Callimachus in Context: From Plato to the Augustan Poets [Reprint ed.] 9781107378346, 1107378346

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Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-00857-1 - Callimachus in Context: From Plato to the Augustan Poets Benjamin Acosta-Hughes and Susan A. Stephens Frontmatter More information

CALLIMACHUS IN CONTEXT

Scholarly reception has bequeathed two Callimachuses: the Roman version is a poet of elegant non-heroic poetry (usually erotic elegy), represented by a handful of intertexts with a recurring set of images – slender Muse, instructing divinity, small voice, pure waters; the Greek version emphasizes a learned scholar who includes literary criticism within his poetry, an encomiast of the Ptolemies, a poet of the book whose narratives are often understood as metapoetic. This study aims to situate these Callimachuses within a series of interlocking historical and intellectual contexts in order better to understand how they arose. In this narrative of his poetics and poetic reception four main sources of creative opportunism are identified: Callimachus’ reactions to philosophers and literary critics as arbiters of poetic authority, the potential of the text as a venue for performance, awareness of Alexandria as a new place, and, finally, his attraction for Roman poets. b e n j a m i n a c o s t a - h u g h e s is Professor of Greek and Latin at The Ohio State University. He is the author of Polyeideia: The Iambi of Callimachus and the Archaic Iambic Tradition (2002), of Arion’s Lyre: Archaic Lyric into Hellenistic Poetry (2010), and co-editor, with Manuel Baumbach and Elizabeth Kosmetatou, of Labored In Papyrus Leaves: Perspectives on an Epigram Collection Attributed to Posidippus (P.Mil.Vogl. VIII 309). He is also co-editor, with Luigi Lehnus and Susan A. Stephens, of Brill’s Companion to Callimachus (2011). s u s a n a . s t e p h e n s is Sara Hart Kimball Professor in the Humanities, and Professor of Classics at Stanford University. She is author of Seeing Double: Intercultural Poetics in Ptolemaic Alexandria (2003), a study that has transformed scholarly thinking about Egypt as present in Hellenistic poetry. Trained as a papyrologist, she co-edited, with the late Jack Winkler, Ancient Greek Novels: The Fragments (1995). She is the author of numerous articles on Hellenistic poetry, and is co-editor, with Benjamin Acosta-Hughes and Luigi Lehnus, of Brill’s Companion to Callimachus (2011). She is also co-editor, with Phiroze Vasunia, of the 2010 collection Classics and National Cultures.

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Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-00857-1 - Callimachus in Context: From Plato to the Augustan Poets Benjamin Acosta-Hughes and Susan A. Stephens Frontmatter More information

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Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-00857-1 - Callimachus in Context: From Plato to the Augustan Poets Benjamin Acosta-Hughes and Susan A. Stephens Frontmatter More information

CALLIMACHUS IN CONTEXT From Plato to the Augustan Poets

BENJAMIN ACOSTA-HUGHES AND SUSAN A. STEPHENS

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Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-00857-1 - Callimachus in Context: From Plato to the Augustan Poets Benjamin Acosta-Hughes and Susan A. Stephens Frontmatter More information

cambridge university press Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, S˜ao Paulo, Delhi, Tokyo, Mexico City Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge cb2 8ru, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107008571  c Benjamin Acosta-Hughes and Susan Stephens 2012

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2012 Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication data Acosta-Hughes, Benjamin, 1960– Callimachus in context : from Plato to the Augustan poets / Benjamin Acosta-Hughes, Susan A. Stephens. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-1-107-00857-1 1. Callimachus – Criticism and interpretation. 2. Callimachus – Appreciation – Rome. 3. Aesthetics, Ancient. 4. Alexandria (Egypt) – Intellectual life. I. Stephens, Susan A. II. Title. pa3945.z5a35 2011 811 .01 – dc23 2011019856 isbn 978-1-107-00857-1 Hardback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

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Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-00857-1 - Callimachus in Context: From Plato to the Augustan Poets Benjamin Acosta-Hughes and Susan A. Stephens Frontmatter More information

Contents

List of maps Acknowledgments List of abbreviations Maps

page vii viii x xii 1

Introduction 1. Literary quarrels Suicide by the book Plato in the Aetia Prologue “Mixing Ions” Hipponax and mimetic play The power of the poet “Common things” The crowd

2. Performing the text The sounds of reading Dramatic performance Lyric The paean “Lyrics” for Alexandria Choruses and choral dancing Stichic meters Textual and intertextual symposia In the public sphere In the private sphere

3. Changing places

23 23 31 47 57 68 78 80 84 84 90 102 105 108 112 116 130 133 140 148 149 155 160 163

De-centering Greece Cyrene The Cyrenaica Alexandria

v

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vi

Contents The Argive ancestors The “causes” of Alexandria Attica viewed from Alexandria The new center

168 170 196 202

4. In my end is my beginning

204 207 212 233 244 255 257

Early “translation” The doctus poeta Writing for royals Callimachus in Propertius The Roman Callimachus Ovid and Callimachus

Conclusions Appendix: The Aetia Bibliography Index locorum Subject index

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270 275 292 307 317

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Maps

All maps prepared by Al Duncan. 1. Hellenistic Cyrene with sites of importance for Callimachus’ poetry (following Bonacasa and Ensoli), with an insert showing detail of the sanctuary of Apollo. 2. Early Alexandria. 3. The Eastern Mediterranean, showing regions controlled by the early Ptolemies and locations of importance in Callimachus’ Aetia. 4. The Aegean Sea, detail of larger map with locations of importance in Callimachus’ Aetia.

page xii xiii xiv xvi

vii

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Acknowledgments

This study is the result of an ongoing conversation about the poet Callimachus that began in the late 1990s. The experience of co-authoring an article on the Aetia Prologue led us to consider writing a book together as an intellectual and personal pleasure, while the questions raised by students in our respective seminars over the years helped us to frame our research and writing as best we could to answer the most recurrent and pressing of these. Why do there appear to be so many Platonic tangents in Callimachus? Why, in a poet considered the model of the “bookish” author, are there so many indications of poetic performance? What is the rapport between the Ptolemies and their political interests and a remarkably diffuse body of work of one court poet? Why is Callimachus an ongoing feature of Roman poetic culture, and in such a particular way? Each of these questions has resulted in one of the chapters of the present study. During the period of our collaboration the scholarly discourse on Hellenistic poetry has begun to change. The publication of the epigram roll of Posidippus of Pella surprised with its blend of aesthetics and and politics; work on Philodemus continues to enable a better understanding of the relationship of Hellenistic critical theories to poetic practice; and the remarkable underwater archaeological discoveries of the Empereur and Goddio teams, as well as recent recoveries in the city of Alexandria itself, have cast new light on the Greco-Egyptian milieu of the Ptolemies. The publication of new commentaries on the Aetia and of recent editions of Callimachus’ collected poetry by Markus Asper (in German) and Giambattista D’Alessio (in Italian) have greatly increased our ability to appreciate this very fragmentary author. These developments have acted as stimuli for our ideas and have enriched our understanding, and we offer Callimachus in Context to a larger critical audience as part of this evolving discourse. Throughout this has been a work of collaboration rather than a combination of separately constructed segments, and we are equally responsible for the book’s strong, and, if so viii

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Acknowledgments

ix

judged, weak points. Although we shall continue writing together on a different project, now it is time for us to close this chapter. It is with pleasure and gratitude that we acknowledge here the help and support of friends and colleagues who made the process of writing this book so rewarding. A number of scholars have provided us with their work in advance of publication: we wish to thank Diskin Clay, Kathryn Gutzwiller, Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones and Stephanie Winder, Patrick Lake, ´ Kathryn Morgan, Ivana Petrovic, Evelyne Prioux, and Stephen White. Special thanks are due to Annette Harder, to whom we are more grateful than we can say for allowing us access to her commentary on the Aetia in advance of its publication. Without it our book would be the poorer. As editors of the forthcoming Brill’s Companion to Callimachus we have also taken full advantage of the insights of our contributors; they too deserve our thanks. Some parts of this study had a first hearing at the Universit`a ´ di Roma Tre and at the Ecole normale sup´erieure in Lyon: we wish to take this opportunity to thank our close colleagues Adele-Teresa Cozzoli and Christophe Cusset for their kind hospitality. We were privileged to be invited to organize an APA seminar in 2007 on Plato and Hellenistic poetry and wish to acknowledge our gratitude to the Program Committee for their advice and encouragement. The stimulating comments of participants in these venues have done much to shape this study. A number of others have given us scholarly advice, read portions of our manuscript, and saved us from many errors, of omission and commission. We wish to thank, in particular, Alessandro Barchiesi, Chris Bobonich, Keyne Cheshire, Tom Hawkins, Nita Krevans, John Miller, Damien Nelis, Natasha Peponi, Jay Reed, and Alex Sens. We have profited immensely from the assessments of the two anonymous readers for Cambridge University Press, for their engagement with our arguments and for their suggestions of further bibliography. Two graduate students deserve special acknowledgement, Al Duncan (Stanford), who prepared the maps, and Aaron Palmore (Ohio State), who read the entire manuscript for us before final submission. Our partners, Jes´us and Mark, have been strongly supportive throughout (and will be grateful for the project’s conclusion). But above all we wish to acknowledge the graduate students whom we have taught throughout the years: without their engagement, skepticism, and insights as a stimulus, this book would never have taken the shape that it has. To them we dedicate this study, with thanks and affection.

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Abbreviations

The texts of Callimachus are from Pfeiffer (Pf.) unless otherwise indicated. Some papyrological sigla (half brackets, some sublinear dots) are omitted from Greek texts. AP CA DK FGE FGrH GLP GP Hdr. IG M. OGIS Pf. PCG PMG SEG SH

Palatine Anthology J. U. Powell, ed. Collectanea Alexandrina (Oxford, 1925) H. Diels and W. Kranz, eds. Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (6th edn. Berlin, 1951–2) D. L. Page, ed. Further Greek Epigrams (Cambridge, 1981) F. Jacoby, ed. Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker (Berlin and Leiden, 1923–1958) D. L. Page, ed. Greek Literary Papyri I (Cambridge, Mass., 1981) A. S. F. Gow and D. L. Page, eds. The Greek Anthology. Hellenistic Epigrams (Cambridge, 1965) A. Harder, ed. Callimachus: Aetia. Introduction, Text, Translation, and Commentary (Oxford, 2011) Inscriptiones Graecae (Berlin, 1873–) G. Massimilla, ed. AITIA. Libri primo e secondo, Libro terzo e quarto (Pisa and Rome, 1996–2010) W. Dittenberger, ed. Orientis Graeci Inscriptiones Selectae (Leipzig, 1903–5) R. Pfeiffer, ed. Callimachus, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1949–1953) R. Kassel and C. Austin, eds. Poetae Comici Graeci (Berlin-New York, 1983–) D. L. Page, ed. Poetae Melici Graeci (Oxford, 1962) Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum (Leiden, 1923–) H. Lloyd-Jones and P. J. Parsons, eds. Supplementum Hellenisticum (Berlin and New York, 1983) x

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Abbreviations Sk. TGF TrGF

xi

O. Skutsch, ed. The Annals of Q. Ennius (Oxford, 1985) A. Nauck, ed. Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta (2nd edn. Leipzig, 1889) B. Snell, R. Kannicht, and S. Radt, eds. Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta (G¨ottingen, 1971–2004)

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Maps

Map 1. Hellenistic Cyrene with sites of importance for Callimachus’ poetry (following Bonacasa and Ensoli), with an insert showing detail of the sanctuary of Apollo.

xii

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Map 2. Early Alexandria.

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Map 3. The Eastern Mediterranean, showing regions controlled by the early Ptolemies and locations of importance in Callimachus’ Aetia.

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Map 4. The Aegean Sea, detail of larger map with locations of importance in Callimachus’ Aetia.

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Introduction

The paradox of Callimachus is that his influence is inversely proportional to his survival – the more important his poem was in antiquity, the less we have of it. Only his collection of six hymns and about sixty of his epigrams survive intact. The Hecale, Aetia, and Iambi are assembled fragments that often lack narrative and aesthetic coherence. Their reconstructions seem to require a steep learning curve or an act of faith that often leaves the average scholar of classical literature disadvantaged, and he or she quite naturally turns to the later, Roman reception of Callimachus for help in negotiating his poetic terrain. A related paradox is that he consistently wrote about kings and contemporary events, but the reception of his poetics, what is now popularly called “Callimacheanism,” is essentially aesthetic, premised on his rejection of epic, his display of erudition, and his disengagement from contemporary social contexts. The extreme view of this disengagement was articulated by Bruno Snell, who claimed in an influential chapter in his Discovery of the Mind that, suffering from “post-philosophical exhaustion,” Callimachus was incapable of the boldness of thought of earlier ages. However exaggerated Snell’s formulation may appear, his underlying assumption that Callimachus retreated into a bookish, “slender” poetics is echoed in much of what is written about this poet today. The aim of this study is to consider why this formulation of Callimacheanism persists and to reframe the traditional discussion in the following ways. Initially we examine Callimachus’ aesthetic agenda, but within the context of previous Greek speculations about the role of poets and poetry in the civic environment, the role played by philosophers, particularly Plato, in this discussion, and the trope of the literary quarrel. We then turn to Callimachus’ particular creative moment, to situate him not simply as a poet of the book, but as a poet conscious of his position



Snell : .



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

Callimachus in Context

within a long tradition of public performance embedded in specific communities, who is able to capitalize on the universalizing poetic strategies permitted by the written text. In our third chapter we take up his geographies and genealogies, arguing that much of what now appears obscure and eccentric to earlier poetry is the result of his project to re-map the Mediterranean, de-centering mainland Greece to focus on places of familiarity and importance to court and society in early Ptolemaic Alexandria. Finally, we assess the ways in which Roman poets appropriated Callimachus, how they reconfigured, exaggerated, or ignored various aspects of his poems, thus conditioning the way in which we read Callimachus today. In order to contextualize Callimachus within his intellectual traditions and within his physical and social environments, let us begin with what is known about his time and place. Aulus Gellius placed his floruit in  bc, which coincides with the approximate dates of internal references within some of his poems. These include what appears to be an epithalamium for the marriage of Ptolemy II and Arsinoe II (between –); the Hymn to Delos, with its vignette of a revolt of Gaulish mercenaries (); Arsinoe II’s death and apotheosis (); the marriage of Berenice II and Ptolemy III (); and Berenice II’s chariot victory at the Nemean games ( or ). No poems to which dates may be assigned survive between  and  bc. However most of the poems to which we can assign dates were occasional, praising the Ptolemaic queens Arsinoe II and Berenice II. Because Ptolemy II did not take another wife after the death of Arsinoe in , there was no queen of Egypt until Berenice’s marriage in , a circumstance that might explain the apparent hiatus in his production. The earliest of his poems to which a plausible date may be assigned is the Hymn to Zeus. Either it was written for Ptolemy I or for his son, Ptolemy II, at the beginning of his assumption of power, which gives it a terminus ante quem of , the year of Ptolemy I’s death. Callimachus’ elegiac epinician for Sosibius was either written for the nefarious minister of Ptolemy IV or for an earlier figure credited with a treatise on kingship written under Cassander.   



.. (= test.  Pf.) See Lehnus : –. Arsinoe returned to Egypt in / (Just. .–); she is named “loving her brother” in the Pithom Stele in the th year of his reign (/). See Fraser : . n. . For Ptolemy II: Koenen : –; Clauss : –; Stephens : –; for Ptolemy I: Carri`ere . Meillier : – and Laronde :  make a case for Magas as the recipient, but the identification is difficult to reconcile with lines – in which ‘Zeus’ (identified with Ptolemy), receives the best portion (Olympus) although he is the youngest of his siblings. The younger Sosibius was, according to Polybius (.–), responsible for the death of Berenice II. His high status makes him a more suitable participant in Panhellenic athletic contests than the older Sosibius identified by Athenaeus (e).

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Introduction



Based on the assumption that the epinician was for the younger Sosibius, Callimachus’ birth is generally taken to have been around  bc. But if it was the earlier Sosibius, that poem is unlikely to be later than the s and requires Callimachus’ birth date to be adjusted upwards, perhaps as early as  bc. As to the extent of his life, Athenaeus (c) mentions that Callimachus recorded in his Pinakes that one Lysimachus wrote on the education of Attalus. However, the first king so named took the throne only in ; for Athenaeus’ statement to be accurate, Callimachus must still have been writing in , and very probably even later. In either case, Callimachus lived the majority of his adulthood during the reign of the second Ptolemy (–), the period when the Ptolemaic empire was at its height. The Suda tells us that he was an elementary schoolmaster in Eleusis, but if he is already writing for the court in the late s bc, his academic career must have been quite brief. In contrast, Tzetzes records that he was a “youth of the court” (nean©skov tv aÉlv), an official status that is incompatible with elementary school teaching, but would fit with a poetic career that seems to have begun in his early twenties. The easiest explanation for the Suda’s information is that it was extrapolated from poems in which Callimachus speaks of the schoolroom or schoolmasters. Although he wrote for the Alexandrian court, Callimachus identifies himself as a native of the Dorian colony of Cyrene, claiming descent from the Battiads, the city’s founding line. His grandfather, also named Callimachus, was probably the Cyrenean general. Callimachus’ sister, Megatima, seems to have married into a high-ranking Cypriot family. A great-grandfather has been identified as Anniceris, a Cyrenean, who according to an anecdote preserved in Lucian (Dem. enc. ) and Aelian (VH .), tried to impress Plato by driving his chariot (bound for the

 

  



 See Lehnus .  Test. .– Pf. See Wilamowitz : .. Test. c. Pf. Cameron argues that if Callimachus was one of the youths reared at court, as the term implies, then the family must have been in residence in Alexandria during the reign of Soter (: –, –). E.g., Ep.  GP =  Pf. or Iambus . See Cameron : – and Lehnus : . Ep.  GP =  Pf. Cameron :  points out that the term “Battiades” refers to lineage, not the name of a close relative. Ep.  GP =  Pf.: “Whoever walks past my tomb, know that I am the child and parent of Cyrenean Callimachus, and you would know both: one once led his country’s armies, the other sang beyond the reach of envy.” Cameron :  notes the combative symmetries: the one bested the enemy in battle, the other in poetry. Cameron : –. For the details based on inscriptional evidence see Laronde : –,  and Meillier : –.

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Callimachus in Context

Olympic games) around the periphery of the Academy. Anniceris must have been a man of considerable wealth because he was also said to have ransomed Plato from Dionysius of Syracuse. Callimachus’ lifetime largely overlapped the heyday of Cyrenaic philosophy, which traces its descent from Aristippus, a Cyrenean who traveled to Athens and frequented the circle around Socrates. From  to  bc, four figures dominated the Cyrenaic school – Aristippus the Younger (the grandson of this earlier Aristippus), Hegesias, Theodorus, and the younger Anniceris. Their philosophy advocated a hedonism probably developed in response to the Epicureans, but focusing not on the long-term goal of the avoidance of pain, but the enjoyment of ephemeral pleasures both physical and intellectual. One of these men, Theodorus, wrote a book denying the existence of gods, and was expelled from Athens, but, according to Diogenes Laertius, was pressed into service as an ambassador for Ptolemy Soter. He too may have been related to Callimachus. Cyrene had been the most important Greek city on the coast of North Africa in the three centuries before the foundation of Alexandria. According to Herodotus, Battus founded it in the seventh century when he led out colonists from Sparta via Thera to Libya at the instruction of the Delphic Apollo. Increasing migration to the region led to considerable instability, with the result that by the mid-sixth century external threats from the Libyans, Amasis’ Egypt, and internal political machinations led Battus III to consult the Delphic oracle once again. The Pytho instructed him to solicit Demonax from Mantinea in Arcadia as an advisor, who reorganized the citizens into three tribes: the original (Spartan) Theraean settlers, another consisting of Peloponnesians and Cretans, and the third 

  

 



Lehnus :  n.  and F. Williams : –, who suggests that Anniceris demonstrated his skills by driving several times in the same tracks, and that the instruction not to drive one’s chariot “along the same tracks as others” in the Aetia Prologue was a sly reference to his ancestor’s derring-do.  He is named in the Phaedo (c), and see below, ch.  n.. D.L. .. White : –; D.L. .. D.L. .–. Theodorus the Cyrenaic is to be distinguished from Theodorus of Cyrene, a geometrician, and sometime companion of Socrates (in the Theaetetus and the Sophist). According to D.L. ., Plato visited the latter in Cyrene. See, e.g., Long : . Most of what we know about the Cyrenaics is based on the account in D.L. .–. D.L. .–. Meillier : – prints Chamoux’s hypothetical family tree, based on Cyrenean and other inscriptions (though Cameron :  n.  points out Callimachus’ great-grandfather could only have been the older Anniceris). Hdt. .–. The traditional foundation date is  bc. For ancient references to and modern discussion of this story see Giangiulio : –, and especially his notes. The myth is also celebrated in a statue group that, according to Pausanias (..), the Cyreneans dedicated at Delphi. It was a figure of Battus in a chariot with Cyrene, who holds the reins. He is being crowned by Libya.

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Introduction



of the remaining islanders. Battiad rule continued until some time in the mid-fifth century, exerting a hegemonic influence over the rest of the Cyrenaica. When their rule came to an end, Cyrene became a republic. Civic tensions between the aristocratic and democratic factions erupted in the late fourth century, as a result of which the oligarchic party appealed to Ptolemy I to intervene. He placed his general Ophellas in charge, who attempted to quell the demotic insurgency; but Ptolemy himself decided to intervene in /, restructuring Cyrene’s constitution to leave it an oligarchy, though he continued to exert de facto control. This did not end civil discord; it continued for two decades as various factions tried to assert their independence from the imperial grasp. In  bc Magas, the son of Berenice I, and Ptolemy I’s stepson, reconquered Cyrene, administering it as strategos for the Ptolemies until , at which time he declared his independence and ruled Cyrene as its king from  to . During this period the two cities engaged in frequent hostilities, but it is unclear whether political tensions created an impermeable barrier to travel and trade, and if they did, whether Callimachus spent these years in Alexandria or Cyrene. Of his topical poetry, only the Apotheosis of Arsinoe, which must have been written soon after her death in , would seem to require a presence in Alexandria; all of his other poems with datesensitive material fall around or before  or after . Cyrene returned to Ptolemaic control when, at the end of their lives, Magas and Ptolemy II brokered a marriage between their children. Both fathers died before the marriage and, despite bloody intrigues to prevent it, Magas’ daughter, Berenice II, and Ptolemy III were married in  bc. Callimachus’ writing includes discrete details of both Alexandria and Cyrene, and it is significant that his poem on the marriage, the event that led to the reconciliation of the cities, was given the final and most emphatic position in the Aetia. Cyrenean literary attainments before Callimachus appear rather slender. The city could lay claim to a thriving philosophical school, but it did not produce great international poets. However, a sixth-century Cyrenean 



 

Hdt. .. See H¨olkeskamp  on Demonax’s reforms and their duration. Maass  makes the intriguing suggestion that Callimachus’ first three hymns reflect Demonax’s phylitic structure: Zeus’s birth is an amalgam of Arcadian (Peloponnesian) and Cretan legends; the Spartan-Theran colonization myth occurs in the second hymn; Artemis’ cultic connections with the islanders is important in the third. For the constitution (the diagramma) of Cyrene (SEG IX.) see Laronde : –. Ptolemy’s reforms opened up the citizen body to include the offspring of Cyrenean men and Libyan women, an event that Callimachus may well be acknowledging in his dance of the Spartans with yellow-haired Libyan women in hAp. –. Laronde treats these wars in considerable detail, see : – and –. See, e.g., H¨olbl : –.

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

Callimachus in Context

epic poet, Eugammon, allows a glimpse into regional poetics and how it operated within the broader Panhellenic context. Eugammon is credited with a Telegonia, the adventures of Telegonus, a son of Odysseus and Circe that provides a variant ending to the Odyssey. According to Proclus’ epitome, after Odysseus returned to Ithaca and killed the suitors, he needed to propitiate Poseidon by traveling inland until he encountered a people who did not know the sea. He journeyed to the land of the Thesprotians (Epirus), married the queen of the country, and sired a son. When he returned to Ithaca, Telegonus, who had been searching for him, killed him in ignorance with a spear dipped in poison from a stingray. Telegonus then transported his dead father, Penelope, and Telemachus to the Islands of the Blessed; he married Penelope, while Telemachus married Circe. The poet included another son of Odysseus and Penelope, named Arcesilas. Since this name was hereditary in the Battiad line, the figure was surely meant to have been a “genealogical compliment” to the house. Distinctive elements of the Telegonia also surface in Athenian tragedy. Sophocles apparently wrote a play entitled Odysseus ˆkanqoplžx (“Odysseus struck by a stickle-back fish”), which Aristotle identifies (along with the Oedipus Tyrannus) as an example of his favorite tragic plot. In addition, later Italian writers must have known the epic, since Telegonus occurs in their own colonizing histories. All of which suggests a fairly wide circulation for the Cyrenean poem. Whether or not Eugammon was the source, it is reasonable to assume that other Cyrene-specific myths like the Libyan adventures of the Argonauts and the Cyrenean fragments in Hesiod’s catalogue poetry depended on local traditions, both oral and written. These sources certainly underpin Herodotus’ Libyan material, and Pindar too incorporated local myths in his epinicia for Cyrenean victors. Pythian , written for Arcesilas IV’s chariot victory at the Pythian games in  bc, includes a temporally layered narrative of the foundation myth of Cyrene within the broader adventure of the Argonauts. Medea prophesies that one of them, Euphemus, will receive a gift of Libyan earth from a god disguised as a man      

See Giangiulio :  n.  for bibliography. For the fragments see Bernab´e : – and West : –. A line expressing this sentiment found in a letter of the fourth century ad Cyrenean Synesius has been attributed to Eugammon by Livrea . Phillips : –. When referring to Cyrenean monarchs, the Doric form of the name Arcesilas is used throughout, in preference to Arcesilaus. See TrGF Sophocles frr. – Radt, pp. – and Poetics b– (the unwitting murder of kin). See, e.g., Horace, c. ..– with Nisbet and Rudd :  for other occurrences. West : ; Giangiulio : .

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Introduction



(–) and that the heaven-sent clod (daimon©h bÛlax) was a promise that in the seventeenth generation his ancestors will return to colonize the land. Pythian , written for the victory of Telesicrates of Cyrene in the race in armor at the Pythian games in , rehearses the story of Apollo’s love for the eponymous nymph, Cyrene, whom he carries off from Thessaly to Libya. There she gives birth to Aristaeus. Pindar’s poems include many of the city’s features: Carneian Apollo and his festival of the Carneia, the tomb of the founder, Battus, and the garden of Aphrodite. Evidence for dramatic performance in Cyrene is tantalizing but inconclusive. Its earliest theater (with at least two building phases) was located beside the precinct of Apollo. This early Greek theater may have had support for a skene, which would indicate that full dramatic productions took place there, though no evidence for the presence of tragic actors in the city has come to light. A close connection with Athens in the fifth century and evidence for the popularity of the Alcestis story in Cyrene might mean that Athenian plays were performed there, but it is more likely that the myth figured in or was performed as part of the celebration of the Spartan and the Cyrenean Carneia. Apart from the architectural remains, our knowledge of performance practices depends primarily on two fourth-century inscriptions (SEG . and .). These are fragmentary accounts of the damiourgoi listing expenses for tragic choruses, dithyrambic choruses, an auletes, and prizes of an ox for each chorus. It is not clear from these inscriptions whether citizen groups or professional performers constituted the choruses. Because SEG . specifies three tragic choruses it is tempting to identify them with Demonax’s three tribes, but the number of dithyrambic choruses does not match, which would be a much more dependable index. C. Dobias-Lalou would link the three tragic choruses to the Athenian practice of tragic competition, but again the argument is not conclusive. P. Ceccarelli and S. Milanezi in their discussion of these texts raise the possibility that, given the lack of evidence for the worship of Dionysus in Cyrene before the first century bc, the dithyrambic choruses might have been intended for the celebration of another god. If so, the most probable candidate would be Apollo, in connection with the nine-day festival of the Carneia. But they too admit uncertainty. The most that can   



Stucchi : –; Bonacasa and Ensoli : , with a discussion of construction phases for the classical and Hellenistic theater. Quatrocelli . They also list sums for the bear, presumably of Artemis, and for the priestess of Athena. For a discussion of these inscriptions in the context of tragic and dithyrambic performance, see Ceccarelli and Milanezi . : .

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Callimachus in Context

be said is that choral performance of some kind took place on an annual basis and that myths originating elsewhere (like that of Alcestis) circulated in Cyrene. Since Callimachus wrote topical poems that featured Ptolemy II and Arsinoe II, he must have taken up residence in Alexandria at some point early in his life (if he was not resident as a child). In fact, civic unrest in Cyrene and the Cyrenaica created conditions that encouraged many residents from this region to migrate to Alexandria at the beginning of the third century. Although our information about the ethnic identity of Greek immigrants to Alexandria is sketchy, migration patterns into the rest of Ptolemaic Egypt show large numbers from North Africa. In the period between  and  bc immigrants in some numbers also came from Thessaly and Thrace, Athens, the southern Aegean islands, and, in the second century bc, from Judea. There is no inherent reason to think that patterns of immigration to Alexandria would have drawn on different communities or in radically different proportions since Cyrene and the Cyrenaica contained the Greek populations closest to the newly established city. The conclusion to draw from this is that Callimachus was not an isolated figure but would have belonged to one of the city’s largest ethnic groups (Macedonians were probably the largest, but the majority would have been soldiers, and often on campaign). Cyreneans would have brought a local perspective to their reception of his poetry, and this may in turn have conditioned his treatment of specific topics. (For example, the Hymn to Apollo could have been written for the immigrant Cyrenean community in Alexandria.) How long he lived in Alexandria is not known, nor if he traveled elsewhere. Because Callimachus wrote six hymns to Olympian divinities – Zeus, Apollo, Artemis, Delos (Apollo), Athena (in Argos), and Demeter – it is helpful to review the respective religious environments of Cyrene and Alexandria. They differed in important ways. Cults to these five Olympians flourished in Cyrene. Apollo was its patron deity, whose temple was first constructed in the sixth century bc. Its environs included the garden of Aphrodite, a temple of Artemis, and an exedra to Leto with a bronze 

 

The data in La’da  indicates that the largest number identified by ethnicity were Macedonians (), then those from Cyrene or the Cyrenaica (), those identified as Jews (), Athenians (), Syracusans (). See Mueller : . Jewish immigration does not happen much before the second century bc. Oliver  would identify the Callimachus listed as a benefactor in an Athenian decree of / bc as the poet, which would guarantee his residence in Athens at the time. But the identification is far from secure.

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Introduction



Delian palm. The colossal cult statue of Apollo was found in  and now resides in the British Museum. It is a Roman copy of a Hellenistic original that is assigned to the second century bc. Callimachus features the Cyrenean festival of Apollo Carneius in his second hymn. A cult temple of Zeus Olympius was also centrally located, with a cult statue that replicated Phidias’ renowned statue of Zeus at Olympia. Herodotus mentions an extramural sanctuary of Zeus Lycaeus (.), though this has never been found. Another important extramural sanctuary belonged to Demeter and Kore. Deposits of piglet bones indicate that the Thesmophoria would have been celebrated there. The fourth-century Cathartic Law from Cyrene confirms the centrality of the cult of Artemis, particularly in connection with marriage and childbirth. A surviving fragment from an altar to Artemis features the slaughter of the children of Niobe. Worship of Athena is attested as early as Pindar (Pythian .–), and she also appeared on Cyrenean coins. Were some of Callimachus’ hymns written for Cyrene? The strongest case can be made for the Hymn to Apollo, since its central section narrates the history of the Carneia. Archaeologists have also turned to the Hymn to Demeter to reconstruct various features of the city’s topography, although Donald White is surely correct in his assertion that Callimachus was not writing Blue Guides. However, the poetry does contain so many seemingly specific references to place and to local objects that it makes sense to evaluate the accuracy of each description on its own merits, rather than to generalize. Cyrene and the Cyrenaica had had centuries of interaction with pharaonic Egypt and Egypt under Persian rule, so it is not surprising to find that the non-Greek divinities Amun and Isis were also well  

     



Stucchi :  draws a connection to the opening of the hymn to Apollo; for the precinct see Bonacasa and Ensoli : – (and the city plan, –). Higgs . With his long flowing hair, rather loosely draped cloak, lyre, and quiver (with an entwined Delphic snake) the Roman copy is remarkably like Callimachus’ description of Apollo in hAp. –. Of course, the Hellenistic model for the Roman copy postdated Callimachus, but the general attributes may have reflected an even earlier cult statue. Bonacasa and Ensoli : –. The date of the statue is uncertain. The temple itself was rebuilt in the Roman period. Kane : . For a text and commentary on the law, see Parker : – and Robertson . Bonacasa and Ensoli :  and . Apollo mentions the children of Niobe in hDel. . White : –. Does the hDem. describe an actual Cyrenean festival route? Stucchi : –, Chamoux : –, and Laronde : – all argue that it does; White demurs. See Bonacasa and Ensoli : – for important sculptural fragments found at Cyrene, a number of which, like the Three Graces and Cyrene with a Lion, coincide with figures in Callimachus’ poetry. Chamoux : –.

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

Callimachus in Context

established there. Worship of Isis is attested for Cyrene by the fourth century bc, and the shrine of Zeus Ammon at the Siwah oasis was among the most prominent oracles in the ancient Mediterranean. It was this oracle that proclaimed Alexander a god when he consulted it before his expedition to Babylon and India. Zeus Ammon was also worshipped in Cyrene from the sixth century, though as F. Chamoux points out, under a form that was Hellenic in style. Cyrene seems to have been instrumental in the exporting of this Hellenized cult to Attica in the fifth century, and a temple to Zeus Ammon was established in Macedon near Pallene in the fourth. Alexandria provides a marked contrast to Cyrene. It was founded no more than twenty or thirty years before Callimachus’ birth, and in a location on the Libyan coastline previously devoid of any Greek settlement. Alexander is usually credited with laying out the city: Arrian (..), for example, claims that he marked out where the city’s agora should be and “how many temples and of which gods, the Greek [sc. gods] on the one hand and Egyptian Isis on the other,” but his language (¬er‡ Âsa kaª qeän æntinwn, tän m•n ëEllhnikän, ï Isidov d• A«gupt©av) does not instill confidence that he really knew how many or which Greek divinities. In contrast, Tacitus (Hist. ..) says that it was the Ptolemies who were responsible for building the city’s walls, temples, and cults, and he discusses no Olympians, only the cult of Serapis. It is also important to remember that this early city was not the one described by Strabo, who was writing at the end of the first century bc: Callimachus’ Alexandria had some sort of walls, the palace environs, the Museum, and the beginnings of the Library. The lighthouse was built between  and ; the stadium (Lageion) was completed by the time the Ptolemaia was celebrated about ; the Heptostadium and dockyards were built during Ptolemy II’s reign to accommodate his extensive fleet. The Cape Zephyrium temple and the Arsinoeion were constructed (probably) just prior to and immediately after Arsinoe II’s death in . The great temple to Serapis was only completed under the third Ptolemy, perhaps after Callimachus’ death. Probably there was a third-century theater and a Thesmophorion, though the latter is not mentioned before Polybius. Ptolemy IV is credited with building the sema      

Stucchi : –. The cult was exported to other Greek cities even before Alexander, see Classen . Chamoux : –. For Athens, see Chamoux :  and n. ; for Pallene see Bohec-Bouhet :  and n. . For the archaeology of the early city, see McKenzie : –. For the Great Serapeum see McKenzie : –.

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Introduction



of Alexander, but it was almost certainly Soter who moved the body to Alexandria from Memphis. Despite Arrian’s assertions, the only Olympian deity who can be securely attested for the early city is Demeter. A district of the city was named Eleusis, and that presupposes a tie to Athens and suggests that some variety of the Mysteries were celebrated there. Early papyrus letters from the Zenon archive indicate that the city celebrated a Demetria, the equivalent of the Thesmophoria. The city’s patron deity was Serapis, an amalgam of Greek Dionysus and Egyptian Osiris, who was worshipped under both Greek and Egyptian aspects, and thus was not unlike Zeus Ammon. A temple to Serapis, supposedly established by Alexander, is attested in the city by the s. It is to this temple that Hipponax summons the “critics” in the first Iambus. The city also had a temple of Isis, the foundation of which was credited to Alexander in other sources as well as the passage of Arrian quoted above. The celebration of a festival of Isis in the city is attested in a letter of Apollonius, Ptolemy’s treasurer, dated to  bc. Callimachus alludes to the Egyptian rite of prolonged mourning for the death of the Apis bull at the opening of Aetia, book , an event that seems to have occurred at least twice during Ptolemy II’s reign. Other Olympian deities were identified with deceased members of the royal family: the lighthouse on the island of Pharos was probably dedicated to Zeus Soter in conjunction with the Theoi Soteres or the deified couple, Ptolemy I and Berenice I. Arsinoe II was deified as Aphrodite-Arsinoe, and a temple erected to her at Cape Zephyrium, about fifteen miles east of Alexandria. Callimachus and Posidippus mention this temple in several poems. A spectacular funerary temple for Arsinoe II was apparently begun soon after her death, though it seems never to have been completed. Ptolemy II imported an obelisk to adorn it, and according to Pliny the roof was designed with magnets so       



See Erskine  on the body of Alexander. PCZ . and PCol. Zen.  ( bc, which confirms that the Alexandrian festival coincided in date with the Athenian). For the evidence for these festivals, see Perpillou-Thomas : –. Thompson : –. This was known as Parmenio’s Serapeum and is attested in a document from  bc. Fraser : .–. McKenzie :  and n. . PCZ . Apollonius requests that wood be sent to the capital for the festival. See PerpillouThomas : –. Fr.  Pf. + SH .: “women who know how to mourn the bull with a white marking”. Thompson : – indicates that an Apis was buried in  and again in  bc. Since the Victory of Berenice probably commemorates events in , the mention of the death of the Apis in  must have been a topical reference. Fraser ..–.

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

Callimachus in Context

that a statue of the deified queen could rise and appear to float in the air. According to the Diegesis, Callimachus alluded to this temple precinct in his poem on the death of Arsinoe (fr.  Pf.). Major civic festivals included the Ptolemaia, instituted by Ptolemy II in honor of his father, and the Arsinoeia, honoring his deified sister and queen, Arsinoe II. The Ptolemaia included athletic competitions that were promoted as equal in stature to those of the great Panhellenic venues. Posidippus mentions them in his epigram for Nearchus’ victories ( A–B). Although Alexandria possessed features common to other Greek poleis, including an agora, stadium, hippodrome, and a theater, the city center was dominated by a palace complex with attendant buildings that included the Museum and the Library, two structures that have come to epitomize the city. Mouseia, or shrines to the Muses, are well attested elsewhere. The most venerable was on Mt. Helicon located near the Hippocrene and Mt. Parnassus, and this is the site of Callimachus’ dream relocation at the beginning of the Aetia. Plato’s Academy and Aristotle’s Lyceum, which were private establishments, had Mouseia, probably as early as the fourth century. However, in Alexandria the Museum, which housed and provided meals for its members, was state-sponsored, as was the Library. Libraries, too, existed elsewhere in the Greek world, but the scale of collecting that the Ptolemies engaged in surpassed all previous endeavors, and that was undoubtedly the point – for the upstart city without traditions or history visibly to possess the great literary accomplishments of the Greek past, just as it sought to collect and so to control a vast array of objects, among them rare stones and wild animals. The rapid accumulation of papyrus rolls must have brought with it chances for advancement within a growing scribal and scholarly bureaucracy. For those associated with the library, the challenge of organizing and maintaining so many books also offered the unparalleled opportunity to read much of what the past had produced. The earliest period of Alexandria’s history was the time of its greatest literary achievement. Ptolemy I, like his fellow diadochs, continued Alexander’s habit of surrounding himself with men of letters, scientists, and philosophers, and he was also credited with a history of Alexander’s campaigns supposedly written late in his life. Ptolemy I provided his son, Ptolemy II, with a philosopher for a tutor, presumably on the   

HN . and see McKenzie : –. For an imaginative, if speculative, treatment of the monument, see Pfrommer : –.  Weber : –. See, e.g. Pausanias’ long description, ..–. Arrian (Anab. .) regarded it as one of the two most truthful versions available when he undertook to write his Anabasis of Alexander some five centuries later.

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Introduction



model of Alexander, who had been tutored by Aristotle. According to Diogenes Laertius (.), Ptolemy paid Strato of Lampsacus, who succeeded Theophrastus as head of the Peripatetic school in Athens, eighty talents for the task. The Coan poet, Philitas, was another tutor, and we now have an epigram by Posidippus describing a statue of Philitas that was probably erected in Alexandria and dedicated by Ptolemy II himself. The most significant immigrant to the new city may have been Demetrius of Phalerum. The latter had been the virtual ruler of Athens for ten years (under Cassander) before he fell from power under Demetrius Poliorcetes and went into exile. He seems to have been one of Soter’s principal advisors from about  bc, and later sources attribute the establishment of the cult of Serapis as well as the Library to his influence. Whatever the truth of these claims, Demetrius’ literary interests, including the first known compilation of Aesop’s fables and paeans to a new deity, Serapis, make it reasonable to assume that he had some impact on the intellectual direction of the early poets in the city. Callimachus’ own use of Aesop’s fables – they occur in Aetia, fr.  Pf., and the second and fourth Iambi – suggests that he had more than a passing acquaintance with Demetrius’ work. Other immigrant intellectuals included Hecataeus of Abdera, who visited Egypt during the reign of the first Ptolemy and wrote an Aegyptiaca that articulated a model of idealized kingship, and Euhemerus of Messene, who wrote under Cassander. His Sacred Register was a fictional travel adventure that chronicled how the gods were once mortal and came to be worshipped for their services to their people. Euhemerus, either the man himself or his statue, appears in Alexandria in the first Iambus. The impact of his work may be gauged by the fact that it was among the first Greek prose texts translated into Latin. Herophilus of Chalcedon, a Coan-trained doctor, inaugurated the great tradition of Alexandrian medicine. The tragedians  

    

 A-B: the figure “holds the canon of truth” (line : ˆlhqe©hv ½rq¼n [›cwn] kan»na). See Bing : –. D.L. . – relates that he fell from favor for advocating that Ptolemy not prefer his son Ptolemy II (by Berenice I) as his successor over the sons of an earlier wife, Eurydice. Demetrius died in exile in Upper Egypt shortly after Ptolemy II assumed the throne. See, e.g., Pfeiffer : , who states that Philitas and Zenodotus were more important but that Demetrius brought to the Museum the “influence of his great master Aristotle.” See Acosta-Hughes : , . Diodorus Siculus now preserves large sections of these writings. For their importance in early Ptolemaic Alexandria, see Stephens : –; and for Euhemerus, De Angelis and Garstad . Ennius translated it in the early second century bc. For potential references to Herophilus in Callimachus’ poetry see Fraser : .– and Most .

