qui suom officium facit, v. 70);46 no less is at stake in the different manners
of education than the difference between slave and free, between fathers
and masters:
hoc pater ac dominus interest. hoc qui nequit
fateatur nescire imperare liberis.
This is the difference between a father and a master. The person who doesnt like
this idea should admit that he does not know how to control children. (Terence,
Adelphoe 76747 )
The repeated play on liberi, children and free men, is the vehicle for a
central theme of the play:
pudore et liberalitate liberos
retinere satius esse credo quam metu.
I believe it to be better to restrain ones children through their sense of shame and
a generous attitude, rather than through making them afraid. (Terence, Adelphoe
578)
Liberalitas appears only here in Roman comedy: by this term, Micio pre-
sumably means something like conduct befitting a liber, which will include
a certain level of generosity.48 The Greek term is # $
, which
Aristotle defines as the virtue concerned with the giving and taking of
money, between the vice of deficiency (& # $ ) and the vice of excess
(&%);49 this triad is to be thrown back in Micios face at the end of the
play.
Micio believes that friendship (v. 67) offers an appropriate ethical
frame within which the process of habituation can take place,50 and such
46 Cf. the song of the good slave at Plaut. Most. 85984.

47 Cf. Men. Epitr. 7145 where Pamphile sees the difference between a father and a master (' %
)
in the formers reliance on persuasion.
48 Gratwick ad loc. rightly compares Men. Samia 1417. 49 Cf. EN 2.1107b814, Rhet. 1. 1367b3.
50 For philia between father and son cf. e.g. Arist. EN 8.1158b11ff, Theophrastus fr. 533 Fortenbaugh. In
the peripatetic scheme, such unequal philia does not make father and son philoi (cf. EE 7.1239a56,
D. Konstan, Greek friendship AJP 117 (1996) 7194), but the ambiguity opens the door to the
playwright.
friendship will not seek to curb universal patterns of behaviour, the quae
fert adulescentia (typical behaviour of young men) of v. 53 (cf. vv. 1012);
the generosity of an indulgent father is equated, in Micios view, with the
beneficia appropriate to friendship (v. 72), and it is this which constitutes
consuefacere, (accustoming). The play may thus be seen to explore the
differences, which on one possible view Micio has collapsed, between
a sense of reciprocal gratitude, imposed by beneficia, and moral virtue; it
is perhaps in Ctesipho that the theme is to be most fully laid out (cf. vv.
2549). Be that as it may, true friendship, whether # or amicitia, is
possible only between free men, and so Micios rhetoric of education is also
a rhetoric of social hierarchy. This too is to prove important.
The generalising, theoretical, bent of Micios monologue is accentuated
by his report of the fact that he adopted the older of Demeas two sons when
the boy was still very young; this unexplained, and unusual,51 adoption,
together with the rather mysterious background to Micios considerable
wealth,52 reinforces the sense that we are witnessing an experiment in
education. Aristotle stresses the crucial importance of starting the practice
of habituation very young (EN 2. 1103b245, 1104b1113), and the poet here
creates a chance to put theory into practice. The actual plot of the comedy
may then be seen to demonstrate that the very idea of an educational
philosophy is unconvincing . . . in the face of the totalizing challenge of
parenthood, [which is] always likely to prove to be above the realm of any
idea.53
When Demea later challenges Micio over his behaviour in funding both
boys escapades, he expresses himself concerned with the consuetudo (habit)
which is being developed (v. 820). To this, Micio, who has already seemed
to regard the whole thing as merely a matter of money, responds as follows:
multa in homine, Demea,
signa insunt ex quibus coniectura facile fit,
duo quom idem faciunt saepe, ut possis dicere
hoc licet inpune facere huic, illi non licet,
non quo dissimilis res sit sed quo is qui facit.
quae ego inesse illis uideo, ut confidam fore
ita ut uolumus? uideo sapere intellegere in loco
uereri inter se amare: scire est liberum
51 It may, of course, have been more fully explained in Menanders play, particularly if (as many scholars
believe) that play had a divine prologue; the case for a prologue is most fully argued by Gratwick
(1987) 3140.
52 815 mea, quae praeter spem euenere; cf. Gratwick (1987) 39.
53 J. Henderson, Entertaining Arguments: Terence Adelphoe in A. Benjamin (ed.), Post-structuralist
Classics (LondonNew York 1988) 192226, p. 206.
ingenium atque animum: quouis illos tu die
redducas.
There are many signs in human life, Demea, from which you can easily judge,
when two people frequently do the same thing, and you can say This one can do
this safely, that one may not; it is not that the action is different, but the agent is.
What signs do I see in our sons which give confidence that they will be as we wish?
I see that they have common sense and judgement, respect where it matters and
mutual affection. Their innate character and spirit is obvious; they can be brought
under control at any time. (Terence, Adelphoe 8213054 )
On the face of it, this might seem quite incompatible with the generalising
principles of Micios opening monologue,55 but it is important that Micio is
now talking about diagnostic signa visible in homine, i.e. in men who have
all but grown up;56 even Micio acknowledges that there comes a time when
different people will require different handling. The implicit distinction
of vv. 8279 is not, despite the similarity of phrasing, quite the same as
Aristotles distinction (EN 10. 1179b716) between young men who are fitted
to listen to the arguments of philosophy and the many who follow their
passions and thus must be restrained by fear and laws. Nevertheless, there is
an important element of rhetorical improvisation in Micios remonstrances;
he is a man with a theory to meet every circumstance, and however valuable
each theory may be in itself, the time must come when Micio too will learn
about the practicalities of parenthood.
When teasingly praised by Syrus, Demea too claims to use an educational
practice of consuefacere (v. 414), and we can well believe that he keeps a closer
watch on things than does Micio. The famous passage in which he explains
to the mocking Syrus that he tells Ctesipho to look into the lives of all men,
as if into a mirror, and to use the [positive and negative] paradigms of others
in his own life has been much discussed, and its origins in Greek metaphor
traced.57 The banality of the image clearly marks Demea as no theoretician.
More important, perhaps, is its wider connection with the didacticism of
the play. Demeas model, in which one looks at others and takes lessons
for ones own life, functions also as a mistaken model of the reception of
drama. The idea of the mirror may be thought to suggest comedy, even if
we cannot trace the origins of Ciceros claim that comedy was imitationem
54 The problematic text of v. 826 does not affect the general sense of the passage.
55 It may also be debated whether inpune in v. 824 means without incurring punishment or without
suffering moral damage.
56 Cf. HT 11920 for a similar diagnostic sign.
57 Cf. e.g. E. Fantham, Comparative Studies in Republican Latin Imagery (Toronto 1972) 689; Zanker
(1987) 1435.
uitae, speculum consuetudinis, imaginem ueritatis, an imitation of life, a
mirror of custom, an image of truth (Proleg. XXVI.13 Koster). There are
two important points here.
First, one can no more directly apply the moral successes and failures of
others to ones own life than one can use the patterns of the comic stage
in a simple, unreflective fashion. To do so would be to confuse drama
(particularly comedy) and life in a way which was in fact not unknown to
ancient scholars, as also to some of their modern counterparts. Secondly,
Demea in the end asserts that the point of his charade of generosity was to
show Micio that his popularity non fieri ex uera uita neque adeo ex aequo
et bono, | sed ex adsentando indulgendo et largiendo, does not arise from
a truthful approach to life nor from a proper sense of the fair and good,
but from your flattery, complaisance and wastefulness (vv. 9878). Demea
appears to see Micios habitual behaviour as itself a charade; with the phrase
uera uita Demea makes the point that not only does Micios attitude turn
others into flatterers (cf. vv. 87780),58 but Micio himself is characterised
by the hypocrisy and feigned attitudes of the flatterer. As aequum et bonum
throws back in Micios face the latters charge against Demea (v. 64), so
uera uita picks up the following verses (vv. 657, errat longe . . .) to suggest
that Micio has made the classic mistake of confusing friendship (#)
with flattery (# or &% ); his behaviour, as Demea sees it, is
that of the Aristotelian . %59 or the more familiar kolax;60
ille suam semper egit uitam in otio, in conuiuiis,
clemens placidus, nulli laedere os, adridere omnibus.
His life is a ceaseless round of leisure and parties; mildness and calmness personified,
hes never rude to anyone, he smiles at everybody. (Terence, Adelphoe 8634)
True friendship involves truthfulness (&#4 ) and shuns dissimulation:
in amicitia . . . nihil fictum, nihil simulatum est et, quidquid est, id est uerum et
uoluntarium, in friendship . . . there is no pretence or feigning, all is truthful
and whole-hearted (Cicero, De amicitia 26).61 The flatterer, on the other
hand, is always acting out a role, and is thus changeable.62 The flatterer
58 The best commentary on these verses is Arist. EN 8.1159a12, Because of love of honour most men
prefer to be loved rather than to love; that is why most men like flatterers.
59 Cf. EN 4.1126b1314: some men are thought to be obsequious (. %), viz. those who to give
pleasure praise everything and never oppose, but think it their duty to give no pain to the people
they meet (trans. W. D. Ross).
60 Cf. Plut. Mor. 50b Just as false and counterfeit imitations of gold imitate only its brilliancy and lustre,
so apparently the flatterer, imitating the pleasant and attractive characteristics of the friend (
#$ , 1'b !%), always presents himself in a cheerful and blithe mood (e#,
&
), with never a whit of crossing or opposition (trans. F. C. Babbitt).
61 Cf. De am. 65, 92. 62 Cf. Arist. EN 2.1108a926; Hunter (1985b) 4813.
adapts himself to the character and habits of his host, in a cheap imitation
of the similarity which lies at the base of real friendship;63 by refusing to
recognise both his own proper position and the distance between himself
and his son, by trying to live a life in otio in conuiuiis more associated with
the young, comic bachelor, Micio has in Demeas eyes been fooling only
himself: Any idea that father and son might be friends on an equal footing
like brothers, though superficially attractive, is really the topsyturvy stuff
of comedy.64
On the stage, of course, no less than in real life, amicitia and obsequium
may be hard to distinguish. In the Andria, for example, Simo describes his
sons behaviour with approval, but the slave Sosia can make a rather more
jaundiced joke:
SIMO sic uita erat: facile omnis perferre ac pati;
cum quibus erat quomque una is sese dedere,
eorum obsequi studiis, aduersus nemini,
numquam praeponens se illis; ita ut facillume
sine inuidia laudem inuenias et amicos pares.
SOSIA sapienter uitam instituit; namque hoc tempore
obsequium amicos, ueritas odium parit.
SIMO This is how he lived: he put up with everybody without trouble; whoever
he was with, he gave himself entirely to them, fell in with their pursuits, never
crossed anyone, and never put his own interests before theirs. This is the way one
most readily wins praise and gains friends without arousing jealousy.
SOSIA This was a clever plan for life: for these days complaisance wins friends and
truthfulness brings hatred. (Terence, Andria 628)
Sosias joke inverts the proper moral order, and deliberately takes a pejo-
rative view of Pamphilus behaviour: the obsequium which Simo praises as
productive of amicitia is, for the slave, the mark of the deceitful flatterer.65
This relativity is extremely important for understanding the Adelphoe. Eth-
ical theory has its place, but it is dramatic characters who must put this
theory into practice on the stage, as human beings do so in real life. One
mans friendliness may well be anothers obsequium; it is from such rela-
tivity that misunderstandings arise. What Micio saw as part of liberalitas,
Demea sees as indulgendum et largiendum. The perversion of language, as
Demea sees it, is indeed typical of the kolax : for Plutarch, flattery involves
linguistic distortions no less potent than those Thucydides (3.82) recorded
63 Cf. Plut. Mor. 51e. 64 Gratwick (1987) 17.

65 Cicero, De am. 89 cites v. 68, but takes obsequium in a good sense, as opposed to adsentatio. Simos
repeated facile . . . facillume also suggests the facilitas of the flatterer (cf. Adelphoe 861, 986).
from the stasis at Corcyra, and the kolax will pervert the Aristotelian dis-
tinction by using the term # $
for what is really his patrons
&% (Mor. 56ab). Moreover, the kolax is either by nature or action
servile. Aristotle notes that, as it is slavish to live at the service of another,
so all flatterers are servile and base people become flatterers (( e

# e
# ) EN 4.1125a12). Demeas rep-
resentation of Micios behaviour thus casts back at him also the link Micio
drew between education and free status (above p. 420).
To what extent Demeas charge is fair has been the subject of prolonged
scholarly debate,66 but this very question may be itself misleading. What is
rather of importance here is the interest in role-playing within a dramatic
framework. If Terence is any kind of safe guide, Menander seems consis-
tently to have fashioned an analogy between drama and the drama that
human beings act out in their lives. Both drama and real life are theatrical;
failing to recognise that and assuming that they are theatrical in the same
way are both mistakes which lead to truly comic results. Micio hoped
that Aeschinus would be entirely open with him, and was disappointed;
Micio himself was less than truthful with Demea; Syrus staged a con-
vincing drama to fool Demea; when Micio shows Aeschinus in practice
how a real pater and amicus should act (636ff.), he does so by staging his
own little play, which finally forces Aeschinus into the open. So, too,
Chremes, the officious fool of Heauton timoroumenos and another theo-
retician,67 preaches absolutely honesty in human relationships (uera uita
again, HT 154), but spends the play forcing a series of charades upon others
and finally punishing his son with the cruellest charade of all. Chremes
really has turned life into a drama.68 The relationship between the two is
indeed as close as ancient rhetorical criticism alleged, but rather differently
ordered. If being a father and being a son are roles which men play, the
Adelphoe may be viewed as an exploration of how seriously that theatrical
metaphor is to be taken. Be that as it may, it is clear that the play is firmly
anchored in the world of Hellenistic ethics, and can only be understood
within the recurrent Hellenistic concern with How should one live? It is
in this context that the tired problem of Is Menander a Hellenistic poet?
may find a meaningful answer.
66 Cf. e.g. Gaiser in RiethGaiser (1964) 1513 for the view that, whereas Micio embodies the social
virtues as means, Demea sees Micio as representing the deficiencies.
67 Cf. esp. H. D. Jocelyn, Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto Antichthon 7 (1973) 1446.
68 In HT this theme is reinforced by a series of almost metatheatrical references to familiar stage patterns:
101, 20410 (a particularly noteworthy parallel to the concerns of Adelphoe), 439, 957, 9756. There
is a related phenomenon at Andria 83441, in a play which is replete with such things (cf. Hunter
(1985a) 779).
1.4 New Comedy and Attic tragedy

That New Comedy is the child of both Old Comedy and Attic tragedy was
recognised even in antiquity; indeed, modern scholars have often stressed
the tragic inheritance of New Comedy at the expense of the rich continuity
of the comic tradition. It may be argued that in the later stages of his career,
Euripides consciously sought to break down the barriers between comedy
and tragedy (cf. Ion, Helen, Iphigenia in Tauris), but the two genres in fact
always remained quite distinct in performance and style; at all periods the
archaic, poetic vocabulary and stricter rhythms of tragedy differentiated
it strongly from comedy, and such distinctions were in fact accentuated,
rather than lessened, in the Hellenistic period.69 Nevertheless, the appar-
ent similarity between some New Comedy plots, structures, and motifs
the narrative prologue, recognition, refuge at altars etc. and common
Euripidean phenomena is very striking.70 It is tempting to ascribe some of
the similarities to the popularity of mythological burlesque in the fourth
century;71 a story pattern would appear first in comedy as burlesque of a
tragedy, and then slowly be completely assimilated to the comic idiom.
Such assimilation would be fostered by the standard comic practice within
burlesque of making mythological characters behave like ordinary Athe-
nians, of placing them within Athenian contexts and situations, in short,
of erasing the boundaries between imagined past and visible present.72
In the process, the structure of comedy, already altering visibly in the two
fourth-century plays of Aristophanes, moved towards the consequent and
regular pattern of tragedys alternation of spoken scenes and choral per-
formances. Be that as it may, the result is that we can trace in New Comedy
both scenes, motifs, and characters which may owe an unconscious debt to
tragedy and others which deliberately position themselves outside or against
tragedy, whether parodically or not, regardless of their heritage. Already in
Aristophanes, of course, there are many different ways in which comedy
constructs and exploits a parasitic relationship with the grander genre and
its didactic claims.
The possibilities for historical reconstruction are well-illustrated by the
Epitrepontes, where Smikrines arbitrates in a dispute over the fate of a child
who is in fact his grandson. One of the arbitrants, Syriskos the charcoal-
burner, appeals to the story from tragedy of Neleus and Pelias, who were
69 Cf. below, p. 435.
70 Of particular interest is Pasqualis discussion of the relation between the characters of late Euripides
and those of Menander, Scritti Filologici I (Florence 1986) 97129, esp. p. 124.
71 Cf. Hunter (1983a) 225. 72 Cf. Nesselrath (1990) 20441, Hunter (1983a) 245.
exposed, found by a goatherd, and then eventually achieved their proper
status because of the recognition-tokens found with them (vv. 32533). The
reference here seems to be to the Tyro of Sophocles, but the arbitration-scene
as a whole follows a pattern which we know to have occurred in the Alope
of Euripides. Menander, therefore, may here have openly acknowledged
a debt to tragedy; he has done so, however, in an oblique, rather than an
obvious, way by explicitly citing a tragedy which was not in fact the primary
source.
In New Comedy we find tragic language and quotations from tragedy
used in many of the same ways which are familiar from Aristophanes.
When tragedy is quoted in entirely non-tragic circumstances, the disso-
nant absurdity mocks the pretensions of both the comic characters and
the grand genre itself.73 More subtly, characters may change the register
of their language to match an extreme (real or feigned) emotion, whether
happy or sad. Thus, Daos in the Aspis, a former paidagogos (v. 14) upon
whom textual depth sits relatively lightly, speaks in fairly strict rhythm when
mourning Kleostratos, who is believed dead,74 but also in a ludicrous series
of assigned quotations from tragedy when trying to convince Smikrines
that Chairestratos has died, in the course of a charade which itself may be
of tragic inspiration (cf. v. 329). This is not the only case where Menander
associates the patterns of tragedy with a mistaken view of the patterns of
the life he presents on stage. The Aspis, in fact, seems particularly rich in
such paratragic phenomena. Daos battle narrative (vv. 2482) evokes the
messenger-speeches of tragedy,75 but its realistic description of contempo-
rary warfare, and the occasional interruptions of the listening Smikrines,
mark it out from the formally similar tragic narratives (Euripides, Supplices,
Herakleidai) which are set in a heroic past and which it otherwise recalls.
When the slave describes how he came to believe that his master was dead,
we even seem to hear Iliadic themes of indiscriminate death playing in
the background (Aspis 6979 Iliad 7.42132). These grim Iliadic reso-
nances are slowly overcome in the course of the play by the Odyssean and
romantic-melodramatic motifs of disguise and sudden return. Whatever
influence the later melodramas of Euripides may have had on the history
of comedy, tragedy is constructed by comic poets as a set of grim and
awful tales, full of death.
73 Good examples at Diphilus fr. 60 KA, Philemon fr. 82 KA.

74 Cf. Hunter (1985a) 123, with bibliography at 170 n. 17.
75 Note Smikrines repeated request for information (vv. 19, 22), the first couched as the verbose: How
did he die, or in what fashion?, and the formal markers of narrative with which Daos begins and
closes, There is a river in Lycia called the Xanthos . . ., You have heard everything.
Menander seems also to have experimented with the insertion of demar-
cated scenes of paratragic material into otherwise comic scenic patterns.
Thus, in the Dyskolos, after Knemon has been rescued from the well, itself
probably a common comic scenario, he is wheeled onto the stage on a bed
or a chair, in a scene reminiscent of the parodies of tragedys use of the
ekkyklema in Aristophanes Acharnians and Thesmophoriazousai. That the
injured Knemon should be unable to walk is realistic enough, but there is
no reason to bring him outside except so that the audience can see, and so
this use of the device is closely parallel to the fifth-century scenes. Here,
someone who has fallen down a well while trying to retrieve a hammer and
a bucket is presented like a stricken tragic hero. Menander evokes an anal-
ogy between Knemons entrance to defend his way of life and the apologia
of, say, Hippolytus after he has been carried in at the end of Euripides
tragedy; from another perspective, Knemons charge to Gorgias (vv. 729ff.)
to find a husband for his daughter is a kind of comfortingly civic and comic
version of the dying Heracles awesome and mysterious charge to his son at
the end of Sophocles Trachiniai to marry Iole; whereas the latter seems to
make no sense within the parameters of ordinary morality and is greeted
by Hyllos with abhorrence, the former represents Knemons concession to
sanctioned social practice. So, too, Knemon seeks the isolation of an Ajax
or Heracles, but is brutally forced to conform.
Two other such scenes which similarly adopt tragic structures are
the recognition scene of the Perikeiromene and the messenger-speech of
Sikyonioi. In the former, the scene of reunion between father and daughter
(vv. 779ff.) is played out in imitation of the style stricter rhythm, sti-
chomythia, poetic vocabulary (and verbatim quotation) of tragedy. This
virtuoso piece of theatre flaunts and exaggerates its historic debt to tragedy,
while the presence of Glykeras brother, who has seen himself as her lover
and who overhears the conversation and makes a number of aside remarks,
stains the prevailingly high tone and thus preserves the comic milieu. The
stichomythia has broken up by the time of the actual recognition, but the
total effect is tonally complex and anything but straightforwardly realistic.
In Sikyonioi a lengthy report of events off-stage is preceded by an exchange
between the messenger and another character in the style of tragedy (vv.
16975) and is framed by echoes of the two messenger-speeches in Euripi-
des Orestes. The comic speech, which for the most part is completely in
the comic idiom, concerns a public meeting at Eleusis to decide the fate of
a young girl and the efforts of her brother (as he is to turn out to be) to
secure her; the first messenger-speech of the Orestes concerns a meeting to
decide the fate of Orestes and his sister. Here, echoes of a famous tragedy
construct dramatic history for an audience familiar with the principle of
comedys parasitic relation to tragedy.
The Samia makes particularly interesting use of the known relation-
ship between tragedy and comedy to fashion the dramas meaning. The
reactions of Demeas and Nikeratos to the situations with which they imag-
ine themselves confronted exploit the (always ironised) claim of comedy
to offer some kind of mimetic truth, whereas tragedy is marked as the
realm of fabulous myth and hence error.76 Thus Demeas misconception
as to the parentage of the child is marked not merely by his speculation
that Chrysis seduced Moschion when the latter was drunk (vv. 33842),
an entirely improbable scenario which inverts ordinary comic patterns (cf.
Epitrep. 471ff.) as well, apparently, as being quite untrue to what actually
did happen at the Adonia,77 but also by his assimilation of Chrysis to Helen
(v. 337). That Helen is here thought of as a figure from drama is made
probable by Demeas apparent quotation at v. 326 from Euripides Oedipus:
Oedipus family life was tangled indeed the son did sleep with his fathers
partner but the reality of Demeas situation is worlds away from such
entanglements. The ready-made patterns which tragedy offers only mislead
when applied to the real world which comedy claims to present, and the
trouble (as well as the comic potential) lies precisely in the didactic and
gnomic authority which tragedy claims for itself a claim which Athenian
society had traditionally endorsed.
Demeas second misunderstanding is marked by a reprise and revision
of the language of the first (Moschions amazed Why are you shouting?
at v. 481, marking the bafflement of a young man who does not see the
world in mythic patterns, picks up Demeas self-address at v. 326), but it
is the intellectually humble Nikeratos whose exaggerated reactions lay bare
the patterns which Demeas has been playing out in a rather lower key. The
analogies of Oedipus, Thyestes, and the like are now screamed to the heav-
ens (vv. 495500); Demeas resolve to behave like a man and conceal what
has happened for his sons sake (vv. 34952) becomes Nikeratos absurd
claim that, if anything like this had happened to him, the whole city would
openly talk of how Nikeratos had proved himself a man by avenging the
foul deed (vv. 50713). Whereas, moreover, Demeas had invoked the help
of Apollo in not being revealed to anyone (v. 448),78 itself a self-conscious
76 The Samia is stimulatingly discussed in something like these terms by Hurst (1990).
77 N. Zagagi, The Comedy of Menander (London 1994) 127, however, rightly notes that the (male)
audience may well think of Chrysis former life as a hetaira.
78 Cf. Dikaiopolis explanation to Euripides that the chorus must not know who he is, though the
audience will (Ar. Ach. 4404); this scene could, of course, hardly be more metatheatrical.
role-playing marked by the audience address of v. 447, Nikeratos knows
only the outwardness, not the inwardness, of theatrical patterns. Those
patterns which Demeas had seen subtly to inform his life are now laid bare
with a truly paratragic intensity. Demeas himself is made a tool of this exag-
geration when, having finally learned the truth, he appeals to Nikeratos,
who sees the world in the lurid patterns of inherited myth, through the
paradigm of Danae (vv. 589ff.), another seduced daughter; there is a witty
appropriateness here the roof had indeed played an important role in the
seduction of Nikeratos daughter (cf. v. 45) but Demeas plays perfectly
to his simple-minded audience by appealing to the authority of tragedy for
this story (v. 590). At 601ff. there is a dramatic switch to a comic mode
of ]% I' 5) satire of named individuals, with ribaldry at the
expense of Chairephon and Androkles; the effect is to juxtapose an exagger-
ated (and perhaps oudated)79 comic style to a comic construction of tragic
style. Such generic self-conconsciousness locates true comedy both inside
and outside inherited patterns: real control, such as that shown by Demeas
at the end of Act 4, comes through the exploitative acknowledgement of
those patterns.
1.5 The appeal of New Comedy

