Callimachus Revisited: New Perspectives in Callimachean Scholarship 9789042938502, 9042938501

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HELLENISTICA GRONINGANA

CALLIMACHUS REVISITED NEW PERSPECTIVES IN CALLIMACHEAN SCHOLARSHIP

EDITED BY

J.J.H. KLOOSTER M.A. HARDER R.F. REGTUIT G.C. WAKKER

PEETERS

CALLIMACHUS REVISITED

HELLENISTICA GRONINGANA MONOGRAPHS Editorial Board: M.A. Harder J.J.H. Klooster R.F. Regtuit G.C. Wakker Advisory Board: K. Gutzwiller, Cincinnati, OH R.L. Hunter, Cambridge A. Köhnken, Münster R.F. Thomas, Cambridge, Mass. F. Williams, Belfast 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

M.A. Harder, R.F. Regtuit, G.C. Wakker, Callimachus, 1993. M.A. Harder, R.F. Regtuit, G.C. Wakker, Theocritus, 1996. M.A. Harder, R.F. Regtuit, G.C. Wakker, Genre in Hellenistic Poetry, 1998. M.A. Harder, R.F. Regtuit, G.C. Wakker, Apollonius Rhodius, 2000. L. Rossi, The Epigrams Ascribed to Theocritus: A Method of Approach, 2001. M.A. Harder, R.F. Regtuit, G.C. Wakker, Hellenistic Epigrams, 2002. M.A. Harder, R.F. Regtuit, G.C. Wakker, Callimachus II, 2004. G. Berkowitz, Semi-Public Narration in Apollonius’ Argonautica, 2004. A. Ambühl, Kinder und junge Helden. Innovative Aspekte des Umgangs mit der literarischen Tradition bei Kallimachos, 2005. J.S. Bruss, Hidden Presences. Monuments, Gravesites, and Corpses in Greek Funerary Epigram, 2005. M.A. Harder, R.F. Regtuit, G.C. Wakker, Beyond the Canon, 2006. É. Prioux, Regards alexandrins. Histoire et théorie des arts dans l’épigramme hellénistique, 2007. M.A. Tueller, Look Who’s Talking: Innovations in Voice and Identity in Hellenistic Epigram, 2008. E. Sistakou, Reconstructing the Epic. Cross-Readings of the Trojan Myth in Hellenistic Poetry, 2008. M.A. Harder, R.F. Regtuit, G.C. Wakker, Nature and Science in Hellenistic Poetry, 2009. M.A. Harder, R.F. Regtuit, G.C. Wakker, Gods and Religion in Hellenistic Poetry, 2012. E. Sistakou, The Aesthetics of Darkness. A Study of Hellenistic Romanticism in Apollonius, Lycophron and Nicander, 2012. C. Cusset, N. Le Meur-Weissman, F. Levin, Mythe et pouvoir à l’époque hellénistique, 2012. J. Kwapisz, The Greek Figure Poems, 2013. M.A. Harder, R.F. Regtuit, G.C. Wakker, Hellenistic Poetry in Context, 2014. M.A. Harder, R.F. Regtuit, G.C. Wakker, Past and Present in Hellenistic Poetry, 2017. Y. Durbec, F. Trajber, Traditions épiques et poésie épigrammatique, 2017. M.A. Harder, R.F. Regtuit, G.C. Wakker, Drama and Performance in Hellenistic Poetry, 2018.

HELLENISTICA GRONINGANA 24

CALLIMACHUS REVISITED NEW PERSPECTIVES IN CALLIMACHEAN SCHOLARSHIP

Edited by J.J.H. KLOOSTER M.A. HARDER R.F. REGTUIT G.C. WAKKER

PEETERS LEUVEN – PARIS – BRISTOL, CT

2019

A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. © 2019 – Peeters – Bondgenotenlaan 153 – B-3000 Leuven – Belgium All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any forms or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the holder of the copyright. ISBN 978-90-429-3850-2 eISBN 978-90-429-3851-9 D/2019/0602/82

TABLE OF CONTENTS Jacqueline KLOOSTER Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1

Benjamin ACOSTA-HUGHES A Lost Pavane for a Dead Princess. Call. fr. 228 Pf.. . . . . . . .

5

Peter BING Thanks Again to Aristaenetus: The Tale of Phrygius and Pieria in Callimachus’ Aetia (Frs. 80-83b Harder) through the Eyes of a Late-Antique Epistolographer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

27

Ewen BOWIE Callimachus and Longus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

51

James J. CLAUSS The Near Eastern Background of Aetiological Wordplay in Callimachus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

65

Kathryn GUTZWILLER The Reception of Callimachus in Meleager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

97

Annette HARDER From Scamander to Demeter: Allusions to Homer in the Sixth Hymn of Callimachus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 Alex HARDIE Callimachus Ep. 32 Pf. (Ap 12.148) and Menippus of Gadara

147

Richard HUNTER Reading and Citing the Epigrams of Callimachus . . . . . . . . . . 171 Robert KIRSTEIN New Borders of Fiction? Callimachean Aetiology as a Narrative Device in Ovid’s Metamorphoses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193 Jan KWAPISZ & Katarzyna PIETRUCZUK Your Own Personal Library of Alexandria: Callimachus’ Scholarly Works and their Readers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221 Jackie MURRAY Poetically Erect: The Female Oriented Humor in Callimachus’ Hymn to Demeter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249

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Floris OVERDUIN The Didactic Callimachus and the Homeric Nicander: Reading the Aetia Through the Theriaca? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265 Ivana PETROVIC Poetry for the New Goddess: A Gift that Keeps on Giving . . 285 Alexander SENS Some Aspects of Closure in Callimachus’ Epigrams . . . . . . . . 305 Evina SISTAKOU Denarrating the Narratable in the Aetia: A Postmodern Take on Callimachean Aesthetics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329 Susan STEPHENS Celebrating the Games . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351 Frederick WILLIAMS Did Erysichthon Eat the Cat? Some Reflections on Call. H.6.110 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369 Index rerum et nominum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 385 Index locorum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391

INTRODUCTION Jacqueline KLOOSTER

We are happy and proud to present this special volume of the Hellenistica Groningana. The volume is a result of the conference held on 12-14 September 2017 as a celebration of Annette Harder’s career as a professor of Greek Language and Culture at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, where she has worked for over thirty years, ever since 1986. The organizers of this event, Gerry Wakker, Remco Regtuit, Martine Cuypers and myself, thought that nothing could be more fitting as a tribute to Annette Harder’s scholarly achievements than a festive edition of the Groningen Workshops on Hellenistic Poetry, which she herself first instigated. To this end we invited a number of renowned international scholars who had been participants since the first workshops, as well as some younger ones who are prominent in the field of Hellenistic studies. Of course no other poet than Callimachus could form the focus of the workshop. Indeed, it was exactly twenty-five years earlier, in September 1992, that the first ever Groningen Workshop was organized by Annette Harder. That event, like the 2017 edition, focused on Callimachus, who at the time was receiving renewed attention thanks to the papyrological reconstructions of his Aetia and Hecale by Peter Parsons and Adrian Hollis. Since Annette Harder’s own magnum opus, the 2012 two-volume Oxford edition and commentary on the Aetia, had been giving a boost to new scholarship on Callimachus through its lucid and comprehensive presentation of the fragments, it seemed like a beautiful ring composition to return to Callimachus after twenty-five years, take stock of current approaches, and see what the future might have in store. One thing this volume shows is that there are still un-trodden paths onto which Callimachean scholarship can lead us today. Along these narrow lanes, various themes and concerns emerge: a first cluster of papers focuses on Callimachus’ experimental poetics and his striking formal choices from a literary-theoretical point of view, showcasing some important recent trends in literary theory and their significance for the study of Callimachus’ poetry. Robert Kirstein takes his starting point from the study of unreliable narrators in structuralist narratology and asks how Callimachus’ Aetia straddle the border between fiction and reality, and how Ovid read them, and recreated similar unreliable narrators in his

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Metamorphoses. Evina Sistakou approaches the Aetia from the angle of post-modern literary theory and highlights the surprisingly far-reaching implications of Callimachus’ experimental narrative techniques, which ultimately question what narrative is: ‘The Aetia begin as an epistemological survey of reality (…) and develop into a series of ontological questions: ‘Are there possible worlds and alternative realities? What is their status in reference to historical truth and literary fiction? Who has the ability to perceive them and the authority to recreate them?’ Jackie Murray’s paper represents a third highly relevant theoretical approach, discussing Callimachus’ mode of dealing with gendered narrating voices in his Hymn to Demeter. She finds that Callimachus is able to create in this poem ‘a transgendered subjectivity, (…) by transforming the Erysichthon story into one about the collapse of the household, focalizing the narrative through females or feminized males, and by infantilizing Erysichthon himself.’ Alexander Sens, finally, looks at the way a Callimachean poem inscribes its own ending in itself, aligning a variegated and subtle array of closural techniques in the epigrams. A second thematic focus is on the question how Callimachus’ works are embedded in previous Greek and other ancient poetic traditions. Answering this, the contributors go above and beyond the old concept of Kreuzung der Gattungen and moreover show how intertextual references and etymological wordplay are much more than a mere display of learning on the poet’s part. In this vein, James Clauss relates the intriguing topic of etymological wordplay and puns, which has a prominent place in Callimachean aetiological stories, to the similar traditions in NearEastern origin stories. He suggests that Callimachus, writing as he did for the Ptolemaic court, may have had the intention of assimilating to the Egyptian branch of this particular tradition. Floris Overduin throws light on the relation of the Aetia to didactic poetry: if we look beyond the formal characteristics, as he demonstrates, Callimachus’ poem shows many common features with this poetic genre. Taking the Victoria Berenices of the Aetia and the Victoria Sosibii as her starting point, Susan Stephens illuminates Callimachus’ epinician court poetry by comparing them to some of the less conventional examples of Pindaric poetry for athletic victors. She argues that Callimachus is not so much blending the elegiac genre with the epinician one, but rather grafting his new poetry upon an earlier genre, thus creating a new form by anchoring it in an established tradition. Annette Harder herself, the laudanda of the workshop and the volume, contributes a version of her valedictory lecture: a thoughtful reading of the Hymn to Demeter against the background of Homeric poetry, with a keen eye for the specific significance that the

INTRODUCTION

3

heroic and kingly Homeric values alluded to in this hymn might have held for Ptolemaic royalty. Court and context return in the next thematic cluster. Ivana Petrovic shows how Callimachus’ Iambus 12 and Hymn to Apollo metapoetically comment on the value of panegyric poetry for the semi-divine Ptolemaic dynasts. An excellent example of such panegyric, the fragmentary poem on the death and apotheosis of Arsinoe Philadelphus (fr. 228 Pf.) is placed in context and enlightened with parallels in the contribution of Benjamin Acosta-Hughes. Jan Kwapisz and Katarzyna Pietruczuk explore the courtly significance and panegyric dimensions of the great scholarly production of Callimachus in his role of kritikos in the Alexandrian Library and Mouseion. Even in the close study of issues of seeming detail a lot can yet be learned and clarified, as the contribution by Alex Hardie, on the vexed identification of the addressee ‘Menippus’ in the Callimachean epigram 32 Pf. demonstrates. Indeed, questions of Callimachean detail may be as unruly as a herd of cats, as Fred Williams shows us in a paper that is as amusing as it is erudite, centering on the question of whether Erysichthon did or did not actually eat one of Annette Harder’s favourite animals? A final topic concerns the reception of Callimachus in poetry, prose and beyond. Kathryn Gutzwiller explores the Callimachean dimensions of Meleager’s epigrammatic production, in which she identifies what she aptly describes as a ‘debt with deviation’ to the earlier poet. Ewen Bowie makes a case for Callimachean elements in Longus’ pastoral novel Daphnis and Chloe, beyond the more obvious allusions to pastoral poetry in that work, and explores their possible implications. The late antique epistolographer Aristaenetus once more receives thanks — as he had once before in an article by Annette Harder herself — from Peter Bing for preserving important clues to the reconstruction of Callimachus’ narratives about Acontius and Cydippe and Phrygius and Pieria. Additionally, Bing throws light on the possibile significance of these specific Callimachean subtexts about happily married couples in the contemporary historical context of the elusive ‘Aristaenetus’. Richard Hunter, finally, looks at the Callimachean reception (both as a scholar and a poet) in the indirect tradition of Greek literature, to refine and add to our current image of Callimachus’ centrality as a poet. * * * In the long run of the Groningen Workshops, a group of regular participants naturally formed. As some have remarked, the workshops felt like

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reunions of friends or even extended family. One highly appreciated member of this community was professor Adolf Köhnken, who sadly passed away on 5 August 2017. He was missed during the workshop, and we were grateful that professor Anja Bettenworth honoured him with a memorial speech. Organizing this third Groningen workshop on Callimachus, the question what the first gathering had been like naturally occurred. Fortunately, it was possible to track down a source, telling, albeit in the ‘indirect tradition’, about this mythical past: “The present volume [the first Callimachus volume] represents the publication of the first of the “Groningen Workshops on Hellenistic Poetry” that took place in early September of 1992. Rumor had it that the event was both enjoyable and instructive. While the collection, comprised of 13 papers, does not let on about the former, the latter is very much in evidence. What a propitious beginning for the workshops and their publications!” (BMCR 94.5.13, James Clauss, emphasis added)

Twenty-five years later, the return to Callimachus in honour of the distinguished career of Professor Annette Harder was most certainly both, as eyewitnesses can confirm, and as this volume hopefully bears out. Our thanks go out to all participants in this event: all who presented papers at the time or contributed them to this volume, all respondents, chairs, and other contributors to the general discussions. Special gratitude goes out to our student assistant Sean McGrath and his helpers Caroline van Toor, Meera Hayes, and Ninah Tiemersma. Jos Janssen helped with the redaction and indexing, for which we are also very grateful. Fred Williams’ special brand of “pettifogging pedantry”, in his own words, was of inestimable value in preparing the proofs. The 13th Groningen Workshop on Hellenistic Workshop was funded generously by the KNAW.

A LOST PAVANE FOR A DEAD PRINCESS CALL. FR. 228 PF. Benjamin ACOSTA-HUGHES

Introduction In the following pages I seek to provide a reading of one of Callimachus’ very fragmentary poems, fr. 228 Pf., entitled by the Milan Diegesis to the poem the Ἐκθέωσις ᾿Αρσινόης, the “Deification of Arsinoe”. In the following pages I first read the larger extant fragments of the poetic text, and then consider the poem in the context of contemporary poetry on apotheosis of royal figures. As both the recent publication of the epigrams attributed to Posidippus (P. Mil. Vogl. VIII 309), particularly the section entitled anathematica (Epigrams 36-41 AB),1 and some of the new images recovered from the area of Canopus by Frank Goddio and his team of maritime archaeologists have re-awakened interest in early Ptolemaic ruler cult,2 this seems an opportune moment to look again at the longest extant poetic text on Arsinoe II from the 3rd century.

1. The Poem P. Berol. 13417 preserves some 75 lines, with extensive scholia, of one of the most tantalizing fragmentary poems of the 3rd cent. BCE poet Callimachus of Cyrene. This is a court poem, likely originally a performance composition, on the death of Arsinoe II Philadelphus,3 Callimachus’ own 1. On the anathematica see esp. Stephens 2004. 2. Particularly impressive is the 1.5 meter image in black granite that Goddio and his team have suggested is an image of Arsinoe-Aphrodite from her temple at Canopus. See Goddio (2003: 156-7) and now Goddio (2016: 92-93). 3. Arsinoe II, elder sister of Ptolemy II (she appears to have been born ca. 316 BCE), daughter of Ptolemy I and his fourth wife, Berenice I. She was married first to Alexander’s diadochos Lysimachus, ruler of Thrace, until the latter’s death at Corupedium in 281. After a brief and violent marriage to her half-brother Ptolemy Ceraunus, who was himself responsible for the deaths of two of her three sons, she returned to Alexandria in 279. Following a brief interlude, in which she was likely involved in the removal of her predecessor, Arsinoe I, and apparently also the deaths of the remaining half-brothers, she married her full brother Ptolemy II at some time before 274 (probably 276-5, maybe a year earlier). Posidippus composed a poem for this wedding (114 AB = SH 961), as, it appears, did

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Pavane for a Dead Princess.4 The poem, described by an extant prose summary of several of Callimachus’ works5 as the Ἐκθέωσις ᾿Αρσινόης, or “Deification of Arsinoe”, consists of 75 extant lines; how long the poem may have continued after line 75 cannot be ascertained. Although Wilamowitz published the editio princeps in 1912,6 the late Colin Austin was the first scholar to publish the plates of P. Berol. 13417 that preserve Callim. fr. 228 Pf. in 2006.7 As Austin phrased it at the time: “Pour nous, c’est un miracle que l’original existe encore: il aurait pu si facilement disparaître pour de bon, dévoré par les flammes, sous les bombardements de Berlin en 1945!” P. Berol. 13417 likely dates to the 3rd or 4th century CE; most recently Guido Bastianini has suggested that, based on the hand, it might likely be datable to the first half of the fourth century8 — an interesting point that a court poem describing an event in 270 BCE had a sufficiently enduring appeal to still be copied some seven centuries later. The poem is in a remarkable meter, stichic archebuleans: ×‒∪∪‒ ∪∪‒ ∪∪‒ ∪‒ ‒

The archebulean9 came to be so named after a Hellenistic poet, Archebuleus of Teos,10 of whom a single line survives;11 there are, however, archebuleans in earlier lyric poetry, in Stesichorus,12 in Ibycus,13 occasionally in Euripides’ choral lyrics,14 and in Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae Callimachus (fr. 392 Pf.). I would suggest that Theoc. 17 may also be a poem celebrating this marriage. Arsinoe II died on July 9, 270 BCE. On the date of her death see further Fraser (1972: v. 1, 668-669; v. 2, 937-938); Cadell (1998); Hölbl (2001: 40). 4. Pavane pour une infante défunte, the title of Maurice Ravel’s 1899 composition for solo piano, of which he published an orchestrated version in 1910. 5. P. Mil. Vogl. 1 18, published in 1934 by M. Norsa and G. Vitelli. 6. Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (1912). 7. Austin (2006). 8. In private correspondence with C. Austin: Austin (2006: 58 n.12). 9. Also termed λογαοιδικὸς ἀναπαιστικός or logaoedic (‘between speech and song’) anapaest. On the meter Hephaestion Enchiridion de metris p. 28.9 Consbruch; see further Lelli (2005: 152-154). The meter might also be termed an enoplion with choriambic expansion. 10. In the Suda life of Euphorion the poet is said to have been trained in philosophy and poetry, his teacher in the latter case being Archebuleus of Thera, of whom Euphorion was also the boyfriend. This would suggest that this Archebuleus is a contemporary of Callimachus: Euphorion’s birth date is uncertain, but ascribed to the period 275-268 BCE. 11. SH 124: μόρον οὐ νοέοντες ἐφιστάμενον κατάντην. 12. Stesichorus PMG 244 (= 244 PMGF, from Stob. Ecl. 4.56.15 (5.1126 Hense)): ἀτελέστα τε γὰρ καὶ ἀμάχανα τοὺς θανόντας | κλαίειν. 13. PMGF 283 (= 283 PMGF), from the first book of Ibycus’ Songs: δαρὸν †δάραοι† χρόνον ἧστο τάφει πεπαγώς. 14. Eur. Heracl. 356 μεγαληγορίαισι δ’ ἐμὰς φρένας οὐ φοβήσεις ~ 365 καὶ ἐμᾶς χθονὸς ἀντομένους ξένος ὢν βιαίως; HF 1197 πολυμοχθότερον πολυπλαγκτότερόν τε

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A LOST PAVANE FOR A DEAD PRINCESS

at line 1158.15 Two factors we might derive from a comparison of these earlier instances of this metrical line: earlier use is almost entirely confined to choral lyric, and a striking number of these instances have to do with Death or the Underworld. Callimachus’ choice of the archebulean for his poem on the death of Arsinoe II, while remarkable, is not surprising given this pedigree. Stichic lyric lines are a feature of Hellenistic poetry’s reception of lyric. There is now another Hellenistic poem in stichic archebuleans (SH 992), also in Doric dialect, which makes a good comparandum with this one.16 Another poem that makes a striking comparison with Callimachus fr. 228 is Philicus’ Demeter (SH 680).17 Philicus is a slightly older contemporary of Callimachus, a priest of Dionysus under Ptolemy I. The Philicus poem, conventionally, if somewhat misleadingly, called a ‘hymn’,18 is composed in catalectic choriambic hexameters; like Callimachus fr. 229, composed in choriambic pentameters, and Callimachus fr. 228 (the poem under present discussion) the Philicus poem shows the imprint of the stichic lyric meters of Sappho, particularly Book 3 of the Alexandrian edition (in greater Asclepiads, hipponacteans expanded by 2 choriambs) and Book 2 (glyconics expanded by 2 dactyls). It is worth noting that all of the so-called ‘lyric’ poems of Callimachus (frr. 226-229 Pf.) are in meters that are more or less paralleled among the lyric meters of Sappho: the first book of Sappho was strophic, but books 2 and 3 in particular were not, and so provide a model of stichic lyric composition. Relevant parallels between Callim. fr. 228 and the Philicus poem include the lyric patterning of multiple speakers, the description of journeys, and of course the loss of the principal figure (Persephone/Arsinoe). The Charites also figure in the Philicus poem. Particularly striking is the nexus of familial associations in lines 20-27: [ [ [ [ [

]νυ.[ ]οχανου.[ ].μμ[...]έρριπτο χύδ[ην ∪ ‒ ‒ ]μασι θερμη δ’ ἐπέκαενα[‒ ]δε μύθου προλαβοῦσα .[ – –

(20)

θνατῶν ~ 1205; Hel. 687 δι’ ἐμὰν κατεδήσατο δύσγαμον αἰσχύναν; Ion 1442 χθονίων μέτα Περσεφόνας τ’ ἐδόκουν ναίειν. 15. Ar. Th. 1158 νῦν ἀφίκεσθον, ἱκετεύομεν, ἐνθάδ’ ἡμῖν. The chorus prays to Demeter to appear: on this line see Austin & Olson (2004: 336 ad locum). 16. See Lloyd-Jones (1974) = Lloyd-Jones (1990: 219-222). 17. I owe a debt of gratitude to Ewen Bowie for pointing this out to me at the 2017 Groningen Workshop. 18. See Bowie (2018) particularly on the poem’s genre and meter. Page treats a part of the fragment in Edgar (1970: 402-407).

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BENJAMIN ACOSTA-HUGHES

[ [ [ [ [

ν]ικηφόρον οἰωνὸν ἔκρινον [– – ].θι λιτὰς μητρόθεν αὐταδέλφους ]ις ὁμόσπλαγχνον ἔθρεψα κύπριν ].ινη γάλα σοι, μητρὶ δ’ ἐγὼ σύναιμος μ]εγάλας κοινοπάτωρ λοχεύει

(25)

were cast (?) abundantly…warm (?) was burned (?) …taking up the tale… select victory-bearing bird …prayers of the self-same sister from her mother…raised a love of one body…milk for you, I your mother’s close relation…common father brought forth great…

To begin with line 20 έρριπτο χύδ[ην ∪‒ ‒ and compare fr. 228.11 ἁ δ] ὲ χύδαν ἐδίδασκε λύπα. The premise of Callim. fr. 228 is that Philotera, the previously deceased sister of Arsinoe II and Ptolemy II, is crossing the heavens coming in return from visiting the goddess Demeter in Sicily (Philotera may have been a synnaos theos of Demeter in Alexandria, as Arsinoe was of Aphrodite). The somewhat convoluted imagery of blood relationship in the Philicus poem, which has troubled scholars (see Page on this in particular), is of course a particularly apt parallel for a poem on the death of Arsinoe II. Like Callim. fr. 228, which is in archebuleans (an expanded choriambic pattern), the Philicus poem is again also in a stichic lyric pattern, here catalectic choriambic hexameters. Callim. fr. 228 Pf. is indeed fragmentary: in this section of my paper, I will limit myself to discussion of a few of the fuller extant passages. The opening of the poem is preserved in part by P. Berol. 13417 Ar 1-38; the opening line and the fifth line are in part preserved in other sources.19 –Ἀγέτω θεός, οὐ γὰρ ἐγὼ δίχ˜α τῶνδ’ ἀείδειν π] ροποδεῖν Ἀπόλλων ] κεν δυναίμαν κατ] ὰ χεῖρα βᾶσαι. –νύμφα, σὺ μὲν ἀστερίαν ὑ˜π’ ἄμαξαν ἤδη κλεπτομέν] α παρέθεις20 σελάνᾳ ] ἀτενεῖς ὀδυρμοί ] μία τοῦτο φωνά ἁμετέρα] βασίλεια φρούδα τ] ί παθὼν ἀπέσβη; ἁ δ] ὲ χύδαν ἐδίδασκε λύπα ] `̣ μέγας γαμέτας ὁμεύνῳ ] αν πρόθεσιν πύρ’ αἴθειν ] λεπτὸν ὕδωρ

(5)

(10)

19. Line 1 is attested by Heph. Poëm. 28.16 Consbuch, and the Diegesis to this fragment; line 5 again in Hephaestion ibidem. 20. Following D’Alessio I print Wilamowitz’ suggestion παρέθεις for παρέθει in the papyrus.

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A LOST PAVANE FOR A DEAD PRINCESS

σὺ δὲ καὶ]

στόματ’ οἷς

Θέτ] ιδος τὰ πέραια βωμῶν ] .[..]ωδε Θήβα. ] .ας ] η· ] φερτα ] .θη· τ] όλμας ] α· ] ρειδης· ν] ύμφας ] πλοις ] αι ] ει· ] ου ] ] ας ] αντῶν ] βας ] μον· ]πόλις ἄλλ[α] τευξεῖ· ]φέρει θάλα[σσ]αν ]ᾶ παναγὴς ε.[...]σ· ]ν τὰ τάλαντα [....].· ]ων τὰ καλὰ πτ[....]ᾶ

(15)

(20)

(25)

(30)

(35)

Let the god lead, for I not to sing apart from them | … Apollo to walk before | … could I … go below the hand. | 5 Bride, you already below the starry wagon |… stolen away you ran by the moon | … strained laments | … one voice this |… our queen is gone 10 … from what suffering did she die? | … and grief taught abundantly | … the great bridegroom for his bed-mate | … to set the laying out fire alight | … fine water | 15 … coast of the altars of Thetis | … Thebes. | … | and you …| … | 20 daring | … | … | … of the bride | 25 … | … | … | mouths for which … | … | 30 …| … | … | … | … city but will attain | 35 … bears (?) sea | … very clear … | … the pair of scales … | … of which the fair …

The poem opens with a prelude,21 an address to Apollo (and the Muses? so δίχ˜α τῶνδ’?)22 inviting the god to lead in the song performance. The very close bond of Apollo and poet is a typical feature of Callimachus’

21. In his 2006 study of the poem, the late Austin (2006: 60) offered, with true Callimachean philological play, the following conjectured supplementation of the opening lines: –Ἀγέτω θεός, οὐ γὰρ ἐγὼ δίχ˜α τῶνδ’ ἀείδειν δύναμαί ποτε· νῦν γε μέν, αἰ π]ροποδεῖν Ἀπόλλων ἐθέλοι μετὰ Πιερίδων, τάχα ]κεν δυναίμαν ὀνίναντι γὰρ ἐρχόμεναι] κατ]ὰ χεῖρα βᾶσαι 22. Pfeiffer, and following him D’Alessio, print the superscript τωνδ’ above τῶιδ in the papyrus. Cf. however Austin (2006: 59-60).

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poetry, memorable from the first fragment of the Aetia,23 but also prevalent elsewhere.24 At line 5 the poet addresses a bride (νύμφα); as we know from the scholia to either line 5 or line 6 this is Arsinoe who is now, in lines 5-6, already on her heavenly journey, stolen away (by her brothers, here the Dioscuri?) at the time of the full moon.25 There follows, albeit fragmentarily, what appears to be an accounting of Arsinoe’s death (lines 9-10), the grief of her husband (assuming, probably a fairly safe assumption, that Ptolemy II is the μέγας γαμέτας of line 12), possibly images of the pyre (lines 13-14). The ‘coast of Thetis’ altars’ is an image that has long troubled scholars of the poem (there being only one rather oblique reference to the cult of Thetis in Alexandria), but Wilamowitz’ proposal that the island of Pharos is meant here is generally accepted, as is the referent of Θήβα as Thebes (modern Luxor) in Upper Egypt. The reference to Thetis may have further relevance given the role of Charis in the poem: the careful recall of the latter part of the Iliad in fr. 228 Pf. gains an additional nuance if the journey of Thetis to Charis and Hephaestus in Iliad 18 is called to the mind of the poem’s audience. The verso of the papyrus (P. Berol. 13417 Av 39-75) is somewhat better preserved, and includes some 16 complete lines: Πρωτῆϊ μὲν ὧδ’ ἐτύμοι κατάγο[ντο φᾶμαι. σαμάντριαν ἃ δὲ πυρᾶς ἐνόησ’ ἰ[ωάν, ἃν οὖλα κυλινδομέναν ἐδίωκ[ον αὖραι < . . . . . . . >26 ἠδ’ ἂμ μέσα Θρηϊκίου κατὰ νῶτα [πόντου Φιλωτέρα· ἄρτι γάρ οἱ Σικελὰ μὲν Ἔνν–α κατελείπετο, Λαμνιακοὶ δ’ ἐπατεῦ[ντο βουνοί Δηοῦς ἄπο νεισομένᾳ· σέο δ’ ἦν ἄπ[υστος ὦ δαίμοσιν ἁρπαγίμα, φάτο δ’ ημιδ[

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23. Call. Aet. fr. 1 lines 21-22: καὶ γὰρ ὅ˜τε πρ–ώ˜τιστον ἐμοῖς ἐπὶ δέλτον ἔθηκα γούνα˜σιν, Ἀ[πό]λλων εἶπεν ὅ μοι Λύκιος· 24. The conclusion of the Hymn to Apollo and Iambus 12 e.g. 25. I turn to the Diegesis in the next part of the paper, but at issue would be the apotheosis of Arsinoe at the hands of the Dioscuri: two lines seems to me too short a space, particularly since line 5 is complete, to articulate this action, but this need not be correct, the diegete could just be summarizing only the opening of the poem. There are indeed some striking parallels for the κλεπτομέν]α line 6, as Pfeiffer notes ad loc., two of Helen herself: E. Or. 1497-1499 (of Helen): ἢ θεῶν κλοπαῖς. | τὰ δ’ ὕστερ’ οὐκέτ’ οἶδα· δραπέταν γὰρ ἐξ- | έκλεπτον ἐκ δόμων πόδα; ibid. 1633-1634: ἐγώ νιν ἐξέσωσα χὐπὸ φασγάνου |τοῦ σοῦ κελευσθεὶς ἥρπασ’ ἐκ Διὸς πατρός; Eur. Hel. 1666-1675 (note here especially Hermes snatches Helen from Sparta (κλέψας δέμας σὸν) that Helen not wed Paris; IA 1615 (Clytemnestra to Iphigenia): ὦ παῖ, θεῶν τοῦ κλέμμα γέγονας. The passages with Helen are especially noteworthy: the poem appears to place Arsinoe in a frame already well known from the apotheosis of Helen at the hands of her brothers the Dioscuri. 26. Wilamowitz noticed that a line appears to be missing at this point in the papyrus.

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’ἕζευ Χάρι τὰν ὑπά[τ]αν ἐπ’ Ἄθω κολώ[ναν, ἀπὸ δ’ αὔγασαι, ἐκ πεδίου τὰ πύρ’ αἰ σαπ[ τ]ίς ἀπώλετο, τίς πολίων ὁλόκαυτος α[ἴθει. ἔνι μοι φόβος· ἀλλὰ ποτεῦ· νότος αὐ[ νότος αἴθριος· ἦρά τι μοι Λιβύα κα[κοῦται;’ τάδ’ ἔφα· θεὸς ἀλλ’ ὁπότε σκοπιὰν ἐπ[έπτα χιονώδεα, τὰν ἀπέχειν ἐλάχιστ[ον ἄρκτου ἥκει λόγος, ἐς δὲ Φάρου περίσαμο[ν ἀκτάν ἐσκέψατο, θυμολιπὴς ἐβόα[σε ‘ναὶ ναὶ μέγα δή τ[ι ἁ λίγνυς ἀφ’ ὑμετ[έρας πόλιος φορεῖται.’ ἃ δ’ ἤνεπε ταῦτα[ τάν μοι πόλιν ᾇ με[ κείρουσιν· ὃ δ’ ἐς φιλι[ πόσις ᾤχετο πενθερ[ ἄκουσά τε Μακροβίω[ν ὄφρα δύσποδας ὥς ἑ π[ θεὸς ἔδραμεν· αὐτίκ[α ἡξεῖ δόμον.’ ἃ μὲν [ οὐκ ᾔδεε· τᾷ δὲ Χάρ[ις βαρὺν εἶπε μῦθον· ‘μή μοι χθονός – οὐχὶ [τεὰ Φάρος ᾀθάλωται – περικλαίεο· μηδέ τι[ ἄλλα μέ τις οὐκ ἀγαθ[ὰ φάτις οὔαθ’ ἥκει. θρῆνοι πόλιν ὑμετέρ[αν οὐχ ὡς ἐπὶ δαμοτ[έρων χθών· ἀλλά τι τῶ[ν] μεγάλων ἐ[, τάν τοι μίαν οἰχομ[ένα]ν ὁμόδελφυν [αὐτάν κλαίοντι· τὰ δ’ ᾇ[ κεν ἴ]δῃς, μέλαν [ἀμφίεσται χθονὸς ἄστεα· ν[ωϊτ]έρων τὸ κρατ[

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To Proteus thus were brought down true voices. | 40 she noticed the signing cry from the pyre, | a curl of smoke that as it circled the breezes pursued | [a line appears to be missing] she through the mid air along the backs of the Thracian sea, | Philotera. For just now she had left Sicilian Enna, | and trod upon the hills of Lemnos, | 45 coming from Deo. Of you she was unknowing, | oh you snatched up by the gods, and she spoke … | ‘sit, Charis, upon the high hill of Athos, | look from there, fires from the plane … | someone has died. Who has died? Which of the cities all burned up is alight? | 50 I am afraid. But fly. The south wind … | the airy south wind. Is perhaps my Libya done harm?’ | These things she spoke. But when the goddess flew to the snowy lookout, | which word tells is the shortest distance from the Bear, | she looked to the very famed headland of Pharos, | 55 and faint in her heart she cried …, ‘ | yes, yes indeed greatly … the fire is born from your city’ | she said these things … | which to me the city for which … | 60 they cut their hair. And he to (love?) | … the wedded husband went … | I heard of the Macrobians … when slow of foot as … | the god ran. Immediately … | 65 will come to the house.’ She … | did not know. But Charis spoke to her a heavy word. | ‘not the country – Do not weep [your Pharos is not aflame ] | nor in any … | but some not good report has come to my ears | 70 lamentations your city …

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| not as for common people… | land. But something of the great ones … | your one departed self-same sister for her they lament. | That you might know, the cities of the land are clothed in black. | 75 Of our people the rule (?)

Proteus at line 39 returns the poem’s focus to the island of Pharos, where Proteus (Odyssey 4.561-569) once prophesized to Menelaus his eventual rest in the Elysian plain. As in the opening of the Victoria Berenices, where Pharos and Proteus also appear,27 the reference links this poem to the Homeric past, and to the Homeric image of Egypt. This is particularly relevant here, as the poem’s audience is again reminded through this allusion of Helen’s apotheosis at the hands of her brothers, the Dioscuri, who now bear Arsinoe to heaven.28 At line 41, there is a change of focalizer. Philotera, sister of Ptolemy II and Arsinoe II,29 already deceased and apparently co-templed with the goddess Demeter, becomes the principal figure. Both her own immortality, and metaphorically the curl of smoke she sees rising to the skies,30 prefigure Arsinoe’s own apotheosis. Philotera has come from Sicily (and Demeter) to Lemnos, where she is as yet unaware of her sister’s death and of what has befallen her sister Arsinoe.31 The apostrophe at line 45 σέο δ’ ἦν ἄπ[υστος marks a particular note of sympathy between the poet and his subject (cf. e.g. of Acontius fr. 75.74-75, of the child Zeus Jov. 55-56). Philotera sends Charis to the peak of Mt. Athos to search out what has befallen ‘my Libya’.32 And from the snowy peak of Mt. Athos (lines 52-53) Charis looks to Alexandria and cries out that she sees smoke 27. Call. fr. 54.4-6 Harder: ἁρμοῖ γὰρ –Δαναοῦ γ˜ῆς ἀπὸ βουγενέος | εἰς Ἑλένη[ς νησῖδ]ᾳ καὶ εἰς Παλληνέα μά[ντιν | ποιμένα [φωκάων], χρύσεον ἦλθεν ἔπος. 28. Cf. E. Hel. 1666-1669. 29. We know nothing of Philotera outside of this poem. D’Alessio (2007: 664 with note 24) may well be right that the very simple manner of her introduction here presupposed a previous literary treatment — she would have to be a figure fairly easily recognizable to the poem’s audience. 30. ἰωή is a relatively rare Homeric word, used only once of fire, at Il. 16.127: λεύσσω δὴ παρὰ νηυσὶ πυρὸς δηΐοιο ἰωήν, ‘Indeed I see the rush of destructive fire by the ships’. The use of rare Homeric words, and also rare uses of Homeric words, is characteristic of Hellenistic poets, often to clarify or enhance the original meaning of something obscure in later texts. In this case, the allusion to one tragic figure in the Iliad prefigures the subsequent use of another, Andromache, to whose bereft gaze that of Philotera is thus likened. 31. ἄπ[υστος at line 45 is Wilamowitz’ conjecture, based on the parallels of Call. Cer. 6 (significantly, the poet’s Hymn to Demeter), ἁρπαγίμας ὅκ’ ἄπυστα μετέστιχεν ἴχνια κώρας, the parallel is all the more effective as this is one goddess, Demeter, in search of another, Persephone. Note further Stesich. PMGF fr. S104 13. 32. ἦρά τι μοι Λιβύα κα[κοῦται. Libya is a standard reference to North Africa in Hellenistic poetry, including Egypt. Cf. Theoc. 1.24: ὡς ὅκα τὸν Λιβύαθε ποτὶ Χρόμιν ᾆσας ἐρίσδων, where Λιβύαθε might be understood in a more narrow or broader sense. On Libya in Callimachus’ work see Acosta-Hughes & Stephens (2012: 172-173).

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rising from there. To Philotera’s question whether her city (Alexandria) has suffered some ill, Charis responds with the dreadful news that Arsinoe has died. The priamel-like structure of lines 69-74 adds to the pathos, as does the length, and the position, of ὁμόδελφυν of the image at lines 73-74: τάν τοι μίαν οἰχομ[ένα]ν ὁμόδελφυν [αὐτάν |κλαίοντι· The extant poem as we have it ends with the apparent image of the city clothed in black.

2. The Diegesis to Call. fr. 228 P. Mil. Vogl. 18, often referred to as ‘the Milan Diegeseis’ is a prose summary (Lat. narratio) of a number of Callimachus’ works: the papyrus begins with Aetia fr. 67 (so part-way through the third Book of the Aetia), and then continues with Aetia 4, the Iambi, the so-called Mele, the Hecale and Hymns 1 (to Zeus) and II (to Apollo) where the papyrus then breaks off.33 This is the entry for Call. fr. 228 Pf.: Ἀγέτω θεός, οὐ γὰρ ἐγὼ δίχα τῶνδ’ ἀείδειν Ἐκθέωσις Ἀρσινόης· φησὶν δὲ αὐτὴν ἀνηρπάσθαι ὑπὸ τῶν Διοσκούρων καὶ βωμὸν καὶ τέμενος αὐτῆς καθιδρῦσθαι πρὸς τῷ Ἐμπορίῳ. Let the god lead, for to sing without them Deification of Arsinoe. He says that she was taken up by the Dioscuri and that her altar and temple were founded near the Emporion.

The phrase ἐκθέωσις Ἀρσινόης is more likely a summary description (ἐκθέωσις is a prose, not a poetic word),34 rather than a title as we use it now in referring to this poem (and as it is usually affixed in translations). Ἀνηρπάσθαι, like κλέπτεσθαι, is the standard term for the assumption into Heaven at the hands of divinities. The altar and sanctuary refer to the mortuary temple (of which more anon) of Arsinoe founded near the Emporium (the littoral part of the city on the Eastern Harbor bounded by the Royal Quarter on one side and the Heptastadion on the other, of which, again, more anon). The language and imagery are quite simple and unlike longer entries in the Diegeseis this diegesis does not appear to be supplying other citations from the poem vel sim.

33. Further on the Diegesis see esp. Falivene (2011); see also Acosta-Hughes (2003: 478-479); Harder (2012: 65). 34. It is found in a 3rd. cent. BCE inscription from Canopus (OGIS 56.53, the Canopus Decree), and in Philo (Legatio ad Gaium 332, 338 etc.).

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The four poems that Pfeiffer in his 1949 edition of Callimachus’ fragments tentatively entitled μέλη, following the Suda entry on the life of Callimachus,35 are a particular issue, the subject of a long scholarly discussion, one that is usually presented in reverse order, a point that I would suggest we correct henceforth in what is likely to continue to be an ongoing debate in the future.36 There are of course seventeen Epodes of Horace, an unusual number, and one for which Horatian scholars naturally search for a model in earlier literature.37 There might of course be a variety of reasons for the number seventeen, and possibly more than one model. However many scholars have seen a possible model for Horace’s seventeen Epodes in the jointure of the Iambi and the so-called ‘μέλη’: they find support for this proposal in the common presence of both ‘collections’ in some papyri, and three of the Iambi (Iambi 6-8) are epodic. I have written at length about this issue in an earlier study,38 and do not want to recreate that study here, but would argue that it is the number of Horace’s Epodes that is informing this debate, and that this number is not a secondary or supportive issue. Were these four ‘μέλη’ not in fact adjacent to the Iambi in the Milan Diegeseis, P. Mil. Vogl. 18, this discussion would very likely never have arisen.