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

Callimachus in Context

Lycophron of Chalcis and Alexander the Aetolian were also active in early Alexandria. We should add to the mix Theodorus the Cyrenaic, mentioned above, who was said to have served as Ptolemy’s ambassador to the court of Lysimachus of Thrace. These figures give some sense of the range of cities from which the Ptolemies drew talent and the contour of their intellectual activity: philosophers who have turned to politics; prose writers theorizing kingship and speculating on the nature of divinity; poets writing traditional forms like tragedy and also creating new art forms like royal panegyric. Finally, there is what comes to be the hallmark of Alexandrian intellectual life, the systematic collection and preservation of the literary production of the past. Zenodotus of Ephesus was the first name to be connected with this endeavor. His particular sphere of activity as Ptolemy’s first librarian (correcting texts of Homer) illustrates the changing intellectual terrain. He is said to have been a pupil of Philitas of Cos, who in addition to his elegiac poetry was recognized for his collection of glosses on rare and difficult words in Homer. The background against which Philitas’ and Zenodotus’ work should be understood is that by the third century bc Homer had come to be the most popular and best known of the ancient poets: the whole of his Iliad and Odyssey had from the last quarter of the sixth century been performed by rhapsodes during the Athenian festival of the Panathenaea. From this period too dates the use of Homer as a school text, as boys learned to read, memorize, and recite it. The demand for Homer throughout the Greek-speaking world meant that there were numerous texts in circulation, with regional variants, rhapsodic alterations, and simple errors. This popularity meant that he was continuously subjected to interpretation and an easy target for critique, most noticeably in the fifth century from historians who questioned the accuracy of the events he portrayed and from the Sophists and later philosophers who debated his meanings and questioned the moral and ethical values that his poems encoded. In addition, the urgency (and banality) of the need for the translation of his unfamiliar words into the local koine is amply attested by the large numbers of glossaries and word lists found on papyri, many  

 

Lysimachus was the first husband of Arsinoe II. Pfeiffer : –. West : – argues that Zenodotus was surely not an editor of Homer in our modern sense of the term, nor was he by any means as systematic as Aristarchus in the next century. For a different assessment, see Rengakos . Ataktoi glossai. For an evaluation of the glosses see Bing : – and for fragments and commentary, see Spanoudakis : –. See, e.g., P. Murray : – and West : –.

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Introduction



written by unpracticed hands. The fact that the first Alexandrian librarian worked on Homer (either actively gathering and collating manuscripts or annotating his own copies with variants found or conjectured) is not only a tribute to the status of the poet, but it also reflects the complexity of his reception, as well as a new emphasis on the possession of his texts as an icon of state power. Callimachus belongs to the second generation of these Alexandrian intellectuals, and like Philitas he was both poet and scholar. His importance in this world is undisputed, though now his relationships with his immediate contemporaries, Timon of Phlius, Aratus of Soli, Posidippus of Pella, Asclepiades of Samos, Theocritus of Syracuse, and Apollonius of Rhodes can only be pieced together from the occasional epigram – he expresses admiration for Aratus in  GP =  Pf., possibly anti-Posidippan sentiments in  GP =  Pf. – and the degree of overlap with others in theme and aesthetic orientation is discernable only from the poems themselves. These overlaps with Theocritus and Apollonius, and, as it now appears, Posidippus, are considerable: for example, Callimachus’ Aetia begins at Anaphe, where Apollonius’ Argonautica ends; both poets include similar adventures of the Argonauts; both recount the details of Apollo slaying Pytho; the Hydrophoria at Aegina appears at the end of the Argonautica, but also in Callimachus’ eighth Iambus; Callimachus’ Hymn to Delos provides the prophecy of Ptolemy II’s birth on Cos, Theocritus’ Encomium for Ptolemy recounts that event in similar language; Posidippus follows the path of Thracian cranes to Egypt, Callimachus banishes the noisy birds to Thrace; one of Callimachus’ opening lines from the Hymn to Athena was imitated with an obscene twist in an epigram of Posidippus or Asclepiades. Were these men (or a subset) his Telchines, the severiores who attack him in the Aetia? Or are we looking at poetic fiction akin to his dream of poetic induction into the throng of the Muses on Helicon? This question is unanswerable, not because Callimachus’ poems are for the most part fragmentary, but because whatever statements he makes as a poet cannot be taken as biographical facts, but must be filtered through an understanding of the literary construct and its social context. How to recuperate these frames of reference is our challenge. Callimachus’ prose works have almost entirely disappeared, though ancient testimony sheds some light on his interests. While treatises on   

As a rough metric, there are ten times as many fragments of Homer from Greco-Roman Egypt as the next most popular author, Euripides ( compared to ). For Posidippus and Callimachus see Stephens  and Fantuzzi-Hunter : –, –. Cameron : – argues that the epigram was about Ptolemy II’s mistress, Bilistiche.

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

Callimachus in Context

zoology occur (fish, birds), he seems more concerned with geography: rivers, islands, foundation stories, and the name changes that occurred to places over time. C. O. Brink points out that the titles of his prose works – Customs of the barbarians, On birds, On fish, On winds, Marvels throughout the world by location – indicate a Peripatetic cast of thought. But Callimachus’ sources also included figures like Eudoxus and Theopompus. One of his now lost works bore the title: Pr¼v Praxif†nhn (fr.  Pf.). Praxiphanes was primarily a philosopher in the School of Aristotle, and credited with a treatise on poems (Perª poihm†twn) and another on poets (Perª poihtän). According to the Florentine scholia on the Aetia prologue he was one of the Telchines (Sch. ad fr. .– Pf.); if he was critical of Callimachus the correct translation for the title is Against Praxiphanes, which, in turn, suggests an anti-Peripatetic stance. Most scholars have reconstructed the bone of contention as Callimachus’ resistance to Aristotle’s (expressed by Praxiphanes) holistic view of art, which demanded that a serious poem be an organic unity and espouse universal values, in contrast to the particularity of historical writing. They cite the complaint of the Telchines in the Aetia Prologue that Callimachus did not compose “one continuous poem” (šn Šeisma dihnek”v) as an allusion to an Aristotelian model of poetic unity, which the poet rejects. What the available information suggests is that Callimachus’ response to Aristotle (and his School) was eclectic. Aristotle’s ideas certainly appear in Callimachus’ poetry as well as his prose. The organization of fauna, for example, in the second Iambus is indebted to Aristotle’s classificatory schemes, and the nautilus epigram (Ep.  GP =  Pf.) takes its zoological detail from the Historia animalium. The fundamental disagreement with an Aristotle or a Praxiphanes is likely to have arisen from the external imposition of rules on poetic composition – not specific rules, but any rules that privileged the judgment of the critic over that of the poet. Thus Callimachus may well have accepted Peripatetic rules and categories about natural phenomena while rejecting them for poetry. In regard to the Against Praxiphanes, it is significant that Callimachus, like the Peripatetics and Stoics, had entered into the critical fray by writing on poetry not in verse but with a prose tract.   



 Brink : –, – and Gutzwiller : –. Krevans : . For a thoughtful discussion of Praxiphanes and Callimachus as part of a debate arising from the Peripatetic redefinition of the outlines of poetry and history, see Fuhrer . See, e.g., Brink : : “[Callimachus] did not want to write an Šeisma dihnek”v, which would be a necessary condition for the distinction Aristotle makes between the epic cycle and Homer.” For a more recent discussion, see Hunter a: –. See, e.g., Prescott ; Gutzwiller ; and Selden : –.

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Introduction



Callimachus’ most influential prose works appear to have been his collection of Marvels (QaÅmata) organized by location and his Pinakes. The Marvels is our earliest known collection of paradoxes, and although Callimachus did not invent the genre of paradoxography that came to prominence in the Hellenistic period, he gave it a distinctive stamp. As Nita Krevans explains: “the key to the genre is the objective and rational presentation of an item which appears to break the laws of nature,” the purpose of which is to produce not an “Aha” of understanding, but an “Oh” of wonder. Paradoxography is closely tied to the Peripatetic impulse to organize the world into discrete and organically related categories. Collecting examples of things that behave contrary to conventionally accepted rules of nature is an attempt to order and contain what is inherently chaotic. But phenomena may only be labeled qaÅmata if they lie beyond implicitly normative boundaries (as with the monsters on geographers’ maps). In identifying the marvelous, therefore, what constitutes the norm (whether implict or explicit) is thrown into relief. In Callimachus there is a strong connection between the material that he accumulates in his Marvels and many of his aitia: geography (including Arcadia and Italy), rivers, name changes, and cults. If the Marvels catalogues violations of nature’s norms, many of the Aetia catalogue phenomena that violate social norms or expectations: for example, why does the statue of Artemis at Leucas have a mortar on her head in place of a crown? The purpose of these aitia may be to astonish, but they also explain, and in doing so they incorporate the paradoxical or unexpected behaviors and events into a wider pattern of human activity. To do so implicitly requires the audience to expand experiential boundaries with the result that what starts out as strange gradually becomes familiar. Within the milieu of the library Callimachus’ unique contribution was his Pinakes (or Tablets), which were equally a product of the categorizing projects associated with the Peripatetics. These were not a catalogue of the holdings in the library – for a library of any size the card catalogue needed to be invented – but an enormous enterprise that organized all previous Greek poetry and prose into genres, with author, biographical information, a list of works, and incipits. It is unnecessary to imagine Callimachus himself reading and recording this information for every text, nor even supervising a set of professional scribes for the labor, but rather as the mind making the organizational decisions when the material had

 

 Krevans :  and : . Fraser : .–. See, e.g., Bagnall :  n.; Krevans : .

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

Callimachus in Context

been assembled. Still it was a prodigious feat, the significance of which is articulated by Tim Whitmarsh: The impulse to categorize, to taxonomize, was born of the archival mentality, an articulate expression of the literary consciousness of the age. But the Tablets were not simply an uninspired, functional exercise: they represented a monumental achievement, a confident bid for cultural authority in the present and infinite fame in the future. . . . the Tablets constituted a boldly provocative challenge, an attempt to reify the canon, and so play gatekeeper to the subsequent reception of all literature.

At the same time Callimachus’ own poetic practice was not to adhere to the generic categories he was instrumental in assigning, but to experiment at their boundaries. He might use an old category in new ways (as in the Iambi), or rework tragic themes in epic meter (as in the Hecale), embed encomia in hymns (as in the Hymn to Delos), write epinicia in elegiacs, or even devise new models by arranging over fifty diverse tales into one discontinuous (or disingenuous) narrative of over four thousand lines (as in the Aetia). Callimachus’ own polyeideia, or habit of writing in more than one genre, and his crossing of generic boundaries, at least the boundaries that Aristotle and even Callimachus the author of the Pinakes would set, was not unprecedented. However, in two respects his generic experimentation appears to have been unique: () in creating a long poem he moved away from the style of epic poetry with its narratives unified by incident or character, and () he incorporated prose sources in poetry, occasionally even by name. In Callimachean criticism the first deviation is generally understood in terms of his rejection of Homer. In Callimachus’ day Homer’s ubiquity, from the schoolroom to civic performance, and his Panhellenic iconicity limited his efficacy as a model for creative imitation. Homer was an artifact, a monument of the poetic past, and inimitable, because the very monumentality of his texts guaranteed second-tier status for anyone who tried. The challenge for Callimachus and his peers was how to adapt Homer to a new environment, and this necessarily included “rejecting,” if by that term we mean neither privileging nor imitating those aspects of earlier hexametric poetry that could not be translated effectively into contemporary writing. Callimachus clearly did not privilege the writing of a sustained narrative over many thousands of lines, the kind of narrative  

: . Morrison : – points out that the generic mixing of Callimachus is limited to rather discrete categories.

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Introduction



trajectory we find in the Iliad. For single subjects and contained narratives he seems to have preferred shorter hexameter poems, ranging from no more than a hundred (as the Hymn to Zeus) to over a thousand lines in all (as in the Hecale). But Callimachus did not reject length per se, since his Aetia contained over four thousand lines. The changes were his choice of meter (elegiacs) and his narrative structure, which resembled a collection of short poems arranged in patterned sequences and bound together in an accommodatingly loose frame. This aesthetic decision may have been viewed by Callimachus’ critics, his Telchines, as a failure of heroic nerve, but unless one chooses to believe that the only reason not to write an epic poem is a negative judgment of Homer as a poet, there is no reason to imagine that Callimachus thought any less of the poet than any of his contemporaries did. An attendant view is that the rejection of sustained narrative necessarily resulted in a more limited or “slender” poetic vision. Callimachus certainly advocated a refined poetic style, but this did not necessarily constrain his poetic conception for the Aetia, which was both bold and sweeping. Homer’s iconicity also made him an obvious target for criticism, as Plato demonstrates in the Republic with his long debate over the value of poets for the state. In addition, Homer’s language had become an object of study that reified it as alien, although such intense scrutiny may have led to a heightened awareness of its potential for poetic expressiveness. The more rare or strange the word, the more likely it was to conjure up specific Homeric moments, and hence allow the later philosopher or poet to embed the word in his own text as an emotional shorthand. For example, in the Hymn to Demeter, Triopas prays to his father Poseidon to take away the burden of Erysichthon’s all-consuming appetite; Callimachus characterizes that hunger as kak‡ boÅbrwstiv, employing a hapax legomenon from Homer’s Iliad. The phrase comes from the scene of Priam visiting Achilles to ransom Hector’s body. Achilles reflects that Zeus has two urns, one of goods, one of ills: to the lucky he gives a mixture, to the unlucky man he gives ills only: kaª — kakŸ boÅbrwstiv –pª cq»na d±an –laÅnei (“and a ravening hunger drives him over the shining earth,” .). Callimachus’ employment of this unique expression allows the reader to see Triopas’ plight as the result of divine whimsy but also Triopas’ desire to be rid of his son as a bathetic contrast to Priam’s need to reclaim his dead child. In the Republic (d) Socrates had cited this passage of the Iliad in his  

On Hellenistic narrative hexameter poetry, see Amb¨uhl . Homer certainly found his way into Callimachus’ poetry, into every poem whatever its genre.

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

Callimachus in Context

critique of Homer’s understanding of the nature of the gods. If the gods are wholly good, how can they confer evils on men? Because of the mimetic power of the encounter of Priam and Achilles, both of whom instantiate Achilles’ claim that to the fortunate Zeus gives a mixture of good and ill, Socrates makes a cogent argument for excluding such poetry from the state. Callimachus subsequently includes this by now doubly marked phrase (for Homer and for Plato) in his hymn in such a way that kak‡ boÅbrwstiv defines not divine whimsy, but retribution for sacrilege, thus imposing moral order onto Homer’s random world. In so doing, de facto he answers Socrates’ objections. Plato’s critique of Homer had many components, but a central issue was what actions and behaviors were suitable for imitation. Callimachus’ judgment may not have coincided with Plato’s, but both men inhabited social and intellectual worlds that required models for behavior that differed from Homer’s, and whether writing philosophical speculation or poetry, the Homeric moment had passed (or at least these writers thought it had) even as engagement with his texts, if anything, may have increased. Callimachus’ second deviation from generic norms was the blending of prose and poetry. From at least the time of Homer poets had staked out a place of cultural authority. So much so that prose writers, even historians like Thucydides or philosophers like Plato, often turned to poetic sources to corroborate or serve as foils for their own arguments. However, by the third century bc, prose writers had gained the ascendency in their superior claims of knowledge and truth-telling, whether by research (autopsy or report) or through a process of rational argument. The fourth century saw the proliferation of prose writing, and in particular the local histories that assumed some of the poets’ functions in recording regional myths, as for example in the Atthidographers’ promotion of the Theseus legend. The Alexandrian library would have made far more of these written texts available, which in turn would have provided new opportunities for acquiring information for those who worked in its shadow. Callimachus seems to have been the first poet to embrace the altered status of prose, and in a pivotal aition in book  (fr. .– Pf.), he reverses the behavior of prose writers who quoted the poets: he claims that the story of Acontius and Cydippe came from the Cean historian Xenomedes: pr”sbuv –thtum©h. memelhm”nov, ›nqen ¾ pa[i]d»v | mÓqov –v ¡met”rhn ›drame Kalli»phn (“the old man, scrupulous of the truth, whence the story of the child ran   

We are indebted to Federica Caraguti for calling these passages to our attention. Even Longinus, in his admiration for Homer, does not require writers to imitate the form (hexameter epic), only the poet’s sublime aesthetic. Calame b.

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Introduction



to my Calliope”). He also reverses the research process insofar as he does not spend time on autopsy, going out in search of his story, rather the information in his source is portrayed as “running” to him. Xenomedes’ tale was not Callimachus’ only borrowing from prose. Leandrius (or Meandrius) is named as his source for the tale of Ino and Melicertes. The Argolika of Agias and Derkylos, whether or not the poet cites them within his text, provided the Argive material for more than one aition (in at least that of Linus and Coroebus in book  and the Argive Fountains in book ). Callimachus uses other prose sources without attribution: the peculiar behavior of the Indian ants in Iambus  is remarkably close to an account in Herodotus ..; Šeisma ™n is the unusual, Ionian expression Herodotus uses to discuss the Linus song in his book on Egypt; and the image of drought as being able to cross a river with dry feet in the Victory of Sosibius (fr. . Pf.) has an exact analogue in Herodotus (.). What Callimachus relates on the Sicilian cities is found in Thucydides and was in Timaeus as well; information supplied by the Atthidographers appears in the Hecale. This unusual feature of his writing coupled with the close identification he makes between himself as a poet and the old historian Xenomedes suggests that Callimachus’ greatest genre violation was to contaminate poetry and prose. To do so in the context of the Aetia was to provide not just a new poetic vision of the past but to co-opt the truth-value of prose writing for his own, non-Homeric poetic agenda. Callimachus lived between two cities: Cyrene, with its rich Dorian traditions, venerable civic spaces, and divinities closely entwined with the origins and well-being of the city, and Alexandria, a new space that could not claim autochthony, common myths, or even an organically evolved set of social practices. In many respects Alexander had shattered the integrity of the polis-world that Cyrene represented. His conquests had introduced Greeks to far more heterogeneous and diverse cultures than they had previously encountered, and his newly established cities created opportunities for Greeks from many different poleis to intermingle. In the most important city of his legacy, Egyptian Alexandria, Callimachus could not return to the past, writing as if the world that Alexander’s conquests had made visible were irrelevant. To write in this world required the poet to reshape the     

For debates among the Greek historians about what constituted proper research methodology, see Schepens . Hdt. .. For a discussion of this unusual phrase, see Stephens : –. We are indebted to David Smith for drawing this to our attention, see now Harder : –. See Hollis : –, –. Though surprisingly this is often the claim that is made about his poetry.

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

Callimachus in Context

Greek culture that earlier Greek writers both created and took for granted, to make that set of inherited values meaningful in a non-Greek location and for an immigrant population of Greeks who lived among non-Greeks. In his poetry Callimachus adumbrates this world of cultures transformed: of old institutions like the Spartan Carneia in new places, of migrating figures like Pollis or Theugenes in the Aetia, a world with a multiplicity of voices and behaviors. If they are not reducible to an Aristotelian unity, they can be celebrated, and their discrete voices harmonized through the imagination and the text of the poet. In order to do this Callimachus not only experiments with the available poetic models inherited from the Greek past, he also turns to prose: generic mixing in this broader sense allows him to allude to, borrow, and imitate a wide range of writers from Herodotus to Plato. This prompts us to ask, as a fundamental question, to what extent Callimachus aims not just to assert a role for poetry in speaking for and about this new cultural formation, but to create literary forms that absorb previous modes of articulating human realities – poetry, history, philosophy – to convey not one or another parochial truth, but a universalizing view of converging particularities.

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c h ap t er 1

Literary quarrels

suicide by the book e­pav ‘ ë é Hlie ca±re ì Kle»mbrotov ÞmbrakiÛthv ¤lat’ ˆf’ ËyhloÓ te©ceov e«v %¹dhn, Šxion oÉd•n «dÜn qan†tou kak»n, ˆll‡ Pl†twnov šn t¼ perª yucv gr†mm’ ˆnalex†menov. On saying, “Farewell Sun,” Cleombrotus the Ambraciote leapt from a high wall into Hades, not that he had seen an evil that merited death, but because he had read a single writing of Plato’s – On the Soul. (Ep.  GP =  Pf.)

Cleombrotus was, notably, one of the companions not present at Socrates’ death, as Phaedo informs Echechrates at the beginning of the dialogue that bears his name. But Plato did not indicate that the Cleombrotus missing at Socrates’ final moments was an Ambraciote, which has caused some scholars to hesitate before identifying the figure in Callimachus’ epigram with the Cleombrotus of the Phaedo. It should not. The potential for ambiguity is characteristic of epigram: the first two lines open like a conventional epitaph for someone-or-other named Cleombrotus, while the last two narrow the choices by directing the reader to Plato’s dialogue. By specifically naming Plato at the end of the third line and the dialogue, On the Soul, in the fourth, Callimachus invites his audience to contextualize 



Phaedo c– (along with the elder Aristippus of Cyrene). In another epigram (Ep.  GP =  Pf.) Callimachus records the death of the children of a Cyrenean named Aristippus: “Melanippus was buried at dawn, Basilo died at sunset ( el©ou d” | duom”nou), by her own hand (aÉtocer©).” All Cyrene mourned on beholding the “well-offspringed house” (eÎteknon . . . d»mon), now “widowed” (cron). The name, Aristippus, the suicide, and the temporal markers (Phaedo and his companions come to Socrates at dawn [d] on the last day; he dies [b–] at sunset, ¡l©ou dusmän), and the metaphors (Callimachus’ widowed house, Socrates’ orphaned followers, a–) all suggest some relationship to the Phaedo. White  argues that Callimachus’ Cleombrotus is the figure from Plato; G. D. Williams : – the opposite.



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

Literary quarrels

the epigram in terms of the Phaedo. The epigram’s own transition from speaking (: e­pav) to reading (: ˆnalex†menov) carries its audience from open-ended dialogue and infinite possibilities to fixed text, from the Hades of poets to the immortal soul of philosophers, from Callimachus (author of the epigram) to Plato (author of the Phaedo) to alternate readings of Plato’s text: Callimachus the poetic commentator versus Cleombrotus the prose-reading suicide. Cleombrotus’ original absence justifies his interest in the discussion on the deathless soul, but at a distance – by reading; and Cleombrotus, by misreading the dialogue, which specifically disallows suicide (c–c), may play out the fears expressed by Socrates in another dialogue, the Phaedrus, about the efficacy of writing for conveying philosophical truths. The epigram raises questions central for this chapter: how deeply does Callimachus engage with Plato? Does he express admiration for a writer so powerful that he could drive a reader to suicide or contempt for the foolishness of philosophers and philosophy? Is the epigram more than clever and erudite play? Could it be understood as part of a broader and more serious response to Platonic writings? Callimachus treats Plato differently from his other philosophical sources: in the epigram on Cleombrotus he introduces him by name into a poetic environment. The poem makes it clear that Callimachus had read Plato and with some care, since he compresses the theme of the Phaedo into four short verses that, in addition, encapsulate Plato’s concerns about misreading. Additional confirmation that Callimachus knew and reacted to Plato’s criticisms of poetry comes from Proclus’ commentary to Plato’s Timaeus: e­per g†r tiv Šllov kaª poihtän Šristov kritŸv ¾ Pl†twn, Þv kaª Logg±nov sun©sthsin. ëHrakle©dhv goÓn ¾ Pontik»v fhsin, Âti tän Coir©lou t»te eÉdokimoÅntwn Pl†twn t‡ %ntim†cou proÉt©mhse kaª aÉt¼n ›peise 

  

T¼ perª yucv appears as an alternate title for the Phaedo already in the th Epistle, a: –n t perª yucv l»g. Whether or not the epistle is genuine, this does suggest that the alternate title was already in circulation before Callimachus’ time. A second century ad lexicon from Oxyrhynchus (POxy. ..) cites Pl†t(wn) P(erª) yuc(v), and certainly Lucian in his dialogue, Philopseudeis, knows this title (.: ˆneg©gnwskon g‡r t¼ perª yucv toÓ Pl†twnov bibl©on –f’ ¡suc©av, “For I was reading Plato’s book on the soul at leisure”). A papyrus of the Phaedo (PPetr. .–) from Gurob and commentary from Hibeh (both third century bc) confirm that the dialogue had some circulation outside of Museum circles. For an excellent discussion of this epigram in its philosophical context, see White . Miles . The view of the soul that Socrates articulates in this dialogue, namely that it was entirely separable from the body and would survive death, was not shared by other philosophical schools, and that too belongs to the background of the epigram. See Long : – for a brief summary of Hellenistic philosophical positions on the soul.

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Suicide by the book



t¼n ëHrakle©dhn e«v Kolofäna –lq»nta t‡ poižmata sull”xai toÓ ˆndr»v. m†thn oÔn flhnafäsi Kall©macov kaª DoÓriv Þv Pl†twnov oÉk Àntov ¬kanoÓ kr©nein poiht†v· If there was any one best critic of poets it was Plato, as Longinus also asserts. For Heraclides Ponticus at any rate says that although the works of Choerilus were then esteemed, Plato preferred those of Antimachus, and he persuaded Heraclides himself, when he was going to Colophon, to collect the man’s poems. Callimachus and Duris chatter foolishly when they claim that Plato was not competent to judge poets. (c)

At issue clearly were questions of aesthetic judgment and poetic preference, and the last sentence indicates that Callimachus expressed these opinions in something other than his poetry, and that his critique was important enough to register with Proclus. Proclus’ source for his information has usually been taken to be Against Praxiphanes. Callimachus might well have included judgments about Plato in what was presumably an anti-Peripatetic tract, but it is equally possible that he was critical of both Peripatetic and Academic ideas about poetry, and in more than one place. Since his prose work is now lost, we can only judge his views on any theoretical issue from his poetry, and poets have different agenda than philosophers, which they express imaginatively via a story or allusion or example. Hence they necessarily lack the tidiness of an Aristotelian argument. Nonetheless, Proclus’ remark and Against Praxiphanes adumbrate an agonistic stance that may be found also in Callimachus’ poetry where disputes about poetry writing are of some importance in his intellectual self-representation. But why should they occupy as much poetic space as they do, and what exactly are they about? Undoubtedly there is an element of captatio benevolentiae to these moments, as Markus Asper has well articulated. But Callimachus did not invent the literary quarrel: it is a topos that has a distinctive pedigree – Plato a century earlier in Republic, book , made the assertion that there was “an ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry” (palai‡ m”n tiv diafor‡ filosof© te kaª poihtik, b–), and certainly earlier figures like Xenophanes did criticize contemporary poets. But, in fact, the idea of a quarrel may be related to the cultural circumstance of competitive performance that 

 

Callimachus’ opinion of Antimachus’ Lyde was expressed in an epigram fragment (fr.  Pf.: LÅdh kaª pacÆ gr†mma kaª oÉ tor»n [“the Lyde, both a stout poem and not lucid”]). For the critical terms, see Krevans : –. Krevans also points out that, despite the critical tone, the two poets shared many features of narrative and diction (–). : –. DK B , B .–. Ford : – would distinguish this earlier criticism as social in function in contrast to later, formal criticism.

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

Literary quarrels

dominated civic and religious festivals from at least the sixth century bc, and competitive display was clearly attached to the teaching practice of the Sophists. In addition, the generation of philosophers that followed the establishment of the first philosophical schools was so riven with strife that new schools quickly proliferated, so “quarrel” may have been a natural way of positioning philosophical thought against whatever was considered to be the dominant paradigm. Plato’s “quarrel” with poetry centered on the relationship of poetry to moral and ethical questions, while Callimachus’ quarrels (at least as they have been understood) are restricted to disputes over form and the technical production of poetry, though it is by no means certain that these two positions were ever completely separable. Andrew Ford’s recent study of the origins of criticism provides a useful historicizing framework for this discussion: he finds that in the Archaic and early Classical periods criticism remained embedded within the social practice of performance, but during the fifth century the growth of prose, changing views of language, and the concomitant growth of a literary culture led to what in the fourth century, primarily as the result of Aristotle, became a fully “formal” criticism in which the poem took on an autonomous artistic value. In the Archaic period poets could invoke divine inspiration as authority for their performance and as a guarantee of the truth of poetic utterance. Poets were speakers of wisdom (sof©a) and many of the figures later appropriated for philosophy wrote in verse. When criticism was directed against poets it was for failing in this respect, that is, failing in their moral and ethical obligations to their community. But during the fifth century the poet’s relationship to society began to change; as prose writers challenged the truth-value of poetry and created new venues for expression, poetry shifted from a product of inspiration or of divine possession to that of craftsmanship or technˆe. The term technˆe seems to have ranged in meaning from simple skill to the complete intellectual mastery of a subject (as Socrates uses the term in the Ion). Whether poets were independent of or complicit in the process, the gradual removal of poetry from the realm of the possessed speaker and the treatment of it as  

  

E.g., the Sophist Alcidamas is credited with the Contest of Homer and Hesiod. Ford . From Ford’s perspective this led to modern literary criticism, but the heuristic value of his scheme for understanding Callimachus’ historical position in the evolving social role of the poet does not depend on accepting his conclusion. Maslov :  observes that “if an unmarked term for ‘poet’ exists in Pindar, it is sof»v.” Finkelberg : –; Ford : –. We normally transliterate t”cnh rather than privilege any one translation. P. Murray : –; Ford : –. For a Callimachean context, see Andrews : , who also cites Aristotle’s definition of true technˆe as “knowledge of the universal” and the ability to account for causes of things (Met. b–).

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Suicide by the book



a craft meant that it became – at least theoretically – teachable and capable of being explained by rules, rules that Plato, but more systematically Aristotle and the members of his School, sought to articulate and then deploy as critique. The transition from inspiration to craft was accompanied by a shift from the terms “singer” (ˆoid»v) and “to sing” (ˆe©dein) to the terms “maker” (poihtžv) and “to make” (poie±n) to describe the poet/performer and the creative act. By Callimachus’ time philosophers/critics had been writing for a generation on the character and training of the poet (poihtžv) and the technical aspects of composition (po©hsiv): language and word arrangement, genre, and sound. The origins of this dislocation of the poet from the poem are disputed, but Peripatetic writings attributed to Aristotle and his successors, Theophrastus, Heraclides Ponticus, and Praxiphanes are all complicit in the process. These last three are credited with works On poets and poetry, though none has been transmitted intact. If precise mapping of debates about poetry in the early Hellenistic period is not possible, general trends are clear enough: () they trace their beginnings to a poetic theory that separated the poet (poihtžv) from his creation (po©hsiv), which in turn permitted the poem an aesthetic existence apart from its moment of performance. Various philosophical theories about how language (l”xiv) worked, at the level of etymology (–tumolog©a), syntax (sÅntaxiv), sound (fwnž), and even letter (stoice±on) led to the scrutiny of the poem at every level of its technical organization. Each element then was subject to rules that could be elaborated, usually in terms of t¼ pr”pon, or what was appropriate for a genre, character, effect, or thought (di†noia). () All theories try to describe the aesthetic impact of poetry and how it is achieved. () All sketch some relationship between pleasure and ethical or moral principles, and this usually is figured as utility. Theories may be reduced to three possibilities: poetry must be in service of some higher purpose (so Plato), poetry must “teach and delight” (so Horace in the Ars poetica), or poetry must provide pleasure, and ethical content is irrelevant (so Crates of Mallos). () Mimesis is the mechanism that creates and transmits pleasure and/or values, though not even Plato and Aristotle were consistent in their formulation of what mimesis is and how it works. Possibilities include the imitation of some idealized “reality” external to this world (for example, Plato’s incorporeal Forms), a mirror held up to   

Ford : –; Maslov  argues that in the Archaic and Classical periods, apart from epic poets, the term ˆoid»v was restricted to performers, not composers of poems. Janko : –. But in Philodemus it seems that the exact relationship of poet to poem continues to be a matter of contention, see Asmis c: –.

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

Literary quarrels

life, the poem creating its own reality, or what S. Halliwell calls “behavioral emulation”, that is, the imitation of others. This last model “also gave rise to the idea of artistic emulation of predecessors or rivals.” Concrete evidence for specific details of these ideas before or contemporary with Callimachus, apart from the legacy of Aristotle and Plato, is sketchy at best, and Plato’s own views are inconsistent over the course of the dialogues. A papyrus treatise from the mid-third century bc found in Hibeh would appear to set out poetic diction so that poets know what to use and avoid and so that the individual has criteria by which to judge poetry. The editor, E. G. Turner, suggested that the author was Theophrastus or perhaps Heraclides Ponticus because both were known to have written tracts on poetics. Whoever the author, the papyrus provides evidence that by  bc texts on what constituted correct writing and what constituted formal criteria for criticism were already circulating in Upper Egypt. Heraclides Ponticus, whom Proclus mentioned as Plato’s agent for collecting Antimachus’ works, was discussed by Diogenes Laertius immediately following Strato and Demetrius. Closely connected to the Academy, he is said to have studied also with Speusippus, the Pythagoreans, and finally Aristotle. The philological works attributed to him include On poetry and poets, On Archilochus and Homer, On music, and On the three tragic poets. Some of his views on poets and poetry may be extracted from Philodemus, a philosopher of the late Republican period, whose writings have been recovered from Herculaneum and whose value lay in his systematic critique of views held by his predecessors. In his lengthy work On poetry, columns . to at least ., Philodemus says that Heraclides advocated that a poet both please and be useful, although Philodemus later found much to criticize in Heraclides’ articulation. Heraclides thought the poet should possess knowledge and “burdened the poet” with the requirement that he have accurate knowledge of dialects (.–), though against this Philodemus comments that it is enough if the dialect is “sufficient for what the poet chooses to write.” If Heraclides is the subject in .,  

 



Halliwell : . This type of emulation is particularly important in Longinus. See the useful essays in Moravcsik and Tempo . For a shorter but trenchant assessment see P. Murray : –. For Hellenistic literary theory see Gutzwiller  and, with respect to Callimachus in particular, Romano .  See the assessment of Mejer : –. PHib. ., p. . PHib. ., which is assigned on the basis of context and hand to – bc, contains a comparison of Archilochus and Homer. There is no way of knowing the relationship of this text to Heraclides’ effort, but it does indicate that contemporary texts that discussed iambographers were available in early Ptolemaic Egypt. On the papyrus sources of Heraclides, see Dorandi . D.L. . and see the collected fragments in Wehrli.

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Suicide by the book



then he also argues that the poet needs vividness (–n†rgeia) and concision (suntom©a). These positions bear some resemblance to statements found in Callimachus, though given the gaps in the evidence we ought not to assume that Callimachus is dependent on Heraclides, only that similarities in the two reflect contemporary discourse. From the fragments listed in Wehrli we learn that Heraclides located the origins of poetry with Amphion, the son of Zeus, that is, he attributed a divine origin to it, and that he thought the phrase «Ÿ pai†n, «Ÿ pai†n, «Ÿ pai†n could be scanned alternately as a hexameter and as a choliambic (a meter he attributes to Hipponax). His writing on music makes it clear that he saw poetry and music as inextricably bound and that musical modes should be suited to character and genre. Philodemus provides further insights into early Hellenistic thinking about poetics in his comments on Neoptolemus of Parium, Crates of Mallos, and Pausimachus of Miletus. Neoptolemus was a Peripatetic whose chief claim to fame was a threefold division of poetry: po©hma (lineby-line stylistic analysis), po©hsiv (subject and form), and poihtžv (the education of the poet). Crates was a Stoic and a Euphonist associated with the Pergamene library. He came to Rome in / bc (Suetonius, De gramm. ). The main lines of his theory of poetry were that the aim of poetry was pleasure (not to express truths); content, genre, or wordchoice was not important; the central component of poetry was sound, which could be broken down to the level of letter and syllable; good poets intuitively knew how to choose efficacious sounds to please the many; and there was a “natural” relationship between sound and meaning. Pausimachus was another Euphonist who believed that poets composing under the influence of inspiration rather than art would inevitably produce naturally good sounds. These men, who belonged to the end of the third and middle of the second century bc, allow a glimpse of the critical terrain in the generations immediately after Callimachus. They were sometimes identified as philosophers, but the term they often applied to themselves – kritiko© – is closer to the mark, since they were not primarily engaged       

Mangoni . These passages are translated by D. Armstong in Obbink : –. Fr.  Wehrli = Plutarch, De musica  and see Barker : –. Fr.  Wehrli = Ath. e. Fr.  Philodemus, On Music. See Janko : –. See Barker  for the historical context of Heraclides’ views of music. See Asmis c: –. On his importance for Horace’s Ars poetica see Brink . See Asmis a: ; Janko : –; J. Porter’s very helpful BMCR review of M. Broggiato, Cratete di Mallo (..) and Porter . See Janko : –.

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

Literary quarrels

with wider philosophical questions, nor with the ethical or moral implications of poetry, but in establishing formal criteria for judgments about its quality. Their arguments cannot now be attached to any particular school, though they do show affinities with various theories of language in vogue. E. Asmis, for example, claims that the ideas particularly of Neoptolemus and Crates were an eclectic mix that derived ultimately from Plato (especially his Cratylus), and incorporated elements of Stoicism. There is no doubt that Callimachus’ own poetic practice and critical observations conform in some cases to ideas expressed by these later theorists – his emphasis on the pleasures of sound, for example, clearly aligns him with Crates and Pausimachus, who articulated a position that sound alone was the criterion for good poetry (the ear not the intellect should be the judge), and may have ultimately derived from the philosophical positions of the Cyrenaic hedonists; and his etymologies coincide in several cases with Plato. It is a fair assumption, therefore, that already by the third century ideas similar to those of later kritiko© were well established in the Alexandrian Museum. Presumably the fil»sofoi whom, according to Athenaeus, the Skeptic poet/philosopher Timon of Phlius satirized in the Silloi were those engaged in these critical disputes. No doubt they should also be identified with the kritiko©, whether fil»logoi or fil»sofoi, whom Hipponax chastises in the first Iambus. Because almost all of Callimachus’ prose has disappeared, it is impossible to know to what extent he engaged in writing treatises like those we have been discussing (apart from Against Praxiphanes). Certainly, the taxonomic implications of formal criticism would have been significant for his Pinakes, but to what extent his compositional principles overlapped with contemporaries is now moot. Callimachus made his greatest impact as a poet both upon his contemporaries and on subsequent generations of Greek and Roman poets, and it is the relevance of critical ideas to his own poetic practice that is of interest here, not a linear reconstruction of this or that theory. Within Callimachus’ poetry critics and criticism are clustered in specific contexts and, rather surprisingly, Plato can often be recognized within these same poetic environments, sometimes for a theoretical perspective but more often for a particularly memorable image, narrative sequence, or verbal alignment. This suggests that Callimachus   

Asmis c. For Hellenistic theories of language see Schenkeveld and Barnes  and for the Stoics, see Long : –. His etymologies in the Hymn to Zeus have parallels in the Cratylus (a–c, b), while that of «Ÿ pai†n resembles what is found in Clearchus of Soli (fr.  Wehrli = Ath. b). “Many bookish scribblers graze in populous Egypt quarreling forever in a basket of the Muses”: SH fr.  = F  Di Marco.

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Plato in the Aetia Prologue



was not interested in staking a claim to any single critical model, but in situating his own poetry within the kind of social and political discourse that Plato had attempted to close off to poets. For his purpose Plato and his writings about poetry would have been a useful foil, and Plato’s penchant for illustrative stories (mÓqoi) makes the distance between the two by no means as great as it was between Aristotle and Callimachus, for example. Moreover, Plato and Callimachus seem to share an extensive interest in the relationship of different modes of intellectual exchange: performance versus reading a fixed text, the relationship of inspiration and systematic knowledge to poetic practice, the intersection of poetry and prose, and the status of the poet vis-`a-vis other types of intellectual exchange. plato in the aetia prologue Poll†ki moi Telc±nev –pitrÅzousin ˆoid, nž·dev o° MoÅshv oÉk –g”nonto f©loi, e¯neken oÉc šn Šeisma dihnek•v £ basil[h . . . . . . ]av –n polla±v ¢nusa cili†sin £ . . . . .].ouv ¤rwav, ›pov d’ –pª tutq¼n ›l[exa pa±v Œte, tän d’ –t”wn ¡ dek‡v oÉk ½l©gh. . . . . . . ].[.]kai Te[l]c±sin –gÜ t»de· ‘fÓlon a[ . . . . . . .] tžk[ein] ¨par –pist†menon, . . . . . . ].. rehn. [½l]ig»sticov· ˆll‡ kaq”lkei . . . . polÆ tŸn makrŸn Àmpnia Qesmof»ro[v· to±n d•] duo±n M©mnermov Âti glukÅv, a[ . . . . . . ] ¡ meg†lh d’ oÉk –d©daxe gunž. . . . ..]on –pª Qrž·kav ˆp’ A«gÅptoio [p”toito a¯mat]i. Pugma©wn ¡dom. ”. nh [g]”ra[nov, Massag. ”. t. ai kaª makr¼n. ½·steÅoien –p’ Šndra Mdon]· ˆ[hdon©dev] d’ æde melicr[»]terai. ›llete Baskan©hv ½lo¼n g”nov· aÔqi d• t”cn kr©nete,] mŸ sco©n Pers©di tŸn sof©hn· mhd’ ˆp’ –meÓ difte m”ga yof”ousan ˆoidžn t©ktesqai· brontn oÉk –m»n, ˆll‡ Di»v.’ kaª g‡r Âte prÛtiston –mo±v –pª d”lton ›qhka goÅnasin, %[p»]llwn e²pen  moi LÅkiov· ë . . . . . . .] . . . ˆoid”, t¼ m•n qÅov Âtti p†ciston qr”yai, tŸ]n. MoÓsan d’ Ýgaq• leptal”hn· pr¼v d” se] kaª t»d’ Šnwga, t‡ mŸ pat”ousin Œmaxai t‡ ste©bein, —t”rwn ­cnia mŸ kaq’ ¾m† d©fron –l]. n mhd’ o³mon ˆn‡ platÅn, ˆll‡ keleÅqouv ˆtr©pto]u. v, e« kaª steinot”rhn –l†seiv.ì











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

Literary quarrels t piq»mh]n· –nª to±v g‡r ˆe©domen o° ligÆn §con t”ttigov, q]»rubon d’ oÉk –f©lhsan Ànwn. qhrª m•n oÉat»enti pane©kelon ½gkžsaito Šllov, –g]Ü d’ e­hn oËl. [a]cÅv, ¾ pter»eiv,  p†ntwv, ¯na grav ¯na dr»son ¥n m•n ˆe©dw prÛkion –k d©hv  ”rov e²dar ›dwn, aÔqi t¼. d. ’ –kdÅoimi, t» moi b†rov Âsson ›pesti triglÛcin. ½lo nsov –p’ ìEgkel†d. . . . . . . . MoÓsai g‡r Âsouv ­don Àqmati pa±dav mŸ lox, polioÆv oÉk ˆp”qento f©louv. . . . . . . . . . . . . .]se. [..] pter¼n oÉk”ti kine±n . . . . . . . . . . . . .]h. t[]mov –nerg»tatov.