New Comedy seems to have appealed to educated men for several centuries
after Menanders death; Menander was a central text, both for performance
and in private reading and recitation. We should not, of course, make too
much of this: that Aristophanes of Byzantium may have ranked Menan-
der second after Homer (cf. Testimonium 170c KA) tells us more about
Aristophanes and his scholastic world than about either poet. Antiquitys
very high regard for Menander was based upon a rhetorical and ethical
approach to drama which is no longer common today; seeking to under-
stand this high regard can, however, teach us a great deal about ancient
patterns of thought.
Within its limited horizons, New Comedy presents a stylised but broadly
recognisable representation of elements of society within a strongly rhetor-
ical view of the behaviour characteristic of different types of people. Many
modern readers in fact find Menanders art of individual characterisation
to be one of his greatest skills, despite or perhaps because of this system
of types. It is hard not to admire, for example, a portrayal such as that
79 Cf. above, p. 412. For this reason, arguments about the relative date of the Samia which are based
solely on this comic mode are very dangerous.
of Smikrines in Aspis: although the prologue depicts him as a monster of
wickedness (vv. 11421), his greed and unhealthy concern with the letter
of the law rather than with equity are, in his conversations with others,
understated and briefly indicated; the mask of compassion is worn skilfully
but obviously. The characters of Menander are indeed sympathetic, at least
in their weaknesses and their mistakes. The plays concern attempts to sort
out fairly ordinary lives which have been disturbed, if not actually in the
way that many lives are disturbed in the real world, at least in ways which
ancient spectators and readers could comprehend. Even so striking a case
as Chaereas rape of a young citizen-girl in the course of Terences Eunuchus
reveals universal human weakness in front of the forces which rule our lives.
So, too, mistaken or lost identity, disguise and the idea of recognition all
play upon uncertainties and fears that are by no means the creation of the
modern age. The constant appeal in these plays to the power of Fortune
is not merely banal consolation, but a way of expressing fear in front of
the unknown that the characters in these plays eventually survive and
perhaps even triumph can soothe those fears. Fortune, in fact, acts as a
positive social and narrative force.80 The resolution of this dramatic distur-
bance does not, however, mean that the fear goes away; however unreal
in some respects, the characters of Menander and their society are familiar
enough for their doubts and uncertainties to evoke similar disturbances in
the audience. This potential to disturb is, however, balanced by a pervasive
sense of distance from the characters, a slightly ironical detachment from
their plight particularly when that plight is an affair of the heart which
many would probably think of as a Hellenistic feature in Menanders art.
Let us finally return to the Samia. Moschions opening admission of
a mistake (1( v. 3) is simultaneously frank and disingenuous: he
presents the rest of his life (surely over-optimistically?) as a model of helpful
reciprocity. What the rest of the play shows us is a succession of further
mistakes and misjudgements, in which people act in anger and delusion.
What is highlighted in this way is the deliberate mistake which Moschion
makes in his charade which opens the fifth act (cf. above, p. 407); here,
he is shown to fall far short of any sense of reciprocity or rational judge-
ment. At the end of the play, Demeas tellingly points out to Moschion that,
whereas he had sought to preserve the young mans reputation, Moschion
was now assembling witnesses of Demeas folly (vv. 7048); the metathe-
atrical reference, suggestive of the presence of an audience, could hardly be
80 Cf. Giglioni (1984) 357; G. Vogt-Spira, Dramaturgie des Zufalls. Tyche und Handeln in der Komodie
Menanders (Munich 1992).
plainer, and it is here, if anywhere, that the real didactic force of Menanders
obsessive concern with role-playing lies.
2 hellenistic tragedy
Tragedy was an Athenian creation and addressed itself to central issues of
fifth-century Athenian society and ideology for a very largely Athenian
audience. As early as the later fifth century, however, tragedies were not
infrequently performed outside Attica, and increasingly in the fourth cen-
tury, and particularly in the wake of Alexanders Hellenising conquests,
tragedies were written and performed all over the Greek world; the presen-
tation of Latin adaptations of Greek tragedies at Rome was a significant step
in the Hellenisation of the state which was to control the entire Mediter-
ranean world. Unfortunately, our textual evidence for tragedy after the
fifth century is exiguous. From the fourth century survive some fragments
quoted by later authors, a few brief scenes on papyrus, certain scenes (if
we knew how to identify them) of Euripides Iphigenia at Aulis, and per-
haps the Rhesus ascribed to Euripides;81 from the later period we have even
fewer fragments, but also the Exagoge of Ezekiel.82 Despite this paucity of
evidence, there is good reason to believe that tragedy flourished in the Hel-
lenistic period and remained much more important than our evidence and
the powerful influence of Aristophanes Frogs, which seems to announce
the death of tragedy, might have suggested.83 In another way, however, the
promised resurrection of Aeschylus in the Frogs does point to an important
fact about tragedy after the fifth century.
The watching (and reading) of tragedies meant a direct engagement not
merely with new texts, but also with the classics of the fifth century, which
were now regularly re-performed in competition with new plays. Tragedy
itself was now part of the inherited conglomerate of literary tradition, to
be invoked in Athens for its moral and social authority as we find it used
in fourth-century oratory and in the wider world for its gnomic wisdom,
just as Homer had been (and continued to be) used. Though we can hardly
say how the meaning of a play of Euripides differed for a fourth-century
81 The fullest discussion is G. Xanthakis-Karamanos, Studies in Fourth-century Tragedy (Athens 1980).
For the Rhesus cf. W. Ritchie, The Authenticity of the Rhesus of Euripides (Cambridge 1964).
82 Cf. below, pp. 4356. The basic collection of material are volumes iii of TrGF. Cf. also F. Schramm,
Tragicorum Graecorum hellenisticae quae dicitur aetatis fragmenta (Diss. Munster 1929).
83 For some general considerations cf. P. E. Easterling, The End of an Era? Tragedy in the Early Fourth
Century in A. Sommerstein et al. (eds.), Tragedy, Comedy and the Polis (Bari 1993) 55969, ead.
From repertoire to canon in P. E. Easterling (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy
(Cambridge 1997) 21127.
audience, as compared to the original fifth-century one, our own theatrical
(and scholastic) experience shows that familiarity and classic status brings its
own interpretative preconceptions. It is likely enough, though can hardly
be proved, that re-performances of classic tragedies were (at least) often
received as more univocal in meaning and less provocative than the original
performances; increasing familiarity with the plays through reading will also
have changed the dynamic of their relationship with Athenian culture. In
other words, tragedy may now have carried a particular and recognisable
generic resonance, which new tragedies could exploit; here again, of course,
it is the later plays of Euripides which foreshadow future developments.
Tragedy, whether performed in the theatre or read in book texts, has become
literature, and can make creative use of the idea of tragedy as well as
allusion to specific texts.
It is also important that tragedy no longer necessarily always refers to
the same kind of performance as is familiar to us from the fifth century.
The performance of extracts from classic plays and chorusless performances
are just two modes with which the Hellenistic world seems to have been
familiar. Once tragedy is removed from its formalised place at the Attic
festivals of Dionysus, it may be broken apart and adapted to many different
performance situations. One of the most interesting post-classical (and
probably Hellenistic) tragic texts is Adesp. 649 (TrGF ), in which an ecstatic
Cassandra describes to Priam, the chorus and Deiphobus the fatal duel
between Achilles and Hector (apparently as it is taking place off-stage).
The mode of sung exchange, an obvious rewriting of Iliad 22, a probable
debt to the Agamemnon of Aeschylus, and the intense emotionality and
theatricality of the passage seem to reflect features usually associated with
both elite and popular poetry of the period.84 Unfortunately, we can be
sure neither of the date of the piece nor that we have to do with a tragedy
in the ordinary sense of that term; we may have to do rather with a brief
Singspiel, or even a bookish reconstruction of the tragic manner.85
Some titles suggest that the very occasional fifth-century practice of
drawing subject-matter from contemporary or near contemporary history
became relatively more common in the later period,86 and tragedy may
also have shared in the Hellenistic taste for mythic stories from outside the
84 Cf. R. A. Coles, A New Fragment of Post-classical Tragedy from Oxyrhynchus BICS 15 (1968)
11018; Gentili (1979) 6387; O. Taplin, Did Greek Dramatists Write Stage Instructions? PCPS 23
(1977) 12132, p. 127; Mazzoldi (2001) 27080; C. Catenacci, Un frammento di tragedia ellenistica
(P.Oxy. 2746 = TrGF adesp. 649) QUCC 70 (2002) 95104
85 Cf. the commentary (with further bibliography) of KannichtSnell.
86 E.g. the Themistocles and Pheraioi of Moschion (TrGF I 97 F3), and the Marathonioi and Kassandreis
of Lycophron (TrGF I 100).
familiar mainstream. Both tendencies may to some extent be illustrated
by a fragment (Adesp. 664 (TrGF )) of a play on the story of Gyges and
Kandaules wife familiar from Book 1 of Herodotus; in this fragment, the
wife relates to the chorus the events of the night in which Gyges spied
upon her. Although powerful voices have argued that this lost drama was
Herodotus source, rather than an imitation of the historian, it cannot be
ruled out that we are dealing with a Hellenistic dramatising of the well-
known story; the following of a famous earlier text, not just a common story
or myth, lays particular emphasis upon the drama as a mimesis: drama is
now increasingly marked as a literary product, as a work of art. It may
also be the case that the original text of the Gyges-drama was not a script
for performance but (or also) a text for reading or recitation. That many
tragedies of the third century were in fact (predominantly) Buchpoesie
seems all but certain,87 and this may particularly have been the case for
the tragedies ascribed in the grammatical tradition to such leading poets as
Callimachus, Timon (cf. Diog. Laert. 9.109), and Alexander Aetolus.
Tragedy flourished at Alexandria (cf. Theocritus 17.11214). Late texts
date to the period of Ptolemy Philadelphus a group of tragic poets known as
The Pleiad, although it is not certain that that title was contemporary with
the poets themselves,88 nor that all the poets of the Pleiad actually worked
at Alexandria; membership of this group varies somewhat in the ancient
lists.89 It is reasonable to assume some relationship the nature of which we
can no longer ascertain between tragedies written at Alexandria and the
scholarly work of the Alexandrian Museum on the text and interpretation of
classical Attic tragedy. According to the very late report of Tzetzes, Alexander
Aetolus, himself one of the Pleiad, was a central figure in Alexandrian
work on Attic tragedy, as Lycophron was for comedy. The meaning of the
verb with which Tzetzes describes the work of these scholars, ' to
correct, has been a source of considerable controversy,90 but at the very
least it is not improbable that Alexandrian tragedy alluded not merely to
famous scenes of classical tragedy, but also to problems in interpretation,
much as Alexandrian epic (the Argonautica) makes creative use of Homeric
scholarship. Here again, there is continuity as well as refocusing, for classical
tragedy itself is intensely intertextual, and would doubtless appear more so,
if more had survived.
87 Cf. below, p. 436, and Zwierlein (1966) 127ff. 88 It is first attested in Strabo 14.675.
89 Standard are Alexander Aetolus, Homer of Byzantium, Philikos, Lycophron and Sositheos; two out
of Aiantiades, Sosiphanes, Dionysiades and Euphronios usually make up the conventional seven,
cf. TrGF I 545, RE 21.1912.
90 Cf. Pfeiffer (1968) 11920; K. Nickau, Untersuchungen zur textkritischen Methode des Zenodotos von
Ephesos (BerlinNew York 1977); Rengakos (1993) 1214.
The sparse fragments of the Pleiad, as of other contemporary poets,
show an apparently total avoidance of resolution and Attic correption in
the iambic trimeter.91 Such a metrical practice, shared also by the Alexan-
dra of Lycophron,92 assimilates Hellenistic tragedy to archaic iambus, and
distinguishes it strongly from Attic tragedy of both the fifth and the fourth
centuries. We may, however, doubt whether these poets intended so to dis-
tance themselves from classical tragedy; rather, the strict rhythm represents
the idea of tragedy and differentiates tragedy as far as possible from ordi-
nary speech and from the style of contemporary comedy; the metrical form
of the trimeter, like the introduction of a high stage which separated actors
from chorus, and like the increasingly elaborate dress, marked tragedy as
remote and stylised.93 Here again, however, we may also be tempted to see
a development which makes sense within an increasingly bookish culture;
such a metrical practice perhaps belongs in the areas of reading and recita-
tion as much as in that of performance.
Of potentially great importance for the study of Hellenistic tragedy is
Horaces discussion of the genre at Ars Poetica 153294. We are, as too
often, hampered by ignorance of Horaces sources, but two subjects at least
are worthy of note. In vv. 1858 Horace deprecates the presentation of
horrific incidents on the stage, coram populo. How far in this direction
some areas of Hellenistic tragedy had moved we do not know, but it would
be unsurprising if there had indeed been some movement towards the
melodramatic and shocking, particularly near the more popular end of the
performance scale. Secondly, there is the problem of the five-act law which
Horace endorses in vv. 18990. It is not in fact improbable that comedy,
which we know to have regularly (and perhaps unchangeably) employed five
acts, and tragedy came together in this structural form, as the importance
of the chorus was lessened in both genres; the papyri offer clear evidence
of texts of classical tragedy in which the words of the chorus are omitted
(presumably as being irrelevant to the narrative of the play). A five-act
structure might thus be one further debt of Seneca to Hellenistic drama.94
One text which may throw light upon these questions is the Exagoge of
Ezekiel.95 This text, perhaps of the second century and perhaps written in
91 The most striking evidence for this comes in fact from outside the Pleiad: Moschion, TrGF I 97
F6, a passage of 33 trimeters on early man and the rise of civilisation.
92 Cf. below, p. 440.
93 The earliest iconographic evidence for the famous high kothornoi of tragedy is mid-second century
bc, cf. Pickard-Cambridge (1968) 2048.
94 Cf. in general Zwierlein (1966), R. J. Tarrant, Senecan Drama and its Antecedents HSCP 82 (1978)
21363.
95 Cf. TrGF 128; H. Jacobsen, The Exagoge of Ezekiel (Cambridge 1983).
Alexandria by a Hellenised Jew, offers a dramatised version of the flight
of the Jews, led by Moses, out of Egypt to the promised land; like the
Gyges drama and the Cassandra fragment (cf. above, pp. 4334), the
Exagoge closely follows a pre-existing text (in this case the Septuagint).
What survives seems to be divided into acts by changes of place and time
a very rare occurrence in classical tragedy 96 and it is not unreasonable to
assume that the Exagoge originally had five such acts. The possibility (or,
indeed, probability) that this was a Lesedrama, rather than a play primarily
for performance, has already been noted; its metrical practice is, however,
not that of the Pleiad, but rather appears to be an attempt to reproduce
the practice of classical tragedy, especially that of Euripides, whose stylistic
influence is also felt, particularly in the prologue.97 What is clear is the
extent to which traditional dramatic structure could rapidly disintegrate,
once the unifying classical chorus diminished in importance and lost its
connection with the plot performed by the actors. Various pressures in the
Hellenistic period the tendency to anthologise, the performance, often by
solo artists, of famous monologues from plays, the decline in the importance
of the chorus led to the privileging of the individual scene over the whole
drama, and in their different ways the episodic articulation of Plautine
comedy98 and the Exagoge both illustrate similar developments.99
A further feature of later Greek tragedy which also finds some confir-
mation in Horaces Ars Poetica (cf. vv. 22050) is the prominence of satyr-
play; one at least of the Pleiad, Sositheos, seems to have been particularly
renowned in this area.100 This archaic form, with its characteristic mixture
of high poetic vocabulary, bawdy chorus, and striking juxtapositions of
style and tone, seems to have held a particular appeal for Hellenistic taste.
Nevertheless, some Hellenistic satyr-plays probably had little in common
with their Attic forebears, except for the presence of satyrs. Most remarkable
of all is the Agen of Python, a political satire against Harpalus staged under
Alexanders patronage (and perhaps with Alexander as a character) during
his eastern campaigns.101 Harpalus was also the object of the attention of
comic poets,102 and the Agen was not the only satyr-play which seems to
96 Cf. O. Taplin, The Stagecraft of Aeschylus (Oxford 1977) 41618.

97 Cf. B. Snell, Die Iamben in Ezechiels Moses-Drama Glotta 44 (1967) 2532.
98 Cf. Hunter (1985a) 4551.
99 T. D. Kohn, The tragedies of Ezekiel GRBS 43 (20023) 512 explains many of these unusual
features of the Exagoge on the radical hypothesis that what we have are fragments of a tetralogy,
not of a single play; for a response cf. H. Jacobson, Ezekiels Exagoge , one play or four? GRBS 43
(20023) 3916.
100 Cf. Anth. Pal. 7.707 (= Dioscorides xxiii GP)
101 TrGF 91; for discussion and bibliography cf. Fantuzzi (1993a) 315.
102 Cf. Philemon fr. 15 KA.
have moved closer to the style and subjects which were traditionally the
preserve of comedy. In the Menedemos, Lycophron portrayed the Eretrian
philosopher of that name, and the tone of a surviving fragment (TrGF 100
F2) is not unlike that of Middle Comedy, although the verses are delivered
by Silenos to the chorus. The coming together of comedy and satyr-play is
hardly surprising in a world where poets now composed in both genres, and
the inevitable link between drama and the life of Athens had been broken
for good.
3 lycophron s a l e x a n d r a
One of the most remarkable Hellenistic poems is the Alexandra, tradition-
ally ascribed to Lycophron of Chalcis, the tragic poet and scholar who is
credited with the diorthosis of the comic poets at Alexandria. The Alexandra
(1474 iambic trimeters, as transmitted) consists of a single speech, in which
a servant who has been set to watch Cassandra reports to Priam the riddling
prophecies she delivered on the day on which Paris set out on his fateful trip
to Sparta. Apart from the servants narrative frame (vv. 130, 146174), the
whole poem is devoted to Cassandras prophecies reported in oratio recta;
these prophecies cover the future fate of Troy and its heroes, and also the
past and future of the leading Greek heroes who will sack Troy. Cassandras
opening word, *5) sets the tone for the gloom and hatred which fill her
speech.
The most notorious problem of the Alexandra concerns its date and
authorship. Already in antiquity it was noted that a passage on the legends
of early Rome (vv. 122680), introduced by Cassandra to forecast how
Romes power will recompense Troys suffering, is hard to reconcile with a
date in the reign of Philadelphus. In particular, vv. 122631 caused trouble:
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The fame of the race of my ancestors shall hereafter be exalted to the highest by
their descendants, who shall with their spears win the foremost crown of glory,
obtaining the sceptre and monarchy of earth and sea. Nor in the darkness of
oblivion, my unhappy fatherland, shall you hide your glory faded. (Lycophron,
Alexandra 122631, trans. G. R. Mair)
The scholiast on these verses observed that such remarks about the Romans
could not have been written at the court of Philadelphus and must therefore
have been written by another Lycophron. Modern scholars have, broadly
speaking, taken one of three approaches to this and another difficult pas-
sage (vv. 144650) which seems to refer to Rome. One is to argue that
these passages could indeed have been written under Philadelphus; Arnaldo
Momigliano103 explained that obtaining the sceptre and monarchy of earth
and sea was little more than a poetic version of a standard complimen-
tary formula attested elsewhere. Outside these passages, the latest datable
historical reference in the poem seems to be to the murder in 309 bc of
Heracles, believed to be the son of Alexander and Barsine, and this would
seem to strengthen the case for a date in the early third century. A second
approach104 has indeed been to ascribe the whole poem to the first half
of the second century (perhaps to a period not long after the victory of
T. Quinctius Flamininus over Philip V of Macedon in 1976) and to an
otherwise unknown poet, and the third105 has been to argue for later inter-
polations within the body of a third-century poem. Of particular interest
are vv. 12812:
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So many are the woes, hard to bear, which they shall suffer who are to lay waste
my fatherland. (Lycophron, Alexandra 12812, trans. G. R. Mair)
Stephanie West pointed out that these verses do not follow naturally after
the Roman passage, which may thus have been added for the sake of an
Italian audience and/or patrons. Striking also, as West points out, is the
relative brevity with which Alexander is handled, a strangeness not really
mitigated by the fact of Cassandras anti-Greek stance. That certain aspects
of the style and nature of the Alexandra fit well with known concerns
of Alexandrian poetry106 and with a poet who not only wrote tragedies
but is also credited with an interest in anagrams is, however, an argument
which could be adduced both for and against the poems authenticity. The
discussion which follows assumes that at least the bulk of the poem belongs
103 Terra marique JRS 32 (1942) 5364.
104 Cf. especially K. Ziegler, RE 13.235481, and most recently P. M. Fraser in The Oxford Classical
Dictionary (3rd ed., Oxford 1996) s.v. Lycophron and Gigante Lanzara (2000) 1921.
105 Cf. especially S. West (1984).
106 It cannot, of course, be entirely excluded that Lycophron wrote the Alexandra before he came
to Alexandria; Wilamowitz (1924) II 144 held this view, but the arguments adduced in its favour
amount to very little. It is also important not to lose sight of the very real differences in style
between Lycophron and, say, Callimachus and Apollonius, though these too are a fragile basis for
chronological arguments. As for borrowings by Lycophron from other Hellenistic poets, scholars
have again been divided; the most important case would be that of Euphorion: for Euphorion as
the borrower cf. Magnelli (2002) 2731; for Euphorions priority Gigante Lanzara (2000) 323.
to the poetic milieu which is the subject of this book, but it is hoped that
a divergent chronology would not substantially alter these arguments.
The Alexandra begins with an answer to a question:
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I shall tell truly everything you ask, from the very beginning; if my tale stretches
out, forgive me, master. (Lycophron, Alexandra 13)
The Alexandra thus presupposes questioning by the king, as indeed its con-
clusion implies future action by the king; it thus invites us to treat it as
a fragment. This Hellenistic monodrama offers in fact a familiar tragic
form, the messenger-speech, extended to the length of an independent
tragedy; the subject-matter of the poem is epic in both scale and inspira-
tion, as also is the monologic form, although complicated by the presence
of two voices.107 To what extent the form of the Alexandra exploits a per-
ceived affinity between epic and the tragic messenger-speech we do not
know enough to say, but it seems reasonable to suppose that it is not only
modern scholars who have explicitly drawn the connection;108 if tragedy
as a whole indeed developed from epic, as at least one important branch
of ancient scholarship argued, then Lycophron has collapsed tragedy back
to its origins. At one level, then, the Alexandra recreates the birth of the
tragic genre. At the same time, however, it is also the text of an elabo-
rate, secondary performance, which presupposes the existence of classical
texts, notably tragedy; central to this construction is the very Hellenis-
tic practice, fully confirmed by papyri, of anthologising, i.e. copying (not
just in schools) and/or performing bits of plays, in particular star turns
(like messenger-speeches?), rather than whole texts. This practice is clearly
related to or derives some of its inspiration from another performance tra-
dition, namely the rhapsodic recitation of epic, but what is clear is that
the Alexandra suggests both a proto-generic form (early tragedy) and a
contemporary deconstruction or fragmentation of that form; or, perhaps
better, it suggests that the two are identical. The poems sense of generic
form is, at any rate, very much a historical sense, and the same may be
said of a number of other Hellenistic sports: the Megara, for example, is a
hexameter conversation between Heracles wife and his mother, which has
clear links with both the epic and dramatic traditions. The Megara poet is
107 Cf. Fusillo (1984), Mazzoldi (2001) 24469.