3. The Quartet The Suda life of Callimachus does state that Callimachus composed ‘μέλη’, but there is no way to know whether these four poems (Call. frr. 226-229) are necessarily the poems that the Suda is referring to, nor that these are all of the μέλη that Callimachus composed. There are a couple of suggestive links between the poems that may offer a certain logic for the particular order of these four poems as we have them. All four are in meters which may be termed ‘lyric’, and for which lyric examples are

35. Suid. v. Καλλίμαχος 11-13: τῶν δὲ αὐτοῦ βιβλίων ἐστί καὶ ταῦτα· Ἰοῦς ἄφιξις, Σεμέλη, Ἄργους οἰκισμός, Ἀρκαδία, Γλαῦκος, Ἐλπίδες, σατυρικὰ δράματα, τραγῳδίαι, κωμῳδίαι, μέλη, Ἶβις…The entry has troubled some scholars for the lack of accord between the extant works of Callimachus and this set of titles/categories. It is worth noting, though, that in the case of ‘tragedies’ Callimachus does claim that he composed one (Ep. 59 Pf. = 59 G.P.). Several of the titles in the Suda citation above look like possible ‘epyllia’. 36. On this particular issue see Lelli (2005: 1-27); Acosta-Hughes (2003); Cameron (1995: 163-173). 37. Ironically, perhaps, Callimachus’ thirteen Iambi present a similar issue. 38. Acosta-Hughes (2003).

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attested.39 All four are composed in stichic lyric meters, which is characteristic of Alexandrian lyric.40 Frr. 227, 228 and 229 all begin with addresses to Apollo (in 229 also to Zeus): this may also be a factor in the sequence of these three poems. Frr. 227 and 228 both refer to a performative occasion; fr. 229 suggests one toward the end of the poem (again, with only the lemma of fr. 226 surviving it is not possible to assess very much).41 Frr. 227 and 228 both figure the Dioscuri, in fr. 227 with Helen, in fr. 228 with Arsinoe: given the importance of Helen for the iconography of early Hellenistic queens, this is very revealing. Frr. 228 and 229 are both concerned with cult foundation: the former with the mortuary temple of Arsinoe in Alexandria, the latter with the Ptolemaic re-foundation of the cult of the Branchidae. Lemnos features in both frr. 226 and 228. All four poems can be characterized, though in somewhat different ways, as erotic: 226 is paederastic, 227 is a pannychis with imagery of drinking-games and kissing, 228 is a poem on brother-sister love, 229 tells of the homoerotic story of Apollo and Branchus. As an erotic quartet these are two homoerotic poems enclosing two hetero-erotic ones: all four include a certain amount of erotic language and/or imagery. The four poems also have cult motifs: 228 and 229 are both concerned with Ptolemaic (re)-foundations (the Alexandrian Arsinoeion, the cult of the Branchidae), both 226 and 229 appear to feature prophecy (in the case of the former this may be a bit of a stretch, but note the injunction at the end of the diegesis to the fragment, which reads like a paraphrase of poetic text: διόπερ καὶ ὑμεῖς εἰς τὸ μέλλον ἀποβλέπετε, ‘wherefore do you also look to the future’). Whether Callimachus himself or a later editor chose to order these poems in this way, there appears to be a particular logic to the ordering. That all four are ‘erotic’ poems may in itself argue for this self-contained group of four: might it not be argued that, rather like the epigrams in Meleager’s Garland, these four poems were selected as a quartet of erotic lyric poems?

39. Fr. 226, of which only the lemma in the Diegesis to that poem survives, is a Phalacean, a meter of Sappho Book 5; fr. 227 is a ‘so called Euripidean fourteen syllable’ (Heph. Poëm. 53.10 Consbruch); fr. 229 is a catalectic choriambic pentameter, a meter that Horace uses at Odes 1.11, 1.18 and 4.10. 40. See Bowie (2018: passim) and Acosta-Hughes & Stephens (2017: passim). 41. Call. fr. 229.12: χαῖρε δὲ Δελφ]ίνι’ ἄ[ν]αξ, οὔν[ο]μα γά[ρ] τοι τόδ’ ἐγὼ κατάρχω,

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4. Poetic resonances In a seminal article on Call. fr. 228, Vincenzo Di Benedetto outlined the role of Andromache’s perception of Hector’s death at Iliad 22.437-471 for Philotera’s perception of Arsinoe’s death in Call. fr. 228.42 Andromache, at first unaware of what has happened, hears the cry of lament from the tower; in direct speech bids her maids to accompany her to discover what has happened, and states her fear that her husband may have been killed. On beholding her dead husband dragged around the walls of Troy by Achilles, she faints. Charis too in fr. 228.5 apparently grows faint — θυμολιπής — on beholding the lamentations in Alexandria. I would like to add just a few points to Di Benedetto’s masterful study. At the time just prior to Andromache’s hearing the lamentation from the tower, she has bidden her maids set a great tripod over the fire, that there may be warm water for Hector’s bath on his return home.43 While the scene is a conventional epic one, the combination of fire, water and sorrow is worth noting when compared with Call. fr. 228.12-15 which again feature the surviving spouse, his grief, and the fire and water here for the laying out, the prothesis of the body. The implicit comparison of Arsinoe with Hector works on a couple of levels: it renders Arsinoe a heroic figure (and it may be worth our reminding ourselves that Arsinoe’s own history was itself one heavily impacted by military experience). And at the same time the comparison evokes one of the great episodes of pathos in Homer, setting a somewhat novel cultural experience (apotheosis as an aspect of ruler cult) in terms of one very culturally familiar (Homer’s Iliad). As Di Benedetto acutely observed, both deaths are framed in terms of true accounts, a narrative gesture that seeks to obtain a particular attention from its audience.44 We might be able to add another step to this particular mythological intertext: another poem that features Hector and Andromache, and that is in a meter not dissimilar to that of Call. fr. 228, is Sappho fr. 44, on the wedding of Hector and Andromache, in a meter (the meter of the second book of Sappho) of glyconics expanded by two dactyls:45 xx‒∪∪‒∪‒∪∪‒∪‒ 42. Di Benedetto (1994). 43. Il. 22.442-446: κέκλετο δ’ ἀμφιπόλοισιν ἐϋπλοκάμοις κατὰ δῶμα | ἀμφὶ πυρὶ στῆσαι τρίποδα μέγαν, ὄφρα πέλοιτο | Ἕκτορι θερμὰ λοετρὰ μάχης ἐκ νοστήσαντι | νηπίη, οὐδ’ ἐνόησεν ὅ μιν μάλα τῆλε λοετρῶν | χερσὶν Ἀχιλλῆος δάμασε γλαυκῶπις Ἀθήνη. 44. Il. 22.437-439: ἄλοχος δ’ οὔ πώ τι πέπυστο | Ἕκτορος· οὐ γάρ οἵ τις ἐτήτυμος ἄγγελος ἐλθὼν | ἤγγειλ’ ὅττί ῥά οἱ πόσις ἔκτοθι μίμνε πυλάων ~ Call. fr. 228.39 Πρωτῆϊ μὲν ὧδ’ ἐτύμοι κατάγο[ντο φᾶμαι. 45. This is also the meter of Theoc. 29. See Acosta-Hughes (2010: 107-115) on this poem.

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This is of course an earlier erotic re-casting of the tragic end of the love of Hector and Andromache, and Callimachus may well mean to recall this poem here as well; Callimachus thus recalling an earlier lyric variation of a scene of great Homeric pathos. And the Iliadic parallel works particularly well in this historical context. Arsinoe was older than her considerably younger brother, her marriage to him (following the disgrace of Arsinoe I) solidified his position as the younger of several brothers of Ptolemy I on the throne. Arsinoe also had a history that included considerable military experience. Hers is a strengthening, enabling presence for her brother; the image on the onyx cameo of Ptolemy II and Arsinoe II, now preserved in Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum, not by chance emphasizes her presence ‘around’ him as his silhouette is portrayed against hers. The seeming slippage of gender roles in fr. 228 highlights the powerful presence of the queen now goddess. The presence of Proteus (line 39), of Pharos (line 67, taking Wilamowitz’ conjecture), of Libya,46 and of the Helen model more largely suggest that another Homeric model is at hand, that of Helen and Menelaus on Pharos in Odyssey 4, a mytho-cultural episode of great importance in early Ptolemaic ruler cult, and one that, certainly from the brief summary of the Diegesis, seems to be very significant here. Proteus, Pharos, and Helen feature in another Callimachus poem, The Victory of Berenice (frr. 54-60 j. Harder) which also involves traveling news (here of the victory of Berenice II at Nemea), also implicates ruler cult,47 and appeals to an older mythology (here of Danaus and Argos) that links Egypt to Greece. Both poems should be read in light of the instantiation of ruler cult in Ptolemaic Alexandria, particularly of the queen, and to the extant literature that celebrates this phenomenon, and to this I now briefly turn.

46. One of the two times that Libya appears in the Odyssey (Libya does not appear in the Iliad) is in Menelaus’ initial catalogue of his wanderings at Od. 4.81-86: ἦ γὰρ πολλὰ παθὼν καὶ πόλλ’ ἐπαληθεὶς | ἠγαγόμην ἐν νηυσὶ καὶ ὀγδοάτῳ ἔτει ἦλθον, | Κύπρον Φοινίκην τε καὶ Αἰγυπτίους ἐπαληθείς, | Αἰθίοπάς θ’ ἱκόμην καὶ Σιδονίους καὶ Ἐρεμβοὺς | καὶ Λιβύην, ἵνα τ’ ἄρνες ἄφαρ κεραοὶ τελέθουσι. An intriguing question about this particular passage is how it might have read to an Alexandrian audience at the time of Arsinoe’s death — the passage might have rung almost as an outline of the Ptolemaic Mediterranean. 47. Fr. 54.2 Hard.: νύμφα, κα[σιγνή]των ἱερὸν αἷμα θεῶν, ‘bride, holy blood of the brother-sister gods’ (i.e. of Ptolemy II and Arsinoe II).

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5. The Poetry of Apotheosis Theocritus Idyll 17, his Encomium of Ptolemy, opens with the now-deified Ptolemy I Soter in the company of Alexander and of Heracles; both Ptolemy and Alexander are cast as Heracles’ offspring (the presence of Heracles in Heaven neatly recalls and enhances another Homeric text, Od. 11. 602-604,48 where Heracles ‘himself’ is in Heaven and married to Hebe, as recalled at Idyll 17.28-33).49 It is however the apotheosis of the wife of Ptolemy I, Berenice I, which is recalled in this poem that, at its conclusion, celebrates the marriage of Ptolemy II and Arsinoe II: two royal marriages framed within two images of marriage on Olympus. κάλλει ἀριστεύουσα θεάων πότν’ Ἀφροδίτα, σοὶ τήνα μεμέλητο· σέθεν δ’ ἕνεκεν Βερενίκα εὐειδὴς Ἀχέροντα πολύστονον οὐκ ἐπέρασεν, ἀλλά μιν ἁρπάξασα, πάροιθ’ ἐπὶ νῆα κατελθεῖν κυανέαν καὶ στυγνὸν ἀεὶ πορθμῆα καμόντων, ἐς ναὸν κατέθηκας, ἑᾶς δ’ ἀπεδάσσαο τιμᾶς.

(45)

(50)

Lady Aphrodite, surpassing all goddesses in beauty, this one [Berenice] was the object of your care. Because of you fair-faced Berenice did not cross Acheron full of lamentations, but rather you captured her away, before she embarked upon the dark ship and met with the hateful ferryman of the dead, and you set her in your temple, and apportioned a share of your honors to her.

The goddess Aphrodite prevented the queen on her death from descending into Hades: rather she placed her in her own temple as a synnaos theos, a co-templed god, thereby making her both figuratively and imaginatively one with herself. At issue is a real Egyptian practice: the image of the pharaoh or queen set in the temple of a god and thus represented as a figure on a par with the temple god (sort of divinity by association), as can be the case with the image of the Egyptian queen placed in conjunction with Hathor, the Egyptian equivalent of Aphrodite. The practice here is translated into Greek terms, and invokes, not accidentally, the relationship of Aphrodite to the heroine Helen in Iliad 3, where Helen might be termed both the passive subject of the powerful god Aphrodite and at the same time her avatar: Aphrodite’s terrifying appearance in Helen’s chamber is followed by Helen’s ‘epiphany’ to the old men on the wall, not yet a synnaos theos, but the Homeric image can certainly 48. Od. 11.602-604: τὸν δὲ μέτ’ εἰσενόησα βίην Ἡρακληείην, | εἴδωλον· αὐτὸς δὲ μετ’ ἀθανάτοισι θεοῖσι | τέρπεται ἐν θαλίῃς καὶ ἔχει καλλίσφυρον Ἥβην. 49. Theoc. 17.28-33: τῷ καὶ ἐπεὶ δαίτηθεν ἴοι κεκορημένος ἤδη νέκταρος εὐόδμοιο φίλας ἐς δῶμ’ ἀλόχοιο, | τῷ μὲν τόξον ἔδωκεν ὑπωλένιόν τε φαρέτραν, | τῷ δὲ σιδάρειον σκύταλον κεχαραγμένον ὄζοις· | οἳ δ’ εἰς ἀμβρόσιον θάλαμον λευκοσφύρου Ἥβας | ὅπλα καὶ αὐτὸν ἄγουσι γενειήταν Διὸς υἱόν.

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be understood as invoked in this one of Aphrodite and the dead ‘fairfaced’ Berenice. Toward the poem’s end we return to Heaven in a surprisingly effective and typically Homeric way, yet at the same time the poet gently progresses through the instantiation, or perhaps better, translation, of Egyptian apotheosis in a Greek context (Theoc. 17.121-134): Μοῦνος ὅδε προτέρων τε καὶ ὧν ἔτι θερμὰ κονία στειβομένα καθύπερθε ποδῶν ἐκμάσσεται ἴχνη, ματρὶ φίλᾳ καὶ πατρὶ θυώδεας εἵσατο ναούς· ἐν δ’ αὐτοὺς χρυσῷ περικαλλέας ἠδ’ ἐλέφαντι ἵδρυται πάντεσσιν ἐπιχθονίοισιν ἀρωγούς. πολλὰ δὲ πιανθέντα βοῶν ὅγε μηρία καίει μησὶ περιπλομένοισιν ἐρευθομένων ἐπὶ βωμῶν, αὐτός τ’ ἰφθίμα τ’ ἄλοχος, τᾶς οὔτις ἀρείων νυμφίον ἐν μεγάροισι γυνὰ περιβάλλετ’ ἀγοστῷ, ἐκ θυμοῦ στέργοισα κασίγνητόν τε πόσιν τε. ὧδε καὶ ἀθανάτων ἱερὸς γάμος ἐξετελέσθη οὓς τέκετο κρείουσα Ῥέα βασιλῆας Ὀλύμπου· ἓν δὲ λέχος στόρνυσιν ἰαύειν Ζηνὶ καὶ Ἥρῃ χεῖρας φοιβήσασα μύροις ἔτι παρθένος Ἶρις.

(125)

(130)

Alone of his forefathers and of those whose feet still leave their warm imprint in the dust as they walk, he [sc. Ptolemy II] established fragrant temples to his dear mother and father. Therein he has set his mother and father all beautiful in gold and ivory, as helpers to all humanity. Many are the fat thighs of oxen he burns upon the reddened altars as the months go by, he himself and his lovely wife, than whom no better woman embraces her husband in her arms in his halls, loving him from her heart as both brother and husband. So also was a holy marriage union brought about by Rhea, queen of Olympus, for her own children: for one bed does Iris, still a virgin, lay out, her hands made pure with perfumes, for Zeus and Hera.

The passage is again an intricate interweaving of Egyptian and Greek cultural elements that come together to make a new, syncretic whole. The dead pharaoh and his wife are represented as gold and ivory objects of devotion in their own temples (correct translation is important here): such chryselephantine images in the Greek world are gods, not humans. The embrace of Ptolemy II and his sister-wife Arsinoe II, and the ‘holy marriage’ they achieve, is likened to that of Zeus and Hera (the ‘holy marriage’ is a specific term for the sexual union of these gods as children, one achieved secretly apart from their parents). Yet the role of Rhea here is more evocative of that of the Egyptian goddess Nut, the sky, in whose womb, in one line of tradition, the union of her children Isis and Osiris was thought to have been achieved, a perfect union of brother and sister, husband and wife.

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I have argued in another context that this poem, Theocritus Idyll 17, was the victorious entry for the wedding of Ptolemy II and his sister-wife Arsinoe II (which might be hypothetically dated to ca. 275).50 Here I would rather emphasize the process of apotheosis as laid out, quite carefully and quite gradually, in the poem’s progression. Through a series of images (the dead as immortal, the dead rescued from mortal death, the living as honoring the dead now gods, the living equated to gods) the audience is brought to the dual cultural equation of their rulers as future gods, and indeed present gods, and of an ongoing transition from earth to heaven — the gods of Philae (Ptolemy II and Arsinoe II as Egyptian divinities) are here the renewed nuptials of Zeus and Hera, and the celebration of the pharaoh/king and his sister/wife. Two other Theocritean Idylls come into play here, Idylls 15 and 18, on which I touch very briefly in this context. In the second part of Idyll 15 there is a hymn celebrating the figures of Adonis and Aphrodite that lie before the female singer and the audience at a festival at the palace. The singer prefaces her hymn with a short encomium to the patroness of the festivities, Arsinoe II: Κύπρι Διωναία, τὺ μὲν ἀθανάταν ἀπὸ θνατᾶς, ἀνθρώπων ὡς μῦθος, ἐποίησας Βερενίκαν, ἀμβροσίαν ἐς στῆθος ἀποστάξασα γυναικός· τὶν δὲ χαριζομένα, πολυώνυμε καὶ πολύναε, ἁ Βερενικεία θυγάτηρ Ἑλένᾳ εἰκυῖα Ἀρσινόα πάντεσσι καλοῖς ἀτιτάλλει Ἄδωνιν.

(110)

Cypris daughter of Dione, you, so men’s story goes, made Berenice immortal from mortal, when you distilled ambrosia into her woman’s breast. Indulging you, you of many names and many temples, Berenice’s daughter, she who is like Helen, Arsinoe cherishes Adonis with all sorts of lovely things. (Theoc. 15.106-111)

This passage is both a portrayal of embalming and a cult line, and recalls, of course, the opening comparison with Helen with which I began this paper. Particularly noteworthy here is the nexus Aphrodite/Helen/Berenice/ Sappho. The “daughter of the Argive woman”, a professional singer, sings a song, imbued with recollections of Sappho, that becomes a vehicle for cult presentation, of Ptolemaic queens as both religious figures and authors of cultural preservation. The singer showcases the generosity of the queen to the city, to women, and to Adonis. And we should recall that the poet particularly associated with the Adonis cult in lyric was Sappho, 50. Acosta-Hughes (2014: 55-58).

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whose voice we may well still hear echo in the singer’s characterization of Adonis as ῥοδόπαχυς, ‘ruddy-forearmed’. Prior to this poem of Theocritus the epithet occurs only in Sappho (frr. 58.19, 53; cf. also 217 V). Theocritus Idyll 18, Helen’s Epithalamium, is a hexameter poem that takes on the features, as it were, of a choral song of young girls celebrating the departure of their star member for marriage with the Spartan king Menelaus. I have written on this poem extensively in this context elsewhere,51 and so touch on a few points briefly here. In the context of the Ptolemaic court, Helen is a model, and a very important one, for the Greek queen.52 She is herself a hemitheos who at the end of her life is assumed into heaven, the object of cult worship at Sparta, and a figure from early Greek mythology whose mythology implicates Egypt. As Aphrodite’s avatar she can be associated closely with Arsinoe, the living queen and future synnaos theos of the goddess. As a model for the royal marriage of Ptolemy II and Arsinoe, the married pair Menelaus and Helen, figures of early Greek mytho-history with marked Egyptian associations, are in an additional sense especially suitable. They have no son, and, in that aspect, serve as an appropriate image for a childless union. That both Idylls 17 and 18 conclude with the image of marital love is not fortuitous: one is an explicit praise of the royal marriage, the other a celebration of a significant mytho-historical model of the same union. Idyll 18 is an epithalamium, a song sung at the wedding-chamber. So too, I would argue, is Idyll 17, the ‘beginning’ of a royal-divine love of which we see the sorrowful end, the loss of one spouse, is the subject of Call. fr. 228.

6. The Temple As the diegesis to Callim. fr. 228 notes, the poem told of the founding of a mortuary temple near the Emporion in Alexandria: φηϲὶν δὲ αὐτὴν ἀνηρπάϲθαι ὑπὸ τῶν Διοϲκούρων καὶ βωμὸν καὶ τέμενοϲ αὐτῆϲ καθιδρύϲθαι πρὸϲ τῷ Ἐμπορίῳ. The Emporion in Alexandria faced the Eastern Harbor, between the Heptastadion to the West and the Royal Quarter to the East. Ptolemy II began construction of the temple; it is not entirely clear whether it was ever completed. As Pliny notes at NH 36.67 f., Ptolemy II had a large obelisk placed in front of the temple;53 Pliny’s 51. Acosta-Hughes (2010: 29-38). See now Hunter (2015). 52. A central thesis of Griffiths (1979). 53. Plin. NH 36.67.1-68.5: Alexandriae statuit unum Ptolemaeus Philadelphus octoginta cubitorum. exciderat eum Necthebis rex purum, maiusque opus in devehendo statuendove vtum est quam in excidendo. a Satyro architecto aliqui devectum tradunt rate,

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description is, fittingly, partly dedicated to the Nilotic journey of the huge piece of stone to Alexandria. There may be a reference to this obelisk in another poem, Callimachus’ Lock of Berenice (fr. 110 Pf.), which tells of another dedication, and of another journey, in this case of Berenice’s lock of hair for her husband’s (Ptolemy III) safe return from the third Syrian War: Call. fr. 110.45 βουπόρος Ἀρσινόη–ς μ˜ητρὸς σέο, καὶ διὰ μέ[σσου, ‘the ox-piercer of your mother’. The exact sense of βουπόρος Ἀρσινόη–ς is contested (Catullus omits this reference in his rendition of the poem): some scholars understand this to be a reference to Mt. Athos, while many others, following the scholion to this line, βούπορος ὁ ὀβελίσκος, believe it refers to an obelisk established in honor of Arsinoe II, very likely the one at her mortuary temple in Alexandria.54 One scholar has posited a date of ca. 250 for the establishment of this obelisk in Alexandria;55 assuming this may be correct, the dates of the two poems, and the narratives of the two dedicatory journeys, are quite close (250 and 246 BCE). The mortuary temple in Alexandria featured a statue of Arsinoe II, an image of the queen that was, in a visible recreation of her apotheosis, drawn up to the top of the temple, apparently by magnets. The two textual attestations of this phenomenon are somewhat unclear (and one is quite late),56 though this has not prevented some intriguing and imaginative

Callixenusa Phoenice, fossa perducto usque ad iacentem obeliscum Nilo, navesque duas in latitudinem patulas pedalibus ex eodem lapide ad rationem geminati per duplicem mensuram ponderis oneratas ita, ut subirent obeliscum pendentem extremitatibus suis in ripis utrimque; postea egestis laterculis adlevatas naves excepisse onus; statutum autem in sex talis e monte eodem, et artificem donatum talentis L. hic fuit in Arsinoeo positus a rege supra dicto munus amoris, coniuge eademque sorore Arsinoe. 54. See discussion in Harder (2012: 814-817). 55. Rice (1983: 154 with note 46). 56. Plin. NH 34.148: Magnete lapide architectus Timochares Alexandriae Arsinoes templum concamarare incohaverat, ut in eo simulacrum e ferro pendere in aëre videretur. intercessit ipsius mors et Ptolemaei regis, qui id sorori suae iusserat fieri. ‘The architect Timochares began to vault a temple of Arsinoe at Alexandria with magnets, so that the statue would appear to hang in the air from iron. His own death intervened, and that of Ptolemy the king, who had ordered it made for his own sister. The obelisk was later moved to the Forum: see McKenzie (2007: 51-52). Also see Aus. Mosella 314-317: Conditor hic forsan fuerit Ptolemaïdos aulae Dinochares, quadrata cui (?) in fastigia cono surgit et ipsa suas consumit pyramis umbras, iussus ob incesti qui quondam foedus amoris Arsinoen Pharii suspendit in aëre templi. spirat enim tecti testudine totus (?) achates afflatamque trahit ferrato crine puellam. ‘Here also may have been the architect of Ptolemy’s palace, Dinochares, builder of the pyramid which rises (?), four-sided, to a cone and consumes its own shadows, he who, when ordered to commemorate Arsinoe, the incestuous bride poised her image in mid-air beneath the roof of her Pharian temple. For from the vaulted roof a magnet breathes and draws the attracted young queen towards it by her iron-wrought hair’.

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scholarly attempts to recreate this image of a celestial journey.57 What we can deduce from these descriptions, however, is the fascinating concept of an apotheosis re-configured as a visible spectacle: the queen’s apotheosis is not only a part of her mytho-history, but can in fact be experienced as a repeated visual phenomenon.

7. Later Reception To search for resonances of Callimachus’ ‘pavane’ would be the work of a longer study, but I would like to highlight here two rather obvious examples. In the case of Dido’s death in Virgil’s Aeneid there is the pyre viewed by her horrified sister Anna, the lament throughout the city (Aen. 4.665-668), the flight of Iris to Dido’s pyre, not to raise her in apotheosis but to sever a lock of her hair and so allow her soul to escape her body, the flames of her pyre viewed from afar (Aen. 5.1-4), the lament of Anna (Aen. 4.675-685).58 That Virgil’s poem here pictures the death of a queen in Libya makes the parallel all the more suggestive, although clear verbal allusions are lacking. The apotheosis of Julius Caesar in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (15.843851) is another passage that offers striking parallels with our text as well as to the Lock of Berenice (Aetia frr. 110-110f H.), which raises the tantalizing suggestion that Ovid is reading the two Callimachus apotheosis poems in tandem. Here Venus bears Caesar’s soul to the sky, where it becomes a star (catasterism is a significant feature of both Egyptian and Greco-Egyptian imagery). The brief celestial journey is especially striking. Were one to take this study further, the Julian star would certainly be one direction worth careful consideration; another would be the description (in prose as well) of the deaths of female members of the Roman imperial family. Here we encounter two particularly striking parallels. The emperor Caligula had two cult statues of Ptolemy II and Arsinoe II brought to Rome from Heliopolis, where they were installed in the Horti Sallustiani. Caligula had his own sister made divine after her death: as a gesture to this transformation, he had a second statue of Arsinoe II made, 57. Pfrommer (2002: 54-75) is a particularly creative and suggestive attempt to recreate something of a model of this temple: he also offers a detailed discussion of the possible technology involved. The Serapeion in Alexandria featured a similar device: see McKenzie (2007: 198-203). 58. On Call. fr. 228 Pf. and the death of Dido see the suggestive study of Bertazzoli (2002).

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which he dedicated to Drusilla (all three statues are now in the Vatican Museum).59 The recent publication of P. Oxy. LXXVII 5105 by Paul Schubert on the Apotheosis of Poppaea has brought to light a hexameter poem clearly influenced both verbally and thematically by the Deification of Arsinoe.60 The poetry of apotheosis, as in the case of Call. fr. 228, allows for a fairly easy confluence of royal and divine, of contemporary ruler and long-established mythology, and of cultural syncretism. Callimachus’ poem on the death of Arsinoe Philadelphus, with a celestial trajectory that outlines a large part of the contemporary Ptolemaic empire and the careful alignment of Arsinoe to Helen and to a very old tradition of Greeks in Egypt, is at once a poetical pavane and a statement confirming royal legitimacy — an ideal example of performance art for a royal court. REFERENCES Acosta-Hughes, B., 2003, “Aesthetics and recall: Callimachus frs. 226-9 Pf. reconsidered”. The Classical Quarterly 53, 478-489. ―, 2010, Arion’s Lyre: Archaic Lyric into Hellenistic Poetry. Princeton. ―, 2012, “A Gift of Callimachus”. SIFC 10.1, 24-39. ―, 2014, “Dans l’image d’Hélène ou comment se figurer une reine. Les représentations d’Arsinoé II”. In E. Brunet-Prioux et al. (eds), L’héroique et le champêtre: la théorie rhétorique des styles appliquée aux arts, entre modèle analytique et scheme explicatif. Paris, 41-58. Acosta-Hughes, B. & S.A. Stephens, 2012, Callimachus in Context. From Plato to the Augustan Poets. Cambridge. Acosta-Hughes, B. & S.A. Stephens, 2017, Callimachean ‘Lyric’. Trends in Classics 9(2), 226-247. Austin, C., 2006, “L’apothéose d’Arsinoé (P.Berol. 13417 A = Callim. fr. 228 Pf.)”. In: G. Bastianini & A. Casanova (eds), Callimaco Cent’ Anni di Papiri. Firenze, 57-68. Austin, C. & S.D. Olson (eds), 2004, Aristophanes: Thesmophoriazusae. Oxford. Bertazzoli, V., 2002, “Callimaco e Virgilio a confronto: l’apoteosi di Arsinoe e la morte di Didone”. InvLuc 24, 27-35. Bowie, E., 2018, “Philicus’ Demeter.” [forthcoming] Cadell, H., 1998, “A quelle date Arsinoé II Philadelphe est-elle décidée”. In: H. Melaerts (ed), Le culte du souverain dans l’Egypte ptolemaïque au IIIe siècle avant notre ère. Leuven, 1-3. Cameron, A., 1995, Callimachus and his Critics. Princeton. D’Alessio, G.B., 2007, Callimaco. Inni. Epigrammi. Frammenti. 2 vols. Milan. 4th ed. 59. Museo Gregoriano Egizio inv. 22681 (Arsinoe), 22683 (Drusilla-Arsinoe). For description of the former see Stanwick (2002: 98). 60. See esp. Gillespie (2014).

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Di Benedetto, V., 1994, “Callimaco di fronte al modello omerico: il fr. 228 Pf.” RFIC, 273-276. Edgar, C.C. et al. (eds), 1970, Select papyri. Cambridge, Mass. Falivene, M.R., 2011, “The Diegeseis Papyrus: Archaeological Context, Format, and Contents”. In: B. Acosta-Hughes et al. (eds), Brill’s Companion to Callimachus. Leiden, 81-92. Fraser, P.M., 1972, Ptolemaic Alexandria. 3 vols. Oxford. Gillespie, C., 2014, “Poppaea Venus and the Ptolemaic Queens: an Alternative Biography”. Histos 8, 122-145. Goddio, F. 2003. with the collaboration of H. Constanty. Trésors engloutis. Journal de bord d’un archéologue. Tours. ―, 2016. and A. Masson-Berghoff. Sunken Cities. Egypt’s Lost Worlds. London. Griffiths, F.T., 1979, Theocritus at Court. Leiden. Harder, A., 2012, Callimachus Aetia. Oxford. Hölbl, G., 2001, A History of the Ptolemaic Empire. London. Hunter, R.L., 2015, “Sweet Stesichorus. Theocritus 19 and the Helen revisited”. In: P. J. Finglass & A. Kelly (eds), Stesichorus in Context. Cambridge, 145163. Lelli, E., 2005, Callimaco Giambi XIV-XVII. Rome. Lloyd-Jones, H., 1974, “A New Hellenistic Fragment in the Archebulean Metre”. ZPE 13, 209-213. (= Lloyd-Jones, H., 1990, Greek comedy, Hellenistic literature, Greek religion, and miscellanea: The academic papers of Sir Hugh Lloyd-Jones. Oxford, 219-222). McKenzie, J., 2007, The Art and Architecture of Alexandria and Egypt 300 BCAD 700. New Haven. Norsa, M. & G. Vitelli (eds), 1934, Διηγήσεις di poemi di Callimaco in un papiro di Tebtynis. Florence. Pfrommer, M., 2002, Königinnen vom Nil. Mainz-am-Rhein. Rice, E.E., 1983, The Grand Procession of Ptolemy Philadelphus. Oxford. Schubert, P., 2011, “P.Oxy. LXXVII 5105: Apotheosis in Hexameters”. In: R.A. Coles et al. (eds), Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Vol. 77, 59-80. Stanwick, P.E., 2002, Portraits of the Ptolemies. Greek Kings as Egyptian Pharaohs. Austin. Stephens, S.A. 2004. “For You, Arsinoe …”. In B. Acosta-Hughes, E. Kosmetatou and M. Baumbach (eds), Labored in Papyrus Leaves. Perspectives on an Epigram Collection Attributed to Posidippus (P. Mil. Vogl. VIII 309). Willamowitz-Moellendorff, U. von, 1912, Neues von Kallimachos: I. Berlin.

THANKS AGAIN TO ARISTAENETUS: THE TALE OF PHRYGIUS AND PIERIA IN CALLIMACHUS’ AETIA (FRS. 80-83B HARDER) THROUGH THE EYES OF A LATE-ANTIQUE EPISTOLOGRAPHER Peter BING

Most classicists lead fulfilling scholarly lives without giving much thought to Aristaenetus; indeed, many may never even have heard of him. Yet this late-antique epistolographer holds a special place in Callimachean studies. As Annette Harder put it almost 25 years ago in an essay for the Festschrift of the Byzantinist, Willem J. Aerts, “Thanks to Aristaenetus … [this is also the title of her paper] two aitia from the third book of Callimachus’ Aetia are better known to us than they would have been” (1993: 3). These two aitia — one, among the most celebrated and influential in Callimachus’ oeuvre,1 the tale of Acontius and Cydippe (frs. 67-75e); the other, its romantic doublet, the story of Phrygius and Pieria (frs. 80-83b) — served respectively as the primary models for two of Aristaenetus’ erotic epistles (1.10 and 1.15). As Harder points out, Aristaenetus was “following Callimachus very closely” (1993: 3), even as she appreciates that “there are also important differences” (1993: 3). By consequence, according to her, “we are fully justified in using Aristaenetus in an attempt to increase our knowledge of Callimachus’ Aetia,” yet “we also have to be very careful” (1993: 3-4) — premises that her sensitive and meticulous analysis admirably fulfills. “Using Aristaenetus” to illuminate Callimachus — as if Callimachus were the one who had read Aristaenetus and reflected his influence rather than the other way around — is a peculiar, if hardly surprising, aspect of the symbiotic relationship these two authors enjoy in Callimachean scholarship: students of Hellenistic poetry mostly view the prose epistolographer, who wrote some 700 years later, as a source for reconstructing Callimachus, rather than Callimachus as a source for better understanding Aristaenetus. The latter forms part of the poet’s apparatus, as it were; literally so in the editions of Pfeiffer (1949) and Massimilla (2010). Harder goes a step further, lifting those parts of Aristaenetus’ letters that 1. All fragments of the Aetia are listed according to their numbers in Harder’s edition (2012) unless otherwise mentioned.

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overlap with Callimachus out of the apparatus and giving them the status of fragments, Callimachean fragments. The headings at the top of the page proclaim them as Callimachi Aetia frs. 75b and 83b. That may at first seem like a signal honor for the epistolographer; in fact, it effaces him: What remains of his authorial identity is an abbreviated name in the apparatus, ‘Aristaen.’. This topsy-turvy state of affairs may be nothing unusual when we view these works through the mirror of intertextuality, whose fun-house curves may make now one text’s reflection loom especially large, now another’s. For the purposes of this paper, however, I would like to look at Aristaenetus through the more linear lens of aemulatio, as an author who read Callimachus, absorbed his influence, and used it for his own ends. The letter on which I want particularly to focus is that containing the narrative of Phrygius and Pieria (1.15). This is the one that Harder did not treat in her essay, though she did of course deal with it in considerable detail in her great commentary, which provides the starting point for my contribution. First, however, who is Aristaenetus?2 He was a late-antique author, likely writing somewhat after 500 A.D. (see below), whose collection of 50 letters, divided into two books, narrates a series of fictive erotic encounters and escapades, all in a mildly spicy, abundantly charming style; these are set throughout within the conceptual framework of pagan antiquity, without a trace of Christian influence, except perhaps that the erotic relationships described are exclusively heterosexual. The text survives as a codex unicus, the Vindobonensis philologicus graecus 310, dating to the 12th or 13th century. Janus Lascaris recounts how during a trip through Apulia in 1492 he found a manuscript containing letters by a previously unknown Greek author. In 1561, Johannes Sambucus, the humanist, doctor, and court historian to emperor Maximilian II, bought the manuscript and brought it to Vienna, where it remains in the Imperial Library (scil. Austrian National Library); he published it for the first time in 1566 (Bing & Höschele 2014: xi). The name, Aristaenetus, is merely inferred from the speaking name (‘redender Name’) at the head of the initial letter of Book 1 (I understand it as ‘Praiser of the Best’, since the speaker of letter 1 praises the supreme beauty of Lais, though one could also construe it passively as the one ‘Most Worthy of Praise’). However, as such speaking names precede the great majority of epistles in the collection and are for the most part obviously fictive, keyed to the content of the given letter, it would be unwise 2. For identity, date, and transmission see generally Drago (2007: 7-36); Bing & Höschele (2014: xi-xvi).

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to suppose that this was the writer’s actual name. Though for the sake of convention I will refer to him as Aristaenetus, please imagine his name in scare-quotes throughout and consider his true identity ‘Anonymous’. We cannot date the letters with precision.3 Several factors, however, suggest the period between about 500 and 530 A.D. An initial terminus post quem is given by a reference in letter 1.26 to the ‘New Rome’, a title established for Byzantium by the emperor Constantine in 324 A.D. That same letter, however, contains a reference shifting our terminus post quem at least a century later, for it mentions a celebrated mime, Karamallos (‘Woolly Head’): a number of Karamalloi are known to us (perhaps it was a theatrical dynasty, perhaps simply a type of mime), but they all fall between ca. 425 and 520 A.D. A date towards the latter end of this spectrum is suggested by a further factor, the letters’ prose rhythm. These texts are among the earliest to use accent-regulated clausulae, that is, at the end of sentences or before a sense-pause we find them avoiding “sequences of words there with one or no unaccented syllables between the last and penultimate accents, and favoring sequences with two or four such syllables” rather than three (thus Arnott 1974: 355; Nissen 1940: 2). In addition, although Aristaenetus aspires to the Attic style of Plato and Menander, and draws frequently on 2nd and 3rd century Atticists such as Alciphron, Lucian, and Philostratus the Elder, his use of tense and mood is often quite un-classical. Nissen (1940: 14) concludes that prose-rhythm and style all point to a date after the middle of the 5th cent. A.D. Plausible grounds for placing the letters still later appear in a significant detail from epistle 1.19. There, an hetaira named Melissarion, who had come from an impoverished background, yet had gained renown as a performing artist (μουσουργός 1.19.6-7), has a baby by her wealthy lover, Charicles. He, as we learn, ‘was at once so enamored of his offspring that he considered it the greatest injustice for his beloved, the mother of such a child, to still be called hetaira. So he liberated her at once from that shameful profession and made his beloved his wife, so as to plant in her the seed of legitimate children.’ (ὁ δὲ Χαρικλῆς οὕτως εὐθὺς διετέθη πρὸς τὸ τεχθὲν φιλοστόργως, ὥστε ἀδικώτατον κρίνειν ἑταίραν ἔτι καλεῖσθαι τὴν ἐρώτιον τοιοῦτον τεκοῦσαν. τοιγαροῦν αὐτίκα τῆς αἰσχρᾶς αὐτὴν ἀπέστησεν ἐργασίας καὶ ἐπ’ ἀρότῳ παίδων γνησίων τὴν ἐρωμένην ἠγάγετο γαμετήν 1.19.42-47). In an important essay, Mazal (1977) argued that this scenario likely reflected circumstances following the emperor Justinian’s passage of the lex de nuptiis between 520 and 524, which permitted ‘women who have been on the stage (mulieres 3. For an overview, see Drago (2007: 25-34).

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autem, quae scaenicis quidem sese ludis immiscuerant), but who have changed their mind and abandoned a dishonorable profession’ to enter into a legal marriage with men of any rank (Cod. Justin. 5.4.23). Indeed, he suggested that the letter’s description of Melissarion’s ascent from performing artist/hetaira to legitimate wife purposely evoked a sensational contemporary parallel, the career of Theodora, the notorious mime/ hetaira who rose to become wife of the emperor Justinian and empress of the realm.4 We shall return to this letter and its topical significance later. In any case, such a setting makes good sense, since (as Mazal argues further, 1977: 4-5), it allows us to situate Aristaenetus within the revival of classical literature during the reign of Justinian, among such authors as Procopius of Caesaria and Agathias of Myrina in history, Musaeus in epic, Paul the Silentiary and Agathias (again) in epigram — a context that also signals the likelihood of there being an audience sufficiently learned to appreciate Aristaenetus’ constant recourse to earlier Greek literature, including to Callimachus.5 The story of Phrygius and Pieria as Aristaenetus tells it in the epistle on which I will focus (1.15) runs as follows: Myus and Miletus, neighboring cities in Ionia, had long had hostile relations. These were relieved only by an annual truce during which citizens of Myus were allowed to visit so as to celebrate the festival of Artemis. At one such festival, Phrygius, the king of Miletus, saw a radiant beauty from Myus named Pieria and — under the influence of Aphrodite, who wanted to effect a reconciliation between the cities — at once fell in love with the girl. Following their blissful union, he offered to give her anything she desired. In response, Pieria requested free access to Miletus for herself and all her kin. Phrygius took this as an appeal for peace between the two communities, which the king forthwith established. Ever since, the women of Ionia have had a saying: ‘if only my spouse would honor me, his wife, as Phrygius honored the beautiful Pieria.’ Scholars have long realized that this tale is very similar in subject matter and style to the other one that Aristaenetus adapted from Callimachus for Book 1 of his epistles, namely Acontius and Cydippe (1.10). The Callimachean origin of the latter story was well-known already in antiquity (cf. Ovid, Rem. 381-382), but ancient accounts do not name a source for the tale of Phrygius and Pieria (in addition to Aristaenetus, we find it in Plutarch, Moralia 253f-254b = de mul. virt. 16, and Polyaenus, Strat. 8.35). 4. “Ich möchte postulieren, dass … eben dieses Gesetz und in Zusammenhang damit auch die Ehe Justinians mit Theodora den Hintergrund gebildet hat” (1977: 3-4). 5. Such a date is also accepted by Zanetto (2005: 38).