Often the Telchines croak at my song, fools, who are not friends of the Muse, because I did not complete one continuous poem either on kings? [ . . . or . . . ] heroes in many thousands of lines, but I [told] my tale bit by bit like a child, though the decades of my years are not few. [ . . . ] to the Telchines I [say] this: “tribe [ . . . ] that knows how to waste your liver [ . . . ] was of few lines. But bountiful Demeter drags down by far the long [lady?], and of the two the [ . . . ] taught that Mimnermus is sweet, not the large lady . . . [ . . . ] may the crane rejoicing in the blood of Pygmies [fly . . . ] to Thrace from Egypt, and may the Massagetae shoot at their man, [the Mede], from afar. Thus are [nightingales] sweeter. Begone, baneful race of Envy. And in turn [judge] poetry by its technˆe, not by the Persian rope. Do not ask me to produce a loud-sounding song: to thunder is not mine, but Zeus’s.” For, when for the very first time, I placed my tablet on my knees, Lycian Apollo said to me: “[ . . . ] singer, [raise] your sacrificial victim to be as fat as possible, but your Muse, my friend, to be slender. [And I bid you] this also: go there where wagons do not trundle; [drive your chariot] not along the same tracks as others; nor along the broad path, but the [unworn] ways, even though you will drive along a narrower course.” [I obeyed him.] For we sing among those who love the clear sound of the cicada, not the din of asses. Let another bray just like the long-eared [beast]; may I be the small, the winged one, ah truly, that I may sing feeding upon the moisture, the morning dew from the divine air, and that in turn I may shed old age, which is a weight upon me as great as the tricorn island upon destructive Enceladus. [ . . . ] as many as the Muses look upon with favorable eye when they are children, these friends they do not lay aside when they are gray. [ . . . ] no longer to move its wing [ . . . ] then the most vigorous . . . . (fr. .– Pf. with additions)

This opening of Callimachus’ most important poem, the Aetia, is his most famous and most frequently quoted excursus on poetic practice. Within 

For poll†ki see Pontani . Although the text is restored, the scholium (Marc. gr.  to Od. .) reads: mžteri m•n Þv poll†kiv Telc±nev, which confirms E. Lobel’s original conjecture poll†k]i. For the restoration of line , see Acosta-Hughes and Stephens .

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Plato in the Aetia Prologue



these lines he incorporates names and allusions to at least ten different literary predecessors: Aristotle’s notion of poetic unity (); the weighing of poetry from Aristophanes’ Frogs (–); Philitas’ poem on Demeter (); Mimnermus (); the battle of pygmies and cranes from the opening of Iliad, book  (–); the battle of the Medes and Massagetae is most probably from Choerilus’ epic (–); Hesiod’s encounter with the Muses (–); the wagon and the narrow path from Pindar (–); Aesop’s fable of the ass and the cicada (–); the weight of old age like Mt. Etna on Enceladus from Euripides’ Heracles Furens (–); Tithonus from Sappho and the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite (–). We have argued elsewhere that Callimachus has chosen intertexts that carry implicit or explict statements about poetic values, and that these intertexts are rereadings or at times deliberate misreadings of his poetic predecessors as part of Callimachus’ self-definition as a poet. An intertext that we did not discuss may be the most important – Plato’s Phaedo. Early in the Phaedo, Socrates begins to relate his own urge to engage in poetic activity. This theme is not pursued in the subsequent dialogue, but its position at the opening of the work, and the specific elements involved, find several points of correspondence with Callimachus’ Aetia Prologue. Moreover, Cleombrotus was mentioned in the passage only a few lines earlier (c–) than the passage set out here in some detail: ëO oÔn K”bhv ËpolabÛn, NŸ t¼n D©a, å SÛkratev, ›fh, eÔ g’ –po©hsav ˆnamnžsav me. perª g†r toi tän poihm†twn æn pepo©hkav –nte©nav toÆv toÓ A«sÛpou l»gouv kaª t¼ e«v t¼n %p»llw proo©mion kaª Šlloi tin”v me ¢dh ¢ronto, ˆt‡r kaª EÎhnov pr hn, Âti pot• dianohqe©v, –peidŸ deÓro §lqev, –po©hsav aÉt†, pr»teron oÉd•n pÛpote poižsav. e« oÔn t© soi m”lei toÓ ›cein –m• Eɞn ˆpokr©nasqai Âtan me aÔqiv –rwt – eÔ o²da g‡r Âti –ržsetai – e«p• t© crŸ l”gein. L”ge to©nun, ›fh, aÉt, å K”bhv, tˆlhq, Âti oÉk –ke©n boul»menov oÉd• to±v poižmasin aÉtoÓ ˆnt©tecnov e²nai –po©hsa taÓta – ¢‚dh g‡r Þv oÉ çdion e­h – ˆll’ –nupn©wn tinän ˆpopeirÛmenov t© l”goi, kaª ˆfosioÅmenov e« Šra poll†kiv taÅthn tŸn mousikžn moi –pit†ttoi poie±n. §n g‡r dŸ Štta toi†de· poll†kiv moi foitän t¼ aÉt¼ –nÅpnion –n t parelq»nti b©, Šllot’ –n Šll Àyei fain»menon, t‡ aÉt‡ d• l”gon, “ ö W SÛkratev,” ›fh, “mousikŸn po©ei kaª –rg†zou.” kaª –gÜ ›n ge t pr»sqen cr»n Âper ›pratton toÓto Ëpel†mbanon aÉt» moi parakeleÅesqa© te kaª –pikeleÅein, ãsper o¬ to±v q”ousi diakeleu»menoi, kaª –moª oÌtw t¼ –nÅpnion Âper ›pratton toÓto –pikeleÅein, mousikŸn poie±n, Þv filosof©av m•n oÎshv meg©sthv mousikv, –moÓ d• toÓto pr†ttontov. nÓn d’ –peidŸ ¤ te d©kh –g”neto kaª ¡ 

For Sappho, see Acosta-Hughes : –.



: –.

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

Literary quarrels

toÓ qeoÓ —ortŸ diekÛlu” me ˆpoqn skein, ›doxe crnai, e« Šra poll†kiv moi prost†ttoi t¼ –nÅpnion taÅthn tŸn dhmÛdh mousikŸn poie±n, mŸ ˆpeiqsai aÉt ˆll‡ poie±n· ˆsfal”steron g‡r e²nai mŸ ˆpi”nai prªn ˆfosiÛsasqai poižsanta poižmata [kaª] piq»menon t –nupn©. oÌtw dŸ präton m•n e«v t¼n qe¼n –po©hsa oÕ §n ¡ paroÓsa qus©a· met‡ d• t¼n qe»n, –nnožsav Âti t¼n poihtŸn d”oi, e­per m”lloi poihtŸv e²nai, poie±n mÅqouv ˆll’ oÉ l»gouv, kaª aÉt¼v oÉk § muqologik»v, di‡ taÓta dŸ oÍv proce©rouv e²con mÅqouv kaª  pist†mhn toÆv A«sÛpou, toÅtwn –po©hsa o³v prÛtoiv –n”tucon. In reply Cebes said, “By Zeus, Socrates, you’ve done well in reminding me. About the poems you have composed, setting Aesop’s tales to verse and the prooimion to Apollo, others had already asked me, and Evenus just recently, what you had in mind, since you came here, in composing these, since earlier you had never composed anything. If you’d like me to have something to say in answer to Evenus, whenever he asks me again – for I am well aware that he will ask – tell me what I should say.” “In that case tell him the truth, Cebes,” Socrates said, “that it was from no wish to rival him or his poetry in technˆe that I undertook this – for I knew that it would not be easy – but rather I was trying out the meaning of certain dreams, and avoiding the sin of negligence towards its message, if in actuality it often bade me compose this sort of music. For this is what happened: the same dream that often came to me in my past life, appearing now in one form, now in another, but always saying the same thing: ‘“Socrates,” it said, “make music and cultivate it.” Now at first I understood it to bid and encourage me to do what I was doing, that just like those who encourage runners so too the dream was bidding me do what I was doing, to make music, understanding that philosophy was the best music, and that this was what I was doing. But now, since the trial occurred, and since the god’s festival hindered my death, I thought it right, if in fact the dream was often enjoining me to make what is conventionally understood as music, not to disobey it but compose poetry, since it was safer not to die before fulfilling my sacred obligation, by composing poems in obedience to the dream. So first I composed one to the god whose festival it was. And after the god, realizing that a poet, if he wants to be a poet, must compose stories and not arguments, and since I’m not myself adept at story-telling, I therefore took up the stories I had to hand and knew, those of Aesop, and made poems of the first I chanced on.” (c–b)

Socrates explains how in his old age he had dream visions, how he decided to obey the injunctions from the god to write poetry, first by hymning Apollo, and then by writing poems on subjects taken from Aesop. Even though his very act of writing poetry arouses the suspicion that he wishes to compete with a contemporary poet (Evenus), he makes it explicit that he embarks on this act of poetic composition not to engage in rivalry, but in obedience to the god. Parallels with the opening of the Aetia are striking. As the poem opens, Callimachus the narrator is an old man reflecting back

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Plato in the Aetia Prologue



on his life (). He recounts how he first wrote poetry not as an act of poetic aemulatio with the Telchines (whatever quarrel they choose to pick with him), but in obedience to Apollo, who appeared to him when he first took up his writing tablets and lectured him on how to write poetry (–). He then renders Aesop into verse in his comparison of the donkey and the cicada (–). Both men had supernatural injunctions to write poetry, but Callimachus’ occurred when he was a young man, and he promptly obeyed. Only at the end of his life does Socrates begin to write poetry and, at the point of his death, he expresses his hopes for the soul’s immortality, while Callimachus, already a successful poet, also wishes for his soul to pass into immortality. Two potential verbal parallels would further strengthen the tie between the two passages. Socrates comes to think it best to compose poetry “in obedience” (b–: peiq»menon) to the dream injunction from Apollo: Callimachus, too, acts in obedience to Apollo’s injunction, assuming that : [t piq»mh]n (restored for other reasons) is correct. Further, in the passage that details Socrates’ dream poll†kiv occurs three times in twelve lines, making it the most repeated word other than the signal mousikž. While poll†kiv is a very frequent term in Plato, this clustered repetition is unusual. This same rather pedestrian word (poll†ki) is the first word of the Aetia. Particularly significant for understanding Callimachus’ engagement with the figure of Socrates is Plato’s appropriation of the term mousikž for philosophy, and the hierarchy implicit in identifying poetry – what Socrates’ contemporaries would regard as mousikž – as a mere commonplace. In the Phaedo Plato constructs mousikž with a broad–narrow or public–private aspect, much like Callimachus’ oppositions at the opening of the Aetia. Yet in this passage Plato also effects an equivalence of the two that makes the appropriation of each into the other the more understandable, and perhaps inevitable. Socrates needs to be able to write poetry for his claim about the superior status of philosophy to be viable, and Callimachus’ early demonstration of his ability to write poetry allows him at the end of his life to imagine his own impending immortality. Socrates’ choice of Aesop as a source for his poetic mÓqov is appropriate because the fables are ethical in content: the homely animal figures are similar to the analogies from everyday life that Socrates likes to employ, and they are similar to the mÓqoi found elsewhere in dialogues. However, the image of Socrates at the end of his life celebrating Delian Apollo or Aesop in song does open the door to an ongoing question – if philosophers too need to write poetry, how can philosophical discourse alone be the proper language/activity of the Muses?

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

Literary quarrels

A little later in the Phaedo (e–b), Socrates tells his disciples that he thinks himself akin to the swans, Apollo’s birds, who, because they are mantic, know when death is approaching. At that moment they sing most beautifully because they are about to join their divine master. . . . o° –peid‡n a­sqwntai Âti de± aÉtoÆv ˆpoqane±n, dontev kaª –n t pr»sqen cr»n, t»te dŸ ple±sta kaª k†llista dousi, geghq»tev Âti m”llousi par‡ t¼n qe¼n ˆpi”nai oÕp”r e«si qer†pontev . . . ˆll’ oÎte taÓt† moi fa©netai lupoÅmena dein oÎte o¬ kÅknoi, ˆll’ Œte o²mai toÓ %p»llwnov Àntev, mantiko© t” e«si kaª proeid»tev t‡ –n +idou ˆgaq‡ dousi kaª t”rpontai –ke©nhn tŸn ¡m”ran diafer»ntwv £ –n t ›mprosqen cr»n. [Swans] who, when they perceive that they must die, although singing before, then they sing at length and most beautifully, rejoicing that they are about to go to the god whose servants they are . . . (e–a) . . . But I do not think these [sc. other birds] sing in grief, nor the swans, but because they [sc. the swans] are Apollo’s birds they are mantic, and with foreknowledge of the good things in Hades they sing and take pleasure especially on that day more than in the time before. (a–b)

At the end of the Aetia Prologue, Callimachus, who is now an old man, imagines his impending death, and immortality. First he likens himself to the cicada who feeds on dew. A few lines later, in a now broken section at the end of the Prologue (] pter¼n oÉk”ti kine±n | . . . . . . . . . . . . .]h. t[]mov –nerg»tatov, –), he appears to employ the image of the swan at the very moment of death, when the bird can no longer move its wing, but is thereupon at its most energetic or vigorous. The cicada and the swan enclose the poet’s lament for his old age and effectively collapse two very famous Platonic moments that liken the transition from mortality to afterlife to specific animal behaviors. The swans are vatic, they are mantiko© of Apollo; the cicadas on the other hand (according to Plato) have a very particular relationship with the Muses. In the Phaedrus Socrates offers a mÓqov, an account of the cicada that follows a discussion of the immortality of the soul (e–d). At this point in the dialogue Socrates has set out a hierarchy of souls as they undergo reincarnation (d–e), claiming mousikž for the life of the philosopher: the soul that has seen the most [shall enter] into the birth of a man who will be a philosopher or lover of beauty or of a musical and loving nature (d–). Whereas a poet or other imitative artist is reduced to the sixth category of merit (e–), a disjunction that becomes the 

Scholars have argued that this passage refers not to the cicada, but to the dying swan, because of a well-known intertext, Heracles Furens, in which the chorus imagines old age as the weight of Mt. Etna (–) and then wishes to sing like the dying swan (–). Callimachus uses the image of the dying swan also in Iambus , fr. .– Pf.

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Plato in the Aetia Prologue



more significant in the account of the cicadas and the “music” of the oldest Muses, Calliope and Urania: l”getai d’ ãv pot’ §san oÕtoi Šnqrwpoi tän prªn MoÅsav gegon”nai, genom”nwn d• Mousän kaª fane©shv dv oÌtwv Šra tin•v tän t»te –xepl†ghsan Ëf’ ¡donv, ãste dontev  m”lhsan s©twn te kaª potän, kaª ›laqon teleutžsantev aËtoÅv· –x æn t¼ tett©gwn g”nov met’ –ke±no fÅetai, g”rav toÓto par‡ Mousän lab»n, mhd•n trofv de±sqai gen»menon, ˆll’ Šsit»n te kaª Špoton eÉqÆv dein, ™wv ‹n teleutžs, kaª met‡ taÓta –lq¼n par‡ MoÅsav ˆpagg”llein t©v t©na aÉtän tim tän –nq†de. Teryic»r m•n oÔn toÆv –n to±v coro±v tetimhk»tav aÉtŸn ˆpagg”llontev poioÓsi prosfilest”rouv, t d• ìErato± toÆv –n to±v –rwtiko±v, kaª ta±v Šllaiv oÌtwv, kat‡ t¼ e²dov —k†sthv timv· t d• presbut†t Kalli»p kaª t met’ aÉtŸn OÉran© toÆv –n filosof© di†gont†v te kaª timäntav tŸn –ke©nwn mousikŸn ˆgg”llousin, a° dŸ m†lista tän Mousän per© te oÉran¼n kaª l»gouv oÔsai qe©ouv te kaª ˆnqrwp©nouv ¬sin kall©sthn fwnžn. pollän dŸ oÔn ™neka lekt”on ti kaª oÉ kaqeudht”on –n t meshmbr©. It’s said that they [sc. the cicadas] were once men before the Muses were born, and at the Muses’ birth and the appearance of song certain men who were alive then were so struck by pleasure, that they sang with no thought for eating or drinking, and not realizing it they put an end to themselves. From them the race of cicadas was later born, obtaining this honor from the Muses: at birth to have no need of nourishment, but straightway sing without need of food or drink, until they die. And on their death they go to the Muses, reporting who of men now honors which of them. To Terpsichore, therefore, reporting about those who honor her in dance, they make them the more beloved to her, and to Erato those who honor her with erotics, and the rest in the same way, according to the kind of activity over which each presides. To the eldest, Calliope, and to her who comes after her, Urania, they report those who spend their time in philosophy and honor their particular music, and these Muses, because they are the ones most concerned with heaven and speech, both human and divine, they utter in the most beautiful voice. And so for many reasons we should talk, and not sleep, during midday. (b–d)

Again there are structural similarities with the Aetia Prologue just as with the Phaedo. This passage in the Phaedrus narrates an aition on the origin of the cicada, which by its very nature was a fitting appropriation for a poem that consists of a series of aitia. Callimachus’ cicada is central to the Prologue, acting as a lens that refracts previous literary iterations of the image and serves as the metaphor for his poetic immortality. Callimachus’ cicada conforms to Plato’s tale in several ways: he claims to sing among those who love its clear sound (–); he desires to shed old age and become a cicada (–); and finally in his subsequent interactions with 

Acosta-Hughes and Stephens : –.

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

Literary quarrels

the Muses he functions not like the Hesiodic initiate but as someone exchanging information with them. Plato’s description of the birth of the Muses and their enchanted song is a re-working of Hesiod’s catalogue of Muses at Th. –. As in Hesiod, so in Plato, Calliope is the pre-eminent Muse. But unlike Hesiod, for Plato some men (those who evolve into cicadas) are older than the Muses. The cicadas singing above Phaedrus and Socrates are these older men, and thus are able to bestow on men of the present day the gift they have themselves obtained from the Muses. They are now intermediaries, proftai, of the Muses, and their relationship to the Muses is intimate. The discourse is framed in terms of fil©a: it befits the cultured, “Muse-loving” man (fil»mouson Šndra) to know the origin of the cicadas and their particular gift; the cicadas, in turn, cause certain men to be more beloved (prosfil”steroi) to certain Muses. Callimachus may deliberately appropriate these terms in defining the Telchines as those who are not friends of his Muse (fr. . Pf.: nžidev o° MoÅshv oÉk –g”nonto f©loi). Later, his wish to sing among the cicadas is followed by the observation that the Muses do not thrust aside their friends when they become old (–). In the frame tale for at least the first book of the Aetia, Callimachus exchanges information on various cult practices with the Muses. The first Muse to speak seems to be Calliope (fr. .), who is also the Muse whom Callimachus will call “our Calliope” in fr. . Should fr. .: nžidev o° MoÅshv oÉk –g”nonto f©loi also be understood in light of the Platonic aition? Callimachus insists on one Muse, not a plurality, and that single Muse is likely to be the one whom Callimachus later claims for his own – Calliope. If so, she is the Muse that Socrates identifies as the one to whom the cicadas report about men who spend time in philosophical pursuits, men who are most concerned with divine and human speech and whose voices are the most beautiful. It seems possible that Callimachus is following Socrates by associating himself with this pre-eminent Muse. Socrates also equates the sheer beauty of the cicadas’ sound with that of the Sirens, and warns Phaedrus not to succumb to the mindless pleasures of hearing instead of continuing the dialogue that will yield a deeper      

Terpsichore precedes Erato; Plato also recalls Hesiod’s –rat¼n Àssan ¬e±sai (lines  and ) in ¬sin kall©sthn fwnžn. On Plato’s interest in Hesiod, see Boys-Stones and Haubold . Cf. Ferrari : . In Idyll . one of Theocritus’ characters calls Ptolemy fil»mousov. The Phaedrus is important elsewhere in Theocritus, see, e.g., Fantuzzi and Hunter : – for details. On the structure of this verse see Massimilla : . Fr. .–: mÓqov –v ¡met”rhn ›drame Kalli»phn. “The tale ran to our Calliope” suggests the process of reporting to the Muse outlined in Plato. Certainly Plato’s fil»mousov lends support to the proposed supplement at line : Š]mouson to describe the Telchines; see Bing .

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Plato in the Aetia Prologue



and more profound understanding than the song. There is no question that Callimachus in the opening of the poem is especially attentive to the beauty of sound: his own wish to sing among the cicadas attributes to them the high, light, clear sound – ligÅv – that was most prized by his contemporaries in human and instrumental performance. In contrast he characterizes his opponents as having the unpleasant braying sounds of an ass – ½gkžsaito – in a heavy spondaic ending. As the Platonic dialogue progresses, the sounds of the cicadas recede into the background to be replaced with talk. The section that links the opening vignette of the Aetia Prologue, in which Callimachus expresses the desire to shed old age and become a cicada, to the Dream (fr.  Pf.) is no longer extant, though we know that he not only encounters the Muses on Helicon (in explicit reminiscence of Hesiod) but he converses with them, or more accurately reports to them what he has learned about cult practices (or divine things). In his dream Callimachus thus acts out the role of a Socratic cicada, providing the Muses with details about human behavior. A further inference is possible. Richard Hunter has made the attractive suggestion that the dream takes place at noon while listening to cicadas, like the figures in Plato’s Phaedrus. In conversing with the Muses, Callimachus could be reacting to Socrates’ injunction to engage in discourse, not to succumb to the enchanting sounds and sleep at noon. In this way he would have communicated both beautiful sounds and the values Socrates associated with verbal exchange by representing himself in dialogue not with a philosopher but the Muses themselves. Plato’s appropriation of mousikž for philosophy, as Penelope Murray has elegantly shown, had serious and far-reaching consequences. Poetry, or what Plato’s contemporaries would have categorized as mousikž – and modern scholars might describe as song-culture – was central to Greek social, political, and religious life. As Plato makes his readers acutely aware, children were educated into their proper roles as citizens through mousikž  

 



West : . For further details on the sound of the Prologue see Acosta-Hughes and Stephens : –. The term q»rubov () may also evoke Socrates’ plea to his jurors in the Apology (a: mŸ qorube±te). The Aetia is in many respects an apologia. Hunter : –. The Oxford commentary to this now lost part of the Aetia preserves tantalizing hints of further Platonic overtones: the lemma ˆmn]ž. saite (fr. . M., fr. g Hdr.), is glossed as ˆnamn]žsait” m[e, which is reminiscent of the Platonic theory of anamnesis, articulated in the Meno and elsewhere. A little latter l”sch. v (fr. . M.), “conversation” or “place for conversation,” is glossed: [¾]mil©a[v]á l. ”get. [ai | d. • kaª t»pov, –n  ˆqr. [oi|z»men. [oi dia]l”gont[ai, “of association. And it is also said to be a place in which those gathered engage in dialogue.” Murray in Murray and Wilson : –.

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Literary quarrels



via the stories of heroic behavior sung at festivals and other cultic occasions. Although Plato’s views are not systematically articulated and often appear to be ambivalent or contradictory, the role of poets and poetry in moral education was a recurring subject in his dialogues. In the Phaedo and Phaedrus, Plato elevates the philosopher’s practice of dialectic to the highest form of mousikž at the same time that he deliberately demotes traditional poets. In Republic, book , he claims there was an ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry. Plato’s evidence for this “quarrel” is the attack on philosophy or philosophers found in Old Comedy. The generically limited source of the attacks and Plato’s own quarrel with Aristophanes’ portrait of Socrates in the Clouds has led many critics to understand the quarrel as a Platonic fiction designed to undercut Comic caricatures of philosophers on the one hand, and to enhance the status of the philosophy he is trying to promote, on the other. In the fifth century poets enjoyed a greater standing by far than philosophers. Poets (and Attic comedy is an excellent example) were publicly engaged in a wide range of discourses that were closed to philosophers, and which philosophers could only envy. Therefore it should not be surprising that in constructing his ideal state (however ironic the construction) Plato chooses to banish poets because of their pervasive and harmful influence. At many other places throughout the course of his writing, Plato seems to be testing poetic discourse against philosophical (in the same way that he tests rhetorical and Sophistic argument), and always he finds poetry lacking in some essential way. In the Ion poetic inspiration is found to be wanting in comparison with technˆe, or the systematic understanding of a given subject. In the Protagoras poetry is seen to occupy the same intellectual space as the earliest philosophers, the Seven Sages, who speak in gnomic utterance but do not engage in systematic argument. Since much pre-Socratic philosophy was in verse, Plato’s demotion of poetry in this dialogue is not irrelevant to his attempt to transform earlier philosophy into prose dialectic, as well as to elevate the social status of philosophy. The Republic and The Laws contain a series of reflections on mimesis and generic purity. In general, whenever Plato sets poetry against the practice of philosophy, it is found wanting because it panders to the irrational appetites and is incapable of truth as opposed to appearances. The fullest exposition of the fundamental difference between philosophy and poetry is to be found in Plato’s Ion. In this dialogue, which is generally



Nightingale : –.



Nussbaum in Moravcsik and Temko : –.

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Plato in the Aetia Prologue



taken to be quite early, Socrates encounters Ion, a professional rhapsode, who is a native of Ephesus. Fresh from his victory at Epidaurus, he is now in Athens because he intends to compete in the rhapsodic contests at the Panathenaia. Socrates begins: Kaª mŸn poll†kiv ge –zžlwsa Ëmv toÆv çaydoÅv, å ï Iwn, tv t”cnhv· . . . Œma d• ˆnagka±on e²nai ›n te Šlloiv poihta±v diatr©bein pollo±v kaª ˆgaqo±v kaª dŸ kaª m†lista –n ëOmžr, t ˆr©st kaª qeiot†t tän poihtän, kaª tŸn toÅtou di†noian –kmanq†nein, mŸ m»non t‡ ›ph, zhlwt»n –stin. oÉ g‡r ‹n g”noit» pote ˆgaq¼v çayd»v, e« mŸ sune©h t‡ leg»mena Ëp¼ toÓ poihtoÓ. t¼n g‡r çayd¼n —rmhn”a de± toÓ poihtoÓ tv diano©av g©gnesqai to±v ˆkoÅousi· toÓto d• kaläv poie±n mŸ gignÛskonta Âti l”gei ¾ poihtŸv ˆdÅnaton. Moreover I have often envied you rhapsodes, Ion, for your technˆe . . . and at the same time you are compelled to be in the company of many other good poets, but especially Homer, the best and most divine of poets; to know thoroughly his mind, not only his verses, is enviable. For no one would ever be a good rhapsode, if he did not understand the things the poet says. The rhapsode must be an interpreter of the mind of the poet to his hearers. But it is impossible to do this well without understanding what the poet means. (b–c)

Socrates then sets out in his typical fashion to demonstrate to the Platonic reader, if not to Ion, his poor interlocutor, that he does not literally know (in a Platonic sense) what he is talking about. First Socrates asks Ion if he is equally skilled in his understanding of Hesiod and other poets as well as Homer (d–a). By no means, Ion asserts: he is a specialist in Homer. Socrates then maneuvers him into admitting that if he can speak of Homer only and not the other poets as well, he must do so without technˆe or true knowledge. “If you were able to speak with technˆe, then you would be capable of speaking about all other poets. For poetry is a whole” (c– ). The Socratic notion of technˆe sets a very high standard: it ostensibly demands that the poet (and his imitators) have systematic and expert knowledge of each constituent element of a poem – geography, generalship, medicine – if travel or generals or doctors are at all mentioned. Next Socrates adds an illustrative metaphor: poets and rhapsodes are successive magnetic links on a chain, or successive stages of inspiration, between the Muse and audience (Muse –> poet –> rhapsode –> audience). Socrates’ links of creativity locate the rhapsode in a subordinate position, dependent  

P. Murray : . We might wish to ask at this point to what extent is mousikž a whole? Is the person who operates at the highest level capable of operating at other levels as well? Should the philosopher be able to write poetry? Would the epigrams attributed to Plato have been read, in part, in this light?

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

Literary quarrels

on his (one) poet as the source of inspiration (–nqousiasm»v); he then extends this argument by inference to poets as well. They too compose (that is, access their knowledge) as a result of a kind of divine possession by their one Muse. Plato articulates a poetics of systematically verifiable truth that has little to do with actual poetic practice, because, as Stephen Halliwell suggests, the unrealistically high criterion for poetic knowledge has as “its subtext . . . an attack on the culturally widespread but unexamined, or insufficiently substantiated claims for the authority and wisdom of the poets.” Within this framework Socrates concedes that poets may have divine inspiration but denies them the rational understanding and systematic knowledge of truth that is the provenance of the philosopher. As we saw with the disposition of mousikž in the Phaedo and Phaedrus, Socrates’ argument creates a divide between poetry and philosophy, and grants to philosophy the superior position; it is the fundamental goal of the philosopher to know universal truths; having done so, the philosopher is able to critique poetry, but the poet or the rhapsode who is always at the whim of his Muse (or his poet) cannot really know what he is doing. S.-M. Weineck has argued that the real purpose of the Ion is to create the basis for systematic criticism of poetry, which, by Callimachus’ time, was a feature of virtually every philosophical school, so that how and what to write was no longer a dialogue among performing poets (as, for example, Aristophanes critiquing Euripides) or even a negotiation between patron and poet, but an often acrimonious exchange, at least among those who generated its rules. Those rules may have in fact had little to do with the actual practice of poetry (as the relationship of the majority of Greek tragedies to Aristotle’s views of best practices in the Poetics makes clear), but they were the inevitable consequence of poetry becoming more broadly available as texts, and were enormously influential for subsequent generations of kritiko©/scholars. It is not surprising, therefore, that Callimachus as both scholar and poet would stake out his own positions vis-`a-vis his contemporaries (however we choose to label them). But he seems to dismiss them in the aggregate as Telchines (or kritiko©). A much more dangerous threat to the poet was Plato, whose imagination and mimetic skills rivaled the best poets, and whose powers of seduction were aimed at stripping the poets of their long-held cultural authority.  

 Weineck : . : . It is difficult to believe that Callimachus, as the scholar who created the Pinakes, was not involved in such debates.

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Plato in the Aetia Prologue



In fact, in the Aetia Prologue Callimachus would appear to address the question of –nqousiasm»v versus t”cnh in language that is remarkably similar to Plato’s Ion. At first, he appeals to the Telchines to judge his poetry by its t”cnh, not by a banausic skill or empty critical theory like expectations about length. And he chooses the term sophia for poetry, that is, ‘wisdom’ (to which we might compare Socrates’ di†noia), which aligns him with poets of an earlier age. As the Prologue evolves, Callimachus equally associates himself with the cicada – a central image of poetic inspiration. In these memorable lines he imagines himself shedding his human skin and becoming the disembodied voice of song in a disjointed syntax surely meant to recreate his passing into an ecstatic state: For we sing among those who love the clear sound of the cicada and not the din of asses. Let another bray like the long-eared [beast], may I be the small, the winged one, ah truly, that I may sing feeding upon the moisture, the morning dew from the divine air, and that in turn I may shed old age. (fr. .– Pf.)

The injunction to judge poetry by technˆe was scarcely a novel idea even in Plato, let alone for Callimachus in the early third century bc. Therefore, what has for a generation been the scholarly consensus, namely, that Callimachus asserts the priority of technˆe over inspiration, is in need of some re-evaluation. Callimachus’ Prologue is not a banal affirmation of the value of technˆe so much as a reclamation project that seeks to reestablish an older relationship of technˆe and inspiration to sophia, or a poetry that seeks to reclaim its former position in society. Callimachus’ technˆe is chiefly articulated in Lycian Apollo’s instructions. It could, of course, be coincidence that Aristotle’s School was established at the Lyceum, an Athenian gymnasium that was dedicated to Apollo Lyceus. But if behind Callimachus’ “Lycian” Apollo lurks Aristotle’s Lyceum then perhaps the rules Apollo promulgates are not meant as seriously as they are usually taken to be. In fact his rules are so vague that they evoke a wide stylistic variety of intertexts: the narrow and untrodden path might refer to the Orphic or Pythagorean way, the poet’s avoidance of Homeric themes in Pindar, but equally the choice of the Stoic Heracles, or even Anniceris driving around the     

For the claim that the Prologue is in no small measure “philosophical satire” see Andrews . Note especially her remarks on technˆe (–) and the philosopher’s soul (–). See Maslov . See Asper’s very helpful discussion of the religious implications of this metaphor, : –. See Asper : –, –. A version of the “choice of Heracles” is related in Xenophon’s Memorabilia (..), attributed to the Sophist Prodicus. The figure of Vice, who appears to him, is characterized as teqramm”nhn m•n e«v polusark©an, or “nurtured to the point of fleshiness”. Compare Apollo’s injunction: t¼ m•n

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

Literary quarrels

academy in his own rut. The rules, therefore, are not the whole story: the poet must achieve and should be judged for what Callimachus calls by the time-honored name of sophia. As the Prologue progresses he moves from a technˆe that is more than rules (he does after all instruct the Telchines not to measure poetry by the Persian rope). His Apollo addresses him as an ˆoid»v (), and he identifies his preferred poetic act as ˆe©dein (, ), again a self-conscious reversion to a pre-Platonic or Aristotelian model of song and, if B. Maslov is correct, a word that aligns Callimachus with performance and epic poetry. Further, Callimachus’ claim to his inspired state seems to conflate or overlay the cicada image of the Phaedrus with that of the Ion, where inspiration is described as an out-of-body experience, of becoming winged, in which Socrates is drawing a distinction between the poetry of inspiration and that of technˆe: koÓfon g‡r crma poihtžv –stin kaª pthn¼n kaª ¬er»n, kaª oÉ pr»teron o³»v te poie±n prªn ‹n ›nqe»v te g”nhtai kaª ›kfrwn kaª ¾ noÓv mhk”ti –n aÉt –n· The poet is a light thing, both winged and holy, and he cannot compose poetry before becoming inspired (›nqeov) and out of his mind (›kfrwn), no longer in possession of his wits. (b–)

Another intertext within the Prologue points in this same direction: Aristophanes’ Frogs. Callimachus designates the poet’s art as sophia (line ). This word has a long history as a term for poetry, and though it was coopted by philosophers well before Socrates and Plato to mean “wisdom” in a more general sense, even as a term for poetry it retained a moral component. In the Frogs sophia is not a simple synonym for poetry, but encompasses the idea of the poet who is wise in a moral sense and is most capable of articulating his values to the benefit of the state. The central agon of the play is a contest to judge whether Euripides or Aeschylus has the better claim to address the state as a sof»v, or moral teacher. Dionysus chooses a novel method to make his decision: he weighs lines from their tragedies. Aeschylus wins because his lines are by far the heavier, a comedic corollary for poetry that is best able to instill courageous behavior in the citizen-soldier at a time of crisis. Importing this memorable image into the

  

qÅov Âtti p†ciston qr”yai, [tŸ]n. MoÓsan d’ Ýgaq• leptal”hn (fr. .– Pf.). Cf. Asper : –.  .  See Hunter . F. Williams : –. Wimmel’s long footnote (: ) remains the most succinct and thorough comparison of the two works. In line , for example, Aeschylus deems Sophocles to be second only to him in sof©a; see Goldhill’s discussion : –.

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Plato in the Aetia Prologue



opening of the Aetia Prologue (fr. .– Pf.), Callimachus claims that Philitas’ Demeter drags down what appears to be a longer poem (tŸn makržn, the noun is now missing), marked specifically with the verb kaq”lkei. Here is the passage of Aristophanes on which it depends:







EU. ‘OÉk ›sti PeiqoÓv ¬er¼n Šllo plŸn L»gov.’ AI. ‘M»nov qeän g‡r Q†natov oÉ dÛrwn –r .’ DI. M”qete. AI. k. EU. Meqe±tai. DI. Kaª t¼ toÓd” g’ aÔ ç”pei· q†naton g‡r e«s”qhke, barÅtaton kak»n. EU. –gÜ d• PeiqÜ g’, ›pov Šrist’ e«rhm”non. DI. PeiqÜ d• koÓf»n –sti kaª noÓn oÉk ›con. ˆll’ ™teron aÔ zžtei ti tän barust†qmwn,  ti soi kaq”lxei, karter»n ti kaª m”ga. EU. f”re poÓ toioÓton dta moÉst©; poÓ; DI. Fr†sw· ‘b”blhk’ %cilleÆv dÅo kÅbw kaª t”ttara.‘ l”goit’ Šn, Þv aÌth ’stª loipŸ sfn st†siv. EU. ‘sidhrobriq”v t’ ›labe dexi xÅlon.‘ AI. ‘–f’ Œrmatov g‡r Œrma kaª nekr nekr»v.‘ DI. –xhp†thken aÔ se kaª nÓn. EU. t tr»p; DI. DÅ’ Œrmat’ e«s”qhke kaª nekrÜ dÅo, oÍv oÉk ‹n Šraint’ oÉd’ —kat¼n A«gÅptioi.

e u r . “Persuasion has no temple other than Speech.” a e s . “Alone of the gods Death does not desire gifts.” di on . Release it (sc. the balance). e u . and Aes. It’s released. di on . And again this one’s side sinks. he put death in – the heaviest of ills. e u r . But I put in Persuasion, a perfectly expressed phrase. d i on . Persuasion is light and without sense. But look for something else really heavy that will weigh the scale down for you, something weighty and large. e u r . Now where is such a thing in my verse? Where? d i on. I’ll tell you: “Achilles cast two singles and a four.” You should speak since this is your last round. e u . “He took up his iron-laden club in his right hand.” a e s . “Chariot upon chariot, corpse upon corpse.” di. He got the better of you again. e u . How? di. He piled on two chariots and two corpses. Not even a hundred Egyptians could lift them.

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

Literary quarrels

In Aristophanes the heavier language of Aeschylus weighs down the scale (kaq”lxei) and thus Aeschylus wins; in Callimachus apparently it is the lighter, more slender poetry that draws down the scale. Modern scholars generally take the force of the allusion to be limited to Aristophanes’ literary criticism, but the exact context of the borrowing suggests a somewhat different point. The choice is between Aeschylus’ language of war and death (chariots and corpses) and Euripides’ preference for Persuasion. Callimachus’ reversal of Dionysus’ judgment by preferring what is lighter does not require rejection of the ethical or moral dimension of poetry; it might signal a realignment of what mode of discourse best embodies it. Callimachus’ choice in fact better suits altered political circumstances of the Ptolemaic state. Citizen-soldiers were not much in demand so that Callimachus’ opting for a different sophia, in Aristophanic terms a sophia of moral suasion (or Euripides’ PeiqÛ), rather than the stirring terms of war poetry (Aeschylus), may well have reflected new realities, not been an abdication of moral responsibility. In the Prologue, then, instead of aligning his poetry with an old model of inspiration or a new model of technˆe Callimachus presents a poet who has taken instruction from Apollo, but who is also transformed into the cicada, and so combines a technˆe that lays claim to the sophia (wisdom or knowledge) necessary to create (which he may share with the philosopher) with the divine state of inspiration or frenzy (which the poet alone possesses). Socrates makes a further claim in the Ion that is relevant for this discussion: he claims that if poets did write by means of technˆe they would be able to move easily from one genre to another while the divinely inspired poet knows only one form. Œte oÔn oÉ t”cn poioÓntev kaª poll‡ l”gontev kaª kal‡ perª tän pragm†twn, ãsper sÆ perª O ë mžrou, ˆll‡ qe© mo©r, toÓto m»non o³»v te ™kastov poie±n kaläv –f’ Á ¡ MoÓsa aÉt¼n ãrmhsen, ¾ m•n diqur†mbouv, ¾ d• –gkÛmia, ¾ d• Ëporcžmata, ¾ d’ ›ph, ¾ d’ «†mbouv· t‡ d’ Šlla faÓlov aÉtän ™kast»v –stin. oÉ g‡r t”cn taÓta l”gousin ˆll‡ qe© dun†mei . . . . It is not by technˆe that poets say many fine things about human affairs, as you claim about Homer, but by divinely appointed lot. Each can do well only that to which the Muse moves him, the one dithyrambs, another encomia, another

  

E.g. Fantuzzi and Hunter : . Which makes the restoration of [t piq»mh]n at line , the more attractive: by yielding to Apollo’s moral suasion he validates Euripides’ preference. Technˆe and wisdom combine again in Iambus ., where Apollo composes his song with sofŸ t”cnh. The song will endure forever and bests the golden gifts of Hephaestus.

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“Mixing Ions”



hyporchemata, another epic, another iambics. And each is poor at all the others – for not by technˆe do they say these things but by divine power. (b–c)

In his selection of intertexts – from Hesiod, Homer, Euripides, Aristophanes, Philitas, Mimnermus, Pindar, and Plato himself – Callimachus’ practice in the Aetia Prologue is analogous to the poet who composes in more than one genre. He does not confine himself to allusion to one poetic type but avails himself of statements about poetry from multiple sources, prefiguring the fabric of the Aetia, which is a pastiche of multigeneric borrowings, recast in elegiacs; and at one point – the aition of Linus and Coroebus – Callimachus even claims that his subject has come via a rhapsode’s song. “mixing ions” Callimachus’ practice of composing in more than one poetic genre would seem to have been the bone of contention in Iambus , another poem that is constructed as a literary quarrel. That Iambus  is in some sense related to Plato’s Ion is not a new idea – a number of scholars including Mary Depew, Richard Hunter, and Arnd Kerkhecker have identified many points of contact if not overt allusion. Iambus  is now very fragmentary, but the Diegesis survives. It relates the following: MoÓsai kalaª kŠpollon, o³v –gÜ sp”ndwá –n toÓtw. pr¼v toÆv katamemfom”nouv aÉt¼n –pª t polueide© æn gr†fei poihm†twn ‰pantän fhsin Âti ï Iwna mime±tai t¼n tragik»ná ˆllì oÉd• t¼n t”kton† tiv m”mfetai polueid skeÅh tektain»menon. “Fair Muses and Apollo to whom I pour my libation.” In this poem in response to those censuring him for the variety of the many kinds of the poems he writes, he (sc. Callimachus) responds that he is imitating Ion the tragic poet, and that no one censures a carpenter either for building a variety of objects.