108 For the epic omission of the augment in tragic messenger-speeches cf. Page on Eur. Med. 1141.
no less interested than, say, the Apollonius of Book 3 in the boundaries of
drama and epic, and here too the practice of anthologising may well have
been a crucial influence. Whereas the Alexandra is a dramatic form on an
epic scale, the Megara presents an epic form reduced to the scale of a scene
from drama. This is less a mixing of genres than an exploration of their
relationship and history.
Such formal considerations cannot, however, do justice to the broad
Herodotean sweep of Cassandras vision of world history as it will dog
the Greek victors, or to the unique structuring of her prophecies. There
is a great attraction in Stephanie Wests suggestion109 that we have to do
(in part) with a learned and stylised literary version of the large body of
prophetic (often prophetic post eventum) and apocalyptic literature which
circulated in various Eastern cultures and which often seems to have found
its audience among relatively humble people; the most relevant example in
the present context is the famous Egyptian Oracle of the Potter, preserved in
Greek as an important witness to native Egyptian resistance to Ptolemaic
conquest.110 If this suggestion is correct, we will have here another example
of the raising to high literary status of a largely sub-literary form, and
one which bears further witness to the extraordinary new impetus given
to Greek literature by the confrontation with other cultures during the
Hellenistic period.
It is not merely in the area of form that the Alexandra explores inherited
dichotomies; poetic voice is central to this project. The uninvolved epic
narrator is set off against Cassandras pathetic involvement, through excla-
mation, lamentation, and apostrophe, in the miseries which she foresees;
such a technique should be seen in the same context as other third-century
developments in the range of poetic voice and the interest in the bound-
aries between diegesis and mimesis. The metre of the poem, a very strict and
repetitive iambic trimeter which all but avoids resolution,111 associates the
Alexandra with the tragedy of the Pleiad,112 but the lavish scope and verbal
style of the prophecies (cf. below) clearly draws inspiration from the lyric
tradition. The identifiable sources of the poem include epic (the Kypria),
tragic (especially Aeschylus Agamemnon and Euripides Trojan Women),
109 S. West (2000). For the Alexandra and the Sibylline oracles cf. G. Amiotti, Gli oracoli sibillini e
l Alessandra di Licofrone in M. Sordi (ed.), La profezia nel mondo antico (Milan 1993) 13949,
Mazzoldi (2001) 2512.
110 The bibliography is now very large, but L. Koenen, Die Prophezeiungen des Topfers ZPE 2
(1968) 178209 remains fundamental.
111 There are some 19 or 20 examples in the whole poem, cf. A. Del Ponte, Lycophronis Alexandra: la
versificazione e il mezzo espressivo SIFC 63 (1981) 10133.
112 Cf. above, p. 435.
and historiographical (Herodotus, Timaeus) texts, and the prophecies of
Cassandra were a favourite mythic subject in virtually all poetic forms.113
Nevertheless, it is part of Lycophrons design to fragment the stories he
tells in such a way as to blend his sources into a single mythographic mass.
Thus, for example, elements of the Argonautic story and of the death and
maltreatment of Hector are scattered throughout the poem and resist inte-
gration into a chronologically ordered narrative. This is both imitative of
the inspired prophetic mode and also part of the poems particular nar-
rative concerns. The normal ordering function of narrative chronology is
collapsed into the sea of stories, all of which are equally available to the
(learned) poet.114 So, too, the opening and closing frame foregrounds the
role of the narrating messenger in such a way as to give self-conscious
prominence to the figure of the poet; this is also the effect of the marked
ring-composition which characterises the enclosing frame.115 The riot of
Cassandras prophecies is really under the strictest control. The messen-
ger offers us a complete account,116 but it is also one dependent upon his
(i.e. the poets) remarkable memory (vv. 89). As for the truth of the mes-
sengers account, the conventional assertion of v. 1 ( ) resonates
ironically against the inevitable truth of Cassandras prophecies, and also
the inevitable disbelief with which they are greeted (vv. 145160); these
prophecies are (when decoded) both true, because they refer to known
facts, and also false in that they share the fictionality of all creative poetry.
Cassandras description of Odysseus tales in Books 912 of the Odyssey as
a fictive lament ($#(%
, v. 764)117 not merely expresses her
scorn for the hated Greek, but plays too with the truth of her own fictive
lament, which is itself heavily indebted to Odysseus tales.
The difficulty of the Alexandra resides principally in the related obscuri-
ties of its subject-matter and its language. Transitions between sections are
blurred; new characters are often introduced merely as or ', and
their identity emerges only gradually from a series of riddling clues;118 the
same metaphor (particularly that of the lion) is used of many characters;
the narratives themselves often rely upon very arcane facts, especially when
113 Cf. e.g. Bacchylides 23 Maehler (with SH 293), imitated according to Porphyry by Hor. c. 1.15,
Adesp. Trag. 649 KS (above, p. 433).
114 Fusillo (1984) is particularly important here.
115 With vv. 1, 9 cf. vv. 14701; with v. 6 cf. v. 1468; with v. 14 cf. v. 1467; with v. 1315 (the running
image) cf. vv. 14712 (
! . . . ' 5).
116 Cf. Soph. El. 680.
117 This interpretation is admitedly disputed; Holzinger understands the phrase to refer, not to
Odysseus tales, but to his weeping, which occasions his tale-telling.
118 S. West (2000) notes that this is typical of apocalyptic prophecy.
familiar stories are involved. Here, too, Lycophron sets off a traditional view
of poetry as inspired, as a discourse akin to the prophecy of the possessed
a view most famously and amusingly set out in Platos Ion against the
newer mode of written, scholarly poetry, of poetry which draws its inspi-
ration from written compilations of the past. The Alexandra is thus an
important document in the history of poets awareness of the changing
conditions and nature of poetry. On one side, it dramatises the sense that,
whereas in the classical period different states had particular claims upon
and particular interests in different cycles of a story, the new foundations
of the Hellenistic period appropriated as their own a vast, largely undiffer-
entiated, tapestry of myth which flowed into the present, binding it (or so
it was hoped) to the past. On the other side, the Alexandra shows us not
merely how the nature of poetry has changed, but also perhaps what has
happened to the poet: like Cassandra, the poet has been removed from the
centre of the state, and however true his words, he will never find belief.
Cassandra is always destined to remain marginal. To survive, poetry must
mark out a space for itself, right away from the concerns and language of
the everyday, because the everyday has turned its back upon poetry. This
is the project to which the language of the Alexandra contributes.
The extraordinary facts of the language of the Alexandra have often been
documented. Of the 3,000 or so words used in the poem, some 518 are
found only here, and a further 117 occur for the first time here;119 a large
number of these coinages are, of course, compound adjectives designed
to convey mythical facts. If it is tempting to see the whole monstrous
enterprise as an elaborate joke,120 we should at least ask what kind of
joke this might be. Extant discussions of style are more concerned with
oratory and rhetoric than with poetry, but it is clear that Lycophron takes
to extremes features which were thought to distinguish poetic from non-
poetic discourse. In the Aristotelian tradition, the principal virtue of both
poetic and rhetorical lexis is clarity (Poetics 1458a18, Rhet. 2.1404b2), but
the two differ in that the former admits more foreign elements which do
not belong to ordinary speech, the clear (perhaps suggesting also true)
speech of $ ]
. These elements include metaphors, glosses (i.e.
rare words), and compound adjectives. In the Poetics (1458a2334) Aristotle
observes that an overuse of these features will turn a poem either into
a riddle (K ) or a non-Greek babble (99%
); Cassandra is
precisely a barbarian who speaks in riddles. Just as Lycophron can equip
the pedestrian trimeter with a radically poetic vocabulary, so Theocritus
119 Cf. Ziegler, RE 23438. 120 Hopkinson (1988) 232.

can use in epic hexameters a vocabulary and subject-matter which Aristotle
would have classed as humble ( 4), and hence non-poetic.
Closely connected in ancient theory with ideas of clarity is that of envi-
sionment, enargeia, that power of the orator or poet to make his listeners
or readers see the events being described. There is evidence that some later
Hellenistic critics at least saw enargeia as the principal virtue and/or object
of poetry.121 Be that as it may, enargeia is particularly a characteristic of nar-
rative,122 and when Longinus comes to illustrate phantasia which, in his
system, aims at amazement (#M) in poetry and enargeia in rhetoric,
his examples are largely drawn from messenger-speeches (De subl. 15). It is
not unreasonable to suppose that messenger-speeches were in fact viewed
as particular loci for clarity and enargeia within drama;123 at a practical level,
we may note such features as Euripides marked use of historic presents
in his messenger-speeches, a device which is well suited to later discussions
of enargeia.124 A prophet such as Cassandra does indeed see clearly, but
her listeners remain in the dark mists of ignorance. Longinus notes that
the term phantasia has come in his day to denote those moments when,
carried away by emotion (2C $%% ($), you think that
you see what you are describing and you bring it within the field of vision of
your hearers (De subl. 15.1); Cassandra fits this bill precisely, but the result
is a total failure of enargeia. The Alexandra thus explores the inevitably
problematic theatricality of Cassandras visions, but in a different way from
that of the Cassandra-drama (above p. 433). Whereas the latter exploits
the most familiar fact of all Greek staging that action happens off-stage
the Alexandra shows us how, for the clear-sighted prophet, action takes
place merely inside the envisioning and creative mind.125
121 Cf. G. Zanker, Enargeia in the ancient criticism of poetry RhM 124 (1981) 297311, esp. 3057 on
the evidence from Philodemus.
122 For the principal passages in rhetorical texts cf. H. Lausberg, Handbuch der literarischen Rhetorik
(Munich 1960) I 4002.
123 Cf. R. Meijering, Literary and Rhetorical Theories in Greek Scholia (Groningen 1987) 4950.
124 Cf. I. J. F. De Jong, Narrative in Drama (Leiden 1991) 38.
125 For the Nachleben of the Alexandra cf. now S. West, The Alexandras fluctuating fortunes Terminus
1 (2001) 12740.
chap t e r 10
Roman epilogue
1 a critical silence?
What little evidence there is from the dark period of the late third and
second centuries bc suggests that the great names of third-century poetry
Callimachus, Apollonius, Theocritus, Aratus soon established them-
selves as major and influential figures: they had become part of the Greek
poetic tradition. Second-generation Hellenistic poets, such as Euphorion,
acknowledged the now classic status of their predecessors by citation and
rewriting.1 It is, however, important that, as far as we can tell, these pre-
decessors were treated in the critical tradition as individual poets to be
discussed and explained, not as the leaders of a movement or a new kind
of poetry. The traces that they have left in, say, the exegetical work of
Aristarchus show that scholars were using Hellenistic poets to explain the
text of Homer, as all poets later than Homer (e Z ) were used, and
perhaps also occasionally explaining them for themselves;2 Callimachus at
least was a well-known text to Aristarchus. In other words, what we think
of as Hellenistic poetry was, to put it simply, just poetry.
The evidence for this critical attitude is fragmentary, but tells a fairly clear
tale. Thus, the surviving interlinear commentary (? early second-century
bc) on the Victoria Berenices (SH 254269) does not differ in kind from
the simple exegetical notes attached to the texts of many archaic and clas-
sical poets, and a (?) late third-/early second-century commentary on a
riddling epigram on the oyster3 cites not only Sophocles but also Menan-
ders contemporary Diphilos and the poet Theodoridas (second half of the
third century) as examples drawn from an undifferentiated poetic tradition.
Hermesianax (fr. 7 Powell) brings his catalogue of the loves of poets down
1 Cf. the remarks of Magnelli (2002) 56, 102.

2 Cf. Montanari (1995), Rengakos (2000), Fantuzzi (2000c). Cameron (1995) chapter 8 collects much
evidence, of varying degrees of persuasive force, for Hellenistic scholarship on Hellenistic poets.
3 Cf. P. J. Parsons, The Oyster ZPE 24 (1977) 112.
444
to Philoxenus of Cythera (fourth century bc) and Philetas of Cos, who was
very likely an older contemporary of Hermesianax. The critic Pausimachus
(? c. 200 bc), as cited by Philodemus (On Poems 1, col. 83 Janko),4 lists
Homer, Archilochus, Euripides, Sophocles, Philoxenus, and Timotheus
among good poets, and we find Callimachus several times and Euphorion
and Simias of Rhodes at least once each cited by Philodemus in his great
catalogue of dreadful things said by poets;5 some at least of these quotations
will presumably go back to Philodemus principal source, Apollodorus of
Athens (mid-second century), but here again Hellenistic poets are just
poets. This is, of course, not the whole story, but it is important to remind
ourselves that although the poetry of the third century may seem to us in
certain respects clearly distinct from what went before, things may not have
looked quite the same when viewed at closer quarters.6
Much of our evidence for ancient discussion of cultural periods comes
in fact not from the high Hellenistic period, but from the writers of Roman
classicism, from the Atticists of the Augustan age through to Quintilian,
together with those who parody them, such as Petronius.7 For these writers
and scholars e &!5 and their virtues were what we would classify as
the ancients down to (roughly) the end of the fourth century bc, though
of course divisions could be made within such a long period. It is, as we
have seen, less easy to establish whether and where the poets and scholars of
the third century themselves drew boundary lines, or rather what any such
boundaries might have meant for them, in the way that we can see that
&!5 and #
are already highly charged words for Thucydides
and for certain self-consciously fashionable characters in Aristophanes. It
will mean something that Eratosthenes did not carry his chronographical
work on the Olympian victors beyond the death of Alexander, though not
necessarily that he saw that death as the end of history. So too, Quintilians
famous report that, in the late third and second century bc, Aristarchus
and Aristophanes of Byzantium did not receive anyone of their own time
(suum tempus) into the lists of approved authors (10.1.54) perhaps tells
us more about the history of generic classification as a scholarly activity
than it does about any sense of what divides the present from the past;
we have already seen that the Aristarchan picture (at least) is far from
one-sided.
4 For Philodemus and the otherwise lost critical tradition to which he gives us access cf. Section 2
below.
5 On Piety Book 2, cf. A. Schober, Philodemi De Pietate pars prior CErc 18 (1988) 67125.
6 For a reading of Theocritus, Idyll 7 as a kind of meditation on the past and present cf. Hunter (2003a).
7 Material in this paragraph reuses Hunter (2001c).
446 Roman epilogue
The histories of the critical reception of Hellenistic rhetoric and of Hel-
lenistic poetry are quite different; Alexander seems to have been identified
as a significant watershed for the former (cf. e.g. Dionysius of Halicarnas-
sus, On the Ancient Orators 1), but it is only with certain classicising critics
of the Empire, such as the author of On the Sublime, that we can perhaps
sense that the particular character of Hellenistic poetry is being used to
mark it as different from (and worse than) what went before:
I do think that the greater good qualities, even if not consistently maintained, are
always more likely to win the prize if for no other reason, because of the greatness
of spirit they reveal. Apollonius makes no mistakes in the Argonautica; Theocritus
is very felicitous in the Bucolics, apart from a few passages not connected with
the theme; but would you rather be Homer or Apollonius? Is the Eratosthenes of
that flawless little poem Erigone a greater poet than Archilochus with his abundant,
uncontrolled flood . . . Take lyric poetry: would you rather be Bacchylides or Pindar?
Take tragedy: would you rather be Ion of Chios or Sophocles? Ion and Bacchylides
are impeccable (&'(), uniformly beautiful writers in the polished manner
( #$ ( ## ); but it is Pindar and Sophocles who
sometimes set the world on fire with their vehemence, for all that their flame often
goes out without reason and they collapse dismally. (Longinus, De subl. 33.45
(trans. Russell))
Even in this famous passage, however, Apollonius and Eratosthenes, like
Bacchylides and Ion of Chios, are chosen for the particular flawless quality
of their work, not because Hellenistic poetry is in general set against the
poetry of earlier ages. Nevertheless, there is clearly some connection between
chronology and evaluation, and the choice by Longinus of Ion of Chios
is at least given colour by the status Callimachus gives him in Iambus 13
as a model for his own poetic practice.8 Longinus too treats Ion and
Bacchylides as Hellenistic poets avant la lettre; what he has to say about
them breathes much the same air as his dismissal of an imitation of Homer
by Aratus (Phainomena 299) as making Homers 9
text into one
which is unimpressive and polished (
. . . #$
) De subl.
10.6). So too, the epithet blameless (&Z) which Longinus applies
to Eratosthenes Erigone points towards the grammatical tradition of poetic
criticism which was very much a product of the Hellenistic age; we might
gloss the adjective used by Longinus as with which no grammarian could
find fault.
Hellenistic poetry was indeed written in the expectation of being exam-
ined, commented upon, and criticised, much as some of these poets
themselves were critics of the poetry of earlier ages. Both Herondas (8.71
2)9 and Callimachus (fr. 1, h.Apollo 10513, Iambus 13) had with what
8 Cf. Hunter (1997). 9 Cf. Hunter (1993b) 347.
degree of seriousness can be debated predicted and exploited the fact that
envious critics, embodying the spirit of Phthonos and Momos, would carp
at their poems. This trope is turned back against Callimachus himself in
an early imperial attack upon the pedantic :
n) 0Z$ <$ $ ) % &)
s #!5 99#) d'
$ %Q# )
=##(!$ %) p F V# Q%
'C $ #%% &% )
%$'% #$ 4 ) P , v %
3' _ 5 * Q L! =Q#:)
9%C * * Q_ &#
.##) 'C 1T *, &%9% .
Grammarians, offspring of Stygian Momus, thorn-worms, demon foes of books,
puppies of Zenodotus, armed forces of Callimachus, you who stretch forth as a
shield, yet keep not your tongues even from him;10 hunters of grim conjunctions,
delighting in min and sphin and the question whether the Cyclops possessed
dogs may you wear yourselves out eternally, scoundrels, chattering abuse of others;
but against me, put out your venoms fire. (Philip of Thessalonica, AP 11.321 =
GPh 3033ff., trans. Gow-Page)
This poem, which contains a number of echoes of Callimachus own critical
language,11 acknowledges Callimachus status as both poet and grammarian;
the epigrammatic tradition of attack upon the absurd pedantry of gram-
marians, the earliest example of which is probably the attack by Herodicus
upon the Aristarcheans (Athenaeus 5.222a)12 but which clearly has a close
affinity with the attacks of Old Comedy upon Socrates and the Sophists,
was extended in the early imperial period to poets, and particularly to
Callimachus the obvious target because of his prominence also as a gram-
marian.13 One of these epigrams pairs as does Longinus Homer and
Archilochus in opposition to (probably) Callimachus (cf. h.Apollo 112)
and/or (? self-styled) imitators of Callimachus:
Q C V% #
v #' v %
.I' ) # &#
)
l C
% # #$ % &%4%
4 M e #, ['.
%4 C;!#
! .% D 6O4$
%' U 8 '! C 2'
.
10 Verse 4 very likely contains an obscene suggestion as to how the grammarians use their tongues.
11 Cf. J. T. Kakridis, Zum neuen Kallimachos Philologische Wochenschrift 48 (1928) 121415, L. Lehnus,
Callimaco fr. 1.7 Pf. ZPE 86 (1991) 910.
12 Page, FGE pp. 625; cf. D. Manetti, La Grecia e il greco: la fuga dei filologi (Herodic. SH 494)
Eikasmos 13 (2002) 18397.
13 Cf. Antiphanes, AP 11.322 (= GPh 771ff.)
448 Roman epilogue
Away with you, all who sing of loccae and lophnides and camasenes, tribe of
thorn-gathering poets, and you who drink frugal water from the holy spring, prac-
tising contortions as your verses ornament. Today we pour wine for the birthday
of Archilochus and manly Homer; our bowl is not at home to water-drinkers.
(Antipater of Thessalonica, AP 11.20 = GPh 185ff., trans. Gow-Page)
Here the allegedly mannered (? and effeminate) prettiness of Callimachean
verse is set against the manly virtues of the two greatest figures of Greek
poetry, virtues which (by implication) offer scope for pedantic
(cf. Horace, AP 359 on Homer nodding).
Of particular interest for the later reception of Callimachus is Antipaters
classification of the rejected poets as water-drinkers. This epigram has
played a central role in debates about whether Callimachus represented
himself as drinking inspiring water from the Hippocrene (or another river)
in the Dream of the Aitia,14 although there is (as yet) no evidence at all for
this in what survives of the text.15 Be that as it may, water-drinking may
yet point to an important aspect of Callimachus self-presentation and its
reception.
In the meeting with Theogenes of Ikos, the poetic voice of the Aitia
rejects excessive drinking in favour of learned conversation;16 this is not
water-drinking, but could easily be represented as such.17 Just so does
Callimachus forget the details of what he ate and drank, but remember every
detail of such learned conversation (fr. 50.1217 M.); this, as noted earlier
(above pp. 812), reverses the familiar sympotic rejection of a drinking-
partner with a memory, a rejection forcefully expressed by (probably) the
same Antipater in another epigram: better shipwreck in stormy waters than
water-drinkers who remember what one says (AP 11.31 = GPh 273 ff.).18 If
the imagery of the Reply to the Telchines places Callimachus on the side
of the Aristophanic Euripides of the Frogs,19 it was this character who put
poetry on a thinning diet (Frogs 93942), from which wine will have been
14 Helpful survey in P. E. Knox, Wine, Water, and Callimachean Polemics HSCP 89 (1985) 10719.
15 Cf. Cameron (1995) 3668. Asper (1997) 12834 offers an excellent history of the dichotomy; further
bibliography in M. G. Albiani, Ancora su bevitori dacqua e bevitori di vino (Asclep. xlv, Hedyl.
v G.P.) Eikasmos 13 (2002) 15964.
16 Cf. above, p. 78.
17 That Callimachus was not a teetotaller (Cameron (1995) 366 n. 28) is, if true, really neither here nor
there; the possible importance of this fragment for the construction of a water-drinking Callimachus
is also underplayed by Asper (1997) 130.
18 This epigram clearly exploits the symposium at sea motif to which W. J. Slater drew attention,
cf. Symposium at Sea HSCP 80 (1976) 16170. It is also worth entertaining the possibility that
Antipater AP 9.305 (= xxxvi GP) , in which the poet is warned in a dream by Dionysus to give up
water-drinking (cf. above, p. 345), is intended as some kind of inversion of Callimachus encounter
with Apollo and then with the Muses.
19 Cf. above, p. 70.
strictly excluded, as it would be from the life of cicada Callimachus.20 It
is, moreover, the Aristophanic Euripides who is associated both with talk
(#(#) and with an intellectual approach to poetry which insistently asks
questions (Frogs 9719); it is indeed likely enough that some version of the
contrast between the grandly thundering Aeschylus and the subtle Euripides
was already figured in the contrasting pictures which Aristophanes and the
drunken Cratinus, whose words carried everything before them, drew
of each other in the 420s. If the Aristophanic Euripides and Callimachus
did not actually characterise themselves as water-drinkers, the style of
poetry which they rejected for themselves could certainly be associated
with Dionysiac frenzy;21 Callimachus pointed contrast between ! and
length as criteria for poetry looks with hindsight, after all, like a malicious
version of the later ars ingenium contrast.22
2 philod emus and hellenist ic poet ics

On the basis of the extant critical treatises of the late Hellenistic and early
imperial age Horaces critical poems, the works of Dionysius of Halicar-
nassus, Demetrius, On Style, even Longinus (cf. above) there is, as we
have seen, little that the critical tradition at this stage identified as Calli-
macheanism or poetry which was typically Hellenistic. This might seem
a surprising fact, given that the late republic and early empire saw both the
first flourishings of genuine textual and exegetical work on third-century
poets23 and the period of greatest influence for Hellenistic poetry on poetry-
making at Rome. Nevertheless, critics of this period neither individuate
Hellenistic poetry as a style different from that of classical poetry nor, in
fact, mention it very much; when they do, as we have seen (above, p. 446),
they are not always unreservedly enthusiastic. Was, then, Callimacheanism
a brief chapter in the Greek literary history of the third century, and one
which would have caused little disturbance to our traditional picture of the
dominance of the grander genres, were it not for the attention given to it
by the great figures of first-century bc Roman poetry?24
20 Cf. Plato, Rep. 8.561c78 (the inconsistent behaviour of the democratic man) X X Q
$#Q ) c 'X 2' %!
.
21 Cf. OSullivan (1992) 11719, 1378.
22 For Ovid (or at least his voice in Amores 1.15), Callimachus lacks ingenium and Ennius lacks ars;
this dichotomy probably parrots school judgements and is not to be taken too seriously, but it is
nevertheless another version of the implied contrasts which I have been tracing. Greek tradition, of
course, never denied ! to Homer.
23 The great critical names here are Artemidorus, Asclepiades of Myrlea, and Theon.
24 This view is particularly associated with Konrad Ziegler (cf. Ziegler 1966, Fantuzzi (1988b)); Cameron
(1995) elaborates some of Zieglers ideas and (e.g. chapter 18) rejects the programmatic role that is
commonly assigned to allusions to Callimachus in Roman poetry.
450 Roman epilogue
Unsurprisingly, the situation is more complicated than that. The Greek
critical treatises which we possess have, on the whole, survived because they
were used in schools and in rhetorical training; the basis for that training
was the lists of the greatest classical authors in each genre (e )
which were first drawn up by the poet-scholars of the Hellenistic period.
In editing and explaining the classics, Hellenistic scholar-poets not only
implicitly acknowledged their own epigonality, but also wrote themselves
out of the mainstream of critical tradition. Moreover, the critical tradition
of the late Republic and early Empire was dominated by a conservative
classicism, and we must also reckon with the constant influence of Plato
and Aristotle, who not only did not, of course, discuss Hellenistic poetry,
but gave very little space to any poetic genres other than epic, choral lyric,
and drama. We may perhaps compare the views of Pliny the Elder and
his probable source, Apollodorus, on Hellenistic art: for Pliny (NH 34.52),
bronze art died (cessauit) in 2963 with the end of the school of Lysippus
and Praxiteles, and was resurrected (reuixit) only in 1563 with the classicism
of the neo-Attic school.
Poetry contemporary with our Greek treatises shows us, however, that
Callimacheanism was not of merely historical interest. The key figure here,
of course, is Horace. As a poet, Horace took his inspiration both from the
lyric and elegiac traditions of archaic Greece and from the Hellenistic taste
for short poems. As a literary critic, however, it was recognised already by
Porphyry that in the Ars Poetica Horace took over very important parts of
the system of the Peripatetic Neoptolemus of Parium, and modern scholars
have also traced a significant debt to Aristotles Rhetoric.25 Whether because
of these sources, or because of the literary tastes of the Pisones to whom
the Ars Poetica is addressed,26 or merely in keeping with the general nature
of the critical tradition as described above,27 Horace gives very little space
to the lyric and iambic poetry which had formed the dominant element
in his own poetic output, and he does not even mention love elegy; he
concentrates almost exclusively on epic and on drama, including satyr-
drama, which he had not written and which was probably much more
marginal to the contemporary literary world of Rome than were the various
types of short poem.28 Even if Horace does explicitly warn poets against
25 Cf. Brink (1963) 7989.