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Yet it so resembled that of Acontius and Cydippe in Aristaenetus’ telling that Richard Reitzenstein (1892/3: 15-17) argued that it, too, must derive from Callimachus6 — this was 55 years before Lobel (1948) confirmed this suggestion when he published the papyri of the Phrygius and Pieria episode from Book 3 of the Aetia in P. Oxy. 2212 and P. Oxy. 2213. Recent studies have characterized the episodes in Callimachus as “companion pieces” (Harder 2012: II 673) or “doublets” (Acosta-Hughes & Stephens 2012: 175). Stylistically, they certainly form something of a gendered pair inasmuch as they focus our interest respectively on hero or heroine, with the narrator of the one story addressing Acontius directly for significant portions of the poem, while doing so in much the same way with Pieria in the other.7 Likewise analogous are the narrative elements. As Harder puts it (2012: II 672), “within Aetia 3 Callimachus seems to invite his readers to compare the story of Phrygius and Pieria with the story of Acontius and Cydippe in fr. 67-75c, as some striking similarities can be observed: 1) both pairs of lovers meet at a festival where Artemis is present…; 2) both men fall in love at first sight and achieve what they want; 3) both stories illustrate the beneficial effects of love, i.e. the longlasting rule of the Acontiads with its implications of stability, fame, and power at Ceos, and peace in Asia Minor”. Harder elsewhere connects this last similarity to Callimachus’ larger thematic concerns in Books 3 and 4 of the Aetia (2012: II 545): “These notions of love as a condition for political stability may be read as a background for the Lock of Berenice and underline the importance of the love between the royal couple, which was part of the Ptolemaic kingship ideology”. Dee Clayman (2014) would go yet further, arguing that “the most important contextual feature of books 3 and 4 [of the Aetia] is surely Berenice [II]” (2014: 93); she consequently contends that both Acontius and Cydippe and Phrygius and Pieria must be seen against the backdrop of her marriage to Ptolemy III Euergetes.8 6. Reitzenstein (1892/3: 17): “If that narrative [scil. Acontius and Cydippe in Aristaenetus] came from a poet, then Aristaenetus also drew this one [scil. Phrygius and Pieria] from a poet; and if from a poet, then from Callimachus” (si illam e poeta, e poeta et hanc repetiit Aristaenetus; si e poeta, e Callimacho). 7. Reitzenstein, too, noted such narrative complementarity in the two epistles of Aristaenetus (1892/3: 17): eodem modo alloquendo ibi ad Acontium, ad Pieriam hic auctor se convertit. For him this constituted further evidence that both derived from Callimachus. 8. According to her (2014: 98), “Phrygius and Pieria can be read in the context of long-standing difficulties in the relations between Cyrene and Alexandria which were resolved as the result of Berenice’s marriage with Ptolemy III”. Bulloch (2006: 506) likewise stresses the importance of the themes of love and marriage in Book 3 of the Aetia in connection with Berenice, without however the link stressed by Harder to Ptolemaic kingship ideology or the historical specificity of Clayman’s interpretation.

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While such readings emphasizing the thematic coherence of Callimachus’ Aetia have generally — and rightly — been embraced in recent years,9 no one till now has asked comparable questions about Aristaenetus: did the late-antique epistolographer likewise intend the two episodes he adapted from Book 3 of the Aetia to be read as companion pieces and, if so, did he want thereby to underline important themes in Book 1 of his epistles in a manner analogous to Callimachus? I believe that the answer is Yes on both these counts. Before arguing that conclusion, however, it is worth pointing out that recent work has shown that Aristaenetus elsewhere deliberately created links that invite readers to consider disparate letters in light of each other. Zanetto (1987: 198), for instance, has shown how epistles 1.5 and 1.22 are keyed to each other as a thematic diptych. Uniquely in the collection, the letters’ correspondents are the same, the one seeming to answer the other inasmuch as sender and addressee are reversed in the second letter. These, moreover, bear the names of influential models for Aristaenetus as epistolographer: 1.5 is written by Alciphron to Lucian, 1.22 from Lucian to Alciphron. The texts are a match also in subject matter, as each tells of a woman who schemes with another female to regain the love of a man. Aristaenetus, finally, imbues both letters with phrasing and motifs deriving from Menander — possibly an acknowledgement of the crucial influence of this comic poet on both Alciphron and Lucian. In a recent essay, Barbiero (2016) pushes the case for such linkage yet further. Discussing another Aristaenetan diptych, letters 2.3 and 2.12, each of which prominently evokes Aristophanes’ Clouds in both language and situation,10 she shows how this pair is connected to that other one identified by Zanetto so as to form a complex “epistolary quartet” (2016: 247-250).11 These examples make clear that Aristaenetus artfully shaped his readers’ reception of the work by creating thematic and verbal ties across his 9. Bulloch (2006: 503) stresses that prior to his study, “thematic structure, so popular a topic in the critical literature on other authors, is not something that modern critics generally like to discuss when writing on the Aetia”. 10. 2.12.20 quotes Clouds 55, but Barbiero demonstrates how Aristaenetus develops the premise of his letter from the Aristophanic nucleus of a husband complaining that he is being reduced to beggary by a spendthrift wife (and indicating his threadbare cloak as evidence). Letter 2.3 signals the same source by having a wife complain about her inattentive husband, interested only in practicing oratory, and significantly named Strepsiades. See also the verbal echoes cited in note 32 below. 11. According to Barbiero, the female protagonist of 2.3, Glykera, shares the name of her counterpart in 1.22, and each turns to a female intermediary (a matchmaker and a procuress respectively) to help solve their love woes by trying to make the object of their desire jealous of another man. Similarly, she relates 2.12 to 1.5 through the use of a robe as theatrical prop in the plot of either letter.

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collection, which readers are invited to note and interpret. Seen from this perspective, the two epistles based on Callimachus stand out markedly as they are atypical in topic and so demand to be viewed together. As Arnott noted (1982: 297), “apart from 1.10 and 1.15 (the stories of Acontius and Cydippe, and of Phrygius and Pieria respectively, where ‘Aristaenetus’ follows his source Callimachus in making the wedding night the sexual climax), the passions and escapades [described in the letters] are entirely extra-marital”. Interestingly, Arnott frames his observation about these mostly extra-marital amours against the background of Aristaenetus’ sources (1982: 297 n.20): “The rareness of the conventional ‘Acontius and Cydippe’ type of love story, where an innocent romance is sealed by marriage, is all the more surprising when two of the major sources of ‘Aristaenetus’ are considered, the Greek novel and plays of the New Comedy like Menander’s Dyskolos. The epistolographer plagiarizes their language, often too their situations; but he does not care for their nuptial climaxes”. Arnott is for the most part correct about Aristaenetus’ aversion to “nuptial climaxes”. It is worth noting, however, that the epistolographer sometimes stages his erotic plots against the backdrop of marriage.12 He thus accomplishes two ends: on the one hand he creates the impression that the institution of marriage is constantly being undermined, on the other he makes those few letters in which erotic passion results in a happy marriage stand out all the more conspicuously. As is clear from the list in note 12,13 however, it is not just the two letters inspired by 12. The following list details the roughly 13 out of 50 letters in which marriage figures as part of the plot: 1.5 A wife deceives her elderly husband. 1.9 A wife, while strolling with her husband and servants, contrives to touch her lover by stumbling on the street and letting him help her up. 1.10 Acontius and Cydippe: ends in happy marriage. 1.13 A youth desires the pallakis of his father, who is tricked into giving her to him. 1.15 Phrygius and Pieria: ends in happy marriage and peace. 1.19 Melissarion and Charicles: she has a baby with him, and he marries her. 1.20 A prison-guard is unable to keep an imprisoned adulterer from his wife. 2.3 The wife of the orator Strepsiades complains to a cousin that he has no interest in her but only in court cases, so she contemplates finding a lover. 2.8 A man falls in love with his mother-in-law. 2.11 A man loves both girlfriend and wife. 2.12 A man marries a poor girl so as to avoid having an arrogant wife, but finds she has grown haughty and spendthrift and so decides to divorce her. 2.15 A wife and widow join forces: they plot for the wife to have an affair with the widow’s servant, and the widow to have an affair with the wife’s husband. 2.22 Husband catches wife with lover, but she tricks him into thinking lover was burglar. 13. To this list one might add two further letters as dubia: 2.17 Youth tries to seduce a (married?) woman with the aim of marrying her. 2.18 (Married?) woman takes a young lover, using maid as intermediary.

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Callimachus (1.10 and 1.15) that end in conjugal bliss. One further one within the corpus does so as well, namely epistle 1.19, which we have mentioned before, the tale of the performer Melissarion. These three letters, then, all from Book 1, constitute a coherent trio by sounding a different note — a striking if (numerically) understated alternative to the dominant tone of the collection — inasmuch as they share an idealizing view of love and marriage that stands in marked counterpoint to the more ephemeral erotic adventures comprising the rest of the work. Aristaenetus underlines the difference also by creating meaningful juxtapositions between these three narratives and their immediate neighbors in Book 1. The extended account of Acontius and Cydippe in 1.10 is preceded by the brief tale in 1.9, which likewise concerns marriage. The two stories serve as contrasting foil, mirroring each other in essentials of plot. In both, lovers encounter each other in a public place;14 in both, one of them, immediately upon seeing the other, contrives a plot with the help of Aphrodite to achieve their desire;15 both plots involve a trick of picking someone/thing off the ground.16 But of course, 1.9 is about undermining a marriage union through a trick to fool a husband, while 1.10 is aimed at achieving conjugal bliss through a deception to enlist the consent of the beloved. A meaningful difference appears also between 1.14 and 1.15 (Phrygius and Pieria). In the latter, Pieria’s selfless behavior — all she wants from the king is peace for her city, not fabulous riches for herself — stands in stark contrast to the mercenary demands of the hetaira Philochremation, the speaker/sender of 1.14 (one of Aristaenetus’ typical redende Namen). While the hetaira, ‘Ms. Lovemoney’, brazenly boasts ‘I judge a young man’s love by his dough, for I know no better proof of devotion than money’, ἀργυρίῳ τῶν νέων τὸν ἔρωτα δοκιμάζω· χρυσίου γὰρ μεῖζον τεκμήριον τοῦ κομιδῇ φιλεῖν οὐκ οἶδα ἕτερον (1.14.16-18), the narrator in 1.15 addresses Pieria directly with admiration, ‘you, excelling all women in beauty and judgment, were not led astray from prudent counsel, neither by a necklace, nor earrings, nor a precious crown, nor a chain, nor a sweeping Lydian robe, nor purple fabrics, nor by Karian handmaids or marvelous weaving women from Lydia, all those things which the female 14. In 1.9 a married woman strolling in the agora with husband and servants sees her lover ~ in 1.10 Acontius sees Cydippe in the Artemisium. 15. In 1.9.3-4 the wife ‘devised a brilliant plan with the aid of the goddess’, ὡς ... εἶδε, ἄφνω βουλεύεται δαιμονίως ἅμα τῇ θέᾳ ~ in 1.10.24-26 as soon as he sees Cydippe, Acontius takes a Cydonian apple from Aphrodite’s garden, αὐτίκα ... ὡς ἐθεάσω ..., τοῦ κήπου τῆς Ἀφροδίτης Κυδώνιον ἐκλεξάμενος μῆλον. 16. In 1.9.8 the wife slips so that her lover can help her up, διανίστησι ~ in 1.10.28 the nurse snatches up the apple from the ground, ἀνήρπασεν.

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sex is utterly crazy about’. Riches, in other words, do not cloud Pieria’s thinking. Inasmuch as this passage points to the delight that other women — apart from Pieria — take in such luxuries (‘all those things which the female sex is utterly crazy about’, οἷς ἅπασιν ἀτεχνῶς ἀγάλλεσθαι τὸ θῆλυ πέφυκε γένος, 1.15.41-42), it looks back to Philochremation in the previous letter, underscoring Pieria’s virtue e contrario. The final epistle highlighting conjugal contentment, the tale of the performer Melissarion and her happy marriage to Charicles in 1.19, is likewise thrown into sharp relief by its placement after the humorous 1.18, addressed to the hetaira, Meirakiophile (‘Youth Lover’), which chides her for her singleminded interest in just one thing, the age of her lovers: she wants them young, or not at all. This letter is interesting for its extended verbatim quotations from Plato’s Phaedrus (240d-e ~ 1.18.11-16 and 240c ~ 1.18.17-19) and Republic (5.474d-475a ~ 1.18.2030), both of which passages critique the homoerotic liaison between the male erastes and his young eromenos — a relationship doomed to be fleeting, as the youth grows less attractive with age, and bound to encourage foolhardiness on the part of his older lover. Interestingly, Aristaenetus deploys his citations in a striking gender-reversal: Meirakiophile plays the role of Plato’s erastes, ready to excuse every flaw in her beloved simply because of his youth. As in the passage from the Republic, such behavior is ultimately compared to a wine-addict’s, whose judgement is so impaired that he will praise any wine at all, even the most wretched. Aristaenetus thus describes a hetaira indifferent to financial security, since her obsession makes her reject even those older lovers who might offer her the riches of Tantalus (τοὺς δὲ πρεσβύτας παντελῶς ἀτερπεῖς καὶ πόρρωθεν ἀποφεύγεις, κἄν τις γέρων προτείνοι Ταντάλου θησαυρούς 1.18.9-11). Letter 1.18 had begun with the letter-writer telling Meirakiophile ‘you are exceedingly fortunate, graced with a desire that rejoices in beauty and is not a slave to any form of wealth averse to what is most delightful’ (Ὑπερευδαιμονεῖς ἔρωτα φιλόκαλον εὐτυχοῦσα καὶ μηδενὶ παρὰ τὸ ἥδιστον δουλεύοντα πλούτῳ 1.18.1-2). By opening with that rare and over-the-top Ὑπερευδαιμονεῖς, the letter leaves no doubt that the compliment is meant ironically;17 in fact the letter concludes that she has no 17. Thus, in Aristotle Rh. 1385 b 21, the verb’s only appearance before Imperial prose, οἱ ὑπερευδαιμονεῖν οἰόμενοι are among those incapable of pity; rather they behave insolently, ἀλλ’ ὑβρίζουσιν. Later, in Lucian Gall. 20.15-17, the rooster tells his interlocutor that it is a delusion to think the wealthy are exceedingly happy (εἰ γοῦν ᾔδεις τὰς φροντίδας ἃς ἔχουσιν, ἐγέλας ἂν ἐπὶ σαυτῷ πρῶτον οἰηθέντι ὑπερευδαίμονα εἶναι τὸν πλοῦτον).

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better judgement than a φίλοινος. In 1.19 on the other hand, the speaker also begins by praising the good fortune of Melissarion, the μουσουργός, but she does so with evident sincerity: ‘By Hera, if Fortune ever looked with friendly eyes on Melissarion, daughter of Aglais, she has done so now’ (Μελισσάριον τὴν Ἀγλαΐδος, νὴ τὴν Ἥραν, εὐμενέσιν ὀφθαλμοῖς εἴπερ ποτὲ καὶ νῦν εἶδεν ἡ Τύχη 1.19.1-2). Melissarion’s rise to legitimate marriage and wealth is the result of tireless pursuit of her art and strategic calculation — an attitude that could not be more different from Meirakiophile’s appetite for any and all attractive youths.18 As her artistic fame increased, ‘Melissarion socialized with the richest men, as one whose company was highly prized’ (πολύτιμον τὸ Μελισσάριον παρ’ ἄνδρας πλουσιωτάτους ἐφοίτα 1.19.16-17). Even so, she was careful to keep her options open — ending an unwanted pregnancy, for instance — until the arrival of her Mr. Right: ‘When she fell in love with Charicles, a young man outstanding for his beauty and wealth, and who reciprocated her feelings in equal measure, she prayed to all the gods of birth to make her pregnant by him’ (ὡς δὲ Χαρικλέους ἠράσθη νέου τινὸς ἐπισήμου καὶ κάλλει καὶ πλούτῳ καὶ ἀντερῶντος οὐχ ἧττον ἐκείνης, παιδοποιεῖν ἐξ ἐκείνου προσηύχετο πᾶσι τοῖς γενεθλίοις θεοῖς 1.19.29-32). Unlike the impulsive Meirakiophile, the careful Melissarion manages her situation prudently and is thus able to transform her social status. In all, then, Aristaenetus clearly took pains to highlight the letters culminating in a happy marriage insofar as he makes the preceding one in each case serve pointedly as foil.19 Returning now to Phrygius and Pieria, what can we say about how Aristaenetus shaped his epistle relative to his model, Callimachus? His intertextual method, one should emphasize, is a fascinating mix; in some ways he is very Alexandrian, with a learned specificity in his allusions emulating that of Callimachus. That is, Aristaenetus may summon up his 18. Indeed, the difference between them may be encoded even in the significance of their names: Melissarion’s (‘little bee’) evokes traditional associations with this creature’s diligent industry, though it may also initially suggest a familiar hetaira’s name (Alciphron fr. 6; Lucian, DMeretr. 4). As a representation of an industrious woman, one could almost see Aristaenetus’ letter as a gloss on the ‘bee-woman’ in Semonides fr. 7.83-87: τὴν δ’ ἐκ μελίσσης· τήν τις εὐτυχεῖ λαβών·/ κείνηι γὰρ οἴηι μῶμος οὐ προσιζάνει,/ θάλλει δ’ ὑπ’ αὐτῆς κἀπαέξεται βίος,/ φίλη δὲ σὺν φιλντι γηράσκει πόσει / τεκοῦσα καλὸν κὠνομάκλυτον γένος. In view of Semonides’ first and last lines here, it is striking that Aristaenetus has Melissarion name her baby Lucky: τὸν υἱὸν ἐπωνόμακεν Εὐτυχίδην (1.19.36-37). The image of the diligent wife as ‘bee’ is much developed in Xenophon Oec. 7.32-39. 19. It is interesting that this foil always seems to lie in the previous letter, while the one following shows no such signs of being tailored specially to its predecessor. Does this suggest a sort of unidirectional structuring geared to a sequential reading?

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model by pointedly recalling its diction, whether through individual words or phrases; and these in turn may evoke the larger context in his source text in ways that contribute to the meaning of his own. Aristaenetus was, moreover, a scrupulous reader, who mined his exemplar with a scholar’s care; it seems probable that, like his Alexandrian forebears, he used glosses or an annotated copy (or commentary) to help explain poetic words (Consonni 2000: 121 n.12). In other ways, however, he manifests an entirely different conception of intertextuality, mirroring the literaryrhetorical practice of his own era.20 Elsewhere, when drawing on prose, he incorporates into his letters extended passages from a model text, great gobbets consisting of multiple sentences quoted near-verbatim, which simultaneously evoke his source and artfully serve the needs of a new framework.21 In his narrative of Phrygius and Pieria (1.15), however, as also in that of Acontius and Cydippe (1.10), where his source is poetry instead, he does something different, though analogous. To a degree unparalleled when he is drawing on a prose source, the epistolographer seems to follow guidelines such as Quintilian’s (I 9.2-3) for performing the rhetorical exercise of paraphrasing a poem.22 That passage is worth citing here in full (cf. also Cic. De orat. I 34.154): Versus primo solvere (condiscant), mox mutatis verbis interpretari, tum paraphrasi audacius vertere, qua et breviare quaedam et exornare salvo modo poetae sensu permittitur. Quod opus, etiam consummatis professoribus difficile, qui commode tractaverit cuicumque discendo sufficiet Let them learn first to resolve the metrical form, next to give the meaning in different words, then to paraphrase more freely, wherein it is allowed 20. Claudio Consonni points out to me (per e-litteras) a further aspect suggesting rhetorical convention in Aristaenetus, namely his inclusion of themes at the start of his epistle (1.15.1-15) aligning with recommendations of Menander Rhetor for an epithalamios logos: “il generico richiamo iniziale ad Afrodite (cf. Men. Rhet. 400, 5) e la descrizione di Eros (ibid. 405, 2ss., in termini diversi da quelli della lettera)”. In connection with the marriage of Phrygius and Pieria, furthermore, he notes, “nella precettistica retorica Gamos fa cessare la στάσις fra gli elementi al principio dei tempi (ibid. 401, 9ss); i fondatori delle πανηγύρεις hanno fatto cessare il conflitto fra le città (Ps. Dion. Hal., Ars rhetorica 7.4, Προτρεπτικὸς ἀθληταῖς).” 21. For a paradigmatic example of such an extended prose citation and its function within a letter, see the analysis of Aristaenetus’ near-verbatim extract from Hippocrates’ On the nature of the child in epistle 1.19 at Bing & Höschele (2014: xxvii-xxxv). Important work on late antique allusion and how it differs from that of earlier eras has been done mostly with regard to Latin poetry. See especially the stimulating discussion of Pelttari (2014: 115-160), with his useful overview of earlier scholarship on intertextuality. See also Kaufmann (2017) and Elsner (2017). These works attest to the considerable ferment, disagreement, and debate in current treatments of late antique intertextuality. An in-depth analysis of Greek intertexuality in this period remains, so far as I can see, a desideratum. 22. Rhetorical paraphrase has been studied in detail by Roberts (1985: 7-38, 135-139). He is cited also by Consonni (2000: 121 n.12).

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both to abbreviate and embellish certain matters provided only the sense of the poet is retained. This is a task which is even difficult for mature teachers. Anyone who handles it properly will be able to learn anything.

These instructions describe with fair accuracy Aristaenetus’ technique of rewording, abridging and expanding his source,23 and I would say that he proves himself a master. Yet simultaneously one must stress that Aristaenetus’ version is far more than a mere paraphrase: as we have seen with his arrangement of the letters, he is also an artful author in his own right and expects from his audience the erudition to see how he is playing with his model. To take just one instance, Rosenmeyer (1996: 12) observed that right at the start of 1.10, his version of Acontius and Cydippe, “Aristaenetus’ text … proclaims its authenticity” vis-à-vis its Callimachean paradigm by naming the letter’s addressee Dionysias, “an obscure alternative name for Cydippe’s island of Naxos, as Callimachus tells us in Aetia fr. 75,41.” I would suggest that there is a comparable nod to his source in the addressee’s name, Lysimachus, in letter 1.15, Phrygius and Pieria. Its last three syllables — -ιμάχῳ — are strangely reminiscent of Καλλ-ιμάχῳ, and one recalls that the poet himself had given a manifestly martial gloss to that name in a famous epitaph (21 Pf. = 29 GP = AP 7.525.3-4) where he said of his grandfather (likewise a Callimachus) that ‘he once led his country’s armies’, while he himself ‘sang songs mightier than envy’, ὁ μέν κοτε πατρίδος ὅπλων / ἦρξεν, ὁ δ’ ἤεισεν κρέσσονα βασκανίης.24 Aristaenetus, I believe, played on the martial connotation of ‘Callimachus’, evoking his model’s name right at the start of his letter, even as he altered it so as to fit his tale’s conciliatory content: he addresses it to Λυσίμαχος. A corresponding gesture toward Callimachus appears also at the very end of the letter, where we learn ‘the origin of the ancestral saying among Ionian women: “If only my spouse would honor me, his wife, in the same manner as Phrygios honored the beautiful Pieria”’ (1.15.65-68). As Reitzenstein put it (1892/3: 15), “by the addition of an aition, we seem to be holding Battiades in our hands” (cui vel αἴτιον quoddam additum est, ut Battiadem quasi manibus tenere nobis videamur). And indeed, the aition of that wish may well also have appeared in Callimachus (fr. 83). 23. This, at least so far as we can trace it from his fragmentary model; the better preserved Acontius and Cydippe in the Aetia, along with its diegesis, provides more substantial comparanda, yet the remains of Phrygius and Pieria permit a comparable appraisal. 24. The grandfather’s name clearly matches his military role; that of the epigrammatist does so more subtly: the epitaph’s vision of the poet singing things ‘mightier’ than envy, κρέσσονα βασκανίης, plays on the common use of κρείσσων in the context of battle (LSJ s.v.) and so imagines Callimachus victorious on the fields of poetic conflict.

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To see on a micro-level how Aristaenetus adapts the Callimachean version of Phrygius and Pieria in epistle 1.15, let us look at one of the passages that reveals significant overlap. It is at fr. 80.5-11, with Harder’s translation: ἦ] ῥα· σὲ δ’ οὐ πυλ{εών οὐ κά]λυκες, Λ]ύδιον οὐ κα[ίρωμα ]ι Κάειρ[α]ι λάτριες, οὐκαγ[..].ικο[ ]ς, τ]οῖς ἔπι θηλύτ[ερ]αι.[ ] ἰαίνεσθε ἔξαιτον, πυκι|[νοῦ γ]νώματος ἐξ[έ]βαλ[ο]ν· αἰδοῖ δ’ ὡς φοί|[νικι] τεὰς ἐρύθουσα παρειάς ἤν]επες ὀφ|[θαλμο]ῖς ἔμπαλι.[...]ομεν[.].[

10

He spoke, but neither a headband nor earrings (?) nor a Lydian garment…nor Carian slaves…, in which you women especially find pleasure, deterred you from your sensible judgement. While your cheeks turned red with shame as if dyed with purple you spoke with your eyes averted…

This corresponds with Aristaenetus 1.15.35-49: τοιαῦτα μὲν ὁ δίκαιος ἐραστής· σὲ δέ, ὦ πασῶν ὑπερφέρουσα γυναικῶν καὶ κάλλει καὶ γνώμῃ, τῆς ἔμφρονος οὐ παρήγαγεν εὐβουλίας οὐχ ὅρμος, οὐχ ἑλικτῆρες, οὐ πυλεὼν ὁ πολύτιμος, οὐ περιδέραιον, οὐ Λύδιός τε καὶ ποδήρης χιτών, οὐ πορφυρίδες, οὐ θεράπαιναι τῆς Καρίας οὐδὲ Λυδῶν ὑπερφυῶς ἱστουργοῦσαι γυναῖκες, οἷς ἅπασιν ἀτεχνῶς ἀγάλλεσθαι τὸ θῆλυ πέφυκε γένος, ἀλλ’ εἰς γῆν ἑώρας τὸ πρόσωπον, ὥσπερ τι συννοουμένη. εἶτα ἔφης ἐπιχαρίτως πεφοινιγμένη τὰς παρειὰς καὶ τὸ πρόσωπον ἐξ αἰδοῦς ἀποκλίνασα καὶ πῇ μὲν τῆς ἀμπεχόνης ἄκροις δακτύλοις ἐφαπτομένη τῶν κροσσῶν, πῇ δὲ περιστρέφουσα τοῦ ζωνίου τὸ ἄκρον, ἔστι δὲ ὅτε καὶ τοὔδαφος περιχαράττουσα τῷ ποδί (ταῦτα δὴ τὰ τῶν αἰδουμένων ἐν διαπορήσει κινήματα), ἔφης οὖν μόλις ἠρεμαίᾳ φωνῇ·

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Thus the just lover. But you, excelling all women in beauty and judgment, were not led astray from prudent counsel, neither by a necklace, nor earrings, nor a precious crown, nor a chain, nor a sweeping Lydian robe, nor purple fabrics, nor by Karian handmaids or marvelous weaving women from Lydia, all those things which the female sex is utterly crazy about — no, you cast your glance down to the earth, as though deliberating something. Then you said, your cheeks charmingly ablush, tilting your head in modesty, now fingering the tassels of your shawl, now fiddling with the trim on your belt, and sometimes tracing figures in the ground with your foot (for such are the gestures that betray embarrassment in the shy) — so in a hushed and gentle voice you said… (transl. Bing & Höschele)

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We see at once that Aristaenetus hews quite closely to Callimachus in some respects, while elaborating greatly in others. For Callimachus’ simple epic ἦ] ῥα· (80.5) closing Phrygius’ appeal to Pieria to make some special request from him,25 Aristaenetus guides readers’ estimate of the king’s offer by characteristically adding an ethical judgement: he calls him δίκαιος. Immediately thereafter, Callimachus’ narrator addresses his heroine directly, as does Aristaenetus’ (σὲ δ’ 80.5 ~ σὲ δέ 1.15.36), both of them retaining the Du-Stil through the rest of the tale (Harder 2012: 678). As Gallé-Cejudo notes (1997: 218-219), by following Callimachus so closely here that he preserves his direct address, Aristaenetus breaches the epistolary fiction, the genre’s convention that only the letter’s addressee is spoken to directly.26 That is something he does to mark another Callimachean moment as well, for the same breach occurs at letter 1.10.20-28 and 46-47, where he likewise follows Callimachus in addressing Acontius.27 Readers may barely notice these lapses, as they are swept along by the colorful narrative, yet in either case the epistolographer subtly points both to his source and the fact that it is non-epistolary.28 In what follows, Aristaenetus expands the catalogue of valuables that did not shake Pieria from her good judgment (thus already Pfeiffer 1949: 88 ad 5-9), even as he streamlines Callimachus’ word-order, where the verb governing σὲ δ’ (fr. 80.5) is delayed for the better part of four verses (γ]νώματος ἐξ[έ]βαλ[ο]ν, fr. 80.9). Contrary to standard paraphrasing technique, he retains one rare poetic word from Callimachus, πυλεών (fr. 80.5) — probably a headband, wreath, or crown — which comes first in the poet’s enumeration of rich jewels, while in Aristaenetus it appears only in third place. Yet even as the epistolographer sets it in a less prominent position in the sequence, he adds a descriptive tag and demonstrative ὁ, 25. I am inclined to agree with Massimilla, who emends fr. 80.2 from εἴτε γὰρ οὐκαπ[ to εἴθε γὰρ οὐκαπ[on the basis of Aristaenetus’ hortatory εἴθε γὰρ θαρροῦσα λέξειας (1.15.33). Phrygius appears to urge Pieria to say what thing, τοῦτ’ εἰπεῖν[ (fr. 80.3), she wants from him, ἐ]ξ ἐμέθεν (fr. 80.4). This corresponds to Aristaenetus’ λέξειας, ὦ καλή, τί ἄν σοι χαριέστατα γένοιτο παρ’ ἐμοῦ (1.15.33-34). Note the straightforwardly prosaic παρ’ ἐμοῦ for the poetic ἐ]ξ ἐμέθεν. 26. “El remitente de la carta suspende por unos instantes la comunicación con el destinatario y dirige su discurso a uno de los personajes de la historia que está narrando” (1997: 218). 27. Gallé-Cejudo (1997: 218-219) remarks on both passages. 28. It is worth noting that the summary argumentum heading letter 1.10 also suggests its non-epistolary source: “The erotic tale of Acontius and Cydippe, set in epistolary form” (ὡς ἐν ἐπιστολῇ τὸ κατὰ Ἀκόντιον καὶ Κυδίππην ἐρωτικὸν διήγημα). Such argumenta epistularum, which accompany all the letters, are generally assumed to have been added after Aristaenetus (Mazal 1971: viii, Vieillefond 1992: xxv). Be that as it may, their author was evidently aware that this ἐρωτικὸν διήγημα did not originally appear ὡς ἐν ἐπιστολῇ.

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calling it πυλεὼν ὁ πολύτιμος, ‘that very precious crown’: does he make this addition so as to point — discreetly — to the high value of Callimachus as prototype, to the fact that the term occupies the first position in the Aetia version?29 But πυλεών may be a two-tier reference, pointing to a further poetic source, since this word is especially Laconian, appearing twice in Alcman (PMG 3, fr. 3.65 and 60.1-3). As Massimilla points out (2010: 402 ad 5-7), “the whole Callimachean passage — with its enumeration of luxurious items preceded by a negation — seems to have been inspired by vv. 64-73 of the great Partheneion of Alcman” (PMG 1)30 — an origin that Aristaenetus and his learned audience could have been aware of, whether by reading the source text first hand or by using an annotated copy.31 πυλεών here is one of several instances in Aristaenetus’ letters, where the epistolographer does not, as would be typical in a paraphrase, alter his source so as to simplify it, but rather retains what Consonni (2000b: 251) calls “unexpected words” (voci inattese) deriving from the model text.32 These are words that Aristaenetus typically uses only this once, that is, they are not a usual part of his lexicon but chosen specifically so as to point to his model. With regard to the other jewels, while he drops the second type mentioned by Callimachus, κά]λυκες — a Homeric hapax (Iliad 18.401 = HAphr. 163, cf. 87-88) —, Aristaenetus augments the list by adding ὅρμος, ἑλικτῆρες and περιδέραιον before and after πυλεών (1.15. 38-39). Curiously, these additions correspond to ancient glosses on

29. Complicating the reference to the Hellenistic poet as ‘source’ is the fact that πυλεών is, according to Pfeiffer’s app. crit. (1949: 88 ad 5), a correction of the Vienna MS’s πόλεων by Lobel — one of the rare instances in which a reading in Aristaenetus was improved through one in his source Callimachus. According to Mazal’s (1971) apparatus, moreover, ὁ πολύτιμος is Lesky’s emendation for τὸ πολύτιμον. These simple and compelling corrections should be accepted (as they have been by all successive scholars), since the manuscript reading lacks specificity and makes little sense: οὐ πόλεων τὸ πολύτιμον (‘not that which is highly valued in the cities’, or in J. Mercier’s Latin rendering of the MS in Hercher (1873: 147), non civitatum luxuriate). 30. “L’intero passo Callimacheo — con la sua serie di cose lussuose precedute da negazioni — sembra ispirarsi ai vv.64-73 del grande partenio di Alcmane.” 31. Interestingly, Aristaenetus adds some items beyond his Callimachean model, which seem to derive rather from Alcman, cf. ὅρμος PMG 91 ~ 1.15.38; οὔτε γάρ τι πορφύρας / τόσσος κόρος PMG 1.64-65 ~ οὐ πορφυρίδες 1.15.39-40. Compare also νεανίδων / ἰανογ[λ]εφάρων ἄγαλμα PMG 1.68-69 with οἷς ἅπασιν ἀτεχνῶς ἀγάλλεσθαι τὸ θῆλυ πέφυκε γένος 1.15.41-42. 32. He points also to the Ionic pronoun οἱ in 1.19.26 (in text that is based on Hippocrates!). Similarly, Arnott (1982: 306, cf. Zanetto 1987: 204) shows that in letter 2.3 Aristaenetus uses unusual words from Aristophanes’ Clouds (2.3.19 προμνήστριαν ~ Clouds 41; 2.3.23 δικόρραφος ~ Clouds 1483) so as to underline the links to his model (signaled prominently by calling the distracted husband Strepsiades). See note 10 above.

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κάλυκες.33 It is as though Aristaenetus were himself devising his catalogue out of glosses for a disputed word. Callimachus may have included just one textile in his list, the Λ]ύδιον… κα[ίρωμα (80.6), a rare term he uses elsewhere (fr. 547) along with related words (frs. 640, 54.13), deployed here in striking assonance with Κάειρ[α]ι (a Homeric hapax, Il. 4.451) at the end of the same verse;34 Aristaenetus opts for the simpler χιτών, and adds a second fabric, πορφυρίδες 1.15.39-40. Similarly, he reworks the poetic Κάειρ[α]ι / λάτριες (80.6-7) into the more conventional θεράπαιναι τῆς Καρίας (1.15.40) and again doubles up, adding a second group of servants, Lydian weaving women. One last notable feature of the list in both authors is the summary comment about women. The Hellenistic poet expands his apostrophe to Pieria so as directly to address females generally about those things ‘in which you women especially find pleasure’ (τ]οῖς ἔπι θηλύτ[ερ]αι.[ ] ἰαίνεσθε / ἔξαιτον, 80.8-9, n.b. the 2nd pers.pl.). Given the special focus of Aetia 3 and 4 on queen Berenice, I wonder whether we may be justified in seeing Callimachus’ narrator here turning to the female segment of his audience. In any case, Aristaenetus omits that female orientation by making the subject of his clause the female race, οἷς ἅπασιν ἀτεχνῶς ἀγάλλεσθαι τὸ θῆλυ πέφυκε γένος (1.15.41-42). Following the enumeration of luxuries, Callimachus introduces Pieria’s virtuous response: ‘While your cheeks turned red with shame as if dyed with purple, you spoke with your eyes averted’. What strikes us first is how the heroine’s nobility here manifests itself in a bodily reaction that evokes in its coloring riches such as those enumerated in the list. This distinguishes the Callimachean passage from intertexts that Harder (2012: II 683-684) and others have pointed out.35 Already here, however, Aristaenetus casts a wider allusive net, adding an ethical nuance: When he says of Pieria, ‘you cast your glance down to the earth, as though 33. For ὅρμος and περιδέραιον cf. Hesychius κ 535 κάλυκας· ὅρμους, περιτραχηλίους κόσμους; for ἑλικτῆρες cf. scholia AbT to Iliad 18.401: οἱ δὲ ἐνώτια. 34. Lobel’s supplement in Pfeiffer (1949: 88 ad 6), κα[ίρωμα τά θ’ ἱστουργοῦσ]ι Κάειρ[α]ι, would add Carian robes possibly corresponding to the πορφυρίδες in Aristaenetus 1.15.39-40, but it would suggest that the epistolographer added a whole new category, serving women from Caria and Lydia, to the list of possible gifts to Pieria from the king, which seems unlikely. Barigazzi (1976: 16) proposed ποδηνεκές instead, which is certainly closer to Aristaenetus’ ποδήρης and indicates that Callimachus already included slaves on in his list. 35. See Hypsipyle’s response on first meeting Jason in Apollonius’ Argonautica 1.790792: ‘she cast her eyes down, and a blush spread across the maiden’s cheeks; but although abashed before him, she addressed him with beguiling words’, (ἡ δ’ ἐγκλιδὸν ὄσσε βαλοῦσα / παρθενικὴ ἐρύθηνε παρηίδας· ἔμπα δὲ τόνγε / αἰδομένη μύθοισι προσέννεπεν αἱμυλίοισιν·).

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deliberating something’ (ἀλλ’ εἰς γῆν ἑώρας τὸ πρόσωπον, ὥσπερ τι συννοουμένη 1.15.42-43), he echoes Socrates’ description of Alcibiades (φαίνῃ…εἰς γῆν βλέπειν, ὥς τι συννοούμενος) in the Platonic Second Alcibiades (138a), a dialogue devoted entirely to the question of how to request something that is truly good for you. Alcibiades’ plea is fraught with peril inasmuch as he, in his rash lack of understanding, is praying to the gods, who may grant his wish even if it is not good for him. On the other hand, while Pieria’s request also entails critical consequences, she appears to grasp what in fact is good. To the pair of gestures described by Callimachus (the blush of modest shame, the averted gaze), Aristaenetus hereupon adds another three: ‘now fingering the tassels of your shawl, now fiddling with the trim on your belt, and sometimes tracing figures in the ground with your foot’ (1.15.42-47). The sentence just after this reveals, I believe, something of the character of Aristaenetus’ approach vis-à-vis Callimachus. While the epistolographer has enlarged his source, he underlines that he has done so in a very specific way, offering a more comprehensive account, a universalizing taxonomy of one particular ethical posture, delivered, as it were, by the book; his narrator sums up learnedly, ‘for such are the well-known gestures that betray embarrassment in those with a sense of shame’ (ταῦτα δὴ τὰ τῶν αἰδουμένων ἐν διαπορήσει κινήματα, 1.15.48).36 As with the echo from the Second Alcibiades (above), the phrase ἐν διαπορήσει (in a heightened state of ἀπορία) gives the romantically motivated choice that Pieria faces a philosophical inflection. Turning now to the broader narrative level, we find that Aristaenetus seems to have given his account of Phrygius and Pieria a more generic quality as romance by omitting the local/historical/genealogical detail found in Callimachus’ version. That was certainly his approach to Acontius and Cydippe, where — except for the lovers’ names — he dispensed 36. For the force of δή following the demonstrative ταῦτα as conveying precisely the well-known aspect of the assertion, cf. LSJ s.v. δή II 2. An interesting contrast with the gesture of tracing figures on the ground with one’s foot in embarrassment is suggested to me by Caitlin Hines, who points (per litteras) to “the proclivity of (elegiac) courtesans to trace figures on tables in wine, as a mode of sending secret messages to their lovers”. The gestures in Aristaenetus closely resemble those in Musaeus’ description (possibly contemporary with the epistolographer’s) of Hero responding to a speech by Leander; these the narrator likewise sums up as signs, προάγγελα, in this case signalling that Leander’s use of persuasion (i.e. his amatory rhetoric) may have been successful (160-164): παρθενικὴ δ᾿ ἄφθογγος ἐπὶ χθόνα πῆξεν ὀπωπὴν / αἰδοῖ ἐρευθιόωσαν ὑποκλέπτουσα παρειήν, / καὶ χθονὸς ἔξεσεν ἄκρον ὑπ᾿ ἴχνεσιν, αἰδομένη δὲ / πολλάκις ἀμφ᾿ ὤμοισιν ἑὸν συνέεργε χιτῶνα—πειθοῦς / γὰρ τάδε πάντα προάγγελα. For a discussion of this passage vis-à-vis Aristaenetus, see Kost (1971: 39-43 and 356-359), who believes Musaeus imitated Aristaenetus.