We can reconstruct the poetic narrative as follows: The first line (quoted by the diegete) implies a symposium context. After that either the poet as the narrating ego sets up the charge and quotes his opponents, as Callimachus does in the opening of the Aetia, or the fictive critic is made to speak and the poem is constructed as a dialogue. Three charges against Callimachus are recoverable: () he wrote unskilled (ˆmaqäv) iambics because he had never gone to Hipponax’s Ephesus and steeped himself in the local culture, the fons et origo of Hipponax’s vituperative art; () as a result, he has introduced innovations in his own iambics that mixed Ionic and Doric in some way (lines –); () there must also have been a charge (implicit

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

Literary quarrels

or otherwise) of writing in more than one genre. His critic concludes by characterizing Callimachus’ poetic behavior as madness from which his friends are enjoined to rescue him (lines –). Lines  and following contain the poet’s response. He begins his defense ([oÉk?] –rmov, “[not] undefended”) with the counterexample, first a carpenter, who makes more than one type of object (lines –), then a poet (Ion of Chios), who wrote successfully in a number of genres (lines –). Callimachus caps his argument with the claim that those who would restrict creativity to a one-genre rule are the truly mad. In their limitations they are like those who would scratch out no more than starvation rations with the tips of their fingernails (lines –) when they could be enjoying a richer feast, thus redeploying the critics’ own earlier image of madness, not even touching sanity with the tips of one’s fingers (line ). The iambic concludes by repeating the opening lines, though now with altered force and meaning. Originally they were placed in the mouth of his critic, but now Callimachus affirms his own poetic agenda: ˆe©dw – “I sing without having gone to Ephesus . . . ” In spite of the very fragmentary nature of the poem, previous scholars have been able to find enough similarities to Plato’s Ion that they appear to constitute a deliberate strategy rather than random occurrences. This is more than a simple matter of resemblances deriving from a continuum between Plato’s theoretical positions and later Hellenistic ideas, though this is undoubtedly true in part. Callimachus does seem specifically to allude to Plato in sections of his poem, but Plato is not the whole story; a number of charges that the critics within the poem leveled against Callimachus can also be paralleled in later Hellenistic poetic theory. The critic’s opening salvo, namely, that Hipponax’s iambics grew organically from their environment, to which Callimachus lacked both temporal and geographic access, falls into the category of a complaint about poetic character and training (the poihtžv). –k g‡. r. . . . . . . [. oÎt’] ï .Iw. si summe©xav oÎt’ ï Efeson –lqÛn, ¤tiv –sti.am.[ ï Efeson, Âqen per o¬ t‡ m”tra m”llontev t‡ cwl‡ t©ktein mŸ ˆmaqäv –naÅontai· For [ . . . you] neither mingled with Ionians nor went to Ephesus . . . Ephesus, whence those intending to produce the limping feet (choliambics) take fire not without learning. (fr. .– Pf.) 

POxy. . has a paragraphos in the left margin above l.  of the text which could indicate a change in speaker.

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“Mixing Ions”



The distinction, as we said earlier, between poet and poem on the analogy of craftsman and craft was widespread. As a critical position it goes back to Aristotle and surfaces in many places in Philodemus’ On Poetry. Horace in his Ars poetica provides the most extensive extant discussion of the character of the poet, probably derived from the Hellenistic critic Neoptolemos of Parium. Yet for the critic Hipponax’s style would seem to include both the learning or skill (mŸ ˆmaqäv) and inspiration (–naÅontai) that were opposed in Plato’s Ion. Socrates doubts that a poet could be informed by both technˆe and inspiration, but here the two are combined in the critic’s good poet. This coincides at least superficially with the critical stance of Heraclides, especially the emphasis on learning that includes dialect, though there are likely to have been others who held similar opinions. It is important to acknowledge that the critic’s initial complaint that the poet (Callimachus) lacked a proper model for imitation (the real world of Ephesus) does not match a Platonic model of poetic mimesis, though other Platonic models for non-poetic imitation may well be in play. A few lines after this opening, Callimachus begins his response, stating the bone of contention in terms that echo Socrates’ observation that the Muse inspires in one genre only (quoted above): t©v e²pen aut. [ . . . .]l. e..r.[ . . . .]. sÆ pent†metra sunt©qei, sÆ d. ’ ¡[ro]n, sÆ d• tragde. [±n] –k qeän –klhrÛsw. ; dok”w m•n oÉde©v . . . .



Who said . . . you compose pentameters, you the [heroic], you will be allotted tragedy by the gods?” In my opinion no one . . . (fr. . – Pf.)

He then adduces the example of a carpenter, followed by Ion of Chios, a homonym of Plato’s rhapsode, who could do what Socrates questioned – 

   



At the opening of the Poetics (a–b) Aristotle comments that poets are called “poets” not by reason of the imitative nature of their work but by reason of the meter they write in, hence the designation “epic poet” or “elegiac poet,” thus implying a category of “poet” distinct from any single poetic product. Janko : –, and especially . For the difficulties with this verb and possible solutions, see Russo, : –. The verb seems to refer both to poetic inspiration and to the fiery quality of the Hipponactean choliambic. Janko : . It does, however, match a preference expressed by historians for the direct gathering of information as opposed to hearsay or the reading of books, see Schepens : –. Here it may coalesce with an underlying theme in Callimachus, who elsewhere claims not to travel. Kerkherker : : “‘Who said that,’ the poet asks in , and mentions . . . elegy, epic, and tragedy. There is, perhaps, an answer to his rhetorical question: Plato.”

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

Literary quarrels

write poetry in more than one genre. Ion of Chios is an ideal model for Callimachus because he wrote successfully in a variety of poetic genres, as well as in prose. He was listed among the five great tragedians, wrote dithyrambs, hymns, and paeans; he also wrote a foundation story of Chios, a philosophical work, and the Epidemiai, prose reminiscences that resemble Platonic dialogue (though it looks as if in the th Iambus only poetry is mentioned). Callimachus has not coincidentally chosen as his exemplum a poet who shares a name with Plato’s rhapsode, who might be styled Ion of Ephesus. Significantly for the context, both Ions were international artists, whose inspired compositions and/or performances were not limited to their regional origins or local customs. The Ion-Ion link is strengthened by the reiteration of Ephesus at the closing of the poem; when Ephesus occurs in the opening lines, of course, it can only suggest Hipponax, but after the introduction of Ion of Chios and a series of Platonic echoes, in the final lines Ion of Ephesus becomes a ghostly presence. When at the end of the poem Callimachus throws his critics’ condemnation back at them: “I sing, although I have not gone to Ephesus nor ï Iwsi summe©xav” (–), Richard Hunter makes the attractive suggestion that this might be a sly reference not only to “mixing with Ionians” (whether people or mode or dialect), but mixing Ions. Callimachus builds on this implicit association of Ions with a further link – Callimachus imitating Ion (the poet) now stands in an analogous place to Ion (the rhapsode) imitating Homer. The importance of this becomes clear if we consider the nature of the complaint. Fantuzzi and Hunter remark that by the third century “poets now cultivated a variety of genres during their careers, and the idea, most familiar from Plato’s Ion, that a poet could only be inspired by the god in a single literary genre must have seemed rather dated.” Since Ion of Chios predated Plato, and apparently in his own prose wrote about Socrates, the model of this particular polyeidetic poet was already available at the time of the dialogue, so either Callimachus has his critic speak nonsense, or something else is at stake. In fact, the formulation of Callimachus’ response: “who said . . . in my opinion, no one” is a provocative introduction of his target, Plato’s Ion, which despite the fragmentary state of the poem, has been   



 On the Epidemiai, see Pelling . FGrH  F–F = – Leurini.  : . Hunter : . According to D.L. ., Ion claimed that Socrates as a young man accompanied Archelaus to Samos (for philosophical reasons). R. Fletcher : – suggests that this biographical datum runs counter to the constructed Athenocentrism of philosophical inquiry in Plato, in which a stationary Socrates plays an important symbolic role. If Ion’s Socrates was a traveler, it provides an additional ironic dimension to a poem about the need for travel to acquire appropriate knowledge. He does seem to make this claim in lines –: “but in these matters you chatter much nonsense . . . ”

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“Mixing Ions”



easily recognized by modern critics. Not only did someone say it, but that someone was Socrates, and it is the theme of the entire Platonic dialogue. After this specific criticism is introduced the rest of the poem requires the reader (just as in the Cleombrotus epigram) to think Platonically, so that everything that follows – the carpenter, the example of Ion, not going to Ephesus, learning and inspiration – requires a double reading: the literal context of the iambus and the Platonic, or perhaps more accurately, the Socratic subtext. If it is Socrates who claims that poets cannot compose in more than one genre, it is also Socrates who never leaves Athens, and who knows what he knows not by travel or experiencing other cultures but by interrogating his fellows and strengthening his own moral convictions from their inadequacies (at least in Plato’s mimesis of Socrates). Moreover Socrates’ elenctic practice is to turn around the arguments of those he interrogates, gradually enticing them to contradict or reverse themselves as the dialogue progresses. We see a similar narrative strategy in this Iambus – the initial charges are turned against the accuser and then embraced as valid compositional principles, and they seem to be defended specifically by introducing counterarguments from Plato and against positions associated with Plato. “Not going to Ephesus” morphs from a prosecutorial charge into a line of defense. From the synopsis we learn that Callimachus introduces the carpenter (t”ktwn) as an example of someone who is not censured for the variety of his artifacts. That section has disappeared from the poem, but E. A. Barber’s shrewd supplement of line  as d©]fra kaª tr†p[ezan (chairs and table) would indicate that it came immediately after the question: “who said you compose in pentameters, etc.” and before the example of Ion was introduced. In earlier poetry the carpenter was analogous to the poet: Pindar talks about “wise t”ktonev of verse” (Pythian .), for example, and the evolving critical discourse about poetry, as we saw above, was moving from a model of divine inspiration to craft. But the craftsman occupies a very specific niche in Plato’s dialogues. Socrates’ homely analogies were often mocked in comedy, so it is quite possible that by employing the t”ktwn Callimachus was capitalizing on familiar caricature of Socratic argument. And perhaps with malice aforethought: Plato’s particular bˆete noir seems to have been Old Comedy, and iambic, the genre revived via Callimachus’ Hipponax, has its closest affinities in style and content to Old Comedy. We can only conjecture what direction Callimachus took   

See particularly the discussion of song and artifact in Finkelberg : –.  For the t”ktwn see Republic .a–d. Kerkhecker :  n. . See, e.g., Hunter : –.

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

Literary quarrels

with his carpenter, but there are several rather straightforward conclusions to be drawn. The carpenter as an analogue serves to answer the critic’s objections to a poet writing in multiple genres. Each of the carpenter’s creations should be judged by how good it is for its specific task – how good a table or chair or bed – not whether the carpenter in question built chairs as well as tables. The introduction of the carpenter thus requires the reader to realign the elements of the argument. If poets are like carpenters then each genre in which they can compose is a subset of a larger class – poetry – and understanding how to create one type should then allow the poet (like the carpenter) to create other types as well. We cannot be sure how the analogy of the t”ktwn played out in the poem beyond what the diegete tells us, but the inclusion of a distinctive example from a Platonic discussion of mimesis into a subsequent discussion of poetic mimesis is not likely to have been fortuitous. Arnd Kerkhecker observes that the carpenter is the first example that “Socrates uses to launch his final indictment of poetry on the opening pages of Republic X,” an indictment that results in banishing poetry from the ideal state. The analogy of the carpenter introduces Socrates’ most stringent critique of imitation (in painting and poetry) in an argument that was notoriously problematic. He posited a tripartite division of form into real (incorporeal) Form, particular examples in the sensible world, and imitations. Carpenters, who create particular examples by looking to the real Form, are therefore better than the poets and painters, who only imitate and are thus thrice removed from that which is true (a). Virtually all of Plato’s successors had trouble with this particular claim: Aristotle argued that Plato produced Forms of artifacts, but it is unclear whether he thought this result particularly welcome (Met. a), while Proclus thought that Plato had no real belief in the couch Form, but that it was only introduced for the sake of the argument. As Callimachus seems to deploy the analogy of the carpenter the question of mimesis is moot, but according to the Diegesis Callimachus’ rebuttal to the charge of composing in more than one genre is that he imitates (mime±tai) the poetic practice of the tragic poet Ion. The verb is important and not likely to have been introduced by the diegete if Callimachus was merely providing an analogy for his own practice. Let us pursue a bit further the possibility that notions of what  



:  and n. . See Nehamas :  who insists that the issue is not as usually taken that poetry is “an imitation of an imitation” but that an object of mimesis has an “identity . . . constituted by the thing it seems to be, not by any properties that it might have in its own right.” We are indebted to Chris Bobonich for these observations. See also P. Murray : .

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“Mixing Ions”



constitutes acceptable poetic mimesis really are central to Callimachus’ strategy. If Plato’s theory of mimesis in Republic, book , condemns poetry as incapable of accessing what is true because it is thrice removed from the true Form, there were other more favorable views in circulation. One such theory of good poetics, now recorded by Philodemus, namely that one should “imitate well the [poems] of Homer and [others] who have been similarly handed down” is relevant to the th Iambus. According to Elizabeth Asmis: [T]he new notion of imitation gives priority to the imitation of poets over the imitation of things. What determines the poetic goodness is how well a poem fits into the tradition of poetry, not how accurately it mirrors reality, whatever it may be . . . There is a tacit recognition that poets themselves determine criteria of truth. As the author of On the Sublime explains in a later period, the great authors of the past fill others with inspiration as though from a holy source. As a result they “will somehow lead the souls” of their imitators to “the standards that are presented as images” [.–, .]. The imitation is not a theft, but “like an impression taken from beautiful forms or figures or works of craftsmanship” [.]. By replacing Plato’s Forms, the new poetic models offer a way out of Plato’s strictures on poetry. Although a poem is an imitation – even more so, in a sense, than in Plato’s view, for it is an imitation of another poet’s imitation – it is not trapped in falsehood. For the imitation raises the poet to the divine source of truth.

If it is theoretically acceptable to imitate a poet from the past, then the critic’s complaint in Iambus  that Callimachus did not go to Ephesus loses its force. Callimachus does not need to go to Ephesus, the poems themselves (presumably) provide sufficient inspiration to allow good imitation, or to restate it in terms of Callimachus’ critic: if Hipponax not without learning caught fire in Ephesus, Callimachus via Hipponax’s poems has that same learned inspiration available to him. Hence his concluding statement – “I sing, without going to Ephesus.” There is an elegance to this. The analogy of the carpenter (discussed below) is inextricably bound to Plato’s discussion of the theory of Forms set out in Republic, book , where poetry comes in a distant third after the practical arts. But in other dialogues (and even the earlier part of the Republic) Plato is less negative. The Phaedrus and the Ion are texts in which Socrates seems to acknowledge the ability  

Cited in Asmis b: . Her text is that of Jensen; see also Armstrong’s translation in Obbink : , which incorporates the text of Mangoni. b: . In his famous epigram on Aratus’ Phaenomena (Ep.  GP =  Pf.) Callimachus uses precisely the language of “taking an impression” (line : ˆpem†xato and line : sÅmbolon, if this is the correct reading) to characterize Aratus’ imitation of Hesiod.

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

Literary quarrels

of poets to access the divine via inspiration. Callimachus has implicitly recast Socrates’ metaphor of the interconnecting chains substituting a poet (himself ) depending from another poet (whether Hipponax or Ion of Chios or both) for Plato’s rhapsode. He thus absorbs inspiration like the rhapsode directly from the poet he imitates. This is a logical step in an age moving from performance-based to text-based song, and it has implications for Callimachus’ habit of identifying himself as a “singer.” If we think in terms of Plato, another charge leveled by the critic in Iambus  takes on some coherence: toÓt’ –mp[”]plektai kaª laleus[..].. ìIastª kaª Dwristª kaª t¼ sÅmmikton. [ t[e]Ó m”cri tolm v; (fr. . – Pf.)

This is interwoven and chattered (?) in Ionic and Doric and the mixture. How far do you dare?

The critic accuses Callimachus of generic mixing and “interweaving,” but interweaving what? ìIastª and Dwristª should refer to dialect. Either Callimachus is accused of mixing dialects within one poem or within the corpus of the Iambi mixing poems in Ionic (the traditional dialect of iambic) with poems in Doric. The theoretical basis for this complaint was poetic propriety (t¼ pr”pon), and it included the nature of the relationship between sound and meaning: what sounds were suitable for imitation at all, in what poetic circumstances, and how should verbal composition (l”xiv) contribute to the overall production of poetic meaning? This discussion has a long and venerable tradition that includes Plato’s Cratylus and Stoic theories of the natural correspondence between words and the things they name. Needless to say, there were diverging opinions on what seems to have been a widespread practice of dialectical and generic mixing. One of the critics cited by Philodemus, for example, makes a claim that runs counter to Callimachus’ critic, namely, that good poetic diction is the same for all genres. The structure of the iambic suggests that Callimachus did respond to the charge of “mixing,” though how he did so is missing. However, it may     

Plato is inconsistent even in the Republic: in book  (–) and in the Laws (a–b, b–c) the imitation of good models via singing and choral performance is positively affirmed. See, e.g., Kerkhecker : –. Iambi –, , , , and  are in Ionic; , , and  in Doric. Iambus  is in Doric with Aeolic features. See Asmis a: – and above n. . PHerc. , , tr B, fr. ––, Sbordone quoted in Asmis a: –.

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“Mixing Ions”



be possible to piece together the framework for the answer, if not the poetic particulars. Just after Ion of Chios is introduced, the disjointed lines – read: ]oÉcª moÓnon ex.[ o]uv tragdoÆv ˆll‡ ka. [ . . . . . . ].n p]ent†metron oÉc Œpax . [.”]krouse ]serw . . . f. a. u. l. a. . . . .ousi Lud¼n] pr¼v aÉ. l¼n l . . . . . . .k. a. ª cord†v ]á§n g‡r –ntel”v te t¼ crma ..]..[.]rageinon kaª l. . . . . ˆnepl†sqh



“not only hex[ameters?] . . . tragedians but also . . . a pentameter [sc. elegy] he struck not just once . . . the [Lydian] aulos . . . strings | . . . for the thing was both complete . . . was made (or refashioned).”

It is notable that Callimachus describes Ion of Chios’ polyeidetic accomplishment not just in terms of generic variety but also of performance. This might be part of the strategy of associating Ions, because the Platonic rhapsode was after all a performer. But Ion of Chios was not only a man of many genres, he seems to have been interested in musical innovation as well: he wrote a poem praising the innovation of the eleven-stringed lyre, and sound is a frequent theme in his fragments. He is among the names specifically associated with the New Music. Musical innovation exercised critics from the late fifth century on and is directly relevant to concerns about dialectal purity and generic mixing, since at the base of all of these is the question of proper poetic sound. We find that lexis and music coalesce in Plato’s critique of poetry in the third book of the Republic. He claims: . . . t¼ m”lov –k triän –stin sugke©menon, l»gou te kaª ‰rmon©av kaª çuqmoÓ . . . .OÉkoÓn Âson ge aÉtoÓ l»gov –st©n, oÉd•n džpou diaf”rei toÓ mŸ dom”nou l»gou pr¼v t¼ –n to±v aÉto±v de±n tÅpoiv l”gesqai o³v Šrti proe©pomen kaª ÞsaÅtwv; A lyric song consists of three things: speech and melody and rhythm . . . insofar as speech at least is concerned, the need to be spoken in accordance with the same models we just prescribed, and in the same way, applies no less to speech that is not sung, does it not? (c–d) 



The text is usually restored as Lud¼n] pr¼v aÉl»n, with Ion’s own reference to the Lydian m†gadiv (flute) cited for corroboration (TGrF fr.  = fr.  Leurini). The same or a similar phrase – frÅg[a] pr[¼v] aÉl»n occurs at Iambus ., and the Phrygian aulos is very well attested. Whether Lydian or Phrygian here, the sounds have effeminate associations. For the aulos, see West : – and Maitland : – and n. . Fr.  and West : .

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

Literary quarrels

Socrates then talks about modes: certain Ionian and Lydian modes are loose, some of the mixed modes should be proscribed as scarcely suitable even for women, and Dorian modes are most suitable for instilling military virtues. Many-stringed instruments that have a wide harmonic range and the aulos should also be excluded from the ideal city (c–d). In this schematic, as in Callimachus, Ionian and Dorian modes occupy opposite poles, and the mixed modes are not at all acceptable. Also Ion of Chios’ eleven-stringed lyre is exactly the type of stringed instrument with a wide harmonic range that Socrates takes exception to. A long passage in the Laws provides more detail: the problem with poets is that they mix modes, language, and rhythms in such a way that a tune or gesture suitable for women is assigned to men, they incorporate the cries of beasts and the clash of instruments, and in general indulge in the senseless mixing and jumbling together (t‡ toiaÓta –mpl”kontev kaª sugkukäntev ˆl»gwv, d–) of elements that ought to be separate. The language here is very similar to Callimachus’. If, as Socrates claims, the rules are the same for words and music, then the charge against Callimachus of mixing Doric or Ionic dialects in these particular poems may by extension imply the inappropriate mixing of sounds and mimesis of individuals unsuitable for poetry. In the Republic the link between poetic form and context results from a theory of imitation that allows only good models, since the concept of the good as one brooks no variety in expression. Whatever its value for critiquing poetic practice, it has a straightforward parallel in Plato’s model of the ideal state, a state that works best when each citizen does the job for which he is best suited and only that job. Plato’s arguments about poetry are supposedly in the service of this higher good. Might Callimachus be subjecting the Platonic elenchus to its own reductio ad absurdum? Ion of Chios is an ideal counterexample – a poet who composed both tragedies (Plato’s despised genre) and dithyrambs (Plato’s acceptable genre), experimented with musical forms, and wrote prose dialogues that took up contemporary intellectual themes, moving freely from state to state and welcomed in each. Ion exemplifies the power of poetry in contrast to the power of philosophy (Athens condemned Socrates to death; Plato had to be ransomed apparently from Dio’s Syracusan court, and possibly by one of Callimachus’ ancestors). If (as most critics seem to agree) the th Iambus is at its core about the independence of poets to construct their poetics in response to 

Similar ideas are expressed in Republic, book  (), where inappropriate musical expression and mixing is posited as a danger to the ideal state.

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Hipponax and mimetic play



contemporary circumstances, not tradition or legislation (whoever the critics), then it should not be surprising that Callimachus selected as his main foil not some vague and unnamed kritik»v but the most dangerous and seductive of those who would regulate poetry – Plato. If this is along the right lines, then Callimachus’ engagement with prose encompassed more than history and fable, and he shows a deeper understanding of philosophical argument than has been previously suspected. Callimachus turns the premise of the Ion on its head: if one poet can successfully compose in more than one genre (as Ion of Chios clearly does), then another poet may be able to do so as well (Callimachus, Ion’s imitator). To do so is to lay claim not just to inspiration, but also to dianoia. hipponax and mimetic play We began consideration of Plato in the Iambi with the last – the th Iambus – first, because the Platonic elements of this poem have long been acknowledged. Literary quarrels and the figure of Hipponax occur at the very beginning of Callimachus’ collection of iambic poems as well, in ways that securely construct a frame for the eleven intervening poems. The st Iambus begins with a mimesis of Hipponax: the archaic iambicist returns from the underworld and speaks in his “own” voice, crying out: “listen to Hipponax!” He materializes specifically to chastise the squabbling critics of Alexandria. The Diegesis tells us that he first summoned them into the Serapeum, singling out Euhemerus for his “unrighteous books” (fr. . Pf. Šdika bibl©a). This new Hipponax teaches by example, telling the quibblers a pointed tale about the Seven Sages: when he lay dying, Bathycles gave a cup to his son with instructions to give it to the wisest man. The son duly sought out the philosopher Thales, who in turn sent the cup to Bias, who for his part sent it to Periander, who sent it to Solon, 







Callimachus would not have been alone in his interest in Plato. His quasi-contemporary Euphorion of Calchis (fr.  Lightfoot = D.L. .) and Eratosthenes of Cyrene, a generation later, were periti of Plato and of his text(s); on the latter see Vitrac . The debate over the number of Iambi –  or  – continues to flourish. Acosta-Hughes is committed in print to  (see  and , which offer reasons for the additional four poems). What follows certainly adds to the case for , though the arrangement of the corpus is not central to our argument. According to the Diegesis, these men were fil»sofoi, which on the papyrus was subsequently corrected to fil»logoi. But there may be no reason to choose between the two terms: both would fall into the category later known as kritiko©. Bathycles may have been a sculptor who worked on the Amyclaean throne of Apollo. If so, a nice choice for Hipponax to demonstrate that he has put aside his archaic vitriol. Hipponax’s poetry (in the fine tradition of the iambic persona) was said to have driven another sculptor, Bupalus, to commit suicide. We are indebted to an unpublished paper of Stephen White’s for this observation.

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

Literary quarrels

Solon to Chilon, Chilon to Pittacus, Pittacus to Cleobulus, who finally completed the circle, returning it to Thales. Thales then dedicated it in the Didymaeum at the temple of Apollo in Miletus. The moral for the kritiko© is clear – the truly wise do not boast of their own excellence, value the wisdom of their fellows, and are pious towards the gods. This story of the Seven Sages had many regional iterations, each capped by a local winner, who then dedicated the gift in a local temple. Diogenes Laertius devotes the first book in his Lives of the Philosophers to the various men identified as sages, so their position as first philosophers or protophilosophers was well established. Two of them (Bias and Myson) are mentioned in Hipponax, though whether he knew or related the story of the cup is moot. The first extant narrative featuring the Seven is in Plato’s Protagoras. Callimachus’ list of sages matches that found in Demetrius of Phalerum’s “Sayings of the Seven Sages,” but Diogenes Laertius tells us that Callimachus’ version came from one Maeandrius (or Laeandrius) of Miletus, which would account for the prominence of the Milesian, Thales. Alan Cameron has pointed out that the dedication of the cup in the Didymaeum at Miletus coincides with the rebuilding of that sanctuary paid for by Ptolemy II in the s and s and that Callimachus, by substituting a cup for the more usual tripod, avoids the version of the Seven that involved a dispute between Cos and Miletus, two places equally of interest to Ptolemy and dependent on his largesse. This is very much in keeping with Callimachus’ other poetry on the Ptolemies, and should not surprise. The more compelling question in this chapter, however, is not why Callimachus chose one particular variant of a well-known story but why he told the story at all. And why does he resurrect Hipponax? Again, Plato may be the key. The Seven Sages figure prominently in Plato’s Protagoras, a dialogue that features a four-way contest for who can best teach virtue – the Sophists, the Seven Sages, the poet (Simonides), or Socrates. The dialogue begins 

    

It is usually a tripod, though here a cup. The cup may be relevant to the next iambus, which features Aesop. He bears a marked resemblance to iambicists in that he chastised the Delphians for the greediness with which they consumed sacrificial meats (see fr. . Pf. for a reference to Delphians at a sacrifice). He was then accused of stealing a cup from the temple and condemned to death. Rather like Socrates, he embraced the verdict and leapt to his death (like Cleombrotus?) from a cliff. Diogenes (.) lists twelve, but the number varies with the source. See Martin . Because the first example of the connected narrative is so late Fehling : – wondered if Plato had invented it for the dialogue. See DK .–, and see now Fortenbaugh and Sch¨utrumpf : –, no.  with bibliography. See Cameron :  for reasons to prefer Maeandrius to Laeandrius.  Cameron : . The subject also of the Branchus (fr.  Pf.).

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Hipponax and mimetic play



with Socrates and the Sophist Protagoras, spurred on by their attendant young men, including Hippias and Alcibiades, engaging in a competitive exchange. Protagoras starts off with a mÓqov – the creation of men and the bestowing of skills (t”cnai) upon them, but not universal virtue (ˆretž). The question then becomes who best can teach virtue, as Socrates and Protagoras agree to interrogate each other in turn. Protagoras sets as the topic the meaning of a poem of Simonides. The poet, it seems, has ‘corrected’ an aphorism of Pittacus (one of the Seven Sages). Socrates has already informed us about the Seven in the context of Spartan speech habits. We are told that the Lacedaemonian is the most naturally philosophical of men, because of brevity of speech (braculog©a): –n”balen çma Šxion l»gou bracÆ kaª sunestramm”non ãsper dein¼v ˆkontistžv, ãste fa©nesqai t¼n prosdialeg»menon paid¼v mhd•n belt©w. toÓto oÔn aÉt¼ kaª tän nÓn e«sªn o° katanenožkasi kaª tän p†lai, Âti t¼ lakwn©zein polÆ mll»n –stin filosofe±n £ filogumnaste±n, e«d»tev Âti toiaÓta o³»n t’ e²nai çžmata fq”ggesqai tel”wv pepaideum”nou –stªn ˆnqrÛpou. toÅtwn §n kaª Qalv ¾ Milžsiov kaª Pittak¼v ¾ Mutilhna±ov kaª B©av ¾ PrihneÆv kaª S»lwn ¾ ¡m”terov kaª Kle»boulov ¾ L©ndiov kaª MÅswn ¾ ChneÅv, kaª ™bdomov –n toÅtoiv –l”geto Lakedaim»niov C©lwn. oÕtoi p†ntev zhlwtaª kaª –rastaª kaª maqhtaª §san tv Lakedaimon©wn paide©av, kaª katam†qoi Šn tiv aÉtän tŸn sof©an toiaÅthn oÔsan, çžmata brac”a ˆxiomnhm»neuta —k†st e«rhm”na· oÕtoi kaª koin sunelq»ntev ˆparcŸn tv sof©av ˆn”qesan t %p»llwni e«v t¼n neÜn t¼n –n Delfo±v, gr†yantev taÓta  dŸ p†ntev ËmnoÓsin, Gnäqi saut»n kaª Mhd•n Šgan. toÓ dŸ ™neka taÓta l”gw; Âti oÕtov ¾ tr»pov §n tän palaiän tv filosof©av, braculog©a tiv Lakwnikž· [The Lacedaemonian] like a skilled javelin-thrower lets fly some notable saying, terse and full of meaning, so that the person with whom he is talking seems no better than a child in his hands. And many of our own age and of former ages have noted this very fact that the true Lacedaemonian life sets the love of wisdom far above the love of gymnastics; they are conscious that only a perfectly educated man is capable of uttering such expressions. Such were Thales of Miletus, Pittacus of Mytilene and Bias of Priene and our own Solon and Cleobulus the Lindian and Myson the Chenian. And seventh in the catalogue was the Lacedaemonian Chilon. All of these were lovers and emulators and disciples of the culture of the Lacedaemonians, and anyone may perceive that their wisdom was of this character, consisting of short, memorable sentences that they severally uttered. And they met together and dedicated to Apollo at his temple at Delphi the first fruits of their wisdom, for they inscribed those things that all men sing: “know thyself ” and “nothing in excess.” Why do I say this? Because a certain Lacedaemonian brevity characterized the philosophy of earlier times. (e–a, emphasis ours)

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

Literary quarrels

As the argument continues, the esoteric model of Laconic speech figures as an alternative to the education under the public gaze (exoteric), favored by the Sophists, who taught for profit. Pittacus’ saying that “it is hard to be good” illustrates the braculog©a of a first-generation philosopher. But the poet Simonides in his ambition to acquire a reputation for wisdom (according to Socrates) attempts via his poem to discredit Pittacus’ words. This section of the dialogue foreshadows the clash between poetry and philosophy that is overt in the Republic and projects it back into an earlier age. Socrates identifies Pittacus and his fellow wise men as philosophers because of the wisdom contained within their laconic utterances, even going so far as to make them collectively responsible for dedicating the “first fruits” of their wisdom at the Delphic oracle. Should we wish to plot the mini-history of philosophy implicit in the Protagoras, the aphorisms of the Seven, enshrined at Delphi, stimulate Socrates to the next stage, namely to proceed beyond the folk wisdom of “know thyself ” and “nothing in excess” to attempt to define and articulate the nature of justice or goodness, not definitively, but via elenctic debate. His principal rivals are the Sophists, who deny absolutes and claim to be able to teach virtue to anyone (who can pay). Poetry is a non-starter in this competition. Pittacus’ attempt to grapple with a difficult question – is it possible for a man to be good? – is irrelevant to Simonides. Simonides is reputed to have been the first poet to be paid for his work, and Socrates turns this against him, remarking that Simonides felt obliged to attack Pittacus because “he was often required to praise and magnify a tyrant or the like, much against his will” (b–). The poet thus not only attacks an earlier proto-philosopher for gain, but in the process he deliberately contorts a seminal message about the nature of goodness. How (so the implicit message goes) can we trust such poets to educate our sons? The dialogue continues with Socrates himself explicating Simonides’ poem in terms of sentence structure (the placement of m”n is introduced into the discussion), language, and concordance, presumably to illustrate why philosophers are more competent than poets to utter on meaningful matters like justice or goodness. The dialogue concludes with a discussion of pleasure and the good (b–d) and by praising the art of measurement – an exact science – as a means of neutralizing the deceptiveness of appearances (c–c). By any estimate this is a very odd dialogue, full of  

Though, to be fair, the poet and the Sophist tend to merge together in the dialogue, so one could easily argue that the principal target was the latter, not the former. For a fine discussion of Socrates as a literary critic, see Carson .

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contradictions, reversals of position, and arguments verging on the absurd (Socrates’ syntactical analysis of the poem, for example, and his extolling the virtues of measurement). Socrates himself concedes that their behavior was strange (Štopoi) and that if their argument were human it would laugh at (katageln) them (a–). Incommensurate length and differing styles of the dialogue and the st Iambus require that any comparison must be done with extreme caution; still there is much that the two share. In addition to the central narration of the Seven Sages, the Iambus, like the dialogue, embeds the teaching of moral excellence within the context of literary quarrels. The Protagoras features a quarrel between philosophers, Sophists, and poets, with Socrates as ostensibly the narrating voice of truth; the Iambus a quarrel between various philosophers and/or critics, with a stern, moralizing poet – the resurrected Hipponax – as the narrator and moral arbiter. The dialogue ends with the dubious proposal that measure is the “solution” to moral ambiguity, the Iambus ends with the victorious sage, Thales, sketching out geometric figures in the dirt. Socrates characterizes the earliest philosophers as laconic (in both senses), speaking few but dense and morally charged words, what he names braculog©a. The concept coincides with Callimachus’ expressed views on how good poetry should work. In the Aetia Prologue Apollo’s instructions to the fledgling poet are a model of concision and wit: raise fat sheep but a slender Muse. Someone (probably Philitas) is praised as ½lig»sticov (fr. . Pf.), or a man of few poetic lines, and in an epigram ( GP =  Pf.) Callimachus extols the brief utterance as bracusullab©h: mikrž tiv, Di»nuse, kal‡ pržssonti poiht çsivá ¾ m•n ‘nikä’ fhsª t¼ makr»taton,  d• sÆ mŸ pneÅsv –nd”xiov, ¢n tiv ›rhtai ‘päv ›balev;’ fhs©· ‘sklhr‡ t‡ gign»mena.’ t mermhr©xanti t‡ mŸ ›ndika toÓto g”noito toÔpov· –moª d’, ånax, ¡ bracusullab©h.



A short speech befits the good poet, Dionysus. His longest speech is “I win”. But on whom you breathe unfavorably, whenever someone asks: “How did it go?” He says: “It was a bad business!” This would be the speech of one brooding on injustice; but for me, O Lord, brevity.



A point that seems oddly resonant in Iambus  with its careful measurements of Phidias’ statue of Zeus.

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

Literary quarrels

His language throughout the Aetia and the Iambi is dense and thoughtprovoking, full of ironic duplicity that requires his audience to reevaluate meaning, for example, in the I(r)onic mixing of the th Iambus. Callimachus also introduces Plato’s principal sage, Pittacus, in what Kathryn Gutzwiller argues was the first epigram of a collection, arranged by the poet himself. In that epigram, when approached by a stranger wishing advice on whom to marry, either a woman of his own station or one above him, in an admirable demonstration of laconic speech, Pittacus responds by pointing with his staff to children at play, saying only: “these will tell you the whole story” (: ke±no© soi pn –reoÓsin ›pov). The children, laconic in their turn, are playing with a spinning top, and call out: “keep it in its track” (: tŸn kat‡ saut¼n ›la). The epigram capitalizes on the oracular aspect of the advice and, what Richard Martin has called “the unique and pungent eloquence, verbal or gestural,” that characterized the Sages. Callimachus does not speak in propria persona in this opening Iambus but ventriloquizes the older poet, a creative decision that provided the bone of contention in the th Iambus. Callimachus brings back Hipponax not as a character in a narrative but by an act of mimesis, permitting him to speak in his own voice. In that poem Callimachus identified various models of artistic reproduction – a carpenter, inspiration, or imitation of an earlier poet. In the st Iambus Callimachus’ speaking through Hipponax bears some resemblance to Socrates’ ventriloquizing Simonides in the Protagoras, because in both the older figure is quoted and adapted for new narrative goals, but an even closer mimetic parallel is that of Plato ventriloquizing Socrates within the dialogues, as the younger philosopher dramatically recreates the older and speaks through him. The mimetic vagaries of the two texts proliferate: the Protagoras ends with praise of mathematics and exact sciences. Although the last lines of Callimachus’ poem are lost, the story of the sages clearly ends with Thales, praised as an astronomer, sketching a mathematical theorem in the dirt (). The theorem is said to be that of the Homeric hero, Euphorbus (). Pythagoras believed he had been Euphorbus in a former life. The poem makes three points about Pythagoras: he was a moral philosopher as well as a mathematician, he 

 

Ep.  GP =  Pf. See Gutzwiller : , who remarks that Callimachus “begins his epigram collection . . . not with the announcement of any one theme, but with the suggestion that his philosophy of restraint, of refined choice, will be the glue that holds together the [collection].” Martin : . By Plato’s own definition his revenant Socrates is a product of mimesis. Why is the prose form of mimesis acceptable (if it is) when the poetic is not? Is it the fact that they are not poetic (set to music?) that makes this kind of mimesis viable?

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Hipponax and mimetic play



also set up a polis (in Italy), and he held a belief in reincarnation (–). (Plato, of course, turned to mathematics at the end of his life, tried to instruct Dionysius of Syracuse about proper government – unsuccessfully – and to judge from the dialogues believed in reincarnation.) Thales imitating Euphorbos (who has returned from the dead as Pythagoras) bears a certain resemblance to Callimachus imitating Hipponax in that both recall and transmit the past. Hipponax, though, makes no claims to reincarnation: he may have come back from the dead, but he cannot stay. His is a textual rather than a literal rebirth. But if the latter is possible, why not the former? Callimachus’ mimetic act is also akin to Ion the rhapsode performing Homer or Archilochus – Callimachus’ Hipponax comes alive again and speaks through the mouth of Callimachus. Callimachus’ inspired speech act thus blurs the distinction between himself and Hipponax as he is filled with (in Socratic terms) the di†noia of the poet. Speaking in the persona of an iambic poet is not quite the same thing as merely alluding to or even borrowing from his text. Archaic poets were not always separable from their biographies, and iambicists like Archilochus and Hipponax even less so. They were not just names of poets whose works will have been available for reading in Alexandria, they came with specific personal voices and attached performance practices. Their names alone evoked or were coincident with the poetry of praise or blame. We might go so far as to say that the medium (the choliambic meter) and the associations of the name were the message quite apart from the content of a specific poem. It is possible to repeat, that is, perform Homer like the rhapsodes, but the option to craft a new text of Homer speaking did not exist for Callimachus in the same way that recreating Hipponax did, since “Homer” was coextensive with the specific texts of his poems. This surely is part of the complaint in the th Iambus – Callimachus cannot be Hipponax without in effect being Hipponax – living in Ephesus and experiencing the same stimuli to write invective that the poet did. Callimachus’ approach to the problem is twofold: a mimesis similar to Plato’s mimesis of Socrates and (in the th Iambus) a mimesis that is aligned with poetic inspiration and rhapsodic performance.

 

Whether we should think of iambic as a genre is not entirely clear. Similar invective already belonged to Old Comedy. Hence the choice of the title Iambic Ideas for a recent collection. Cavarzere, Aloni, and Barchiesi : xii write: “We have decided to promote this well-known problem of generic analysis to a major theme of our discussion, by naively foregrounding it in the title, Iambic Ideas, not Idea.”

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

Literary quarrels

The reconstituted Hipponax sets the tone for the whole collection as poems of pungent critique. The archaic Hipponax attacked personal enemies, and invective is still to be felt in the Iambi, but now he announces that he has set aside the “Bupalian battle” – the personal nastiness – to emphasize the stern, moralizing aspect of iambic critique. Even in this fragmentary text the contemporary world of Alexandria is set in contrast to the archaic world and their respective vices and virtues instantiated by Euhemerus and Thales. Euhemerus was somewhat older than Callimachus, and he wrote the Sacred Register, in which he claimed that the Olympian gods were not originally divinities but culture heroes, venerated after death and subsequently divinized. His writings were called atheistic, and in the Iambus his books are stigmatized as “unrighteous” (). Euhemerus scratching out his books in the temple precinct of the Serapeum is parallel to Thales in the temple precinct of Apollo at the end of the poem scratching out geometric figures in the dirt. It is difficult to take this very seriously if we peel away the layers of potential allusion. () Hipponax summons his prey to “a shrine in front of the wall,” that is, the city wall. Two of Plato’s dialogues begin “outside of the wall” – the Phaedrus (a) and the Lysis: “outside the wall under the wall itself” (a–). Callimachus’ Cleombrotus leaps to his literary suicide from a “high wall.” () The gathering of quibblers has its closest parallel in the Socratic dialogues, where Socrates and his friends meet in the wrestling schools or in private houses. () Previous thinkers charged with atheism would include Socrates, who was accused by the Athenians, condemned, and forced to drink hemlock, and () according to Aristophanes’ portrayal of Socrates in the Clouds, Socrates spent his time (like Thales) in astronomical observations. The addition to the mix of Pythagoras channeling Euphorbos and preaching vegetarianism to the Italians suggests that the real point is not the vices of moderns in contrast to the wholesomeness of the past, but that philosophers have never had much to recommend them. In contrast, the poet is the judicious critic and he teaches via his poetry, which contains an exemplum (the Seven Sages) that even a philosopher found useful, as well as a memorable portrait of the generous behavior of a good man, Bathycles, who is not one of the Seven. The challenge to philosophy’s superior claim to teach or preach moral values can be seen in several of the other Iambi as well. Although most cannot be reconstructed beyond the outlines of the Diegesis (if that is 

Imitation of the good man is the one type of mimesis that is always valorized in the Platonic dialogues. See especially Laws b.