26 Cf. e.g. R. S. Kilpatrick, The Poetry of Criticism: Horace, Epistles II and Ars Poetica (Edmonton 1990)
36, 53.
27 Cf. Brink (1963) 227.
28 For some doubts about the traditional view cf. T. P. Wiseman, Satyrs in Rome? The Background
to Horaces Ars Poetica JRS 78 (1988) 113.
the wide and common circle (vv. 1312), in an obvious reworking of
Callimachus famous rejection of cyclic poetry (AP 12.43 = HE 1041ff.),
he does so in the context of writing epic, not short poems; for Horace, who
refers explicitly in the Ars Poetica to no Hellenistic poet, Callimachean
finesse is required for the composition of the traditional, classical genres.29
If the critical tradition which has reached us relatively unscathed has
little to say of Hellenistic poetry, it is clear from the fragments of Philode-
mus five-book On Poems, which survive among the charred papyri from
Herculaneum, that some Hellenistic poetical theory had in fact a much
more marked Hellenistic flavour than we might otherwise have imag-
ined.30 Philodemus from Gadara was an Epicurean philosopher resident in
Campania in the middle of the first century bc, and in close touch with the
Roman literary scene and its greatest poets, including Virgil and Horace.
He himself wrote elegantly allusive epigrams, and therefore it should not be
a surprise that he ranks the epigram, together with Sapphos short poems
perhaps considered as the prototype of the epigram as fully-fledged poiesis
(On Poems 5, cols. 37.238.15).31 Nevertheless, much of what survives of his
On Poems is directed against a group of predominantly Stoic formalist crit-
ics of the third and second centuries; Heracleodorus, Pausimachus of Mile-
tus, and Crates of Mallos are among the most prominent targets (labelled
e by Philodemus).32 For their views we only have Philodemus
obviously tendentious and polemical reports, a difficulty greatly magnified
by the desperate state of survival of these texts. Nevertheless, there are here
very suggestive indications of a distinctively Hellenistic aesthetic, even if,
as with Horace, it continues to be the great poets of the archaic and classical
periods who are explicitly named.
Even if the ivory tower view of Hellenistic poetry is today recognised
as at least an exaggeration, both poetic choices and explicit declarations of
poetics (e.g. Philetas CA 10 = 12 Sbardella, Callimachus, AP 12.43 quoted
above) show clearly that some Hellenistic poets at least, most notably those
whose tastes appear Callimachean, practised a type of refined and allusive
poetry which was designed for a fairly restricted and learned audience; such
a poetic practice carried with it elitist claims from which the wider public
were excluded. In view of this, it is noteworthy that we find in Book 1 of
Philodemus work quotations from Andromenides discussion of whether
and how poetry can or must appeal to the masses. Andromenides was
probably older than Crates,33 and he seems to have formulated a genuine
29 Cf. Brink (1963) 21920, (1987) 20810. 30 Cf. above pp. 712 on Callimachean terminology.
31 Cf. D. Sider, The Epigrams of Philodemus (New YorkOxford 1997) 2831.
32 For the terminology cf. Janko (2000) 1246. 33 Cf. Janko (2000) 1434.
452 Roman epilogue
aesthetic theory about the reception of poetry by non-learned audiences.
Thus, in Book 1, col. 159 Janko we read:34
(Educated hearers admire that diction which excels in making the sense under-
stood, whereas) the ordinary person is enthralled by that diction which has been
held by convention to be fitting for poets, with regard to that which excels as to
comprehension of the sense and that which creates enthralment in such a person,
and in col. 162 Janko:
an ordinary person is enthralled by the diction which has been held by convention
to be fitting for poets, and is enthralled naturally but not without a reason.
The distinction between the appreciation of the few and that of the many
is made explicit in col. 161:
The prose-writer must seek the truth, but the poet those things which are most
popular with the many . . . that diction is most beautiful, which enthrals the rabble,
not that which is quite correctly admired by just some.
If Jankos interpretation of the broken opening of fr. 159 is correct, then
the proper appreciation of poetry by the few would be the appreciation of
the capacity of diction to allow the sense to be understood; such enargeia,
which derives from a very careful choice of words, is adduced several times
by Andromenides (fr. 25, 27, 30, 32, pp. 1501 Janko) as an essential ingre-
dient of fine poetry.
Andromenides thus acknowledges, on the one hand, the importance of
poetrys power for :$! ) by which the masses are enthralled natu-
rally, but not without reason; this is an essential test of the worth of poetry
in general, and is the key test (9(%) col. 162.21) of its popular appeal.
On the other hand, he also recognises a more intellectual level of apprecia-
tion, available only to an elite and learned few; this we might think is very
Hellenistic. There is, however, no reason to think that Andromenides
position was widely accepted.35 As for Philodemus himself, he too was not
inclined to follow Andromenides (cf. col. 162.234 Janko); his ideas of
poetry, which included a defence of art for arts sake (surprising from an
Epicurean)36 and a rejection of the utility traditionally ascribed to literature
(cf. On Poems 5, col. xxxii.917 Mangoni), were too elitist for that.
As is well known, poets had long been compared, or had compared
themselves, to figurative artists in other media; both poets and other artists
34 All translations from Book 1 are from Janko (2000).
35 Philodemus normally presents his views in the context of objections to them by opponents who did
not accept the test of popular appreciation which he proposed.
36 Cf. the remarks of D. Sider in Obbink (1995) 456.
sought to give convincing representations (mimeseis) of real life.37 In the
choral lyric of the classical age, comparisons with the major genres of
painting and, particularly, statuary were those which predominated.38 From
a later age, the most famous instance is perhaps Horaces exegi monumentum
(Odes 3.30), modelled on similar ideas in Simonides (PMG 531) and Pindar
(Pythian 6.1013). The Roman poet has certainly here adapted the archaic
Greek images to his rather less vaunting poetry, but the grandeur of the claim
remains: Horaces undertaking in introducing Aeolian poetry (v. 1314) and
short lyrics to Roman literature is something taller than the pyramids. This
long-lived tradition gives particular interest to the rather different images
used by one of the critics whom Philodemus attacks. This critic explicitly
compares poets to the engravers of rings: the craftsmans #$4 is like
the poets craft of sunthesis. In contrast to the way in which the relationship
of poetry and art had been figured in the archaic and classical periods, here
the similarity between poet and engraver, a similarity based obviously on
their precise working on a very small-scale, is one which cannot be shared
with painters or monumental artists. The attempt to reproduce a model
faithfully is not peculiar to the engraver, but is common to all plastic art and
to painting; no more is the use of language and thought to communicate
useful or harmful material peculiar to the poet, but is common to many
different forms of communication:
As I said, he adduced as examples different arts, but all having a common objective.
Just as the proper task (K') of the ring-engraver is not the production of objects
similar to the model for this would be common also to the plastic artist and
painter but engraving on iron and gems, even if the value (, &
) of such
engraving lies not in this, but in the production of objects similar to the model, a
thing which is common to all artists. In the same way, the poet is held to wish his
specificity to reside in composition (sunthesis), but to pursue its value in the thought
and the language a value which he claims, straightforwardly, to be neither good
nor bad. (Philodemus, Tract. tert. col. xvi.323 Sbordone39 )
It is, of course, very tempting (to say the least) to associate this new image
of poetry as intricate, small-scale working with the Callimachean slender
37 Cf. in general D. T. Benediktson, Literature and the Visual Arts in Ancient Greece and Rome (Norman
2000).
38 Epinician poetry and funerary or celebratory monuments were analogous, or perhaps competing,
guarantors of kleos; Pindar and Simonides both frequently compare their words to monumental
stones, though both also stress the primacy of the verbal medium. The matter has been very much
discussed: cf. Ford (2002) 93157; L. Kurke, The Traffic in Praise (Ithaca, NY 1991) 16394; D. T.
Steiner, Images in Mind (Princeton 2001) 25181.
39 For a revised text cf. M. L. Nardelli, P.Herc.1676: contenuti di un libro dellopera filodemea Sulla
Poetica, Proceedings of the XVI International Congress of Papyrology (Chico, CA 1981) 166 n. 17.
454 Roman epilogue
Muse (fr. 1.24 M.).40 This temptation has become harder to resist after
the publication of the new Posidippus, PMil.Vogl. VIII.309, which offers
us an insight into the treatment of epigram, the principal genre of short
poems, in the very first century of Hellenistic poetry. The opening section
of what survives of the papyrus is devoted to epigrams on rocks and precious
stones, called #( by modern scholars;41 particular attention is paid to
engravings on gemstones and to the extraordinary techne of the jewellers
who work in this tiny medium. Although there is no explicit comparison
between epigram poet and engraver, such an implication is not very far away
(even without the appearance of the programmatically marked # 4 in
the opening surviving poem).42 Ekphrastic epigrams upon statues or other
works of art are, of course, always a principal site for reflection on the
mimesis at which both art and poetry aim, but the emphasis upon small-
scale working in both Posidippus lithika and the anonymous critic cited
by Philodemus suggests that the critic has learned from the practice of
Hellenistic poets.
Closely connected to this taste for small-scale precision and the short
poem is another fundamental principle of Hellenistic poetry: the search
for %$) concision. Although this derives already from the aesthetic
taste of the fourth century, %$ only becomes, under Stoic influence,43
one of the virtues of style (& #M ) after Theophrastus; Hellenistic
scholars then naturally identified this quality already in Homer,44 and it
may be at issue in a metapoetical epigram of Callimachus (AP 7.447 = HE
1209f. on Theris the Cretan).45 Be that as it may, %$ was certainly
praised by Heraclides Ponticus with an enthusiasm which provoked the
criticism of Philodemus. In the context of the dialectal variety necessary
for a poet (cf. Callimachus, Iambus 13), Heraclides declares %$)
together with enargeia, to be the first and most basic requirement of the
poet, a combination which cannot fail to recall Horaces expression of an
40 Cf. the remarks of E. Asmis in Obbink (1995) 162.
41 The papyrus is broken at the end and may also be at the beginning, though stichometric marks
indicate that we have the first column of the papyrus roll, cf. BastianiniGallazzi (2001) 13. The title
of the section on precious stones is lost, though #( is a very likely guess.
42 Cf. D. Schnur, A Garland of Stones: Hellenistic Lithika as Reflections on Poetic Transformation
in Acosta-HughesKosmetatouBaumbach (2003) 11822, and P. Bing, The Politics and Poetics of
Geography in the Milan Posidippus Section One: On Stones in Gutzwiller (2005).
43 Cf. J. Stroux, De Theophrasti virtutibus dicendi (Leipzig 1912) 1328.
44 Cf. G. B. DAlessio, Le Argonautiche di Cleone Curiense in Pretagostini (2000) 1045.
45 Suntomia (of structure, rather than expression) is also more generally praised, together with oikono-
mia, in SH 339, a discussion of an Argonautic poem; it is possible that Apollonius is being praised
in comparison with another Argonautic poet, but the papyrus is too broken to allow more than
speculation (cf. J. S. Rusten, Dionysius Scytobrachion (Cologne 1982) 567). For discussion cf. Lloyd-
Jones and Parsons in SH ad loc., DAlessio (previous note), who tentatively suggests that the author
is Asclepiades of Myrlea), and Hunter (2001a) 10810.
ideal which it is not easy to achieve (decipimur specie recti: breuis esse laboro
| obscurus fio: AP 256):46
[Heraclides] improperly burdens the excellent poet with an accurate knowledge of
dialect usages, although knowledge of the subject on which he chooses to write
is sufficient . . . [when Heraclides] says that the first and most basic (#(!%)
requisite for proper first conceptions are [to write] with brevity and concision,
and for concepts [to write] persuasively and with enargeia, and that both of these
things belong to the art and the poet, we must ask what is meant by first and
most basic . . . How, moreover, are enargeia and suntomia better than the other
qualities proper to poetry? Why is it necessary for what happens to be reported
with enargeia and persuasively, when not only many lies, but things which are
drawn completely from the realm of fable ( $'%) are reported by the
poets with the greatest enargeia? How can it be a matter of doubt whether both
of these things belong to the art and the poet? This is not a peculiarity of poetry,
for prose-writers also practise suntomia and enargeia . . . (Philodemus, On Poems
5, cols. v.10vii.20 Mangoni)
In another passage of On Poems Book 5, we also find the pairing of enargeia
and suntomia, together with a further criticism of the alleged primacy of the
latter, though this time with regard to concepts, rather than to the formal
aspects of poetry:
Composition which makes clear the underlying thought clearly and concisely and
at the same time respects the poetic character applies also to prose, except for the
necessity to respect poetic character . . . this involves the claim that everything
is expressed with concision, whereas in some cases one must use [scil. concise
phrasing], in some cases spend time on the same subject, and in others even use
paraphrase. (Philodemus, On Poems 5, col. xxxi.725 Mangoni)
Sunthesis, composition, which as we have seen was compared to engrav-
ing and hence formed the basis of the comparison between poet and
engraver, was an essential element in the quest for euphony, which many
of those criticised by Philodemus claimed as the specific goal of poetry:
. . . the euphony which supervenes [scil. on poetry as a result of sunthesis] is
the specific hallmark (K') of poetry, whereas the thoughts and expressions are
external matters to be judged as common; all the kritikoi hold this view as fixed as
if it were inscribed on stone . . . (Philodemus, Tract. tert. col. xvii.29 Sbordone)
Even Philodemus, despite the greater concern with content which we would
expect from an Epicurean,47 can sometimes admit that a work containing
46 Brink (1963) 108 seems to overlook this passage in tracing Horaces attitude to the post-Theophrastan
Peripatos; its importance had, however, been recognised by A. Rostagni, Orazio. Arte Poetica (Turin
1930) 11.
47 Cf. N. Pace, Problematiche di poetica in Filodemo CErc 25 (1995) 13354.
456 Roman epilogue
fine thought is not good if its sunthesis is bad (cf. On Poetry 5, xvii.35
xviii.7 Mangoni). Although for both the kritikoi and Dionysius of Hali-
carnassus the goal of euphony is intimately tied to sunthesis, at least one
of the peripatetic champions of # 4 selection as the specific quality of
poetic diction seems also to have thought of euphony as the primary goal of
poetry. Thus Andromenides, like the peripatetic Neoptolemus, gave special
attention to the study of glosses, selected bright (#() words which
distinguished poetic from ordinary language and were in conformity with
the grandeur of poetic subject-matter;48 nevertheless, he also stressed more
than once that the selection of words must have a euphonic result (cf. F
14, 19, 21, 22, 23, pp. 14750 Janko); this stress has in fact led scholars in the
past to place Andromenides among the champions of sunthesis.49 Behind
Andromenides theory here probably lies the combination of / 4)
# 4) and which is found already in Theophrastus (fr. 691
Fortenbaugh).
It is clear that this cult of euphony, practised in the context of (predom-
inantly) sunthesis but also of # 4)50 is in complete sympathy with the
concern of Hellenistic poets for acoustic effects,51 and one may venture to
guess that contemporary poetry has here, in fact, influenced theory. It was
the sense of hearing which aided sunthesis and judged what was euphonic;
as such, there was little room left for the other traditional elements of
poetry, or for literary genres which had little regard for the formal aspects
of sound. What followed was a radical downgrading of the importance of
subject-matter, whether a concern for its truth status or a concern for its
novelty.52
Sunthesis covers at the level of theory many of what we regard as the
most characteristic features of Hellenistic poetry. Let us consider the case
of mythology, where Hellenistic poets followed after a very long tradition
of epic and tragic poetry. Poets could, of course, use less familiar stories
drawn from antiquarian prose-writers and local historians, as Callimachus
does in the Aitia (cf. above pp. 606 on Acontius and Cydippe);53 because,
48 Cf. Janko (2000) 1445. For bright words cf. On Poems 1, col. 161.17 Janko, and for the necessity
for gods and sons of gods to avoid too common a language, ibid. cols. 160.1718, 172.1418 Janko.
49 For the history of this misinterpretation cf. A. Ardizzoni, J>@70;: ricerche sulla teoria del linguaggio
poetico nellantichita (Bari 1953) 8890.
50 Cf. J. Porter, e : a Reassessment in J. G. J. Abbenes, S. Slings, and I. Sluiter (eds.), Greek
Literary Theory after Aristotle (Amsterdam 1995) 83109, pp. 8993, 102.
51 Cf. D. A. van Groningen, La poesie verbale grecque (Amsterdam 1953), with the reservations of
Magnelli (2002) 1012.
52 Thus, for example, Heracleodorus is represented as maintaining that even incomprehensible poetry
could give pleasure (frs. 19, 20, 22, p. 161 Janko); cf. also On Poems 5, xxii.1421 Mangoni.
53 Philodemus perhaps alludes to this practice when he considers the possibility of a hypothesis which
is &
. On this term, though not in this context, cf. Pace (n. 47 above) 1445.
however, of the importance of sunthesis, they could also, in the view of critics,
decompose and reconstruct stories by giving them a structure individual
to them. Both new stories and those taken from earlier models were thus
on the same footing, provided that the form of the earlier poetic treatments
was not preserved:
Just as in the case of the manual arts, we do not judge a workman badly because he
has taken over material from another craftsman before working it well, so too we
will not think the worse of a poet who takes a hypothesis which has not before been
elaborated in poetry (&
) and applies his own intelligence to it. This is our
attitude not only in the case of small-scale compositions, but also in the case that
someone has broadly () taken from another the Trojan or Theban story,
and then (as it were) broken it up before rearranging it again into his own personal
shape. Consider the stories of Thyestes and Paris and Menelaos and Electra and
many such others: Sophocles and Euripides and many others have written about
them, but we do not, for that reason, consider that these are the better writers and
others worse. Often, in fact, we consider that those who have taken the stories
over from their predecessors are better, if they have been more successful in intro-
ducing poetic value (, , &
).54 (Philodemus, Tract. tert. fr. e, col.
i.20ii.24 Sbordone)
Moreover, in giving primacy to the search for naturally beautiful expres-
sion, the euphonists firmly rejected the importance of poetic ) that is
the conventions and traditional rules governing the relationship between
certain types of subject, certain metres, and certain genres;55 in other words,
they rejected the importance of the classical system of genres. Philodemus
himself was certainly not a champion of the primacy of euphony, but rather
argued for the existence of preconceptions (#4: ) concerning the
goodness or otherwise of poetry; it was in the context of these precon-
ceptions that one should consider both the unimportance of the themata,
which was maintained by otherwise unspecified philosophers, and the
absence of a natural good ($%, &
) and thus of objective criteria
of natural valuation:56
As for the philosophers who say that there are conventions () which one
should use in making critical judgements, and add the other things which (Crates)
has transcribed, if he is alluding to the Epicureans, he is talking nonsense [. . .]
They abandoned completely the notions concerned with fine and bad compositions
and poems [. . .] They were wrong in maintaining that everything is a matter of
conventions and that there is no valid criterion of judgement applicable to all fine
54 Cf. also Tract. Tert. col. vii.112. The similarity to Horace, Ars Poetica 119ff. is obvious, cf. Nardelli
(above n. 39) 16971.
55 For Philodemus concurrence with the idea of naturally beautiful expression cf. Rhet. i.151.614
Sudhaus.
56 Cf. Janko (2000) 1313.
458 Roman epilogue
and bad verses, but that one is appropriate in one case, another in another, as with
customs. (Philodemus, On Poems 5, col. xxv.130 Mangoni)
I pass over the fact that even an imitation with a certain elaboration for a poetic
composition is that which imitates as far as possible even such an imitation would
grant a judgement common to all, and not a judgement based on each different
convention for those who had established these conventions. Crates thus made a
fool of himself in saying that these were the only opinions (2#4: ) regarding
a good poem, and that only this one [i.e. concerning the existence of themata] was
proper to philosophers;57 the same is true of his statement that it is not persuasive
that themata exist, as hearing bears witness to this view. Even if we accept that
there is evidence against the themata, hearing does not bear witness to the fact, as
it does not exercise judgement over any aspect of poetic composition and finds,
by Zeus, no pleasure in any element, except rhythm.58 (Philodemus, On Poems 5,
cols. xxvi.11xxvii.1 Mangoni)
That the themata may be seen as practically including notions of literary
genre59 emerges from an argument used by the kritikoi. Good poets pursued
euphony in many different genres independently of the themata applicable
to each genre; moreover, their success in achieving beautiful, middling, or
poor diction was also independent of the themata, being obviously a result
of the capacity of the individual poet:
It will make no difference, says Pausimachus, even if we match Archilochus,
Euripides, or anyone else against Homer, if we juxtapose only the praiseworthy
diction of either with his. For it is not because tragedy, iambus, and lyric are in
some way a different (genre), that we shall match one poet against another from
another genre, since the end is the same for every genre. For it follows that all the
diction that is in them is composed in a beautiful, middling, or inferior way.60
(Philodemus, On Poems 1, col. 77 Janko)
[Pausimachus says that] poets of lampoon (*9) compose tragic (verses),
and conversely tragic poets compose lampoons, and Sappho composes some
(verses) in the manner of lampoon, and Archilochus (some) not in the manner
of lampoon. Hence one must say that a composer of iambus or some other genre
(exists) not by nature, but by convention (
"); but poets (compose) by nature
when they name (things) by coming upon the word that is nobly born, primary,
57 This is a difficult passage of uncertain meaning, cf. Mangoni (1993) 287.
58 Crates had apparently asserted that judgement (krisis) was operative at the level of physical differences
between sounds and consisted in the degree of pleasure which the hearer derived; Philodemus admits
that rhythm can give the ear a certain pleasurable sensation, but it cannot be a basis for judgement.
Cf. Porter (n. 50 above) 15765.
59 Cf. Janko (2000) 159.
60 Janko (2000) 271 explains the argument thus: since all poets use the same words, what matters is
how they put them together; it is not the generic affiliations of iambic, tragic, or epic poets that
matter, but the quality of their diction . . . In that poets like Archilochus, Euripides, and Homer all
have excellent diction, they resemble each other more than they differ by generic criteria.
and entirely appropriate, and when in every genre of verse, both what is well com-
posed and what is badly composed, the same argument holds. (Philodemus, On
Poems 1, col. 117 Janko)
While criticising this position as excessive, Philodemus himself denied that
a good poet could compose well in every genre:
If anyone claimed that the virtue of a poet lay in being able to compose every
composition well . . . if he means that a good poet can compose every kind of
poem well, he makes poetic virtue a completely non-existent thing. No one has
been able to compose everything well, and in my view, it is impossible no one
could do it. In any case, no poet is able to remain at a consistent level even in just
one genre. (Philodemus, On Poems 5, col. xxxvii, 124 Mangoni)
This is, of course, different from the fact that, as Philodemus acknowledged,
genres were not completely discrete:
as for his argument that it has the heroic line instead of tragic metres, for tragedy
is composed of all metres, if it is mistaken in this respect, that there are lines tragic
(?) in construction among the epic poets, and in tragedies of comic poets . . .
(Philodemus, On Poems 4, col. v.1525 Janko61 )
In granting little importance to the traditional themata of poetry, Pausi-
machus substituted the universal search by poets of every genre for euphony;
thus, at least implicitly, was the traditional generic hierarchy subverted, for
on this theory even a poet of low genres, as judged by subject-matter,
could reach the level of tragedy.62 As for the claim that to specialise in
one genre and to follow faithfully its traditional laws without crossing over
into other genres was not in accord with nature, this sounds like an implicit
rejection of both the reality of archaic and classical Greek literary history, in
which most poets had indeed been mono-generic, and some famous poetic
theory, most notably perhaps that propounded by Socrates in Platos Ion
(esp. 534c).63 Pausimachus views are not quite the same as those implied in
Callimachus thirteenth Iambus (cf. above, pp. 1516), Who said [. . .] you
compose pentameters, you heroic verses, your divine lot is to write tragedy?
No one, I think; Callimachus seems, on the basis of the Diegesis, merely
to have wished to assert the right of a poet to write in more than one genre
(polyeideia); Pausimachus, on the other hand, appears to have taken a still
more radical position by stressing the permeability of generic boundaries.64
61 For the text of Book 4 cf. R. Janko, Philodemus On Poems and Aristotles On Poets CErc 21 (1991)
564, pp. 1117.
62 Cf. E. Asmis, Crates on poetic criticism Phoenix 46 (1992) 12869, pp. 1623.
64 Iambic poets write tragic verses (col. 117 above) seems to mean that subjects or structures which
are proper to tragedy are sometimes found in iambic.
460 Roman epilogue
If Callimachus cannot thus be cited as ancient support for what modern
scholars have come to call the crossing or contamination of genres, Pausi-
machus does seem to have sketched a literary history in which the form
and content of different genres were not utterly separated from each other;
this is not the same thing, of course, as the practice of crossing genres,
but one may think that that practice is presupposed by the theory.65 Calli-
machus adduced Ion of Chios, one of the few classical poets who was not
mono-generic, as his model for polyeideia; Pausimachus generalises much
more broadly: for him, the genres had interpenetrated each other from the
earliest periods of Greek literature. If Callimachus looks for predecessors,
Pausimachus, with the Hellenistic experience behind him, views the whole
of literary history sub specie Hellenistica.
The unimportance of the themata was also shown by the fact that the
search for euphony placed on the same level both those who wrote in the
traditional and canonical genres and those who had mixed their metres:
So, after promising a proof that the good poets excel and they alone endure
on no other account than the sounds, and after saying that I have established
elsewhere that only Homer, Archilochus and Euripides are doing the same thing
and in addition to them Sophocles and Philoxenus, and likewise Timotheus too
in mixing their verses (4), [the critic] says I shall now discuss sounds in
themselves. (Philodemus, On Poems 1, col. 83 Janko)
Moreover, the traditional themata were internally inconsistent:
[Heracleodorus says that] both in tragedy and comedy more beautiful composi-
tions do not arise on account of differences in the verse-forms, just as the genres too
do not differ. For in comedies there are mingled verse-forms from lampoons . . .
(Philodemus, On Poems 1, col. 205 Janko)
Also, the differences between generic themata were not consistently
maintained:
[It is irrelevant to claim, as Heracleodorus does, that nor is there one diction which
is epic, another tragic], another which is iambic, or comic, or whatever, in short,
some people say, and that comic, tragic and lyric contents do not differ (from
each other), and that no (kind of ) speech prevents the good poet from making
obvious the form which he chooses to create, and that poets styles (! )
are not individuated, and that even the general species ( K') cannot
be distinguished.66 (Philodemus, On Poems 1, cols. 1923 Janko)
65 Janko (2000) 279 notes the possibility that Pausimachus has been influenced by the practice of
Alexandrian poets.
66 The final two statements seem to refer to the theory of three or four styles of sunthesis, which is
normally traced back to Theophrastus, cf. Janko (2000) 156, 41719.
3 Graecia capta 461
The themata were in fact so far rejected that the ultimate boundary between
poetry and prose broke down, and Heracleodorus declared the best prose-
writers to be poets:
. . . as a result of which they call poets those who achieve perfection . . . either
we suppose that he (Crates) misunderstood or that critic [Heracleodorus] was a
raving lunatic, when he claimed that the works of Demosthenes and Xenophon are
verses, and yet more so those of Herodotus, although according to convention
each is a prose-writer.67 (Philodemus, On Poems 1, col. 199 Janko)
Sunthesis as the particular technique of poetic diction was perhaps already
a familiar idea in the Hellenistic age,68 as euphony as the aim of poetry
certainly was.69 Both are systematised in the handbooks of Demetrius
(On Style) and Dionysius of Halicarnassus (On Composition); the latter was
slightly younger than Philodemus; the former treatise is usually thought
contemporary with Philodemus or Dionysius, but has also been placed as
early as the third century. In neither Demetrius nor Dionysius, however,
is anything made of the very Hellenistic polemic against the traditional
generic themata which we have found in the kritikoi. Perhaps, then, the
poetics of sunthesis existed before the Hellenistic critics, who, if they did
not create it, championed it with such emphasis; certainly, it outlived them.
In any case, the tight link between the ideas of sunthesis and euphony, on the
one hand, and the attack upon the traditional themata of the literary genres,
on the other, can best be understood in a Hellenistic context. Sunthesis at
least was, however, to find a way of living with the new demands of the
schools and the new classicism of the late first century bc.
3 g r a e c i a c a p ta
From its very earliest days, the writing of literature in Latin involved a
creative engagement with the Greek heritage: early Roman tragedies and
comedies are translations of Greek models, and the earliest non-dramatic
literary poem on which we have serious information is Livius Andronicus
translation of the Odyssey into saturnians. The Roman tradition is, how-
ever, by no means one of simple, unreflective appropriation of a classical
literature: from the beginning, Latin poetry shows its awareness of its place
in its tradition . . . it is metapoetical to a high degree.70 To this extent,
67 Cf. also Tract. D fr. 17 Nardelli. That certain prose-writers had a share in the charis of poetry became
a commonplace of criticism. Demetrius names Plato, Xenophon, Herodotus and Demosthenes (On
style 181), and Dionysius of Halicarnassus names Demosthenes and Plato (de comp. verb. 25.1).
68 Cf. Ardizzoni (above, n. 49) 60 with n. 5, 69ff.
69 Cf. Janko (2000) 16989.
70 Thomas (1993) 204. For Livius as a self-aware and learned adaptor cf. Hinds (1998) 5863.
462 Roman epilogue
Roman literature is inherently belated, and it might have been expected
that Roman poets would recognise some kinship with elite Greek poetry
of the third century, much of which is driven by the creative energies and
ironies which belatedness confers. It is not, however, until the first century
bc that we have clear evidence of the importance at Rome of an Alexandrian
aesthetic which depended upon ideas of literary hierarchies and canonical
texts.71 Nevertheless, from the beginning the acknowledged literary glories
of Greece were always there as a stimulus and a challenge: Plautus derives
an important part of his comic power from exploitation of the fact that his
plays are versions of Greek dramas, with all the uneasy cultural dissonance
that such translation brings. This exploitation is firmly rooted in differ-
ences between constructed national characteristics and ideologies what
Greeks are like, what Romans are like and the Roman engagement with
Greek poetry, at least until the early Empire, must always be seen within
wider patterns of cultural interchange and appropriation, part of the par-
ticular character of which lies in Roman self-consciousness and reflection
about these very processes.
Knowledge at Rome of some Hellenistic poetry can be established for
the poetry of the second century. Ennius began the Annales with a dream
encounter with Homer, who explained that his soul had passed into the
Latin poet; Ennius cannot possibly have been unaware72 of the Hesiodic
dream which immediately followed the Reply to the Telchines at the head
of Callimachus Aitia,73 and it has been plausibly argued that Ennius whole
poetic persona, with its emphasis on the poets Grecising modernity and
an oeuvre which ranges across many genres and metres, is quintessentially
Hellenistic.74 Nevertheless, there is no good evidence for extensive Ennian
use of Callimachus elsewhere, either in the Annales or in the rest of his
oeuvre. Noteworthy, in particular, is the absence of any clear evidence for
Ennian allusion to the Reply itself;75 this may seem unsurprising, given
the generic gulf which separates these two poetic projects, but the very
71 Farrell (1991) 294 and Cameron (1995) 289 overstate what we can say with any certainty about the
Roman reception of Greek poetry between Ennius and Catullus.
72 O. Skutsch, The Annals of Q. Ennius (Oxford 1985) 148. 73 Cf. above, pp. 6676.
74 Cf. esp. Kerkhecker (2001) with earlier bibliography.
75 Fr. 206, scripsere alii rem | uorsibus quos olim Fauni uatesque canebant, from the programmatic
prologue to Book 7 may have some connection . . . with the manner in which Callimachus speaks
of his critics and rivals without naming them (Skutsch ad loc.), but the debt is no more precise than
that of Terence, cf. below. Hutchinson (1988) 279 n. 4 points to sophiam at fr. 211, but a reminiscence
of Call. fr. 1.18 is very uncertain. For more elaborate arguments for Ennian reworking of the Reply
as well as the Dream cf. Farrell (1991) 299, A. S. Hollis, Callimachus: Light from Later Antiquity
in Callimaque 3554, pp. 3943.
3 Graecia capta 463
importance of the Reply to late Republican and Augustan poetry76 can
obscure the fact that the opening of Eclogue 6 may well have been the first
major adaptation of this now famous text in Latin literature, even if the
influence of its aesthetic may be detected already in the poetry of Lucretius
and Catullus.77 Ennius Sota, however, was presumably inspired by (or even
adapted) poems of Sotades.
From later in the second century, the indications are again tantalisingly
sporadic. It has been argued that the prologues of Terence, in which the
young poet responds to the slurs of a malicious old poet and defends his
writing practices, show the influence of the Callimachean Reply,78 but the
resemblances do not certainly pass beyond a general similarity of strategy.
That Lucilius was familiar with some Hellenistic poetry seems entirely
probable, but again we have little which offers a firm critical footing.79
The Mimiambi of Cn. Matius (date uncertain) may have been inspired
by Herodas, but the extant fragments show no obvious point of contact
with our text of the Greek mimiambist.80 It is, however, certain that some
Hellenistic literary epigrams circulated in Italy from a relatively early date: in
addition to the famous imitation of Callimachus, AP 12.73 (= HE 1057 ff.)
by Q. Lutatius Catulus (? late second century), aufugit mi animus; credo,
ut solet, ad Theotimum | deuenit (fr. 1 Courtney), other late second- or
early first-century epigrams show clear reworkings of familiar motifs of the
Hellenistic erotic epigram.81 Meleagers Garland will thus have stimulated
interest in the epigram, but was certainly not responsible for its introduction
to Italy. So, too, we may note possible echoes of Bion from early in the
first century,82 and the Erotopaegnia of Laevius (flor. c. 90 bc) will have
been influenced by the Greek epigram and other minor genres, such as the
pattern poem (technopaegnion).83 More important, however, than these
scattered hints are the clear signs of an interest by Roman poets of this
76 Cf. Wimmel (1960); useful summary in Hopkinson (1988) 98101.
77 Cf. e.g. Catullus 95 on Hortensius voluminous poetry, Lucretius 1. 92530, 4.1812, E. J. Kenney,
Doctus Lucretius Mnemosyne 23 (1970) 36692, P. E. Knox, Lucretius on the narrow road HSCP
99 (1999) 27587. I am unconvinced by Farrell (1991) 298 that Plautus, Pseudolus 399405 parodies
Callimachus fr. 1.
78 Cf. M. Pohlenz, Der Prolog des Terenz SIFC 27/8 (1956) 43453.
79 M. Puelma Piwonka, Lucilius und Kallimachos (Frankfurt 1949) sees Callimachus Iambi as an
important model for Lucilius, but the case remains speculative.
80 Cf. Courtney (1993) 1026.
81 Cf. Courtney (1993) 7081, Ross (1969) 14055, Morelli (2000), A. Perutelli, Frustula poetarum
(Bologna 2002) 3158.
82 Cf. Reed (1997) 3, 578. For Bions influence on Virgil cf. above, p. 178.
83 Cf. fr. 22 Courtney, a poem, like Simias, AP 15.24, in the shape of wings, cf. above, p. 40. For Laevius
as a forerunner of Catullus and the neoterics cf. Ross (1969) 15560 (with strong reservations),
Hutchinson (1988) 297, Hinds (1998) 7880.
464 Roman epilogue
period in literary history. Volcacius Sedigitus wrote a De Poetis in senarii,
and a famous fragment of Porcius Licinus describes the arrival at Rome of
Hellenising poetry:
Poenico bello secundo Musa pinnato gradu
intulit se bellicosam in Romuli gentem feram.84
During the second Punic war the Muse, in warlike mood and with winged gait,
transferred herself to Romulus wild people.
This historical interest points the way to the frenetic Roman engagement
with Greek, and particularly Hellenistic, poetry that characterises the sub-
sequent decades.
Evidence for an extensive engagement by a Roman literary elite with
Hellenistic poetry is associated particularly though not exclusively with
the group of poets to which moderns give the name neoteric.85 For Calli-
machus, the best evidence is Catullus translation of the Coma Berenices
(Poem 66),86 in which we may already sense Callimachus status as one
of the classic Greek elegists, his reworkings of Callimachean epigrams
(Cat. 70 Call. Epigr. 25 Pf., Cat. 95 Call. Epigr. 27 Pf.),87 and the
obvious engagement throughout his poems with the aesthetics of carmina
Battiadae. Callimachus mimetic hymns are the obvious model for the mode
of Catullus Roman epithalamian, Poem 61,88 and it is not improbable that
both Cat. 1.910, quod, o patrona uirgo, | plus uno maneat perenne saeclo,
and Cinna fr. 14 Courtney, saecula permaneat nostri Dictynna Catonis, reflect
Callimachus wish for the Aitia at fr. 7.1314 (= 9.1314 M.). A prose Aetia
on Roman customs by Varro may also be assumed to have taken some, at
least, of its inspiration from Callimachus. What relation the Glaucus poems
of the youthful Cicero and Q. Cornificius had to the n# ascribed by
the Suda to Callimachus we cannot say.89
Theocritus leaves far fewer traces than Callimachus in Latin literature
before Virgils Eclogues.90 The amoebean structure of Catullus 62 perhaps
84 Fr. 1 Courtney. Interpretation is (inevitably) disputed: see Courtney ad loc.
85 Among helpful accounts of the problems associated with this and related terms are: N. Crowther,
>e Z ) poetae novi, and cantores Euphorionis CQ 20 (1970) 3227, C. Tuplin, Cantores
Euphorionis PLLS 1 (1976) 125, R. O. A. M. Lyne, The Neoteric Poets CQ 28 (1978) 16787, A.
Cameron, Poetae novelli HSCP 84 (1980) 12775, Courtney (1993) 18991, Lightfoot (1999) 5667.
87 This famous Callimachean epigram on Aratus Phainomena was also echoed (rather more closely)
in an epigram by Helvius Cinna (fr. 11 Courtney).
88 Cf. e.g. Wilamowitz (1924) II 282. For the apparent echo of Call. h. 2.47 at Cat. 61.768 cf. S.
Heyworth, MD 33 (1994) 512.
89 Cf. Lightfoot (1999) 689. Lightfoot (1999) 5667 also offers a helpful guide through the maze of
thorny problems associated with the Roman reception of Euphorion; cf. also Magnelli (2002) 103
n. 1 for further bibliography.
90 It is far from certain that Catulus fr. 2 Courtney has anything to do with Theocr. 18.268; for the Latin
epigram cf. C. Weber, Roscius and the roscida dea CQ 46 (1996) 298302, Morelli (2000) 15264.
3 Graecia capta 465
reflects familiarity with Theocritus, and the refrain which structures the
final section of Catullus 64 may in part derive from the similar structures
of Theocritus 1 and 2. Cat. 64.96, (Aphrodite) quaeque regis Golgos quaeque
Idalium frondosum, looks very like a reworking of the opening verse of
the Hymn to Adonis in Theocr. 15 (v. 100); that this reworking occurs
within a larger echo of the apostrophe to Eros at Arg. 4.4459 (cf. Cat.
64.948) is a mark of how Catullus constructs a shared tradition within
his third-century Greek models.91 As for Apollonius Argonautica, this was
translated into Latin by Varro Atacinus92 and is a primary model for
both the framing narrative and the ekphrasis of Catullus 64.93 Even more
remarkable is the success at Rome enjoyed by Aratus Phainomena. This
was translated by the young Cicero in the first of a line of Latin versions
(Germanicus, Ovid, Avienus); the section on weather signs was translated
by Varro of Atax (and subsequently became an important model in Virgil,
Georgics 1), and Aratus Myth of Dike has clearly had its influence upon
the end of Catullus 64. Cinna fr. 11 is an epigram intended to accompany
a gift of the text of Aratus.94 Nicanders didactic poems were also certainly
read in Rome by the 50s; they seem to be echoed by Lucretius and were a
principal source for the Theriaca of Aemilius Macer.95
A historical explanation for part of this apparent explosion in interest in
at least certain aspects of third-century Greek poetry has been seen in the
coming to Rome of Parthenius of Bithynia, captured during the Mithri-
datic wars and brought to Rome, perhaps by the poet L. Helvius Cinna.96
In an extant preface to his Erotika Pathemata Parthenius commends the
collection of stories to Cornelius Gallus for use in his # )
Cat. 3.1314 may well echo Bion, EA 55, cf. MD 32 (1994) 1658. Possible echoes of Theocritus
in Catullus are 63.856 (cf. Theocr. 13.6471, below p. 480), 64.260 (cf. Theocr. 3.51) and 68.71
(cf. Theocr. 2.104); Simaithas invocation of Ariadne and Theseus at Theocr. 2.456 may have been
in Catullus mind while writing 64.52ff. (cf. Wiseman (1985) 198 n. 68). The evidence that Catullus
translated or adapted Theocr. 2 (cf. Wiseman (1985) 193 and Appendix 2) is very slight, though of
itself the idea is not implausible.
91 Cf. below, p. 485. For Catullus imitation here of Theocritus cf. Perrotta (1972) 397 and in general
cf. A. Perutelli, Teocrito e Catullo in Lofficina ellenistica. Poesia dotta e popolace in Grecia e a Roma
(Trento 2003) 31730.
92 Cf. Courtney (1993) 23543, A. S. Hollis, The Argonautae of Varro Atacinus in AccorintiChuvin
(2003) 33141.
93 Cf. below, pp. 4813.
94 Cf. S. Hinds, Cinna, Statius, and immanent literary history in the cultural economy in Lhistoire
litteraire immanente dans la poesie grecque (Entretiens Fondation Hardt 47, VandoeuvresGeneva
2001) 22165, pp. 22436.
95 Cf. Cicero, De Oratore 1.69, Courtney (1993) 2929, A. S. Hollis, Nicander and Lucretius PLLS 10
(1998) 16984, J.-M. Jacques, Nicandre, Oeuvres (Paris 2002) ii cxvicxvii.
96 For Parthenius importance cf. Clausen (1964) and (more cautiously) N. B. Crowther, Parthenius
and Roman poetry Mnem. 29 (1976) 6571. Lightfoot (1999) 5076 surveys the arguments and
(scanty) evidence.
466 Roman epilogue
and subsequent hostile tradition standardly groups Parthenius with Calli-
machus and Euphorion as modern and obscure writers. It has often been
conjectured that Calvus elegy on the death of Quintilia (frs. 1516 Court-
ney, cf. Catullus 96) owed something to Parthenius elegiac epikedeion for
his wife Arete (SH 60614), but there is no more than general probabil-
ity upon which to build; there is slightly more solid evidence with which
to postulate Parthenian influence on Cinnas epyllion Zmyrna,97 and the
hypothesis that Parthenius was an important influence in the appearance of
a number of such epyllia (Catullus 64, Calvus Io) is not of itself improb-
able. Nevertheless, it is also clear from the outline sketch already given
that Hellenistic poetry was already known and imitated at Rome before
Parthenius; the broad cultural movements I have been tracing cannot be
laid at the door of any one traveller from the east.
This engagement with the poetry of the third century is, moreover, not
limited to echoes and reworkings. At one level, modern scholars have been
able to point to stylistic (including metrical) imitation of the Hellenistic
manner, alongside verbal echo.98 At the level of macroscopic form, more-
over, Catullus 62, an amoebean wedding song in hexameters, is an act of
imaginative historical recreation which has much in common with The-
ocritus 18, the epithalamian for Helen and Menelaos, even though it is not
given a mythical setting. Catullus 63, the Attis, shares many of the tech-
niques of Hellenistic hymns such as Call. h. 5 and Theocritus 26.99 Poetic
form and poetic sensibility were both fashioned by the experience of the
great Alexandrian poets. The simultaneously inhibiting and inspiring influ-
ence which archaic and classical poetry had had upon third-century poetry
was recreated (deliberately) by the manner in which these Latin poets con-
structed Roman literary history. Our best evidence is Catullus, but in this
he may not have been untypical. The Roman poetic (especially Ennian)
and moral tradition was constructed as something past, something to be
assumed as read, utilised, alluded to and rewritten in a quite new mode,
rather than just simply thrown away;100 the parallel with the Hellenistic atti-
tude to the classical past is obvious. Of course, the image of third-century
poetry and its poetics created by these poets was a very partial one,101 and
one which has in fact impeded modern appreciation of Hellenistic poetry,
97 Cf. Courtney (1993) 220.