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with all the specifics that Callimachus carefully assembled from the historian Xenomedes (fr. 75.54): their places of origin,37 ancestry,38 parentage,39 site of their encounter,40 excursus on the political prominence of their descendants.41 Of course we have far less of Callimachus’ Phrygius and Pieria, and what remains is very fragmentary, so we cannot show in comparable detail what specifics of regional lore Aristaenetus omitted. Yet the one instance we can observe suggests an analogous approach: At vv. 17-18 in Callimachus, the narrator speaks of how prior to Pieria’s intercession people of Myous were permitted ‘to go only to the temple of Neleid Artemis’ at Miletus (μούν[ης νηὸν ἐς] Ἀρτέμιδος / π]ωλε[ῖσθαι Νη]ληΐδο[ς) during their annual truce. ‘Neleid’ Artemis here suggests the likelihood that Callimachus, in some other part of his narrative also mentioned Neleus, son of the Athenian king Codrus and founder of Miletus, as the father of Phrygius.42 While Aristaenetus makes no mention of ‘Neleid’ Artemis, she does appear in Plutarch’s account of Phrygius and Pieria (de mulierum virtutibus 16, 253f-254a: οὔσης οὖν ἑορτῆς Ἀρτέμιδι καὶ θυσίας παρὰ Μιλησίοις, ἣν Νηληίδα προσαγορεύουσιν),43 which also tells us that Phrygius was ‘the most powerful of the sons of Neleus’ (τῶν δὲ Νείλεω παίδων ὁ δυνατώτατος ὄνομα Φρύγιος).44 Plutarch further specifies the names of Pieria’s parents, Pythes and Iapygia, indicating that her father belonged to the nobility (‘a man illustrious among the Myousians’, ἀνὴρ ἐν αὐτοῖς ἐμφανής). Given that Plutarch also notably ends his narrative with an aition, the women’s wish that their husbands honor them as Phrygius honored Pieria (just as in Aristaenetus), it seems probable that he too was drawing on Callimachus.45 37. They were respectively from Ioulis on Ceos and Naxos, fr. 67.5. 38. They belonged to the clan of the Euxantidai and that of Prometheus respectively, fr. 67.7, the former ancestral priests of Icmian Zeus, the latter descendants of Codrus, fr. 75.32-34. 39. Cydippe’s father is Ceyx, fr. 75.28. 40. Delos, fr. 67.6. 41. The Acontiads, fr. 75.50-77. 42. Callimachus elsewhere mentions how Neleus made this goddess his guiding force when he led his ships from Athens to Miletus (σὲ γὰρ ποιήσατο Νηλεύς / ἡγεμόνην, ὅτε νηυσὶν ἀνήγετο Κεκροπίηθεν H.3.226-227). 43. Cf. also Polyaenus’ (Strat. 8.35), which probably depends on Plutarch, cf. Stadter 1965: 13-29. 44. On the well-attested variation between the spelling Νηλεύς and Νειλεύς, see Magnelli (1999: 136-137). 45. Similarly Clayman (2014: 97): “the accounts of this tale in Aristaenetus, Plutarch and Polyaenus, … all appear to derive from Callimachus’ aition”. One must note, however, that e.g. Pfeiffer (1949: ad fr. 83), Harder (2012: II 673-674), and others thought that Callimachus (and Plutarch?) drew on local sources such as Leandr(i)us, whom the

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The Boeotian polymath may, therefore, provide us with insight into the local/genealogical/historical details that Callimachus included, but Aristaenetus left out. Now Harder (2012: II 672, cf. 678 ad fr. 80.5-9) argued on the basis of Aristaenetus’ version that the relationship between Phrygius and Pieria as presented by Callimachus was merely “a brief ‘affair’”,46 and that neither author had marriage in mind for the lovers. In my opinion, this view does not do justice to the aition that pointedly closes the narrative — at least as it appears in Aristaenetus. The wish of the Ionian women clearly shows that the story was understood by the epistolographer as applying specially to husbands and wives: ‘If only my spouse would honor me, his wife, in the same manner as Phrygius honored the beautiful Pieria’. (εἴθε με παραπλησίως ὁ σύνοικος τιμήσειε τὴν ὁμόζυγα, ὥσπερ ὁ Φρύγιος τὴν καλὴν τετίμηκε Πιερίαν.). The letter’s narrator, moreover, calls Phrygius ‘the bridegroom’, ὁ νυμφίος (1.15.31) when the latter encourages Pieria to ask for her heart’s desire;47 he tells further how the king granted the wish to ‘his most beloved’ (τῇ φιλτάτῃ 1.15.55), a designation that hardly evokes a one night stand.48 Indeed, the story’s logic suggests — and the closing aition confirms — that the love of Phrygius and Pieria serves as a symbol of the harmonious ties established in perpetuity between their two cities. On the other hand, Harder shrewdly points out that Aristaenetus presents Pieria as “a girl of undefined social status (Aristaenetus 1.15.22-24 and 26 refer only to her beauty)” (2012: II 672) — a description she would extend to Callimachus. I think it likelier, however, that Plutarch’s version (followed by Polyaenus 8,35,7 f.), where Pieria comes from a poet cites elsewhere in the Aetia (fr. 88), or from Milesiaca that mentioned Phrygius, as in a manchette of Parthenius XIV (Lightfoot 1999: 454). 46. Cf. also (2012: II 672), “the story seems to end with the conversation of the pair during their first (and presumably only) night together”, as well as (2012: II 678), “Pieria…is free to choose items which could be proper wedding gifts as a reward for one night’s services”. 47. Harder (2012: II 672) argues that this term need not refer to one who is formally married, but Aristaenetus’ one other use of it (1.6.30) clearly refers to a bridegroom: a nurse tells her wayward charge, ‘When the time comes, I will teach you how a girl who has become a woman before marriage may yet seem a virgin to the groom’ (ἐγώ σε τηνικαῦτα διδάξω πῶς ἂν ἡ πρὸ γάμου γεγονυῖα γυνὴ παρθένος ἔτι δόξῃ τῷ νυμφίῳ). νυμφίος is the letter’s final word. 48. Note also that Aristaenetus carefully marks Pieria’s path from kore (κόρη γάρ τις τοὔνομα Πιερία 15.22-3; τῇ κόρῃ 28-9) and parthenos (ἡ μὲν παρθένος 15.26) before they make love, to gyne as soon as they have done so (σὲ δέ, ὦ πασῶν ὑπερφέρουσα γυναικῶν καὶ κάλλει καὶ γνώμῃ 36-7; φιλοπάτριδος γυναικὸς 52). I wonder whether these latter descriptions are focalized from Phrygius’ perspective. Note that he, too, addresses Pieria directly.

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noble family, more closely approximates what stood in Callimachus.49 It was Aristaenetus rather who, as in his version of Acontius and Cydippe, condensed and simplified his Callimachean source so as to make Pieria just ‘a girl’ of indeterminate rank. Correspondingly, though nothing remains in Callimachus to confirm this, the epistolographer makes Phrygius emphatically a king (1.15.27 ὁ τοῦ ἄστεος βασιλεὺς, cf. 1.15.49 ἐπίνευσον, ὦ βασιλεῦ, and 1.15.54 κατένευσέ τε βασιλικῶς) — rather than just the most powerful of the sons of Neleus, as Plutarch has it (τῶν δὲ Νείλεω παίδων ὁ δυνατώτατος ὄνομα Φρύγιος, or as in Polyaenus ‘one of the descendants of Neleus’). To suit his own purposes, then, Aristaenetus — I maintain — makes the story in part one about how a king raises the status of a girl of spirit and wisdom by marrying her. If I am right in suggesting that he shaped the story in this way, then Aristaenetus also made it align thematically with the last in his trio of letters reflecting on happy unions (1.10, 1.15 and 1.19), the tale of Melissarion, the lowly μουσουργός, who rose from the demi-monde to the status of legitimate wife and mother through her marriage to the wealthy Charicles. That letter, you will recall, was plausibly linked by Mazal (1977) to the passage of the lex de nuptiis and indeed to the sensational case of the mime, Theodora, who married Justinian and became his empress. The link with Theodora may in fact be more pronounced than Mazal saw. One of the most striking aspects of letter 1.19 is its account of how Melissarion became pregnant and got an abortion through the help of her fellow-performer, Euphronion, the narrator of the epistle. This narrative very artfully reworks an extended passage from Hippocrates’ On the Nature of the Child (7:490 Littré), which likewise concerns a μουσουργός, but one who (unlike Melissarion) is a slave. Upon getting pregnant, she tells her owner about her condition. The owner, whose financial interests are at stake, enlists Hippocrates to prescribe steps to induce an abortion: the doctor recounts these in detail along with the result. In Aristaenetus, by contrast, the abortion is glossed by euphemism: Euphronion orders her friend ‘to do what I knew had to be done and quickly freed her of her anxious forebodings’ (1.19.27-29). ‘What had to be done’ appears positively, serving “as an expedient, a necessary 49. Harder seems to want to have it both ways, since she suggests (2012: II 673) that the characters’ ancestry was “a formal point of contact” with the tale’s companion piece in Callimachus, Acontius and Cydippe: “There was a tradition that the eponymous hero of Miletus was Miletus, a son of Euxantius, the ancestor of Acontius (cf. Σ AR 1, 185-88a, fr. 67,7), while on the other hand Phrygius was a Neleid and therefore a descendant of the Athenian Codrus like Cydippe”.

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step in Melissarion’s pursuit of happiness, her personal journey out of poverty to riches and status” (Bing & Höschele 2014: xxx). With regard to the empress Theodora, conflicting accounts emerge in the sources, even within the same author. Procopius, for instance, praises the empress’ beauty, piety, and courage in some works (the Buildings and Wars of Justinian), yet paints a most damning portrait in his Secret History, where he exposes the former mime/hetaera-now-turned empress as thoroughly corrupt, vicious and debauched. One misdeed that he singles out repeatedly is abortion. This he seems to regard as emblematic of her destructive depravity, the capstone of her crimes, as when he says that Justinian ‘did not think it unworthy … to have sex with a woman who wrapped herself not just in every other great defilement but even committed numerous infanticides through deliberate abortions’ (οὐκ ἀπηξίου…καὶ γυναικὶ πλησιάζειν ἄλλα τε περιβεβλημένῃ μεγάλα μιάσματα καὶ παιδοκτονίας πολλὰς ἐθελουσίων ἀμβλώσεων 10.3). Elsewhere he says, ‘though she was pregnant often, yet she succeeded in contriving to abort almost all of them immediately’ (καὶ συχνὰ μὲν ἐκύει, πάντα δὲ σχεδὸν τεχνάζουσα ἐξαμβλίσκειν εὐθὺς ἴσχυε 9.19). She did this so often, according to Procopius, that she had a habitual technique: ‘she did everything to induce, in her customary way, an abortion’ (πάντα μὲν ἀμβλύσκειν, ὥσπερ εἰώθει, ἐποίει 17.16). Procopius describes how pregnancy caused her to be ‘worried and distressed, since after becoming a mother she would no longer be able to traffic in her body’ (ἀπορουμένην τε καὶ ἀσχάλλουσαν, ὅτι μήτηρ γενομένη τῷ σώματι ὁμοίως ἐργάζεσθαι οὐκέτι ἂν δυνατὴ εἴη 17.17). This motivation closely tracks that of Melissarion in Aristaenetus’ letter: ‘It was crucial that she not get pregnant lest the birth of a child cheapen her in the eyes of her lovers and she spoil the flower of her youth too soon in labor’ (ἣν οὐκ ἔδει λαβεῖν ἐν γαστρί, ὅπως μὴ διὰ παιδογονίαν ἀτιμοτέρα γένοιτο τοῖς συνοῦσι, τῆς ἀκμῆς τὸ ἄνθος ἄωρον ἀποβαλοῦσα τοῖς πόνοις 1.19.17-20). Thus through his example of the lowly μουσουργός who manages to transcend her impoverished background and the need for even such expedients as abortion, so as to find love, wealth, and a privileged social status through a happy marriage, Aristaenetus may have evoked the rise of the mime/hetaira Theodora,50 creating for the empress a flattering analogue, founded upon the idea of conjugal bliss and in keeping with the more reverent depictions of her bond with the emperor Justinian. Aristaenetus, I suggest, underlined the political implications of this happy union in letter 1.19 by subtly reinforcing the 50. For a lively recent account of Theodora’s rise, see Potter (2015: 39-59).

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theme in the two letters he adapted from episodes in Book 3 of Callimachus’ Aetia. It does not seem unlikely, given his close reading of Callimachus, that Aristaenetus grasped how these episodes were keyed to the interests of the royal couple, Ptolemy III Euergetes and his queen Berenice II, who were eager to promote a model of political harmony embodied in a paradigm of happy marriage as part of their ideology of kingship. While Callimachus promoted this standard explicitly (e.g. in the Lock of Berenice) and also by analogy (Acontius and Cydippe, Phrygius and Pieria), Aristaenetus seems to have done so more subtly, creating a comparable image for the royalty of his age solely by analogy and by conclusions drawn by his learned readers through their knowledge of Callimachus.

REFERENCES Acosta-Hughes, B. and S. Stephens, 2012, Callimachus in Context. From Plato to the Augustan Poets. Cambridge. Arnott, G.W., 1974, “Review of O. Mazal Aristaeneti Epistularum Libri II”. Gnomon 46, 353-61. ―, 1982, “Pastiche, pleasantry, prudish eroticism: the letters of ‘Aristaenetus’”. YCS 27, 291-320. Barbiero, E. A., 2016, “Two Clouded Marriages: Aristainetos’ Allusions to Aristophanes’ Clouds in Letters 2.3 and 2.12”. In: C.W. Marshall and T. Hawkins (eds), Athenian Comedy in the Roman Empire. London. Barigazzi, A., 1976, “L’aition di Frigio e Pieria in Callimaco”. Prometheus 2, 11-17 Bing, P. and R. Höschele, 2014, Aristaenetus, Erotic Letters: Introduced, Translated and Annotated. Atlanta. Bulloch, A., 2006, “The Order and Structure of Callimachus Aetia 3”. CQ 56, 496-508. Clayman, D. L., 2014, “Historical contexts for two Aitia from book III: ‘Acontius & Cydippe’ (frr. 67-75 Pf.) and ‘Phrygius & Pieria’ (frr. 80-83 Pf.)”. In: M. A. Harder, et al. (eds), Hellenistic Poetry in Context. Leuven – Paris – Walpole, MA., 85-102. Consonni, C., 2000a, “Cidippe e Aconzio: Aristeneto”. In: A. Stramaglia, Ἔρως. Antiche trame greche d’amore. Bari, 105-128. ―, 2000b, “Pieria e Frigio: Aristeneto”. In A. Stramaglia, Ἔρως. Antiche trame greche d’amore. Bari, 243-252. Drago, A.T., 2007, Aristeneto. Lettere d’amore: Introduzione, testo, traduzione e commento. Lecce. Elsner, J., 2017, “Late Narcissus: Classicism and Culture in a Late Roman Cento”. In J. Elsner and J. Hernández Lobato (eds), The Poetics of Late Latin Literature. Oxford, 176-204. Gallé-Cejudo, R. J., 1997, “Signos metalingüísticos referentes al marco formal en la epistolografía ficticia griega”. Habis 28, 215-226.

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Harder, A., 1993, “Thanks to Aristaenetus…”. In: H. Hokwerda, E. R. Smits and M. M. Woesthuis (eds), Polyphonia Byzantina. Studies in Honour of Willem J. Aerts. Groningen. ―, 2012, Callimachus. Aetia. Introduction, Text, Translation, and Commentary. 2 vols. Oxford. Hercher, R., 1873, Epistolographi Graeci. Paris. Kaufmann, H., 2017, “Intertextuality in Late Latin Poetry”. In J. Elsner and J. Hernández Lobato (eds), The Poetics of Late Latin Literature. Oxford, 149-175. Kost, K., 1971, Musaios. Hero und Leander. Einleitung, Text, Übersetzung und Kommentar. Bonn. Lightfoot, J. L., 1999, Parthenius of Nicaea. Oxford. Lobel, E., 1948, The Oxyrhynchus Papyri vol.19. London Magnelli, E., 1999, Alexandri Aetoli Testimonia et Fragmenta. Florence. Massimilla, G., 2010, Aitia. Libro terzo e quarto. Callimaco. Pisa Mazal, O., 1971, Aristaeneti Epistularum Libri II. Stuttgart. ―, 1977, “Zur Datierung der Lebenszeit des Epistolographen Aristainetos”. Jahrbuch der Österreich. Byzantinistik 26, 3-4. Nissen, T., 1940, “Zur Rhythmik und Sprache der Aristainetosbriefe”. BZ 40, 1-14. Pelttari, A., 2014, The Space That Remains: Reading of Latin Poetry in Late Antiquity. Ithaca Pfeiffer, R., 1949, Callimachus I. Oxford. Potter, D., 2015, Theodora. Actress, Empress, Saint. Oxford. Reitzenstein, R., 1892/3, “Inedita poetarum graecorum fragmenta, II”. Index Lectionum in Academia Rostochiensi. Roberts, M., 1985, Biblical Epic and Rhetorical Paraphrase in Late Antiquity. ARCA 16 Rosenmeyer, P., 1996, “Love Letters in Callimachus, Ovid and Aristaenetus or the Sad Fate of a Mailorder Bride”. MD 36, 9-31. Stadter, P. A., 1965, Plutarch’s Historical Methods: An Analysis of the Mulierum Virtutes. Cambridge MA Vieillefond, J.-R., 1992, Aristénète: Lettres d’amour. Texte établi et traduit. Paris. Zanetto, G., 1987, “Un epistolografo al lavoro: le Lettere di Aristeneto”. SIFC 5: 193-211. ―, 2005, Alcifrone, Filostrato, Aristeneto: Lettere d’amore. Milan.

CALLIMACHUS AND LONGUS Ewen BOWIE

1. Introduction Most of the five Greek novels to be transmitted as complete texts in a manuscript tradition seem not to include Callimachus in their wide range of intertexts — not even Achilles Tatius, despite his supposed origin in Alexandria and his enthusiastic ecphrasis of that city (5.1), nor Heliodorus, despite locating much of his narrative in Egypt. I say ‘seem’ because I may not have been so thorough as I should have been in my explorations: but so far neither I nor scholars expert in the novels whom I have consulted have anything to suggest.1 Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe is quite different in this matter, as indeed it differs in many respects from the other novels both complete and fragmentary. Longus seems to know and use Callimachus’ Aitia, his Hymns, his Epigrams, his Branchus or perhaps his Iamboi. Such knowledge of Callimachus is not a priori surprising in a careful writer who draws much of his description of a pastoral setting and habits from Callimachus’ contemporary Theocritus and — I would maintain — from Philitas in the generation before Theocritus, and whose exploitation of erotic epigram seems to reveal him as a reader of Asclepiades and Dioscorides. But it does set Longus apart not simply from the novelists but from many other Greek writers of the second and third centuries AD. On what, then, do I base this claim? 2. ἀρτιγένειος and the Aitia I begin with a lexical item: ἀρτιγένειος (1.15.1, 4.10.1). Longus uses this adjective twice, first of Daphnis’ potential rival for Chloe, Dorcon, at 1.15.1: Δόρκων δὲ ὁ βουκόλος, ὁ τὸν Δάϕνιν ἐκ τοῦ σιροῦ καὶ τὸν τράγον ἀνιμησάμενος, ἀρτιγένειος μειρακίσκος καὶ εἰδὼς ἔρωτος καὶ 1. I am grateful to the participants in the Hellenistic workshop in September 2017 for helpful questions and interventions, and to Christiaan Caspers for his carefully thought-out response, some aspects of which I address in my conclusions (section 8).

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τὰ ἔργα καὶ τὰ ὀνόματα (‘But Dorcon the cowherd, who had winched Daphnis out of the pit, and also the billy-goat, a young man whose beard had just begun to grow, and who knew both the deeds and the words of desire’). He uses it again in Book 4 (4.10.1) of Astylus, the young son of the estate-owner Dionysophanes, a son who turns out to be Daphnis’ brother: ἧκε μὲν ὁ ῎Αστυλος ἐφ’ ἵππου καὶ παράσιτος αὐτοῦ, καὶ οὗτος ἐφ’ ἵππου· ὁ μὲν ἀρτιγένειος, ὁ δὲ Γνάθων (τουτὶ γὰρ ἐκαλεῖτο) τὸν πώγωνα ξυρώμενος πάλαι (‘Astylus arrived on horseback together with his parasite, and he too was on horseback — the former was just growing his first beard, while Gnathon (for this was his name) had long had his beard shaven’). ἀρτιγέvειoς is used nowhere else in the novels. It is almost certain that the adjective ἀρτιγένειος was in the Aitia: see Σ Flor. on fr. 2.17 Pfeiffer = fr. 2d Harder, and compare the phrase ἄρτι γένεια | περκάζων (‘whose chin was just beginning to darken’) at Callimachus, Hymn 5.75-6, discussed below. Longus may also have noticed the choice epithet ἀρτιγένειος in the Augustan epigrammatist Diodorus, Anth. Pal. 9.219 (= GP 2100-2105), a poem probably describing Augustus’ stepson Tiberius when he was aged seventeen or eighteen: αἰγιβότου Σκύροιο λιπὼν πέδον Ἴλιον ἔπλω οἷος Ἀχιλλείδης πρόσθε μενεπτόλεμος, τοῖος ἐν Αἰνεάδῃσι Νέρων ἀγὸς ἄστυ Ῥέμοιο νεῖται ἐπ’ ὠκυρόην Θύβριν ἀμειψάμενος, κοῦρος ἔτ’ ἀρτιγένειον ἔχων χνόον. ἀλλ’ ὁ μὲν ἔγχει θῦεν, ὁ δ’ ἀμφοτέροις, καὶ δορὶ καὶ σοφίῃ. As was Achilles’ son in olden days, steadfast in war, when he left the plain of goat-grazing Scyros and sailed to Ilium, such was Nero, prince among the descendants of Aeneas, when he changed his abode to the city of Remus and headed for the swift-flowing Tiber, a youth who still had the down of a freshly grown beard. But whereas the former dominated with his spear, the latter did so with both lance and wisdom.

Longus may well know all these poetic texts, but it is very likely that he was also, and perhaps especially, drawn to use the epithet ἀρτιγένειος by a different intertext — the participial phrase ἄρτι γενειάζων (‘just growing a beard’) describing Polyphemus at Theocritus 11.7-9,2 where “the first beard marks the transition to young manhood or from eromenos to erastes, when thoughts may turn to marriage” (Hunter 1999 ad loc.); οὕτω γοῦν ῥάιστα διᾶγ’ ὁ Κύκλωψ ὁ παρ’ ἁμῖν, ὡρχαῖος Πολύφαμος, ὅκ’ ἤρατο τᾶς Γαλατείας, ἄρτι γενειάσδων περὶ τὸ στόμα τὼς κροτάφως τε. 2. Cf. ἡμιγένειος (‘with his beard half-grown’) of Damoetas at Theoc. 6.3.

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It was in this way, at any rate, that the Cyclops from our land kept going most easily, Polyphemus of old, when he was in love with Galatea, just growing a beard around his mouth and his temples.

It is also possible, given the considerable influence of Xenophon’s Cyropaedia on the novels, that the phrase ἄρτι γενειάσκοντα (‘just growing a beard’), used there by Gobryas of his murdered son (Cyr. 4.6.5), could have caught Longus’ eye. But the two chief intertexts for Longus’ use of ἀρτιγένειος of Dorcon are the Aetia and Theocritus 7, the former of which offered precisely that adjective in the nominative (as in both instances in Longus), while the latter linked the condition described by the participial phrase ἄρτι γενειάζων with erotic desire, the emotion that drives Dorcon at 1.15.1 and that a reader may worry might impel Astylus towards disruption of Daphnis’ relationship with Chloe at 4.10.1.

3. Epigram My inclination to see Callimachus’ Aitia as the main source for the epithet is strengthened by Longus’ use of ἕλκος at 1.14.1, very shortly before his first use of ἀρτιγένειος. Longus has his enamoured Chloe say: νῦν ἐγὼ νοσῶ μέν, τί δὲ ἡ νόσος ἀγνοῶ· ἀλγῶ, καὶ ἕλκος οὐκ ἔστι μοι (‘Now I am sick, but what the sickness is, I do not know; I feel pain, but I have no wound’). That Chloe diagnoses her erotic pain as similar to that which she might have expected to come from a wound plays with the idea that eros is itself a wound — an idea not found in the other novelists.3 This idea, like many in the lexicon of eros, is already there in Euripides Hippolytus (530); and it reappears at Theocritus 11.15-16, where Polyphemus is described as follows: ἔχθιστον ἔχων ὑποκάρδιον ἕλκος, Κύπριδος ἐκ μεγάλας τό οἱ ἥπατι πᾶξε βέλεμνον. with a most hateful wound beneath his heart which a dart from mighty Cypris had fixed in his liver.

It appears again at Theocritus 30.10-11: εἰς οἶκον δ’ ἀπέβαν ἔλκος ἔχων καῖνο. πόλλα δ’ εἰσκαλέσαις θῦμον ἐμαύτῳ διελεξάμαν. And I went off home with a new wound in my liver. Calling my soul into action, I had a dialogue with myself.

3. Achilles Tatius uses ἕλκoς metaphorically, but not of love, 2.29.3, 5, 5.8.2.

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But alongside these two Theocritean uses stands that by Callimachus Anth.Pal. 12.134 (= 43 Pfeiffer = HE 1103-1108) in a justly admired epigram: ἕλκος ἔχων ὁ ξεῖνος ἐλάνθανεν· ὡς ἀνιηρὸν πνεῦμα διὰ στηθέων—εἶδες; —ἀνηγάγετο, τὸ τρίτον ἡνίκ’ ἔπινε, τὰ δὲ ῥόδα φυλλοβολεῦντα τὠνδρὸς ἀπὸ στεφάνων πάντ’ ἐγένοντο χαμαί· ὤπτηται μέγα δή τι, μὰ δαίμονας· οὐκ ἀπὸ ῥυσμοῦ εἰκάζω, φωρὸς δ’ ἴχνια φὼρ ἔμαθον. Our guest has a wound and we did not notice. How painfully he heaved his breath up from his chest — did you see him? — when he was drinking the third cup? And the roses, casting their petals, all fell on the ground from the man’s wreaths. He is being burned by some great fire, by the gods: I am not guessing wildly — as a thief, I recognised the tracks of a thief.

That this epigram made some contribution to Longus’ play with ἔλκος is supported by his re-exploitation of it a few chapters later, when Daphnis describes his symptoms of love that are parallel to those of Chloe: his description ἐκπηδᾷ μου τὸ πνεῦμα (‘my breath leaps out’, 1.18.1) recalls the exclamation ὡς ἀνιηρὸν | πνεῦμα διὰ στηθέων—εἶδες; —ἀνηγάγετο (Anth. Pal. 12.134.1-2). So far, then, I think there is a moderately strong case for Longus’ knowledge of the Aitia and a comparably strong case for his knowledge of the Epigrams. Let me add two further possible intertexts in Callimachus’ Epigrams. The first is Longus’ use of ἀνέραστον (‘without love’) at 3.11.3, where Longus sums up the happy outcome of Daphnis trying to visit Chloe despite the winter snow: καὶ ἄλλας δὲ πολλὰς ἦλθεν ὁδοὺς ἐπ’ ἄλλαις τέχναις, ὥστε μὴ παντάπασιν αὐτοῖς γενέσθαι τὸν χειμῶνα ἀνέραστον. And he made many other journeys on the basis of other stratagems, so that the winter might not be entirely loveless for them.

The adjective ἀνέραστος is found first in Hellenistic poetry, and even there it is rare. Its debut is in Callimachus, Anth.Pal. 12.148 = Ep. 32.4 Pfeiffer = HE 1071-1074 (on which see Hardie in this volume): οἶδ’ ὅτι μευ πλούτου κενεαὶ χέρες· ἀλλά, Μένιππε, μὴ λέγε πρὸς Χαρίτων τοὐμὸν ὄνειρον ἐμοί. ἀλγέω τὴν διὰ παντὸς ἔπος τόδε πικρὸν ἀκούων· ναὶ φίλε, τῶν παρὰ σεῦ τοῦτ’ ἀνεραστότατον. I know my hands are empty of wealth; but, I beseech you, Menippus, by the Graces, do not tell me my own dream. I feel constant pain when I hear

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this bitter phrase. Yes, my dear, this is the most loveless thing in your dealings with me.

ἀvέραστος is then used by Moschus, fr. 2.7 and Bion, fr. 9.3, and it is common in imperial Greek prose.4 But in the novelists before Heliodorus it is found only here and once in Xenophon of Ephesus (1.2.9). Longus could know ἀνέραστος from any one or more of these or a number of other texts — among them Dio of Prusa’s Euboean Oration (7.133), which anticipates his treatment of love between two innocent rustics and with which he seems to be familiar. But the appearance of ἀνέραστος in an epigram of Callimachus about the obstacle of poverty — an obstacle that at one point in Daphnis and Chloe seems likely to prevent the couple’s marriage — together with the other Callimachean intertexts discussed points to the probability that Longus first found it in Callimachus’ epigram. My other suggested intertext in the Epigrams is based on similarity not of words but of theme. At 4.24.2 Dionysophanes explains why he had decided to expose the baby Daphnis: he already had three children when Daphnis was born, and three seemed enough. But after Daphnis’ exposure both Dionysophanes’ older son and his only daughter died from the same disease on the same day, leaving only one child, Astylus. Such things can happen in real life — e.g. in Panticapaeum in the second or first century BC a mother and three children were killed by a single καιρός.5 And the simultaneous death of two children is the theme of epigrams by Apollonides, Anth. Pal. 7.378 (= GP 1149-52 = GVI 1718), and by the unidentified poet of Anth. Pal. 7.323 (= FGE 1276-1277 = GVI 1716). But the most memorable handling of the theme is by Callimachus, in Anth. Pal. 7.517 (= Ep. 20 Pfeiffer = HE 1193-1198), where the simultaneous deaths are those of a son and a daughter, apparently historical figures in Cyrene: ἠῷοι Μελάνιππον ἐθάπτομεν, ἠελίου δὲ δυομένου Βασιλὼ κάτθανε παρθενικὴ αὐτοχερί· ζώειν γὰρ ἀδελφεὸν ἐν πυρὶ θεῖσα οὐκ ἔτλη. δίδυμον δ’ οἶκος ἐσεῖδε κακὸν πατρὸς Ἀριστίπποιο· κατήφησεν δὲ Κυρήνη πᾶσα τὸν εὔτεκνον χῆρον ἰδοῦσα δόμον. At dawn we buried Melanippus: and as the sun set the maiden Basilo died by her own hand; for she could not bear to live after placing her brother on 4. Dio of Prusa, Or. 7.133, Plut. De Pyth. orac. 23 = Mor. 406a, Lucian, Philostratus, etc. 5. GVI 845.

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the pyre. The house of their father Aristippus saw a twin woe, and all Cyrene was downcast when they saw the home of fine children bereft.

Before returning to the Aitia let me make some tentative suggestions concerning the Hymns.

4. The Hymns At Daphnis and Chloe 2.18.1, after the rustics have routed the complaining Methymnans, Chloe takes Daphnis off to the Nymphs’ grove to bathe his face, blood-stained from a broken nose. This is done κατὰ πολλὴν ἡσυχίαν (‘in considerable tranquillity’), contrasting with the τάραχος (‘uproar’) of the rustics’ hot pursuit. The phrase πολλὴ ἡσυχία appears in Longus alone of the novelists, and although it is not uncommon in classical and imperial texts,6 the Daphnis and Chloe context of bathing and Nymphs might indicate that Longus drew it from Callimachus Hymn to Athena 5.74, where he emphasises, by repetition of ἁσυχία, the tranquillity in which Artemis and her Nymphs bathed: μεσαμβρινὰ δ’ εἶχ’ ὄρος ἁσυχία. ἀμφότεραι λώοντο, μεσαμβριναὶ δ’ ἔσαν ὧραι, πολλὰ δ’ ἁσυχία τῆνο κατεῖχεν ὄρος. Τειρεσίας δ’ ἔτι μῶνος ἁμᾶ κυσὶν ἄρτι γένεια περκάζων ἱερὸν χῶρον ἀνεστρέφετο

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midday tranquillity held the mountain. Both were bathing, and the hour was that of midday, and great tranquillity held that mountain in its grasp. Teiresias still, alone with his dogs, his chin just beginning to darken, was ranging through the sacred space.

That ἄρτι γένεια περκάζων may also be seen as one of the intertexts of ἀρτιγένειος at 1.15.1 and 4.10.2 (see above section 2) may give some support to the case for seeing this part of the Hymn to Athena as relevant to our reading of 2.18.1 — perhaps, like some of Longus’ tragic intertexts, pointing up how his pastoral world is one where the gods are a threat only to the impious, not, as in the traditional mythology treated by tragedy and Hellenistic poetry, to the merely inadvertent. There is also some similarity of content, though not of phraseology, between 2.20.3, where the Methymnans drag Chloe off πολλὰ τῶν ἀγαλμάτων κατακερτομήσαντες (‘uttering much abuse against the cult-statues’) 6. Cf. D. 8.12, 24.29, Isoc. Pac. 137, Areop. 80, Plut. Arat. 27.3, Cat. Mi. 70.7, Aem. 39.2, Dio of Prusa Or. 7.23, 12.51, Aristides Or. 51.56 Keil.

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and Erysichthon’s impious outburst in Callimachus’ Hymn to Demeter 6.53-5: ‘χάζευ’, ἔφα, ‘μή τοι πέλεκυν μέγαν ἐν χροῒ πάξω. ταῦτα δ’ ἐμὸν θησεῖ στεγανὸν δόμον, ᾧ ἔνι δαῖτας αἰὲν ἐμοῖς ἑτάροισιν ἄδην θυμαρέας ἀξῶ’. ‘Get back!’, he said, ‘lest I plant my great axe in your flesh. But these will make me a well-protected banqueting hall, in which forever shall I unceasingly hold heart-warming feasts for my companions.’

That similarity might add to our evidence for Longus’ familiarity with Callimachus’ Hymns. Similarly ἐπτοηθεῖσαι at 1.22.2 may have been noticed by Longus in Callimachus’ Hymn to Artemis, 3.190-191: ἧς ποτε Μίνως πτοιηθεὶς ὑπ’ ἔρωτι κατέδραμεν οὔρεα Κρήτης for whom Minos’ desire was set a-flutter so that he ran all over the mountains of Crete

But πτοιεῖσθαι is a word first known from Sappho,7 and far from rare.8 So this is not a strong case. An even less strong case is the suggestion by Morgan in his excellent Longus commentary that at 1.9.1 Longus alludes to Callimachus’ use of bees at Hymn to Apollo 110 as a symbol for the poet.9 Longus’ phraseology does not seem to me to point in this direction: βόμβος ἦν ἤδη μελιττῶν, ἦχος ὀρνίθων μουσικῶν, σκιρτήματα ποιμνίων ἀρτιγεννήτων· ἄρνες ἐσκίρτων ἐν τοῖς ὄρεσιν, ἐβόμβουν ἐν τοῖς λειμῶσιν αἱ μέλιτται, τὰς λόχμας κατῇδον ὄρνιθες. Now there was a buzzing of bees, the music of tuneful birds, the gambols of new-born sheep; lambs gambolled in the hills, the bees buzzed in the meadows, birds filled the thickets with song.

5. The Iamboi and Branchus From the Hymns I turn briefly to the Iamboi and Branchus. At Daphnis and Chloe 4.17.6 Gnathon cites Apollo’s love for Branchus in his list of precedents for his passion for Daphnis: αἶγας ἔνεμε Βράγχος, καὶ 7. Fr. 22.16 and 31.6 Voigt/Campbell. 8. Cf. e.g. πτοιήσεις, Archias, Anth.Pal. 7.214 = GP 3724-3731; ἐπτοημένος and ἐπτόημαι, Pollux 5.123; πτοούμενος, Pollux 1.197; πτοιητόν, Nicander, Alexipharmaca 243. 9. Morgan 2004: 157.

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Ἀπόλλων αὐτὸν ἐϕίλησε (‘Branchus was herding goats, and Apollo kissed him’). The somewhat recondite myth of Branchus was mentioned by Callimachus in his Iamboi (fr. 194.28 Pfeiffer) and was the subject of his poem entitled Branchus (fr. 229 Pfeiffer) where, as we know from Hephaestion (30.18 Consbruch), Callimachus told the story of Branchus in choriambic pentameters. The myth is mentioned in several places in the first four centuries AD,10 so Callimachus need not be Longus’ source for the myth. But it is tempting to me, at least, to think that Longus’ readers were expected to see Gnathon, οἷα πᾶσαν ἐρωτικὴν μυθολογίαν ἐν τοῖς τῶν ἀσώτων συμποσίοις πεπαιδευμένος, (‘since he had been taught the whole of amatory mythology in the symposia of the dissolute’, 4.17.3) as having supplemented that teaching by a reading of such metrically unusual poems as Callimachus’ Branchus. This suggestion may receive support from the fact that it is only in this sequence (4.14.2, 17.6) that Longus mentions that especially Callimachean god, Apollo, a rare exception to his general exclusion of Olympians.11

6. The Aitia again Let me now return to the Aitia, where I began in section 2 with the word ἀρτιγένειος. First, Longus 2.7.6: the old herdsman Philetas recalls how nothing assuaged his desire for Amaryllis: ἐκάλουν τὸν Πᾶνα βοηθόν, ὡς καὶ αὐτὸν τῆς Πίτυος ἐρασθέντα· ἐπῄνουν τὴν ’Ηχὼ τὸ ’Αμαρυλλίδος ὄνομα μετ’ ἐμὲ καλοῦσαν I would call on Pan to come to my aid, since he himself had desired Pitys; I would praise Echo when she called the name of Amaryllis after I did.

This has long been seen to be close to a passage in Propertius, 1.18.19-32, of which the key lines are as follows:12 vos eritis testes, si quos habet arbor amores, fagus et Arcadio pinus amica deo. ah quotiens vestras resonant mea verba sub umbras, scribitur et teneris ‘Cynthia’ corticibus! …..

20

10. Strabo 9.3.9, Lucian, de domo 24, dial. deorum 6.2, D.L. 1.72, Clem. Al. Strom. 5.8.48 (observing that Branchus’ foundation of Didyma is found in Callimachus’ Iamboi), Philostr. Epp. 5 and 8, Q.S. 1.283, Himerius 8.210. 11. Demeter is mentioned at 4.13.3, Hermes at 4.34.3, Zeus and Dionysus several times, but Athena, Artemis, Hera and Poseidon not at all. 12. 2.13.3-8 have also been brought into the discussion.

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sed qualiscumque’s, resonent mihi ‘Cynthia’ silvae, nec deserta tuo nomine saxa vacent.

31

You will be witnesses, if a tree experiences any desire, you, beech, and pine dear to the Arcadian god. Ah! How often do my words echo beneath your shade, and ‘Cynthia’ is written in your tender bark … But however you behave, the woods will echo my cry ‘Cynthia’, nor will the deserted rocks be without your name.

This passage in turn (on the basis of similarities in Aristaenetus 1.10) has been argued to relate to Callimachus, Acontius and Cydippe. In his discussion 35 years ago Richard Hunter tentatively concluded (1983: 79-81), that both Acontius and Cydippe and Longus might echo the Hellenistic poet Philitas. I suggest that Longus may echo both Philitas and Callimachus, though the view that Chariton and Longus knew Latin poetry has been much more forcefully argued recently than it was in 1983.13 But if Longus knew Callimachus’ Acontius and Cydippe, then his use of the term ἱστορία in his prooemion must be re-assessed. His opening sentence runs: ἐν Λέσβῳ θηρῶν ἐν ἄλσει Νυμϕῶν θέαμα εἶδον κάλλιστον ὧν εἶδον· εἰκόνα γραπτήν, ἱστορίαν ἔρωτος. In Lesbos, hunting, in a grove of the Nymphs I saw a spectacle that was the fairest I ever saw: an image that was painted, a story of desire.

The term ἱστορία appears elsewhere in the novels only at Heliodorus 2.29.5 (an ostentatiously Herodotean use, in the sense ‘enquiry’),14 and it might be thought to be an unexpected term for what will become Longus’ narrative. But significantly it is used by Callimachus, Aitia, fr. 75.6-7 Pfeiffer of another tale of ἔρως (‘desire’), that of Acontius and Cydippe, though as is pointed out by Harder 2012: 590 its meaning here “must be ‘information’ or ‘knowledge’ obtained by scholarly inquiries (see LSJ s.v. I 2) rather than just ‘story’ as suggested by e.g. Hopkinson ad loc. and d’Alessio’s translation”: ὤναο κάρτ’ ἕνεκ’ οὔ τι θεῆς ἴδες ἱερὰ φρικτῆς, ἐξ ἂν ἐπεὶ καὶ τῶν ἤρυγες ἱστορίην. You have benefited greatly that you did not see the rites of the dreadful goddess, since forth you would have spewed information even about them.

13. See Tilg (2010), Jolowicz (2015). 14. ἦλθον δὴ καὶ εἰς τὴν σὴν Αἴγυπτον καὶ Καταδούπους αὐτοὺς καθ’ ἱστορίαν τῶν καταρρακτῶν τοῦ Νείλου (‘Indeed I even came to your country Egypt and the Catadoupi themselves in pursuit of knowledge about the Nile’s cataracts’).

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Whether Longus, if he knew this couplet, understood ἱστορίη to mean ‘information’ or (like Hopkinson, d’Alessio and others) ‘story’, we cannot tell. If I seem to have made some case for Longus knowing the Aitia, then let me add two long shots. Longus’ animals are confined to pens in winter, 3.3.4: τότε βοῶν ἐπὶ ϕάτναις ϕροντὶς ἦν ἄχυρον ἐσθιόντων, αἰγῶν καὶ προβάτων ἐν τοῖς σηκοῖς ϕυλλάδας, ὑῶν ἐν τοῖς συϕεοῖς ἄκυλον καὶ βαλάνους. then attention was given to the cattle beside their mangers eating bran, to goats and sheep eating shoots in their pens, to pigs eating mast and acorns in their pig-sties.

Does this confinement recall that of Molorcus’ animals — which include a goat — penned in because of the depradations of the Nemean lion, as Molorcus describes at Aitia fr. 54b27–32? An even longer shot, which I can claim to be no more than a suspicion, is that the term νικητήριον with which Longus stamps the last triumphant speech of Daphnis at the very end of his Book 3 (3.34.3) is deployed partly to recall the prominence of the Victoria Berenices in Book 3 of the Aitia.