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Hipponax and mimetic play

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available), it is telling that within these scraps several other Iambi still have easily identifiable Platonic/Socratic allusions. The third Iambus deplores the current age’s preference for wealth over virtue and features a young man named Euthydemus, who has apparently been pimped to a rich old man by his own mother. Euthydemus is also a character who gives his name to a Platonic dialogue. Within the dialogue he is one of two brothers deft at sophistic argument; they “prove” among other things that bad is good, that gods are animals, and that money is a good thing, while more money is even better. The name then would not be inappropriate for a boy selling himself to an older man. Euthydemus’ jilted lover speaks one of the few surviving lines of the poem: “I was properly educated, I thought [when I met you?] I saw the good” (fr. .–: krhgÅwv –paideÅqhn | [ . . . –]fr»nhsa tÝgaq¼n bl”yai). The betrayed man alludes to the ladder of love that Diotima advocates in the Symposium: the love of one beautiful body, when understood properly, can lead the lover to see (with the mind’s eye) the form of the good itself. The thought is frequent in Plato, and as Kerkhecker observes: “Plato’s mysterious Good is a frequent subject of jokes in comedy.” The th Iambus continues the theme of promiscuous behaviors, in which, according to the Diegesis, Callimachus chastises a schoolmaster for the sexual abuse of his students (toÆv «d©ouv maqht‡v kataiscÅnonta). The poem is very fragmentary, but what little text survives suggests that Plato is lurking in the background here as well. The Iambus opens with a proverb: “advice is something sacred” (sumboulŸ g‡r ™n ti tän ¬rän, fr. .  Pf.); among other places it is found near the opening of Plato’s Theages (b–: l”geta© ge sumboulŸ ¬er¼n crma e²nai), spoken by Socrates in response to a father who wishes advice about educating his son. Theages wishes to learn statecraft, and his father asks Socrates to teach him. The Theages is a short dialogue featuring Socrates in his role as a teacher with familiar details apparently drawn from other Platonic dialogues, like Socrates’ relationship to his divine voice and his disclaimer that he had no expertise except in some small measure in erotics (b –: oÉd•n –pist†menov plžn ge smikroÓ tinov maqžmatov, tän –rwtikän).   

See, e.g., Symp. c-d: bl”pwn pr¼v . . . kal»n and c–. Kerkhecker : . For a discussion of the potential addressee (whether Apollonius or Cleon) and whether the students are those of the speaker or the school teacher, see Acosta-Hughes : –. The Theages is generally considered spurious, though it was apparently accepted as genuine in antiquity. It dates from the last quarter of the fourth century bc. An early-second-century-bc papyrus exists written on the back of a roll that contained sections of Odyssey bk.  on the front. See Joyal ; for a full bibliography of the papyrus see the Leuven Database of Ancient Books (www.trismegistos.org/ldab/).

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Literary quarrels



Socrates explains in the dialogue that he teaches mainly by personal contact (sunous©a), not by any formal method, and gives examples of several statesmen with whom he associated, for good or ill. The dialogue’s distilled essence of Socrates the teacher made it more easily accessible than most authentic Platonic dialogues, but also would have made it an easy target for parody or critique. As the dialogue continues Socrates interrogates the boy to find out what he wishes to learn, claiming that for specific knowledge you need to go to those who have that skill. He runs through various types of knowledge ranging from seafaring, farming, chariot-driving, javelinthrowing, finally to settle on the boy’s desire to learn about the governing of states. Two allusions, one lexical, the other a metaphor, lead to Plato. At line  the iambic speaker says: –gÜ B†kiv toi kaª S©bulla [kaª] d†fnh kaª fhg»v. ˆll‡ sumbaleÓ. tnigma, kaª mŸ Pitq”wv ›ce cre©hn· I am your Bakis and Sibyl [and] laurel and oak. But interpret the riddle and have no need of Pittheus.

In the Theages Socrates asks the boy: s o c r a t e s : E­poiv ‹n oÔn moi t©na –pwnum©an ›cei B†kiv te kaª S©bulla kaª ¾ ¡medap¼v %mf©lutov; t h e a g e s : T©na g‡r Šllhn, å SÛkratev, plžn ge crhsmdo©; s o c r a t e s : Now would you tell me the name that Bakis and Sibyl have and our own Amphilytus? t h e a g e s : What else, Socrates, but soothsayers? (d–)

Bakis and Sibyl occur rarely in Greek texts, and only in these two are the names so closely linked. These expressions are virtually identical, and to each is added an historical figure who interpreted oracles correctly. Plato names Amphilytus, who was, according to Herodotus (.), the soothsayer who interpreted the enigmatic hexameters predicting Pisistratus’ victory over the Athenians who had thrown him out. (The introduction of the correct interpretation of oracles foreshadows Socrates later describing how he heard and interpreted his particular oracular voice.) Callimachus names Pittheus, the grandfather of Theseus, who correctly understood the oracle given to Aegeus, but deliberately misled him. (The oracle advised Aegeus 

See, e.g, Aristophanes’ Peace – and –, where they occur, but a few lines apart.

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Hipponax and mimetic play



not to have intercourse before he returned home to Attica, but Pittheus persuaded him that the oracle meant that he should bed his daughter; the result was Theseus.) Both figures are vital in Athenian history, though Callimachus prefers the father of the founder of democratic Athens over the city’s most famous tyrant. This may be pertinent because part of the Theages is dedicated to tyrants versus rulers who govern with the people’s consent, though how or whether that plays out in the Iambus is unknown. The two passages also differ in how advice is handled. Socrates does not give direct advice but draws out young Theages by his usual practice of question and answer. In contrast to the philosopher’s technique, Callimachus advises via poetry. Just before Bakis and Sibyl the speaker proclaims: ­sce d• dr»mou margäntav ¯ppouv mhd• deut”rhn k†myv, mž toi perª nÅss d©fron Šxwsin, –k d• kÅmbacov kubistžsv. . . . and hold from their racing your raging horses, and do not take the return course, lest around the turning post they shatter your chariot and you tumble out headlong. (fr. .– Pf.)

Ostensibly the allusion is to Homer, a most fitting text for the schoolroom and therefore an ironic choice by means of which to instruct a schoolmaster. KÅmbacov is a very rare word that first occurs in Iliad . to describe Antilochus’ plunge headlong from his chariot into the dust. Kubistžsv may also reinforce the Homeric context; several forms of the verb appear in an episode in Iliad .–, when Patroclus strikes Cebriones in the head with a rock. He tumbles from his chariot in death while Patroclus taunts him and the rest of the Trojans. The taunting lends a nice subtext to the speaker’s words in Callimachus. Yet neither of the Homeric intertexts is remotely erotic. The metaphor of the passions as runaway horses was quite familiar in ancient texts, but there is also a specific, Platonic, context: Socrates in an eroticized setting discourses on love to a beautiful boy (Phaedrus), allegorizing the passions as being like runaway horses (). This very famous passage well suits the Iambus, since its specific context is of a man controlling (or not controlling) his passion for a youth. There is a further clue: Callimachus’ charioteer is in danger of falling out of his vehicle like a tumbler. The word is not common, but Aristophanes, in   

See, e.g., Plutarch, Life of Theseus .–.. Parallels are provided by Kerkhecker :  n. . Phaedrus –. Callimachus employs this metaphor of the divided soul in Ep.  GP =  Pf. (discussed at the opening of ch. ).

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Literary quarrels



his unforgettable speech about Eros in the Symposium, describes original humans as possessing four arms and four legs and being able to move hand-over-hand, just like tumblers (a–: kubistäntev; kubistäsi kÅkl). In addition to the two Iambi featuring Hipponax ( and ) and the rd and th Iambi, there are others with verbal reminiscences of Plato, most obviously Iambus . It is almost completely lost, but the Diegesis gives a first line as: “The Aphrodites – for the goddess is not one” (t‡v %frod©tav– ¡ qe¼v g‡r oÉ m©a) which suggests Pausanias’ speech in the Symposium, in which he claims that there were two Erotes because there were two Aphrodites – heavenly and common. Kerkhecker adds two more Platonic allusions that we are inclined to accept, but they are not clear-cut enough to advance the discussion. The speakers in these poems cannot always be identified, but several focus on erotic behavior gone wrong within the context of paideusis. Socrates was the great teacher of moral virtue, whose particular engagement with the jeunesse dor´ee of Athens was (supposedly) misunderstood by the demos that condemned him for corrupting the youth of the city. He was an easy target for the comedians and remains so for the new iambicist, but the chastising of dubious sexual mores is only part of the poems: the real focus is who can best teach virtue – the question that recurs in the Platonic dialogues – the philosopher or the poet. The poems then tend to undercut the philosopher’s claim, just as many of the Socratic examples were aimed at undercutting the poet’s claim. It would be simplistic, though, to insist on only one purpose in the Iambi. Just as with the epigram on Cleombrotus, Callimachus’ relationship to Platonic writing has many facets. Callimachus’ own elevation of braculog©a to a poetic principle and his stress on avoidance of the common shows considerable affinity with Plato’s rejection of the many in favor of the knowledgeable few. the power of the poet At the opening of this chapter we set out a case for the importance of Platonic intertexts in the Aetia Prologue, in particular, Platonic models of poetic initiation and inspiration from the Phaedo, Ion, and Phaedrus. We then turned to the Iambi, a collection that suggests a particularly close awareness of a broad selection of Platonic dialogues. We now turn to the  

See :  n.  (Iambus ) and  (on Iambus ). The charge surely implied sexual as well as intellectual corruption.

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The power of the poet



second book of the Aetia, to a symposiastic scene set in contemporary Alexandria, where Plato again seems to make an appearance, this time in ways that directly contrast the power of philosophers with that of poets. The intertexts are the Republic, the Laws, and, to a lesser extent, the Symposium. The second book of the Aetia is also the most fragmentary, and before discussing contents, it is important to consider how the fragments might be aligned. The first that can be securely placed is fr.  Pf. It opens with Callimachus reflecting on the transience of the pleasures of the banquet in contrast to the enduring value of talk (–), which is followed by a long exchange of information between Callimachus and the Muses on the foundations of Sicilian cities. An unplaced fragment (Icus, or the Ician Guest, fr.  Pf.) also contains a vignette of a dinner party that Callimachus attended. It overlaps fr.  in its theme of abstemiousness and conversation. Both fragments contain a concentration of allusions to the Homeric poems, but especially to the Odyssey. Fr.  Pf. breaks off with the mention of the cult of Peleus on Icus (where he died), while the opening lines of fr.  appear to mention Thetis and a burial. It is certainly possible that in the course of the poem Callimachus narrated events of two different dinner parties that he attended, but the options for placement elsewhere in the Aetia are limited, a circumstance that has encouraged scholars to propose locating fr.  at the opening of book , with fr.  immediately following. If this is correct, the book opened with Callimachus attending the dinner party, then later describing what he learned there to the Muses, after which they exchanged information on Sicilian cities. In the Minos, another “Platonic” dialogue now generally considered to be spurious, Socrates praises Minos, not as a powerful king, but as a lawmaker, and in terms that are a distillation of the arguments of Plato’s Laws. Minos, we are told, established the rule for citizens that they should not drink to drunkenness at symposia, but use the occasion for conversation about virtue. Socrates, in response to the question from his unnamed companion about how, if this is true, Minos gained such an evil reputation, explains that Minos made the mistake of going to war against Athens and, in turn, the poets (i.e., Athenian dramatists) set about destroying him:   

See Massimilla : – and Harder : .. Zetzel : – made the initial case. If certainty is not possible, consensus for this alignment continues to grow. See now Harder : .–. Morrow : – discusses the relationship of this dialogue to the Laws. He suggests that it is authentically Platonic but unfinished. Whether or not it is Platonic, it does provide an early reception of the Laws and an indication of possible ways for Callimachus to have read Plato’s texts.

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

Literary quarrels

Di’Á kaª sÅ, å b”ltiste, –‡n swfronv, eÉlabžs, kaª Šllov pv ˆnŸr Ât m”lei toÓ eÉd»kimon e²nai, mhd”pote ˆpecq†nesqai ˆndrª poihtik mhden©. o¬ g‡r poihtaª m”ga dÅnantai e«v d»xan, –f’ ¾p»tera ‹n poiäsin e«v toÆv ˆnqrÛpouv, £ eÉlogoÓntev £ kakhgoroÓntev. Therefore, you, my good friend, if you are sensible, and everybody else who cares for his reputation, beware of ever quarreling with any poetic sort at all. For poets have great power over one’s public perception, in whichever direction they create it in the minds of men, by speaking good or ill. (e–)

Callimachus’ Minos, who occurs at least twice in the Aetia, is not the lawmaker, but the tyrant. In the opening aition he is described as having “stretched his yoke over the neck of the islands” (fr.  Pf.). He appears again in fr.  where Callimachus informs the Muses that: o²da G”la potamoÓ kefal ›pi ke©m. en. on Šstu L©ndoqen ˆrca© [s]k. imp. [t»meno]n gene[, Min h[n] kaª Krs[s]an, ¯[na ze©on]ta loet[r‡ ceÓan –[p’] EÉrÛphv u¬”· K[wkal©]dev· I know about the city lying at the head of the river Gela, propped on its ancient lineage from Lindus; and Cretan Minoa, where the daughters of Cocalus poured boiling bath water upon Europa’s son [sc. Minos]. (fr. .– Pf.)

What Callimachus knows about Minos is not the deeds of the great lawgiver, but his demise as a result of events in his dysfunctional family. When Minos’ wife Pasiphae conceived a passion for the most beautiful bull in the herd, the resident artist, Daedalus, built a wooden cow that allowed Pasiphae to couple with the bull. She subsequently gave birth to the Minotaur. Daedalus then judged it prudent to flee to Sicily and was received into Cocalus’ court. Minos found him there. In order to protect Daedalus, the daughters of Cocalus transgressed the rules of guest-friendship and killed Minos by pouring boiling water on him when he imagined he was receiving the courtesy of a bath. After Minos Clio, in her turn, narrates the story of the foundation of Zankle. She begins with the fraught history of its foundation, then tells of its name, Zankle: ˆll’ Âte dŸ m»ssunav –p†lxesi [kartunq”]ntav o¬ kt©stai dr”panon q”nto pe[rª Kr»nio]n, – k. e±qi g‡r  t‡ gonov ˆp”qrise mžde’ –ke±nov k. ”kruptai gÅp z†gklon Ëp¼ cqon©, – 

The story seems to have been quite well known, see, e.g., Hdt. . ; DS ..–, and Harder : .– for greater detail.

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The power of the poet



When the builders strengthened the towers with battlements around Cronus’ sickle – for that with which he cut off his father’s genitals – the zanklon – is hidden there in a hollow in the earth . . . (–)

According to Thucydides (..), z†gklon was the Sicilian word for dr”panon, or sickle, but although he tells virtually the same foundation story, in his version the name, Zankle, resulted from the sickle-shape of the location. In contrast, Clio’s version gives readers the tale that Plato, in the Republic (e–), singled out as the greatest of all lies told by the poets, one that should not be repeated to young and thoughtless persons, and would be better buried in silence – namely that Cronus castrated his father. In contrast, the Cronus that Plato would have us learn about appears in the Laws (a–e): the Athenian stranger extols the age of Cronus as “a time of prosperous settlement, as a model for the best of the states that now exist.” In Callimachus a foundation in conflict commemorates by its very name a story that Plato would bury in oblivion, because it implicitly undermines that image of Cronus as a just and fair lawgiver, and, moreover, it is a story dear to the poets and the Muses, the sources of poetic inspiration, who are portrayed as active collaborators in its recollection. Callimachus presses Clio for further information, this time on Minos’ brother, Rhadamanthys, who was also known for his just judgments (fr. . –). The passage is broken, but the phrase: “the spring of Rhadamanthys” (kržnh ëRadam†nquo[v) suggests the context. It moves the reader to Boeotia, where, according to Apollodorus (..), Rhadamanthys fled into exile. According to Tzetzes’ commentary on Lycophron (§) Rhadamanthys went into exile for killing one of his brothers. So once again Callimachus is introducing a lawgiver not by alluding to his sterling qualities as a purveyor of virtue, but to his less admirable accomplishments. After Minos, Cronus, and Rhadamanthys, in the next surviving fragment in book  (fr.  Pf.) the Egyptian king Busiris occurs. He had the habit of sacrificing whatever strangers entered his realm. But, according to Isocrates, who wrote an encomium on Busiris, far from being a lawless despot, Busiris introduced his Egyptian subjects to the wisdom that leads to philosophy, laws, and scientific inquiry (§§–). Like Plato, Isocrates castigates the poets for promulgating scurrilous stories, like the “eating of  

In Arg. . Drepane is the name of Corcyra, the land of the Phaeacians, so named for its connection with the castration of Uranus. Harder : . makes the attractive suggestion that if fr.  began the book, then Busiris as a bad Egyptian host from pharaonic Egypt formed a closing contrast to the good Athenian host of the banquet in Egypt under the Ptolemies.

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

Literary quarrels

children, castrating of fathers, tying up of mothers, and many other lawless acts” (§). There is, of course, more going on within this section of book , but for the moment we wish to focus on the fact that Callimachus the poet has chosen to dwell on the dark side of the very lawmakers who were the darlings of philosophers: Minos, Rhadamanthys, and Busiris, not to mention Cronus, Plato’s divine template of the ideal lawgiver. This is surely a deliberate inversion (or send-up) of well-known philosophical exempla. It is also a self-conscious assertion, or recollection, of the power of poetry, since Callimachus is retelling all-too-familiar tales. It is possible to miss the novelty of these accumulated tales simply because they are so familiar, but Callimachus was not known for banal reinforcement of the status quo, and four such figures in such a brief compass would be rather a lot of mythological padding (especially when the ostensible subject for at least two of the figures is Sicilian cities). In fact, there are a number of other potential intersections with Plato the man and Plato the philosopher in this section. After  broken lines, the Sicilian Cities opens with Callimachus telling the Muses what he heard at a dinner party: kaª g‡r –gÜ t‡ m•n Âssa karžati tmov ›dwka xanq‡ sÆn eÉ»dmoiv ‰br‡ l©ph stef†noiv, Špnoa p†nt’ –g”nonto par‡ cr”ov, Âssa t’ ½d»ntwn ›ndoqi ne©air†n t’ e«v ˆc†riston ›du, kaª tän oÉd•n ›meinen –v aÎrion· Âssa d’ ˆkoua±v e«seq”mhn, ›ti moi moÓna p†resti t†de.



For as many soft amber ointments that I then placed on my head with a fragrant crown, and the many things that went down past my teeth into an ungrateful belly, all are immediately lifeless, and of them nothing survives until the morrow. But the many things I took into my ears, these alone remain with me. (fr. . –)

The speaker claims that conversation alone abides from such events, not ointments or garlands or the pleasures of the belly, which is not far from the situation in Plato’s Symposium. The poem is also full of Homeric echoes. Thus it fits nicely with fr.  Pf., which describes a dinner party held at the house of an Athenian named Pollis, who was a resident in Egypt and had invited friends to join him in celebrating an Attic festival.  

ìOd»ntwn ›ndoqi (cf. Il. .); ne©air†n t’ e«v ˆc†riston (Od. . and .), and oÉd•n ›meinen –v aÎrion (Od. .), and see Harder : .– for details. The name is given in Athenaeus (c), who quotes the passage to illustrate that: “Callimachus it seems erred in using [skÅfov and kissÅbion] synonymously, saying about the Ician guest being entertained with him at the house of the Athenian Pollis . . . ” Denis Feeney suggests that the name, Pollis, may have been intended as a pun on p»liv, see Kaesser : .

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The power of the poet  Üv oÉd• piqoigªv –l†nqanen oÉd’ Âte doÅloiv §mar ìOr”steioi leuk¼n Šgousi c»ev· ìIkar©ou kaª paid¼v Šgwn –p”teion ‰gistÅn, %tq©sin o«kt©sth, s¼n f†ov, ìHrig»nh, –v. da©thn. –k. †l. e. ssen ¾mhq”av, –n d” nu to±si xe±non Áv A[«]gÅpt kain¼v ˆnestr”feto memblwkÜv ­di»n ti kat‡ cr”ov· §n d• gen”qlhn ï Ik. iov,  xunŸn e²con –gÜ klis©hn oÉk –pit†x, ˆll’ a²nov ëOmhrik»v, a«•n ¾mo±on Þv qe»v, oÉ yeudžv, –v t¼n ¾mo±on Šgei. kaª g‡r ¾ Qrh·k©hn m•n ˆp”stuge cand¼n Šmustin o«nopote±n, ½l©g d’ ¤deto kissub©. t m•n –gÜ t†d’ ›lexa periste©contov ˆle©sou t¼ tr©ton, eÔt’ –d†hn oÎnoma kaª genežn· ‘§ m†l’ ›pov t»d’ ˆlhq”v,  t’ oÉ m»non Ìdatov a²san, ˆll’ ›ti kaª l”schv o²nov ›cein –q”lei. tŸn ¡me±v – oÉk –n g[‡]r ˆrustžressi fore±tai oÉd” min e«v ˆt[ene±]v. ½frÅav o«noc»wn a«tžseiv ¾r»w[n] Ât’ –leÅqerov ˆtm”na sa©nei – b†llwmen calep f†rmakon –n p»mati, QeÅgenev· Âss[a] d’ –me±o s[”]qen p†ra qum¼v ˆkoÓsai «ca©nei, t†de moi l[”]xon [ˆneirom”n]· Murmid»nwn —ssna t[© p†trion Î]mmi s”besqai Phl”a, käv ï Ik xun[‡ t‡ Qessali]k†.











The day of the Pithoigia did not pass unheeded nor when the Choes of Orestes bring a white day for slaves. And when he [the Athenian] kept the yearly ceremony of Icarius’child, your day, Erigone, most lamented by the women of Attica, he invited his friends to a banquet, among whom was a stranger, a recent visitor to Egypt, who had come on some private business. He was Ician by birth, and I shared a couch with him. By no assignment, but the adage of Homer is not false: god always brings like to like. He, too, despised greedily draining wine from a Thracian goblet, but enjoyed the small cup. I said to him as the beaker went around for the third time, after I had learned his name and lineage: “the saying is true that wine requires not only a portion of water but also of talk. We do not pass conversation around in ladles, nor seek it on the haughty brows of the cup bearers, when the free man is subservient to the slave. Let us, Theugenes, cast talk as a pharmakon into this harsh cup, and in answer to my questions do tell me all that my heart most desires: why is it your custom to honor Peleus, the king of the Myrmidons? What does Icus have to do with Thessalian affairs?

In attendance at this party are an Athenian (Pollis), a Cyrenean (Callimachus), and a man from Icus (Theugenes), united by their customs – the drinking party itself – as well as their common understanding

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Literary quarrels

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of myths and rituals. Within this unifying frame Callimachus adumbrates behaviors that vary from region to region – an Athenian festival and an Ician celebration of the death of Peleus (a man originally from Aegina, who immigrated to Thessaly). The opening of fr.  Pf. cited here provides a snapshot of the Pithoigia and the Choes, the first two days of the Attic festival of the Anthesteria. The first day (Pithoigia) commemorated the opening of the new wine; the second (Choes) was apparently a time for solitary drinking of unmixed wine, the explanation for which was that it commemorated Orestes the matricide when he was a suppliant in Athens: he was given sanctuary, but for fear of pollution no one would associate with him, thus he drank alone. On that day, apparently, slaves were allowed to behave as free men, in a typical ritual inversion. The third event Pollis celebrates was the Aiora or “Swing festival” commemorating the death of Erigone. The expressed desire to avoid heavy drinking in favor of intellectual exchange is the sine qua non for Plato’s Symposium (), although this was not the only dialogue in which the topic was treated; it was also important throughout the Laws as the place for strengthening social mores and transmitting culture. At Callimachus’ party the Athenian is celebrating a festival in honor of Dionysus; in Plato’s Symposium Agathon celebrates his tragic victory at another festival of Dionysus, the Lenaea; Callimachus’ explicit mention of Orestes in connection with Athens calls to mind tragedy, particularly Aeschylus’ Eumenides. Callimachus refers to an often quoted Homeric line that seems to have become a proverb: Odyssey .: Þv a«eª t¼n ¾mo±on Šgei qe¼v Þv t¼n ¾mo±on. Homer’s expression is critiqued at the beginning of Plato’s Lysis, –. The term f†rmakon of course would have a strong Platonic resonance. When Socrates and Phaedrus recline under a plane tree in a grove shrill with the voice of cicadas, Phaedrus is said to have found the f†rmakon to persuade Socrates to travel outside the city (Phaedrus, d). We saw the importance of the Phaedrus at the opening of the Aetia, in the image of the old man as the cicada and the mouthpiece of the Muses, so an allusion to that dialogue (if such it is) at this point might facilitate a recollection of Callimachus’ earlier dialogue with the Muses. Finally, in the Laws (b–) wine is said to be a f†rmakon against old age, and a fine lubricant for conversation and music, particularly when taken in moderation. All of these are potentially relevant, but on the surface Callimachus’ banquet is far more deeply indebted to Homer. The language used to describe 

Scodel : – and Robertson : –.

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The power of the poet

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Pollis’ party conjures up Homeric feasts as the site in which guest-friendship is reinforced or violated. As Annette Harder observes, Callimachus aligns Pollis’ banquet with Odysseus’ reception on the island of the Phaeacians at the opening of the Odyssey, book , where food and drink are plentiful, seating arrangements unproblematic, and a singer is present to entertain. Callimachus also evokes the Cyclops, with his brutish “feasting,” Telemachus entertained by Menelaus and Helen in Sparta, and Odysseus’ own return to Ithaca and confrontation with the suitors. Callimachus is not subtle about this: he begins with the explicit quotation of Homer and his own (or his persona’s) judgment about its veracity in lines –. A few lines later he mentions the kissÅbion (), a type of cup used by the Cyclops (Odyssey .) and Eumaeus (Odyssey .), but which Athenaeus, at least, found quite inappropriate for Callimachus’ setting. While line : b†llomen calep f†rmakon –n pÛmati recasts Odyssey .: –v o²non b†le f†rmakon, describing Helen throwing a soothing drug into the wine (and a drug whose use she has learned in Egypt) when Telemachus visits Sparta seeking news of his father. Two other Homeric words – line : o«kt©sth and line : o«noc»wn – also contribute to this emerging picture of good and bad banquets, but possibly they are meant to do more than add to the Homeric coloring. Passages of Homer in which they occur are among those quoted by Socrates in the Republic .–. In this very well known and controversial section Socrates takes up the question of the value of poets for his imaginary state. Homer, in particular, is the target of his concern with the ways in which poets imitate not only good behaviors but also gods and heroes acting without selfcontrol or nobility. Such passages run the risk of encouraging emulation, especially by the young, and Socrates quotes a number of passages to illustrate his points. The depiction of Achilles is subjected to considerable criticism for his lack of self-control (), for his venality (e), and for his impiety in addressing Apollo (a). Thetis comes in for criticism for unseemly mourning (b) and Peleus, as Achilles’ father, is praised as swfron”statov (c). Socrates is equally disapproving of statements that portray heroes like Odysseus as overly fond of food and drink. At a-b Socrates combines lines from the Phaeacian feast with lines from the slaying of the cattle of the Sun, when he asks:   

 See above, n. . Harder : – and : .–. These allusions are well known; see Massimilla : – and Harder : .. In Callimachus, fr.  seems to name Thetis and a burial, while fr.  ends with the aition of Peleus’ cult on Icus. This could be coincidence, or it could be a further indication to the reader of an engagement with Plato.

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

T© d”; poie±n Šndra t¼n sofÛtaton l”gonta Þv doke± aÉt k†lliston e²nai p†ntwn, Âtan – par‡ ple±ai åsi tr†pezai s©tou kaª kreiän, m”qu d’ –k krhtrov ˆfÅsswn o«noc»ov for”si kaª –gce© dep†essi, doke± soi –pitždeion e²nai pr¼v –gkr†teian —autoÓ ˆkoÅein n”; £ t¼ – lim d’ o­ktiston qan”ein kaª p»tmon –pispe±n; What of this? The man [sc. Homer] making his wisest hero [sc. Odysseus] say that he thinks that the best of all occasions is whenever – the tables alongside are laden with bread and meat, and the cupbearer drawing wine from the krater brings it and pours it into the cups (Od. . –). Does it seem to you conducive to self-control for the young to hear this? Or this: It is the most pitiable thing to die and meet one’s fate from hunger? (Od. . )

In the introduction to this volume we discussed Callimachus’ use of the Homeric hapax boÅbrwstiv suggesting that he was revising Homer by deploying the distinctive word in a context that would have satisfied Socrates’ critique and not contravened ideas of the divine as wholly good. The Icus fragment may provide another example, if Callimachus’ allusions are intended to remind the reader of Socrates’ strictures on Homeric consumption. As in the earlier example, Callimachus seems to realign the offending Homeric elements in his own mimesis of an imaginary event that Plato could scarcely disapprove of – a symposium with light drinking devoted to edifying conversation. In doing so Callimachus (as the composing poet) would also be privileging poetry over philosophy, and reversing the effect of Plato’s quotation of Odyssey . –, the first of the two passages cited above. But he may also be tacitly reinforcing Socrates. In his quotation of Homer Plato omitted the phrase that immediately preceded par‡ ple±ai åsi tr†pezai: namely ˆkou†zwntai ˆoidoÓ ¤menoi –xe©hv (“they listen to the singer sitting in order, the tables alongside are laden,” etc.). A charitable interpretation of the omission is that Socrates had no quarrel with singers performing, merely the content of what they perform, so Socrates restricts himself to mentioning only the food and drink. However, only a few lines before (c–), Socrates certainly does object to the song that this particular singer (Demodocus) sang about Hephaestus catching Aphrodite in adultery with Ares (Od. .–). Therefore it is more likely that Plato deliberately omits the half line, as it were erasing the singer from his own text. Callimachus does so as well. There does 

We are indebted to an unpublished paper by Patrick Lake for this observation.

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The power of the poet



not appear to be a singer at his banquet; on the contrary, he substitutes a Platonically endorsed conversation. But the most striking Platonic coincidence in this fragment is the name of Callimachus’ Athenian – Pollis. According to Diogenes Laertius, when Plato went to Sicily to the court of Dionysius of Syracuse, the tyrant, unimpressed by Plato’s moral instruction, considered putting the philosopher to death. Persuaded otherwise, instead he sold Plato into slavery to the Spartan ambassador, one Pollis. Subsequently, at least in anecdote, Plato was purchased by Anniceris of Cyrene. Given that Plato was connected to Sicily as a lawgiver, and a failed lawgiver at that, we tentatively suggest that Callimachus’ dinner party (with its subsequent conversation with the Muses) replicates structural elements from the opening of Plato’s Laws. The dramatic location of the Laws was Crete, where three men, a Cretan, a Spartan, and an Athenian stranger, were making a pilgrimage to the Idaean cave where Zeus was born and/or reared. They pass their time in conversation about various aspects of Spartan and Cretan behavior and end with a discussion of laws and city foundations. Minos, as the model lawgiver who communicates with the god, and his brother Rhadamanthys are both mentioned as the dialogue opens. The three identifiable participants in Callimachus’ symposium are an Athenian, now removed to Egypt, Callimachus, from Cyrene, which was a Spartan foundation, and Theugenes, from Icus, which is said to have been a Cretan foundation. Plato’s Laws was about stabilizing cultural traditions, and he ratified the symposium, if conducted properly, as the appropriate and time-honored means of insuring the continuity of these traditions. Callimachus shows us a well-conducted symposium, but with these traditions as they move and change – as colonial descendents and immigrants from the original locations re-enact (Pollis) or relate (Theugenes) their local customs in what would have been for Plato the alien and non-Greek space of Egypt. To recapitulate: at the opening of the second book of the Aetia, Callimachus “answers” Plato, who wishes to dismiss the poets from his (or Socrates’) ideal state. He does this through a combination of means. Focusing on Sicily (where Plato had failed as a lawgiver), Callimachus narrates not idealized foundations, but what went wrong, starting with the portraits of famous lawgivers themselves, Minos, Rhadamanthys, Busiris, and Cronus, and by narrating foundations from blood, betrayal, and conflict. In the banquet that probably framed the exchange with the Muses he constructs a  

D. L. .. It is tempting to see Pollis’ cup-bearing slaves with their haughty demeanor (–) as an allusion to Plato’s one-time slavish condition. Ps-Scymnus, Periodos gˆes, –.

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Literary quarrels

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Platonically acceptable drinking party by interweaving Homeric intertexts (as Plato often does) that acknowledge and respond to the criticisms in the Republic, and finally he gives his Athenian host the name of Plato’s rescuer, Pollis, thus interjecting an element of historical verisimilitude. At the same time in his recounting of specific festivals and events connected with foundations, he demonstrates the significance of poetry as the artificer of culture, whose selective acts of recollection construct and perpetuate these foundations. “common things” A further reason that Callimachus may have been attracted to Plato as both model and foil is he might have regarded Plato as a writer of epigrams. Few scholars today believe that the epigrams attributed to Plato are genuine; but the question is not whether he did compose epigram, but whether an Alexandrian audience, or an Alexandrian poet like Callimachus, thought he did. He was certainly deemed an epigram writer by Meleager, whose praise in his Garland – “Indeed, the golden bough of ever-divine Plato, resplendent with virtue throughout” – leaves no doubt about Plato’s suitability for inclusion in a collection devoted solely to epigram. This is not insignificant. Meleager’s catalogue does not include other authors known primarily for their prose works, nor apparently does Meleager see any incongruity in placing the author of the Ion and Republic among the hymnothetai of his garland. Even a false attribution is contingent on plausibility, to which, ironically, the long discussion in the scholarship of the authenticity of these epigrams also bears witness. To rephrase the question: is Callimachus, in casting Plato in an epigram and in alluding to a specific Platonic dialogue (Phaedo), responding to a tradition that knew, or thought it knew, Plato as an author of epigram, that is, a tradition that embraced Plato as a poet? The chronology of the ‘Platonic’ epigrams would support this. Walter Ludwig thought they were composed in the third century bc, and he first discerned their influence on Dioscorides, who dates from the second half of the century. It is not surprising that Plato, the philosopher who appropriates the imagery of Muses and mousikž for philosophy written in prose, would have made a plausible composer of the short elegiac poem, and might, in other words, have exhibited something of the dianoia that Socrates claims was necessary at the end of his life. 

Phaedo – passim and see above.

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“Common things”



Among the epigrams attributed to Plato is one that centers on a figure from Socratic dialogue (Phaedrus) set in an erotic context: NÓn, Âte mhd•n *lexiv Âson m»non e²f’ Âti kal»v, åptai kaª p†nt psi peribl”petai. qum”, t© mhnÅeiv kusªn ½st”on; e²t’ ˆnižseiv Ìsteron. oÉc oÌtw Fa±dron ˆpwl”samen; Now, when I said nothing more than “Alexis is fair,” he is noticed and gazed upon from all directions by everyone. My heart, why do you reveal the bone to the dogs? You will grieve soon after. Did I not lose Phaedrus in this way? (FGE )

Let us juxtapose this poem with Callimachus’ famous epigrammatic reprise of his own aesthetics, set in an erotic context: ìEcqa©rw t¼ po©hma t¼ kuklik»n, oÉd• keleÅq ca©rw, t©v polloÆv æde kaª æde f”rei· mis”w kaª per©foiton –rÛmenon, oÉd’ ˆp¼ kržnhv p©nw· sikca©nw p†nta t‡ dhm»sia. Lusan©h, sÆ d• na©ci kal¼v kal»v – ˆll‡ prªn e«pe±n toÓto safäv,  cÛ fhs© tiv· ‘Šllov ›cei.’ I hate the cyclical poem, nor do I enjoy a path that carries many hither and yon. I also despise a roving love, nor do I drink from any font. I despise all that is common. Lysanias, you are fair, yes fair. Yet before uttering this clearly, some echo says “he is another’s.” (Ep.  GP =  Pf.)

The points of overlap are considerable: both speakers lament the loss of lovers who are “fair” (kal»v); for both the act of speaking the word kal»v in public is intimately associated with loss; for both lovers loss occurs when the beloved is exposed to the broader public gaze, and as a consequence both reject the many. And both epigrams juxtapose the erotic loss with broader aesthetic or intellectual values. The Plato epigram positions the loss of Alexis against that of Phaedrus – the erotically charged foil for Socrates in the dialogue named after him as well as the partner of Pausanias in the Symposium – while Lysanias’ lack of sexual exclusivity (or discrimination) in Callimachus’ epigram is figured as the inverse of Callimachus’ aesthetic response to commonplace poetry and events. Plato likens the indiscriminate gaze of the many (p†nt psi) to a dog eyeing a bone, while Callimachus’ choice of language – polloÅv, per©foiton –rÛmenon, and dhm»sia – recalls the public aspect of Socrates’ philosophical mission: being seen in the company of beautiful boys, whom he attempts to instruct in virtue, while the public – o¬ pollo© – misconstrue his behavior and condemn him to death.

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

Literary quarrels

It is possible that the relationship of the two epigrams should be reversed, that “Plato” is imitating Callimachus. Then the question becomes what triggered a rewriting of this particular epigram in Platonic terms. The most salient feature is the language: foit†w, for example, is commonly used in Plato of frequenting a teacher, and a recurring theme in the dialogues is the habit of young men searching out Sophists without regard for the truthvalue of their teaching (see, e.g., Euthydemus c-d or Protagoras c). The line mis”w kaª per©foiton –rÛmenon in Callimachus might easily mean: “I hate a young man like the Platonic eromenos who continually seeks out teachers from the common herd, who teach a facile virtue.” Epigrammatic writing is an intimate exchange among poets, so there is no definitive answer as to priority. But it is safe to conclude that either Callimachus was imitating “Plato” or an imitator of Callimachus was responding to something identifiably Platonic in Callimachus. Both the Academy and the Lyceum had shrines dedicated to the Muses, symbolic of the transformation that philosophy was undergoing. The poets who come after Plato, perhaps especially those associated with the Museum in Alexandria, were necessarily aware of this now shared cultural space in which appropriation of poetry by philosophy as a subject for discourse, interpretation, evaluation, and rivalry had already happened. In this context Cleombrotus’ plunge has added irony: his peculiar katabasis – his misreading of Plato is cast in verse, and the result of his philosophical study – is a fall from its self-assumed sublime height (where the soul is immortal) into the familiar tropes of poetry (going down to Hades). the crowd There is one final literary quarrel. At the end of the Hymn to Apollo Callimachus appends a sphragis that articulates a distinction between the kind of poetry he wishes to write and the poems preferred by Phthonos: ¾ Fq»nov %p»llwnov –p’ oÎata l†qriov e²pen· ‘oÉk Šgamai t¼n ˆoid¼n Áv oÉd’ Âsa p»ntov ˆe©dei.’ t¼n Fq»non Þp»llwn pod© t’ ¢lasen æd” t’ ›eipen· ‘%ssur©ou potamo±o m”gav ç»ov, ˆll‡ t‡ poll† lÅmata gv kaª poll¼n –f’ Ìdati surfet¼n ™lkei. Dho± d’ oÉk ˆp¼ pant¼v Ìdwr for”ousi m”lissai ˆll’ ¤tiv kaqarž te kaª ˆcr†antov ˆn”rpei p©dakov –x ¬erv ½l©gh lib‡v Škron Šwton.’ 





This epigram and Ep.  GP (which opened the chapter) are not the only ones in the Callimachean corpus that play off of ideas in Plato. See ch.  for a discussion of Ep.  GP =  Pf.

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The crowd



Covertly Envy spoke into Apollo’s ear: “I do not admire the poet who does not sing as much as the sea.” Apollo spurned Envy with his foot and said: “the Assyrian river has a vast flow, but it drags along its waters the many leavings and much refuse from the land. But the bees do not carry water to Demeter from every source, but what wells up pure and untainted, crown of waters, a small drop from a holy fountain.” (–)

The metapoetic implications of these lines have provoked extensive discussion, much of which centers on which poet should be identified with the sea or the Assyrian river in contrast to the bees who carry pure water to Demeter. Callimachus identifies his own poetics with the latter, and possibly that of Philitas, who had written a poem on Demeter that is cited in the Aetia Prologue. In a recent, unpublished paper K. Cheshire has observed that the initial syllables of lines –, lÅ and Dh, spell out the name of Antimachus’ Lyde, a poem quite admired by Plato. Callimachus’ own observation that this poem was weighty and not lucid would certainly make it a fit candidate for the swollen river here, but more interesting is its Platonic penumbra coupled with the word, surfet»n, which sits between lÅ and Dh in line . This word is not particularly frequent in Greek, and its basic meaning seems to have been “refuse,” but its more common application in later Greek was metaphorical, as a term for the mob. In Plato surfet»v is the great unwashed, whose judgments are not to be taken seriously, in contrast to those who have true understanding. In a passage of the Theaetetus, in which he is discussing the difference between exoteric and esoteric knowledge, Socrates remarks: öAr’ oÔn pr¼v Car©twn p†ssof»v tiv §n ¾ Prwtag»rav, kaª toÓto ¡m±n m•n  ‚n©xato t poll surfet, to±v d• maqhta±v –n ˆporržt tŸn ˆlžqeian ›legen; Truly, by the Graces, what an altogether wise man Protagoras was! But did he speak in riddles to us as members of the mob, meanwhile telling the truth in secret to his disciples? (Tht. c)

The comment is ironic, but the sentiment may not have been. Again, in the Gorgias:    

See F. Williams : – and most recently Cheshire : – and n. ; for Philitas, see Spanoudakis :  and Hunter : –. See above, n. . According to F. Williams : , it first occurred in Hesiod, WD  with the meaning of “chaff”. We are grateful to Alessandro Barchiesi for calling this word to our attention.