98 Cf. Ross (1969) 11569 (whose metrical arguments, particularly about distinctions within the
Catullan corpus, are not weakened by Hutchinson (1988) 298 n. 43), W. Clausen, Catullus and
Callimachus HSCP 74 (1970) 8594.
99 Cf. below, pp. 47785. 100 Cf. J. E. G. Zetzel, ICS 8 (1983) 2646.
101 Cf. e.g. Wimmel (1960) 1289, Cameron (1995) 4601, Hunter (1996b) 196.
4 Verbum pro verbo 467
though this has been a failing of understanding for which the Roman poets
themselves can hardly be blamed. Many elements of third-century poetry
are simply ignored in Roman poetry; others make but a faint appearance,
and others are given a quite new prominence. Thus, for example, if Catullus
64 and 68 are anything to go by, an elaborate interlocking structure within
longer poems was one of these features which had Greek forebears, but
which now assumed new importance as poetic signifiers;102 this example
is the equivalent, at the level of structure, of the verbal remoteness from
the everyday available to Greek poets through the existence of a poetic
Kunstsprache.103 By emphasising structural artifice, Latin poets were able
to claim for their poems a similar elite privilege to that which Hellenistic
poets had asserted through linguistic and generic difference from classical
models.104
4 verbum pro verbo