7. Some more key words. Now three further lexical throws. The opening word of the Aitia, πολλάκις, occurs 16 times in Longus, from its application to the frequent disappearance of the nanny-goat that suckles Daphnis (1.2.1) to its retrospective use of Chloe’s frequent baths in the spring of the Nymphs (4.32.3). This frequency is much higher than that of πολλάκις in any of the other three earlier novels: it averages 4 per book, as against 1.375 per book in Chariton, 1.8 per book in Xenophon of Ephesus, 2.625 per book in Achilles Tatius. Heliodorus, admittedly, has proportionately even more uses of πολλάκις, 4.9 per book. Longus’ use of λεπτός is also of interest. In it he outstrips all the other novelists: 1 instance in each book, as opposed to an average of 0.625 per book in Chariton and Achilles Tatius, 0.4 per book in Xenophon, and 0.3 per book in Heliodorus. Longus’ first and last uses of λεπτός are especially striking. In the first, at 1.10.2, Daphnis is described cutting slender reeds to make a syrinx, his main creator of music: ὁ δὲ καλάμους ἐκτεμὼν λεπτοὺς καὶ τρήσας τὰς τῶν γονάτων διαϕυάς, ἀλλήλοις τε κηρῷ μαλθακῷ

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συναρτήσας, μέχρι νυκτὸς συρίττειν ἐμελέτα (‘And he would cut slender reeds and after piercing their nobbly joints and fixing them to each other with soft beeswax would practise syrinx-playing until nightfall’). Daphnis never composes songs or poems, though at the party celebrating Chloe’s recovery he does, along with others, sing ᾠδὰς εἰς τὰς Νύμϕας, παλαιῶν ποιμένων ποιήματα (‘songs to the Nymphs, the creations of shepherds of old’, 2.31.2); so the music of the syrinx is for Daphnis what poetry is for Callimachus, and the epithet λεπτός given to the reeds from which his syrinx is fashioned becomes significantly Callimachean. Longus’ fourth and last use of λεπτός is of the dry-stone wall (αἱμασιά) that surrounds the garden (paradeisos, παράδεισος) of Dionysophanes at 4.2.4:15 καὶ ταῦτα μέντοι λεπτῆς αἱμασιᾶς περιέθει περίβολος (‘and around them [sc. the outer circle of non-fruiting trees] in turn ran a slender perimeter-wall of dry stones’. Why does Longus choose to describe the wall as ‘slender’ (λεπτῆς) when its protecting function would be better achieved if it were sturdy? The paradeisos, like Philetas’ garden in Book 2, is (amongst other things) a mis-en-abyme of Longus’ work as a whole, as many scholars have seen: early in Book 4, which we know from his preface will be his last,16 he uses this mis-en-abyme to ask us to contemplate his work’s combination of smallness of scale with superlative τέχνη: τέτμητο καὶ διακέκριτο πάντα καὶ στέλεχος στελέχους ἀϕειστήκει, ἐν μετεώρῳ δὲ οἱ κλάδοι συνέπιπτον ἀλλήλοις καὶ ἐπήλλαττον τὰς κόμας· ἐδόκει μέντοι καὶ ἡ τούτων ϕύσις εἶναι τέχνης. 6. ἦσαν καὶ ἀνθῶν πρασιαί, ὧν τὰ μὲν ἔϕερεν ἡ γῆ, τὰ δὲ ἐποίει τέχνη. Everything was divided and kept distinct, and tree-trunk stood apart from tree-trunk, whereas up in the air the branches hung close to each other and interwove their foliage: it seemed, however, that even their natural shape was the product of art. There were also beds of flowers, some of which the earth produced, whereas others were created by art. Longus, Daphnis and Chloe 4.2.5-6

It is to that small scale associated with extreme art, τέχνη, that Longus’ epithet λεπτός points, inviting readers to measure his Persian παράδεισος, and his work as a whole, not by the Persian chain, thus heeding the prescription of Aitia fr.1.17-18: αὖθι δὲ τέχνῃ | κρίνετε, μὴ σχοίνῳ Περσίδι τὴν σοφίην (‘and hereafter judge skill by art, not by the Persian chain’).17

15. The two other uses are at 2.12.3 (of the Methymnan pleasure-cruisers’ fishing lines) and 3.26.2 (of Daphnis’ slim hope of marrying Chloe given his foster-father’s poverty). 16. τέτταρας βίβλους, pr. 3. 17. For the ‘Persian chain’ see Harder (2012: 52-53).

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It is no surprise, then, that Longus also makes much more frequent use of the word τέχνη than the other novelists: they average 3.25 instances per book, beginning with the τέχνην περιττήν in the second sentence of his preface (of the painting with which his literary work competes), as opposed to 1.5 per book in Chariton, 1.4 in Xenophon, 1.75 in Achilles Tatius and 2.3 in Heliodorus. It may be held that no one of these suggestions on its own, even that concerning ἀρτιγένειος, goes very far towards showing that Longus knew and exploited Callimachus’ Aitia. But taken together they make a case that must at least be considered. And if Longus did know and decide to exploit the Aitia, a further question arises: was the rather unusual fourbook structure of Longus’ ἱστορία ἔρωτος also a tribute to Callimachus, as well as a general catalyst of readerly reflection on where Longus stands in relation to his many literary predecessors? And if his choice of four books is significant, what relation should we see between Daphnis and Chloe and Callimachus’ theme and title Aitia? Should we read as a tribute to the Aitia Longus’ inclusion in each of his first three books of a short μῦθος which in every case offers an αἴτιον — the tale of Phatta (1.27), the myth of Syrinx (2.34), the myth of Echo (3.23) — corresponding to which in his fourth book we are given the answers to our hitherto unanswered questions about the origins of Chloe and about the aition of the nymphs’ sanctuary and its paintings which opened Book 1? The number of features of the Aitia which are shared with Daphnis and Chloe is not small, and which of these was the first to catch Longus’ eye cannot even be guessed. It may, indeed, have been none of those already examined, but the image of Hesiod ‘shepherding his sheep’ (μῆλα νέμοντι) early in Aitia Book 1 (fr. 2.1-2).

8. Conclusions In my discussion above I began my examination of instances of possible intertextuality of Daphnis and Chloe with Callimachus with what seemed to me the one for which the strongest case could be made, and then I grouped further instances broadly by genre. In conclusion I want to revisit some of these instances in the order in which a reader of Longus encounters them, and ask what can be inferred about Longus’ agenda. Longus’ proem or preface immediately presents a concentration of Callimachean elements which may be noticed by a second-time reader (a reader who has been alerted by ἀρτιγένειος, see above section 2) and even by some first-time readers: the very existence of a preface, absent

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from our four other extant novels unless we include the rather different, albeit related, introductory sequence of Achilles Tatius 1.1-2; the highlighting of τέχνη; the announcement that the work will be divided into four books; and the description of its content as ἱστορία ἔρωτος. Longus’ account of the exposed babies’ discovery, naming and upbringing (1.1-10) establishes Theocritean pastoral poetry as his chief intertext, but that sequence concludes (1.10.2) with Daphnis’ syrinxmaking from reeds that are λεπτοί (see above section 7); only a few chapters later Chloe compares her love-sickness to a ἕλκος (1.14.1) and Dorcon is introduced as ἀρτιγένειος (1.15.1). After that concentration of possible Callimachean intertexts it is only in Book 2 that they reappear, with Philetas’ recollections of his desire for Amaryllis (2.7.6, see above section 6) and Chloe’s bathing of Daphnis κατὰ πολλὴν ἡσυχίαν (2.18.1, see above section 4). Book 3 has only two, less certain intertexts: the penned-in animals of 3.3.4 (see above section 6) and the description of winter as potentially ἀνέραστον at 3.11.3 (see above section 3) Book 4 has a much greater frequency. It opens with a further evocation of Callimachean τέχνη in its ecphrasis of Dionysophanes’ garden at 4.2.5-6 (see above section 7), then introduces Astylus as another youth who is ἀρτιγένειος (4.10.1); continues with Gnathon’s appeal to the myth of Apollo and Branchus (4.17.6, see above section 5) and with Dionysophanes’ account of his son and daughter dying on the same day (4.24.2, see above section 3). The final Callimachean touch in Daphnis and Chloe may be the recapitulory remark at 4.32.3 that Chloe had often, πολλάκις, bathed in the spring where readers had encountered her bathing Daphnis κατὰ πολλὴν ἡσυχίαν (2.18.1), reminding them that Longus’ Chloe has repeatedly drawn upon Callimachus as its πηγή, ‘source’.18 What is the nature of this intertextuality? On the one hand Longus is not reworking an earlier classic work or oeuvre to create something new that stands firmly in the same tradition, in the way that Quintus of Smyrna, for example, perhaps in the same century, hangs his Posthomerica predominantly upon the Iliad and the Odyssey. The two traditions in which Daphnis and Chloe stands are those of pastoral poetry and the novels, and other intertexts, such as Sappho, Callimachus, and Hellenistic epigram play a subordinate albeit important role.19 18. For the privileging of Chloe as the work’s subject cf. Pan’s description of her at 2.27.2 as παρθένον ἐξ ἧς ῎Ερως μῦθον ποιῆσαι θέλει (‘a maiden of whom Eros wants to create a myth’). 19. I discuss these and other intertexts in the introduction to my forthcoming commentary on Daphnis and Chloe in the Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics series.

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Nor, however, are these subordinate intertexts simply random demonstrations of Longus’ wide reading. Many of them invite his reader to add something from the text evoked to their response to a passage in Daphnis and Chloe — the hint at the erotic proclivities of an ἀρτιγένειος (which admittedly comes from the Theocritean, not the Callimachean intertext); the aura of Nymphs’ divine presence that is imparted by the phrase κατὰ πολλὴν ἡσυχίαν; the wide range of mythological knowledge that can be expected in urban pepaideumenoi as exemplified even in one of their lesser members, Gnathon, and that adds to our understanding of the society from which Dionysophanes and Megacles come; the profound grief that Dionysophanes must have felt, even if he does not now express it in his narrative, when his two children died. Such intertexts offer a subtle and economical enrichment of Longus’ slender work. REFERENCES Harder, M.A., 2012, Callimachus Aetia. Introduction, text, translation and commentary. Oxford. Hunter, R. L., 1983, A Study of Daphnis & Chloe. Cambridge. Hunter, R. L., 1999, Theocritus. A selection: Idylls 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 10, 11 and 13. Cambridge. Jolowicz, D., 2015, Latin Poetry and the Idea of Rome in the Greek Novel. DPhil. dissertation, Oxford. Morgan, J. R., 2004, Longus, Daphnis and Chloe, Oxford. Tilg, S., 2010, Chariton of Aphrodisias and the Invention of the Greek Love Novel. Oxford.

THE NEAR EASTERN BACKGROUND OF AETIOLOGICAL WORDPLAY IN CALLIMACHUS James J. CLAUSS

Wordplay in all kinds of narratives, including and especially aetiological, had a long history in the Near East many centuries before the Greeks arrived in the Balkan Peninsula.1 Before turning to Callimachus, I would like to examine briefly a small selection of surviving NE and early Greek texts that demonstrate the nature and frequency of the phenomenon in aetiological narrative. My sense is that aetiological wordplay among the Greeks likely originated within, or at least was highly influenced by, the long-term cultural and literary exchanges that took place between the Greek and Near Eastern peoples, an exchange fully and persuasively described by M. L. West in The East Face of Helicon (1997).2 In the case of Callimachus, beginning with obvious examples of aetiological wordplay in one of his earliest poems, the Hymn to Zeus, I will then turn to the Aetia on the assumption that we should expect to find significant evidence of this literary device in a poem dedicated to aetiology.3 In particular I will look for clusterings of puns, which characterize NE texts. There exists the possibility that, given the presence of Egyptian culture elsewhere in Callimachus’ poetry,4 the density of aetiological wordplay found in Egyptian narrative style might have influenced its presence in the Aetia. And yet one can only speculate on such a hypothesis. With regard to wordplay in general, Bruce Louden aptly notes: “a connection between two similar-sounding words … invests the relationship between them with additional meaning.”5 In his study of wordplay in Ovid, Ahl 1985: 9 observes that: “Greek and Roman writers often assumed that words which sound or look alike are related in meaning: a pun or double 1. Wordplay exists in many other cultures and languages (e.g, Sanskrit, Hindi, etc), but my focus is on the Near East as a likely influence on Greek and later Roman literature. 2. See also, e.g., Astour (1967); Burkert (1987); Mondi (1990); Burkert (1991); Burkert (1992); Morris (1992); Morris (1997); Dalley and Reyes (1998); Selden (1988); Raaflaub (2000); and more recently Noegel (2007: 191-233) who focuses on the influence of NE punning upon Greek literature. 3. Aetiological wordplay is largely a subset of etymological wordplay that supports aetiological stories. 4. As amply demonstrated by Stephens (2003: 1-121). 5. Louden (1995: 27).

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entendre is not an accident of language but evidence as to how apparently diverse things are related.”6 And as Ahmet Ünal states with even greater emphasis, the power of wordplay lies in “a belief in the efficacy and magical power of charged paronymous words.”7 Aetiological narratives would thus be particularly open to such lexical manipulation because of their inherent interest in creating belief in their content. That said, what established itself as a defining feature in early religious texts in future iterations of the same, related or comparable texts has the potential to become a literary device, a trope perhaps imagined as required of the genre, a striking example of which involves the Flood Story, discussed below.

1. Egyptian and Near Eastern Texts The Egyptian text entitled “Scroll of Knowing the Evolution of the Sun and of Overthrowing Apophis. Recitation” (Hallo and Younger 2004: 1.9; ANET 6-7; 1292-1069 BCE ?) described the creation of multiplicity from Atum, who is called the “Lord to the Limit” and “Evolver.” The Lord to the Limit, speaking after he evolved: I am the one who evolved as Evolver. When I evolved, evolution evolved. All evolution evolved after I evolved, evolutions becoming many in emerging from my mouth, without the sky having evolved, without the earth having evolved, without the ground or snakes having been created in that place. I became tied together in them out of the Waters, out of inertness, without having found a place in which I could stand. I became effective in my heart, I surveyed with my face. I made every form alone, without having sneezed Shu, without having spat Tefnut, without another having evolved and acted with me… I am the one who acted as husband with my fist: I copulated with my hand, I let fall into my own mouth I sneezed Shu and spat Tefnut… When I evolved into this world, Shu and Tefnut grew excited in the inert waters in which they were, and brought me my Eye after them. After I joined together my parts, 6. Ahl (1985: 9). 7. Ünal (2003: 378).

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I wept over them: this is the evolution of people, from the tears that came from my Eye.

The name Evolver plays on variations of the root ḫpr, “evolve,” including conjugated and participial forms such that the actions reflect and explain the god’s epithet. The god Shu (šw) was created by way of a sneeze (jṡš), while the goddess Tefnut (tfnt) came into being by way of spitting (tf), a “reference to the ‘etymological’ aetiology of these two gods” (J.P. Allen ad loc). The phrase “inert (nnw) waters (nwj)” plays on the divine name Nun, the primordial watery abyss, whose name derives from the former. “People” (rmṯ) are said to come from the “tears” (rmyt) of the god’s eye, creating another etymological aetiology (see below for a comparable play on words between λᾶας and λαός). Although simplistic, the intense wordplay is clearly self-conscious and underscores the evolutionary process described in the passage. As Faulkner 1994: 147 noted about the phenomenon of wordplay in general (cited by Noegel 2014: 31-32), even though puns may seem heavy-handed, as they are here, they were a means of connecting the divine and mortal plains and are at heart performative. In the Sumerian text “The Story of Enki and Ninhursaga” (full text in ETCSL 1.1.1), the goddess Ninhursaga agrees to cure the dying Enki. Asking him where he felt pain, for each ailing body part she created a divinity whose name contains a syllable of the organ (lines 254-263): (Ninhursaga asked:) “My brother, what part of you hurts you?” “The top of my head (ugu-dili) hurts me.” She gave birth to Ab’u out of it. “My brother, what part of you hurts you?” “The locks of my hair (siki) hurt me.” She gave birth to Ninsikila out of it. “My brother, what part of you hurts you?” “My nose (giri) hurts me.” She gave birth to Ningiriutud out of it. “My brother, what part of you hurts you?” “My mouth (ka) hurts me.” She gave birth to Ninkasi out of it. “My brother, what part of you hurts you?” “My throat (zi) hurts me.” She gave birth to Nazi out of it. “My brother, what part of you hurts you?” “My arm (a) hurts me.” She gave birth to Azimua out of it. “My brother, what part of you hurts you?” “My ribs (ti) hurt me.” She gave birth to Ninti out of it. “My brother, what part of you hurts you?”

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“My sides (zag) hurt me.” She gave birth to Ensag out of it.

The connection between the body part in need of healing and the creation of the divinity intended to bring about healing is clear and establishes an intimate relationship between the divine and mortal plains. Similar to the preceding Egyptian text, the dense wordplay performs a significant role in explaining the origin of the gods mentioned. The Hebrew Bible is replete with aetiological wordplay, and right from the beginning, as at Gen. 2.7: Yahweh created Adam (’ādām), which signifies both human being and the name of the first man, from the earth (’ădāmāh), to which state he will return after death (Gen. 3.19). Similarly, after God creates Eve from Adam’s rib, Adam states (Gen. 2.23): “This at last is bone from my bones, and flesh from my flesh! This is to be called woman (’išāh), for this was taken from man (’îš).”8 The story of the birth of the twins Esau and Jacob (Gen. 25.19-34) involves multiple aetiological puns. For instance, Esau was red at birth, ’admōnî, and his other name, ’ědōm, was associated with the red soup, ’ādōm, for which he sold his birthright, the event that provoked the enmity between the brothers, which accounted for the future Israelite subjugation of the Edomites, the descendants of Esau.9 The name Jacob, Ya‘ǎqōv, said to refer to his grabbing at his older twin’s heel (‘ǎqēv) at birth, ultimately plays out with the supplanting (‘āqav) of his brother as recipient of his father’s blessing. The clustering of puns parallels those observed in the Egyptian and Sumerian myths. Among many other name puns in the OT, a particularly delightful example involves the name Rachel (Rāḥēl), which means “ewe.” At the well of Haran, Jacob is informed that she is coming with the sheep: Rāḥēl … bā’āh. The verb bā’āh means “is coming” and also evokes the sound of the sheep that define her role.10 Modern scholarship on the topic reveals a host of other examples that leads to the conclusion that wordplay in pre-Greek Near Eastern texts is not, as Scott Noegel has pointed out again and again in his publications, merely a literary device nor is it for that matter playful, but rather it exerts a critical function by validating the information provided by the texts.11 8. All translations of biblical texts come from The Jerusalem Bible (1966). 9. His remarkable hair (se‘ar) also looks forward to his future home in the land of Se‘ir. 10. Noted by Noegel (2000: 164-165), who demonstrates the presence of a remarkable number of puns in the story of Jacob and Laban. 11. E.g., Noegel (2007: 40-41): “The employment of puns in the process of interpretation, therefore, constitutes an act of power. There is nothing ‘playful’ about wordplay in ancient Mesopotamia.” See also most recently Noegel (2014). As Noegel (2007)

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Given the profound influence of Near Eastern culture and literature upon the early Greeks, as mentioned above, it does not seem overly rash to suspect that the significant presence of wordplay in Greek and later Roman narratives, especially those of an aetiological nature, could well have its origin in Near Eastern models. Before turning to Callimachus, a brief look at a couple of early Greek examples is in order; many more could easily be adduced.

2. Hesiod At the beginning of the Theogony, Hesiod underscores his concern with communicating the truth (ἀληθέα γηρύσασθαι [Th. 28]; cf. ἐτήτυμα μυθησαίμην [Op. 10]), so given the close connection between his theogonic narrative and Near Eastern parallels,12 it would seem reasonable to expect wordplay validating the apparent truthfulness of his narrative by providing explanations in imitation of the earlier models. And in fact there are many well known aetiologies in the poem, of which I will only mention a few examples that resonate with the texts seen above. The Cyclopes, insofar as they made Zeus’ thunderbolt, were named after the three dominant aspects of the meteorological phenomenon (Th. 139-146): Brontes (βροντή, the sound), Steropes (στεροπή, the light), and Arges (the formulaic epithet of κεραυνός, the bolt that strikes).13 Together the names succinctly account for the tripartite nature of the thunderbolt as experienced by the Greeks. What makes this example particularly interesting is that Hesiod also feels the need to explain the generic name of these figures, Cyclopes, a need perhaps influenced by his NE models (Th. 142-145): οἱ δ’ ἤτοι τὰ μὲν ἄλλα θεοῖς ἐναλίγκιοι ἦσαν, μοῦνος δ’ ὀφθαλμὸς μέσσῳ ἐνέκειτο μετώπῳ· Κύκλωπες δ’ ὄνομ’ ἦσαν ἐπώνυμον, οὗνεκ’ ἄρα σφέων κυκλοτερὴς ὀφθαλμὸς ἕεις ἐνέκειτο μετώπῳ. They (the Cyclopes) were similar to the gods in other respects, but only one eye lay in the middle of their forehead. And the name they were given was Cyclopes because one circular eye lay in their foreheads. (my translation)

demonstrates with numerous examples, puns also play a key role in mantic and oneiromantic texts, whose function is equally performative. 12. West (1997: 276-305) makes this abundantly clear. 13. West (1966: 207).

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As is evident, the phrase κυκλοτερὴς ὀφθαλμὸς contains the two elements of the generic name: κυκλο- and ὀπ-/ωπ-, the latter of which is further echoed by the etymologically related μετώπῳ.14 Similar to the authors of the NE texts seen above, Hesiod seems to be fully aware of the linguistic evidence he offers in support of his etymology, an awareness that is even more pronounced in the following example. Because Ouranos did not allow his children to be born by remaining attached to his wife in the embrace of intercourse, Gaia devised a plan to allow birth to happen that would lead to the separation of heaven and earth, a critical stage in cosmic evolution. In addressing her unborn children, she asks for assistance and vengeance because their father initiated such shameless deeds: πρότερος γὰρ ἀεικέα μήσατο ἔργα (Th. 166, repeated by Kronos at 172). That μήσατο comes from μήδομαι (cf. ἀείκεα μήδετο ἔργα, Il. 22.395), which calls to mind μήδεα (genitals), seems pertinent, for Kronos exacts vengeance, separates heaven and earth, and allows for his and the births of his siblings to happen by cutting off his father’s genitals: φίλου δ’ ἀπὸ μήδεα πατρός / ἐσσυμένως ἤμησε (Th. 180-181).15 Thus because he conceived of (μήδομαι) shameless deeds, Ouranos loses his μήδεα when they are “harvested” (ἤμησε); given that Kronos was in origin a fertility divinity, the latter term assumes greater significance. Kronos then throws the μήδεα into the sea and from the foam of the semen (λευκὸς / ἀφρός, 190-191) there emerges a new goddess, Aphrodite (Ἀφροδίτη, 195), an august goddess (αἰδοίη, 194). As a scholiast noted, this term of respect, used of other goddesses, also refers to the sexual organs (cf. pudenda) from which Aphrodite arises.16 Hesiod makes this connection clear with another pun: Aphrodite is called φιλομμηδέα (“genital-loving”), a play on her more usual φιλομειδής (“laughter-loving”), because of her birth from μηδέων (Th. 200). This is precisely the sort of intense wordplay seen in the Egyptian and Sumerian examples, deployed in support of the “truthfulness” of the story. Many more examples from both Hesiod and Homer have long been observed, such as the famous examples of the play on Zeus’ name at Hes. Op. 1-5 and Odysseus’ name at Od. 1.60-62.17 The performative function of wordplay, especially when clustered, in aetiological texts, as found 14. Etymological wordplay was clearly a matter of issue for later scholarly writers, such as Plato in the Cratylus; see, e.g., West (1978: 138-39) regarding Hesiod’s play on the name of Zeus. But here I am focused exclusively on its employment in verse. 15. Hesiod’s φίλου διὰ μήδεα πατρός at Th. 398 shows that he is aware of the polysemous potential of the word. 16. Pace West (1966: 223), who rejects the scholiast’s suggestion. 17. See, e.g., West (1978: 138-39) and Louden (1995).

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everywhere in NE texts, appears in our earliest preserved Greek literature, and, similar to many other aspects of archaic Greek culture, likely owes its existence to NE influence, as can be most clearly seen in the following example.

3. The Flood Story The Hebrew Flood Story offers a fascinating example of a specific Near Eastern tale that brought with it in its Greek rendition a comparable explanation for the organization of the peoples of the region based on wordplay involving names; moreover it provides a clear example of the apparent need to include and/or accommodate wordplay in a borrowed aetiological account. In Genesis 9, after the flood, Noah invented wine and, overindulging in his new invention, fell asleep in his tent naked. His son Ham saw him and informed his brothers Shem and Japheth, who, walking backwards, covered their father. Because of this, Noah cursed Ham, the ancestor of the Canaanites, and blessed Shem and Japheth. Genesis 10 lays out the descendants of the three sons in a manner that places the sons of Japheth in Asia Minor and the Mediterranean islands, Ham’s sons in Egypt, Ethiopia, Arabia and Canaan, with Shem’s descendants in between. Noah’s curse of Ham (“Accursed be Canaan. He shall be his brother’s meanest slave”) is aetiological insofar as it anticipates and justifies the later domination of the descendants of Shem over this people, comparable to the experience of Esau’s descendants.18 As such, the genealogies offer a geopolitical account of the different peoples of the Eastern Mediterranean. The Genesis account not only explains the antipathy between the descendants of Shem (the Israelites) and Ham (the Canaanites) but also the close relationship between the descendants of Shem and Japheth (9.26-27), which includes a pun on the latter’s name: Blessed be Yahweh, God of Shem, let Canaan be his slave! May God extend (yapht) Japheth (Yephet), may he live in the tents of Shem, and may Canaan be his slave!

Japheth’s name, which comes from pātāh “to extend,” is realized in the extensive territory his descendants occupied, and the prayer accounts for the harmonious relations with Shem and his descendants. The accursed Ham, whose descendants will rule Caanan, is also the father of Egypt 18. Scott Noegel pointed out to me that Ham involves a bilingual pun inasmuch as the name means slave in Egyptian.

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(Miṣraim, Gen. 10.6), with whom the Israelites will likewise have difficulties in the years ahead. It is noteworthy that Japheth appears to have been taken over into Greek as Iapetus, the father of Prometheus, who in some accounts (e.g., Catalogue of Women 2 M&W/3 Most) is the father of Deucalion, which, if the identification is correct, reveals just how many parts of a borrowed Near Eastern account can migrate to a different cultural environment.19 Moreover, Japheth’s sons include Yāvān (Gen. 10.2), ancestor of the Ionians, which hints at the further possibility of a direct link between mythological traditions. The Greek rendition of the aftermath of the Flood Story, naming Deucalion and Pyrrha’s descendants, functions similarly but limits its purview to the ethnic divisions of the Greeks. In the Catalogue of Women 4 M&W/5 Most, we learn that among the several children of Deucalion and Pyrrha was Hellen, the eponym of the Hellenes; 9 M&W/Most informs us that Hellen sired Dorus, Xouthus, and Aeolus; 10a.21-24 M&W/Most identifies the children of Xouthus as Achaeus, Diomede, and almost certainly Ion.20 The resulting onomastic genealogy accounts for the major branches of the Hellenic people — Doric, Aeolic, Ionic and Achaean (see Apollod. 1.7.3, Str. 8.7.1, Paus. 7.12, Conon 27) — and thus serves the same function as the list of the descendants of Noah’s sons, with the exception that it does not include non-Greek peoples, making it an entirely Hellenocentric accounting of the people who came into existence after the flood as opposed to the more inclusive Hebrew narrative. The aftermath of the Flood Story in the Greek versions also includes a telling example of wordplay; namely the repopulation of the world by way of stones. Although none of the surviving fragments of the Catalogue of Women treats the story of the Flood per se, Strabo (7.7.2) ascribes to Hesiod the creation of the Leleges from stones some two generations after the time of Deucalion in a quotation that likely comes from the Catalogue (234 M&W/251 Most; the text and translation are from the latter):21 ἤτοι γὰρ Λοκρὸς Λελέγων ἡγήσατο λαῶν, τοὺς ῥά ποτε Κρονίδης Ζεὺς ἄφθιτα μήδεα εἰδὼς λεκτοὺς ἐκ γαίης ΛΑΟΥΣ πόρε Δευκαλίωνι For Locrus led the Lelegan people, whom once Cronus’ son Zeus, who knows eternal counsels, gave to Deucalion, pebble-people gathered up from the earth. 19. See West (1966: 202-03). 20. See Gantz (1993:1.167) for this and for the other offspring associated with Deucalion and Pyrrha. 21. As D’Alessio (2005: 225 n. 36) suggests, this does not preclude an earlier instance of the device. On Locrus’ place in Deucalion’s genealogy, see Fowler (2001-13: 2.140-47).

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In the fragment, the “people (λαός) gathered up from the earth” allude to the throwing of stones (λᾶας) by Deucalion and Pyrrha over their backs, as recounted by Acusilaus (fr. 35 Fowler), which in this instance resulted in the autochthonous creation of the Leleges, an action prompted by Zeus. Why the Leleges in particular is explained by the further pun contained in associating this people (Λελέγων) with the process of gathering (λεκτοὺς) the stones from the earth. Pindar (O. 9.42-53) is the earliest extant author to associate this act of creation with the flood and to expand this creation beyond the Leleges to all people, an action also ascribed to Zeus.22 The importance of embedding an aetiological pun in the Flood Story was apparently so ingrained in this Near Eastern tale that in his version in the Metamorphoses Ovid — or an earlier source — refashioned the Greek pun in order to accommodate the wordplay in Latin (Met. 1.400415): saxa (quis hoc credat, nisi sit pro teste vetustas?) ponere duritiem coepere suumque rigorem mollirique mora mollitaque ducere formam. mox ubi creverunt naturaque mitior illis contigit, ut quaedam, sic non manifesta videri forma potest hominis, sed uti de marmore coepta non exacta satis rudibusque simillima signis, quae tamen ex illis aliquo pars umida suco et terrena fuit, versa est in corporis usum; quod solidum est flectique nequit, mutatur in ossa, quae modo vena fuit, sub eodem nomine mansit, inque brevi spatio superorum numine saxa missa viri manibus faciem traxere virorum et de femineo reparata est femina iactu. inde genus durum sumus experiensque laborum et documenta damus qua simus origine nati.23 It is much beyond belief, were not receding ages witness, hard and rigid stones assumed a softer form, enlarging as their brittle nature changed to milder substance — till the shape of man appeared, imperfect, faintly outlined first, as marble statue chiseled in the rough. The soft moist parts were changed to softer flesh, the hard and brittle substance into bones, the veins retained their ancient name. And now the Gods supreme ordained that every stone Deucalion threw should take the form of man, and those by Pyrrha 22. See Gantz (1993:1.165-166) and West (1985: 52), who includes the fragment with the Catalogue. 23. Ovid borrowed the phrase genus durum from Vergil G. 1.62-63, as noted by O’Hara 2017: 255, in the context of Deucalion’s throwing of the stones. The translation is that of Brookes More, Ovid Metamorphoses. Boston 1922, taken from the Perseus website.

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cast should woman’s form assume: so are we hardy to endure and prove by toil and deeds from what we sprung.

The fact that humans arose from stones explains our hardy nature but in place of the implied association of λαός-λᾶας (paronomasia), Ovid replaces it with a polysemous pun: vena refers both to a vein in the human body and that in a stone;24 the aetiological pun thus explains the source of human veins and confirms the metamorphosis. Here too it is a god, in this case Themis (Met. 1.375-383), who offers the solution to repopulating the earth, which maintains the association of divine enactment in the story.25 While the recreation of people after the flood from stones does not form a part of the Genesis narrative, there is evidence nonetheless that it may reflect an aetiological pun in Hebrew. Biblical scholars have made the intriguing suggestion that a passage in the New Testament, when read through Hebrew, might possess a comparable wordplay.26 At Matthew 3.9 John the Baptist states: And do not presume to tell yourselves, “We have Abraham for our father,” because, I tell you, God can raise children (bānîm; τέκνα) for Abraham from these stones (’ǎbānîm; λίθων).

Elsewhere, Noegel (2000: 165-166) notes a similar collocation involving stone, son and father (’ab) in Genesis 29-30. The quotation in Matthew includes all three of these elements, ’ab being present in the name of Abraham, “father of multitudes,” which seems to be a significant detail in the saying. I suspect that behind this statement lies an old Hebrew (possibly more broadly Mesopotamian) account of human creation from stones,27 which wended its way west at some point — perhaps as a part of the first flood story encountered by the Greeks — and became an integral feature of the tale. So in addition to the presence of clusters of puns in service of an aetiological account, the stories seen immediately above lead us directly back to the NE and demonstrate the apparent importance for writers to incorporate wordplay, even if it means finding a functional solution in their own languages. 24. On these two types of puns in Near Eastern texts, see Watson (1984: 241-243). For more on other wordplays in this episode, see Ahl (1985:114-116). 25. It is perhaps worth noting Themis’ association with Prometheus, father of Deucalion, as in some accounts she was his mother (Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound) or in others the person who reveals the secret of Thetis’ fate, which is also intimately associated with Prometheus (Pi. I. 8.30-45; cf. A.R. 4.799-804). 26. E.g., Argyle (1963: 36). The pun also works in Aramaic: ’abnayyâ (stones), b(e)nayya. 27. Unfortunately, Stith Thompson (1955-58): A1245 and A1245.1 does not include any Near Eastern parallels.

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4. Callimachus With this age-old tradition in mind, I now turn to Callimachus.28 What makes aetiological puns in Callimachus potentially more intriguing is that he wrote in Egypt, which possessed a traditional literature for which aetiological wordplay was ubiquitous. I begin with the early Hymn to Zeus. Although most of its wordplays have long been observed, it will be useful to review the poem in the context of the present discussion, especially as it abounds in aetiological puns, looking very much like the Egyptian myth cited at the beginning of this paper.29 4.1. Hymn to Zeus The Hymn to Zeus opens with a striking repetition within the first nine lines, suggesting that the poet is up to something from the very start: Ζηνὸς ἔοι τί κεν ἄλλο παρὰ σπονδῇσιν ἀείδειν λώϊον ἢ θεὸν αὐτόν, ἀεὶ μέγαν, αἰὲν ἄνακτα, Πηλαγόνων ἐλατῆρα, δικασπόλον Οὐρανίδῃσι; πῶς καί νιν, Δικταῖον ἀείσομεν ἠὲ Λυκαῖον; ἐν δοιῇ μάλα θυμός, ἐπεὶ γένος ἀμφήριστον. Ζεῦ, σὲ μὲν Ἰδαίοισιν ἐν οὔρεσί φασι γενέσθαι, Ζεῦ, σὲ δ’ ἐν Ἀρκαδίῃ· πότεροι, πάτερ, ἐψεύσαντο; ‘Κρῆτες ἀεὶ ψεῦσται’· καὶ γὰρ τάφον, ὦ ἄνα, σεῖο Κρῆτες ἐτεκτήναντο· σὺ δ’ οὐ θάνες, ἐσσὶ γὰρ αἰεί. Would anything else be better to hymn at libations of Zeus than the god himself, ever great, ever lord, router of the Titans, dispenser of justice for the sons of Uranus? But how shall we hymn him, as Dictaean or Lycaean? My heart is in doubt, for the birth is contested. Zeus, some say you were born in the Idaean mountains; Zeus, others say in Arcadia. Which of them is telling falsehoods, father? “Cretans always lie.” And indeed, Lord, the Cretans built a tomb for you; but you are not dead, you live forever.30

28. On etymological wordplay among the Alexandrians in general, see O’Hara (2017: 21-42) with references to the significant bibliography on the subject. Several of the items mentioned below are included in O’Hara’s excellent survey. 29. In this I follow O’Hara’s approach of starting from the more obvious examples in order to “develop the competence necessary to notice or recognize less explicit examples” (2017: 24). 30. The translation is that of Stephens (2015).

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It is hard not to see and hear a connection between the verb “to sing” (ἀείδειν, ἀείσομεν) and the adverb “always” in its various forms (ἀεὶ, αἰὲν, αἰεί). The pun arises in the context of a question regarding Zeus’ immortality. Cretans claimed to have built a tomb for Zeus, but Callimachus rejects this proposition because the god has not died but lives forever, ἀεί. Moreover he also lives forever because he is always the topic of song, as is suggested by an apparent link between ἀείδειν, ἀεί + ζῆν and αει + Δην (a form preserved by Hdn. Gr. 2.911).31 By associating the verb for singing with Zeus and immortality, the apparent etymology ascribes to poetry divine timelessness in a format not dissimilar to the etymologies found in the Egyptian (e.g., tfnt coming from tf) and Sumerian (e.g., Ensag coming from zag) examples seen above, although in this case it is the name of the god which generates the related word. The birth narrative of Zeus in the hymn also contains a number of puns that function within an aetiological account of the first appearance of rivers in Arcadia and the transfer of the infant god to Crete (Jov. 10-54). Rhea (Ῥείη [10], Ῥέη [21]) gave birth to Zeus in Παρρασίη (10) then occupied by the Ἀπιδανῆες (14). Though the latter refers to Peloponnesians, derived from the legendary king Apis, the term could also allude to the time when Arcadia did not have water: Σ ad D.P. 415, for instance, associates the word with α-πῖδαξ or α-πίνω. Such wordplay seems even more likely given the fact that as a result of the miraculous emergence of water the locals now drink (πίνουσι, 41).32 After giving birth Rhea looked for a stream of water (ῥόον ὕδατος, 16) to cleanse herself and the infant Zeus. But not yet did the Ladon or Erymanthus flow (ἔρρεεν, 18) because Arcadia, called Ἀζηνίς (20), was completely without rain (ἄβροχος ἦεν ἅπασα, 19), such that someone walking on the beds of future rivers would be thirsty (διψαλέος, 27), despite the presence of much water below their feet.33 To rectify the situation, Rhea asks Gaia to give birth to water, as her birth pangs are easy (τεαὶ δ’ ὠδῖνες ἐλαφραί, 29). So striking a mountain with her staff, there “flowed a great flow” (ἐκ δ’ ἔχεεν μὲγα χεῦμα, 32),34 which would be called the Neda river after the nurse who carried 31. As noted by Hopkinson (1988: 122) and Cuypers (2004: 105). Hopkinson (1984: 139) aptly compares the similar wordplay at Theoc. 16.1-4 and underscores what we have been seeing all along: that wordplay was “more than a learned game” and represented “visible manifestations of divine activity” (141), precisely the same function it served in NE texts. 32. The connection was noted by Hopkinson (1988: 126). 33. Tandy (1979: 80) observed that ἁβροχος was “the term applied to that part of the Nile basin which fails to be inundated by the annual flood.” On the association of the Nile with the emergence of rivers, see below. 34. ἔχεεν … χεῦμα is an example of figura etymologica, a very common form of wordplay in Near Eastern texts; see Watson (1984: 239), who prefers the term “turn.”

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Zeus to Crete for safeguarding. Rhea, whose name is associated with flowing (ῥέω) and ease (ῥεῖα),35 thus brings about with ease the creation of water for the “drinkless” Ἀπιδανῆες in Ἀζηνίς, which suggests ἀ-Ζήν/ἀ-ζῆν, without Zeus/without life, the former signaled by the opening word of the hymn, Ζηνός.36 The cluster of puns accounting for the flow of water thanks to Rhea at the birth of Zeus resembles the Egyptian and Sumerian texts seen above. And the puns continue. When Rhea created the Neda river, she lifted up her arm (πῆχυν, 30) in order to strike (πλῆξεν, 31) the mountain. Once in Crete, the nymph Neda, after whom the river was named, hands Zeus over to the companions of the Curbantes who take him into their arms (προσεπηχύναντο, 46), after his umbilical cord (ὀμφαλός, 44) fell off giving rise to the Omphalian (Ὀμφάλιον, 45) Plain. Thereafter the sudden appearance of the Panacrian bees who supplied honey for the infant god (ἐξαπιναῖα Πανακρίδος ἕργα Μελίσσης, 50) resulted in the naming of the hills of Ida Panacra (Πάνακρα, 51).37 As part of the plan, Couretes (Κούρητες, 52) danced and struck (πεπλήγοντες, 53) their armor to keep Cronus from hearing Zeus’ infant cries (κουρίζοντος, 54), effectively providing an etymology for the Couretes (McLennan 1977: 90 and O’Hara 2017: 34 n. 169). In what follows (lines 55-90), the puns become less intense, but are still present. While still a boy, all of his plans were perfectly executed (πάντα τέλεια, 57), the result of eating the honey of Panacra (Πάνακρα), and also the quality of Zeus’ avatar on earth (τελεῖ, 87).38 According to the hymnist, it was because of his deeds, not the casting of lots, that Zeus was made king (οὔ σε θεῶν ἑσσῆνα πάλοι θέσαν, ἔργα δὲ χειρῶν, / σή τε βίη τό τε κάρτος, ὃ καὶ πέλας εἵσαο δίφρου, 66-67). Given that ἑσσῆνα is a term used of the “king” of the bees (cf. Σ ad loc.), we can also connect this term with the eating of Panacrian honey (as McLennan 1977:103). The potential for wordplay in the name of the mountain might also suggest παν + κρ, with the latter referring to κάρτος/κράτος (67) and hinting at the concept of “all-mighty” (cf. πανυπέρτατε, 91), perhaps -κρι which anticipates Zeus’ judgment of kings, mentioned at lines 35. So, eg., Hopkinson (1984: 141-42) and Stephens (2015: 58); on the association between Ῥείη and ἐλαφραί, see McLennan (1977: 61). On Nicander’s play on Rhea’s name signifying ease, see Clauss (2006). 36. As Tandy (1979: 82) notes, while the name might be derived from ἄζα (dryness), this does not preclude a pun on the name of Zeus. Similarly δίζητο (16) might call Δι- Ζη- to mind (Hopkinson 1984: 142) and διεροῦ (24) might also have been associated with Zeus as the source of rain (Hopkinson 1988: 125). 37. Given the intensity of the puns, I wonder if ἐξαπιναῖα might also be read as ἐξ-απιναῖα; that is, after the time of not drinking. 38. τέλεια also plays on Zeus’ cult title Τέλειος, as noted by Tandy (1979: 140).