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

Literary quarrels

£ o­ei me l”gein, –‡n surfet¼v sulleg doÅlwn kaª pantodapän ˆnqrÛpwn mhden¼v ˆx©wn plŸn ­swv t sÛmati «scur©sasqai, kaª oÕtoi fäsin Œtta, taÓta e²nai n»mima; Or do you suppose that I am saying that if the mob of slaves and men of every type, worthless except perhaps for the strength of their bodies, gathers together and says some things, that these things are prescriptive? (Gorgias  c–)

In both cases these are philosophical discussions. The subject is not poetry, but what unites the two is the distinction between the few who really know the truth and the opinion of the masses. Callimachus seems, therefore, to have borrowed a loaded term to apply to those who do not understand poetry (and that would no doubt include his source). Callimachus’ poetry was self-consciously innovative and experimental, and took seriously the challenge of writing for a new age. To do that meant abandoning or reinventing old forms, but that was not without the danger of being misunderstood. Matching oneself against Homer was bound to be counterproductive, but Plato’s own uneasy relationship with poetry (and in particular, Homer) provided a fertile environment to exploit in articulating his own poetic stance. In this chapter we are making no claims that Callimachus was engaging with Plato’s central philosophical speculations, although Callimachus might well have been responding to more than we have been able to identify. Rather our purpose has been to make the case for Plato as a central and significant intertext within Callimachus’ poetic heritage. Plato appropriates poetry as a theme for philosophic discourse, staging the relationship of the two agonistically, and he borrows from the repertory of poets – he employs mimesis of individuals, makes up stories, and alludes to previous poets in an overt way by acknowledging sources, but also by incorporating those allusions into the fabric of his own discourse. He also critiques them, and especially Homer. Callimachus indulges in all of these poetic behaviors, but in addition he incorporates distinctive narrative moments from Platonic discourse on poetry into his own verse – the most telling of which is his representing himself as the cicada immediately before his conversation with the Muses. Callimachus’ reading of Plato constitutes a powerful and (for us) unexpected act of reception that acknowledges the changing role of the poet and the growing challenge of criticism of poetry. But Callimachus also finds in Plato a vocabulary and an adaptable critical framework in which to articulate a poetics that de facto differed from an earlier literary culture because of time, place, and the fact of a library – or access to poetic

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The crowd



predecessors not solely as performance but also in the aggregate as texts. Entering into a public discourse, writing for the dhm»sia qua dhm»sia, at least in the important way that Greek tragedians and comedians had done, was no longer feasible in Ptolemaic Alexandria, but how does a poet reposition himself for a more restricted audience (an audience like Plato’s?), one that necessarily included the crown, members of an imperial bureaucracy, the intellectual e´lite, as well as one’s fellow Cyreneans resident in Alexandria?

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c h ap t er 2

Performing the text

THE SOUNDS OF READING

Callimachus’ Aetia Prologue is filled with sound. His opponents, the Telchines, twitter or squeak; they bray like asses. Zeus thunders. In contrast, Callimachus sings with the light, clear voice of a cicada. This mimetic immediacy is more than a humorous effect: his onomatopoeia reinforces sense as the ass brays a heavy spondaic ending (($O ), and the cicada’s singing style ( $4 ) is the vox propria for a controlled, clearsounding instrument or a human singing voice. Together the sounds are an aural reenactment of Aesop’s story of the ass and the cicada, a fable with aesthetic ramifications for poetry. Callimachus is also self-consciously and ironically textual – in the Aetia Prologue he presents himself with a tablet on his knees when Apollo comes to inspire him – someone who learns poetry by taking down a series of rules. His poetry then deliberately suspends itself between two worlds – the sounds and sights of poetic performance and the written text as epitomized by the collections in the new library. The latter must have effected a psychological re-orientation as the poet’s imagined audience no longer received the text simply as an aural and visual experience. Performance is ephemeral, noisy, and visually stimulating, especially so in the third century when even Homer was acted dramatically by Homeristai, while texts are silent but long-lasting. Whether or not Hellenistic poets wrote for public performance, they wrote with double consciousness. It would have been textual and intertextual on the one hand, since they were beginning to experience the literature of the past in new ways (as texts collected within a library), but equally they were fashioned by the immediate experiences of viewing and hearing live performances in public spaces. This double consciousness is nicely captured in a fragment from Strato’s Phoenikides, a late-fourth- or early-third-century comic excerpt found in 

West : .



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The sounds of reading



Athenaeus and also in a schoolmaster’s manual from Ptolemaic Egypt. It is a comic monologue in which the speaker, who ventriloquizes his cook, complains about the man’s habit of employing obscure Homeric words for common household items. “Is there brine?” “Brine? Get hosed! Will you say more clearly what you want to tell me?” “You are presumptuous, old man,” he said, “bring me the salt. That is what brine is.” The libation water was at hand, he sacrificed, he said a lot more that by Earth no one would have understood–cuts, portions, diptychs, spits. So that it was necessary to take the books of Philitas to figure out what each was. But I begged him to change his tone, to say something within the range of human comprehension. But him, Persuasion could not have persuaded if she had been standing right there. I think the scumbag has from childhood been a slave of some sort of rhapsode, so full was he of the words of Homer. (–)

The stage cook is accused of performing Homer in his kitchen, his vocabulary and even his ability to deploy it acquired from his intimate association with rhapsodes. But his employer operates in the realm of books – he thinks of consulting Philitas’ Ataktoi glossai to be able to understand the cook’s words. The excerpt dramatizes a clear awareness of the divide: what was once only visual and aural can now be fixed in text, where the real-time cognitive experience of the performance is replaced by reading, or by consulting a book. It locates Homer between two different aesthetic experiences of reception. The staged incident may also depend for its humor on a class distinction: it seems to be the lower-class cook who speaks “Homer” while his presumably higher-class employer is unfamiliar with the words outside of books, and by inference the world of popular (Homeric) performance. The challenge then for the contemporary poet was both to accommodate the potential of the text based on the replicable 



The two sources do not entirely agree; see PCG .– for details. See Fantuzzi and Hunter : – for the Homeric language of the cook. The school book (Cribiore : no. ) contains Macedonian month-names, squares of numbers, fractions, an epigram attributed to Posidippus on a fountain dedicated to Arsinoe II (* A–B), and a dedication for a temple of Homer, then this selection from Strato. The schoolbook itself combines practical knowledge and extracts of poetry that are topical, as well as a list of names that includes Callimachus, Antimachus, and Agathodorus, who might well be the comic actor mentioned in OGIS . (see below). It is quite possible that the book was employed for teaching the children of Macedonian soldiers who lived in the Fayum (the alleged find spot), and the reason to include this particular passage is the fact that young learners themselves would have struggled with Homer’s vocabulary. Homeric parody, particularly in a culinary context, seems to have been quite popular in the th and rd centuries bc. See the discussion in Olson and Sens . Aristophanes provides an instructive parallel in his Frogs, where Dionysus’ perusal of a text of Euripides’ Andromeda (–) brings on a longing for the now dead Euripides and his theatrical art. As the subsequent agon in the Underworld makes clear, it is not for Euripides qua reading experience that Dionysus longs.

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

The sounds of reading

experience of reading (as opposed to hearing and memory) and to retain the immediacy and the energy of seeing and hearing poetic performance within the fixity of the text. It has been often stated that Callimachus did not write for performance, a judgment that tends to carry with it a devaluation of his poetry in comparison to his predecessors. The belief that his poems were not performed persists despite the fact that a high percentage of them are for specific events connected to the Ptolemaic royal house, for example, marriage (fr. , Wedding of Arsinoe), lament for royal death (fr.  on the deification of Arsinoe), and success in Panhellenic games (Victory of Berenice). The consequence of this judgment would be either that these poems were written for real events for which there was no celebration that included poetic performance (whether competition, cultic rite, or a sympotic context) or, if events did include performance, that Callimachus did not participate in them but circulated a text about the event. In the non-performance model his poems would have been only for reading or circulation among a select group of intellectuals (the cook’s employer but not the cook). Scholars have tended to operate within entrenched dichotomies of performed vs. written, popular vs. learned, public vs. private that are of marginal heuristic value for estimating Callimachus’ poetic achievement. The deeper questions of how and why he creates the immediacy of performance in juxtaposition to an acknowledgement of textuality in his poems, what kinds of performance he is interested in, and with what assumptions about mimesis (who speaks) are largely neglected. The Acontius and Cydippe episode from Aetia, book  (frr. – Pf.) provides a case in point. The poem opens with an evocation of one of the most familiar of Panhellenic choral events, the theoriai sent to Apollo on Delos. But it also acknowledges the written (and non-poetic) source of the erotic narrative, the Cean chronicler Xenomedes, and then closes with a vivid image of the transition from historical source to poem as a “running story.” In order to assess how Callimachus negotiates the different aesthetics of performance and written text within his poetry we begin with a roadmap of what constituted the contemporary performance practices for early Hellenistic Alexandria. Alexandria was in the process of being built under the first three Ptolemies, the time during which Callimachus was writing. This new foundation differed in important ways from a Greek city like Athens in 

Gentili :  sums up the non-performance position, while Cameron  provides ample anecdotal evidence to undermine the paradigm, though both work within the standard oppositions. For a more nuanced view of the complex interrelationships of performance and text see Morrison : – and Bing : –.

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The sounds of reading



respect to its immigrant populations, its location in Egypt, and its cults. Yet this new city needed to define itself as a Greek space, for the large number of inhabitants who were from diverse ethne or were Greek speakers but not ethnically Greek. Here we begin to see the role that Greek culture, or paideia, was to come to play in defining identity in the Hellenistic period. Public performance was significant in accomplishing this goal, and in its performance practices Alexandria probably resembled other cities of the Hellenistic Mediterranean. Traditional tragedy and comedy were staged there as well as mime or farce, rhapsodic recitations, and musical events. Alexandrian festivals, like those found elsewhere in the Hellenistic world, now combined athletic, musical, and dramatic competitions. The court-sponsored festivals, on which there is good information, include the Ptolemaia, instituted by Ptolemy II in honor of his deceased father and first celebrated in Alexandria around  bc; the Basileia, which seems to have combined an older Macedonian festival of Zeus Basileus with coronation ceremonies and royal birthday celebrations; the Soteria (probably in honor of Zeus Soter/Ptolemy Soter); an Arsinoeia (in honor of Arsinoe II); an Adonia, the subject of Theocritus, Idyll ; more than one festival in honor of Demeter; as well as festivals of Isis (Demeter’s Egyptian avatar). Additionally, Alexandrian Greeks could and did participate in the broader Panhellenic festival culture of the athletic games at Olympia, Nemea, Isthmia, and Delphi, to which the Ptolemies added the Alexandrian Ptolemaia and promoted it as the equal of the other four (or “isolympic”). Callimachus wrote epinicia commemorating the Panhellenic victories of Berenice II (Nemea) and of Sosibius (Nemea and Isthmia). Religious events at the great common shrines like Delphi and Delos, Samothrace, Dodona, and Didyma also supported a rich song culture. This is reflected in Callimachus’ poems celebrating cultic events on Delos (Hymn ), and Delphi (Hymn  and Aetia  frr. – on the Daphnephoria), and Didyma (Iambus , Branchus, fr.  Pf.). In the Hellenistic period there is everywhere a broad pattern of continuity with earlier performance practice, enhanced by the largesse of new dynasties defining themselves and competing for status in the wake of the death of Alexander. Theocritus’ celebration of Ptolemy II’s benefactions to performers and poets (Idyll .–) is a case in point. There is also change over time as the Hellenistic world moved away from Archaic and    

 Lightfoot : . See West : – for Hellenistic performance practices. Callimachus’ Hymn to Zeus, and possibly Theocritus’ Heracliscus (Id. ), may have been written for the Basileia in  bc. See Fraser : .–, –; Weber : –, Perpillou-Thomas : –. See Hunter : , –.

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Classical performance practices to develop its own style, and professional virtuosi or international superstars came to dominate public performance. In the emerging Hellenistic kingdoms the boundary between public and private was continually blurred: monarchs funded public events like tragic competitions or hosted dinner parties in connection with some festival occasion like the Ptolemaia. The convergence of the two performance venues is nicely illustrated in Athenaeus’ description of a tent pavilion for the symposium held as part of the festival. One set of decorative entablatures featured characters from tragedy, comedy, and satyr play as participants in symposia. Theocritus Idyll  provides another example: the poem features a female performer who sings the hymn to Adonis to a select public at the royal palace under the queen’s sponsorship, but who also apparently took part in formal contests. Events like weddings, when aristocrats or royals were involved, functioned at least as much in the public as the private domain. From the time when we can first identify the aristocratic symposium, it was a place for class bonding, with amateur and professional performance forming an integral part. Ewen Bowie remarks that the picture of sympotic song that emerges from Theognis “involves praise, gnomai, reflection, banter, games in which one song capped another.” Symposium entertainment might also include professional performance of lyric, iambic, or elegy. Traditionally such events were culturally entrenched opportunities to measure and regulate behaviors and to influence opinion that had a broad social impact. These practices can be found writ large in fourth and third century symposia given by monarchs or members of the e´lite. Who was invited, what was served, how it was presented, what kinds of entertainment were offered, and even the extent of the drinking formed a complex semiotics of power in which proper behaviors for both ruler and ruled are delineated as well as negotiated. Whether the poet attended as a guest or a hired entertainer, his song was an important part of the process. Hellenistic poets like their archaic predecessors were fully aware of their position and influence within this environment. The significance of the symposium as a place in which ideas can be exchanged and behaviors affected can be seen in the growth of literature about the symposium in the fourth century. Plato’s Symposium is the best, but by no means the  

 

f–a. Athenaeus is quoting Callixinus. Cf. lines –, –. At –, Gorgo describes the singer of the Adonis song: “She’s about to sing the Adonis song, the Argive woman’s daughter, a very practiced singer. She’s the one who won in the dirge last year.” Whether the public here consists of both men and women or women only is still a subject of debate: see Burton : – and Reed : –. See for example the description of Alexander’s wedding at Susa (West : ).  : . P. Murray : –.

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only example of such writings. The dialogue is set in a private house, following Agathon’s public victory in the tragic competition ( bc), and the participants forego deep drinking to discuss Eros. Plato’s interest in the potential of the symposium can be seen also in the Protagoras and the Laws, and Callimachus’ own writing reflects both of these texts. The philosophers’ symposium may have been more of a literary construct than a commonly experienced event, but a letter purportedly written by Aristeas to Philocrates, probably in the second century bc, projects back onto the reign of Ptolemy II a symposium presided over by the king in which the participants exchange views on subjects like kingship. With the fictive date of the anniversary of Ptolemy’s defeat of Antiochus I at sea (§), the symposium fˆeted those who had translated the Septuagint into Greek. In addition to the Jewish guests it included a number of philosophers, one of whom was Menedemus of Eretria (§). This same Menedemus was targeted by Lycophron in a satyr play in which he described dinner parties that included poets and scholars. The food was notoriously bad. An early third-century papyrus from a Greek soldier’s tomb in Elephantine in southern Egypt describes what certainly looks like a living practice: +6 ’,   # : . %2  .  1  &$, $  &T +2% ' , C   %,  , 7 ' O %  .[ ]%8  &  :’ ` $2   .2. ;  &% 6 5&2, '42 [  ]$,  7 2· Whenever we come together as friends for this sort of thing we should laugh, and jest, acting with virtue, take pleasure in coming together, to tease and mock each other in a way that provokes laughter. But then seriousness should follow and we should listen to each other speaking in turn. (Page GLP – = IEG –)

Any discussion of Hellenistic performance practices, then, must take into account the symposium as well as court-sponsored, civic, and religious 

 

  

Xenophon’s Symposium is in part an imitation of Plato’s. Other philosophers credited with symposia are Aristotle, Speusippus, and Epicurus. Of particular interest for Callimachus are the A&  (“Visits”) of Ion of Chios. See further Hunter : –. Tecusan : –, and see previous chapter. Most scholars regard the letter as a fiction. For it to work as fiction, though, such an event has to be plausible. The multi-day event was devoted to such questions as: “What is the highest form of government?” (); “How could the king be free from grief?” (); “How could he recognize those who were dealing treacherously with him?” (); “What is philosophy?” (). See further Bagnall : –. D.L. .–. Menedemus is mentioned in an epigram of Posidippus as well ( A–B). See Falivene . See Cameron : –, who discusses the Hellenistic symposium in terms of poetry and philosophy.

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The sounds of reading

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events. In the early stages of city settlement this is particularly critical because there is no reason to imagine a population distinct from the officials and functionaries, mercenaries, and support staff that migrated to the site to serve the imperial court. Callimachus’ poetry reflects this range of performance options – either because he wrote for real-time poetic performance, as is possible with his epinicia, or because he constructed his poems as sites of performance, as perhaps in his hymns (although at least a few of these, e.g., Hymns  and , could have been intended for original performance). More crucial for our argument, Callimachus consistently identifies himself as a performer, an aoidos, and his self-proclaimed models – Ion of Chios and Hipponax – are particularly characterized by their roles as performers. But Callimachus also participates in symposia (Aetia, fr.  Pf.), a venue that may have served as the background for the second book of the Aetia, and seems to have been the setting for the Hymn to Zeus and possibly the thirteenth Iambus; the symposium is unsurprisingly the setting for several of his erotic epigrams. These two categories, traditional modes of public performance and the symposium, form the framework for this chapter. We begin by surveying the contemporary practices of drama, lyric poetry, and stichic meters, and Callimachus’ relationship to them, and then we turn to Callimachus and the symposium. dramatic performance Tragedy (and probably comedy) seems originally to have been a product of Classical Athens with its choruses both paid for and performed by citizens, and in retrospect it appears as the dominant poetic idiom for the fifth and fourth centuries (at least for Athens), and this circumstance tends to color modern critical judgments about later poetry. Yet even in the fifth century theater production was not limited to events like the Dionysia, an Athenian celebration of itself that would have attracted thousands of viewers, many of them foreign. As early as Aeschylus this model must have been modified since he wrote and presumably produced plays for courts of the Sicilian tyrants; certainly Euripides was to do so at the end of his life for the kings of Macedon. How choral performance was managed in these environments can only be conjectured, but the playwrights could not always have depended on local amateurs. The shift from polis production to troupes of professional performers took place over time, but by the early  

See Scheidel  for a discussion of the settlement and population of Alexandria. See Csapo : –.

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Dramatic performance

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Hellenistic period inscriptions provide evidence that dramatic performance throughout the Greek-speaking world was coming under the control of the “Artists of Dionysus.” Members of these groups were uniformly of citizen status, and extremely well paid for their efforts. They might also have been exempt from taxes or other duties, and could have claimed sacred status as dedicated to the god. Their title (technitai) reflected the fact that they viewed themselves as highly trained and skilled performers; technitai included actors as well as lyre players, aulos players, and rhapsodes. (Mime artists, jugglers, and conjurors were apparently of lower status and seem to have been excluded.) Inscriptional evidence suggests that cities and other institutions could contract with the artists for a particular performance, who were then responsible for all aspects of the production. However, as festival venues expanded it became increasingly difficult to guarantee that a sufficient number of artists would or could attend, and some venues became more prestigious than others. There are notable consequences for the growth of these guilds: () performance became more broadly available and exportable to whatever locations could pay the price of hiring the guild; () the standards of performance were raised as polished virtuoso efforts came to be the norm and production handled by companies rather than citizen amateurs; () the development of a repertory that could be performed again and again in various venues reduced the opportunities for the unique compositions for festival competition familiar from Athens; and () the performance of whole plays with actors and chorus gave way slowly to selections suitable for virtuosi now accompanied either by lyre or aulos. Such guilds expanded the average Greek speaker’s chances of experiencing some kind of tragic or comic performance, while the performance of the same play or poem in more than one location reinforced the idea of a common stock of mythological lore, which in turn must have been a significant factor in transmitting a shared sense of Greek cultural identity. Since the increasing skill of musicians and actors and rhapsodes coincided with growing awareness of the potential for textual transmission, it is quite possible that the growth of guilds was a contributing factor for some Hellenistic poets moving away from broad venues like the stage or interstate competitions to more intimate forms like local festivals and symposia. Well before the Ptolemies settled in Alexandria, the Macedonian kings had shown a taste for drama. Euripides probably wrote his Archelaus, a   

 Lightfoot : . Csapo and Slater : –; Lightfoot .  West : –; Lightfoot . Csapo and Slater : –. Nagy  also makes the case for performers creating and guaranteeing a canon of performed texts.

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play that features one of the ancestors of the house, for the Macedonian court. Philip II and Alexander continued the tradition of supporting theatrical performance, as did the Successors. A theater of Dionysus was built in Alexandria under the first Ptolemies, and some of the earliest evidence for the existence and roles of the technitai comes from Egypt, where they are connected to the throne. These artists appear in the Ptolemaia, one of the first festivals recorded in the new city. It included a procession, which resembled in many respects the opening of the City Dionysia at Athens, consisting of “Artists of Dionysus” led by the “poet and priest of Dionysus,” Philicus, who was apparently one of the Pleiad (see below), Delphic tripods for the victorious boys’ and men’s choruses, figures dressed as tragic actors and satyrs, as well as a cart carrying a golden phallus pole (§e), and figures representing cities. The listing of prizes for boys’ and men’s choruses guarantees that dithyrambic performance was an integral feature of the festival, though whether whole tragedies were staged is not clear. However, when the Ptolemies controlled Delos, tragic performances were apparently part of the celebration of the Ptolemaia held there. Tragedy in Alexandria never assumed the dominant position it held in Athens, and almost nothing is known about local production practice, but T. Falkner makes a good case for Alexandrian scholars like Aristarchus in the second century bc deriving much of their information about drama from seeing productions, not reading texts. Ancient commentators identify seven Hellenistic dramatists as “the second rank of tragedians,” naming them the Pleiad. The seven: Lycophron, Alexander the Aetolian, Homerus of Byzantium, Sosiphanes of Syracuse, Sositheus, Philicus of Corcyra, and either Dionysiades of Tarsus, Aeantides, or Euphronius of Chersonese certainly produced in Athens, but they are also associated with Ptolemy II, and that suggests at least some activity

  

 

 

Harder : –. Polybius .., Strabo C, Athenaeus d. Cities of the chora, for example Ptolemais and Oxyrhynchus, also had theaters. OGIS nos. –, dated between  and  bc. They are called “the technitai for Dionysus and the Theoi Adelphoi (= Ptolemy II and Arsinoe II).” These technitai appear to be mentioned in Theocr. Id. .–, see below. Described at length in Athenaeus. For technitai see c–d, discussed by Rice : –. IG XI : '4  )  2. -    '$  & ,    /$  '$T , ‘to proclaim victory in the first contest of the Ptolemaia, whenever the tragedians compete’. See Sifakis : –. Falkner : especially –. For the identification of Philicus see Fraser . .  n.  and Rice : –.

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in Alexandria. In this ancient rank-ordering Machon was, according to Athenaeus, next to the Pleiad in quality, and he did produce his plays in Alexandria (where he was buried). In an epigram (AP .) Dioscorides even portrays the deceased Machon as claiming: “City of Cecrops [sc. Athens], by the Nile, too, it is the case that bitter thyme blooms for the Muses.” Anecdotal evidence suggests that playwrights like Philemon and possibly even Menander produced in Alexandria. Strato’s comedy, a fragment of which was quoted above, was produced in Athens, though because of the close connection of Philitas with the first and second Ptolemy (he is said to have been Philadelphus’ tutor), it would fit an Alexandrian context as well. In later Alexandria, Ptolemy IV is credited with a tragedy on Adonis, a subject already associated with the royal house in Theocritus Idyll . Given the wealth of the early Ptolemies and their strong cultural interests, it would be surprising if well-known playwrights did not produce there. From the titles and fragments that survive, it is clear that many Hellenistic plays concerned themselves with historical events that would work well in local production. Lycophron’s Cassandreis, for example, seems to have been based on the foundation of Cassandreia in  bc. Most of the subjects identified in Hellenistic drama are traditional – Medea, Oedipus, Hippolytus – but there is also overlap with subjects found in contemporary poetry – Heracles, for example, or Galatea or Daphnis. Papyri provide further insight into Hellenistic Egyptian (and by extension, Alexandrian) dramatic taste and likewise demonstrate a continuing engagement with traditional mythological figures as well as a number of new themes. There are now almost fifty fragments or extracts from Euripides’ plays from the Ptolemaic period, including the Archelaus, the Helen, and the Heracles Furens, some assigned to the third century bc, and fragments of Hellenistic tragedies and comedies of unknown authorship are also to be found in Egypt. Being found in Egypt does not mean that the plays were necessarily written or produced there, but it does mean 

 

 

For attestations and evidence for the identification of the Pleiad, see Fraser : .– n.. For recent discussions of Hellenistic drama see Fantuzzi and Hunter : – and Sens : –. Plutarch states, for example, that Magas forgave Philemon for pillorying him on the comic stage (Mor. a). Fraser : . n.  argues that the most likely place of production was Cyrene. Rostagni (quoted in Fraser : . n. ) argued for a revived interest in drama under Ptolemy IV. On Ptolemy IV and the increased presence of the cult of Dionysus during his reign see H¨olbl : . Fraser : . and n. . For Menedemus see D.L. . and  A–B. As of  papyri have yielded  fragments of Euripides, but only  for Aeschylus and  for Sophocles. Aristophanes fares better with about  fragments, and there are over  of Menander. For fragments of Hellenistic tragedies see Xanthakis-Karamanos : –.

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that contemporary dramatic texts were read and copied along with the more familiar fifth-century examples. And preservation is itself a kind of reception. Moreover, several of these Ptolemaic fragments of Euripides and other playwrights have musical notation or are lyric extracts, which does suggest indigenous performance. Extracts from tragedy and comedy are well represented in Ptolemaic schoolbooks, and Callimachus’ epigram on a tragic mask ( GP =  Pf.) offers us an insight into schoolroom drama during this period:  Ih 8   S 7 g8 9 W%

8 W4 ·   x :  *  ' ’ ( $% 2$ . 7$H ’ '   + 8 : g% & , 9 $, &  Q,% 7&O ·   2$% “) 9 & , ”, ) R 7.



Snub-nose, the son of Small, dedicated me to the Muses and asked for easy learning. And they, like Glaucus [who exchanged golden armor for bronze] gave him a large gift in exchange for a small one. Now I, the tragic Dionysus, am set up here yawning twice as wide as the Samian, within hearing range of the boys. They recite: ‘Holy is his hair’. What else is new?

The epigram capitalizes on the fact that schoolboys declaimed Euripides’ plays as part of their education. The practice was so commonplace that Dionysus, who is forced to listen, is yawning in boredom – a clever explanation for the typical tragic mask with its gaping mouth. It is difficult to imagine schoolboys reciting dramatic texts but never attending the theater, especially since the cities of Egypt had theaters (and if we may extrapolate from the very early date for some texts with musical notation, dramatic performances came with the earliest Greek immigrants). The living tradition of performance is probably what drove the continuing study of dramatic texts in schools, and Callimachus’ epigram makes clear that “study” was mainly of the oral variety, not focused on the written word. Callimachus makes a further point with the epigram. Dionysus himself is not imagined as the living god, but as a mask confined to a wall, and a schoolroom wall at that, while the line he quotes – ) 9 & , – is among the few lines of tragedy that could be alternatively scanned to accommodate trimeter or,   

 Cribiore : nos. –. See Pohlmann and West : .  For the phrase, see the discussion in GP .–. Euripides, Bacchae . Jack Mitchell in a recent Stanford dissertation (: –) argues on the basis of markings on Homeric papyri that the separation of reading from performance may be a modern concept. If he is correct, then students would have automatically acted out the characters as they read.

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Dramatic performance



as here, the elegiac couplet. Could this metrical trick hint at the grander scheme of Callimachus’ poetics, namely his penchant for absorbing other genres into his own generic frames? According to the Suda Callimachus too wrote for the stage – tragedies, comedies, and satyr plays. Most scholars do not regard the entry as accurate, though a contributing factor has always been disbelief in the existence of Alexandrian drama performed at such an early period. And yet tragedy figures in four of Callimachus’ epigrams (, , ,  GP = , , ,  Pf.), a surprising number from a relatively small, varied corpus. Not, in this case, allusion to earlier tragedy, or tragedies, but rather to features of its production: tragic masks ( GP), tragic competition ( GP), and tragic speech ( GP). Ep.  GP refers to the poet’s own tragic composition, and there is no reason to assume that the speaker is other than Callimachus. The epigram employs the technical language of instructing a tragic chorus: line : ' ’ # +Y ’ 7   ,, “but if he had directed one play,” and lines –: :  &O | I$, “and I, who did this/composed this” plays on the double meaning of the verb. Ovid’s Medea would in any case suggest caution before immediately dismissing the Suda entry: no one would credit Ovid with a tragedy on this theme without independent corroboration of its existence. Whether or not Callimachus composed dramatic works, the Suda does suggest that earlier commentators did not find the idea inherently implausible, and given the highly mimetic quality of Callimachus’ poetry, it would be in any event easy to assume that he wrote for the stage. However, he is not figured in ancient assessments of Hellenistic drama, so if he wrote plays they could not have been a very memorable part of his corpus. In the th Iambus Callimachus claimed Ion of Chios as his model for multi-generic composition; the fact that Ion wrote tragedies, satyr plays, and dithyrambs, as well as encomia, paeans, elegies, and hymns does not necessarily mean that Callimachus did so as well, but this poem might have conditioned the entry in the Suda.     

Ruth Scodel, in a paper delivered at the University of Chicago in , pointed out that the phrase is anapestic in the Bacchae, but here, with the initial iota long, it also fits the pentameter. E.g., Schwinge : –; Cameron : –, however, argues for its validity. McKenzie : ,  thinks the theater dates to Philadelphus, but without independent evidence: she cites Athenaeus (Callixinus) on the Ptolemaia. So D’Alessio : – n. . Selection for school purposes could account for the survival of some of Callimachus’ poems: Athenaeus, for example, claims that he read Callimachus’ epigrams in school (c). Topicality accounts for a number of others: there are currently over  fragments from Egypt, including his epinicians and the Lock of Berenice.

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The sounds of reading



His own poetry has been invoked to support the argument that he shunned popular art forms and preferred an art of intellectual refinement. But these are not inevitable readings of the texts in question. The epigram above on the mask of Dionysus is not an indication of Callimachus’ dislike of tragedy so much as a comment on the banality of educational practice. (To object to hearing high school students recite Shakespeare is not the same as objecting to productions at the Old Vic.) It is even possible to understand Ep. .– Pf. – “A short speech befits the good poet, Dionysus. His longest speech is ‘I win’ . . . for me, O lord, brevity” – as a plea for success in dramatic competition. More likely though it is a plea for success in other forms of poetic competition, since by the third century Dionysus had extended his sphere of influence over all musical and poetic events. However, the conjunction of Dionysus and “I won” does mark the speaker as a participant in formal competitions, and it fits with much of the other evidence we discuss in this chapter for Callimachus’ persona as a performer. Whether or not this meant he actually performed, it is significant that he does not list poetic contests in his catalogue of dislikes. His epigram – “I hate all common things” ( GP =  Pf.) – has been cited as evidence that Callimachus despised New Comedy. A+ ) & ) % ,,    4 +,  & S      .2· 2  &.  7,  ’ '&) O &· + &/   ,. K%, S  +  )  , – '  & #&8

:  . , I+ .  · ‘1  *+.’



I hate the cyclical poem, nor do I enjoy a path that carries many hither and yon. I also despise a roving lover, nor do I drink from any font. I despise all that is common. Lysanias, you are fair, yes fair. Yet before this is said clearly, some echo says “he is another’s.”

In place of the common or popular, Callimachus is thought to prefer the recondite or the obscure, rejecting cyclic poetry and the peripatetic lover of new comedy (2  &.  7). At the close of the previous chapter, we argued that Callimachus’ “rejection” of popular venues was coincident with a homoerotic epigram attributed to Plato, and that elements within it could be read as part of a deliberate strategy of ironizing the anti-democratic positions associated with Socrates (even  

So Cameron : . Thomas : .



Theocritus’ Idylls , , and  indicate this as well.

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Dramatic performance



while appropriating them). At this point it is worth considering an even earlier model: A+ ) 1 ,  %E2  &/  R :. *+% ,. – A+  $%8 &  1   /$, u 6 '   4  ’ 1% ':. I hate a bad man, and veiled I pass him, keeping my mind light as a small bird’s. I hate the roving woman, and the lecherous man, who wants to plow another’s furrow.

These lines from the Theognidea shift the perspective from aesthetic hates to erotic (and political). Callimachus’ recall of these lines is clear: he alters &  to &.  (the two-termination adjective allows for the slippage in gender), and he replaces the sexually explict “plow another’s furrow” with the implicit image of drinking from a fountain. Finally the lightness of the mind in the one is transformed into the faint sounds of an echo in the other. The worldview of the Theognidea is essentially conservative, one that prefers the aristocratic and select to the popular and democratic. Viewed through the lenses of Theognis and Plato, it is not drama or even epic that is essential for understanding Callimachus’ poem, but the setting of the aristocratic symposium, with its homoerotic social construction, in conjunction with the equally aristocratic world of philosophical competition. But to return to theater: far from despising comic forms Callimachus has a predilection for Old Comedy and iambic modes of expression as evinced by his use of Aristophanes’ Frogs at the opening of the Aetia and in the th Iambus. Again this may be a reaction to Plato’s own expressed aversion to tragedy and comedy (opinions that were posed within the context of wider argument, not necessarily as real reflections of personal taste). Aristophanes, like Plato, has taken on a serious aesthetic problem – which poetic style best serves the state. If Aristophanes’ choice of Aeschylean high sentiment made sense in the late fifth century as a means of arousing the fighting spirits of the citizen soldiery, Callimachus’ re-calibration of the scales, signaled via his use of the verb 2  and other Aristophanic allusions, makes it clear that his preference is not for the grand (and weighty) poetry of Aeschylus but the lightness of Euripides and the poetry of persuasion. Within the confines of an imperial court persuasion is a sine qua non and therefore makes excellent political sense, but Callimachus’ preference for Euripides at a key moment in the Aetia Prologue has further poetic ramifications, which also function as a segue into the next section on lyric.

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The sounds of reading



Aeschylus represented traditional musical norms, while in his choruses Euripides was an early advocate of the newer musical styles that Plato inveighed against in the Republic and Laws, and that Aristophanes consistently pillories in the Frogs as well as in other plays. What has come to be called New Music can be dated from the end of the fifth century and included Agathon, Euripides, and Ion of Chios among the tragedians, Timotheus and Philoxenus among the dithyrambists. Since Callimachus’ poetry is not usually considered in the context of performed music, the coincidence of elements of his style with those of the New Music has not been a subject for analysis. Yet, the New Music included an increased interest in the aesthetics of sound over logical exposition; experimentation with elements of language, including the figures of repetition – homoioteleuton, anaphora, and alliteration; increased mixing of modes and song styles (polyeideia); greater use of mimesis within narrative exposition via direct speech; and (in choral lyric and dithyramb) a movement away from the restrictions of strophic composition to freer semantic units with complex stichic meters. The majority of these features belong to Callimachus’ verse as well, and at least two of them – his polyeideia and his mimetic practice – are voiced as complaints by his critics in the th Iambus, where he claims another New Musician (and tragedian), Ion of Chios, as his model. His interest in euphonics places him in a continuum with the New Music and the later critic, Crates of Mallos, who emphasized the sensory (and emotional) values of poetry over narrative coherence (or ,$ ). In Plato and Aristotle these non-logocentric features of New Music were regarded as pandering to the evolving public taste in contrast to the traditional music associated with e´lite manhood. However, Callimachus’ tragic preferences (Euripides, Ion) would have aligned him with this more popular style. In fact, many of the supposedly recondite features of Callimachus’ poetry were equally associated with popular taste in public performance. Timotheus’ Persae is an excellent example of New Music, filled with obscure compounds and metaphorical periphrases that make comprehension a challenge. Yet Timotheus’ nome was popular when it was written, and it continued to be performed for centuries. At the conclusion of the Persae, Timotheus famously defines his poetry as novel and the victim of hostile censure.  

 See now Prauscello . West : –.  Hordern : –. See Asmis b: –.



See Csapo : –.

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Dramatic performance ' ’ f +% '2 :  %+, 78 * ’ 7&% m #O -/· 9 $/ ’ $2   g&/  2$ v$H 4 1 C

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









But you who foster the new-fashioned Muse of the golden lyre, come as ally to my hymns, iˆeie Paian. For Sparta’s great leader, well-born and long-lived, the people abounding in the flowers of youth, blazing torments me and drives me with fiery blame, alleging that I, with my new hymns, dishonor the more traditional Muse. But I keep off neither young, nor old, nor contemporary from these hymns. Rather the ancient Muse-soilers, these I keep off, corruptors of songs, straining cries of far-heard shrill-voiced heralds.

The singer of this dithyrambic nome frames his poetic style in terms of “new-fashioned” and “traditional” Muses, and in terms of a polemic waged by a heroic, and a singular poetic “I” against the Spartan ephors and the populace in general. The artistic struggle Timotheus so vividly describes is representative of the New Music’s reception by conservative artistic and social critics in many other sources. It is not clear if Timotheus’ struggle with his critics had any historical basis, but there was a thriving anecdotal tradition that allowed for such a struggle from at least the second century bc. In the earliest-attested anecdote, Timotheus was supposedly performing at the Spartan Carneia with a lyre that had more than the traditional seven strings. When asked to remove the extra strings, he pointed to a statue of Apollo, whose lyre held the same number as his own. Other anecdotes include his conviction for this offense, modeled on Socrates’ conviction for introducing novel gods, and a story that the

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

The sounds of reading

offending lyre hung in the Spartan agora. It is not necessary to belabor the parallels with Callimachus’ Aetia Prologue. Even if they are not allusively related, they suggest that the rejection of musical and/or poetic innovation seems already to have become a topos, readily available for Callimachus to adapt. Callimachus certainly defined his own poetry as novel in terms similar to those found in Timotheus and Ion, a novelty banished by Plato, and an innovative lightness mocked in comedy. Euripides seems be the lens through which Callimachus refracts these perspectives in the Aetia Prologue. Euripides’ presence is reinforced a few lines after the image of the weighing of poetry that Callimachus has taken from Aristophanes’ Frogs. He next invokes a number of vivid images of old age from a chorus in Euripides’ Hercules Furens. The old men sing that age lies upon their heads as a weight heavier than the rocks of Mt. Aetna (lines –), but since there is no remedy from the gods they will not cease from song (lines –); they will continue to sing a Dionysiac song and an Apollonian one from aging mouths, like the swan ():  &4  M/ 

8 W4 %$ $4 , ;   %T%$. 6 T  ’ '% , # ’ 7  ./ >· *   $2 ' )    W4 *   @   2%   '  &/  ], # ,  &/  +2 % 5&  ,%  &  K%  ,. J&  &4 W4 X ’ 7+,%. &  Q /  D:’ '. &4 

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









See the discussion in Hordern : –. For Timotheus and the Spartans, see Csapo : –. He points out that in the heated rhetoric about New Music, Crete, Sparta, and sometimes Egypt came to signify conservative sociocultural values. The importance of this chorus for the Aetia Prologue has been discussed by a number of scholars. See Scodel ; Massimilla : –; Fantuzzi and Hunter : –; and D’Alessio :  n. .

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Dramatic performance

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4 { $2 ' ) &  7 $4   O· I shall not cease mingling the Graces with the Muses, the sweetest of yokings. May I not live without music ('% ), but always be crowned. Even as an aged singer, then, may I celebrate Memory. I still sing the victory song of Heracles, beside Bromius, the giver of wine, the song of the seven-stringed lyre, and Libyan aulos. Never shall I stop the Muses who dance with me. The Delian maidens sing a paean around the doors of the temple for the fair offspring of Leto, whirling in their fair dances. And paeans in your chambers will I, an old singer, like the swan, celebrate from cheeks that are gray.

The Aetia continues with Callimachus’ alleviation of old age by “mingling” with the Muses. In addition, two papyri preserve as lemmata some first words of the lines that came between what are now Aetia frr.  and  Pf. These include an apparent invocation to the Muses to bring material to the poet’s memory (fr. a. Pf. addendum: ']O , “might you remind me”). According to the Florentine Scholia (on frr. –. Pf.) the first subject that the Muses take up is the Graces, preceded by the poet’s prayer: *   :, 7 2$ ’ 7EO & +8 78 , X  &% S 2 *  . Be kindly now, and wipe your anointed hands upon my elegies, that for me they may last for many a year. (fr. .– Pf.)

The Graces, old age, and memory figured as physical texts (‘my elegies’) serve to translate the choral idiom of tragedy into a form in which the poet is the singer, and both the subject and the conveyor of memory. Lucia Prauscello makes two further, and very significant points about this chorus of Euripides: in contrast to the association of violence and destructiveness with Dionysiac music found in the rest of the play, here the aulos (symbolic of Dionysus) and the lyre (symbolic of Apollo) are joined, and together they accompany the old men’s song (&/  +2 % 5&  ,% |  &  K%  ,). She also observes that elements from this stasimon seem to appear in the Laws. For example, when he is extolling the virtues of invoking Apollo Paean for those choristers under thirty (c–), Plato additionally prescribes wine and Dionysiac choral dancing for old men as a way to bring back youth (b). 

PLit.Lond.  and POxy. . ; for discussion of the placement of these fragments see Harder : .. The verb suggests the possibility of allusion to Plato and his theory of anamnesis.