Translation and its discontents had been a (perhaps the) central theme of
the Roman engagement with Greek literature from the very beginning.105
Terences prologues are our best second-century evidence for debates within
the literary elite about the protocols of translation; as well as the larger issue
of the combination of more than one Greek model (so-called contamina-
tio), these prologues evoke a whole range of issues (accuracy, individ-
ual style within a repetitive genre etc.) which seem to have been trans-
ferred from Greek stylistic and rhetorical theory to the realm of cross-
language translation. When Terence claims that a scene from Diphilus
Synapothnescontes has been imported into the Adelphoe uerbum de uerbo
expressum, modern scholars would probably not speak of a word-for-word
translation. More than one explanation beyond Terentian mendacity
may be suggested. It is a familiar fact that preliterate cultures may have quite
different notions of faithfulness in repetition or translation; Albert Lords
researches among Balkan bards are full of relevant evidence: thus, for exam-
ple, to [a particular Guslar singer] word for word and line for line are
simply an emphatic way of saying like . . . singers do not know what words
and lines are.106 Terences Rome was not a preliterate song culture, though
102 For Hellenistic predecessors cf. Kidd on Aratus, Phain. 36785.
103 Cf. above, p. 442, on Lycophron.
104 This is not, of course, to suggest that linguistic modes of differentiation were not available to, and
intensively used by, Latin poets.
105 For rhetorical teaching on translation and the use of translation in education cf. H. D. Jocelyn,
The Tragedies of Ennius (Cambridge 1967) 259, Brink on Hor. AP 133.
106 The Singer of Tales (Cambridge, Mass. 1960) 28.
468 Roman epilogue
the claim of the Andria prologue that Menanders Andria and Perinthia
had pretty much the same plot would indeed be quite at home in such
a tradition. Beyond the practical considerations of how an experienced
theatrical culture, both performers and audience, might view questions
of sameness and difference, there is in fact more than enough evidence
from the later period to show that verbatim translation meant something
quite different in the literate world of Rome than we mean by the term
today.107
In discussing his translation practice with regard to Greek philosophy,
Cicero speaks of early Roman plays as fabellas Latinas ad uerbum e Graecis
expressas (De finibus 1.4, cf. 1.7), and when Ciceros particular rhetorical
agenda here is set aside 108 there is no reason to doubt that genuinely
different notions of translation than are commonplace today are here in
play. Faithfulness was, however, an important discriminatory criterion for
choosing between categories of appropriation. Cicero describes two (lost)
translations of Demosthenes and Aeschines thus:
nec conuerti ut interpres, sed ut orator, sententiis isdem et earum formis tamquam
figuris, uerbis ad nostram consuetudinem aptis. in quibus non uerbum pro uerbo
necesse habui reddere, sed genus omne uerborum uimque seruaui.
I did not translate them as an interpreter, but as an orator, with the same thoughts
and the forms, or rather figures, of thought, but in words fitted to our usage. I
did not regard it as necessary to render word for word, but I preserved the general
nature and force of the language. (Cicero, De opt. gen. 14)
Here, the context is the education of students of rhetoric, and such trans-
lation was indeed a basic school exercise for Roman boys learning Greek.
The association of translation with youthful training persisted throughout
antiquity: Ciceros translation of Aratus was done when he was admodum
adulescentulus (ND 2.104),109 and in the De oratore he has Lucius Crassus
say that as a young man he would train himself by translating Greek oratory
(1.155, cf. Quintilian 10.5.2).
Faithful translation (exprimere)110 was, then, for Roman poets from the
middle of the first century, one option which they could claim within
107 Cf. J. P. Small, Wax Tablets of the Mind (London 1997), A. Seele, Romische Ubersetzer (Darmstadt
1995). For Latin terminology of translation cf. D. M. Jones, BICS 6 (1959) 278, Traina (1970)
5765.
108 Cf. Traina (1970) 59, citing the very different Acad. 1.10, Why should those skilled in Greek
literature read Latin poets, but not Latin philosophers? Is it because Ennius, Pacuvius, Attius, and
many others give pleasure, though they reproduce not the words but the force of the Greek poets?
109 Cf. D. M. Jones, BICS 6 (1959) 223.
110 For exprimere in this sense cf. Traina (1970) 589, Marinone (1997) 514.
a broad range of possible stances with regard to Greek models; such a
practice, or the claim to it, stands at one end of a continuum of allusive,
intertextual practices, as Horaces use of translated mottos, e.g. nunc est
bibendum, at the head of poems which then veer away from the model,
seems to acknowledge. Thus Catullus 62 (the Greek wedding song) and
66 (the Coma Berenices, translated from Callimachus) are both historical
reconstructions of a mode of Greek poetry. Two very different passages of
Virgil illustrate something of what is at stake in this open recognition of
translation as a deliberate choice of poetic mode.
The fragments of bucolic song cited in Eclogue 9 show how that poem
figures the move away from the countryside, away from bucolic, as a move
towards self-variation (vv. 4650 < Ecl. 5) and translation:
Tityre, dum redeo (breuis est uia), pasce capellas,
et potum pastas age, Tityre, et inter agendum
occursare capro (cornu ferit ille) caueto.
Tityrus, until my return (my trip is not far), graze the goats and then lead them
to drink, Tityrus; take care that you keep out of the he-goats way he butts with
his horn. (Virgil, Eclogue 9.235)
s$ C) , #, # ) 9
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, ?9$, () $#(%% 4 $ Q:".
Tityrus, my dear friend, graze the goats and lead them to the spring, Tityrus; take
care that the he-goat, the tawny Libyan, doesnt butt you. (Theocritus 3.35)
huc ades, o Galatea; quis est nam ludus in undis?
hic uer purpureum, uarios hic flumina circum
fundit humus flores, hic candida populus antro
imminet et lentae texunt umbracula uites.
huc ades; insani feriant sine litora fluctus.
Come hither, Galatea: for what sport can there be in the water? Here is shining
springtime, here the earth pours out her many-coloured flowers by the streams,
here the white poplar hangs over the cave and supple vines weave shady bowers!
Come hither! Let the waves beat wildly upon the shore. (Virgil, Eclogue 9.3943)
&##C & $% C /) +M 5 'X #%%.
#$ 'X (#%% !% ] ! 5U
x' N" C Q 'M 5.
'( ) B' $(%%)
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% :$!, [')
/ #$'' ;K
# $T !
, &9
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' (#%% ! Q C E#;
470 Roman epilogue
But come to me, and you will be no worse off. Leave the grey sea to beat upon the
land! The nights will be sweeter beside me in my cave. Here are laurel trees, here
slender cypresses, here is the dark ivy, and the vine with its sweet fruit; here is cool
water which Etna of the many trees sends forth from its white snow, a heavenly
drink! Who would prefer the sea and the waves to these things? (Theocritus 11.429)
From one perspective, the principal model for Eclogue 9, Theocritus
Thalysia (Idyll 7), established the parameters of what, with hindsight, is seen
as a primary poetic form, whereas Eclogue 9 is an exploration of decay inher-
ent in the self-consciously secondary. The difference between the allusive
style of these quoted passages and that which predominates in the Eclogues
replicates at the level of style the abandonment of the bucolic project which
the poem suggests.111 A second passage to explore the nature of translation
is the Achaemenides scene, which closes Aeneas account of his adven-
tures in Book 3. This scene uses the idea of poetic memory in various
ways:112 for this survivor from Odysseus crew, abandoned in the Cyclops
cave by his comrades who forgot him (immemores 3.617),113 the retelling
is a nightmarish memory which, like Aeneas grief (2.3), almost resists
telling.114 When, however, he comes to events with which we are familiar
from Homer (vv. 61838), his words are an abnormally close translation
from Odyssey 9 because actual Homeric experience cannot be relived except
through memory of Homeric verses: the faithfulness to the Homeric orig-
inal, which here takes the place of the authorising Muse, is a pledge of the
veracity of the awful account.115 Moreover, the often-remarked similarities
between the episode of Achaemenides and the earlier episode of Sinons
deception of the Trojans (Aen. 2.57198) illustrate not merely the epic drive
towards repetition, towards what is in this case internally generated mem-
ory, but also explore (inter alia) the limits and nature of epic fiction itself.116
Translation and self-variation are again seen as crises at the extremes of
allusive practice.
111 The re-emergence of the Theocritean Polyphemus and Galatea in vv. 3743 is particularly marked,
as Idyll 11 had already been reworked as Eclogue 2. (I owe this point to Gregory Hutchinson).
112 For memory and epic poetry cf. above, pp. 11726.
113 There is perhaps a wry suggestion in this word that Odysseus and his men forgot Achaemenides
because Homer and his characters know nothing of him.
114 Note 644 infandi Cyclopes, 653 gentem . . . nefandam.
115 The emphasis on sight in this passage not only acts as a marker of allusion at the level of the narrative
intertext (Papanghelis in KazazisRengakos (1999) 281), but also evokes the powerful enargeia of
the Homeric account, with its associated stimulus to mimesis, cf. below, p. 472.
116 The similarities between the two episodes have, of course, generated a large bibliography; for some
helpful guidance cf. J. Ramminger, Imitation and allusion in the Achaemenides scene (Virgil,
Aeneid 3.588691) AJP 112 (1991) 5371. It is relevant here that the Cyclops was always regarded as
one of Odysseus most outrageous lies, within a hierarchy of unbelievability, cf. Juvenal 15.1323,
Dio Chrys. 11.34.
If Roman poetic practice of the first century bc is in part an imagina-
tive reconstruction of Hellenistic aesthetics, then we should ask about the
Alexandrian equivalent of poetic translation. It might seem obvious that
translation was one form of allusive practice available to the Romans, but
denied to their Greek models, who had to be satisfied with, say, rewrit-
ing Homer or changing the form of past poems, as Sotades turned the
Iliad into sotadeans.117 Nevertheless, some translation of non-Greek poetry,
particularly occasional lyric,118 into Greek is a conceivable literary practice
for third-century Alexandria. That a Callimachus or an Apollonius turned
his hand to the poetic rendering of an Egyptian poem (which had been
translated for him) is hardly an outrageous notion. That the Alexandrian
Library contained some translations of non-Greek works seems overwhelm-
ingly probable; if we are to believe Tzetzes, under Ptolemy Philadelphus it
was a positive hotbed of translation activity (xia ii 1622 Koster). Bi- and
tri-lingual inscriptions were, in any case, a fact of life. Neoteric translation
may thus have had some real or believed Greek forebear.
Two other possible models for Roman practice, or what could be con-
structed as such, may be noted. Erotic epigrams seem to have been one
important vehicle for the transmission of Hellenistic poetry to Italy,119 and
variation (including self-variation) was a standard feature of Greek epi-
grammatic practice during the third century; such constant play with the
work of oneself and ones predecessors has important features in common
with poetic translation. Secondly, there are the implications of Horaces
placing of his strictures against literal translation:
difficile est proprie communia dicere, tuque
rectius Iliacum carmen deducis in actus
quam si proferres ignota indictaque primus: 130
publica materies priuati iuris erit, si
non circa uilem patulumque moraberis orbem
nec uerbo uerbum curabis reddere fidus
interpres nec desilies imitator in artum,
unde pedem proferre pudor uetet aut operis lex, 135
nec sic incipies, ut scriptor cyclicus olim:
fortunam Priami cantabo et nobile bellum.
quid dignum tanto feret hic promissor hiatu?
parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus.
117 As far as we can tell, this was a mixture of rewriting and free composition. Cf. further below,
p. 484.
118 Cf. M. L. West, Near Eastern Material in Hellenistic and Roman Literature HSCP 73 (1969)
11334, pp. 1313.
119 Cf. above, p. 463.
472 Roman epilogue
It is hard to put generalities in an individual way: you do better to reduce the
song of Troy to acts than if you were the first to bring out something unknown
and unsaid. The common stock will become your private property if you dont
linger on the broad and vulgar round, or anxiously render word for word, a loyal
interpreter, or again, in the process of imitation, find yourself in a tight corner
from which shame, or the rule of the craft, wont let you move; or, once again, if
you avoid a beginning like the cyclic poet
Of Priams fortune will I sing, and war
Well known to fame.
If he opens his mouth as wide as that, how can the promiser bring forth anything
to match it? The mountains shall be in labour, and there shall be born a silly
mouse. (Horace, Ars Poetica 12839, trans. D. A. Russell)
Horace connects the translation question120 to the question of choice and
treatment of subject matter, and v. 132 looks directly to cyclical poetry, i.e.
(in this context) the drearily imitative and repetitive. Formulaic, repetitive
composition is here fashioned as the moral equivalent of literal translation,
and thus an analogue within Greek mimesis (note v. 134 imitator) for Roman
practice is discovered.
In his discussion of what can be gained from studying (not, of course,
translating) the great writers of the past, Longinus describes how effluences
(&
) from them flow into the souls of those who would emulate
them (e _# ), as the Pythia was inspired by chthonic vapours at
Delphi (13.2). Shifting the metaphor somewhat, he notes that these great
figures are presented to us as objects of emulation and, as it were, shine
before our gaze . . . (14.1). There is, in fact, in ancient discussions of inspira-
tion and mimesis a persistent language of sight, of seeing the beautiful and
wanting to grasp it. The Augustan critic Dionysius of Halicarnassus distin-
guished two mimetic practices: Mimesis is an activity making a copy of the
model ( , (' ) by means of theoretical principles.
Zelos is an activity of the psyche, roused to admiration (thauma) of some-
thing believed to be beautiful.121 The erotic language, recalling such Pla-
tonic texts as Phaedrus 251ae, is not to be dismissed as unimportant, for it
seems directly relevant to Catullus poem about the experience of translating
Sappho:
120 D. A. Russell, De imitatione in D. West and T. Woodman, Creative Imitation and Latin Literature
(Cambridge 1979) 116, p. 1, unconvincingly denies that vv. 1334 refer to translation, but the case
seems hard to deny.
121 Opuscula II, p. 200 U.-R., cf. Longinus 13.2. Russells $ (sc. :$!) for $ has
much to commend it.
ille mi par esse deo uidetur,
ille, si fas est, superare diuos,
qui sedens aduersus identidem te
spectat et audit
dulce ridentem, misero quod omnes
eripit sensus mihi: nam simul te,
Lesbia, aspexi, nihil est super mi
<uocis in ore;>
lingua sed torpet, tenuis sub artus
flamma demanat, sonitu suopte
tintinant aures, gemina teguntur
lumina nocte.
otium, Catulle, tibi molestumst:
otio exsultas nimiumque gestis:
otium et reges prius et beatas
perdidit urbes
That man is seen by me as a gods equal
Or (if it may be said) the gods superior,
Who sitting opposite again and again
Watches and hears you
Sweetly laughing which dispossesses poor me
Of all my sense, for no sooner, Lesbia,
Do I look at you than theres no power left me
<Of speech in my mouth>
But my tongues paralysed, invisible flame
Courses down through my limbs, with din of their own
My ears are ringing and twin darkness covers
The light of my eyes.
Leisure, Catullus, does not agree with you.
At leisure youre restless, too excitable.
Leisure in the past has ruined rulers and
Prosperous cities. (Catullus 51, trans. Guy Lee)
Contemplation of the Lesbian girl produces a double desire, part of which,

the desire to emulate, and perhaps even surpass (superare), the great figures
of the past, issues in the poem in front of us. In this narrativisation of the act
of literary mimesis, both mistress and literary model take on the attributes
of a Muse: Lesbia becomes a surrogate Sappho figure, while Sappho in
turn is transformed into a poetic and erotic ideal.122 This occurs, however,
within a specific poetics of imitation and translation. Sappho 31 was a very
122 M. B. Skinner, Catullus Passer (New York 1981) 88. For further aspects of mimesis and desire in this
poem cf. Hardie (2002) 504.
474 Roman epilogue
famous poem,123 and it is a fair guess that it was a school text; it is the
choice of this poem, as well as the choice of translation, here involving the
wholesale transposition of metre as well as subject, upon which the final
stanza on otium reflects.124
5 poetry or transl ation?

In Poem 65125 Catullus is very unexplicit about the request from Hor-
talus to which he is responding. Most commentators assume a scenario
in which Hortalus has actually requested what he finally gets, namely a
Latin version of the Lock of Berenice, extorted (expressa) out of a Catullus
with other things on his mind.126 It is possible that the point rather is,
I cant write poetry [which you have requested], but, nevertheless, here
is a translation,127 which would leave quite open the status of Poem 66
as poetry or not, as also the time at which it was composed. Whichever
scenario we choose, it is clear that at the heart of the poem lies the nature
of allusive poetry, of which expressa . . . carmina are one variety. The con-
tinuum of allusive practices is here expressed as an oscillation between
expromere (nec potis est dulces Musarum expromere fetus | mens animi) and
exprimere.
In expromere, as Fordyce says, the metaphor is that of bringing [apples]
out of a store, though William Fitzgerald has also explored to good effect
the birth metaphor of the poem. The Muses are the daughters of Memory,
and poetic composition is here figured as a species of memory, of bringing
out of the minds storehouse. This is an image for memory which recurs
123 Cf. Plut. Mor. 763a, Demetrius 38.4, S. Costanza, Risonanze dellode di Saffo FAINETAI MOI KENOS
da Pindaro a Catullo e Horazio (MessinaFlorence 1950).
124 Cf. D. Fowler, Roman Constructions (Oxford 2000) 25, 2734. Cicero introduces one of his trans-
lations of Homer (De div. 2.63 = fr. 23 MorelBuechnerBlansdorf ) with ut nos otiosi conuertimus.
125 For this poems debt to Callimachus, which is to be set against the very different debt of Poem 66,
cf. Hunter (1993c).
126 For this nuance of expressa cf. Cicero, Orator 147 tuum studium hoc a me uolumen expressit; W.
Fitzgerald, Catullan Provocations (Berkeley 1995) 191. Suetonius uses the same verb to describe how
Augustus forced Horace to write a hexameter poem for him (Epist. 2.1), expressitque eclogam ad
se . . . (Vita Hor. p. 298 Roth). For the language of literary request in general cf. P. White, Promised
Verse (Cambridge, Mass. 1993) 6471.
127 So, e.g. Marinone (1997) 52; D. E. W. Wormell, Catullus as Translator in L. Wallach (ed.), The
Classical Tradition. Literary and Historical Studies in Honor of Harry Caplan (Cornell 1966) 187201,
p. 196. For the poetic artfulness of the I cant write poetry claim cf. e.g. J. Van Sickle, About
Form and Feeling in Catullus 65 TAPA 99 (1968) 497508, D. L. Selden, Ceueat lector: Catullus
and the Rhetoric of Performance in R. Hexter and D. Selden (eds.), Innovations of Antiquity (New
YorkLondon 1992) 461512, pp. 4715, M. Citroni, Poesia e lettori in Roma antica (RomeBari
1995) 959.
5 Poetry or translation? 475
throughout antiquity,128 but there is more involved here than just the trope
of allusion as poetic memory, about which so much has recently been
written. Poem 65 swings (as does the uirgo with whom the poem ends)
between memory and forgetting: Catullus brother has passed beyond the
whirlpool of Forgetting, but it is precisely memory of that death which
both stops Catullus writing and produces the poem in front of us. mens
animi is not just, as the commentators say, an archaism for the intellectual
faculty, but rather gestures towards the active role of the mind in creating
the images necessary both for memory (Varro etymologises meminisse from
mens, LL 6.44, cf. 6.49)129 and for the creation of true poetic phantasia
which relies upon memory. Horace seems to have recognised this in his
imitation at Epistles 1.14.69:
me quamuis Lamiae pietas et cura moratur
fratrem maerentis, rapto de fratre dolentis
insolabiliter, tamen istuc mens animusque
fert et auet spatiis obstantia rumpere claustra.
Though I am kept here by my sense of duty and love for Lamia, who is grieving for
her brother, mourning inconsolably for the brother who has been snatched away,
nevertheless my mind and spirit carry me there and long to burst the barriers that
stand in the way. (Horace, Epistles 1.14.69)
The city-bound Horace can picture the beloved farm in his mind, even
though he is not there, and he echoes the Catullan verses to express that
power of imagining.
In the context of memory, exprimere will most obviously suggest the
impressions on a wax tablet, most familiar to us from Plato, Theaetetus
191c6d,130 and it is tempting to see a contrast between the production of
sweet offspring (paradoxically created by Memory) and the reproduction
of previously read poems stamped on the mind. Such a contrast takes us
back to Dionysius distinction between mimesis and zelos. Mimesis involves
making a model or likeness of the original: Dionysius verb, ( %)
is regularly found in the context of making perfect copies, cf. LSJ s.v.
II, Dion. Hal. Dem. 13 (on the opening of Demosthenes 7) , ?$%,
! * A$! (catches the Lysianic character exactly).
This, then, is all that Catullus can offer in his present grief.
128 Cf. thesauros at Cic. De orat. 1.18, Auct. ad Herennium 3.28, Quintilian 11.2.1; a striking passage is
Augustine, Confessions 10.8.
129 Cf. R. Sorabji, Aristotle On Memory (London 1972) 48.
130 Cf. Cic. TD 1.61 an inprimi quasi ceram animum putamus, et esse memoriam signaturum rerum in
mente uestigia?
476 Roman epilogue
6 the limits of transl ation

In Poem 66 Catullus does not seem to have translated the final two verses
of Callimachus poem, although their wretched state of preservation makes
any interpretation hazardous. Only the opening of the last Greek hexam-
eter can be read, and even here there is room for disagreement about the
punctuation:
![5 ]) # %%
Hail, [lady] dear to your children . . .
Almost certainly the lock131 here hails the deified Arsinoe, treated as mother
to Euergetes and Berenice, who were brother and sister according to the
terminology of the court. It is indeed easy enough to see why Catullus might
have chosen to omit this final couplet. Nevertheless, it is to be noted that
Poem 67 begins with an address to a door, which bears a certain similarity
to the farewell to Arsinoe:
o dulci iucunda uiro, iucunda parenti,
salue, teque bona Iuppiter auctet ope,
ianua . . .
O you who bring pleasure to a sweet husband, pleasure to a parent, greetings, and
may Jupiter increase your prosperity, door . . . (Catullus 67.13)
Peter Wiseman long ago noted that these verses pick up 66 because the
address to the door is in terms more appropriate to a bride . . . the joke lies
in the unexpected ianua,132 but the opening of 67 may in fact allude to
or should we say translate the ending of the Greek Coma Berenices, as
one of the many ways in which 66 and 67 are thematically connected, and
as part of Catullus ongoing exploration of the boundaries of cross-cultural
translation.133
131 Koenen (1993) 112 argues that this must be in the voice of the poet, not of the lock, but the
distinction problematic at any time seems here particularly ruinous.
132 Catullan Questions (Leicester 1969) 22.
133 Cf. Hunter (1993c). It is often suggested that Callimachus omitted the final two verses when he
incorporated the Coma Berenices into the Aitia, as Books 3 and 4 were framed by poems in honour
of Berenice, and it would have been strange actually to end with an invocation to the deified Arsinoe;
cf. the survey in Marinone (1997) 389. Nevertheless, if there is anything in the idea that Cat. 67.12
picks up the end of the Greek Coma Berenices, we might at least toy with the possibility that
Catullus knew two Greek versions, one with the verses and one without; he thus marked their
ambiguous status by preserving them, but in another poem. It may also be worth suggesting that
the sequence of Poems 66 and 67 (an abusive satire) imitates Callimachus passing from the Coma
Berenices to the Iambi, as announced in the Epilogue of the Aitia.
5 catullus at t i s
Catullus 63, the narrative of Attis self-castration when possessed by the furor
of Cybele, and his subsequent regret, has links with a number of Hellenistic
narrative forms. The in medias res opening is a familiar device of Hellenistic
narrative,134 and the apopompe with which the poem ends reverses the
conventional piety of the hymnic voice, seen for example in Callimachus
Hymn to Demeter at the conclusion of the narrative of Erysichthon:
( ) 8 #) V & !4)
K ' C
!U !.
Demeter, may the man you hate be no friend of mine, nor share a wall with me:
hateful to me are evil neighbours. (Callimachus, Hymn to Demeter 11617)
The nature of Cybeles cult, however, means that, to an outsider, piety
looks like punishment, and the gods friends like enemies. Theocritus 26
(Bacchae) also offers a particularly close analogy to Catullus 63,135 although
the personal coda is there relatively more prominent (vv. 2738) than in
Catullus; that poem, too, has a certain thematic similarity to the story
of Cybeles powers (cf. below). Suggestive, too, is a comparison with the
narrative of Callimachus Hymn to Athena. The story of Tiresias blinding
begins less abruptly than that of Catullus 63 (cf. Call. Hymn to Athena 57
69),136 but it too recounts a pathos-laden tale of divinely inflicted suffering.
The narrating voice of Callimachus Hymn to Athena is identified by
the opening section as that of one of the women taking part in the ritual
washing of Athenas statue, or perhaps even their leader. Who then speaks
Catullus 63? The analogy of Theocritus 26 might suggest that the myth of
Gallus should be told by a pious worshipper of the god, i.e. a gallus. The
fact that Cybele seems to be depicted in the poem as a cruel tyrant whose
followers are sad and deluded half-men does not disqualify it as a hymn
to the god. Hymns express the nature of a particular divinity or indeed of
divinity itself, and such powers do not always fit easily into the moral matrix
of human beings.137 Despite our possible emotional revulsion, it may be
only the final two verses of the poem which, with a startling suddenness,
suggest that this is not a (conventional) hymn to Cybele.
134 Cf. e.g. Theocr. 13.25, 22.137, 26.1, above p. 192; for the difference between Cat. 63 and 64 in this
matter cf. below, p. 483.
135 Cf. Hutchinson (1988) 311, Perutelli (1996) 2669.
136 The double start to the narrative, first at 57 and then again at 70 (in a pentameter!), is in fact a good
example of Callimachus teasingly digressive narrative style.
137 Cf. Hunter (1996b) 73. The suggestion of Wiseman (1985) 198206 that Catullus 63 is in fact a
hymn for the Roman Megalesia is unconvincing, though he is correct to stress the poems hymnic
elements.
478 Roman epilogue
Relevant to the question of speaker is the galliambic metre. This catalectic
ionic tetrameter138 was presumably a Hellenistic invention; the stichic use
of such an artificial rhythmical length fits a familiar pattern of Hellenistic
metrical experiment.139 In this case, however, there is no divorce of form and
meaning, as ionics had long been associated, inter alia, with ecstatic religion
(cf. Eur. Ba. 64169, 370401), and Hephaistion reports that e Z
used galliambics for hymns to the Great Mother;140 there is in fact no reason
to doubt that, as the very name suggests, this was the context in which the
metre had been first invented. Hephaistion notes that Callimachus wrote
galliambics, and he cites two very famous verses:
n(## , ] #Q% '
' )
P 5 !(#
#
Female gallai, thyrsus-loving runners of the Mountain Mother, whose weapons
and bronze castanets make a clatter (Callimachus fr. 761)
Whether or not Callimachus wrote these verses, and their possible relation
to Catullus 63, have been much discussed;141 the play with the gender of
(##) the Dionysiac elements of the cult (#Q%),142 the emphasis
on running, and the alliterative instruments of the worshippers are strik-
ingly reminiscent of the Latin poem, though such elements were almost
inevitable in any treatment of the theme. The Greek verses are all but
certainly spoken by a gallos, for it is a natural assumption (despite Hephais-
tions generic assertion) that it is the possessed worshipper who uses such
a possessed metre. Thus, in the satire Eumenides of Catullus predecessor,
Varro, galli sing in galliambics (fr. 132 Astbury), and there is no sign that
the metre appeared more extensively in that poem; certainly, what looks
like a model for Catullus apopompe seems to be in iambics, not ionics:
apage in dierectum a domo nostra istam insanitatem
Drive that madness of yours straight from my home
(Varro, Eumenides fr. 133 Astbury)
138 Cf. West (1982) 145, Morisi (1999) 4956.