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81-83, or perhaps κραίνω, underscoring his ability to accomplish. In any event, Πάνακρα appears to engage a number of possibilities. Regardless of how we interpret this toponym, as Stephens (2003: 107-108) noted, a hieroglyphic symbol for the king of Lower Egypt was the bee, another reason why ἑσσῆνα is so apt a term for Callimachus’ ruler (as Stephens 2003: 107-108; 2015: 68).39 With this in mind, as Callimachus moves toward the climax of the hymn, he celebrates his unnamed ruler, whom most identify as Ptolemy Philadelphus, and notes that Zeus gives wealth (ῥυηφενίην, 84) to kings, but not to all equally, as can be judged by our king (ἡμετέρῳ μεδέοντι, 86?). As a result of Zeus’ generosity, he outstrips all of the other rulers. As the scholiast on the line noted, ῥυηφενίην comes from the combination of a form of ῥέω (ῥύδην, hence ῥύσιν) and ἄφενος. Thus Zeus’ role of giving wealth to kings, whose portion he has chosen for himself, appears to be directly linked with, and accordingly explained by, the circumstances of his birth to Rhea and subsequent flowing of water, a critical resource in Egypt supplied by the Nile (as noted by Stephens 2015: 69). In his clever take on the traditional hymnic envoi, Callimachus requests ἄφενος (94, 96, with a nod toward 84) from Zeus, who we see is the one from whom such largess flows, effectively bringing the two major sections of the poem — Zeus’ birth and acquisition of power — to an elegant conclusion with an unexpected twist: Callimachus asks to be included in flow of affluence as the singer of the eternal god in the reprise of the ἀεί wordplay to which he returns at the conclusion of the hymn (ἀείδοι … ἀείσει, 92-93). As mentioned near the start of this paper, wordplay in Egyptian and other Near Eastern aetiological narratives was particularly dense. While the phenomenon in Greek literature at this point in time had a very long history, originating in all likelihood in the Near East, given the intensity of punning in this hymn I am drawn to the possibility that local practice was influential, especially because of Ptolemaic interest in supporting the notion that their dynasty was a natural extension of the Pharaohs. In particular, the focus on water within the wordplay and its importance in Egypt as a source of wealth and thus royal power support an Egyptian literary context.40 39. With regard to lines 87-88, both McLennan (1977: 124) and Tandy (1979: 168) refer to the Kubban stele honoring Ramesses II which celebrates the pharaoh’s ability to accomplish what he dreamt of during the night at dawn. Another Egyptian connection? 40. Barbantani (2014) offers detailed examples of bilingual epitaphs in Greek and Egyptian, demonstrating that some Alexandrians could speak or understand Egyptian, which allows for the possibility that the scholars were equally capable. I am grateful to Dr. Barbantani for calling my attention to this important paper.

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4.2. Aetia Since wordplay is a critical component in aetiological narrative, we should expect that Callimachus’ most aggressively aetiological poem, written in Egypt and honoring the royal family, would be particularly rich in this literary trope. When dealing with fragmentary literature, one necessarily needs to use imagination and intuition, guided by the application of a consistent methodology, in order to gain insight into the many and tantalizing textual interstices. With this in mind I shall explore several passages in the Aetia under the assumption that wordplay should play a significant role, whether because of its traditional use in Greek poetry, the influence of Egyptian literature in particular, or both, particularly given the need to “see double” (Stephens 2003) when dealing with Alexandrian literature. 4.2.1. The Sicilian Towns (Aet. 43 Harder) I begin with the surviving section of a significant amount of text from Book 2 that deals with cults in honor of the founders of several cities in Sicily culminating in the odd case of Zankle, which does not name its founder(s) during the annual festival. We are fortunate in having what looks like the beginning — albeit fragmentary — of the aetion signaled by a paragraphos below line 17 of 43 Harder and the conclusion, similarly marked at 43.83 Harder. From line 43.18, which might well begin with a verb such as ἔ]ννεπ[ε (Barigazzi) or ἔ]ννεπ[ον (Magnelli), to 43.27, it appears that Callimachus asked the Muses why it is that only in Zancle the residents do not invite the founders by name (ἀνάκλησις) to their annual festivals (εἰλαπίνη). From c. 43.28 to 55, Callimachus catalogues those cities that name their founders, following which Clio explains the circumstances involving Zancle. Since the aetion involves naming, based on the premise that aetiology has the potential to involve dense wordplay we might expect to find wordplay involving the names of the founders, and in fact we do. As Harder (2012: 2: 313) notes, we are unable to determine a program for the arrangement of the cities included in the aetion, which could well depict the random recitation of facts collected by an overachieving antiquarian. The ancient commentary to line 28 notes that Syracuse was included (43a 28-30 Harder), so this city reasonably lies behind πόλιν in line 28.41 Interestingly, its founder was Archias (Th. 6.3.2), who may or may not have been mentioned; might a name associated with beginnings offer a rationale for its position? Catane boasted of two founders: Theocles 41. See Massimilla (1996: 325-26) for further details.

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and Euarchus. The ancient commentary to 43a. 31-2 discusses the latter so that ἄλλον ἀύτει/ἀυτεῖ might mean “Catane, though founded by Theocles, called upon Euarchus” (as Harder 2012 2: 315). Not only do we have a verb for invoking the founders, but the choice of Euarchus might link with the expressed or unexpressed founder of Syracuse, Archias. Theocles had founded Naxus before Catane and he is invoked there in a manner that plays upon his name: καλεῖν … /… Θεοκλέες (35-36 Harder).42 As Massimilla (1996: 327-28) points out, the phrase ἔρχεο Νάξ[ον probably recalls the formula of invitation to the banquet. βοή (43.39 Harder) offers yet a third term associated with invocation of the founder in the context of Thapsus.43 Although we have little to go on in these lines, the number of instances of verbs referring to speech acts is notable. The only preserved information for the next entry, Camarina, is the name of its river, but it begins with another speech act: φήσω (43.42 Harder); the poet will complete his catalogue with the same verb, ὣς ἐφάμην (43.56 Harder). Beginning with the following city, Gela, the text becomes more substantial (43.46-47 Harder): οἶδα Γέλα ποταμοῦ κεφαλῇ ἔπι κείμενον ἄστυ Λίνδοθεν ἀρχαίῃ [σ]κιμπ[τόμενο]ν γενε[ῇ I know of the town situated at the mouth of the river Gela, which boasts of its ancient origins from Lindos44

As it happens, Gela was founded by Ἀντίφημος (Hdt. 7.153.1), whose name Callimachus does not mention, but which might be present by way of the preceding φήσω instead; does the Ἀντι- prefix in some way reflect the absence of his name? With regard to the etymology of the name Gela from its river Gelas, Callimachus’ use of the Doric genitive (Γέλα, 43.46 Harder) provides the name of the city by demonstrating how it comes from that of the river — literally.45 Might the accentuation on its antiquity (ἀρχαίῃ) also reecho the names of the founders Archias and Euarchus in the context of an aetion about naming? In the listings of Euboea and Eryx, Callimachus states (43.52-53 Harder): ἔχω δ’ Εὔβοιαν ἐνισπε[ῖν φίλατο κα[ὶ] κεστ[ο]ῦ [δ]εσπότ[ι]ς ἣν Ἔρυκα· 42. If we read ὀνομασ]τί before καλεῖν as Ehlers apud Harder (2012 2: 316), Callimachus would call attention to his name game. 43. Cf. D’Alessio’s intriguing suggestion that, by editing ε Θάψε to ἔθαψε, Callimachus might refer to the burial of Hieron (mentioned at 43.38 Harder) at Aetna, the settlement that replaced Catana (1996: 2.424 n.13); see also Massimilla (1996: 328-29). 44. Translations of the Aetia passages are from Harder (2012). 45. N.B.: in the case of the λᾶας – λαός pun, λᾶος is the genitive of λᾶας.

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and I can tell about Euboea and about Eryx, which the mistress of the strap loved;

In addition to the inclusion of a by-form of ἐννέπω, with which the aetion perhaps began and which reechoes the focus on speech, there appears to be some sort of verbal game wherein being able to speak about Euboea is followed up with a phrase whose syntax is almost impenetrable. At the conclusion of his catalogue, Callimachus points out that in none of the cities he listed do the founders come to the customary banquet without being named (τάων οὐδεμιῇ γὰ[ρ ὅτ]ις πο[τὲ] τεῖχος ἔδειμε / νωνυμνὶ νομίμην ἔρχ[ε]τ’ ἐπ’ εἰλαπίνην, 43.54-55 Harder). The choice of the unparalleled νωνυμνὶ clearly plays on νομίμην, underscoring the customary practice of naming the founders; again the focus remains aptly on names. The residents of Zancle (Ζάγκλη), on the other hand, whose name concludes with a syllable that calls to mind the verb “to call, invite” do not do so in response to Apollo’s oracle. Apollo spoke (φῆ … φῆ [43.76-78 Harder]), informing them not to invite either Perieres or Crataemenes. The people listened ἐ[κ δ’ ἔτι κεί]νου γαῖα τὸν οἰκιστὴν οὐκ ὀνομαστὶ κ[αλε]ῖ ὧδε δέ μιν καλέουσιν ἐπ’ ἔντομα δημ[ι]οεργοί ‘ἵ]λαος ἡμετέρην ὅστις ἔδειμε [πόλ]ιν ἐ]ρχέσθω μετὰ δαῖτα, πάρεστι δὲ καὶ δύ’ ἄγεσθαι καὶ πλέας· οὐκ ὀλίγως α[ἷ]μα βοὸς κέχυται.’ (43.78-80 Harder) “ … and ever since the country does not call its founder by name, but the magistrates call him to the sacrifices as follows: ‘Let whoever built our town come to the meal in graciousness, and he may bring either two or more guests with him: the ox’s blood has been shed in no small quantity’.”

The situation stands clearly opposite the summoning (καλεῖν) of Theocles (43.35-36 Harder). It is now clear, pace Harder 2012: 2.335, why Clio (Κλειώ) tells the tale: her name plays both on the verb καλέω, used several times in the episode, and Ζάγκλη, whose name is not mentioned directly in the story but alluded to in the sickle (ζάγκλον, 43.71 Harder) used to castrate Uranus, which lay buried in an underground cave.46 Clio traces the problem back to the fact that the citizens ignored a bird of bad omen for colonists (ἔχθιστον κτίστῃσιν), the ἅρπασος who is hated especially when surveyors (γεωδαῖται) are building roads (43.61-65 46. Although the term is Siculan (cf. Massimilla 1996: 339, 347-48), the theme of inviting founders—καλεῖν—easily puns on Zankle.

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Harder). As it happens, the word ἅρπη, from which the bird’s name comes, also means sickle, the implement from which Zancle took its name. Being that Zancle is associated with the sickle used to castrate Uranus, the choice to mention “land” surveyors and the reference to the people of Zancle as γαῖα (43.79 Harder) would appear to engage the castration tale that explains the city’s name, Gaia being Uranus’ wife who instigated the event. Moreover, the sickle that gives its name to Zancle is described with an unparalleled use of γύπη: κέκρυπται γύπῃ ζάγκλον ὑπὸ χθονίῃ (43.71 Harder). Given its creation by Gaia and its original subterranean deployment, not only is it well placed, there appears to be some sort of verbal play. Finally, in the phrase μεγάλου λῆμα Κραταιμένεος (43.59 Harder), the first two words appear to explain the name of the second of the two founders mentioned: μέγας is picked up in κραταιός, while λῆμα and μένος can both refer to passionate disposition (similar to the etymology of the Cyclopes seen above). To conclude, the large number of words associated with speaking, naming and calling that lead to a story told by Clio about the founding of a city by the name of Zancle, whose founders are not called to the annual founding celebration parallels the density of naming puns seen in Near Eastern texts. Moreover, Vergil may have observed the clustering of aetiological wordplay in this passage given the number of etymologizing glosses included in Aeneas’ circumnavigation of Sicily at A. 3.692-708.47 4.2.2. Acontius and Cydippe (Aet. 67-75e Harder) I find a similar potential for sustained wordplay of the sort seen above in the aetiological account of the Acontiadae on Ceos in the story of Acontius and Cydippe. As has already been noted, Acontius’ name calls to mind a word for javelin, ἀκόντιον, a potential for wordplay noted by Ovid in his adaptation of the story (Ep. 21.209-12):48 Mirabar quare tibi nomen Acontius esset; Quod faciat longe vulnus, acumen habes. Certe ego convalui nondum de vulnere tali, Ut iaculo scriptis eminus icta tuis. 47. See Geymonat (1993: 238-31) and O’Hara (2017: 92, 147-50). 48. As noted by Massimilla (2010: 342) and O’Hara (2017: 32), who also notes reverberations of the pun at Ecl. 10.60 (252) and A. 11.615-17 (231); Rosen and Farrell (1986) discuss the former at greater length and identify spicula as a gloss on Acontius’ name (252). Colonna in his review of Pfeiffer, cited by Massimilla (2010: 332), suggested that the etymological game was signaled near the start of the aetion in the phrase οὔνομα κουρίδιον. While the latter does not connect directly with the name, perhaps the fact that Acontius aimed at achieving a name (that of husband) foregrounds the importance of a name game. Harder (2012: 571) only allows for the possibility of the wordplay, calling it “conceivable.”

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I was wondering why your name was Acontius; you have a sting that can wound from far off. I have not yet clearly recovered from the wound, struck at a distance by your letter as if by a javelin. (my translation)

Callimachus begins the episode by telling us that Eros taught Acontius because he was not very “sharp” (οὐ γὰρ ὅγ’ ἔσκε πολύκροτος, 67.3 Harder; metaphorically speaking, more on this below).49 The potential for a sustained pun on his name arises among some of the fragments, as for instance when the poet mentions that those in love with Acontius tossed drops from their cups on the ground (69 Harder): πολλοὶ καὶ φιλέοντες Ἀκόντιον ἧκαν ἔραζε οἰνοπόται Σικελὰς ἐκ κυλίκων λάταγας and many wine-drinkers, who were in love with Acontius let the Sicilian drops fall from the cups to the ground

The phrase Ἀκόντιον ἧκαν, as first encountered, can be read as “they tossed a javelin.” Moreover, the bend of the arm in the game of cottabus, ἀγκύλη, as we learn from Hesychius (a 566 s.v.), was ἀκόντιον, as Harder (2012: 2.569) points out; thus the presence of the name in the context of a game of cottabus, alluded to here, offers a potential double entendre. It is ironic that the one who caused so many to lust for him should himself feel the heat of passion, and described in terms of a wound from a pointed weapon, that particular to his amatory mentor, Eros (70 Harder):50 ἀλλ’ ἀπὸ τόξου αὐτὸς ὁ τοξευτὴς ἄρδιν ἔχων ἑτὲρου But the archer himself feeling the arrow’s point from another bow

Here Acontius is specifically identified as an archer, whose weapon features a pointed tip that is inherent in his name. Also within the context of his attraction to others, we learn that lovers swooned over him in his usual haunts (68 Harder): μέμβλετο δ’ εἰσπνήλαις ὁππότε κοῦρος ἴοι φωλεὸν ἠὲ λοετρόν and the boy was noticed by lovers when he went to school or to the bath 49. Harder (2012: 550-51) offers excellent commentary on the term and its broad literary associations. Since πολύκροτος is a v.l. at Od. 1.1 and calls the wily Odysseus to mind, might it be relevant that Odysseus wins back his wife in an archery contest, given the reference to Eros’ archery below and Acontius’ association with a sharp weapon? 50. For the play on τόξου — τοξευτής, see O’Hara (2017: 32 n. 154). Massimilla (2010: 342) suspects that Ovid’s acumen in the cited passage picks up ἄρδιν. Harder (2012: 2.572) sees in ἄρδιν a reflection of ἀκίς, which also points to Acontius.

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Given the apparent interest in aetiological wordplay involving Acontius’ name, the verb ἴοι could well recall ἰοί, arrows, especially as the metrical ictus would underscore the final syllable. When Acontius inscribes love messages to Cydippe on trees, he clearly must use a sharp implement; Callimachus uses the verb κόπτω (κεκομμένα, 73.1 Harder), a word used with pointed weapons (LSJ s.v. 2).51 With regard to attempts to marry Cydippe to someone else, in the first instance the poet is about to provide an aetiology for the Naxian practice of a bride sleeping with a male child, both of whose parents are alive, but stops himself, pointing out that knowledge without the ability to control one’s tongue is like a boy with a knife (μαῦλιν, 75.9 Harder).52 Within the same first attempt Callimachus describes the impending marriage sacrifice at which the cattle see the reflection of the sharp knife in the water (ὀξεῖαν δερκόμενοι δορίδα, 75.11 Harder). At this point, references to sharp implements momentarily subside and, after three illnesses caused by improper attempts to marry off Cydippe to the wrong suitors, her father, Ceyx, consults Apollo, learns the truth about her oath and gives his daughter in marriage to Acontius. Following a learned digression about his source, the history of Xenomedes of Ceos, Callimachus concludes the aetion with a final nod to the sustained wordplay seen above (75.74-76 Harder): εἶπε δέ, Κεῖε, ξυνγκραθέντ’ αὐταῖς ὀξὺν ἔρωτα σέθεν πρέσβυς ἐτητυμίῃ μεμελημένος, ἔντεν ὁ παιδὸς μῦθος ἐς ἡμετέρην ἔδραμε Καλλιόπην. And he told, Cean, about your difficult love in his history of those towns, the old man, devoted to the truth, from where the boy’s story moved quickly to our Calliope.

As Fantuzzi-Hunter (2002: 65 n. 83) note, ὀξύν alludes to the etymology of Acontius’ name; sharp by virtue of being pointed. But the adjective 51. The same would apply to ἐγκόπτω if with Harder (2012: 2.577) we read the preposition in tmesis. Did his name at some point in the evolution of the tale lead to his inscribing of apples and trees? 52. μαῦλις is also a term for procuress, which role Eros effectively plays in the account. If lines 75.4-5 Harder recall Sotades’ infamous attack against the marriage of Ptolemy Philadelphus to his sister (εἰς οὐχ ὁσίην τρυμαλιὴν τὸ κέντρον ὠθεῖ, fr. 1 Powell), as first suggested by Pretagostini (1984: 139-47; cf. Cameron 1995: 18-22), Callimachus might have selected the rare μαῦλις inspired by the place, τρυμαλιή, into which a κέντρον, another sharp implement, was said to have been inserted. As FantuzziHunter (2002: 62 n. 70) observe, the presence of γλώσσης in the same line suggests “gloss” in anticipation of the rare word, perhaps signaling a wordplay.

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can also point to mental acuity (LSJ III 2), which allows for the possibility of polysemy. As observed at the start of the aetion, Callimachus tells us that Acontius was not very clever. Thanks to Eros’ tutelage, however, he was able to find the wiliness necessary to fulfill his sharp longing for Cydippe. In the presence, then, of the final wordplay on Acontius’ name, the vocative Κεῖε perhaps also comes into play. κείω (LSJ B) means to cleave, a Homeric hapax found at Od. 14.425 in the same metrical sedes (ἣν λίπε κείων), so the word can be understood as “Cean” and “Cut” simultaneously, similar to the name Acontius. As we can see, the episode presents a clear example of wordplay clusters in support of the main point, as it were. 4.2.3. Linus and Coroebus (Aet. 25e-31b Harder) The even more fragmentary story of Linus and Coroebus offers an opportunity to see whether we can observe etymological wordplay amidst even greater ruins. As fragment 31a.2-3 Harder suggests, Callimachus appears to ask the Muses “Why is it that the Argives kill dogs during the Arneid festival in the month of Arneius?” (Harder 2012: 2.276). On the basis of surviving prose summaries and fragmentary remains, Callimachus connected the story of Coroebus’ founding of the village of Tripodiscus with the Argive festival that answers the lead-off question. With regard to the origin of the latter, Psamathe, the daughter of the Argive king Crotopos (25f Harder) who was impregnated by Apollo, gave her baby, Linus, to a shepherd to raise out of fear of her father. The boy was raised among the lambs, to which one fragment attests (25e Harder): ἄρνες τοι, φίλε κοῦρε, συνήλικες ἄρνες ἑταῖροι ἔσκον, ἐνιαυθμοὶ δ’ αὐλία καὶ βοτάναι Lambs, dear boy, were of equal age with you, lambs were your friends, and your sleeping-places were the sheepfolds and the pastures

Sadly the shepherd’s dogs killed Linus and Psamathe’s grief informed her father of the child’s identity, for which reason he killed his own daughter (cf. παιδοφόνω, 26.11 Harder). To assuage Apollo’s anger, the Argives created a new festival, the Arneia, at which time they killed dogs who crossed their path. The longest, though highly lacunose, passage offers some suggestive possibilities for potential wordplay (26 Harder): Ἀρνεῖος μ[ Ἀρνῇδας [ καὶ θανε.[ τοῦ μενα [ καὶ τὸν ἐπὶ ῥάβδῳ μῦθον ὑφαινόμενον

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ἀνέρες ε [ πλαγκτὺν [ ἠνεκὲς ἀείδω δειδεγμένος ουδεμενα [ νύμφης αι [ παιδοφόνω [ ἧκεν ἐπ’ Ἀρ[γείους ἥ σφεων μητέρας ἐξεκένωσεν, ἐκούφισθεν δὲ τιθῆναι οὐχ οὕτω [ Ἄργος ἀνα [

The lambs (ἄρνες) with whom Linus lived clearly explains the name of the festival held in his honor: Ἀρνεῖος is the name of the Argive month (e.g., Massimilla’s μ]είς) when the festival occurs and Ἀρνῇδας (sc. ἡμέρας or ὥρας, as Harder ad loc.) reechoes the association with lambs. Considering the tendency to cluster a number of puns within aetiologies, I feel emboldened to push the evidence of this exiguous fragment further. ἀνέρες (26.6 Harder), the epic form of ἄνδρες, appears to play upon the name of the festival in the first two lines of the fragment, which is based on the ἄρνες with whom Linus lived.53 Whoever these men are (poets given the context?), the seeming echo of ἄρνες feels significant. As lines 4 and following appear to create a transition from the tale of Linus to that of Coroebus, might there then be a phonetic transition from ἀνέρες to ἠνεκὲς ἀείδω to ἧκεν ἐπ’ Ἀρ[γείους?54 If this were the case, it is nonetheless impossible to interpret its significance at present. Be that as it may, the well-known metaphor for poetic composition present in “weaving” (ὑφαινόμενον, 5) might also engage the broader aetiological wordplay in the context of a purification ritual involving lambs, given that their wool would in time produce material for literal weaving. In fact, lambs as source of material for weaving and as a source for this μῦθος might support reading ἀνέρες as poets, especially given the use of the term in describing professions.55 Moreover, Callimachus’ innovative πλαγκτὺν (7), a reference perhaps to the poet’s “textual wanderings” (Harder 2012: 2.269), might also call to mind another word for weaving, πλέκω/πλεκτός, the former of which also refers to poetic composition 53. Massimilla (1996: 302) rightly associates the repetition of ἄρνες at 25e Harder with the aetiology. 54. On the transitional function of these lines and their association with Callimachus’ approach to continuity in his narrative, see Massimilla (1996: 303-04) and D’Alessio (1996: 2.409 n. 92). 55. Harder (2012: 2.268-69).

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(LSJ s.v. II 2). Additionally, Linus, whose name recalls another material used in weaving, λίνον/λίνος (flax), is the grandson of Crotopos (Κροτωπιάδην, 25f Harder), whose name has the potential to allude to the striking of the woof (κροτέω, LSJ II 6). Also of potential relevance is the phrase δασπλῆτα Κόροιβος (30 Harder). Although the etymology, case and referent of δασπλῆτα are unclear (does it refer to Coroebus or to Poine, the child-slaying monster he killed?), in the context of an aetiology involving lambs, it has the potential to evoke δασύς and related compounds used of shaggy animals (e.g. Hdt. 3.108, E. Cyc. 360, A.P. 6.113.1, Nonn. D. 14.70) and thus link with Linus via the lambs he slept with and the festival of the lambs in general. While this connection may be a bit of a stretch, it would suit the sort of density of wordplay observed in aetiological narratives; if we ever find more fragments from this section, a connection with δασύς might come into greater focus. With the combination of weaving and storytelling in mind, ἐπὶ ῥάβδῳ in line 5, which clearly refers to the staff which performers held during performances, cannot but call to mind the other etymology for ῥαψῳδία: ῥάπτω.56 Allusion to the alternate etymology is performative insofar as it instantiates the very nature of this dual aetion wherein the story of Linus is “stitched together” with that of Coroebus. Although the suggested wordplays are impossible to corroborate without more text, the approach offered here — observing clusters of words employed in an ongoing theme, in this case words associated with weaving — might prove to be helpful elsewhere in reading or even reconstructing the Aetia, as I will try to demonstrate below when discussing Icus. 4.2.4. The Graces (Aet. 3-7b Harder) The first aetiology in the Aetia takes up the explanation of why on Paros people sacrifice to the Graces without flutes and wreathes (3-7b Harder). According to the Florentine scholia (7a Harder), Minos withheld the use of these items because he learned of the death of his son Androgeos as he was about to begin the sacrifice. The Parians continued this tradition thereafter. We also learn that within the aetion Callimachus discussed the parentage of the goddesses with the Muses, a small section of which provides the largest surviving connected passage. Clio suggested Dionysus and the Naxian Coronis, while other possibilities are mentioned 56. A possibility acknowledged by Massimilla (1996: 303) and D’Alessio (1996: 2. 409 n.91). See Stephens (2002-03) for further metapoetic implications of the phrase ἐπὶ ῥάβδῳ.

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as well.57 Although marginally connected with the main aetion, the digression offers some interesting opportunities for observing potential wordplay (7.9-14 Harder): ]ες ἀνείμον[ες] ὡς ἀπὸ κόλπου μητρὸς Ἐλειθυίης ἤλθετε βουλομένης, ἐν δὲ Πάρῳ κάλλη τε καὶ αἰόλα βεύδε’ ἔχουσαι ..... ἀπ’ ὀστλίγγων δ’ αἰὲν ἄλειφα ῥέει, ἔλλατε νῦν, ἐλέγοισι δ’ ἐνιψήσασθε λιπώσας χεῖρας ἐμοῖς, ἵνα μοι πουλὺ μένωσιν ἔτος … undressed, like you came from your mother’s womb when Eileithyia was willing, but on Paros with colourful outer garments and shining chitons … and oil always drips from your locks, be gracious now, and wipe your shining hands upon my elegies, so that they will remain for many years

The extant lines reveal that, while other depictions of the Graces represent them naked as they were born, on Paros their statues were elegantly clothed and their hair flowed with oil (possibly a reference to the custom of anointing statues, as Harder 2012: 2.133 notes). The fragment concludes with the poet’s request that the Graces anoint his elegies with this oil so that they last for many years. The birth of the Graces clearly formed a significantly important part of the story to be included in the summary (7a.10-11 Harder) and is well suited to the first aetion of the work to which it provided “a programmatic introduction” (Harder 2012: 2.135). As Harder 2012: 2.129-130 notes, the juxtaposition of Ἐλειθυίης ἤλθετε suggests that Callimachus saw an etymological connection between the goddess of birth and the verbal stem ἐλευθ-, a connection made elsewhere by the poet at Ep. 53 Pf., where we find the same repetition of related sounds found within this passage: καλεύσης / εὔλοχος and ἄλλο at the beginning of the concluding hemiepes. Eileithyia is appropriately described as willing, βουλομένης, which would be critical in the birth of triplets, as Massimilla 1996: 252 observes. In what follows, Callimachus asks that the Graces, decked out in beautiful clothing (κάλλη τε καὶ αἰόλα βεύδε’), show favor (ἔλλατε), take the oil (ἄλειφα) from their hair (ὀστλίγγων), and apply it with their oily (λιπώσας) hands on his elegies (ἐλέγοισι) so that his poetry would last for many a year (πουλὺ μένωσιν ἔτος). The choice of the Aeolic form ἔλλατε for ἵλατε connects the poet’s request for the Graces’ intervention even more closely with the etymology in the phrase Ἐλειθυίης ἤλθετε. 57. Harder (2012: 2.138) suspects, probably correctly, that preference is given to Dionysus whom the Ptolemies claimed as a divine ancestor.

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With an eye toward Near Eastern wordplay and my first example in particular, Ἐλειθυίης ἤλθετε mirrors the practice of “rootplay” whereby a verbal root is “used as the basis for alliterative transpositions” (Watson 1984: 239-241). The selected words that follow this phrase would appear to reecho the sound of the basic root involved in the seeming etymological relationship between the goddess of birth and the act of coming into the world from a mother’s womb (ἀπὸ κόλπου).58 In sum, the birth of the Graces (Ἐλειθυίης ἤλθετε) appears to be intimately related to the success of Callimachus’ elegies (ἐλέγοισι) which will forever be redolent of their intrinsic qualities as manifested on Paros: the beauty and brilliance of their clothing (κάλλη, αἰόλα) and ointments (ἄλειφα, λιπώσας) and, the poet hopes, immortality (πουλὺ) as well.59 Stephen Hinds observed a comparable phenomenon in the etymology involving the name of Venus in Varro (L. 5.61-62): … et horum vinctionis vis Venus. hinc comicus: “huic victrix Venus, videsne haec?” non quod vincere velit Venus, sed vincire. ipsa Victoria ab eo quod superati vinciuntur … et horum vinctionis vis Venus. hinc comicus: “huic victrix Venus, videsne haec?” non quod vincere velit Venus, sed vincire. ipsa Victoria ab eo quod superati vinciuntur The top quotation gives typographical emphasis to words which can reasonably be argued from this passage and from corroborative ancient evidence elsewhere to be involved in a discussion about etymological linkage; the repeat quotation below emphasizes patterns — “mere” patterns — of alliteration and assonance. What is to be made of this? Well, without pressing the implications …, one can at least use a pairing like this to observe that it is characteristic of Varro to generate a kind of atmosphere of sympathetic paronomasia when he etymologizes.60

The parallel is most instructive. In both cases, the name of the divinity is explained and the explanation is echoed in the phonetic texture of the passage. Furthermore in the Callimachean text, the association between divine birth and the poet’s elegies replicates the intimate relationship between divine and mortal planes as seen in the first two NE examples. 58. This would be comparable to the phenomenon of “assonantal paronomasia” in Near Eastern texts; see Watson (1984: 243-244). I would add that even prior to the phrase Ἐλειθυίης ἤλθετε within the same fragment we find υλ, κόλλῃ, (μ?)]εγαλα(ι?), .λασσαι, τατελε (Fr. 7.1-9 Harder). See Massimilla (1996: 251) for a helpful discussion of this section of the fragment. 59. As Kathryn Gutzwiller pointed out during the session, such manipulation of sound could also tie in with contemporary euphonist theory; see Gutzwiller (2014: 346-54). 60. Hinds (2006: 38-39); Ahl (1985: 35-40) referred to the phenomenon as “syllabic” etymology. Jim O’Hara kindly directed my attention to the former.

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4.2.5. The Prologue (Aet. 1 Harder) The surviving four-book edition of the Aetia famously begins with a prologue in which Callimachus defends himself from the attacks of his critics, identified as Telchines (1.1-5 Harder): Πολλάκ]ι μοι Τελχῖνες ἐπιτρύζουσιν ἀοιδῇ νήιδες οἳ Μούσης οὐκ ἐγένοντο φίλοι εἵνεκεν οὐκ ἓν ἄεισμα διηνεκὲς ἢ βασιλ[η ] ας ἐν πολλαῖς ἤνυσα χιλιάσιν ἢ ….]. ους ἥρωας, ἔπος δ’ ἐπὶ τυτθὸν ἑλ[ίσσω παῖς ἅτε, τῶν δ’ ἐτέων ἡ δεκὰς οὐκ ὀλίγη. Often the Telchines mutter against me, against my poetry, who, ignorant of the Muse, were not born as her friends, because I did not complete one single continuous song (on the glory of?) kings … in many thousands of lines or on … heroes, but turn around words a little in my mind like a child, although the decades of my years are not few.

Despite the textual problems, the reason that the Telchines disdain the poet is clear enough: he does not write “one continuous poem … in many thousands (of verses).” The choice of εἵνεκεν, instead of the more common οὕνεκα or τοὔνεκεν, might provide a clue that Callimachus was engaged in an extended sound play, similar to that seen in the story of the Graces:61 the Telchines (Τελχῖνες), who were not born (ἐγένοντο) dear to the muses, do not like Callimachus because (εἵνεκεν) he has not completed (ἤνυσα) one (ἓν) continuous (διηνεκές) poem in (ἐν) thousands (χιλιάσιν) of verses. Does the repetition and variation of the phoneme “en” instantiate the constant muttering (πολλάκι … ἐπιτρύζουσιν) of the Telchines that underscores their insistence upon their preferred manner of poetry? Since Telchines not only work metal but are also practitioners of black magic (see, e.g., Hopkinson 1988: 91-92 and Massimilla 1996: 201-02 for details), might the repetition also evoke a spell? Two texts support such a reading: Eustathius 751.11 defines τρύζειν as τὸ πολυλογεῖν ἢ πολυφωνεῖν and Theocritus Id. 2.62 specifically employs ἐπιτρύζειν of a magical incantation.62 As Gow (1952: 2.47) notes, “(m)uttered tones are appropriate to spells.”

61. On the employment of εἵνεκεν, see Hopkinson (1988: 92) and Harder (2012: 2.18). 62. See, e.g., the spell at PGM VI 29: EĒ IE IE ĒI IOŌ … IAŌIĒ IYE IA IAŌ Ē … OUŌ. Or PGM VII 384 with its variations of pseudo-Egyptian names, Melibou Melibau Melibaubau, a common phenomenon in magical texts. I owe these references to Fritz Graf.

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Such a gambit would be appropriate at the beginning of a collection of poems on aetiological topics insofar as it enacts an example of the sort of wordplay — the clustering of related sounds in support of a particular point — that readers might expect to encounter within the poem, an instance of which is found in the very first aetion. 4.2.6. Icus (Aet. 178-185b Harder) The story of a symposium given at the Alexandrian home of an Athenian named Pollis (185b Harder), traditionally entitled “Icus” from the name of the island that celebrated an unusual cult in honor of Peleus that piqued Callimachus’ curiosity, not only offers some interesting examples of aetiological wordplay, but also provides an opportunity to explore how clusters of related words might assist in the placement of this episode that has long been thought to have stood before the account of the Sicilian Cities examined above.63 We appear to be near the beginning of the episode that sets the stage for the ensuing aetiological discussion (178.1-10 Harder) ἠὼς οὐδὲ πιθοιγὶς ἐλάνθανεν οὐδ’ ὅτε δούλοις ἦμαρ Ὀρέστειοι λευκὸν ἄγουσι χόες· Ἰκαρίου καὶ παιδὸς ἄγων ἐπέτειον ἁγιστύν, Ἀτθίσιν οἰκτίστη, σὸν φάος, Ἠριγόνη, ἐς δαίτην ἐκάλεσσεν ὁμηθέας, ἐν δέ νυ τοῖσι ξεῖνον ὅς Α[ἰ]γύπτῳ καινὸς ἀνεστρέφετο μεμβλωκὼς ἴδιόν τι κατὰ χρέος· ἦν δὲ γενέθλην Ἴκιος, ᾧ ξυνὴν εἶχον ἐγὼ κλισίην οὐκ ἐπιτάξ, ἀλλ’ αἶνος Ὁμηρικός, αἰὲν ὁμοῖον ὡς θεός, οὐ ψευδής, ἐς τὸν ὁμοῖον ἄγει. and neither the day of the opening of the jars nor the time when Orestes’ pitchers bring a happy day for slaves escaped him; and celebrating the yearly festival of the daughter of Icarius, your day, Erigone, object of pity for the Attic women, he invited congenial friends to a meal, and among them a stranger, who, having just arrived, stayed in Egypt, where he came on some private business; by birth he was an Ician and I shared a couch with him, not by prior arrangement, but the word of Homer, that the god always brings like to like, is not untrue.

As Harder 2012: 2.957-58 notes, we probably lack only a sentence identifying Pollis. The fragment opens by informing us that the host had 63. See, for instance, Swidereck (1951); Zetzel (1981); Harder (1988: 9-11); Fabian (1992: 137-40); Cameron (1995: 133-40); Hunter (1996: 21-24); Massimilla (1996: 400); D’Alessio (1996: 2.555 n.14); and most recently Harder (2012: 2.956-57).

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already celebrated the Pithoigia and Choes festivals and afterwards invited guests to a feast in honor of Erigone, a young woman who committed suicide after learning of the murder of her father Icarius, a festival known as Aiola or Aletis.64 The fragment prompts many questions but I will focus primarily on the issue of wordplay. Whether we translate ἠώς as day or dawn,65 the latter meaning is surely present once we encounter the name Ἠριγόνη, the daughter of Icarius, as the usual epithet of the dawn is ἠριγένεια. Thus Ἠριγόνη’s day appropriately begins with ἠριγένεια dawn. As it happens, there were two women by the name of Erigone associated with the Athenian festival: the daughter of Icarius mentioned above and the daughter of Aegisthus. The second Erigone brought suit against Orestes for the murder of his father at the Areopagus and, when Orestes was acquitted, like her namesake, she hanged herself. The first version cited likely came from one of the Atthidographers (e.g., Phanodemus),66 while the second might have been told in earlier mythological texts, such as Sophocles’ Erigone.67 The second account is not only alluded to in the mention of Orestes, who was associated with the festival of the Choes, the second day of the Anthesteria (Ὀρέστειοι),68 but more cleverly by the unparalleled ἁγιστύν, which readily suggests Aegisthus in this context. The choice of the adjective Ἀτθίσιν for Athenian women who hanged themselves in response to Erigone’s death is intriguing. It appears to be a reference to Callimachus’ source: one of the Atthidographers (Ἀτθίς, LSJ 3). If so, we have a polysemous use of the adjective. The person who sits next to Callimachus turns out to be similar to him insofar as he does not like to drink to excess (178.11-12 Harder), a quality that speaks to the myth regarding the Icarian Erigone, since her father was killed by men who believed they were poisoned when they drank to excess and without water the wine Dionysus taught Icarius to make.69 As the third toast went around, Callimachus finally learned the name and family of the guest (οὔμονα καὶ γενεήν [178.14 Harder]; cf. γενέθλην [178.7 Harder]). Inasmuch as god (θεός) brings similar people together, when it comes to his οὔνομα and γενεή, it is interesting that the guest’s 64. Harder (2012: 2.957-64) provides detailed information with references to all related primary and secondary literature. 65. See Massimilla (1996: 401-02) for more on the significance of ἠώς in the context of a festival. 66. As noted, e.g., by D’Alessio (1996: 2.560 n. 23) and Massimilla (1996: 401-02). 67. As suggested by Harder (2012: 2.962). 68. Noted by Massimilla (1996: 404). 69. On the connection between the myth and the theme of moderate drinking at Pollis’ banquet, see Scodel (1980).

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name is Θεογένης,70 an apt name at a festival in honor of Ἠριγόνη. So we have another instance of a punning name game. Upon reviewing the arguments for placing this aetion immediately before the Sicilian Cities, elegantly summarized with all of the modern arguments by Harder (2012: 2.956-57), I agree with the many scholars who find it difficult not to see the conclusion of Pollis’ banquet in 43.117 Harder as a lead in to the entry on the Sicilian Cities. I now add further support for this placement based on the tendency to cluster related words. The name of the Ician guest is Theogenes, and we observed that Callimachus explained his name by including elements of it prior to its mention. In fact, it was the custom for Athenians to call out by name the person sitting next to him at the third round, which might explain how Callimachus learned Theogenes’ name (178.14 Harder).71 Moreover, Massimilla 1996: 414 notes that ἑσσήν, the term selected to describe Peleus’ kingship, also means founder (related to ἕσσαι), offering yet another connection with the episode regarding the Sicilian Cities. Furthermore this aetion similarly played with the name of one of the founders, Theocles, who in fact participated in the founding of Naxus, Leontini and Catana, making him one of the more prominent founders to be called. It so happens that in the aetion following the Sicilian Cities, Haliartus (43b Harder), Callimachus asks the Muses why the Boeotian city of Haliartus celebrates the Cretan festival of the Theodaesia (Θεοδαίσια; defined by Σ ad loc as θεοξένια [43c.1 Harder]). There appears, then, to be a clear theme of names based on the prefix Θεο- in what could then be the first three aetia of the second book. What is more, in all three aetia there are banquets: δαίτην (178.5 Harder) – δαῖτα (43.82 Harder) – Θεοδαίσια (43b.3 Harder). Invitations are offered in the first two aetia: ἐκάλεσσεν (178.5 Harder) – καλεῖν (43.35 Harder)/καλέουσιν (43.80 Harder). The parallels prompt one to expect the appearance of καλεῖν in some significant way in the third story with regard to the Theodaesia. If Icus occupied the first aetion in the book, both it and Haliartus engage the origins of cults that exist outside of their expected domains: the Thessalian Peleus on Icus and the Cretan Theodaesia in Boeotia. These cults in turn frame annual festivals involving the foundations of Greek cities in a foreign territory, all of which speaks to the diffusion of Greek culture that characterizes the Hellenistic era. 70. If ᾧ ξυνὴν εἶχον ἐγὼ κλισίην alludes to Hes. Cat. 1.6-7, a passage describing the mating of gods and mortals that resulted in “god-born” children, this reference might also reflect upon the guest’s name. The parenthesis within lines 178.17-19 Harder includes what seems like another wordplay (ἀτ[ενεῖ]ς and ἀτμένα): the free man fawns on the ἀτμένα whose eyebrows are ἀτ[ενεῖ]ς. 71. See Massimilla (1996: 410).