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The sounds of reading

Callimachus seems not to have disdained classical drama but to have had distinct preferences, and his taste for Euripides matches the preference for that poet over other tragedians that is found in early Ptolemaic papyri. It is also possible that Callimachus’ style of combining narrative and embedded ritual was derived from later dramatists like Euripides and Aristophanes. Claude Calame’s discussion of musical mimesis in Aristophanic comedy, for example, has much that is relevant to Callimachus’ poetic practice. However, tragedy and comedy as generic entities played a less central role in Callimachus’ poetry than lyric, elegy, and hexameter. This no doubt resulted from a number of factors: he was Cyrenean by birth, where drama was not the commanding poetic force that it would have been in Athens; his poetry displays some bias in favor of comic/iambic modes of expression rather than tragic; within the context of an imperial court, the most efficient way to distinguish oneself as a poet was not by writing for the many, but by addressing persuasive fictions to those with power; and finally, in dialogue with Plato, he reaffirms the power and importance of the personal poetic voice (' , ) and therefore would have been most attracted towards those poets who asserted their poetic identity, like Hesiod, Hipponax, Pindar, Sappho, or Simonides. His reservations about tragedy, when he does express them, seem to be about sound. Most revealing is an historical note supposedly from his hypomnemata that claims: “of old tragedy is said to have been   ” (fr.  Pf.). The solo songlike aspect of tragedy is no longer apparent in the masked performance of the

$  whose hollow-sounding voice is mentioned twice in the Iambi: the voice of the tragic Muse speaking as though through a lekythos in fr. : C  $ ) : %T% (Iambi unplaced) is surely to be understood in connection with Iambus .–, where tragic actors have the voice of those who dwell in the sea. lyric Callimachus’ preference for    is especially signaled at the very beginning of the Aetia when Apollo (the patron of lyric, not tragedy or epic)  

Calame . Immisch :  n.  long ago saw that the two passages should be connected and suggested that the “voice of those dwelling in the sea” was the hollow sound produced from the conch shell. Kerkhecker : – objects that  /  . #.[4  should refer to fish, but see Athenaeus c-d for a disquisition on the various “children of the sea” whose voices are reported by poets. These are all mollusks. Also . #.[4  is almost entirely restored, and even the first two letters are in doubt. The other two animal voices in Iambus  are specific – a dog and a parrot. It may be that the missing word is the name of a shellfish.

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Lyric



commands Callimachus to grow his sheep fat but keep his Muse slender ( &  2). This word, which takes on programmatic status in Hellenistic poetry, is used only once in Homer’s Iliad, in a passage on the shield of Achilles that describes a young singer (.–):

8 ’ 7 2 &/U .,$$ $ , /T,  ’ D&)  ) 1  &  2 .·   iO  v   & ’ #%$  &   =& .



In the midst [sc. of the harvesters] a boy played gracefully on a clear-voiced lyre, and sang a fair Linus song in his slender voice. And they followed with singing and cries of joy and danced with their feet.

The boy sings what appears to be a harvest song, but the “Linus” song was often associated with the dirge; for that reason Alexandrian critics often extended the range of the “Linus” song to accommodate this passage in Homer as well as later appearances in the tragedians. The “Linus” song is also related to elegy, in that, as M. L. West puts it, “[f]or the occasion of loss and bereavement there was evidently a kind of lament . . . called elegos or elegoi,” that was taken to be the origin of elegiac poetry. Homer’s boy sings accompanied by a lyre while elegy was accompanied by an aulos, but the association of the “Linus” song and elegos with lament, suggests that the allusion at the opening of the Aetia – a poetic manifesto in elegiacs – may have at its core some contemporary discussion about the origins of monodic song. Especially since Callimachus resembles Homer’s singer in obvious ways: he marks himself as a boy (&8 [ ) in the complaint of the Telchines; his song is $4 , or light and slender; and in this particular poem his meter is elegiac couplets. But in less obvious ways as well: Homer’s singing child inserts a monodic or personal voice into the heroic Iliad, and if, for a moment, Homer via the musical performances on the shield moves his audience away from the framing war poem, Callimachus reorders the priorities by signaling his allegiance via the Homeric allusion to the small,  

  

Nagy : – points out that the verb D&/  should mean that the young singer accompanied the choral singing and dancing. For a discussion of this passage see Stephens –: –. Pindar in a fragment of a threnos lists themes for lament, including Linus (.: v  +  K >  m. “One [song] sang ‘ailinos’ for fair-haired Linus”). Herodotus (.) claims it is a dirge and derived from Egypt. He calls it Egypt’s 1 =. See Stephens –: –. See the Hercules Furens – and Athenaeus’ comments at c. Ancient critics also attempted to emend the passage in Homer, see Rengakos : –, . West : . See, e.g., PMG , the B-scholium on this Homeric passage that connects Linus, lament, and lyric (2  ).

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The sounds of reading

melodic mode of self-expression exactly when his critics are complaining about his failure to write “one long continuous poem on the deeds of kings? [ . . . or . . . ] heroes.” There is one further intertextual echo that Homeric readers are bound to have heard. In book , Achilles in his temporary withdrawal from the battle (or the world at war) is found accompanying himself on his “clear-voiced lyre” (.,$$ $, .), as he sings of the deeds of heroes (1  ’ 1  2 ' ). Callimachus’ readers will hear both lyres – Achilles’ and the boy’s – as intertextual concessions within epic to the personal voice of lyric as the Aetia begins. Whatever the original meter(s) of the “Linus” song, it is significant that Callimachus has begun his prologue with allusion to a passage in Homer where an alien metrical form (we must assume, lyric) has been appropriated for and reformed within hexameter. In the Archaic and Classical periods lyric might be sung or recited by an individual with or without instrumental accompaniment, or sung by a chorus of girls or women or boys or men, who might also have danced. Monodic lyric supposedly belonged to the more restricted environment of the aristocratic symposium, choral lyric to the public festival and religious occasions. Choral singing and dancing certainly continue in the Hellenistic period; for example, there were prizes for the dithyrambic choruses of boys and of men recorded in the grand procession of the Ptolemaia, choral prizes at Cyrene, and theoriai regularly sent to Delos and Delphi. But, not surprisingly, the role of the citizenperformer, the amateur chorus of the independent poleis, was yielding to the touring professional. As part of this shift, whether the cause or the result, the chorus itself became subsidiary to musical accompaniment that took on a solo or virtuoso voice. Lyric poems, some even with musical notation, continue to be written, and lyric continues to be sung by choruses (though in reduced numbers), by solo singers, or even recited by rhapsodes. Callimachus is said by the Suda to have written lyric poems (2 ), but none of his surviving poems is strophic; poems that are usually identified as his 2  (frr. – Pf.) are composed in rare stichic meters – phalaecian, catalectic choriambic pentameters, archebulean. He also wrote epinicia,      

This may be a common technique of lyric; Sappho, for example, realigns Homeric values in fr. . And given the debates about the passage and the nature of the “Linus” song, it might well have served as an early example or even authorization of generic boundary transgression. Bowie , Nagy : . Davies : – emphasizes that the triadic structure of lyric is not an infallible indication of choral composition. Rutherford , West : –. Though West notes () that the dithyramb is “virtually desacralized.” See West : – for a list of poetic fragments with musical notation. For a discussion of these poems, see Acosta-Hughes .

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The paean



poems for which Pindar used either Aeolic or dactylo-epitritic strophes, two in elegiacs (the Victories of Berenice and Sosibius), a third in iambics. It is not clear what to make of this. Does his preference for stichic meters reflect a poetry now of the book (as most scholars assume)? Callimachus’ metrical preferences might well indicate that his poems were not written for choruses to dance, but they do not preclude performance as recitation or as solo or accompanied song. A. Cameron goes further, arguing that if Callimachus were truly a book poet we should have expected him to compose in the same meters as Pindar or Alcaeus, and that “it is surely no coincidence that Hellenistic poets more or less confined themselves to the three meters still available for performance.” Metrical practices, in other words, are not yet wholly detachable from music or at least a musical sensibility. Also, it is worth remembering that three centuries later Horace, who was much more of a book poet than Callimachus could have been, wrote strophic meters in imitation of Sappho and Alcaeus, and if we did not have evidence to support it, who would imagine that his carmen saeculare had been performed at a public event in Rome? Cameron’s observation may be taken a bit further: at least a century before Callimachus, the New Music broke with traditional strophic choral lyric by moving towards freer, flowing astrophic lines that facilitated vocal and instrumental pyrotechnics. If Callimachus’ own poetic practice has a number of affinities with the New Music, might his metrical experiments be a refinement or response to previous innovation, in which he experimented with the balance between astrophic freedom and strophic confinement? Metrical practices point to a complex reality: poets and audiences in the early Hellenistic period would have had a very wide range of expectations for lyric – it might be solo or choral, musically accompanied or recited, stichic or strophic, public or private. All of these possibilities must be factored into the discussion of mimesis or imitation in Callimachus’ repertory. the paean The paean provides an instructive example of the complexity of the problem. Modern discussions of the paeans of the archaic and classical periods focus less on formal elements like characteristic meter than on the context of performance – originally paeans seem to be connected to worship of  



Fr.  (th Iambus). This is extremely fragmentary, see Kerkhecker : –. It is worth recalling that much of Sappho was in lyric distichs. The survival of proportionally more of book , in Sapphic strophe, however, conditions us to see strophic composition as the default category. Cameron :  lists hexameters, elegiacs, and iambics, but other meters are also found.

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Apollo and by extension divinities associated with him like Asclepius. Ian Rutherford would even more specifically locate them as “icon[s] of solidarity among male members of the community. . . . Both in war and in peace, men performing the paean act on behalf of the polis as a whole.” But paeans (as well as other hymn forms) are found embedded in tragic choruses, a circumstance that already in the fifth century is at one remove from performance of a paean in cultic worship. Paeans continued to be written during the Hellenistic and well into the Roman periods, but their subject was no longer restricted to Apollo or the more traditional gods – Demetrius of Phalerum wrote paeans to Serapis. The Rhodians, who established a cult to Ptolemy I in  bc also honored him with a paean. It is a reasonable inference that it was performed at a public festival, since Athenaeus’ source for the information was a treatise by Gorgon, On the Rhodian Festivals. Many of these later paeans were more commonly written in stichic meters. There were also professional performers of paeans, the so-called paianistai, attested in a number of locations. Though the evidence falls outside of our period of interest, paianistai are especially well attested in Roman Egypt: a copy of a paean to Asclepius has been found in the city of Ptolemais Hormou (dated to ad ), an earlier version of which has been found from fourth century bc Erthyrae. Therefore there is a clear sense of connection, even though these Egyptian paianistai were now attached to the cult of Serapis and ruler cult. Further, Rutherford has suggested that the papyrus roll of Pindar’s paeans (POxy. .) may have come originally from this same Ptolemais Hormou. If he is right, within Egypt paean performance seems to have had a long and evolving tradition



 







Rutherford : . Though even in the Archaic period he admits that a paean was sometimes performed at the symposium. Choral performance as a factor in building a community was surely important in the Hellenistic period as well. D.L. .. H¨olbl : , and Ath. f. Athenaeus claims the poem counted as a paean because of its refrain: iˆe paian, on which see below. See West : –, and for examples of paeans with musical notation, see Pohlmann-West : –, –, and Fantuzzi  for a discussion of Isyllus’ paean. Rutherford : –. “In the post-classical period stichic meters become common, and it seems likely that this change in metrical structure signifies that texts were no longer performed, at least not in such an elaborate way” (). Paianistai are first recorded in Rhodes in the nd century bc (IG XII [] .), though earlier professional paean-singers with different names (i.e., Molpoi) are known, see Rutherford : – . The reading & /  occurs in Menander’s Dyscolus, . In his edition of the play E. Handley retains the reading (see his long comment ad loc., pp. –) though Sandbach in his later edition would emend to - / . Rutherford : –. Ptolemais is one of the oldest Ptolemaic settlements in Egypt, and a number of its deme eponyms were associated with the myth of Danaus. See Fraser : ..

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The paean



that included preserving the past (Pindar’s poems) as well as creating new poems for altered circumstances. The fact that paean composition was an ongoing practice with various performance options, not all of which were cultic, surely contributed to the difficulties the Alexandrian scholars had in categorizing it, and to the oftenobserved fact that these scholars were less interested in the performance practices that generated the poetry (as we now are) than in finding formal criteria for identifying a poem as a paean. POxy. ., a commentary on a poem of Bacchylides, provides evidence of this. A now fragmentary remark indicates that Callimachus classified Bacchylides’ poem as a paean because of the refrain (6 O at its end). But a century later Aristarchus took exception, classifying the poem as a dithyramb (lines –), on the grounds that the refrain could not be restricted to paean. Timotheus’ dithyrambic nome Persae includes toward its end the generically surprising lines 78 * ’ 7&% m #O -/. Callimachus also wrote a hymn to Apollo in dactylic hexameters (like the Homeric hymns). It is paean-like in its narrative and includes at several places (lines , , , ) the refrain (6 O or 6 6 &). Rutherford claims that Callimachus employs ‘generic allusion’ to compensate for loss of performance in these poems, but this raises a series of questions. If paeans in the Hellenistic period continue to be written, and in stichic as well as strophic meters; if paeans continue to be performed, though in ways that differed from classical practice; and if Callimachus thought inclusion of the refrain 6 & made the poem a paean, how is it possible to distinguish generic allusion in a poem from a poem that contains the refrain because its author thought he was writing a paean? Suppose Callimachus wrote his poem not for a ritual within cult but for some other performance venue? Would   

 

In fact, the Egyptian paianistai may have been the ancestors of those found in Rome: see Oliver : –. D’Alessio in his review of Schr¨oder  (BMCR ..) lays out the issues most clearly. This passage is much discussed: see Rutherford : –; Schr¨oder : –, D’Alessio’s review, loc. cit. –; and Fearn : –. The status of the cry 6 &/ was a subject of some interest in antiquity: both the meaning and the scansion were disputed, see Athenaeus (c–d for the derivation of the term and f for alternative scansions). Also, Callimachus writes in his Hecale that when Theseus returned to Hecale’s house dragging the bull of Marathon, all the bystanders raised up the paian cry (fr . Hollis = SH . = . Pf.). Editors point out that Callimachus alludes to Bacchylides . when at Theseus’ triumphant return from the sea the heroic youth raise the paian (&/). : –. He is “strongly tempted to call [Callimachus’ hymn] a paean; at the very least it is a sensitive and beautiful homage to the genre” (). The complex relationship of the narrating “I” to the chorus and Apollo is not an impediment to performance. See by way of parallel G.-B. D’Alessio’s  study of the complexities of deixis in archaic poetry or Fearn’s observations on voice : –.

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The sounds of reading

it still be a paean? If we do accept the idea of generic allusion to a fictional cultic performance event, to what do we imagine Callimachus alludes? Is it a form of contemporary performance? Or is it an archaic tradition (the performance practice of which in Callimachus’ day was likely to have been disputed)? This encapsulates the paradox of bookishness – whatever Callimachus knew about earlier paeans, he also lived in a world in which lyric, as part of a festival or religious event, was a living practice, and unfortunately contemporary scholars are less familiar with its regional dynamics than with poetry from earlier periods. “lyrics” for alexandria The hymn/paean to Apollo was centered on Cyrene, an old city with its own well-developed traditions of cultic performance. Callimachus’ composition on the death and deification of Arsinoe II (fr.  Pf.) was written for a specific event in Alexandria. PBerol.  preserves  lines of this poem, and it may have been considerably longer. The opening half of what remains, with the exception of the first line, preserved by the Diegesis, is very fragmentary. Nonetheless, there are several elements that shed light on the ‘lyric’ style of the poem. Callimachus writes in stichic archebulean, t–r–r–r– k––, a rare meter apparently revived by and named after Archebulus of Thera early in the Hellenistic period. Although isolated cola may have appeared in earlier lyric poets, there is not enough to form a judgment about the meter’s social context. However, H. Lloyd-Jones points out that the meter would not have occurred    + much before Callimachus. According to the Suda entry on Euphorion, Archebulus was one of that poet’s teachers (and also his older lover). If true, Archebulus would have been a contemporary of Callimachus, and E. Lelli may be right to posit a cultural link between the two because of their respective homelands, Thera and Cyrene. The dialect of the poem is Doric, perhaps because of its Theran and Cyrenean metrical roots, but also perhaps to highlight Arsinoe’s Doric heritage via Macedon. Posidippus also uses Doric in his epigram on three Ptolemaic victories at Olympia ( A–B), where he takes    

Testimonia about the meter are printed as SH . Lloyd-Jones : . Possible occurrences include Ibycus (= PMG ), Alcman (Hephaestion, p.  Consbruch), and Stesichorus (= PMG , and see Haslam :  n. ). Lloyd-Jones : . He suggests that PMich. Inv.  (= SH ), written in Doric dialect, might also be archebulean and belong to Callimachus. Lelli : –, who calls attention to the affinity of the dialect of this poem and that of the Doric of tragic choruses.

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“Lyrics” for Alexandria



pains to emphasize the Macedonian (Eordean) lineage of the current kings of Egypt. It is difficult to imagine that this poem could have been composed very long after Arsinoe’s death in July . The immediacy of the smoke from the pyre (lines –), the lamentations that fill the city (lines –), the queen now gone (line : v 2] .   .4 ), the grieving husband (line : . 2$ $2  ) all point to composition shortly after the event and suggest that the poem is to be connected formally with the threnos. The repeated allusions to Andromache’s grief at Hector’s death underline this – the demise of the Egyptian queen is celebrated with one of the oldest, and most familiar Greek examples of threnoi and gooi, the burial of Hector. Callimachus begins by invoking Apollo (and those singing with him are surely the Muses) to lead the way ('$2 ), while he follows Apollo’s direction: “steps to the god’s hand.” These lines describe the ritual of mourning, even extending the image of the mourners to cities [clothed in] black.  &,  D 2[ + B 7&  [2 +· ' /  [] $/  7[,

/   #+[2] 9,  .% [ /   ·  ’ [ >]  , 2  ['.  +) 1 · [U ]2 )  . [





Lamentations . . . your city . . . not as for one of the more common [folk] . . . land. But something of the great . . . they weep for your one sister who has died, [she herself]. Wherever you look the cities of the land [are clothed in] black. Our power . . .

Philotera, a sister of Arsinoe who had died previously and been divinized, appears to be the main, speaking character. Like Andromache learning about the death of Hector, Philotera learns of the sad event at a distance, and sends her companion, Charis, to Mt. Athos to discover the details. The scene of the funeral pyre that Charis reports, as she hastens to dispel worries that the city is burning, may also be indebted to Euripides, Trojan Women –, where the chorus laments Troy in flames. The epic models intensify the loss, but also add contrast. The loss of Arsinoe is analogous to that of Hector, with gender reversal – it is the husband who 



For the parallels, see di Benedetto : –, and D’Alessio :  n.  and  n. . In Plato’s Ion the lamentations of Andromache (b) are among the purple passages Socrates mentions as particularly characteristic of emotionally charged rhapsodic performance. The Muses sing the threnos for Achilles in Odyssey ..

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The sounds of reading

mourns (lines –), and Arsinoe who through the allusion becomes heroic and the city’s bulwark. But Hector died and was ashes, a tombstone, and a memory. Arsinoe becomes immortal. Her soul was snatched up by the Dioscuri to become a constellation. She, like Helen and Aphrodite, with whom she was associated in cult, will go on to be an object of veneration, while Alexandria, unlike the Troy that was burned to the ground, is a new city rising to prominence. Was this poem performed? Certainly, the opportunity existed. There would have been elaborate funerary rites at Arsinoe’s death, the more so if a mortuary temple was dedicated to her. Professional mourners to sing or chant the threnoi were a very familiar feature of Greek death rituals, and Egyptian as well. But in contrast to the Hymn to Apollo, with its clear performance markings for a familiar festival of Apollo, the Cyrenean Carneia, there is not enough of this poem to enable one to ascertain other cult features with any degree of security. Fr.  Pf. is one of four fragments (–) that are associated with the Iambi in several papyri, and follow the Iambi without an intervening title or other distinctive marker in the Diegesis. Although Pfeiffer classed these poems as W2  (“Lyrics”), the scholarship on them has long focused on the question of whether they do not in fact belong to the Iambi, and this has diverted attention from their occasional nature. The meter of fr.  Pf. was probably stichic phalaecians. Although almost nothing survives, it included a narrative about the Lemnian women who had murdered their male kin. The Lemnian episode was crucial to the colonization myth of Cyrene: in Pythian .–, for example, Medea prophesies that by plowing “the foreign furrows” of the Lemnian women the Argonauts would plant the seed that in future generations would come to settle Cyrene, and the Argonauts’ sojourn on Lemnos in Apollonius’ Argonautica is a central episode in book . The last line of the Diegesis to this fragment includes a second person plural address: ,&  D8 | # ) 2  '& 2&  (“accordingly you too look to the future”), which suggests that an internal audience figured in the poem. (There is no similar apostrophe in any of the other Diegesis fragments.) The diegete also claims: &) S B% ., “he speaks to the beautiful young men”, but it is not clear whether this is the diegete’s inference or belongs to the narrative events of the poem. The Diegesis to fr.  Pf. provides a distinctive occasion for the poem, a pannychis, or all-night revel in honor of the Dioscuri, and “he also hymns 



On this issue cf. Acosta-Hughes ; Kerkhecker : –; Cameron : –; Clayman : –, –. Lelli’s  commentary on these four is simply entitled Callimachi Iambi XIVXVII. KO , was also a proverb: see Zenobius ..

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“Lyrics” for Alexandria



Helen and asks her to accept the sacrifice.” The Dioscuri were certainly worshipped in Alexandria: early dedications even indicate that Ptolemy II and Ptolemy III were sunnaoi, that is co-templed with them. Callimachus associates Helen with Pharos in the Victory for Berenice, and apparently an Alexandrian deme ( 2 ) was named after her, but whether or not she was the formal recipient of cult is less clear. Hephaestion says the meter was the fourteen-syllable “Euripidean.” The poem begins:  ’ F&,   +·  4 '4·   A  Ih,· *  '.  . Apollo is in the chorus, I hear the lyre. And I just perceived the Erotes. And here is Aphrodite.

Callimachus’ Branchus (fr.  Pf.) was written in catalectic choriambic pentameters. What survives concerns Branchus, a young shepherd beloved of Apollo, to whom he gives the gift of prophecy. Branchus was the founder of the cult of Apollo at Didyma near Miletus, and in the fragment he carries a shoot from Apollo’s Delphic laurel to plant in the new sanctuary. To judge from the parallels, the verb  /+ again suggests the initiation of a performance (lines –): +8  Q .]’ 1[], J[] $/[]  , ’ 7$H  /+, X d#4] # 1[] %   . '&’ * QO %, Hail Lord Delphinius, for so I begin with this name of yours, since a dolphin (delphis) brought you from Delos to the Ecusian city.

As several scholars have observed, Callimachus’ interest in the episode of Apollo and Branchus is very probably connected with the re-foundation of the oracle of Apollo at Didyma and with contemporary Ptolemaic interest in Miletus. With respect to the former, the temple had a particular kind of performance associated with it: citizen-singers, known as Molpoi, performed paeans as they processed along the sacred route from Miletus to Didyma. With respect to the latter, Lelli’s suggestion that fr. .: '/  6 $2  (“holy line of our lords”) refers to the Ptolemies is especially attractive. Too little remains for certainty, but it does seem       

Dieg. X – Pf. (.). On the pannychis see Bravo , and on this poem specifically, –. Fraser : ., who argues that Arsinoe II played a role in establishing their cult in Alexandria. Fraser : . n. . On the pannychis see Bravo , on this poem specifically pp. –.  Cameron : ; Parke : , –. See Lavecchia : . Rutherford : , who thinks this may be “an imitation of a cult hymn in honor of Didymean Apollo.” : .

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

The sounds of reading

as if this “lyric” too had a strong potential for performance. At the very least it recalled a contemporary site for performance, and very possibly a unique local troupe (the Molpoi). The standard interpretation of the four poems that Pfeiffer has categorized as lyric is that they are literary in nature; they do not belong to a genuine but to an imagined ritual event. But how does this differ from such imagined scenes in archaic lyric (for example, Sappho fr.  or Pindar’s nd Dithyramb)? How is it possible to know whether poems such as these were not originally conceived for performance? With respect to archaic poetry, the fact that a poem has a textual life does not preclude it from having an original occasion for performance. (Nor did it preclude Horace’s carmen saeculare from doing so.) The additional fact that at least three of these poems are connected to specific locations where ritual performance could have taken place – by professionals (whether technitai or paianistai) or by local choruses (Alexandrian mourners or Molpoi) – does not require that Callimachus’ poems were also performed. But it does require us to be certain of our criteria for non-performance before automatically deciding that they were not (or could not) have been. What is clear is that each of these poems is constructed to have an authentic moment of performance, through which Callimachus rehearses past moments of performance, whether literary (as in the Homeric allusions in the lament for Arsinoe) or in terms of social practice (as in the Branchus or the pannychis), thus connecting events specific or relevant to Alexandria both to earlier and to contemporary Greek ritual and lyric practice. choruses and choral dancing Callimachus’ evocation of choruses and choral dance operates in a number of different ways. Choruses appear in the hymns, particularly in those to Apollo, Artemis, and Delos, in the epinicia, and a few other fragments. Some dancers are located in mythological time: the choir of islands dancing around Asteria (hDel. –); the dancing mice of the Molorchus episode (fr.  Pf. = SH . ); choruses of nymphs who accompany Artemis (hArt. , , , –); the Kouretes who danced in armor around the 



The Homeric and Callimachean hymns provide an obvious parallel. The Homeric hymns are classified as rhapsodic rather than cultic, that is, performed in competition but not as part of a genuine religious event (Furley ). Callimachus’ hymns resemble the Homeric but are now generally excluded from performance of any kind for reasons that seem to be internal to the poems. The distinction may be correct, but the grounds for it are suspect. Elsewhere in Hellenistic poetry, the words +, and forms of D2 and (+2 occur mainly in fragments from paeans.

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Choruses and choral dancing



infant Zeus (hZeus –). In addition there is at least one allusion to contemporary choral celebration. In the encomium for Sosibius, the speaker (either Sosibius or the Nile) claims that following Sosibius’ Panathenaic victory “we gave a chorus leading a  to the temple of Athena the opportunity to call out sweetly (; S ) Archilochus’ victory song (F+ ,+% 8 7.4)” (fr. .– Pf.). Surely this recalls a real event from the victor’s past. The remaining choruses belong to two events of importance in the Hellenistic world: the Delian theoriai and the Cyrenean Carneia. The former appears at least twice: in the Acontius and Cydippe episode in Aetia  and in the Hymn to Delos. The myth-historical narrative of Acontius and Cydippe opens with the arrival of the two young people on Delos as members of choruses sent from their respective island homes, Ceos (Iulis) and Naxos: a $/, 1, 9  a  A!%   ; ’ '&) e/%,   /+ '   | 6 ]%. &. / . .. . , “not bearing the iambus that sings the Boupaleian battle.” Catullus creates his contemporary Bupalus in attacking (probably) L. Gellius Poplicola. In moving to his own pedestrian Muse, however, Catullus retreats from Callimachus even as he is invoking him: in the last line the rough elision of tu dabi’ supplicium evokes Ennius and the less refined language of earlier Roman as opposed to Greek poetry, with a specific allusion to the revenge of Romulus (Annales . Sk.). Catullus says, in effect: “if you don’t like my refined Greek style I can give it to you in Latin.” M. Skinner observes that c.  is: . . . a delayed admission that poetry written under the aegis of Callimachean poetics is at present a labor undertaken in vain. It cannot achieve its communicative ends within the deteriorating Roman social order – personified by the hostile nobilis Gellius . . . . As we consider further consequences of his repudiating Callimachean aesthetic principles in favor of those of Ennius, we may also find a possible reflex of debate between adherents of Stoicism and contemporary Epicureans over the Stoic, but fundamentally Platonic, doctrine that poetry, to be judged good, must promote the good of society.

However, if this is the correct approach to c. , the rejected Callimachean aesthetics are a Roman, if not a Catullan construction, a reading of the earlier poet that is not necessarily faithful to Callimachus’ own poetic agenda, as we have outlined them in earlier chapters.

   

Barchiesi : . See Hunter  for the connotations of weapon-bearing in these lines. Cf. Wray : . Conventionally identified also as the Gellius of poems , , , , and . Skinner : .

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The doctus poeta



Arida modo pumice expolitum If carmina  and  seem to oppose Roman poetry with the refined style of Callimachus, it is worth considering how this plays out in the opening poem of the modern collection, a poem that must have served as a dedication of a poetry book of some kind, the recipient of which was Cornelius Nepos: Cui dono lepidum novum libellum arida modo pumice expolitum? Corneli, tibi: namque tu solebas meas esse aliquid putare nugas iam tum, cum ausus es unus Italorum omne aevum tribus explicare cartis doctis, Iuppiter, et laboriosis. quare habe tibi quidquid hoc libelli qualecumque: quod patrona virgo, plus uno maneat perenne saeclo.





To whom am I to give this charming new book, just now polished with dry pumice stone? To you, Cornelius. Since you used to think my trifles worth something, even when you, alone of Italians, dared to lay out human history in three learned, and, God, laborious volumes. So take whatever sort of little book this is, of whatever worth – may it last, my virgin patron, more than a century, year in, year out.

Metrically this is not Roman: the phalacean hendecasyllable was popular with several Hellenistic poets, and before them favored by Sappho, with whom Catullus’ polymetrics have a number of obvious connections, including the translation of fr.  (.    ). However, there are other resonances that the learned reader (the sort that Catullus would aspire to) would have identified as Callimachean: the slightly dismissive tone inherent in nugae (trifles) suggests the childlike quality (&8 [ ) that Callimachus attributes to himself in response to his critics. Catullus’ libellus is lepidus and novus, that is, slender and novel – two elements that are important in Callimachus’ Aetia Prologue. His libellus is juxtaposed to the large effort of his addressee (Nepos’ work consisted of three papyrus rolls). The terms with which Catullus casts Nepos’ work, doctis . . . et laboriosis, are not unlike Callimachus’ praise of Aratus, elegant and the product of much lucubration: +  &  | iO , FO % 4  '$%&L  (Ep. .– Pf.). Then plus uno maneat perenne saeclo almost translates X  &% S 2 *  , the sentiment Callimachus expresses in Aetia,  

The text is Mynors’ OCT. See Acosta-Hughes : – on the evolution of Sappho  in Hellenistic literature.

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

In the end is my beginning

fr. .– Pf. when he asks the Graces to wipe their scented hands on his poetry “so that it might survive for many a year.” Within this already Callimachean environment, there may be another close verbal parallel. Callimachus’ Ep.  GP (=  Pf.) is a small gem of Ptolemaic court poetry that reads: N2  M/  · &  $  8  O 1  & & / a  4  8.  7 & 'T  ], … 1   ’    M/  M/  . Four are the Graces. For amidst the other three just now a new one has been fashioned, still moist with perfume, Berenice, splendid, blessed among all, without whom the very Graces are not the Graces.

The poem is now to be found in the fifth book of the Palatine Anthology, which is dedicated to erotic epigram, although both of the epigrams that precede this one are easily read as metaphors for poetic collections. Very probably this epigram should be as well. M/  as a term for rolls of poetry comes originally from Simonides and is picked up by his Hellenistic emulators. Theocritus, for example, designates the papyrus rolls of his poetry +/  (Id. .–); and at the end of that poem he plays on the double sense of the term when he evokes the +/  of Simonides (+/  = my poetry) as well as the M/  of Pindar (Ol. .–: M/  = Graces). Callimachus’ Aetia consisted of four books, the last of which ended with the Lock of Berenice, a eulogy of Berenice II (fr.  Pf.). “Still wet with perfume” (line ) has a strong parallel in the Lock, where the lock itself is bathed in moisture (lines –) and laments its loss of the experience of a married woman’s perfume: \ 1&, &[]   ’ a * , &  &2& |  /, $% ’  '&2 % 4 (“from whose head, when she was still a virgin, I drank many simple essences, and did not enjoy wifely perfumes,” lines –). Also significant is the role of the Graces at the opening of Aetia, book : they appear in the episode immediately following the poet’s dream, and he asks them to perfume his elegiac lines:   



See Cairns : , who is defending the reading patrona virgo and Krevans : –. A. and I. Petrovic  have reached conclusions similar to ours about the relationship of Ep.  GP to c. , in part by examining the language of divine statuary. Asclepiades  GP (= AP .) and Meleager  GP (= AP .). The latter appears to be a short imitation of Meleager’s opening catalogue epigram ( GP). If all three were metaphors for collections, it would explain their juxtaposition. Frr. – Pf. = frr. – M.

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The doctus poeta



*   :, 7. 2$. . .. . ’ 7EO & +8. 7. 8 , X  &% S 2 *  . Be kindly now and wipe your richly anointed hands on my elegies so that they will last for many a year (fr. .– Pf. = .– M.)

The Graces return in an Epilogue to the Aetia (fr.  Pf.), and in the company of a queen. The Epilogue (whatever its original placement) must have been attached to the four-book edition, where it would follow the Lock, and if the reading . 8 ’ '/ (“nurse of my queen” = Cyrene) is correct, the queen would be Berenice II. If Callimachus’ Ep.  Pf. has as its referent not, as previous interpreters would have it, a perfumed statue, but rather the perfumed lock of hair from the last poem in Aetia, book , then the epigram is a metaphorical representation of the four books of the Aetia, which have become, with the addition of the Berenice poem, four Graces, in place of the usual three. The epigram might be paraphrased: the Graces are not the Graces without Berenice, and the four books of the Aetia are not the four books of the Aetia without the addition of the Berenice poem. Support for this interpretation comes from AP ., a two-line epigram located three poems later in the sequence. Its author, Meleager, clearly imitates the earlier epigram when he writes: “I say that one day in story sweet-spoken Heliodora will conquer the Graces themselves by her graces.” The impact of this epigram depends on Meleager understanding Berenice to be a woman, not a statue. Also, Theocritus employs the phrase 'T  ] (line  of the epigram) at Id. ., when Aphrodite has wiped her sweet-smelling hands upon the bosom of the recently deceased Berenice I in an act that conferred immortality, a gesture that resembles the Graces wiping their hands on Callimachus’ elegies in fr. .– Pf. The possibility that the Aetia was composed in two stages, an earlier two-book sequence (now Aetia –) to which the later Aetia – was added, does not affect the identity of the 



See, e.g., the discussion in GP .–. In an oral communication C. Cusset has suggested a possible wordplay in line  of the epigram, where 8  (“three”) is phonetically close to 8  (“hair”). There was more than one Berenice, but the Berenice of Ep.  GP (=  Pf.) can only be the wife of Euergetes. Theocritus does celebrate Berenice I, the wife of Ptolemy I, but Callimachus only writes, as far as can be ascertained, of Berenice II. While establishing an exact chronology among contemporary figures derived from their extant work is inherently risky, it is worth noting that in Theocritus’ Idylls  and , Arsinoe II is alive, and Ptolemy I and Berenice I are recently deceased; in Posidippus (including the new epigrams of the Milan papyrus) Arsinoe II is dead, but there is no mention of Berenice II (accepting D. Thompson’s compelling argumentation that the younger Berenice of the Hippika is Berenice Syra, sister of Ptolemy III and wife of Antiochus II of Syria); and that Callimachus’ Aetia – are bounded by poems celebrating Berenice II.

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

In the end is my beginning

queen. If the epigram was meant to describe or even accompany the Aetia, it could only be the four-book version (viz., the three Graces + Berenice), and given that this edition ends with the Lock, the queen in question could only be Berenice II. The obvious parallel for this epigram would be Callimachus’ own Epilogue for the Aetia (fr.  Pf.), which evokes one poetic genre in another. Let us return to a comparison of the epigram with the opening lines of Catullus c. : Cui dono lepidum novum libellum| arida modo pumice expolitum. The physical shape of modo . . . expolitum and 1  & & / is the same: two four-syllable passive participles that construct their respective poetic offerings in physical terms that mark completion – “thoroughly polished” and “added to or attached” – and each is modified by an adverb (modo, 1 ) that makes the actions immediate. The “dry pumice stone” inverts the elements of “moist with perfume.” If this is an allusion to Callimachus’ epigram on the Aetia qua poetry at the beginning of the polymetrics, how does this “Callimachus” fit (apart from marking a new enterprise or a dedication)? Catullus’ libellum is novum and lepidum (an elegant and novel book); it is juxtaposed to Cornelius’ “history of the Italians” in three learned books (doctis, Iuppiter, et laboriosus). B. J. Gibson has observed that “the mention of Jove draws attention to the contradiction between Nepos’ doctrina and the ‘epic’ non-Callimachean features of his work, which combines the large scale of omne aevum with the compression of tribus cartis.” He also points out that in the Aetia Prologue, thundering Jove is not a particularly positive poetic feature. To take this further, doctus et laboriosus might equally apply to the Aetia, a four-roll book that provided a “history” for the Ptolemies. The parallel might even be closer if the correct reading of c. . is patrona virgo. This would give three books followed by a patron goddess or poetic muse, just as with the three Charites (or book rolls) followed by Berenice. Catullus’ poem is in a meter associated with Sappho, and he has a predilection for poems closer in emotional range and length to hers than to poems of the length of Callimachus’ Aetia. At the same time the latter offered a language of innovation and poetic self-assertion. In this prefatory poem might he be signaling his models for his own brand of small (Sappho, c. ) and large (Callimachus, c. ) poetry? It is also possible that in c.  Catullus has created a contrast between his own poetry and that of Callimachus, but set out in Callimachus’ own terms: Catullus writes even smaller, more elegant,



: .

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The doctus poeta



and newer poetry. Catullus translates both poets, but when he does turn to Callimachus it is not so much to the poet of learned elegance as to his poems about love and marriage (the Lock and possibly Acontius and Cydippe). Haec expressa tibi carmina Battiadae Carmen  is the elegy that precedes Catullus’ translation of the Lock, as an introduction to and explanation of its occasion. It was apparently  lines long (though line  is now missing). In this poem there again seems to be a deliberate shift from “Catullus” to “Callimachus,” but the lines of demarcation are far less clear. In the first half of the poem Catullus claims that the extremity of his grief for his dead brother prevents him writing in his own voice (nec potis est dulcis Musarum expromere fetus), but instead he will send his friend Hortalus expressa carmina Battiadae. Etsi me assiduo confectum cura dolore sevocat a doctis, Ortale, virginibus, nec potis est dulcis Musarum expromere fetus mens animi, tantis fluctuat ipsa malis – namque mei nuper Lethaeo gurgite fratris pallidulum manans alluit unda pedem, Troia Rhoeteo quem subter litore tellus ereptum nostris obterit ex oculis.

numquam ego te, vita frater amabilior, aspiciam posthac? at certe semper amabo, semper maesta tua carmina morte canam, qualia sub densis ramorum concinit umbris Daulias, absumpti fata gemens Ityli. sed tamen in tantis maeroribus, Ortale, mitto haec expressa tibi carmina Battiadae, ne tua dicta vagis nequiquam credita ventis effluxisse meo forte putes animo, ut missum sponsi furtivo munere malum procurrit casto virginis e gremio, 











Ingleheart  suggests that carmina  and  (the sparrow poems) are “a programmatic pair of Sapphic epigrams.” If her line of argument is correct, then cc. – could parallel  and  as free-form versions in the style of the two poets that he subsequently translates. Clausen :  remarks that probably only Virgil of the Latin poets had read all of the Aetia. But whatever Catullus read, there is no evidence that Acontius and Cydippe ever circulated independently, whatever may have been the prehistory of the Lock. In any case, such arguments are inevitably circumstantial, see, e.g., Cameron : –.

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

In the end is my beginning quod miserae oblitae molli sub veste locatum, dum adventu matris prosilit, excutitur, atque illud prono praeceps agitur decursu, huic manat tristi conscius ore rubor.

Sorrow keeps me, exhausted by continuous grief, from the learned virgins, Hortalus, and the thoughts of my heart cannot produce the sweet fruit of the Muses, disturbed by such great misfortunes: for recently the flowing wave of Death’s flood has touched my brother’s pallid foot, who has been snatched from my sight, and on him the soil of Troy lies heavy under the Rhoetean shore. . . . Shall I never see you again, brother, dearer than life? But surely I shall always love you, always sing sad songs of your death, as under the dense shade of its branches the Daulian bird laments the fate of Itylus who has been snatched away. But nevertheless, in my great sorrows, Hortalus, I send these poems of the Battiad rendered for you, lest you think that your words vainly trusted to the winds wandering have flowed out from my heart, as an apple sent as a furtive gift from her suitor, runs forth from the virgin’s chaste lap, which the poor forgetful one had placed under her dress, then at her mother’s approach she leaps forth, the apple is shaken out, and goes before her headlong in a groundward course, as across her sad face spreads a self-conscious blush.

The phrase carmina Battiadae is a license to hunt for Callimachean allusions in these lines, but, in contrast to the earlier poems, here the allusions are harder to pin down. Lines – seem to depend on a sentiment about the failed oaths of lovers found in a number of Hellenistic erotic epigrams, the most familiar of which is Callimachus: Ep. .– GP (= .– Pf.): ƒ· '  2$% ' 2 S 7 *  | % 6 4 J ’ 7 '/  (“he swore; but they speak the truth who say that oaths sworn in love fail to enter the ears of the gods”). Catullus imitates this epigram at c. .–: dicit: sed mulier cupido quod dicit amanti,| in vento et rapida scribere oportet aqua. The initial, emphatic position of dicit parallels ƒ and guarantees the source. In c. , however, the lines may as easily be related to the oath of c. .–: adiuro teque tuumque caput | digna ferat quod siquis inaniter adiurarit! (“I swear by you and your head, by which, if anyone swear vainly, let him pay a worthy penalty”). If we are to think of Callimachus’ epigram, Catullus has eroticized the bond of speaker and addressee. Moreover, Catullus inverts the usual terms – Catullus, unlike the lover, does not ignore Hortalus’ pleas. Later, when Catullus claims that he will always sing sad songs like the nightingale (lines –), this may be more than the conventional Homeric allusion 

This happens as well in c. , another poem that borrows from a Callimachean epigram (Ep.  GP =  Pf.).