139 Cf. e.g. Call. frs. 2289, Hunter (1996b) 45; above, pp. 378.
140 The relevant passages are gathered in Pfeiffers note on Call. fr. 761 and Morisi (1999) 4951.
141 The clearest statement of the positivist Callimachean case is Wilamowitz, Die Galliamben des
Kallimachos und Catullus, Hermes 14 (1879) 194201 (= Kleine Schriften II 18), cf. also id. (1924) ii
2935. All subsequent discussions, including the present chapter, are much indebted to Wilamowitz.
For the sceptical case cf. D. Mulroy, Hephaestion and Catullus 63 Phoenix 30 (1976) 6172, E.
Courtney, BICS 32 (1985) 91.
142 The association of the two gods is attested in literature as early as Pindar, Dithyramb 2 (= fr. 70b
Maehler). For Greek worship of the Great Mother in general cf. W. Burkert, Greek Religion (Oxford
1985) 1779.
There is, then, an initial presumption in favour of the narrative voice of
Catullus 63 being that of a gallos. Against this, it may be objected that, with
very few exceptions, elite poems are not metrically or rhythmically mixed,143
and so Catullus would be following Hellenistic sensitivity in extending the
galliambics from Attis speeches to that of the whole poem. Nevertheless,
an apopompe of Cybele in galliambics, following a poem in which Attis has
expressed, also in galliambics, his regret at becoming a worshipper of the
god, is at least paradoxical: is it in fact already too late for the speaker?
However we imagine the Attis of this poem, his story is paradigmatic:
all worshippers experience moments of lucid regret, during which, like
Attis (vv. 5073), they compose poems expressing that regret.144 If, like
Callimachus fifth and sixth hymns or Bions Epitaphios Adonidos, Poem 63
would most naturally be understood as performed by a worshipper of the
god, that worshipper may himself be a gallus.
Attis story is a kind of reversal of Euripides Bacchae, in which the close
association of Dionysus and Cybele, both gods of L% (Ba. 32, 119)
and furor, is already plain.145 Many detailed parallels may be assembled,146
but the matter requires no lengthy illustration. If the ionic parodos of the
Bacchae offers a makarismos of those who know Dionysus blessings on the
mountains, that play, no less than Catullus 63, places those blessings in an
ambiguous light. Agaue, no less than Attis, comes to regret a possession
which has led to bloody violence. Whereas the chorus of Euripides play
bring their god from the mountains of Phrygia to the broad streets of
Greece, full of dancing (Ba. 867), the movement in Catullus 63 is in the
opposite direction, from the bright streets and seas of Hellenic enlighten-
ment to the dark woods and mountains of irrational Asiatic cult.147 Attis
bears the name of the mythic consort and/or servant of the Great Mother
and founder of her cult, whose story seems to have been told in elegiacs by
Hermesianax,148 and who in some versions was punished with castration
143 Thus, for example, the frame of Theocritus 11 cannot really be distinguished from the song of the
Cyclops; the elegiacs of Theocr. 8 form one of the rare exceptions to this principle. Metrical mixing
is likely to have been commoner in drama (cf. the fragment of ecstatic lyric dactyls in honour of the
Great Mother, interspersed with spoken trimeters, often assigned to Menanders Theophoroumene,
p. 146 Sandbach) and less formal poetic modes, and there does in fact survive a fragment of a
metrically mixed hymn in honour of the Great Mother, which may be roughly contemporary with
Catullus, cf. Dai Papiri della Societa Italiana. Omaggio allXI Congresso Internazionale di Papirologia
(Florence 1965) 915; it seems that the chorus leader gives instructions in iambics, and the hymn
itself is sung in dactylic hexameters.
144 The possibility of ascribing 913 to the poet and the rest of the poem to a gallus may be considered,
but this would merely sidestep, not resolve, the issue of poetic voice.
145 Cf. Ba. 789 with Dodds note. 146 Cf. e.g. Ba. 1656 (the foal simile) Cat. 63.33.
147 Cf. Syndikus (1990) 823. 148 Cf. Pausanias 7.17.5 = Hermesianax fr. 8 Powell.
480 Roman epilogue
for his infidelity.149 Catullus character seems, however, very Greek (cf. esp.
5867), and the name evokes Attic, C;) with the feminine gender of the
Greek word perfectly suited to this notha mulier.150 The movement away
from Greece is a movement away from high Attic culture, or rather the
movement of Attic culture towards an engagement with quite other prac-
tices and poetics. The Athenian harbour of the Peiraeus (where Catullus
Attis, like Theseus in Poem 64, boarded his ship?) was the site of a promi-
nent and long-established cult of the Great Mother and Attis.151 That the
movement of the narrative has an element of the tragic, with Attis waking
in the light figured as an awakening into the light of understanding being
perhaps the most obvious tragic motif (cf. Eur. HF 1089ff., Orestes 211ff.,
presumably Agaues recovery of her senses in Bacchae), is of a piece with this
concern with the literary history of Athens. Such a historical sense is very
familiar in third-century literature and will be seen to be very important to
Catullus also (cf. below).
A comparison between Attis and Hylas, another beautiful Greek youth
and eromenos destined never to return home but to become the object of
Asian cult, may also be productive. Both are stories of stunted develop-
ment, of young men caught forever on the edge of manhood.152 Catul-
lus may indeed echo Theocritus version of the Hylas poem in vv. 856,
where the goddess lion behaves like the human lion, Heracles, after hear-
ing Hylas despairing cry (Theocr. 13.645). One further motif apparently
shared by Catullus 63 with the Hylas narratives of Theocritus and Apollo-
nius is of some interest. The disappearance of Attis companions from the
poem after v. 39 has long been thought problematic, and various explana-
tions have been proposed. The Hylas analogy, however, to say nothing of
149 Ovids Attis, Fasti 4.22346, is a temple servant who breaks an oath of chastity to the god (cf.
Daphnis), and is punished with madness and castration. For the myths of Attis cf. H. Hepding,
Attis, seine Mythen und sein Kult (Giessen 1903), M. J. Vermaseren, Cybele and Attis: the Myth and the
Cult (London 1977), id. LIMC s.v. Attis, G. Thomas, Magna Mater and Attis ANRW ii.17.3 (1984)
150035, P. Borgeaud, Lecriture dAttis: le recit dans lhistoire in C. Calame (ed.), Metamorphoses
du mythe en Grece antique (Geneva 1988) 87103, B.-M. Nasstrom, The Abhorrence of Love. Studies
in Rituals and Mystic Aspects in Catullus Poem of Attis (Uppsala 1989), L. E. Roller, Attis on Greek
Votive Monuments. Greek God or Phrygian? Hesperia 63 (1994) 24562.
150 Cf. Perutelli (1996) 255. For Catullus interest in playing with Greek -t- and -th- cf. 64.289, Thetis . . .
Tethys. W. S. Allen, Vox Graeca, (3rd ed., Cambridge 1987) 234 finds no clear evidence for the
fricative pronunciation of before first-century ad Pompeii. It could, of course, be argued that
Attis was a name adopted only after the castration, so that when he boarded the ship, he was
actually called something else.
151 Cf. e.g. R. Parker, Athenian Religion (Oxford 1996) 18893, J. D. Mikalson, Religion in Hellenistic
Athens (Berkeley 1998) 1423, 2034.
152 Approaching the subject from a completely different direction, Marilyn Skinner notes that Poem 63
is preoccupied with the personal and social consequences of an aborted ephebic transition (Helios
20 (1993) 113).
Ariadne,153 suggests that they have sailed away without Attis; he has been
abandoned to live out his life as the famula of the god.154
Hylas was, of course, one of the Argonauts who founded rites in honour
of the Great Mother on Mt Dindymon near Kyzikos;155 the setting of Catul-
lus 63 insofar as it can be determined is far closer to that Mt Dindymon
than to the like-named mountain near Pessinos in eastern Phrygia with
which the Attis is usually associated, and from where the cult of the Magna
Mater was, at least according to Livy (29.11.7), introduced to Rome.156 The
story of the Argonauts and the Great Mother is older than Apollonius,157
but it is told at length in the first book of the Argonautica, immediately
before the Hylas episode (1.10781152, marked off as an episode by ring
composition); Apollonius telling, like Catullus Attis narrative, makes clear
the links between the Dindymene Mother and Mt Ida in the Troad.158 The
Apollonian narrative is in part an aetiology for the tambourines and other
musical instruments associated with the worship of the Great Mother (Arg.
1.11349). Has Catullus then taken the Apollonian episode one step fur-
ther by rescripting this worship of the Great Mother in rather harsher and
modern terms? The Argonauts, or at least one of their number, become
the original galli, calling upon the Mother of Dindymon, mistress of all,
the dweller in Phrygia (Arg. 1.11256), and a tale of piety rewarded by the
gracious divinity with favourable signs, such as the wild animals (lions?)
which fawn on the Argonauts like dogs and the winds which allow them
to sail away (Arg. 1.114052), becomes a terrifying story of the cruelty of
the god who sends a lion to attack Attis and keeps him on that foreign
shore for the rest of his life. Parody does not seem the right word for the
relation between Catullus and Apollonius, but there should be little doubt
that the Catullan narrative depends upon its sense of difference from a clas-
sic, authorising version. The dislocations of the poem, about which critics
complain, are central to its meaning.
153 Cf. below, pp. 4823.

154 Wiseman (1985) 200 associates the disappearance of the others with the theatrical nature of the
performance: it would be clear to an audience that they had left the stage to the principal character.
155 Cf. Hdt. 4.76, Strabo 12.8.11, F. W. Hasluck, Cyzicus (Cambridge 1910) 21422.
156 For the variant versions and modern discussions cf. E. Gruen, Studies in Greek Culture and Roman
Policy (Leiden 1990) 533.
157 Cf. Neanthes of Cyzicus, FGrHist 84 F39, if that fragment is rightly given to the older Neanthes
(cf. FGrHist Iic, p. 144); it is worth noting that Neanthes also discussed the mystic story of Attis.
158 Some elements of the narrative seem to have appeared also in Euphorion (cf. fr. 145 Powell), whose
interest in Argonautic stories of the Propontis is well attested (cf. frs. 7, 7984 Powell); it is a great
pity not to know more. On the episode in Apollonius cf. Vian I 356, M. Williams, The Cyzicus
episode . . . in C. Deroux (ed.), Studies in Latin Literature and Roman History (Brussels 1997) viii
528.
482 Roman epilogue
Scholars have found various Apollonian reworkings in Poem 63, some
more convincing than others.159 There may be something to be said for link-
ing vv. 3940 with Arg. 1.51920,160 for the beginning of the expedition
would then be evoked and reversed as the beginning of Attis horrible awak-
ening. Suggestive also is the similarity between v. 59 and Medeas bitter
words at Arg. 4.3613,161 for Attis and Medea share more than just paral-
lel (though opposite) journeys; both abandon their homes like runaway
slaves (vv. 512, Arg. 4.3540). The significance of each of these similarities
and their cumulative weight may be debated. One detail, however, may
be particularly important. Attis travels celeri rate (v. 1);
is of course
the standard epithet for a ship,162 but the Argo was etymologised as, inter
alia, the swift (&
) ship, and Catullus himself plainly plays with this
etymology in the opening verses of Poem 64.163 In his excellent study of
the opening of 64, Richard Thomas suggests that this etymology, which is
first attested in Diodorus Siculus 4.41.3, goes back to Callimachus Argo-
nautic episode in the Aitia, but he concludes that for Apollonius the
derivation of the name is quite clear; it is naturally taken from the ships
builder [Argos].164 Apollonius calls attention often enough, however, to
the Argos swiftness to suggest that he too is conscious of this association,
but like so many features of Poem 63, this one directs our attention to
Poem 64.
The similarities between the abandonment of Ariadne and the plight of
Attis have long attracted notice, and there have been many helpful readings
which have sought to integrate both of these poems within the recurrent
concerns of all the longer poems.165 Verbal similarities in describing sea-
travel,166 and the similar emotional turmoil of both characters as they gaze
out over the sea (note esp. 63.47 64.97, the emotional waves on which
both are tossed) are perhaps less important than the strategy which informs
the rhetoric of both characters, behind whom stands the Medea of the
159 That v. 36 reworks Arg. 3.616 (so, e.g. P. Fedeli, GIF 29 (1977) 44) seems to me very uncertain.
160 Cf. e.g. Fedeli (previous note) 45. 161 Cf. e.g. P. Fedeli, RFIC 106 (1978) 49.
162 Cf. Kroll ad loc. That literary heritage is crucial to its use at Call. Epigr. 17.1, where it is combined
with an allusion to the opening of Euripides Medea to contrast a distant heroic age . . . with the
sad present (Hunter (1992a) 120).
163 Cf. R. Thomas, Catullus and the polemics of poetic reference (Poem 64.118) AJP 103 (1982) 144
64, pp. 1504. For this etymology cf. Diod. Sic. 4.41.3, R. Maltby, A Lexicon of Latin Etymologies
(Leeds 1991) s.v. Argo, P. Drager, Argo Pasimelovsa (Stuttgart 1993) 21. Perutelli (1996) 255 draws the
comparison between Attis and the Argonauts, but does not suggest etymological allusion.
164 This etymology is attested as early as Pherecydes, FGrHist 3 F106; cf. Vian, Note complementaire to
1.112.
165 Cf. e.g. G. N. Sandy, Catullus 63 and the theme of marriage AJP 92 (1971) 18595.
166 Cf. 63.1 64.121, 63.40ff. 64.52ff.
fourth book of Apollonius Argonautica; so, too, Bacchus retinue at 64.251
64 also looks very like the troop of galli in Poem 63.167 Ariadnes furor is
the furor of love (64.54, 94),168 but as she rages inops, ardens, amenti caeca
furore (64.197), it is hard not to recall Attis, whose furor has put an end
to all love. Even her offer to serve as Theseus famula (64.15863) seems to
find its echo in the (?) semi-technical language of the Cybele cult (63.68,
90). Are there larger patterns lying behind these similarities? Apollonius
Argonautica is a crucial model text for both the framing narrative (Peleus
and Thetis) and the ekphrasis (Ariadne) of Catullus 64,169 though Catullus
notoriously offers a different mythological chronology than does the Greek
poet (cf. 64.1921). The proem to Catullus poem closes with an elaborate
rewriting of the hymnic close of the Argonautica (Arg. 4.17736 Cat.
64.2224) to mark the authorising text from which the Latin poem takes its
point of departure; for the close of his poem, Catullus preferred the rather
darker tones of Aratus tale of the departure of Dike from the earth.170
The Latin epyllion indeed presents itself in many ways as a recreation
of the high Greek poetry of the third century. The carefully mapped and
interlocking structures and the repeated dicuntur (2), perhibent olim (76),
perhibent (124), ferunt olim (212) are markers of poetic ancestry which confer
a classicising authority upon Catullus poem, at the same time as they mark
it as secondary. The opening dicuntur in fact picks up a technique from the
proem of the Argonautica itself (1.227, cf. 123, 154, 172, 217 etc.).
Poem 63 lacks any such markers, and its narrative seems to float free of
any locking in time. Although the in medias res opening without any once
upon a time, the story is that . . . has good Hellenistic parallels, the contrast
with Poem 64 is very sharp here. We might, loosely, say that Poem 63 lacks
the formal markers of literary heritage in which 64 abounds; the same is
very obviously true of Poem 63s galliambics in contrast to the hexameters
of Poem 64. Galliambi are catalectic Ionic tetrameters and therefore very
open to dactylic words and patterns which might otherwise find their way
into hexameters; could they in fact be constructed as hexameters gone
wrong, particularly when they are used for a short narrative (Catullus 63)
167 The alliteration of 64.2612 seems an almost inevitable part of such descriptions, cf. 63.911, Lucr.
2.618, Varro, Eumenides fr. 132 Astbury.
168 The latter instance is perhaps suggested by . in the model passage at Arg. 4.449.
169 Cf. e.g. R. Avallone, Catullo e Apollonio Rodio Antiquitas 8.3/4 (1953) 879, R. J. Clare, Catullus
64 and the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius: allusion and exemplarity PCPS 42 (1996) 6088.
The idea that Poem 64 is, in essence, a translation from the Greek was largely laid to rest by G.
Perrotta, Il carme 64 di Catullo e i suol pretesi originali ellenistic Athenaeum 9 (1931) 177222,
371409; further bibliography in E. Lefevre, Alexandrinisches und Catullisches im Peleus-Epos
(64) Hermes 128 (2000) 181201.
170 Cf. above, pp. 23941.
484 Roman epilogue
which would otherwise, in both Greek and Roman traditions, find its most
natural expression in hexameters? There is, it must be admitted, no ancient
support for such a suggestion. The most obvious example of the hexameter
gone wrong is in fact the Sotadean, another stichic ionic verse, which is
used by a gallos in a fragment of a novel, and into which Sotades translated
the Iliad;171 the translation of hexameters into Sotadeans seems indeed to
have been something of a regular exercise.172 In quoting an example of such
a transposition, Demetrius (On Style 189) notes that the verse seems to
have metamorphosed, like the stories about men changing into women, or
into galli, we might add. Quintilian (9.4.6), however, links Sotadeans and
galliambics as both verses characterised by short syllables and a lack of uis, for
which lasciuia has been substituted; such metres are fragosa atque interrupta,
or, as Demetrius puts it, #% .% (On Style 189). It is true
that galliambics seem to us more predictable than the protean Sotadean,173
but in their soft female rapidity and collocation of short syllables, both
metres offer a provoking challenge to the stately and manly gait of the
hexameter (note esp. citato . . . pede, 63.2); the long compounds of Poem
63 would certainly have been felt by the critics as praemolle (cf. Quintilian
9.4.65). In both metre and subject, then, the relationship between Poems 63
and 64 seems not unlike that between 63 and the Argonautica of Apollonius:
to rephrase what was recently asserted: Parody does not seem the right
word for the relation between Catullus 63 and Catullus 64, but there should
be little doubt that Catullus 63 depends upon its sense of difference from a
classic, authorising version [i.e. Catullus 64]. The dislocations of Catullus
63, about which critics complain, are central to its meaning. Put another
way, the galliambic lamentations of the notha mulier are to be interpreted
as a secondary diversion (intended to be understood as such) from the
authorising pattern of hexameter female complaint. Whereas the ekphrastic
narrative of Catullus 64 swirls around an act of forgetting, Attis tragedy
lies in his all too sharp memory.174
In his important discussion of Catullus 63, Otto Weinreich175 noted
that an alternative to Wilamowitzs assertion of a Callimachean model for
171 Cf. S. A. Stephens and J. J. Winkler, Ancient Greek Novels, The Fragments (Princeton 1995) 36871.
For a collection of the evidence for Sotadeans cf. I. H. M. Hendriks, P. J. Parsons, and K. A. Worp,
ZPE 41 (1981) 767, M. Bettini, A proposito dei versi sotadei, greci e romani MD 9 (1982) 59105.
172 Cf. Quintilian 9.4.90.
173 The adjective comes from West (1982) 145.
174 A variation of this view would be to see Poem 63 as a revision, not of Poem 64, but of Caecilius
Magna Mater (cf. Cat. 35), which was, very likely, a hexameter epyllion; we know, however, nothing
of this poet or his poem (if indeed it was his, cf. G. G. Biondi, Il carme 35 di Catullo MD 41 (1998)
3569).
175 Catulls Attisgedicht, most conveniently available in R. Heinze (ed.), Catull (Darmstadt 1975)
32559. The relevant pages are 3325.
Catullus 63 would be a model in later Alexandrian lyric, i.e. in post-
Callimachean poetry. He rightly noted that Poem 63 has very little in
the way of aetiology, doctrina, myth etc. that is, very little of what
are usually considered the hallmarks of Callimachean poetry. A glance at,
say, Callimachus frs. 2289 (the stichic lyrics), to say nothing of Catul-
lus 66, will, I think, confirm Weinreichs observation.176 More than one
explanation for this fact, if fact it is, may be entertained, but Weinreichs
move towards the Greek poetry of, say, the second century bc is sugges-
tive. Kroll associated Catullus 63 with the pantomime (using the term very
loosely), and more recently J. K. Newman has seen Catullus 63 as a quasi-
script for . . . a virtuoso;177 Newman seems certainly correct in noting
that the poem derives its power from its urge towards the theatrical, the
histrionic, even the hysterical.178 Such an urge, particularly combined with
a relatively simple thematic style, does indeed recall what little we know of
some Greek poetry of the second, rather than the third, century, whether
that be the lyrics of the Fragmentum Grenfellianum or the hexameters of
Bions Epitaphios Adonidos.179 Here, too, it is dramatised pathos, a spiccata
mimicita,180 which is at the centre of poetic interest, as though a point
which has often been made the melodramatic element in late Euripides
had finally gained the upper hand. Though our knowledge of the perfor-
mance culture in the Greek world of the second and first centuries bc is
woefully inadequate, we can just about glimpse how this poetry decon-
structs and simplifies the formal structures and genres of what has come to
be viewed as a classicising Hellenistic poetry.
Whatever Greek poetry lies behind the Attis poem, Catullus reconstructs
a movement within Greek literary history, from the now classical poetry
of third-century Alexandria to the freer, and more popular, forms which
followed and were parasitic upon the high poetry of the Alexandrian elite.
Such an exercise in historical reconstruction would indeed have been at
home in Alexandria itself, and must be seen as part of Catullus imaginative
engagement with, and mimesis of, Greek literary history and the Hellenistic
aesthetic.
176 There is, of course, much that could be said about the relation between Poems 63 and 66 within
the Catullan corpus, cf. e.g. G. W. Most, Philologus 125 (1981) 119.
177 Newman (1990) 346.
178 ibid. 366; cf. also Morisi (1999) 304.
179 Bions date is, of course, uncertain (sometime between the mid-second and mid-first century bc,
probably in the earlier part of this period, Reed (1997) 23), but the point is unaffected.
180 Fantuzzi (1985) 155.
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Index of passages discussed
(Note: See also under names of authors in the General Index)
Adespota 1.2347 102

TrGF 649 433 1.26877 1034
TrGF 664 434 1.269 254
AP 6.269 = FGE 572ff. 309 1.31516 101
AP 7.313 3036 1.33640 128
FGE 5645 325 1.45095 11214
PMG 939 384 1.4579 102
SH 946 248 1.496511 978, 100
SH 964.1112 259 1.497511 92
Alcaeus 1.72167 116
fr. 333 V. 340 1.9023 111
fr. 336 V. 340 1.9361075 1923
Alcaeus, AP 7.429 = HE 96ff. 1.1078152 481
3312 1.128695 11416
Anacreon, PMG 445 159 2.317407 124
Anacreontea 2.46889 118
11 159 2.5418 1012
19 183 2.762810 11920
23 183 2.81556 123
Antipater of Sidon 2.10269 127
AP 7.161 = HE 296ff. 335 2.10971121 1001
AP 7.423 = HE 362ff. 333 2.1111 100
AP 7.424 = HE 370ff. 335 2.112333 120
AP 7.425 = HE 380ff. 3323 2.114156 1201
AP 7.426 = HE 390ff. 3334 2.11656 121
AP 7.427 = HE 396ff. 3345 3.1715 130
Antipater of Thessalonica 3.3334 111
AP 9.305 = GPh 267ff. 345 3.3825 116
AP 11.20 = GPh 185ff. 4478 3.51120 110
Antiphanes PCG 232 341 3.5689 131
Anyte 3.9481162 104
AP 6.123 = HE 664ff. 31213 3.11326 221
AP 7.492 = HE 752ff. 357 3.127887 2713
Apollonius of Rhodes 3.12781407 27082
Argonautica 1.1 902 3.1292 273
1.1314 118 3.1293 273
1.202 26970 3.12935 274, 275
1.80 270 3.1294 273
1.122 270 3.1296 274
500
3.12991303 2778 Callimachus
3.1304 274 AP 6.147 = HE 1157ff. 316
3.1306 2745 AP 6.149 = HE 1161ff. 31617
3.1311 274 AP 6.301 = HE 1175ff. 305
3.1312 274 AP 6.351 = HE 11512 317
3.1314 274 AP 7.158 = HE 1211ff. 3478, 349
3.1315 274 AP 7.277 = HE 1265ff. 317
3.13269 2789 AP 7.317 = HE 126970 327
3.1327 273 AP 7.318 = HE 12712 3036
3.134853 10910 AP 7.415 = HE 11856 2979
3.13503 2756 AP 7.447 = HE 120910 320
3.135463 27981 AP 7.520 = HE 1199ff. 3237
3.13667 277 AP 7.522 = HE 1227ff. 318
3.137780 2767 AP 7.524 = HE 1187ff. 3223
3.138691 281 AP 7.525 = HE 1179ff. 297302
3.13991404 2812 AP 7.725 = HE 1233ff. 3201
4.25693 129 AP 12.43 = HE 1041ff. 97
4.25793 124 AP 12.51 = HE 1063ff. 3467
4.10981120 127 AP 12.71 = HE 1097ff. 338
4.130521 94 AP 12.118 = HE 1075ff. 345
4.14851536 123 AP 12.134 = HE 1103ff. 3389
4.16941718 1056 AP 12.150 = HE 1047ff. 165, 1802,
4.17745 126 3423
Aratus Hymn to Zeus 11 366
Phainomena 1013 230 7990 353
96136 23942 Hymn to Apollo 104 366
1525 233 Hymn to Artemis 12135 3535
17996 2445 Hymn to Delos 45 371
21424 245 514 368
25563 2434 16576 3559
37382 2289 200 369
41830 2378 24958 3678
678 243 2603 364
733 243 275 366
75877 225 27895 36970
76877 22930 2802 35960
7712 2301 Hymn on the Bath of Pallas 57 192
10367 2345 Hymn to Demeter 11617 477
10941103 2356 134 363
11534 225 Hecale
Aristophanes fr. 1 H 1989
Clouds 135371 26 fr. 48 H 199
Lysistrata 80615 305 fr. 49 H 199
Aristotle, Rhetoric 3.1418b2833 910 fr. 69 H 1978, 24952
Asclepiades of Samos fr. 704 H 2525
AP 12.135 = HE 894ff. 33840 fr. 74 H 199200
AP 13.23 = HE 962ff. 2935, 3012 Iambi
1 811
Bion of Smyrna 2 1112
fr. 3 1845 3 1213
fr. 9 180, 1813, 342 4 1314
fr. 10 1746 5 11, 14
fr. 12 1723 13 1517, 4469, 45960
fr. 13 174 fr. 1 M. 67, 6676, 4489
fr. 16 184 fr. 1.378 M. 73
502 Index of passages discussed
Callimachus (cont.) Dionysius of Halicarnassus, De imitatione fr. 3
fr. 24 M. 734 U-R 472, 475
fr. 4 M. 53 Dioscorides AP 7.430 = HE 1657ff. 314
schol. fr. 59 M 557
fr. 9 M. 45 Euripides, Her. 637700 73
fr. 9.1314 M. 523
fr. 9.15 M. 53 Hegesippus, AP 7.320 = HE 1931ff. 3036
fr. 50 M. 5860 Hermesianax fr. 7 444
fr. 50.1217 M. 802, 448 Herondas
fr. 60 M. 80 8 45
fr. 63.912 48 8.712 446
fr. 64 M. 48 Hesiod
fr. 67.12 48 Theogony 26 144
fr. 67.710 48 8093 351
fr. 6775 478, 606, 179, 192 8193 241
fr. 75 58 41152 355
fr. 75.1214 623 535616 54
fr. 75.19 612 Works and Days 22537 3512
fr. 75.4 192 24862 23842
fr. 75.2237 63 2525 2412
fr. 75.508 645 64682 2312
fr. 75.747 656 6826 233
Dieg. fr. 79 578 Homer
fr. 89 M. 7683, 448 Iliad 6.145210 1201
fr. 110 46, 858 9.5247 91
fr. 110.178 87 schol. 14.34251 13940
fr. 110.91 47 17.64550 1056
fr. 110.94 476 18.10713 107
fr. 11051 878 18.4878 2623
fr. 112 7 18.5256 144
fr. 112.9 33 22.1268 104
fr. 379 357 Odyssey 1.3267 91
fr. 384 4012 8.7582 114
fr. 761 478 8.48791 93
SH 254.12 47 8.499520 1934
SH 25469 444 12.6972 90
SH 25469 835, 1967 17.14 1017
SH 257.8 259 23.31041 122
Carphyllides AP 7.260 = HE 1349ff. Homeric Hymn to Apollo 1179 367
3002 14478 301, 365
Catullus 1.910 464 518 365
63.1 482, 483 Horace
63.3940 482 Ars Poetica 73 91
63.59 482 934 109
63.856 480 12839 4712
64.224 483 1312 451
64.289 480 18590 435
64.96 465 Epistles 1.14.69 475
66.7988 86 Odes 3.30 453
67.1 476 4.2 99
Cicero, De optimo genere oratoris 14
468 Inscriptions
Cinna fr. 14 C. 464 CEG 4 297
Cratinus, PCG 355 247 77 295
Critias fr. 2 Gent.-Prato 2956 89 295
120 308 8925 417
286 308 9015 41617
304 2878 Georgos 7682 S. 41314
429 308 Misoumenos 3615 S. 341
430 295 Perikeiromene 3757 S. 411
432 2856 486510 S. 41012
454 2867 506 S. 411
512 299 779827 S. 428
530 30910 Samia 1318 414
532 2967 326 S. 429
545 309, 323 589615 S. 430
596 309, 328 7048 S. 431
819 28991 Sikyonioi 169271 4289
820 395, 396 Moschion, TrGF I 97F6 435
GVI 350 3256 Moschus
SEG I.4345 3801 Europa 1314 217
SEG XVII.817 3912 246 21718
SGO 04/02/11 3368 57 216
Isidorus 726 2201
1.1424 359 11530 223
1.25 350 fr. 1 1734
2.218 3623 Myrinus, AP 7.703 = GPh 2574ff. 155
3.118 3503
3.2836 361 Nicias, AP 6.122 = HE 2755ff. 31113
4.110 3601 Nossis, AP 7.718 = HE 2831ff. 16
4.3740 360
Ovid
Leonidas (or Theocritus) AP 7.662 = HE 3410ff. Amores 1.15.1320 449
3001 Heroides 5 179
Leonidas of Tarentum Met. 10.53352 1889
AP 7.316 = HE 2569ff. 3026
AP 7.422 = HE 2092ff. 330 Paulus Silentiarius, AP 7.307 310
[Longinus] Philip of Thessalonica, AP 11.321 = GPh 3033ff.
De sublimitate 10.6 446, 447 446, 447
14.1 472 Philodemus, On Poems 1 col. 159 J. 452
33.45 99, 446 Tract.tert. col. XVI.323 S. 4534
Lycophron Pindar
Alexandra Paeans 7b.1112 701
13 439, 441 Pythian 10.15 398
89 441 Plato
764 441 Ion 534b-c 12, 17
122631 4379 Laws 3.700a-e 1819
12812 438 4.719c 2
Phaedrus 230b-c 146
Meleager of Gadara 230c-d 148
AP 12.117 = HE 4092ff. 3456 245e 2
AP 12.119 = HE 4098ff. 346 275d 322
AP 7.195 = HE 4058ff. 1778 Plautus
AP 7.196 = HE 4066ff. 1778 Amphitruo 218 260
Menander 252 260
Aspis 2482 427 Pollianus, AP 11.130 248
31011 417 Posidippus of Pella 20 (Austin-Bastianini) 359
Dyskolos 7249 414 27 3845
797812 414 30 381
86773 416 36 37983
504 Index of passages discussed
Posidippus of Pella (cont.) 5.74 157
38 383 6.323 150
39 3867 6.445 1689
56 299302 7.47 147
74 3913 7.245 153
78 4001 7.5274 1357
82 3901 7.913 154
86 3959 7.96127 137
88 3757 7.10311 15860
102 349 7.11719 159
115 3878 7.13546 1467, 163
116 3856 7.14755 1634
118 745, 389, 403 7.148 154
119 3867 8.3352 16770
123 344 11.1 165
137 3423 11.29 157
138 344 11.602 1656
Propertius 2.1.78 186 15.8095 3716
2.13.518 1878 15.1068 398
2.19.214 1889 16.14 1401
Ptolemy AP 7.314 = FGE 4701 3046 17.14 152
17.1516 152
Quintus of Smyrna 12.30810 73 17.567 4001
17.6670 375
Rhianus (or Zenodotus) AP 7.315 = HE 3640ff. 17.77120 3523
3046 22.27134 191
23.478 1856
Sappho fr. 1 156 24.12 260
Seneca, De ira 1.1.57 111 24.45 25760
Simonides APlan. 23 = FGE 8089 3067 24.69 202
AP 7.511 = FGE 10067 294 24.79 2602
AP 7.677 = FGE 702ff. 289 24.10 2067
Sophocles, Philoctetes 2123 142 24.1116 2624
Straton, PCG 1 2467 24.15 264
24.1819 264
Terence 24.212 266
Adelphoe 2681 41921 24.234 265
41319 4223 24.256 205
82130 4212 24.2633 210
8634 423 24.289 257
9878 4234 24.345 208
Andria 628 424 24.35 265
Theocritus (or Leonidas) AP 7.662 = HE 3410ff. 24.356 2023
3001 24.357 265
Theocritus 24.37 265
1.13 145 24.3840 266
1.4554 1425 24.425 2034
1.778 156 24.434 265
1.828 150 24.4751 209
1.956 156 24.501 2067, 266
1.141 155 24.51 208
3.4051 1613 24.669 2089
4.11 16970 24.73100 207
4.50 157 24.100 201
5.314 1456 24.1023 2045
5.459 1456 24.10333 202
24.104 207 Eclogues 1.15 178
25.1 211 7.4 178
26.258 192
Syrinx 401 Xenophon
Thucydides 5.26.1 234 Anabasis 3.1.25 130
3.1.2730 131
Virgil 3.2.32 130
Aeneid 1.238 122 5.67 129
1.45393 934
3.588691 470 Zenodotus (or Rhianus) AP 7.315 = HE 3640ff.
3.5967 121 3046
General index
(Note: there is no general entry for Homer )
Achilles 10617 and Callimachus 63