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5. Conclusion The NE texts discussed above and countless others have been mined for wordplay of various sorts, so the phenomenon is well known, though less so for Classicists. We have long known of aetiological wordplay in Hesiodic, Homeric and many other texts, including Callimachus. But what I hope to have contributed to these many discussions is the possibility that the clustering of wordplays may have originated in NE texts; that, because they involve such an important role in aetiologies, we should expect to find them clustered in the Aetia; that, as seen in the last example, episodes of the Aetia might be linked by related wordplay; and that their presence in the poem might reflect the influence of Egyptian literature as part of a broader interest in assimilating native culture by the Ptolemaic court.72 REFERENCES ANET = Pritchard, J. B. (ed.) 1969. Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament. Princeton ETCSL = The Electronic Corpus of Sumerian Literature (http://etcsl.orinst.ox. ac.uk) Ahl, F., 1985, Metaformations. Soundplay and Word play in Ovid and Other Classical Poets. Ithaca/London. Argyle, A.W., 1963, The Gospel According to Matthew. Cambridge. Astour, M.C., 1967, Hellenosemitica: An Ethnic and Cultural Study in West Semitic Impact on Mycenaean Greece. Leiden. Barbantani, S., 2014, “‘Déjà la pierre pense où votre nom s’inscrit.’ Identity in Context in Verse Epitaphs for Hellenistic Soldiers”. In R. Hunter et al. (eds), Hellenistic Studies at a Crossroads. Berlin-Boston, 301-34. Burkert, W., 1987, “Oriental and Greek Mythology: The Meeting of Parallels”. In: J. Bremmer (ed), Interpretations of Greek Mythology. New York, 10-40. —, 1991, “Homerstudien und Orient”. In J. Latacz (ed), Zweihundert Jahre Homer-Forschung: Rückblick und Ausblick. Stuttgart-Leipzig, 155-81. —, 1992, The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age. Cambridge MA. Cameron, A., 1995, Callimachus and his Critics. Princeton. 72. This paper originated in a conference on wordplay, organized by Damien Nelis and Joshua Katz. In addition to them, I would like to thank Sandy Hardie, Tom Nelson, Scott Noegel, Jim O’Hara, Susan Stephens, and Daniel Selden for reading and sending comments on this paper at various stages. I would also like to thank the members of a group of faculty interested in the NE at the University of Washington and the audience in Groningen who provided helpful feedback. I was unable to accommodate all of the thoughtful suggestions without lengthening what is already a long paper.

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Clauss, J.J., 2006, “Theriaca: Nicander’s Poem of the Earth”. SIFC 6, 160-182. Cuypers, M., 2004, “Prince and Principle: The Philosophy of Callimachus’ Hymn to Zeus”. In: M.A. Harder et al. (eds), Callimachus II. Leuven-ParisDudley, MA, 95-116. D’Alessio, G.B., 1996, Callimaco. Introduzione, Traduzione e Note. 2 Vols. Milan. ―, 2005, “Ordered from the Catalogue: Pindar, Bacchylides, and Hesiodic Genealogical Poetry”. In: R. Hunter (ed), The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women. Cambridge, 217-38. Dalley, S. & A.T. Reyes, 1998, “Mesopotamian Contact and Influence in the Greek World: 1. The Persian Conquest”. In: S. Dalley (ed), The Legacy of Mesopotamia. Oxford, 85-106. Fabian, K., 1992, Callimaco Aitia II. Alessandria. Fantuzzi M and R. Hunter, 2002, Tradition and Innovation in Hellenistic Poetry. Cambridge. Faulkner, R. O., et al., 1994, The Egyptian Book of the Dead: The Book of Going Forth by Day. San Francisco. Fowler, R.L., 2001-13, Early Greek Mythography. 2 Vols. Oxford. Gantz, T., 1993, Early Greek Myth. A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources. 2 vols. Baltimore. Geymonat, M, 1993 “Callimachus at the End of Aeneas’ Narration”. HSCPh 95, 323-31. Gow, A.S.F., 1952, Theocritus (2 vols.; second edition). Cambridge. Gutzwiller, K.J., 2014, “Literary Criticism”. In: J.J. Clauss & M. Cuypers (eds), A Companion to Hellenistic Literature. Malden, MA-Oxford, 237-65. Hallo, W. W., & K.L. Younger, Jr. (eds), 2003. The Context of Scripture: Canonical Compositions, Monumental Inscriptions and Archival Documents from the Biblical World. Vols. 1-3. Leiden. Harder, A., 1988, “Callimachus and the Muses: Some Aspects of Narrative Technique in Aetia 1-2”. Prometheus 14, 1-14. ―, 2012. Callimachus. Aetia. 2 vols. Oxford. Hinds, S., 2006, “Venus, Varro and the Vates: Toward the Limits of Etymologizing Interpretation”. Dictynna 3. (https://dictynna.revues.org/206). Hopkinson, N., 1984, “Callimachus’ Hymn to Zeus”. CQ 34, 139-48. ―, 1988, A Hellenistic Anthology. Cambridge. Hunter, R.L., 1996, “Callimachus Swings (frr. 178 and 43 Pf.)”. Ramus 25, 18-26. Louden, B., 1995, “Categories of Homeric Word Play”. TAPA 125, 27-46. Massimilla, G., 1996, Callimaco Aitia. Libro primo e secondo. Pisa. ―, 2010, Callimaco Aitia. Libro terzo e quarto. Pisa. McLennan, G.R., 1977, Callimachus. Hymn to Zeus: Introduction and Commentary. Rome. Mondi, R., 1990, “Greek and Near Eastern Mythology”. In: L. Edmunds (ed), Approaches to Greek Myth. Baltimore, 142-99. Morris, S.P., 1992, Daidalos and the Origins of Greek Art. Princeton. ―, 1997, “Homer and the Near East”. In: I. Morris & B. Powell (eds), 1997, A New Companion to Homer. Leiden-New York-Köln, 599-623. Most, G.W. (ed), 2006, Hesiod. Vol. 2. The Shield, Catalogue of Women, Other Fragments. Cambridge, Mass.

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Noegel, S.B., 2000, “Drinking Feasts and Deceptive Feats: Jacob and Laban’s Double Talk”. In: S.B. Noegel (ed), Puns and Pundits: Wordplay in the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Near Eastern Literature. Bethesda, Md, 163-179. ―, 2007, Nocturnal Ciphers: The Allusive Language of Dreams in the Ancient Near East. New Haven, Conn. ―, 2014, “‘Literary’ Craft and Performative Power in the Ancient Near East: The Hebrew Bible in Context”. In: K. Smelik & K. Vermeulen, Approaches to Literary Readings of Ancient Jewish Writings. Leiden and Boston, 19-38. O’Hara, J.J., 2017, True Names. Vergil and the Alexandrian Tradition of Etymological Wordplay. New and Expanded Edition. Ann Arbor MI. (Originally published in 1996.) Pretagostini, R., 1984, Ricerche sulla Poesia Alessandrina. Rome. Raaflaub, K.A., 2000, “Influence, Adaptation, and Interaction: Near Eastern and Early Greek Political Thought”. In: S. Aro, & R.M. Whiting (eds), The Heirs of Assyria: Proceedings of the Opening Symposium of the Assyrian and Babylonian Intellectual Heritage Project held in Tvärminne, Finland, October 8-11, 1998. Helsinki, 51-64. Rosen, R.M. & J. Farrell, 1986, “Acontius, Milanion, and Gallus: Vergil Ec. 10.52-61”. TAPA 116, 241-54. Scodel, R., 1980, “Wine, Water and the Anthesteria in Callimachus fr. 178 Pf.”. ZPE 39, 37-40. Selden, D.L., 1998, “Alibis”. Classical Antiquity 17, 289-412. Stephens, S. A., 2002-03, “Linus Song”. Hermathena 173-174, 13-27. ―, 2003, Seeing Double. Intercultural Poetics in Ptolemaic Alexandria. Berkeley. ―, 2015, Callimachus. The Hymns. Oxford. Swiderek, A., 1951, “La Structure des Aitia de Callimaque à la lumière des nouvelles découvertes papyrologiques”. JJP 5, 229-35. Tandy, D.W., 1979, Callimachus, “Hymn to Zeus”: Introduction and Commentary. Diss. Yale. Thompson. S., 1955-58, Motif-index of Folk-literature: a Classification of Narrative Elements in Folktales, Ballads, Myths, Fables, Medieval Romances, Exempla, Fabliaux, Jest-books, and Local Legends. Bloomington. Ünal, A., 2003, “Word Play in Hittite Literature”. In: H.A. Hoffner et al. (eds), Hittite Studies in Honor of Harry A. Hoffner Jr. : On the Occasion of his 65th Birthday. Winona Lake, Ind., 377-88. Watson, W. G. E., 1984, Classical Hebrew Poetry. A Guide to its Techniques. Sheffield. West, M. L., 1966, Hesiod. Theogony. Oxford. ―, 1978, Hesiod. Works and Days. Oxford. ―, 1985, The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women. Oxford. ―, 1997, The East Face of Helicon. West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth. Oxford. Zetzel, J.E.G., 1981 “On the Opening of Callimachus Aetia II”. ZPE 42, 31-33.

THE RECEPTION OF CALLIMACHUS IN MELEAGER Kathryn GUTZWILLER

The last half-century of literary criticism on late Republican and Augustan Latin poetry has been largely shaped by ‘Callimacheanism’, that is, the reception of Callimachus’ poetics through allusions to his verse.1 Less studied has been the influence of Callimachus in Greek authors of the Hellenistic and later periods, in terms of both direct allusions to his poetry and responses to his aesthetic principles.2 A major anchor for the process of Greek reception was surely Meleager’s Garland, which came to serve as a marker of closure for the Hellenistic era and a beacon of transition to epigrammatic composition in a Romanized world.3 Meleager clearly perceived Callimachus as a formative figure in the development of literary epigrams, since his compositions, likely taken from a collected edition called Epigrammata, appear in all four of the Garland’s major divisions — erotic, dedicatory, sepulchral, and epideictic.4 Meleager also adopted or varied many Callimachean topoi in his own mostly erotic epigrams.5 My focus in this paper will be on Meleager’s subtle, and little noticed, allusions to Callimachus’ programmatic statements — allusions found in the Garland proem (AP 4.1) and in several of Meleager’s most self-reflexive 1. This scholarly period is in general bracketed by Wimmel’s tracing of the influence of the Aetia prologue in Latin poetry (1960) and such recent reassessments as Hunter (2006), who analyzes how the Romans both “imitated and distanced themselves” (1) from their third-century models, especially Callimachus; see too Barchiesi (2011), who argues for a greater separation of Callimachus in his own context from the Roman perception of his poetics. 2. Some of Callimachus’ influence on later Greek is surveyed by De Stefani and Magnelli (2011), who show that poets from the late third century BC to the end of antiquity continued to evoke Callimachus’ programmatic passages by reusing his rare words and unique phrases. See too Cairns (2016: 125-186), who argues that epigrammatists often appropriated and then misrepresented Callimachus’ terminology and concepts. 3. De Stefani and Magnelli point out that Meleager (among other Hellenistic poets) “would surely deserve a closer look” (2011: 536), and the references they provide to earlier scholarship on connections between Callimachus and Meleager (551, n. 64) serve as a starting place for a fuller study. 4. For these divisions and their relationship to bookrolls, see Cameron (1968: 324-331; 1993: 24-31). 5. In my forthcoming commentary on Meleager’s epigrams, I identify at least thirty-three poems that imitate language or topoi from Callimachus’ epigrams, as well as imitations of the Aetia, Iambi, Hymns, and fragments.

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epigrams. My study involves a technique of allusion to Callimachus’ poetics based largely on single words appearing in a textured pattern that I have come to think of as a palimpsest, in which Callimachus’ poetry appears partially obscured beneath Meleager’s own text. The point of the technique, I suggest, is both to highlight the influence of this master Alexandrian poet on the development of epigram as a serious literary genre and, in contrast, to offer Meleager’s own, perhaps Asian-inspired aesthetic sensibility as a new standard for epigrammatic style.

1. Callimachus’ Aetia and Meleager’s Garland: the proems Meleager’s proem opens with a four-line section in which a Muse is asked to whom she brings an all-fruited garland and by whom it was made. In hysteron proteron fashion, the Muse replies that it was Meleager who completed the garland, laboring over it as a memento for Diocles. She then proceeds to list forty-seven collected epigrammatists, associating each with a flower, tree, or plant that has relevance for the poet’s place of origin, subject matter, or stylistic character. In the final couplet (57-58), she answers the second part of the question, explaining that she brings the garland as a common gift for her friends, that is, the devotees of the Muse anthologized there.6 The questioner of the Muse cannot be, as might be expected from earlier Greek poetry, the proem’s own composer because the Muse refers in the third-person to Meleager, first as anthologist (3) and later as one of the included epigrammatists (55-56). The speaker of the first couplet is best understood as a reader seeking to know the contents of a papyrus book-roll entitled Stephanos. This question-and-answer beginning recalls the dialogue format found in epigrams in which a passerby queries a tomb or a dedicated object, and so serves to mark the genre of the introduction, despite its length, as epigrammatic. At the same time, however, the principal model for an elegiac poem of extended length in which a Muse replies to a questioner is found in the first two books of the Aetia, where the youthful Callimachus, transported to Helicon in a dream, extracts from the Muses, one by one, explanations for various cultural practices throughout the Greek world.7 6. Claes (1970: 470-471) was, surprisingly, the first to notice that the Muse speaks the final couplet; he was also the first to explain that the ‘friends’ of the Muse are poets. Bornmann (1973: 225-231) independently came to similar conclusions and also argued that the φίλοι (57) were the poets of the anthology and identical with the μύσται. 7. The ‘Pride of Halicarnassus’ inscription (SGO 01/12/02) has a similar opening in which a passerby inquires of Aphrodite about the fame of the city. As D’Alessio (2004:

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Supporting this ‘shadow’ of Callimachus in question-and-answer format is a series of four words appearing in both the opening lines of the Aetia prologue and the first two couplets of the Garland proem (marked in bold):8 πολλάκι μοι Τελχῖνες ἐπιτρύζουσιν ἀοιδῇ, νήιδες οἳ Μούσης οὐκ ἐγένοντο φίλοι, εἵνεκεν οὐχ ἓν ἄεισμα διηνεκὲς ἢ βασιλ[η ……]ας ἐν πολλαῖς ἤνυσα χιλιάσιν ἢ…..].ους ἥρωας, ἔπος δ᾽ ἐπὶ τυτθὸν ἑλ[ίσσω παῖς ἅτε, τῶν δ’ ἐτέων ἡ δεκὰς οὐκ ὀλίγη.9 Often Telchines mutter at my poetry, being ignorant of the Muse and not born as her friends, because I did not accomplish one continuous poem in many thousands [of lines] on … kings … or … heroes, but I spin out my narrative only a little like a child, though the decades of my years are not few.

(fr. 1.1-6)

Μοῦσα φίλα, τίνι τάνδε φέρεις πάγκαρπον ἀοιδάν, ἢ τίς ὁ καὶ τεύξας ὑμνοθετᾶν στέφανον; ἄνυσε μὲν Μελέαγρος, ἀριζάλῳ δὲ Διοκλεῖ μναμόσυνον ταύταν ἐξεπόνησε χάριν. Dear Muse, to whom do you bring this all-fruited song? Or rather, who has made a garland of poets? The accomplishment is Meleager’s; he labored over this gift to serve as a remembrance for illustrious Diocles. (AP 4.1.1-4)

Granted that ἀοιδή occurs often at the end of early epic hexameters, the coincidence of the word in the same sedes in line 1 of both proems is noteworthy.10 Also present in both passages is the concept of friendship

43-44, 49-51) has pointed out (partially following Gigante 1999: 4), the composer has imitated the format of both the Aetia and Meleager’s proem. 8. All citations of the Aetia are based on Harder’s edition (2012). 9. For ἑλίσσω as a spinning image with the possibility of interpreting παῖς as ‘girl’, see Gutzwiller, forthcoming. 10. AP 4.1.1 also bears similarity to the opening line in Book 4 of the Aetia, Μοῦ]σαί μοι βασιλη[ ἀεί]δειν (fr. 86), which may in turn be compared to Hes. Th. 1, Μουσάων Ἑλικωνιάδων ἀρχώμεθ’ ἀείδειν and Op. 662 (Pfeiffer 1949-53: ad loc.). Fr. 86 may or may not be the beginning of the aition concerning the Delphic Daphnephoria (frs. 86-89a), a festival that originated when Apollo, after slaying Python, garlanded himself with a laurel crown from Tempe and carrying laurel branches returned to Delphi to found the oracle (see Massimilla 2010: 420, who rejects a connection with the opening of Book 4; Harder 2012: 2.713-714, who cautiously remains undecided). Harder (2012: 2.715) comments that because of its intertextual links the aition may “have been of some importance from a programmatic point of view”. It may also be associated with Latin references to ‘bringing down’ garlands from Helicon as a marker of generic originality (e.g., Lucr. 1.117118, of Ennius; cf. Prop. 3.1.17-20).

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with the Muses, a Hellenistic motif first attested in the third century,11 and so not just a commonplace. Meleager’s subtle allusion in the opening address to a Μοῦσα φίλα works as imitation in oppositione of Callimachus’ Μούσης … φίλοι: that is, the Telchines’ lack of friendship with the Muses becomes the model in Meleager for a positive assertion of friendship on the part of the questioner, who so self-identifies, not just as a reader, but also as a poet. Likewise, Callimachus’ οὐχ ἓν ἄεισμα διηνεκὲς … ἤνυσα, on his refusal to compose a long continuous poem on kings and heroes, echoes positively in the Muse’s assertion of the anthologist’s completion of his task (ἄνυσε … Μελέαγρος).12 Completion is an important theme for both poems (cf. ἐκτελέσαι Μελέαγρον, AP 12.257.5, the concluding poem of the Garland). The Aetia likely occupied Callimachus for decades and Meleager’s Garland was a work of his old age, containing epigrams composed both in his youthful period in Tyre and his later years in Cos. The theme of friendship with the Muses reappears both at the conclusion of Callimachus’ prologue and in the last couplet of Meleager’s proem. In rounding off his refutation of the Telchines’ complaints about his poetic technique, Callimachus positively asserts his own life-long friendship with the Muses: ……. Μοῦσαι γὰρ ὅσους ἴδον ὄθματι παῖδας, μὴ λοξῷ, πολιοὺς οὐκ ἀπέθεντο φίλους. For those the Muses observe with steady gaze as children they do not reject as friends when grey.

(1.37-38)

Similarly, at the end of Meleager’s proem his Muse finally answers the question posed in the first line — to whom she brings the work (τίνι φέρεις): ἀλλὰ φίλοις μὲν ἐμοῖσι φέρω χάριν· ἔστι δὲ μύσταις κοινὸς ὁ τῶν Μουσέων ἡδυεπὴς στέφανος. I bring it as a delightful gift to those dear to me; for my devotees the sweet-voiced garland of the Muses is a common possession. (AP 4.1.57-58) 11. E.g., Noss. AP 7.718.3, of herself, Μούσαισι φίλαν; Theoc. Id. 1.141, of Daphnis, Μοίσαις φίλον, and Id. 16.101-102, of poets, πολλοὺς δὲ Διὸς φιλέοντι καὶ ἄλλους | θυγατέρες; cf. Hor. Carm. 1.26.1, Musis amicus. 12. The verb also appears in AP 5.149 (ἦ ῥ’ ἐτύμως ἁνὴρ κεχαρισμένον ἄνυσεν ἔργον, 3), where an artist has produced a depiction of Zenophila that charmed the poet. This poem is the final epigram in the opening sequence of Meleager’s erōtika and so seems to allude back to his own production of the anthology, in a form of ring composition (especially if, as is likely, the erōtika followed the proem as the first book of the Garland; see Gutzwiller 1998b: 281-286).

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She brings it as a gift, that is, an object of delight (χάριν; cf. χάριν, 1.4) for her poet friends, those whose epigrams make up this ‘common garland’.13 The phrase φέρω χάριν is rare after Homer (Il. 5.211, 9.613), where it concerns bringing a delightful gift. But φέρει χάριν does appear in Callimachus’ last aition (fr. 110.75), where Berenice’s lock measures the pleasure of catasterization against the sorrow of separation from the queen. Although the presence of the Muses at the opening and/or closing of a work is anything but surprising, the pattern of verbal overlap between the Callimachus’ references to these goddesses in the Aetia prologue and Meleager’s presentation of the Garland’s Muse in his proem suggests a subtle acknowledgement of Callimachus’ importance as a guiding figure in Hellenistic poetic sensibilities. For the aware reader this mirroring of Callimachean phrasing may call attention to a number of general structural similarities between the Aetia and the Garland. Both were organized in four books (so it seems), both included a prologue and a short epilogue, and the two works were not dissimilar in length, since both certainly exceeded 4,000 lines with an outer limit of about 6,000.14 Essential to each work was the practice of discontinuity (οὐχ … διηνεκές), though the sequencing of episodic aitia differs generically from Meleager’s anthologizing of epigrams, including his own. Both works were intentionally innovative and so spawned later imitators and detractors. The originality of the Aetia lay in its encapsulation of knowledge, or the search for it, in poetic language that was both spare and erudite;15 the originality of the Garland lay, differently, in the combination of the scholarly practice of editing with an aesthetic sensibility manifest both in the design of the anthology and in its poetry, so as to provide a single book context for reading together earlier and later epigrams and for analyzing their influence one on the other.

13. A similar motif is known from a fragment of Phili(s)cus of Corcyra, in which the poet brings gifts consisting of his own novel compositions (καινογράφου συνθέσεως τῆς Φιλίκου, γραμματικοί, δῶρα φέρω πρὸς ὑμᾶς (SH 677). Meleager as editor, however, has no speaking role and so grants to the Muse of the collection the task of describing and presenting it. 14. Cameron (1993: 24-26) calculates that the Garland reached 6,000 lines in four books, though in his count only about 4,500 preserved lines were certainly there. Fantuzzi and Hunter (2004: 44) suggest 6,000 lines for the Aetia; Harder (2012: 1.1215) estimates the length at about 5,000 lines, with possibly a few hundred lines more or less. 15. Cf. Hutchinson (2003).

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2. Metapoetic imagery in Callimachus and Meleager In the Aetia prologue Callimachus set out the aesthetic principles that were to define his poetic art for a new intellectual age. Since he was speaking as a poet, these principles were not delineated prosaically; rather they were to be derived, or decoded, from a series of dichotomous images — short poems versus long, long-distant battles versus sweet nightingales, a fat sacrificial victim versus a slender Muse, the common highway versus the untrodden path, the braying of an ass versus the shrill sound of the cicada. In each pair Callimachus espoused one image and rejected the other, so that his dualistic system was necessarily adversarial. His oppositional images refurbish the established system of the grand versus the plain style found in the Frogs, his Μοῦσα λεπταλέη being an imagistic refinement of the so-called ‘thin’ (ἰσχνός) style.16 Many of the poets to follow, even if they deviated from his principles of brevity, refinement, originality, and erudition, did so with open acknowledgement of the Callimachean model, often through reminiscence of his language and imagery. As one of the most ambitious of these, Meleager created a system of metapoetic symbolism based on garlands and their associated images which seems a directed deviation from Callimachus’ imaged poetics. As an editor-poet, Meleager illustrated the history of epigram as a literary genre, which had come into being as book poetry in the Calllimachean era; in so doing he created a new kind of poetics in which editorial design and original composition varying predecessors offer an innovative model within a poetic tradition. So in the Garland proem Meleager presents himself both as a garland-maker (στεφανηπλόκος), an image that draws upon the long-standing association of flowers with poetry as objects of delight,17 and as an anthologized poet, whose own erotic epigrams at times associate his beloveds with flowery garlands.18 While in Callimachus each metapoetic image involves a pair of opposites, a right 16. For a description of the ἰσχνός style, see Demetr. Eloc. 190-239. Dionysius of Halicarnassus characterizes the low style as not only ‘thin’ (ἰσχνός) and ‘plain’ (λιτός; Dem. 34.13; Imit. 31.2.11), but in Dem. 5.5-9 he also calls it ‘pure’ (καθαρός), ‘simple’ (ἀφελής), ‘accurate’ (ἀκριβής), ‘refined’ (λεπτός), and ‘uncontrived’ or ‘unpoetic’ (ἀποίητος). Callimachus’ leptotic style (cf. Hymn 2.111-112) seems to fit with all of these except ἀποίητος. 17. A statement attributed to Simonides in which Homer is called a garland-maker in contrast to Hesiod the gardener (test. 47k Campbell) perhaps indicates a pre-existing association between interweaving garlands and creating complex poems or designed poetry books. 18. AP 5.143, 5.144, 5.147, 5.195, 12.165; cf. 12.256.

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choice and a wrong choice, Meleager’s imagistic system is based on harmonious combination — mixture or interweaving — as an emblem of both his style and the resulting product. Other epigrammatists are not rivals to be surpassed, but are often interwoven with his own epigrams in a grand garland of poetry past and present. Meleager’s poetic manner coalesces with the polished, or flowery, style described by Demetrius (Eloc. 127-189),19 which likely became accepted during the Hellenistic period as an intermediate alternative to the grand/plain opposition.20 For Demetrius the primary feature of this style is χάρις, exemplified both in Sapphic-type poetry and playful, witty prose. For Dionysius of Halicarnassus the polished style is characterized as εὔκρατος, ‘well-mixed’, in that it combines elements of oppositional styles. Both Callimachus and Meleager include the Muses and the Charites in their systems of images. For both the Muses are closely associated with their poetry itself or its subject matter, and for both the Charites are associated with style, as long-standing symbols of poetic beauty and charm. There are also meaningful differences. Scholars have noted the programmatic presence of the Charites in the Aetia, most clearly preserved in the first aition, where a Muse explains why the Parians sacrifice to these goddesses without flutes or garlands (frs. 3-7b).21 The reason is that Minos, when he learned of his son’s death as he was preparing to honor the goddesses on Paros, continued the offering but with the elimination of music and wreaths, pleasure-bringing aspects of sacred rituals. At the end of the aition Callimachus invokes the Charites themselves to wipe their oiled hands on his elegies so that his poetry might endure for many a year (fr. 7.13-14). Massimilla remarks that the absence of garlands in a sacrifice to the Charites is particularly strange because these goddesses had a passion for flowers and garlands,22 and we should add that the absence of flute music also strangely conflicts with the Charites’ close association with song. Callimachus goes out of his way as well to mark these Charites not as the nude trio ubiquitous in Hellenistic art but Parian statues demurely embodied in lovely robes. Nor is the oil with 19. Gutzwiller (1998a: 88-91); cf. Männlein-Robert (2007b: 243-250) with emphasis on euphonic qualities. Meleager might even be read as an example of the faulty style associated with the polished, which Demetrius calls ‘affected’ (κακόζηλος, etymologically indicating ‘bad imitation’). Compare one of Demetrius’ examples of the affected style, ἐγέλα που ῥόδον ἡδύχροον (Eloc. 188) with Mel. AP 5.144.5-6, λειμῶνες, τί … γελᾶτε; | ἁ γὰρ παῖς κρέσσων ἁδυπνόων στεφάνων. 20. For the uses of the middle style in canon making, see Gutzwiller (2014). 21. Both Massimilla (1996: 248) and Harder (2012: 2.121) view the aition as a kind of prooemium. 22. Massimilla (1996: 249).

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which they are anointed marked as the scented kind that moistens Berenice’s statue in Call. AP 5.146 (see below). All this strangeness is most likely a sign of metapoetic meaning, with the unique Parian ritual figuring Callimachus’ own brand of elegy. As book poetry, to be read and reread, the Aetia eschews the flute music that traditionally accompanied performed elegy, while its body of rare knowledge has a lasting value that contrasts with the ephemeral pleasures associated with eroticism, perfumes, and garlands. This reading of the aition is supported by a passage that is likely from the opening section of the second book of the Aetia:23 καὶ γὰρ ἐγὼ τὰ μὲν ὅσσα καρήατι τῆμος ἔδωκα ξανθὰ σὺν εὐόδμοις ἁβρὰ λίπη στεφάνοις, ἄπνοα πάντ᾽ ἐγένοντο παρὰ χρέος, ὅσσα τ᾽ ὀδόντων ἔνδοθι νείαιράν τ᾽ εἰς ἀχάριστον ἔδυ, καὶ τῶν οὐδὲν ἔμεινεν ἐς αὔριον· ὅσσα δ᾽ ἀκουαῖς εἰσεθέμην, ἔτι μοι μοῦνα πάρεστι τάδε. For however many delicate golden oils I then gave to my head with fragrant garlands, All lost their scent, being useless, and however much passed through my teeth to my graceless belly None of that remained to the morrow. But all I put into my ears that alone is still with me.

(fr. 43.12-17)

Here, discussing a symposium, Callimachus explains the uselessness of perfumed garlands that quickly lose their scent and of food digested in the belly ‘without gratitude’ or ‘without charm’ (ἀχάριστον) and then contrasts the greater, more lasting good of information acquired at the banquet. These sentiments fit well with fr. 178, likely also from the early part of the second book.24 There Callimachus converses about local customs with Theogenes of Icus, a congenial symposium companion, who ‘enjoyed a small cup’ (ὀλίγῳ … ἥδετο κισσυβίῳ 12) rather than ‘heavy drinking’ (ζωροποτεῖν, 12) — conversation as an alternative to strong wine. If we connect these passages with the first aition, linking the openings of the first and second books, then it becomes clearer why the Charites to whom the Parians sacrificed without flutes and garlands serve

23. Harder (2012: 2.299-300, 303-304) argues that it may have ended a brief proem opening Book 2. A few lines before the preserved passage, the papyrus has larger than usual lettering, which may indicate a new section or book, and the last line of the passage is followed by a paragraphus, signaling some sort of closure. 24. Various scholars, e.g., Zetzel (1981), have suggested that fr. 178 contains the opening of Book 2; for discussion and the possible connection to fr. 43, see Harder 2012: 2.303, 955-957.

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as patron deities for Callimachus’ aetiological poetry,25 which needs no musical adornment or flowery style to convey the intellectual pleasures of his poetic investigations. For Meleager, however, the Charites bring features of style and subject that are entirely appropriate to garland poetry, with its symposiastic associations. As the flower-bearers of beauty (κάλλευς ἀνθολόγοι Χάριτες, AP 12.95.2), they join the Desires and ‘perfume-breathing’ Persuasion in facilitating relations with desirable boys. They endow a beautiful youth with sex appeal (AP 12.122). They embody qualities possessed by Meleager’s female beloveds — sweetness of speech (AP 5.137.2, 5.148.1) or musicmaking accompanied by physical attractiveness (AP 5.139-40). In one epigram the three Graces form a triple crown for Zenophila, symbolizing her trio of personal qualities (AP 5.195). The Charites are also essential to Meleager’s programmatic statements of his aesthetics. Charis is the main quality of the semi-serious comic humor in his youthful Menippean writings (AP 7.417.4, 7.418.6), as their title Charites bears witness (Ath. 4.157b). As an erotic epigrammatist, he defines himself by the actions of mixing (AP 7.416), weaving (AP 7.419.4), or harmonizing (AP 7.421.13-14) the Charites with the Muses and Eros, that is, poetic charm with erotic poetry. In his brand of aesthetics, applicable to both serio-comic prose and an eroticized epigrammatic Muse (AP 7.421.9-10), Meleager stands apart from Callimachus’ austere intellectualism, which was itself graced by an unusual, even puzzling set of goddesses, localized in Paros and explained by prose sources, goddesses worshipped without garlands or flutes. To support my reading of Meleager’s reaction to Callimachean aesthetics, we may consider how Callimachus is presented in the Garland proem: ἐν δ’ ἄρα ... ἡδύ τε μύρτον Καλλιμάχου, στυφελοῦ μεστὸν ἀεὶ μέλιτος Also in it (the Garland) [Meleager plaited] … Callimachus’ sweet myrtle, always full of astringent honey. (AP 4.1.21-22)

The myrtle with which Callimachus is associated was one of the most common kinds of greenery used in garlands. It was considered an astringent 25. Elsewhere in the Aetia the Charites are mentioned in the epilogue (fr. 112.2), more covertly in the opening of the ‘Victoria Berenices’ (χαρίσιον ἕδνον, fr. 54.1), and in an aition on a Delian statue of Apollo (fr. 114), perhaps from the third book (Bulloch 2006). The Apollo statue holds his bow in his left hand and the three Charites in his right, both with allegorical meaning. As the bow represented punishment for the wicked, the goddesses represented the rewards Apollo offered to the good. On the political significance of the allegory, see Prioux 2007: 190-214.

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plant,26 with the berries being particularly bitter (ἀποξηραίνει γὰρ καὶ ἀποστύφει τὸ ἄγαν, Thphr. CP 2.81.1), and it was used to dispel the fumes of wine (Ath. 15.675e). Though other plants in the proem are described in botanically correct terms, Callimachus’ ‘sweet’ myrtle appears anomalous. Meleager may, however, have had in mind the kind found only in Egypt which was uniquely sweet-smelling and used for perfume (Thphr. HP 6.8.5; CP 6.18.4; Od. 28). Possibly, then, sweet Egyptian myrtle represents Callimachus as a Ptolemaic court poet who acclaims sweetness as an essential quality of his verse (μελιχρ[ό]τεραι, fr. 1.16; cf. AP 9.507.2).27 It is unclear, however, what is meant literally by ‘astringent honey’, whether it refers to actual honey of a bitter kind or to honeydew, a substance deposited by insects in trees (Thphr. fr. 190.1).28 Whatever the exact botanical explanation, the double oxymoron of ‘sweet myrtle’ and ‘astringent honey’ poses an enigma, indicating an encoded reference to Callimachus’ own system of dichotomous images — sweetness and astringency providing the reader pleasure despite puckering difficulties of comprehension.29 The combination of the two qualities in one plant harmonizes their oppositional nature in a Meleagrian fashion. Elsewhere aridity (ξηρότης) is the faulty version of the plain (ἰσχνός) style (Demetr. Eloc. 236-239; cf. Longin. 3.3-4),30 and those grammarians who search poetry only for obscure facts and grammatical anomalies were later criticized as ‘bitter and dry dogs of Callimachus’ (πικροὶ καὶ ξηροὶ Καλλιμάχου πρόκυνες, Antiphan. AP 11.322.4).31 We may remember too that in Horace a garland of plain myrtle (simplici myrto, Carm. 1.38.5), without Persian adornment or even a single late rose, is an emblem of simplicity, in matters of drinking and, as it seems, in poetic style. Horace perhaps reworks Meleager’s myrtle to present himself in the guise of the Callimachus who disavows short-lived garlands and heavy drinking in favor of serious conversation in search of knowledge.32

26. Dsc. 1.112.1; Nic. Ther. 892; Alex. 275. 27. Both Arsinoe and Berenice II had a close connection to the perfume industry at Alexandria and Cyrene (Ath. 15.689a); see Clayman 2014: 60, 102-103. 28. Suggested by Gow-Page (1965: ad loc.). 29. Cf. Gow-Page (1965: ad loc.): “Callimachus’s verses run smoothly but … their content tends to be harsh or obscure”. 30. In Call. AP 12.150.3-4 the Muses ‘make thin’ (κατισχναίνοντι) Eros since poetic skill (σοφία) is the antidote for erotic illness. 31. Cairns (2016: 165) also connects the ‘dry dogs’ with stylistic dryness. 32. Note Antip. Thess. AP 11.20 where Callimachean drinkers of ‘plain water from a holy spring’ (κρήνης ἐξ ἱέρῆς ... λιτὸν ὕδωρ, 4) are critically contrasted with others pouring libations of wine to Archilochus and Homer.

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3. The Callimachus palimpsest elsewhere in the Garland 3.1. In the erōtika Other features of Meleager’s reception of Callimachus appear in a sequence of twenty epigrams that apparently opened the Garland’s book of erōtica. Because the heterosexual and pederastic poems in Meleager’s erotic book were separated in Cephalas’ tenth-century anthology, this initial sequence now appears in our Greek Anthology divided between Books 5 and 12; however, the order can be generally reconstructed based on similarities of themes and topics.33 The sequence opens with three thematically similar epigrams, two programmatically addressed to a wine jug (Posidipp. AP 5.134; Anon. AP 5.135) and a third by Meleager addressed to an unhappy lover, who is encouraged to wash away his sorrows with strong or unmixed wine: ζωροπότει, δύσερως, καὶ σοῦ φλόγα τὰν φιλόπαιδα κοιμάσει λάθας δωροδότας Βρόμιος. ζωροπότει, καὶ πλῆρες ἀφυσσάμενος σκύφος οἴνας ἔκκρουσον στυγερὰν ἐκ κραδίας ὀδύναν. Drink pure wine, unhappy lover, and Bromius, giver of forgetfulness, will put to sleep your flame of boy love. Drink it pure, and, drawing a cup full of wine’s sap, strike hateful care out of your heart. (AP. 12.49)

This epigram, seemingly the first by Meleager in the Garland’s erotic book, opens with the verb ζωροπότει, repeated at the beginning of the second couplet. Here again we spot the Callimachean palimpsest. This rare verb, which refers to drinking wine mixed with little or no water, is known before Meleager only as a lectio difficilior in Callimachus’ conversation with Theogenes: ὁ Θρηϊκίην μὲν ἀπέστυγε χανδὸν ἄμυστιν | ζωροποτεῖν, ‘he abhorred gulping in one go unmixed wine like a Thracian’ (fr. 178.11-12).34 So here too Meleager echoes Callimachus — again in oppositione — when he encourages the unhappy lover to heavy drinking, in explicit contrast to Callimachus’ encouragement of his companion’s restraint in the Aetia. In fact, the whole first line of AP 12.49 is all but a 33. Wifstrand (1926: 20-22) demonstrated how the Meleagrian sequences in AP 5 and 12 fit together; see Gutzwiller (1998b: 283-301) for a more detailed analysis. On the opening sequence, see Gutzwiller (1997); Höschele (2009: 104-121). 34. The more common οἰνοποτεῖν is found in the papyrus (P.Oxy. 1362) and in Ath. 10.442f and 11.781d (in paraphrase); it was printed by Pfeiffer. Massimilla (1996: 407-408) argues cogently for ζωροποτεῖν, found in Ath. 11.477c and Macrob. 5.21.12, by showing that it was imitated by later poets; other references in Harder 2012: 2.971. See Gutzwiller (2006: 71-73) for a connection to philological debates on Homeric vocabulary.

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cento of the earlier epigrammatist: δύσερως appears already in Call. AP 12.73.6 for the lover whose soul has been half snatched away, and Meleager’s noun-adjective clause adopts the pattern of Callimachus’ τὰν φιλόπαιδα νόσον in AP 12.150.6.35 The opening line in the first Meleager epigram in the erotic book thus, by allusion, acknowledges Callimachus as perhaps the essential model for Meleager’s imitation of earlier erotic epigrams, though with variations that openly reject Callimachus’ preference for talk over strong wine as relief from love sorrow. The importance of Callimachus for Meleager’s epigrammatic poetry, if not his entire anthology, is signaled already in the proem when the Muse names ‘illustrious Diocles’ as the dedicatee of the collection. The phrase ἀριζάλῳ … Διοκλεῖ (AP 4.1.3) is a double palimpsest, derived from the only two Callimachus epigrams that appear in the opening sequence of the erōtika. Meleager surely so places this first Callimachean poem, toasting an erōmenos named Diocles, in order to honor the Diocles of the proem:36 ἔγχει καὶ πάλιν εἰπέ ‘Διοκλέος’· οὐδ᾽ Ἀχελῷος κείνου τῶν ἱερῶν αἰσθάνεται κυάθων. καλὸς ὁ παῖς, Ἀχελῷε, λίην καλός· εἰ δέ τις οὐχί φησίν, ἐπισταίμην μοῦνος ἐγὼ τὰ καλά. Pour and say again ‘for Diocles’. But Achelous does not have any experience of his holy ladles. The boy is beautiful, Achelous, too beautiful. If anyone denies it, may I be the only one to know beauty.

(AP 12.51)

In contrast to the light drinking that Callimachus proposes to Theogenes in the Aetia, here Achelous, representing water if not also a symposium companion, is banned from contact with the undiluted wine that will toast Diocles. The boy, at least as Callimachus perceives him, is too beautiful to allow any restraint in drinking on the part of his admirers. While the repetition in καλὸς ὁ παῖς, … λίην καλός (3) conveys the strength of Callimachus’ desire, in the end he acknowledges that his aesthetic reaction to the boy may be idiosyncratic, based on his unique knowledge of what beauty is. This epigram is the direct model for Meleager’s two Heliodora epigrams that surely accompanied it in the undivided sequence; they, respectively, begin ἔγχει καὶ πάλιν εἰπέ, πάλιν, πάλιν ‘Ἡλιοδώρας’ (AP 5.136) and ἔγχει ... Ἡλιοδώρας (AP 5.137). The direct quotation in the first of Callimachus’ ἔγχει καὶ πάλιν εἰπέ followed by the repeated 35. Callimachus’ τὰν φιλόπαιδα νόσον is preceded by ἐκκόπτει (referring to hunger), which perhaps suggested Meleager’s synonymous ἔκκρουσον (4). 36. Cf. Höschele 2009: 109-110; Prioux 2014: 95.

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πάλιν, πάλιν can even be read as a metapoetic signal for the double reuse of Callimachus’ opening words in the paired Heliodora poems.37 Even so, Meleager demonstrates, again through imitation that deviates, how his own lover’s persona differs from the Callimachean one. Meleager depicts himself at a symposium where, abandoned by Heliodora, he calls for yesterday’s garland, containing a rose that weeps since it sees his beloved in the arms of another. The motif of the faded wreath as a sign of a lover’s sorrow is borrowed from another Callimachus epigram (AP 12.134) where the first-person speaker recognizes a fellow symposiast’s erotic wound because his garland is shedding rose petals (cf. Ath. 15.669c-d). Meleager so establishes his own subject position in the erotic book as that of an anguished lover, unlike Callimachus’ experienced and knowing observer who is distanced from the immediacy of love. The second Callimachus epigram in the opening sequence of the erōtika, on Queen Berenice honored as a fourth Grace, is the source of Diocles’ epithet ἀρίζαλος in AP 4.1.3:38 τέσσαρες αἱ Χάριτες· ποτὶ γὰρ μία ταῖς τρισὶ κείναις ἄρτι ποτεπλάσθη κἤτι μύροισι νοτεῖ. εὐαίων ἐν πᾶσιν ἀρίζηλος Βερενίκα, ἇς ἄτερ οὐδ᾽ αὐταὶ ταὶ Χάριτες Χάριτες. The Graces are four, since one in addition to the three has just been molded, still moist with scent. Fortunate Berenice, conspicuous among all, has a good life, without whom the very Graces are not Graces.