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The doctus poeta



(though it is certainly that); it may recall    T% ' , from Callimachus, Ep.  GP (= . Pf.). In this epigram for his dead friend, Heraclitus, Callimachus relates their earlier closeness as they often “put the sun to sleep” sharing a couch, and although Heraclitus is now ashes, his poems, his “nightingales,” live on. More than one scholar has pointed out the importance of Callimachus’ recollection of shared poetic experiences for Catullus in c. , a poem that occupies a space parallel to c. : as c.  precedes and introduces the translation of Callimachus, c.  precedes and, some have argued, introduces the translation of Sappho (c. ). J. Wills has demonstrated how in Roman poetry one element of a poetic model may be displaced from the obvious seat of imitation to another related location, in what he calls a “divided allusion.” Dividing allusions to Callimachus’ Ep.  GP between c.  and c.  (if that is what is happening) would bind the two translations together on a number of levels: shared longing for the person absent, shared interest in the craft of poetry, and shared confidence in the power of poetry to overcome the limitations of human mortality. Catullus concludes c.  with a complex simile likening the poem that he sends to Hortalus to an apple sent by a suitor to a girl who hides it in her lap. Having forgotten about it, it rolls out when she leaps up at her mother’s approach. Critics are divided about the source of the simile. Some have assumed that it was based on the deceitful gift of Acontius to Cydippe in the third book of the Aetia, others argue that narrative logic makes Acontius’ apple an uncomfortable fit. Acontius and Cydippe (frr. – Pf.) was a central aition in Aetia, book , that prefigured the marriage of Ptolemy III and Berenice II. It is a tale of young lovers who, unlike the lovers of most Greek poetry, live happily ever after. A young man (Acontius) sees a young woman (Cydippe) at a festival on Delos and is smitten with desire for her; he writes an oath on an apple that he places in her path. She takes it up and reads it. What she reads is apparently an oath that binds her to marry Acontius. They return to their homes, where they are overcome (though in different ways) with symptoms of lovesickness. The reconstruction of now lost parts of the poem depends on later imitations (particularly the prose epistolographer, Aristaenetus), but many details are not in doubt. Acontius is the poem’s active observer;    

Wray : – is the most recent detailed treatment of the two poems as a pair. Wills : , . For the allusion, see Hunter b and Skinner : –; against see Syndikus : .–. The fragmentary Diegesis preserves ] 1  '[, which Vogliano restored as  6] z , F|[  $: based on the oath given in Aristaenetus .. If this is the correct restoration of the Diegesis, since it is not metrical, it cannot be a direct quotation of Callimachus’ original text. See Pfeiffer : .

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

In the end is my beginning

Cydippe is largely silent. His treacherous (but effective) gift of the inscribed (and speaking) apple makes him a prototype of the love poet for subsequent Roman writers. On return from the Delian festival, Acontius wanders into the woods to recite a monologue of his desolation (subsequently imitated by Virgil in Ecl.  and Propertius at .) and to inscribe his beloved’s name on the trees (thus again figured as an elegiac poet). The scene then shifts to Naxos, where Cydippe’s love manifests itself as physical illness. Her symptoms, pallor, fever, chill, near death, introduce features of Sappho’s famous lyric on erotic pathology (fr. ) into Callimachus’ narrative. Catullus does not seem to allude to Acontius and Cydippe elsewhere in his poems, and the image of the apple in the fragment numbered a is no help: it recalls the apple thrown in front of Atalanta. The apple is a sexual image, but because fetus (“fruit”) in line  refers to Catullus’ own poetry, the apple also assumes the aspect of a speaking gift. In this sense Acontius’ gift of an apple with its written text is a fine model for Catullus’ gift to Hortalus; it is also a sexual image that Callimachus probably borrowed from Sappho (and conscius rubor of line  may be related to the erotic pathology of c. ). Certainly the succession of images – the young girl’s lap (c. .), her mother (c. .), Berenice’s wedding-night (c. .–), Arsinoe-Aphrodite’s lap at c. . into which the severed lock is placed as a dedication, and the wedding-night of the young girls at c. .– – binds c.  and c.  together by placing considerable emphasis on the interrelated familial and erotic components of conjugal love, which in turn eroticizes the opening of c. , with its contrasting imagery of virginity and (poetic) childbirth. There are other narrative alignments between the two poems: the opening with Catullus separated forever from his brother who has been drowned shares elements with the lock, severed forever from Berenice’s head and dipped in the sea before being transformed into a star. Catullus’ grief at the loss of his brother has similarities to Berenice’s loss of her husband, who is called “brother”: sed fratris cari flebile discidium (). (Berenice II and Ptolemy III were cousins, but in the context of royal ideology were treated as brother and sister.) And Catullus’ act of writing immortalizes his brother and his own grief as Callimachus’ does the lock, though in Catullus’ version the pathos of the lock’s loss seems more tangible than in the Greek version (especially if the final aition was added by Catullus). But to return to the question of allusion in c. : unlike the other poems discussed, the voice of Callimachus in this poem is elusive. Either because 

See Acosta-Hughes : –.

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The doctus poeta



the separation found in the earlier pair (c.  and c. ) and in c.  was not a desirable poetic effect, or irrelevant here because “Catullus” has completely assimilated “Callimachus”, or the whole of c.  was “Catullus” in contrast with the whole of c. , which was “Callimachus.” Could the effect of the pairing be the deeper and more profound sense of loss that the Roman Catullus can convey in his poetry in contrast to the Greek poet, who after all is talking about the loss of royal hair? In Callimachus eros serves the state – the love of the couple is what allows the reunification of Alexandria and Cyrene and the poet to transform a mundane element into an eternal symbol of Ptolemaic power – the star. Throughout Callimachus’ tone is light and ironic; Catullus attempts to express the immense pain of personal loss by experimenting with a variety of fictional losses: daughter’s loss of innocence, mother’s loss of daughter, wife’s loss of husband, Catullus’ loss of his own poetic voice. As he narrates his need to turn to the poetic voice of another he finds his own. It remains to ask how much of c.  is really Callimachus. Translating Callimachus’ Lock Translation studies is a growing discipline both within and outside of the field of Classics, and its central tenet is that translation is not value-neutral: the selection of a text to translate is an act both of colonization and canonization – it lays claim to the original text as now one’s own and important enough to be inscribed in a new language and for non-native readers, that is, to be adopted into an alien literary culture. Hence the translated text can only make sense if reinterpreted for and expressed in an idiom accessible to its new audience. When Callimachus composed the poem now extant as fr.  Pf., Berenice II was a queen whose recent marriage had brought about the reconciliation of Alexandria and Cyrene. Catullus composes his version of this poem from the later perspective of her violent death as a result of her own son’s plotting and the seriously reduced fortunes of the Ptolemaic royal family. In Callimachus’ poem, the catasterized lock contributes to the iconography of ruler cult, a narrative with close Egyptian parallels that figures in a larger cultural dialogue with similar pieces like

 

Or at any rate the poem celebrates an event early in her married life. Ptolemy IV Philometor. Berenice’s own violent treatment of her mother and her mother’s lover, the object of the allusion of .–, would necessarily be read differently in the light of subsequent court history.

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

In the end is my beginning

Theocritus, Id.  or the Apotheosis of Arsinoe. But Catullus was composing in late Republican Rome before a work like this could have had any potential as a vehicle for the political iconography that came to be used in a later imperial culture. Although Callimachus’ poem may well have circulated independently before coming to be included at the end of the Aetia, it is, nonetheless, even in its conception, emblematic of court culture and Ptolemaic patronage. Separated from its Ptolemaic setting, and absent an imperial environment where local allusions are potent, we must look to its emotional and aesthetic residue to begin to understand the significance of Catullus’ choice. Also, c.  is one of a pair of translations (with Sappho’s fr. ) that de facto epitomize the influence of earlier – and Greek – poetry on Catullus’ own work. The scholarship on c.  has, for Hellenistic scholars, tended to focus on the accuracy of Catullus’ version for assessing and restoring the now fragmentary original. The current state of the Lock would suggest great caution here, but that has not generally been the case for those who have tended to regard Catullus’ translation as the equivalent of what we might expect from a Loeb edition. Editions of Callimachus tend to print Catullus’ text en face (e.g., Pfeiffer) or following (e.g., D’Alessio), a placement that raises expectations in the reader that the one may be supplemented by the other, and it inevitably privileges the complete text (Catullus) over the fragment (Callimachus). One goal of translation is surely to render the unfamiliar familiar to an uninitiated audience (whose capacity to judge the result must necessarily be limited), and this is certainly the point of most modern translation. But what does it mean to translate a work from Greek into Latin for a bilingual audience? The e´lite of late Republican Rome was already a Greek-reading culture that took pleasure in adapting well-known Greek works into their own tongue for those who could recognize both the original and the new version. At issue then was the display of poetic taste (what poets would you translate?), the aesthetic quality of the translation (how does the Latin version measure up against the accessible Greek original?), and the values that a specific translation brought to the new cultural environment. A related issue is how to understand the statement: expressa tibi carmina Battiadae (.). Are carmina Battiadae translations? Adaptations? And how can they substitute for Catullus? These questions   

Both of which made an impact on later writing about Roman imperial cult. See Bing : –, and compare the more orthodox approach of Marinone : –. See also Fantuzzi and Hunter : –. Texts like Aratus’ Phaenomena or Callimachus’ Lock of Berenice were not obscure works, but rather widely known, at least among a certain Roman audience.

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The doctus poeta



are further complicated by the prefatory c. . Hence Catullan scholarship, in contrast to Hellenistic, has long been concerned with questions of sincerity and the disparity in importance between the events commemorated in c.  and c. . The gap exists between the translation and its covering elegy. In the original, the subtext of war and the reunification of a kingdom gave substance to Callimachus’ celebration of the city via the catasterism of the lock. But locally relevant elements of Callimachus’ poem are erased in Catullus. The whole relationship of Berenice to her now divinized “mother” Arsinoe Zephyritis fades in translation, as does the erotic residue of Callimachus’ imitation of Sappho, who uses #T% . . . # , &% to describe Arsinoe Aphrodite. The erotic aspects of the goddess, the lock, and the marriage in Callimachus stem in part from a series of Egyptian motifs of fruitful kingship, and these do not have immediate relevance for Catullus. In fr. . Pf. the description of Mt. Athos from the Egyptian perspective, 4& F,  , (“the obelisk of your mother Arsinoe”), disappears in Catullus, and his description of Arsinoe Zephyritis in  as Graia Canopeis incola litoribus (“Greek resident on the Canopic shores”) adds information unnecessary for those in Callimachus’ Alexandria. Finally, the aition with which Catullus concludes his translation is absent in the extant Callimachean version (preserved primarily by PSI . and POxy. .). This has led to a variety of hypotheses: that there were two (or more) versions of the original, one that circulated independently and one that later came to be included in the Aetia, that Catullus invented the aition, or that he took it from another Callimachean poem. It is not our intention to reprise this long debate, but only to emphasize a point that has been raised before about the relationship of this aition to the other long poems of Catullus. Callimachus has no need of another aition so close to the end of the Lock and the Aetia itself. The catasterism is the aition. Catullus’ aition, with its emphasis on chaste marriage (: casto cubili) and foul adultery (: impuro adulterio), fits well with themes already present in c. , and might have been Catullus’ own rewriting of his predecessor. In what has survived it is apparent that Catullus has shifted the erotic relationship away from the lock and the queen to the queen and her spouse, by changing the gender of the lock from male to female. This also turns the relationship of “sister locks” (fr. . Pf.) into loss of same-sex siblings (as with Catullus and his brother). Catullus has rewritten the Lock in such  

See, e.g., Clausen : ; Fitzgerald : –; and Skinner : –.  Clausen : . On the composition of this phrase see Acosta-Hughes : –.

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

In the end is my beginning

a way that the status and identity of individuals is less important than their emotions. The apotheosis of royals, like Egypt itself, fades as passionate love, faithfulness, and loss take center stage. Given the apparent lack of fit, then, why does Catullus turn to this particular poem of Callimachus? Perhaps because Catullus is writing himself into a poetic tradition that takes its beginnings from Callimachus. The latter’s stature in Greek poetry for poets wishing to write in a lyric as opposed to an heroic mode made him an obvious choice for aemulatio, just as Homer served as the obvious precursor for Ennius, when he chose to write martial histories. Further, Catullus’ other poetic model was Sappho, and Callimachus himself had turned to Sappho’s poetry as a crucial influence in celebrating powerful female figures at the Ptolemaic court. The Lock of Berenice was an elegiac poem that in many ways recalled features of earlier lyric, particularly evoking Sappho’s poetry of erotic lament on departure from a female setting for the world of married life. Both Sappho and Callimachus provided models for the speaking self; Sappho gave voice to the female, while Callimachus provided models both to speak as an ego and to distance oneself ironically from the emotions on display. Consider, for example, how Sappho is subsequently received by Callimachus, then Catullus, in the famous: invita, o regina, tuo de vertice cessi, | invita: adiuro teque tuumque caput (“unwillingly, Queen, did I depart from the crown of your head, unwillingly: I swear by you and by your head,” c. .–). The Callimachean original of this line does not survive, but adiuro teque tuumque caput certainly renders fr. . Pf.: O  / ƒ ,  ; therefore it is reasonable to assume that the first line existed in some form in Callimachus. If it did, in turn it would have been Callimachus’ own adaptation of Sappho fr. .: †/&.’, a / ’ '2’ '&% &/ (“Sappho, truly I leave you against my will”). Sappho’s poem, as we have it, encompasses the departure of one female figure from another, lament and tragic exclamation (it is not clear who speaks the first line), memory of time spent together with imagery of flowers and perfume, some recollection of sexual intimacy (lines – in particular). Callimachus’ re-articulation of Sappho’s signal epithet, #, & , at fr. .– Pf.: #T% . . . # , &% marks his own creative debt to this poet. Positing Sappho’s presence in fr.  might in turn alter, or rather enhance, our understanding, of a Virgilian imitation of Catullus’ Lock  

For a more detailed treatment of Callimachus’ adaptation of this poem see Acosta-Hughes : –. #, & occurs twice in Sappho of Aphrodite (fr. . and ) and once in the new Sappho fragment (PK¨oln inv. ), apparently of the Muses.

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Writing for royals



that has proven problematic for readers of Virgil’s Aeneid, a line termed by J. Wills a “locus classicus in the theory of allusion.” At Aeneid ., Aeneas, on encountering Dido’s silent ghost in the underworld, attempts to explain his abandoning of the Carthaginian queen: invitus, regina, tuo de litore cessi, borrowing the words of Catullus’ lock at c. .: invita, o regina, tuo de vertice cessi. A variety of approaches have attempted to explain away the seeming dissonance of the two passages: some derogatory of Catullus, some focused on tonal change. If, however, Aeneas’ declaration to Dido is to be read as one moment within a series of pathetic leave-takings, then his words include Sapphic erotic desire, the marriage that unified two warring cities (as in Callimachus, and as Dido’s liaison with Aeneas might have done), and the ineffable loss of family members (as in Catullus). Aeneas repeats an unreal hope that recalls a long poetic history of compelled separation and abortive relations. This is a history that has been characterized throughout by a certain gender ambiguity. As A. Barchiesi observes, Virgil’s invitus, regina re-writes the gender of Catullus’ invita, o regina (just as Catullus’ coma recasts the gender of Callimachus’ enigmatically gendered , %+ ). It is perhaps not surprising that Sappho fr. , a poem that delineates female-female desire, and that implicates death in the transition from virgin girlhood to marriage, should in turn invite an imitative tradition that allows for gender fluidity. Nor should it be surprising that Catullus, whose accompanying poem c.  opens with contrasting gendered imagery, would have recognized this. writing for royals In the period between the death of Catullus (shortly after  bc) and the publication of Virgil’s first major work, the Eclogues (around  bc), the Roman world had changed forever. The Republic was in its death throes, and outright civil war between the forces of Julius Caesar and Gnaeus Pompey was resolved in Caesar’s favor at Pharsalus ( bc). In defeat Pompey fled to Egypt, where Ptolemy XIII (or his advisors) orchestrated his death in order to curry favor with Caesar. They guessed wrong and paid the price. Caesar threw his weight behind Cleopatra, Ptolemy’s sister and rival for the throne; he supported her with his own troops in the local war that ensued. Caesar and Cleopatra also began a liaison that (apparently) produced a son (Caesarion); when Caesar returned to Rome to celebrate his quadruple triumph ( bc) he also dedicated a temple to 

: .



: .

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

In the end is my beginning

Venus Genetrix, into which he placed a statue of Cleopatra. Cleopatra with Caesarion and her royal entourage were in residence in Rome when Caesar was murdered in  bc. Obliged to return to Egypt in some haste, she subsequently allied herself with Mark Antony. Antony depended on Egypt’s wealth to underwrite his own military struggle against Octavian, Julius Caesar’s nephew, for control of the East. Cleopatra’s relationship with Antony produced three children and ended only when, after defeat by the forces of Octavian at Actium, the pair committed suicide in  bc. Egypt officially became a province of Rome at her death, since Cleopatra was the last of her line. The Ptolemies already in Polybius some two centuries before had acquired a reputation for degeneracy, primarily because of their long habit of sibling marriage: Cleopatra herself was married to two of her full brothers in succession (Ptolemy XIII, who ruled from  to , and Ptolemy XIV, who ruled from  to ). Both Caesar and Antony had Roman wives while they lived openly with her. Antony’s wife also happened to be Octavian’s sister, a paradigm of Roman womanly virtue, who took on the rearing of Antony’s children by Cleopatra after his death. No wonder then that Egypt and its queen in prose and poetry alike became an easy target onto which to deflect anger from the true instigators of civil discord, a symbol of oriental decadence, a not so implicit model for Dido and Carthage in the Aeneid, and an object of covert emulation by Octavian when he became emperor. Horace’s Cleopatra ode (.) sums up suppressed anxieties: dum Capitolio regina dementes ruinas, funus et imperio parabat contaminato cum grege turpium morbo virorum, quidlibet impotens sperare fortunaque dulci ebria.



While the queen in her madness plotted ruin and death against the Capitol and Roman power with her diseased band of “men” foul with perversion, uncontrolled in hoping for whatever might be and drunk on sweet fortune. (–) 

 

Cleopatra’s son Caesarion was murdered on Octavian’s orders; her three children by Mark Antony survived, though neither of the boys lived to adulthood. Her daughter, Cleopatra Selene, was married to Juba II of Numidia. See Kleiner : – for a discussion of Cleopatra’s influence on Augustan building practices. Turpium morbo virorum is both an ironic reminder that her advisors were eunuchs and an allusion to the supposed immoral behavior of her court.

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For Roman poets writing before and immediately after the death of Cleopatra and Octavian’s rise to power, these circumstances necessarily affected their relationship to the poets of Alexandria and, in particular, to Callimachus. While his poetry provided elegant models for praising monarchs, especially monarchs who yearned for immortality, as well as a template for constructing a relationship with the royal patron, the objects of his praise were now Rome’s archenemies. Thus, while the range of imitation of Callimachus’ poems increased to include politics as well as aesthetics, in contrast to Catullus and what will later happen in Propertius, neither Horace nor Virgil refer to Callimachus by name; as a model he is subsumed rather than put on display. Horace, for example, stakes his claim to poetic immortality by bringing the earlier Greek lyric poets to Rome, and he names them in his verse (e.g., . and .), a gesture that places him at a safe distance from the Alexandrians. Yet his poetic practice presents a somewhat different picture, as, for example, in ..–: Non usitata nec tenui ferar penna, biformis per liquidem aethera vates neque in terra morabor longius, invidiaque maior urbis reliquam. By no customary nor slender quill shall I be borne, the biform poet, through the liquid air, nor shall I delay longer on the earth; greater than envy I shall leave the city.

If nec tenui penna implies a rejection of the aesthetics of Callimachean & ,  , in favor of the Pindaric swan, per liquidem aethera | vates appropriates the terms of Callimachus’ poetic immortality in Aetia, fr. .– Pf.: '  . . . 7  I2 , while invidiaque maior echoes Callimachus’ estimate of his own poetic powers as 2  of Ep.  GP (=  Pf.). Or again, Horace opens his third book of odes: odi profanum vulgus et arceo (“I loathe the common herd and avoid them”), a virtual translation of Ep. . GP (= . Pf.): + &/   ,. Horace’s Cleopatra ode (.) opens with another translation (nunc est bibendum), now of one of Horace’s preferred archaic poets, Alcaeus (: + 4, fr. .), and in the same meter, Alcaic. The opening stanzas exult in the defeat of the queen, but the tone changes in lines –, where Caesar is figured as the hawk to Cleopatra’s dove. In lines – she  

Although it is not relevant for this discussion, Horace’s Satires and Epodes were also influenced by Callimachus, see Newman : – and Scodel .  See Heyworth : –. See Nisbet and Hubbard :  n. .

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

In the end is my beginning

is likened to the hare in a snowy field pursued by the hunter (aut leporem citus | venator in campis nivalis). This line, however, is a virtual quotation of Callimachus’ Ep.  GP (=  Pf.): &/  $) | . . . .    .  +2 (“[the hunter] searches out every hare beset by frost and snow”). As the ode continues the defeated queen is portrayed as a non humilis mulier () who courageously embraces the death-bearing snakes rather than be led in Caesar’s triumph. Horace quotes this epigram of Callimachus also in Satires ..–, where he gives it its full erotic force. Here the reference to Callimachus, the encomiast of Egyptian queens, also introduces an erotic field that makes a nice allusion to her relationship with Antony but also maps the poetic terrain – Horace is the encomiast of power, Callimachus the poet of the erotic. The immediately following ode also closes book . It begins: Persicos odi, puer, apparatus (..), a line that is usually translated: “Boy, I hate Persian luxury,” but odi may already have Callimachean associations from Ep.  GP (as it clearly does in odi profanum). And apparatus points in the same direction. In addition to its sense of “pomp” or “sumptuousness”, it also means “a piece of equipment,” so that the phrase is a virtual equivalent of + -  at Aetia . (Callimachus’ rejected “Persian rope”). Persicos odi following immediately on the Cleopatra ode would seem, then, to apply Callimachus’ very familiar aesthetics to a political dimension: rejection of the luxury characterized by the decadent Egyptians and their queen, but phrased in the aesthetic language of another “Egyptian.” Virgil seems to have embraced the works not just of Callimachus but of all of the three great Alexandrians, recasting them in a Roman idiom. His first poetry book, the Eclogues, take as its point of departure Theocritus’ pastoral poems, although Virgil’s version contains much that may be labeled “Callimachean.” For example, Charles Martindale describes Eclogue  as follows: [It] is now normally read metapoetically, as a poem about poem-making, one that constitutes a poetics relevant to Virgil’s whole project. . . . It opens with what in modern times has been termed recusatio, a refusal enjoined by Apollo to write about kings and battles, which is a close imitation, seemingly the first in Latin, of a passage from the Aetia Prologue where Callimachus answers his critics and defends his poetic practice. We are often told that Virgil here rejects epic for pastoral . . . we might say rather that Virgil justifies writing Theocritean bucolic



These were ordered and collected by Virgil’s day, though the exact form of the poetry book he encountered is debated. See Gutzwiller : –.

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Writing for royals

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epos by appealing to Callimachus’ aesthetic credo, his championing of stylistic refinement, leptotes . . . 

Virgil in fact remodels Callimachus for his own ends when he writes: Cum canerem reges et proelia, Cynthius aurem vellit et admonuit: “pastorem, Tityre, pinguis pascere oportet ovis, deductum dicere carmen.” nunc ego (namque super tibi erunt qui dicere laudes, Vare, tuas cupiant et tristia condere bella) agrestem tenui meditabor harundine Musam.



When I was about to sing of kings and battles, the Cynthian plucked my ear and warned: “Tityrus, it behooves a shepherd to let the sheep grow fat, but sing a slender song.” Now I (for there will be others besides who will wish to sing your praises, Varus, and tell the story of sad war) will practice the rustic Muse on my slender pipe.

What Callimachus puts in the mouths of his critics – his failure to write one continuous poem on kings and heroes – becomes divine edict in Virgil. Because of Virgil’s transposition, the fragmentary lines of the Aetia’s opening (–) were read as a similar rejection of epic, a viewpoint that was already questioned even before Cameron’s thorough critique in . In Virgil the poetic conditions have changed: Apollo’s stern advice to the poet allows him to reject the request of Alfenus Varus, who evidently wished Virgil to celebrate his military victories (–). There is no equivalent of Varus in the opening lines of Callimachus’ poem, namely a figure demanding that he be celebrated in one poetic form but who will receive something different (and not of his own choosing). Virgil, Horace, and Propertius all construct poems that stage a refusal of a patron’s poetic request, on the grounds that he (the poet) lacks the necessary poetic heft to pull it off. There is no equivalent structure of patron and poet in the Aetia figured as a request tendered and declined. The role of the Egyptian queen in the Aetia is significant and has repercussions in the Augustan reception of this poem, but Callimachus does not stage an internal debate about what sort of genre to write in – epinician and lyric are offered without expressions of doubt (and in this he would be following models like Pindar). Also, the praise of Berenice belongs to a wider poetic agenda. The Roman recusatio evolved within a different set of social expectations,  

: . The idea that Callimachus’ Prologue encompassed a recusatio goes back to Wimmel (: –), if not before. Callimachus’ supposed refusal to write epic is what prompted this Roman form (see, e.g., G. Williams : ). Cameron : – refutes this commonly held view in some detail.

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

In the end is my beginning

and Callimachus has been ill served by retrojected tropes of refusal. In his imitation, Cynthius aurem | vellit et admonuit: pastorem, Tityre, pinguis | pascere oportet ovis, deductum dicere carmen (“Cynthius plucked my ear and admonished: “Tityrus, it behooves a shepherd to let the sheep grow fat, but sing a slender song,” ..–), Virgil chooses to redirect Apollo’s advice to Callimachus: “singer, [feed] your sacrificial victim as fat as possible, but your Muse, my friend, to be slender.” There are no flocks in the opening of Callimachus’ poem; Callimachus is hardly a shepherd – he is writing when Apollo speaks to him, and his Muse is no rustic, so Virgil directs these words to a more appropriate target, Tityrus, who is composing bucolic poetry. The redirection sets up a tension between Callimachus’ artificiality and Virgil’s Italian essentialism, characterized by the latter’s interest in rural Italy. This plays out in Virgil’s relationship to Theocritus as well as in his subsequent work, the Georgics. If the Eclogues were the work of a Theocritean Virgil, the Aeneid gives us an epic with considerable debt to Apollonius’ Argonautica. But again there is a strong Callimachean presence in the poem, and particularly at moments that might have served as warnings about the dangers or limits of imperial power. Virgil begins the Aeneid in Libya, where the long fourth book of the Argonautica draws to a close. Aeneas’ wish to have died at Troy (terque quaterque beati | quis ante ora patrum Troiae sub moenibus altis | contigit oppetere! (Aen. .–) occurs just before landfall in Libya; the Argonauts’ lament at Arg. .–: a ’ q  D& Q) ^ #: | 2  a 2$ O    ( 2 (“Surely it would have been better for us to perish in the pursuit of something great, though beyond the intent of Zeus”) occurs upon their arrival in Libya, which appears before them as a vast and insurmountable wasteland. But Virgil distances his text from Apollonius by refracting the moment through the lens of Homer’s Odyssey .:  / Q   / , V , ’ R  . Callimachus’ Aetia also begins in Libya (it is thence that he is borne in his dream to Helicon) and ends with its tribute to Berenice, a Cyrenean queen. The severing of Dido’s lock on the departure of Aeneas for his destined warrior future is modeled in part on Callimachus’ Lock of Berenice, while Aeneas echoes the lock’s lament in speaking to Dido’s retreating shade in the underworld (.), though there refracted through   

The shepherd in fr.  Pf. is Hesiod, not Callimachus. Unlike Theocritus’, none of Callimachus’ poetry displays the slightest interest in the countryside. For a detailed study of the relationship of these two epic poems, see Nelis . See Nelis : – for a discussion of Carthage and Libya. On the prioritization of multiple allusions cf. Hinds : –.

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Catullus. But this is an erotic model. Callimachus’ political poetry – his celebration of royals and his foundation narratives – plays a considerable role in the Aeneid. Virgil’s listing of Sicilian cities at the end of Aeneid .– , for example, may have been designed to reflect the catalogue of Sicilian cities that opens Aetia, book , though Selinus and Lilybaeum, a memory of the Carthaginian wars, are a Virgilian addition. The link between the two, as M. Geymonat suggests, is that Callimachus is speaking of city founders, who serve as models for Aeneas. But our reading of Callimachus’ foundation stories is less sanguine, though perhaps a better fit for the Virgilian context: these could be examples of what might go wrong – especially suitable in book , which has a number of other problematic foundations. Dido’s death and funeral pyre viewed by Aeneas from the sea owe something to the Apotheosis of Arsinoe – as Arsinoe’s sister, Philotera, catches sight of the smoking pyre on Mt. Athos. Virgil also looks to Callimachus (the Hymns to Apollo and Delos) in Apollo’s epiphany and prophecy to Aeneas at .–. As Alessandro Barchiesi puts it: “The hymn to Delos offers both the right d´ecor and the motif of ‘Ptolemaic’ prophecy, that can be reused for Rome and the Caesars.” Above all, one of the most moving lines in the Aeneid, Anchises’ apostrophe to the as yet unborn Marcellus (.: tu Marcellus eris), the ill-fated heir apparent to Augustus, appropriates Apollo’s prophetic message about the as yet unborn Ptolemy Philadephus: (.: 7, -  8). The aptness of the allusion heightens the loss for what could have been – the second Ptolemy was a brilliant successor to the founder of the line, but like everything else in Virgil this may be double-edged: a warning about the dangers of empire. A sustained example of the influence of Callimachus’ royal encomia is to be found in the Georgics. This poem not only imitates the Aetia in number of books (four) and primary Greek model (Hesiod), but the opening of book  and close of book  engage with the opening and closing poems of Aetia –. Alone of his poems, Virgil’s Georgics ends with a sphragis (as does the Aetia) that sums up previous poetic achievement and posits a tie between monarch and poet. Both poems are non-linear but nevertheless move from the distant past to the poet’s (and his monarch’s) contemporary    

 Hardie : –. : –, and see also Nappa .  Miller : , , –. : . See, e.g., Hardie : – on Dido and Aeneas cast allusively as Apollo and Artemis, with intimations of Ptolemaic incest (–). For a discussion of the parallels see Thomas : .–. Gale : – observes that, unlike Callimachus’ sphragis, Virgil looks back not forward.

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

In the end is my beginning

world with a set of implicit causalities. Both poems are fundamentally about the homeland. Callimachus emphasizes his Cyrenean lineage as he weaves disparate stories into a new North Africa-centered mythology and geography. Virgil, the Mantuan, turns to rural Italy – to care of the land – to construct his myths of homeland, for which the farmer is the moral center and the monarch the seeming enabler of agricultural prosperity. In Virgil’s writing of Italy as place, it becomes not Greek (though historically the lower half of the peninsula was Greek), and in a parallel movement he constructs for Italy a direct relationship to pre-Alexandrian Greece, writing out Callimachean or what now must be understood as Egyptian geographies, and he superimposes Roman behaviors (or mores) on Egyptian. Georgics  opens by labeling well-known Alexandrian poetic themes as commonplace: omnia iam vulgata, echoing the by now equally commonplace language of Callimachus, Ep. . GP (= . Pf.): &/  

,. It is not the mythological themes that Virgil has in his sights but the political. He goes on to imitate the Victory of Berenice, which opened Aetia, book . primus ego in patriam mecum, modo vita supersit, Aonio rediens deducam vertice Musas; primus Idumaeas referam tibi, Mantua, palmas, et viridi in campo templum de marmore ponam propter aquam, tardis ingens ubi flexibus errat Mincius et tenera praetexit harundine ripas. in medio mihi Caesar erit templumque tenebit: illi victor ego et Tyrio conspectus in ostro centum quadriiugos agitabo ad flumina currus. cuncta mihi Alpheum linquens lucosque Molorchi cursibus et crudo decernet Graecia caestu. ipse caput tonsae foliis ornatus olivae dona feram.







I, first, returning to my country, if life remains, shall lead down with me the Muses in triumph from the Aonian mount. First I shall bring back to you, Mantua, the Idumenaean palm, and on the green plain shall build a temple of marble near the water, where the great Mincius meanders in slow windings and covers his banks with tender reeds. In the midst I shall put Caesar and he will occupy the temple. I, as victor, visible to all in Tyrian purple shall drive a hundred quadrigae to the stream. All Greece, leaving the Alpheus and the Molorchan grove at my doing, will compete in the races and with rough boxing glove. I myself, my head adorned with plucked olive leaves, shall award the prizes.

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Writing for royals

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When the fragment of the Victory of Berenice was published in the late s, it became clear that Georgics  opened not just with an allusion to, but a replication of Callimachus’ poetic strategy: Callimachus brought Greek epinician to Egypt; Virgil brought it to Italy. In the Aetia, the “golden word” of Berenice’s victory moved from Nemea (old Greece) to the Nile, and the mythological figures, Helen and Proteus, who were part of old Greek myth, were now resident in (and emblematic of ) the GrecoEgyptian landscape. Virgil builds his “temple,” his praise of Augustus, in Italy, and announces that all Greece will now attend his “games.” Line : linquens lucosque Molorchi (Nemea) announces the bond to Callimachus’ poem in an interesting way: he names neither the victorious queen nor the poet, but the local countryman Molorchus, who entertained the hero Heracles (only a few lines before he dismissed more traditional stories about Heracles – Eurystheus, Busiris, Hylas – perhaps because Heracles was closely associated not only with the Ptolemies but also Marc Antony). A few lines later conquered Egypt is displayed on his temple doors: in foribus pugnam ex auro solidoque elephanto Gangaridum faciam victorisque arma Quirini, atque hic undantem bello magnumque fluentem Nilum ac navali surgentis aere columnas. On the doors I shall create in solid chryselephantine the battle of the Gangaridae and the victorious Quirinus, and there too the great Nile flood teeming with war and rising columns with bronze ship prows. (.–)

In line  Gangaridum at the beginning and Quirini at the end separated by arma mark the victory by its extremes: the eastern contingent of Antony’s forces at Actium against the Roman victor, Octavian, here identified by an epithet of the deified Romulus, while the battle itself seems to have been transferred to the Nile. In these representations of defeat artistic control mimes the military control over the newly vanquished. Finally, in lines – the juxtaposition of Cynthian Apollo, fearful Envy (Invidia infelix . . . metuet), and harsh rivers (amnemque severum Cocyti) surely evokes the Envy spurned by Apollo at the end of Callimachus’ Hymn to Apollo rather than the trope of modifying behavior so as not to arouse envy that is typical of epinicia. Here the deeds are of such magnitude that Envy is impotent; it cannot begin to create hostility for the victor. And Virgil is the poet, like Apollo’s Callimachus, who is able to celebrate them. 

Thomas : –.

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In the end is my beginning

Book  continues with the dislocation, even erasure, of Callimachus’ Egypt. The central events revolve around apiculture: the proper care of bees, the loss of hives, and how they can be restored. When Aristaeus, the son of Cyrene and Apollo, in a moment of sexual arousal chases Eurydice, in her flight she treads on a poisonous snake that causes her death. Aristaeus is punished with the loss of his hives. He then seeks out his mother for advice, and she sends him to Proteus for a prophecy. In Callimachus, Aristaeus is a healer, connected with Cyrene, Libya, and Ceos in the Acontius and Cydippe episode of Aetia ; Cyrene is the nymph who gave her name to Callimachus’ native city; it is she to whom Apollo shows the new foundation of Cyrene in the Hymn to Apollo. The “Pallenean prophet” of the opening had left Thessaly for Egypt, as part of Callimachus’ movement south. Virgil moves him back. He relocates all of these characters to Thessaly: Aristaeus leaves Tempe to find his mother, Cyrene, who now resides in the waters of the Peneus (.–), and Proteus, long connected with the island of Pharos in the Alexandrian harbor, is now in Pallene, which is even called his patria (.–). The dynamics of Virgil’s political geography is illustrated in an earlier passage at book .–: Praeterea regem non sic Aegyptus et ingens | Lydia nec populi Parthorum aut Medus Hydaspes (“Moreover, neither Egypt nor vast Lydia nor the Parthian peoples or Median Hydaspes [pay as much homage to their kings as do the bees]”). G. Hutchinson has noted that Medus Hydaspes reproduces Indos Hydaspˆes, the first words of the new papyrus roll of Posidippus. Posidippus’ epigrams in this first section are about stones, from small, carved objects to large boulders. The increasing size of the stones as the epigrams progress is coupled with a geographic movement from the Hydaspes (the site of Alexander’s battle with the Indian king Porus) through Persia, Arabia, Cilicia, and Syria to Egypt, as if an inevitable destination. Virgil’s reversal of Posidippus’ geographic trajectory, from Egypt out to India, moves from Rome’s most recent conquest out to the imperial future. Each of these societies, his contrast implies, like the bees, grows dysfunctional when the king is lost. This has now happened to Egypt, just as three centuries before Alexander’s march from Egypt to India toppled kings in his wake. In his treatment of the bugonia – the ritual employed to create a new hive when another has been lost – Virgil continues to replace Egypt with Greece. The bugonia is the ritual that Aristaeus must perform to restore 



Nadeau : – suggests that these are “teasing half-revelations” that prompt the reader to connect Aristaeus with Egypt, and that the allusion to Egypt in the initial bugonia is “an allusion to the war against Antony and Cleopatra.” : .

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Writing for royals

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his hives and to expiate Eurydice’s death. The first account of the bugonia (.–) is provided by Virgil as narrator and corresponds with a phenomenon that Roman writers located in Egypt. Antigonus of Carystus (.) listed it in his paradoxa as one of the many manifestations of the strangeness of Egyptian behavior. The Egyptian bugonia was a fertility rite, linked to the well-being of the country (.: omnis in hac certam regio iacit arte salutem, “the whole region rests its secure health on this method”), and required that a chosen bull calf be enclosed in a box, its apertures sealed up, then beaten to death and left to decompose on a bed of fragrant herbs. Yet when Cyrene instructs Aristaeus at the very end of the book (.–), the process is expiatory: he is told to sacrifice eight animals to the appropriate gods, leaving the carcasses of four bulls to putrefy. After nine days he finds that the carcasses have bred bees. Just as Virgil transformed the praise of an Egyptian queen into praise of Augustus at the beginning of book , here he seems to be transforming a bizarre Egyptian ritual into something less alien, something closer to familiar Greek or Roman animal sacrifice, as if by changing the geography what was beneficial in an enemy’s rite could also be transformed (or not). What connects the bugonia to Callimachus is the description of Danaus as %$2 – cowborn. As we saw above, Danaus is “cowborn” because he is descended from Io, but the Greek word is rare, and in a fragment of Philitas it is already linked to the practice of bugonia. In Callimachus, the epithet for Danaus was a reminder of Io and her migration from mainland Greece to Ptolemaic Egypt. Virgil shows us another “cowborn” migration: what starts out as an Egyptian ritual moves to Thessaly, and he ends his poem with this event. About the spontaneous generation of bees Virgil says: subitum ac dictu mirabile monstrum | aspiciunt (“they see a portent sudden and marvelous to tell,” .–). The sudden appearance of Virgil’s bees is analogous to the miraculous appearance of Berenice’s lock divinely transported to the sky. Each closes a long poem with images of a poetically contrived immortality. To what extent Virgil means us to draw parallels with the end of the Aetia is now impossible to determine, but like every other transformation in the Georgics, we move from the ease and artificiality of court to man’s attempt to wrest a livelihood    

Gow  points out that the Geoponica offers an almost exact replica of Virgil’s account, attributed to Juba and probably from the Carthaginian Mago. See Feeney : – for a recent discussion of this confusing passage. Fr. a Spanoudakis, and see his comments : –. Io’s son Epaphus was equated by Greeks with the Egyptian Apis bull (who is mentioned at Victoria Berenices ). Is there an implied bilingual pun as the cowborn Apis in Callimachus becomes “cowborn” apes in Virgil?

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

In the end is my beginning

from nature. In contrast to the lock, with the bees there is a lesson to be learned: they come with a price – brutal blood sacrifice. From Virgil’s vantage point of history, Berenice’s lock could have been stained with blood as well – she was apparently murdered by her son. callimachus in propertius Propertius’ floruit fell in the second half of the first century bc; he was a writer exclusively of elegiac poems, now arranged in four books. The publication of his first book, the so-called Monobiblos, was around  bc (more or less coincident with the Georgics), his next two between  and , and the fourth book after . That Callimachus is a presence in each of Propertius’ four books is not surprising, since the quantity and innovation of Callimachus’ elegy guaranteed his preeminence. In fact, Propertius names him more than any other poet including Homer, and in each of the four books Propertius’ use of Callimachus seems to be distinct. Only in book  does Callimachus not appear by name, but in allusions (in . and .) to the by now familiar episode of Acontius’ love for Cydippe from Aetia . He is named in the first and last poems of book  as a “slender” poet in contrast to Homer. In . Callimachus is joined with Philitas as a poet of elegy, but the emphasis here is on initiation into the writer’s craft, with a nod to Apollo’s instruction in Aetia fr.  Pf. and the dream of fr.  Pf. Callimachus is no longer simply a useful model of earlier poetry, he has become an alter ego for Propertius. While similar to Callimachus’ own initiation into the Hesiodic tradition, there are important refinements, to which we shall return. In .. Propertius makes the identification explicit: he calls himself Callimachus Romanus, and in place of erotic themes he turns to etiological stories of Rome. The paideutic example of Apollo with the newly fledged poet is emphasized in .; there are hints of the Lock of Berenice in .b, and the Hymns to Apollo and Delos shape .. Thus Propertius’ “Callimachus” seems to evolve in the course of his elegies, and his range of behaviors from allusion to, imitation of, and finally identification with Callimachus is integral to his construction of the Roman poetic tradition. Also, he seems to choose only very well-known passages of Callimachus to serve his purposes, passages already exploited     

See Heyworth : x-xi (with bibliography) on the vexed question of the state of the text. Philitas or the Coan appears five times, four times with Callimachus and once (..) on his own. Cf. Ross : – and Cairns : –. See Miller’s thorough discussion : –. Such a process of evolution is more often regarded as a feature of Ovid’s engagement with Callimachus, see recently Tarrant : –.

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Callimachus in Propertius

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by previous Roman imitators. Propertius’ engagement with Callimachus includes his elegiac heritage, his importance as a figure already within the Roman poetic tradition, and as a unique alter ego for the Roman poet. Amor docuit Cynthia prima suis miserum me cepit ocellis, contactum nullis ante Cupidinibus. tum mihi constantis deiecit lumina fastus et caput impositis pressit Amor pedibus donec me docuit castas odisse puellas improbus et nullo vivere consilio. ... in me tardus Amor non ullas cogitat artes nec meminit notas, ut prius, ire vias. Cynthia first captured me, poor wretch, with her eyes, whom before was touched by no Desires. Then Love made me lower my glance of stubborn pride and pressed upon my head with his feet until he taught me to despise chaste girls and, the shameless one, to live without judgement. . . . In me, slow-witted Love contrives no stratagems nor does he remember to go, as before, on familiar paths. (.–, –)

Propertius . opens the first of his elegies with an allusion to the beginning lines of Callimachus’ Acontius and Cydippe, an episode of the Aetia that comes to emblematize love as the impetus for elegiac composition: " ) - ./+ "%% 0  , 9&&,    Zh