acrostics 22930 and Homer 90132
Adonis 157 reception at Rome 465
Aeschylus 70, 73 echoed by Catullus 4813
Aesop 11 Aratus, Phainomena 22445
Aethiopis, Cyclic poem 96 reception at Rome 465
aetiology 22, 4951, 634, 92, 98, 119, 215, 365, Archestratus 225
36670, 481 Archilochus 4, 8, 9, 10, 14, 73, 447
Agesilaos 396 Argo 102
Alcaeus 25 Argonauts 55
Alexander Aetolus 160, 434 Ariadne 4823
Alexander I Philhellene 394 Arion 3845
Alexander the Great 117, 129, 377, 379, 393, 398, Aristaenetus 47
436, 438, 445, 446 Aristaios 65
Anacreon 173, 344 Aristarchus 126, 444, 445
epigrams ascribed to 289 Aristocles, Hymn to Demeter 32
Anacreontea 173, 180, 183, 186, 345 Aristophanes 8, 9, 20, 68
Andromenides, critic 4512, 456 Clouds 72
anger 129 Frogs 70, 1089, 432, 448
in Aristotle 11112 Aristophanes of Byzantium 126, 247, 430, 445
in epic 10417 Aristotle 3, 34, 5960, 197, 342, 418, 41921, 422,
anthologising 196, 215, 436, 439 450
Antigonos Gonatas 224, 226, 227, 380, 394 On Poets 71
Antimachus 22, 34, 69, 160, 247 Poetics 1389, 214, 2467, 4423
Antipater of Sidon 247, 329, 3328 Aristoxenus 21
Antiphilus, epigrammatist 293 Arrian, Anabasis of Alexander 129
Antisthenes 342 Cynegeticus 151
Antony, Mark 303 Arsinoe 42, 52, 88, 371, 37889
Anyte of Tegea 134, 151, 298 Arsinoe/Aphrodite 85, 381, 3823, 3846
Aphrodite 156 Artemis 47, 57
Apollo 1, 6, 63, 70, 155, 156 Asclepiades of Samos 69, 135, 389
Apollodorus 450 askoliasmos 4
Apollodorus of Athens 445 Athena Poliouchos 382, 383
Apollonius of Rhodes 3, 446 Athens 83
life 89 Attis 47783
Ktiseis 8990 autobiography 231
Argonautica 89132, 192, 204, 217, 26682
political structures in the Argonautica 1278 Bacchylides 194, 446
cosmology in the Argonautica 100 epigrams ascribed to 289
506
General index 507
Berenice I 88, 395, 3989 Cicero 464, 468
Berenice II 42, 45, 838, 3789, 381, 399 Aratea 224
Besantinos 40 Cinna, C. Helvius 466
Bilistiche 4023 Circe 82
Bion 17090, 463 classicism 450
Epitaph for Adonis 18790, 210, 479, 485 Cleanthes 2367, 370
[Epithalamion of Achilles and Deidameia] 176 Cleophon, tragedian 139
Boeotia, relations with Alexandria 52 Comatas, legendary goatherd 1367, 149,
Boiskos of Cyzicus 38 1545
book reception 23 Comedy, Athenian 20, 83
boukolikon, boukoliazesthai 1412 Comedy
bucolic poetry 13390 audience for 413
ancient scholarship on 138 chorus in 407
post-Theocritean 16790 costume in 408
metres of 4078
Callicrates of Samos, admiral 382, 389, 3913, 402 mythological 426
Callimachus 3, 2932, 180, 390, 434 stage buildings of 408
life of 42 New 140, 40432
epic style of 24955 Roman 4056
and Homer 71, 778, 813 Conon, astronomer 85
collection of epigrams of 289 Cornificius, Q. 464
lyric poems of 3940 Cos 135, 3567, 375
prose works of 90 Crates of Mallos 247, 451
scholarship of 434 Crates of Thebes 32
style of 434 Cratinus 449
epigrams against 4469 Cheirones 9
reception at Rome of 464 Cremonidean War 3801, 389
Aitia 4288, 228, 462 Critias 2956
Aitia, structure of 449, 801, 86 curse poetry 160
Hecale 85, 191, 196200, 24955 Cycle, epic 957
Hymns 302, 35071 Cyclops, the 80, 82, 1501, 1647, 184, 186
Hymn to Artemis 364 Cypria, Cyclic poem 96, 97
Hymn to Delos 3559, 364, 36670, 371 Cyrene 42, 373, 398
Hymn on the Bath of Pallas 302, 192, 193, 477
Hymn to Demeter 302, 193 Daphnis 136, 14951, 1545, 156
Iambi 817, 25, 29 deixis, hymnic 312, 364
Ibis 160 Demeter 62, 157
Lyric Poems 29, 40 Demetrius, On Style 461
Pinakes 43 Democritus 13
Calvus, Licinius 466 Demodocus 93
Castorion of Soloi 38 dialects, poetic 1415, 22, 289, 30, 3717
Catullus didactic poetry 22, 22435, 245
Poem 51 868, 46474, 485 Dionysius of Halicarnassus 456, 461
62 466, 469 Dionysus 1, 45, 57, 7880
63 466, 47785 Dioscuri 88
64 122, 195, 467, 4824 dithyramb 1921
65 4745 Doric, dialect 3727
66 469, 476 Dosiadas 40
68 190, 467 dramatisation of narrative 196, 214
Catulus, Q. Lutatius 463 dreams 218, 380
Cercidas 39
Choerilus of Samos 93 education, role of Homer in 98, 1267
Choes, Athenian festival 79 Egyptian motifs, in Hellenistic poetry 867, 352,
Chrysippus 242 359
cicadas 72, 75, 1434, 449 ekphrasis 2034, 210, 2214, 258, 2634, 454
508 General index
Empedocles 166, 2289, 239 Eupolemus 3912, 402
epigrams ascribed to 289 Eupolis, Demoi 9
enargeia 443, 452, 4545 Euripides 70, 139, 426, 432, 433, 436, 485
endings, in epic 1256 Bacchae 479
Ennius 4623, 466 Cyclops 417
Ephesos 1516 Medea 94
epic poetry 212, 24682 Euryleonis, female Olympic victor 359
eros in 97 exemplarity, failure of 1627
fiction in 124 Ezekiel, Exagoge 432, 4356
forgetting in 11819, 1212
formulaic language in 1223, 24782 fable 1112, 13
generic status of 904 first inventor 228, 244
hero in 95 foreshadowing 221
included narratives in 11921 Fortune, in Comedy 431
kleos in 934, 212 Fragmentum Grenfellianum 33, 485
leadership in 12632
magic in, see magic Galatea 150, 165
memory in, see memory Gallus, Cornelius 1789, 465
neikos in 978 garlands 82
philia in 978 Gauls, invasion of Greece by 3558
prediction in 1246 genealogy 545, 567
storms in 1001 in epic 121
style of 24682 genre, contamination of 1741, 45761
Epicharmus 133, 142 Germanicus 224
Epicurus 3412 Glauce, musician 169
Epigonoi, Cyclic poem 956 Graces, the 524, 567, 153
epigrams 283349
anthologies of 28990 handbooks, technical 234
dedicatory 2912, 31217 Harpalus 436
dialogic 30627 Hedylus of Samos 391
drunkenness in 3439 Hegemon 138
erotic 33849 Hellenistic age, ancient division of 4446
funerary 291336 Hephaestus 85
inscribed on pottery 2847 Heracleodorus, critic 451, 461
riddling 32836 Heracles 47, 55, 845, 128, 20115, 25566, 270,
symbolic pictures on 32830 375, 377
Epimenides 7 Heraclides Ponticus 71, 4545
epinician poetry 30 Hermes 156
epyllion 22, 171, 191245, 466 Hermesianax 69, 160, 479
Eratosthenes 89, 124, 445 Herodicus, epigram of 446, 447
Erigone 196, 446 Herodotus 50, 81, 93, 2889, 360, 36970, 434,
Hermes 191 440
Erechtheus 199 Herondas 4, 334, 134, 463
Erichthonius 252 Hesiod 1, 67, 12, 445, 49, 5160, 734, 80, 127,
Erigone 76, 79 175, 1823, 3515
Erinna, Distaff 289 Works and Days 225, 227, 2304, 23842
Euboeus of Paros 7 Catalogue of Women 160, 216
Eudoxus, astronomer 226, 234, [Aspis] 258
235 Hieron II of Syracuse 153
Eumaeus 197, 213 Hipparchus, astronomer 226, 234, 235
Eumelus, Corinthiaca 96 Hipparchus, Athenian tyrant 2878
euphony, as goal of poetry 45561 Hippo, philosopher 3245
Euphorion 160, 438, 444, 445, 466, Hipponax 4, 5, 811, 1417
481 Hellenistic edition of 15
Mopsopia 196 Homeric Hymn to Apollo 3623, 3646
reception at Rome 464 Homeric Hymn to Demeter 2078, 366
General index 509
Horace 215, 451, 469 Meleager of Gadara 1778, 186, 330, 393, 463
Ars Poetica 435, 436, 4501 memory
Odes 32 as intertextual marker 122
Hylas 4801 in epic poetry 934, 11726
hyperbaton 2678 poetic 470
Hyperboreans 36970 Menander 20, 1578, 40432
structure of plays 4067
Ikos 7683 Aspis 427, 431
Ion of Chios 17, 446, 447, 460 Dyskolos 152, 305, 41417, 428
Ion of Samos, epigrammatist 28991 Epitrepontes 4267
Isidorus 370 Misoumenos 409, 411
Hymns of 32, 35063 Perikeiromene 41112, 41819
Isis 86 Samia 42930, 4312
Merops, king of Cos 147
kingship literature 127 messenger-speeches 439, 443
Kleitos, killed by Alexander 117 metre
koine, Greek 3734, 377 choliambics 10
kolakeia 4235 elegiac couplets 345
kritikoi, discussed by Philodemus 451 epodes in epigram 39
Kyniska, female Olympic victor 3959 Euripidean 29
galliambics 4789, 4834
Laevius, Erotopaegnia 463 hexameter
Leonidas of Tarentum 134, 151, 289, 293 in Homer 356
Letter of Aristeas 78 in Apollonius Rhodius 36
library, Alexandrian 89 in Callimachus 357, 44
lions 313 in Theocritus 357, 1501
Little Ilias, Cyclic poem 96 fifth foot spondee 87
Livius Andronicus 461 iambic trimeter
locus amoenus 135, 137, 146, 147, 1489, 154, 180 in Lycophron, Alexandra 440
Longus, Daphnis & Chloe 142, 169 in Hellenistic Tragedy 4345
Lotus-eaters 118 lyric metre in Hellenistic age 268, 3841
Lucilius 463 metres in Callimachus, Iambi 1415
Lucretius 2289 Phalaecian hendecasyllable 29
Lycophron Milon, athlete 16970
Alexandra 215, 260, 434, 435, 43743 mime 27, 138, 140, 141
language of 4423 Sicilian 1334, 157
Menedemos 437 mimesis 23
Lycophronides 177 Mimnermus 6, 69, 160, 283
Lysander, Spartan admiral 2901 Minos 55
Lysippus 450 Moiro 160
Molorkos 845
Macedonia, Macedonian Moschus 1704
identity 390, 394 Europa 191, 192, 193, 21524
language 3767 Muses 1, 6, 12, 446, 524, 589, 734, 119, 124,
Machon 32 141, 1434, 1526, 164, 1813, 227
magic Museum 89, 16, 89
in epic 97 Music, the New 19
in Hellenistic poetry 137 mysteries at Alexandria 32
in Homer 166 mythology 50
in Theocritus 15760, 1667, 207 in Hellenistic poetry 4567
Margites 139 in Aratus 2425
Matius, Cn., Mimiambi 463
Matron 82, 139 Naupactia, Cyclic poem 96
megalopsychia, in Aristotle 113 Neanthes of Cyzicus 305
Megara 1956, 43940 Nemean games 84
Melanippides 20 Neoptolemos of Parium 450, 456
510 General index
Neoteric poets 464 Phaedrus 1435, 1478, 1512
Nestors cup 2867 Symposium 3478, 349
Nicander, reception at Rome 465 Plautus 27, 405, 406, 436, 462
Nicias 170 Amphitruo 258
Nicias of Mytilene 185 Pleiad, tragic 4345, 440
Nicochares 138 Pliny the Elder 450
Nostoi, Cyclic poem 96 poikilia 18
Nymphs, the 147, 148, 1536, 164 Polemon of Ilium 297
polyeideia 17, 133, 460
Odysseus 813, 85, 10714 Porcius Licinus 464
old age, poetic topos of 74 Posidippus, comic poet 412
Oracle of the Potter 440 Posidippus of Pella 69, 745, 180, 377402
Osiris 86 Hippika, structure of 402
Ovid 122, 197 Lithika 454
Amores 3.9 189 Praxiphanes 69
Metamorphoses 55 Praxiteles 450
Priapus 156
paeans 27 propemptikon 1367
Athenian 358, 363, 366, 370 Propertius 179
Pan 137, 152, 155, 156, 15960 Poem 1.18 179, 190
Pandora 58 Poem 2.13 1878
Panyassis, epic poet 205, 214 Poem 2.19 1889
paraklausithyron 137, 138 Proteus, marine divinity 3878
parody, epic 139 proverbs
Parthenius 248, 4656 Aristotle on 161
pathetic fallacy 149, 167, 238 in Theocritus 1601
Pausimachus, critic 445, 451, 45860 psychagogia 452
Peisander, epic poet 205, 214 Ptolemy I Soter 202, 381, 394
Peisistratus 215 Ptolemy II Philadelphos 42, 62, 127, 152, 2012,
performance contexts 223 3559, 371, 4378, 471
Petronius 445 Ptolemy III Euergetes 42, 55, 85
Phanocles 69, 160 Ptolemy IV Philopator 52
phantasia 443 Python, Agen 4367
Pharos, lighthouse 3878
Philemon, Thesauros 418 queens, Hellenistic 3778
Philetas 6, 34, 69, 75, 135, 445 Quintilian 445
Demeter 147
Philicus 378 rhetoric 24
Philippides, comic poet 412 Rhetoric to Alexander 234
Philochorus 297 Rhianus 214
Philodemus 712, 44961 Rhinthon 32
On Poems 445
On the Good King According to Homer 112, Sappho 25, 29, 87, 182, 4724
127 epigrams ascribed to 289
philosophy, origins of 5960 Satyr-play, Hellenistic 4367
Philoxenus of Cythera 165, 166, 445 scholarship, Hellenistic 236, 434, 123, 3734,
Phocylides 288 434, 44461
Pindar 25, 701, 84, 163, 164, 194, 198, 2023, Homeric 89
2057, 2557, 364, 368, 3701, 394, 397, Hellenistic editions of archaic poetry 25
399400, 401 Semonides 10
Isthmian 1, 111, 399400 Seneca 435
Pythian 1 398 Sesostris 129
Pythian 7 400 Simias of Rhodes 40, 445
Plato 1, 1819, 26, 75, 98, 450 similes 1024, 21314
epigrams ascribed to 289 in Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 27582
Ion 442, 459 in Callimachus 197
General index 511
Simonides, epigrams of 2889 19 173
Socrates 341 22 192, 195, 371
Solon 236 23 1856
Sophists 3, 24 24 192, 20110, 25566, 371
Sophocles 195 25 192, 195, 21015
Sophron 27, 134, 140, 1578 26 192, 477
Sosibius 383, 402 27 180
Sositheos, tragic poet 436 Theognis 182, 284, 288, 344
Sostratos of Cnidos 3889 Theophrastus 26, 139, 226, 341, 454, 456
Sotades 38, 62, 463, 471 Characters 418
Spartan traditions 3823, 3958 Thersites 375
speech, direct 1956, 197, 207, 209 Timaeus 150, 165
speech, first-person 910 Timarchus, Cynic philosopher 3237
Stesichorus 28, 155 time, periphrastic indications of 255
Stobaeus 186 Timocles, comic poet 412
Stoics, Stoicising 2267, 231, 2367, 238, 240, Timon, misanthrope 3026, 327
242, 341, 454 Timon of Phlius 78, 9, 434
subjectivity in love poetry 186, 190 Timotheus of Miletus 19, 20
subject-matter, Hellenistic classification of Tithonus 67, 72
13940 Tragedy
symposia, literary 789 Attic 20
synthesis 45561 exploited in Comedy 42632
syntomia 4545 Hellenistic 35, 4326
re-performance of 4323
technopaegnia 28, 401 Roman 432, 461
Telchines, the 669, 74, 75 staging of 435
Terence 68, 405, 406, 463, 4678 translation
Adelphoe 41925 at Alexandria 471
Eunuchus 431 Roman ideas of 46776
Heauton timoroumenos 425
Thebais, Cyclic poem 96 Varro of Atax 465
Theocritus 3, 29, 334, 35 Varro, M. Terentius
Epigrams 39 Aetia 464
Berenice 376 Eumenides 478
lyric poems of 3940 Virgil 178, 451
bucolic poems 13390 Eclogue 2 184
epic style of 25566 Eclogue 6 463
gods in 149, 1517 Eclogue 9 46970
animals in 149 Eclogue 10 1789
superstition in 157 Georgics 231, 235
mythology in 1607 Aeneid 90, 94, 98, 99100, 11718, 125, 1312
realism in 14167, 168, 2067, 220 Volcacius Sedigitus 464
reception at Rome 4645
Idyll 1 138, 14951, 155, 156, 176 water-drinking 4489
2 158 water symbolism 7
3 138 window reference 205
4 16970
5 149, 153, 155 Xenomedes of Ceos 635, 83
6 14951, 155, 1645, 171 Xenophanes 78, 137
7 4, 1348, 1534, 1556, 157, 176, 470 Xenophon 19, 396
8 16770 Anabasis 12931
10 138, 1601, 176 On Horse-Riding 234
11 138, 1501, 1647, 171 On Hunting 234
13 171, 1723, 191, 192, 193, 195
15 1623, 370, 3716 Zenodotus 81, 89, 123, 254
16 12, 1523 Zeuxis 210

Marco Fantuzzi, Richard Hunter Tradition and Innovation in Hellenistic Poetry

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Marco Fantuzzi, Richard Hunter Tradition and Innovation in Hellenistic Poetry

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TRADITION AND INNOVATION IN

Hellenistic poets of the third and second centuries bc were con-

m arco fan tu z z i is Professor of Ancient Greek Literature at the

r i c h ard hu n ter is Regius Professor of Greek at the Univer-

Cambridge University Press

in the English translation Cambridge University Press 2004

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of

First published in print format 2005

- ---- eBook (EBL)

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of

Originally published in Italian as Muse e modelli: la poesia ellenistica da Alessandro

First published in English by Cambridge University Press 2004 as Tradition and

Preface page vii

1 Performance and genre 1

2 The aetiology of Callimachus Aitia 42

3 The Argonautica of Apollonius and epic tradition 89

4 Theocritus and the bucolic genre 133

6 The style of Hellenistic epic 246

7 The epigram 283

8 The languages of praise 350

9 Hellenistic drama 404

10 Roman epilogue 444

This book is a revised and augmented version of Muse e modelli: la poesia

CA J. U. Powell, Collectanea Alexandrina (Oxford 1925)

All dates are bc, unless otherwise indicated.

Performance and genre

1 in voking the muses, evoking models

6 Cf. below, pp. 13840.

49 Cf. D. L. Clayman, Callimachus Iambi (Leiden 1980) 22.

2 im possible mod els and lost per formance contexts

92 Cf. Krevans (1984) 1834.

3 d isassembling and reassembling

146 Cf. Pretagostini (2000) 7. 147 Cf. Fantuzzi (1995a) 23543.

The aetiology of Callimachus Aitia

2 the structure of the a i t i a

10 Nice examples in Parsons (1993) 1718.

21 Gutzwiller (1998) 186 suggests the influence of Hellenistic epigram books.

36 Cf. O. Murray, Herodotus and Hellenistic Culture CQ 22 (1972) 20013.

4 hesiod and callimachus

48 Cf. e.g. E. Schwarzenberg, Die Grazien (Bonn 1966) 445.

52 Cf. Selden (1998) 3214.

5 acontius and cydippe

6 the reply to the telchines

86 So, e.g. Huxley (n. 76 above) 244 n. 62.

120 Cf. above, pp. 524.

7 callimachus and t he ician

The Argonautica of Apollonius and epic tradition

28 Cf. above, pp. 901. 29 Helpful survey in Davies (1989) 239.

45 Cf. below, p. 446. 46 Hardie (1986).

68 Cf. the observation of the bT-scholia on 1.29, ##  !   #

91 Cf. Clauss (1993) 2001.

92 Cf. Beye (1982) 87, Hunter (1988) 4445.

149 Cf. above, p. 111.

Theocritus and the bucolic genre

1 theocritus and the realism of everyday life: in

9 Cf. further below.

2 verisimilitud e and coherence

73 Cf. Fantuzzi (1995b), and above, pp. 347.

77 If we accept the emendation of % ( , which is metrically difficult, to % ( , v. 230.

. . . ?$' # ) ## X .##

The turn to Hesiod perhaps suggests the tradition in which Simichidas

83 Cf. Hunter (1999) 1789.

97 Cf. Segal (1981) 95106.

68 Cf. the observation of the bT-scholia on 1.29, ## ! #

77 If we accept the emendation of %(, which is metrically difficult, to %(, v. 230.

. . . ?$' # ) ## X .##

146 Meinekes correction of V e

k % &' + A: U V C g @

28 On the meaning of the verb in Pindars &!5 ]Q #

4 The verse was followed by the dactyl

]M 5 (" , ( *% .

&%# 'X Z C &' e%Q