(AP 5.146)

ἄνυσε μὲν Μελέαγρος, ἀριζάλῳ δὲ Διοκλεῖ μναμόσυνον ταύταν ἐξεπόνησε χάριν. The accomplishment is Meleager’s; he labored over this gift to serve as a remembrance for illustrious Diocles. (AP 4.1.3-4)

The epigram’s subject is a statue of Berenice, perhaps for placement in a shrine of the Charites. The adjective ἀρίζηλος held significance for Ptolemaic royalty. Ptolemy I Soter is so called in a fragment ascribed, uncertainly, to Callimachus (fr. 734 Pf.), and Theocritus speaks of his queen as ἀρίζηλος Βερενίκα (Id. 17.57). Just as the statue of Berenice as the fourth Charis stands in display for all to see, so Diocles is conspicuously displayed at the Garland’s opening, as the recipient of a gift 37. Höschele (2009: 108) calls it an ‘intertextual marker’. 38. Gow-Page (1965: 2.171) assert that the Callimachus poem was misplaced among the erōtika and should have appeared in the epideictic section, but Cameron (1968: 328-329; 1993: 29-30) more convincingly reasons that Meleager placed the epigram among his own erotic poems to mark his borrowing from it in AP 5.148-149.

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of poetry filled with beauty and charm (χάριν, 4.1.4; cf. 4.1.58). The double palimpsest of two Callimachus epigrams in ἀριζάλῳ … Διοκλεῖ thus associates Meleager’s Diocles, suggestively, with both symposiastic companions and patrons worthy of celebration in poetry. In the Garland sequence the poem on Berenice as a new Charis is followed by three Meleager epigrams, which conclude the opening section (AP 5.147-149). Whatever earlier use the Berenice epigram may have had,39 Meleager in all likelihood knew it from Callimachus’ Epigrammata. Close attention to the relationship between Callimachus’ poem and the three following epigrams shows that Meleager surely placed it here with design, to model language and motifs for his own tributes to his two favorites Heliodora and Zenophila. Already in AP 5.137 he calls Heliodora a goddess to be identified with Persuasion, Aphrodite, and a ‘sweetspeaking Charis’, adapting the Ptolemaic practice of associating queens with deities, such as Arsinoe-Aphrodite at Zephyrium and, as this epigram suggests, Berenice-Charis.40 The strongest link to Callimachus’ epigram occurs in the second and third of the final three Meleager epigrams, where the concluding phrases — αὐτὰς τὰς Χάριτας χάρισιν, AP 5.148.2; καὐτὰν τὰν Χάριν ἐν χάριτι, AP 5.149.4 — mimic the ending of the Berenice poem — αὐταὶ ταὶ Χάριτες Χάριτες.41 Just as the Charites would not be Charites without Berenice, so Heliodora will surpass the Charites with her charm, and the man who made an artistic depiction of Zenophila has given Meleager a Charis by means of his graceful artistry.42 Yet in the first epigram of his three (AP 5.147) Meleager fails to mention the Charites or χάρις but rather plaits an elaborate garland of various flowers for Heliodora. The poem does, however, link verbally to the immediately preceding Callimachus epigram by recalling the perfumed oil that moistens the new Berenice statue (κἤτι μύροισι νοτεῖ, 5.146.2) in naming the garland’s recipient as ‘Heliodora of perfumed locks’ (μυροβοστρύχου Ἡλιοδώρας, 5.147.5). That phrase also looks back to 39. Petrovic and Petrovic (2003: 198-204) have explored the possibility that the epigram originally served as an introduction to Aetia 3-4, perhaps written as a book tag, ‘real or fictional’ (198), for a second edition, and propose that the four Charites stood for the Aetia’s four books. Harder (2012: 1.7, 2.858) finds the idea attractive. As they admit (2003: 204), however, the math fails to add up (three Charites for Aetia 1-2 and one for 3-4), so that the connection between AP 5.146 and the Aetia remains speculative. 40. Gutzwiller (1997: 185). 41. The ending of the Berenice epigram echoes also in Mel. AP 5.196.2, αἱ Χάριτες δὲ χάριν. 42. Charis was the special aspect of Apelles’ skill (Plin. Nat. 35.79); it could bring to a painting not just the appearance of reality but a form of reality; see Gutzwiller (2009: 54-63) for the intermediality of Apelles’ depiction of Aphrodite’s birth from the sea’s foam with foamy paint.

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AP 5.136, the first of the two imitations of Callimachus’ Diocles epigram, where yesterday’s garland, a remembrance of lost Heliodora, is still ‘soaked with perfume’ (τὸν βρεχθέντα μύροις, 3). In the context of the Berenice epigram just preceding 5.147, Heliodora’s perfumed locks may also recall the first and last of Callimachus’ aitia, in which the locks of the Parian Charites flowing with apparently simple oils (ἀπ᾽ ὀστλίγγων δ᾽ αἰὲν ἄλειφα ῥέει, fr. 7.12 with Σ 7b.12, β[οστρ]ύχων) link in ring composition to the catasterized lock that enjoyed only the pure oils of the maiden Berenice, while regretting the loss of the perfumed oils of her married state (κορυφῆς ...,| ἧς ἄπο, παρ[θ]ενίη μὲν ὅτ᾽ ἦν ἔτι, πολλὰ πέπωκα | λιτά, γυναικείων δ᾽ οὐκ ἀπέλαυσα μύρων, fr. 110.77-78). Once again, we find Meleager reworking Callimachus’ imagery involving Charites stripped of garlands and anointed with plain oil to express his own system of imagery involving garlands and perfume; the result is a remodeling of Callimachean aesthetics. 3.2. Animals and epitaphs In the Aetia prologue, Callimachus famously likens his poetry to the ‘shrill song of the cicada’, the ‘light one, the winged one’ who feeds on dew, and rejects the ’noise of asses’, leaving it to others to bray like the ‘long-eared beast’ (fr. 1.29-34). Meleager adapts both of these images, but in contexts involving his own erotic themes. In AP 7.196 Meleager asks a cicada to sing a new song so that he, reclining under a shady plane tree, may escape Eros with noonday sleep. The poet does not here identify himself with the cicada, but rather treats the insect’s song as a means of temporary relief from love longing, a pervasive theme in his erotic epigrams. The opening line, however, again offers a Callimachean palimpsest as the key words τέττιξ, δροσεραῖς echo Callimachus’ τέττιγος (fr. 1.30) and δρόσον (fr. 1.33): ἀχήεις τέττιξ, δροσεραῖς σταγόνεσσι μεθυσθείς, ἀγρονόμον μέλπεις μοῦσαν ἐρημολάλον· Resonant cicada, drunk on drops of dew, the song you sing pervades the countryside and sounds in empty places. (AP 7.196.1-2)

Dew is of course the food of cicadas elsewhere (e.g., [Hes.] Scut. 393-395), but Meleager’s motif of a cicada drunk on dew appears to be directed, again in oppositione, to Callimachus’ dew-drinking cicada-poet. As we have seen in other Callimachean passages, a distaste for excessive consumption of wine is a metapoetic theme connected to the aesthetics of the Aetia. Meleager here creates, from that model but in resistance, his

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own type of cicada, one that can achieve a state equivalent to drunkenness even from the lightest of stimulants. As such, the cicada provides Meleager as lover temporary escape to a bucolic world deriving from a different generic model. The cicada epigram and its companion piece on a tuneful grasshopper (AP 7.195) appear among a series of animal epitaphs in the Anthology’s sepulchral book (AP 7.189-216); this series likely constitutes an excerpt from the Garland supplemented with epigrams from later anthologies. The Meleagrian pair on insects, however, are not epitaphs at all, but have seemingly intruded from another Garland location. Imitations by Latin poets in programmatic positions, such as the sparrow poems in Catullus 2-3 and Vergil’s near quotation of the second and the last lines of the cicada epigram in Eclogues 1.1-2,43 strongly suggest that Meleager’s insect epigrams had a programmatic position in the Garland, perhaps in the mostly dismantled epideictic section or book (AP 9.313-338) or possibly in the erōtika. In such a location, the Callimachean precedent for the imagery of the cicada and dew would be more obvious. In a long sequence from Meleager’s epitaphic book is preserved a series of his four self-epitaphs (AP 7.416-19), immediately preceded by a self-epitaph by Callimachus: Βαττιάδεω παρὰ σῆμα φέρεις πόδας εὖ μὲν ἀοιδήν εἰδότος, εὖ δ᾽ οἴνῳ καίρια συγγελάσαι. You carry your feet past the tomb of Battiades, who knew song well and how to rightly join in laughter by the wine. (AP 7.415)

The Callimachean couplet is thus set as the model for Meleager’s most explicit statements about his biography and poetic principles, and directly paired with Meleager’s only single-couplet epitaph:44 Εὐκράτεω Μελέαγρον ἔχω, ξένε, τὸν σὺν Ἔρωτι καὶ Μούσαις κεράσανθ’ ἡδυλόγους Χάριτας. Stranger, I hold Meleager, the son of Eucrates, the one who mingled the sweet-speaking Graces with Eros and the Muses. (AP 7.416) 43. On AP 7.195-196 as models for the Catullus and Vergil poems, see Gutzwiller (1996: 95-97; 2012: 93-99;). As the second line of AP 7.196 provides a direct source for Ecl. 1.2, silvestrem tenui Musam meditaris avena, so the last line, ἐνθάδ᾽ ὑπὸ σκιερῇ κεκλιμένος πλατάνῳ, provides one of the models for Ecl. 1.1, Tityre, tu patulae recubans sub tegmine fagi. 44. This first self-epitaph in the Meleagrian group was long considered an anonymous imitation of the others, but the current trend is toward acceptance of Meleager’s authorship; see Gow-Page (1965: 2.606); Page (1981: 351-352); Conca et al. (2005: 793n); Männlein-Robert (2007a: 378); Höschele (2013: 26, uncertainly), Rashed 2013. Based on an examination of the lemmata in the margin of the Palatine, I now accept Meleager’s authorship.

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We should first notice that Callimachus’ φέρεις ... ἀοιδήν recurs in the same sedes (though with a different grammatical structure) in Mel. AP 4.1.1, so providing an exact model for the opening line of the Garland’s proem: Μοῦσα φίλα, τίνι τάνδε φέρεις πάγκαρπον ἀοιδάν.

This allusion, unlikely to be accidental, suggests that in Callimachus’ Epigrammata this self-epitaph had a programmatic position, perhaps a concluding one, which Meleager recovers in palimpsest for the first line of his Garland.45 Though the two epitaphic couplets juxtaposed in the Garland’s sepulchral book have no shared vocabulary, the patronymics that open each — Βαττιάδεω, Εὐκράτεω — signal a link between them, as each couplet provides a succinct statement of the author’s poetic personality. For Callimachus this is his superb knowledge (εἰδότος; cf. Call. Hymn 1.78) of how to make good poetry and, in dichotomous relationship (μέν ... δέ), how to compose less seriously (i.e., epigrams) in a symposiastic setting (cf. AP 12.51, on Diocles). For Meleager the couplet replaces dichotomy with mixture, as he blends the charm of sweet language with erotic subject matter. As Höschele has pointed out, the phrase Εὐκράτεω Μελέαγρον, which reappears in AP 7.417.3 (with separation), 7.418.5, and 7.419.3, gives Meleager’s father the speaking name ‘Well-mixed’.46 Yet another form of the Callimachean palimpsest appears in a different Meleagrian self-epitaph, AP 7.421, which, separated from AP 7.416-419 by one poem, acts as a bridge to a series of enigmatic poems by Garland authors (AP 7.422-429). In this epigram a passerby confronts a tombstone that lacks an inscription but is adorned with a winged (πτανέ, 1) statue of the hero Meleager, holding a hunting spear and with the spoils of the boar. After several wrong guesses, the passerby finally realizes that the wings are the clue to the deceased’s identity: ἀλλ᾽ ἄρα, ναί δοκέω γάρ, ὁ γῆς ὑπένερθε σοφιστὰς ἐστί· σὺ δ᾽, ὁ πτερόεις, τοὔνομα τοῦδε – λόγος. But wait — yes, I think this is it. The one beneath the earth is a learned man, while you, the winged one, as a form of language, are his name. (AP 7.421.7-8)

While the beelike poet was called ‘winged’ already in Plato (χρῆμα ποιητής ἐστιν … πτηνὸν, Ion 534b), it is Callimachus’ self-description as a cicada in the Aetia prologue that Meleager recalls with partial repetition 45. As I earlier suggested (1998: 213-214, 224-226), Call. AP 7.415, perhaps paired with his epitaph for his father (AP 7.525), suits a concluding section of the Epigrammata (cf. Prop. 1.21-22), just as Call. AP 7.89 has the characteristics of an opening poem. 46. Höschele 2010: 186; 2013: 27.

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of his phrasing (ἐγ]ὼ δ᾽ εἴην οὑλ[α]χύς, ὁ πτερόεις, fr. 1.32). As the light one, the winged one, Callimachus imagistically embodies his leptotic style.47 In contrast, Meleager’s wingedness seems, through the crucial λόγος, to recall Homer’s ‘winged words’ (ἔπεα πτερόεντα), suggesting that his cleverness as a wordsmith, a σοφιστάς, underlies his own poetic technique, undoubtedly more ‘wordy’ and florid, than Callimachus’. No ‘long-eared’ braying ass (θηρὶ … οὐατόεντι, Aet. fr. 1.31) appears in Meleager’s epigrams, but there is a ‘long-eared’ creature — Phanion’s pet hare, now dead: τὸν ταχύπουν, ἔτι παῖδα συναρπασθέντα τεκούσης ἄρτι μ᾽ ἀπὸ στέρνων, οὐατόεντα λαγὼν I, a long-eared hare, swift of foot, snatched from my mother’s breast when still just a baby.

(AP 7.207.1-2)

The adjective οὐατόεις was never common, remaining somewhat esoteric. The contracted form appears in the epic formula τρίποδ᾽ ὠτώεντα (Hom. Il. 23.264, 513; Hes. Op. 657),48 and the expanded version occurs first in Simonides (631 PMG), of a skyphos, and then in Antimachus (fr. 91.1 Wyss) of a shepherd’s crook. Later, however, the word became more or less inescapably associated with the Aetia prologue, as in Pollianus, who quotes Callimachus’ phrase as an example of triteness (AP 11.130.5), and in Nonnus, who was fond of reviving Callimachean words (ὡς ὄνος οὐατόεις, Dion. 21.209; cf. 14.177). I believe, in fact, that there are hints in Meleager’s comic epitaph that the hare is patterned on Berenice’s lock, both being non-living speakers. As the lock may have been snatched up (ἥ[ρπ]ασε, fr. 110.55)49 by Zephyrus and placed in Aphrodite’s lap (Κύπρ]ιδος εἰς κόλ[πους … ἔθηκε, 56), so the hare was snatched (συναρπασθέντα, 1) from its mother’s breast and placed in the lap of Phanion who cherished and fed it: ἐν κόλποις στέργουσα διέτρεφεν ἁ γλυκερόχρως Φανίον, εἰαρινοῖς ἄνθεσι βοσκόμενον. Sweet-skinned Phanion cuddled me on her lap and nourished me, feeding me spring flowers.

(AP 7.207.3-4)

47. Aristotle (Aud. 804a.27-28) explains that the sounds made by grasshoppers, cicadas, and nightingales are λιγυραί because of the ‘sharpness, fineness, and accuracy’ (ὀξύτητι καὶ λεπτότητι καὶ ἀκριβείᾳ) of their voices. For the poetic associations of Callimachus’ ὁ πτερόεις, see Harder 2012: 2.74-75. 48. See West (1978: ad 657 with 598) on expansion of the form. 49. Pfeiffer 1949-53: ad loc., conceding that ἥ[ρπ]ασε in 55 and ἁ]ρπασθῆνα[ι] in the scholia do not perfectly match the lacunae, concludes ‘tamen vix aliud … fuisse potest’. Massimilla (2010: 156) prefers Gallavotti’s ἤ[λ]ασε, but see Harder 2012: 829-830.

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While the sister locks longed for their sibling when it was newly cut (ἄρτι [ν]εότμητόν με κόμαι ποθέεσκον ἀδε[λφεαί, fr. 110.51), Phanion’s pet hare, in oppositione, eventually came to long no more for its mother (οὐδέ με μητρὸς ἔτ᾽ εἶχε πόθος, 5). Since the Anthology‘s Byzantine editor has placed the hare epigram among animal epitaphs by later poets, we lack knowledge of its original position in the Garland. But given its allusions to the lock aition (and to death), it is not unreasonable to speculate that it occupied a place of closure, perhaps in the erōtika or epideiktika. Another Callimachean reference, of programmatic importance, is the central detail that the hare, fed on spring flowers (εἰαρινοῖς ἄνθεσι βοσκόμενον, 4), died from being ‘fattened on abundant meals’ (πολλῇ δαιτὶ παχυνόμενος, 6). Just as οὐατόεντα λαγών makes reference, with deviation, to Callimachus’ noisy, ‘long-eared beast’, so the participle παχυνόμενος echoes the prologue’s ‘fattened victim’ (θύος ὅττι πάχιστον, fr. 1.23; cf. παχὺ γράμμα καὶ οὐ τορόν, fr. 398 Pf.), both images of the poetic manner Callimachus rejects. Phanion is a favorite love of Meleager’s later years on Cos, so that the spring flowers may figure erotic epigrams he offered her: in the proem his own ‘early white violets’ (πρώϊμα λευκόϊα, 56) are the first blooming flowers of spring, and so much used in wreaths.50 While a diet of spring flowers would not normally fatten, Meleager’s metaphor here implies excess, overindulgence in an epigram style that ideally lies between thin and fat. In a final position, the epigram about Phanion’s dead hare might signal the curbing of Meleager’s flower collection, before it cloys. In conclusion, I offer two examples of how Meleager’s palimpsest technique appears in later epigrammatists. The first occurs in a poem by Philodemus: λευκοΐνους πάλι δὴ καὶ ψάλματα καὶ πάλι Χίους οἴνους καὶ πάλι δὴ σμύρναν ἔχειν Συρίην καὶ πάλι κωμάζειν καὶ ἔχειν πάλι διψάδα πόρνην οὐκ ἐθέλω· μισῶ ταῦτα τὰ πρὸς μανίην. ἀλλά με ναρκίσσοις ἀναδήσατε καὶ πλαγιαύλων γεύσατε καὶ κροκίνοις χρίσατε γυῖα μύροις καὶ Μιτυληναίῳ τὸν πνεύμονα τέγξατε Βάκχῳ, καὶ συζεύξατέ μοι φωλάδα παρθενικήν.

50. Thphr. HP 6.8.1; cf. Plin. Nat. 21.64. Technically, the flower is not a violet, but most usually identified with white (hoary) stock (Matthiola incana) or less often with snowdrop (Leucojum aestivum). Nicolosi (2016) argues that Meleager’s identification with early-flowering λευκόϊα, often compared to roses, is a coded reference to a hoped-for rebirth of love poetry.

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Again to have garlands of white violets and harps and again Chian wine and again — yes! — Syrian perfume And again to go reveling and again to hold a tipsy whore – I don’t want at all. I hate all that madness. Instead bind my head with narcissus and give a try to cross-harps and anoint my limbs with saffron scent and moisten my lungs with Mytilenian wine, and join me with a stay-at-home girl. AP 11.34

Scholars have found the epigram puzzling because the first, rejected symposium has seemed in its details little different from the second, favored one. Sider argues, giving a dynamic reading of the poem, that the different details about the two banquets are of ‘of no account whatsoever’ and only the difference between the whore and the maiden matters to Philodemus.51 If, however, we read the epigram in conjunction with Meleager’s proem, the details of the two banquets do matter. The opening word — λευκοΐνους (sc. στεφάνους) — is a direct allusion to the λευκόϊα that represent Meleager’s epigrams,52 and Philodemus also adapts, with an expanded fivefold usage, Meleager’s triple repetition of πάλι in AP 5.136.1, which is an allusion to Callimachus’ single πάλιν in AP 12.51.1. Also allusory to Meleager’s opening sequence in the erōtika are the references to music, wine, and perfume,53 the latter specified as Syrian like Meleager himself (cf. AP 7.417.5), and also like Philodemus.54 We thus again find imitation in oppositione, as Philodemus renounces Meleager’s freeliving, free-loving ambiance, through allusion to his predecessor’s symbol-laden proem and the opening sequence of his erōtika. In fact, if we read through the lens of the Garland proem, it becomes evident that the elements of the second banquet, appropriate for an attachment with a maiden, apparently recall the first part of Meleager’s list of poets, a section dominated by female epigrammatists and symbols of the feminine. ‘Mytilenian wine’ evokes Sappho (4.1.6), Melanippides’ narcissus 51. Sider (1997: 81). 52. References to ‘white violets’ occur nowhere else in the Greek Anthology apart from Meleager’s epigrams (AP 4.1.56, 5.144.1, 5.147.1, and 12.256.4) and a second Philodemus poem in which λευκόϊα are to adorn the grave of an effeminate gallus (AP 7.222.8). 53. Music performed by a woman appears in Mel. AP 5.138-140, wine in AP 12.49 and AP 5.136-137, and perfume in AP 5.146-147. 54. The surprise rejection of the Meleagrian type of banquet (or, if read programmatically, his erotic/symposiastic poetry) in οὐκ ἐθέλω and μισῶ (4) makes it clear that the preceding list functions as a priamel, and in that regard bears a likeness to AP 12.43, where Callimachus lists what he despises in poetry and in a lover. In fact, the concluding clause in Callimachus’ priamel — σικχαίνω πάντα τὰ δημόσια (4) — echoes in Philodemus’ μισῶ ταῦτα τὰ πρὸς μανίην (4) in the same sedes of the same pentameter line. Is there perhaps, then, a return to the Callimachean model, even as the Meleagrian one is falling out of favor?

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(4.1.7)55 is the flower plucked by Persephone when she became the bride of Hades (h.Cer. 8, 428), and the saffron-scented perfume echoes Erinna’s saffron crocus, called sweet and like maiden’s skin (AP 4.1.12). Perhaps Philodemus’ point is that some of the Garland poets provide appropriate models for his new female companion, who is not of the hetaira class and perhaps had literary interests modeled on the women epigrammatists in the Garland. As a fellow Gadaran of a generation or two after Meleager, Philodemus is an important witness to early interpretation of the Garland’s images and allusive techniques; he also demonstrates anew the continuing process of oppositional imitation through single, programmatic words. For each poet originality within a tradition is what matters, a tradition that has a major reset with Callimachus and is remodeled yet again by Meleager. In the opening of Philip’s proem to his own Garland, he explicitly acknowledges Meleager as his model both by naming him as such and by adopting the imagery and style of the earlier proem: ἄνθεά σοι δρέψας Ἑλικώνια καὶ κλυτοδένδρου Πιερίης κείρας πρωτοφύτους κάλυκας καὶ σελίδος νεαρῆς θερίσας στάχυν, ἀντανέπλεξα τοῖς Μελεαγρείοις ὡς ἴκελον στεφάνοις. ἀλλὰ παλαιοτέρων εἰδὼς κλέος, ἐσθλὲ Κάμιλλε, γνῶθι καὶ ὁπλοτέρων τὴν ὀλιγοστιχίην. Having plucked for you flowers from Helicon, shorn early-born blooms from famed Pieria’s trees, and reaped ears from a new column, I plaited them with likeness to Meleager’s garland, in rivalry. But noble Camillus, you who know the glory of the ancients, recognize also the brevity of younger poets. (AP 4.2.1-6)

In the fifth line, with ἀλλά,56 Philip turns to point out how the more recent epigrammatists he anthologizes differ from the older ones gathered by Meleager. As Magnelli has pointed out, he does so by using a single Callimachean word — his ὀλιγοστιχίην echoing [ὀλ]ιγόστιχος from the Aetia prologue (fr. 1.9).57 The difference between the Meleagrian and Philippan epigrams is characterized as length, shown both in the absence 55. The Suda (μ 454-455) mentions two poets named Melanippides, an older one, who was a contemporary of Simonides and is credited with epigrams, and his grandson, an innovative dithyrambist; see Gow-Page (1965: 2.597-598). It is unclear which Meleager has in mind as his narcissus. 56. Note the structural similarity to Phld. AP 11.34, where the turn away from Meleagrian images also begins in line 5 with ἀλλά. Both poems renounce a Meleagrian model in favor of their own deviation from that model. 57. Magnelli (2006: especially 394-396).

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of longer epigrams in this second Garland and also in Philip’s shortened list of epigrammatists in the second half of his proem (AP 4.2.7-14).58 This list mimics Meleager by naming individual poets and assigning each a plant, but it is decidedly barebones, lacking ornament. Philip first shows his dexterity with Meleager’s ‘flowery’ style in the rather fussy opening two couplets only to privilege brevity and a corresponding plain style as more appropriate for recent epigrams. Here once again a poet (and anthologist) with intimate knowledge of the earlier Garland demonstrates his distinctiveness by imitating Meleager’s palimpsest technique, through which the poet from Gadara had acknowledged his debt to Callimachus, with deviation. REFERENCES Barchiesi, A., 2011, “Roman Callimachus”. In: B. Acosta-Hughes et al. (eds), Brill’s Companion to Callimachus. Leiden-Boston, 511-533. Bornmann, F., 1973, “Meleagro e la Corona delle Muse“. SIFC 45, 223-232. Bulloch, A., 2006, “The Order and Structure of Callimachus’ Aetia 3”. CQ 56, 496-508. Cairns, F., 2016, Hellenistic Epigram: Contexts of Exploration. Cambridge. Cameron, A., 1968, “The Garlands of Meleager and Philip”. GRBS 9, 323-349. ―, 1993, The Greek Anthology from Meleager to Planudes. Oxford. Campbell, D. A., 1991, Greek Lyric III: Stesichorus, Ibycus, Simonides, and Others. Cambridge, MA-London. Claes, P., 1970, “Notes sur quelques passages de Méléagre de Gadara”. AntClass 39, 468-474. Clayman, D. L., 2014, Berenice II and the Golden Age of Ptolemaic Egypt. Oxford. Conca, F. et al. (eds), 2005, Antologia Palatina: Volume primo, Libri I-VII. Turin. D’Alessio, G., 2004, ”Some Notes on the Salmakis Inscription”. In: S. Isager & P. Pedersen (eds), The Salmakis Inscription and Hellenistic Halikarnassos (Halicarnassian Studies 4). Odense, 43-57. De Stefani, C. & E. Magnelli, 2011, “Callimachus and later Greek Poetry”. In B. Acosta-Hughes et al. (eds), Brill’s Companion to Callimachus. LeidenBoston, 534-565. Fantuzzi, M. & R. Hunter, 2004, Tradition and Innovation in Hellenistic Poetry. Cambridge. Gigante, M., 1999, “Il nuovo testo epigrafico di Alicarnasso”. A&R 44, 1-8. Gow, A. S. F. & D. L. Page (eds), 1965, The Greek Anthology: Hellenistic Epigrams. Cambridge. ―, 1968, The Greek Anthology: The Garland of Philip. Cambridge.

58. For statistics to show the shorter standard of length in Philippan authors, see GowPage (1968: 1.xxxvii) with Magnelli (2006: 395-396).

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Gutzwiller, K. 1996, “Vergil and the Date of the Theocritean Epigram Book”. Philologus 140: 92-99. ―, 1997, “The Poetics of Editing in Meleager’s Garland”. TAPA 127: 169-200. ―, 1998a, “Meleager: From Menippean to Epigrammatist”. In: M. A. Harder et al. (eds), Genre in Hellenistic Poetry (Hellenistica Groningana 3). Groningen, 81-93. ―, 1998b, Poetic Garlands: Hellenistic Epigrams in Context. Berkeley-Los Angeles-London. ―, 2006, “Learning and Love in the Epigrams of Meleager”. In: S. Eklund et al. (eds), Συγχάρματα: Studies in Honour of Jan Fredrik Kindstrand (Studia Graeca Upsaliensia 21). Uppsala, 67-85. ―, 2009, “Apelles and the Painting of Language”. RPh 83, 39-63. ―, 2012, “Catullus and the Garland of Meleager”. In: I. du Quesnay & T. Woodman (eds), Catullus: Poems, Books, Readers. Cambridge, 79-111. ―, 2014, “Contests of Style and Uses of the Middle in Canon Making”. In M. Cojannot-Le Blanc et al. (eds), L’Héroïque et le Champêtre II: Appropriation et déconstruction des théories stylistiques dans la pratique des artistes et dans les modalités d’ exposition des oeuvres. Paris, 15-31. ―, forthcoming, “Under the Sign of the Distaff: Aetia 1.5, Spinning, and Erinna”. CQ. Harder, A. (ed), 2012, Callimachus “Aetia”: Introduction, Text, Translation, and Commentary. 2 vols. Oxford. Höschele, R., 2009, “Meleager and Heliodora: A Love Story in Bits and Pieces?”. In: I. Nilsson (ed), Plotting with Eros: Essays on the Poetics of Love and the Erotics of Reading. Copenhagen, 99-134. ―, 2010, Die blütenlesende Muse: Poetik und Textualität antiker Epigrammsammlungen (Classica Monacensia 37). Tübingen. ―, 2013, “’If I Am from Syria – So What?’: Meleager’s Cosmopoetics”. In: S. Ager & R. Faber (eds), Belonging and Isolation in the Hellenistic World. Toronto-Buffalo-London, 19-32. Hunter, R., 2006, The Shadow of Callimachus: Studies in the Reception of Hellenistic Poetry at Rome. Cambridge. Hutchinson, G., 2003, “The Aetia: Callimachus’ Poem of Knowledge”. ZPE 145, 47-59. Reprinted in G. Hutchinson, 2008, Talking Books: Readings in Hellenistic and Roman Books of Poetry. Oxford, 42-63. Magnelli, E., 2006, “Il proemio della Corona di Filippo di Tessalonica e la sua funzione programmatica”. In: L. Cristante (ed), Incontri triestini di filologia classica IV – 2004-2005. Trieste, 393-404. Männlein-Robert, I., 2007a, “Hellenistische Selbstepitaphien: Zwischen Autobiographie und Poetik”. In: M. Erler & S. Schorn (eds), Die griechische Biographie in hellenistischer Zeit. Berlin-New York, 363-383. ―, 2007b, Stimme, Schrift und Bild: Zum Verhältnis der Künste in der hellenistischen Dichtung. Heidelberg. Massimilla, G. (ed), 1996, Callimaco: “Aitia,” libri primo e secondo. Pisa. ―, 2010, Callimaco: “Aitia,” libro terzo e quarto. Pisa-Rome. Nicolosi, A., 2016, “Meleagro e la viola bianca della poesia (AP 4, 1, 55 S. = HE 3980 S.)”. QUCC 114: 119-126. Page, D. L. (ed), 1981, Further Greek Epigrams: Epigrams before A.D. 50 from the Greek Anthology and other Sources. Cambridge.

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Petrovic, I. & A. Petrovic, 2003, “Stop and Smell the Statues: Callimachus’ Epigram 51 Pf. Reconsidered (Four Times)”. MD 51: 179-208. Pfeiffer, R. (ed), 1949-1953, Callimachus. 2 vols. Oxford. Prioux, É., 2007, Regards alexandrins: histoire et théorie des arts dans l’épigramme hellénistique. Leuven-Paris-Dudley, MA. ―, 2014, “Offrandes poétiques: Les figures de destinataires dans la poésie grecque du IIIe s. av. J.-C.” In J.-Cl. Juhle (ed), Pratiques latines de la dédicace: Permanence et mutations, de l’antiquité à la Renaissance. Paris, 93-115. Rashed, M., 2013, “Méléagre de Gadara: Quatre poèmes autobiographiques mal compris (Anth. Gr. VII 416, 417, 418, 419)”. In: P. Fodor et al. (eds), More Modoque: Die Wurzeln der europäischen Kultur und deren Rezeption im Orient und Okzident: Festschrift für Miklós Maróth. Budapest, 105-115. Sider, D. (ed), 1997, The Epigrams of Philodemos: Introduction, Text, and Commentary. New York-Oxford. West, M. L. (ed), 1978, Hesiod: Works & Days. Oxford. Wifstrand, A., (1926), Studien zur griechischen Anthologie. Lund. Reprinted in S. Tarán (ed), 1987, The Greek Anthology I. New York-London. Wimmel, W., 1960, Kallimachos im Rom: Die Nachfolge seines apologetischen Dichtens in der Augusteerzeit (Hermes Einzelschriften 16). Wiesbaden. Zetzel, J., 1981, “On the Opening of Callimachus, Aetia II”. ZPE 42, 31-33.

FROM SCAMANDER TO DEMETER: ALLUSIONS TO HOMER IN THE SIXTH HYMN OF CALLIMACHUS Annette HARDER

1. Introduction In this article I will consider the reception of Homer in Callimachus’ Hymn to Demeter. For this purpose I will in particular explore the way in which Callimachus is alluding to Homer in this hymn and how these allusions may affect the meaning one can attribute to it. Generally speaking the nature of the allusions to Homer in Callimachus varies. On the one hand he operates with small-scale allusions to specific passages, which presuppose a detailed knowledge of the text of the Homeric epic (e.g. by referring the reader to a Homeric hapax). On the other hand he includes more general references to issues or characters from the Iliad and Odyssey, which were probably well known and could have been recognized by a wider audience. The reader’s task in detecting possible layers of meaning by means of these varying allusions is not an easy one and Callimachus does not create a simple one-to-one connection between his poems and their subtexts. In some instances the reader seems to be stimulated to read or remember certain passages of Homer, to which there are many allusions, and to draw his own conclusions from the contrasts and parallels he discovers. He is offered small hints and tips pointing him to parallels, which he may or may not consider relevant for his interpretation of Callimachus’ poems. Thus the reader is activated in various ways and involved in a complex reading experience including both Homer and Callimachus, and with implications for his view of the poems’ contents as well as of its halfhidden messages. For the purpose of this article I will start from the question whether one can detect certain groups of allusions to specific passages in the Iliad or Odyssey which can then, as a whole, be related to the contents of Callimachus’ Hymn to Demeter in a meaningful way and whether these groups of allusions can be explained in relation to central issues of Callimachus’ work in its historical and/or literary context.

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To this end I have investigated the references to Homer in the hymn, which have been helpfully collected in modern commentaries,1 in a systematic way, following in the tracks of earlier scholars who have explored specific groups of allusions (see section 2). The assumption from which I have started is that when a word recalls a hapax or rarely used word or phrase in Homer it is rather likely that Callimachus knew the passage referred to as well as its context and that his learned readers recalled these passages too and were able to use them for their interpretation. Thus one could regard the use of these words as potentially meaningful allusions. In some other cases it is rather the contents or general phraseology which refers the reader to Homer. Such passages have also been included in the investigation.2

2. Hymn 6 In Callimachus’ sixth hymn a group of women is waiting for a procession for Demeter after a day of fasting. While they are waiting the narrator, a kind of master or mistress of ceremonies, is commenting on the events and tells the story of Erysichthon, after rejecting a few other more wellknown stories about the goddess, such as her search for her daughter Persephone or the way in which she taught agriculture.3 The young prince Erysichthon, son of Demeter’s favourite Triopas, has collected a group of friends and threatens to cut the trees in a sacred wood of Demeter. After ignoring a first warning by the goddess, disguised as a priestess, he is punished by an insatiable hunger and thirst. This leads to embarassing situations and eventually, despair for his parents, and when he has eaten everything in his father’s house, including the ‘cat’,4 he ends as a beggar at the crossroads. The hymn then is concluded by a description of the procession, which has finally come, and a prayer to Demeter. The introduction of Hymn 6 contains many allusions to Homeric hapax legomena and rare words and in this way it helps to introduce the reader to a number of important themes in the poem. The story of Erysichthon 1. See Hopkinson (1984); Stephens (2015). It would be worthwhile to investigate all six hymns in this manner and then also to discuss the question whether the six hymns taken together will present a kind of consistent Homeric background with relevance for the whole collection. 2. On the methodology see also Harder (2002: 190-191). 3. For an in-depth analysis of the hymn in terms of its narrator, see the paper of Murray in this volume. 4. On the question what type of animal is referred to here, see the paper of Williams in this volume.

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also contains many allusions to Homer. Here the large number of allusions helps to highlight various themes in the story by referring the readers to their Homeric background. Thus the reader may be alerted to parallel or contrasting situations or to aspects of poetics connected with the story. After the story has ended with Erysichthon sitting as a beggar at the crossroads, however, the passage in which the procession for Demeter is described contains virtually no allusions (116-133). Only in the hymnic farewell in 134-138 there are a few allusions again. If anything, this absence of allusions in 116-133 alone suggests that for Callimachus there was more at stake than just adding some Homeric flavour to his poem: he seems to distribute the Homeric elements not randomly all through the poem, but to evoke them quite carefully at places where they can help the interpretation. Several aspects of the Homeric allusions in Hymn 6 have already been explored and discussed by other scholars, notably by Bulloch (1977), Müller (1987) and Murray (2004). Bulloch, Müller and Murray have all shown how the episode of Odysseus as a beggar in the Odyssey is often referred to and have discussed various aspects of the allusions evoking these scenes. Bulloch (1977) also discusses some other clusters of allusions: to the episode of Agamemnon and Chryses in Iliad 1, to Tityus and to the eating of the cattle of Helios in the Odyssey, another story about hybris and punishment in relation to eating. Systematic investigation of all hapax legomena, rare words and Homeric phrases mentioned in recent commentaries has brought to light further clusters of allusions, notably a range of allusions pointing to passages about proper and unproper ways of eating and drinking (among which the eating of the cattle of Helios also figures) and to the use and misuse of hospitality and a number of allusions to epic scenes involving parents and children. Besides, two further episodes in Homer that focus on — at first sight — less obvious themes are evoked so frequently that they may be thought relevant for the interpretation of the hymn. These are the chariot race in Iliad 23, with the conflict between Antilochus and Menelaus about the second prize, and the fight between Achilles and the river Scamander in Iliad 21. In this article I will focus on the last two episodes. It may be worth bearing in mind that, in combination with the results reached by Bulloch (1977: 102-104) about the beginning of the conflict between Achilles and Agamemnon in Iliad 1 the hymn seems to evoke three important stages in the development of the plot in the Iliad and the emotions and behaviour of Achilles: the beginning of Achilles’ anger in book 1, which leads to his disastrous quarrel with Agamemnon, his demented and murderous

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fury in book 21, and his gradual recovery and development into a new kind of social behaviour in book 23, where harmony takes the place of conflict. 3. Dealing with ὑπερβασίαι: Antilochus as a foil for Erysichthon A range of allusions to the young epic hero Antilochus, a son of Nestor and a brave fighter, seems to be one of the means Callimachus employs to stimulate further thinking about the character and behaviour of Erysichthon in Hymn 6. Antilochus is one of the younger generation of heroes in the Iliad. His character and career are summarized by Willcock (1973: 7-8) and Erbse (1993: 398-403): he is the first Greek to kill in a fight in the Iliad, helps Menelaus against Aeneas, fights bravely and capably in several battles, tells Achilles about the death of Patroclus, and on the whole appears as a responsible and empathic young man, or as Erbse (1993: 401) summarizes: “Er ist so tapfer wie die Besten, aber flinker und aufmerksamer, immer bereit dort einzuspringen, wo eine Notlage entsteht oder der Älterer Hilfe braucht”.5 His real ‘aristeia’ is not a fight, but his role in the chariot race in Iliad 23. Later authors tell how he is killed by Memnon when he is helping his father Nestor in the battle.6 Altogether Antilochus appears as quite the opposite of Erysichthon and an interesting point is also that he is protected by his great-grandfather Poseidon, as is mentioned twice in Il. 13.554-555 and 562-563, when Antilochus is in the midst of a fierce fight and attacked by Adamas, and that he is loved and taught by Poseidon and Zeus (Il. 23.306-308). This behaviour of Poseidon is quite the opposite of his attitude in Callimachus’ hymn (h. 6.96-106), where he does not listen to the prayer of his son Triopas on behalf of his grandson Erysichthon (97 τὸν οὐκ ἀίοντα Ποτειδάωνα ‘the unheeding Poseidon’)7 and is called ψευδοπάτωρ ‘father who are false to me’ (98) by him. In Iliad 23.262-650, the description of the chariot race at the funeral games for Patroclus, the youthful Antilochus is advised to use μῆτις (‘good counsel’) by his father Nestor (Il. 23.306-348), who adduces some examples of men benefiting from it, the first of which is a woodcutter in 5. See also Willcock (1973: 1), who calls him “a personable and attractive young man”. 6. So e.g. briefly Od. 4.187-188 and more elaborately Pi. P. 6.28-43, perhaps derived from the Aethiopis; see Willcock (1973: 7 with n.29). 7. All translations from the sixth hymn are by Hopkinson (1984).

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315 (μήτι τοι δρυτόμος μέγ’ ἀμείνων ἠὲ βίηφι ‘a woodcutter much better through good counsel than through force’), where the notion of violence may be related to the ill advised violence of Erysichthon’s woodcutting in h. 6.33-38). In spite of the good advice Antilochus goes too far in his use of μῆτις and performs an act of hybris when he passes the chariot of Menelaus on a narrow and dangerous piece of the road without paying attention to Menelaus’ warnings.8 By this act he manages to arrive at the finish second, after Diomedes, who wins the race. Achilles, however, offers the second prize, a six years old horse pregnant with a mule, to Eumelus, who comes last because of an accident caused by Athena. Antilochus protests and Achilles offers Eumelus the armour of Asteropaeus instead, but Antilochus is scolded by an angry Menelaus, who asks him to swear that he did not win in a devious manner. Antilochus then repents and offers to give back the prize to which he is not really entitled. Impressed by his candid admission of having been in the wrong and remembering their earlier friendship Menelaus then offers him the prize anyway. The whole scene has been regarded as an example of the way in which the conflict between Achilles and Agamemnon could also have been solved, simply and effectively.9 In Callimachus’ sixth hymn we find a considerable number of allusions to this episode.10 The reader is first reminded of the chariot race in h. 6.4 μηδ’ ὑψόθεν αὐγάσσησθε (‘ no gaze down … from above’). Here the verb recalls a hapax in Il. 23.458 οἶος ἐγὼν ἵππους αὐγάζομαι ἦε καὶ ὑμεῖς (‘am I the only one to see the horses or 8. For further discussion of this issue see Dunkle (1987: 1-9). 9. See e.g. Lohmann (1992: 308-313 and 317), who shows that the narrative of the funeral games as a whole challenges the heroic notion of ‘always coming first’ and offers a peaceful and sensible alternative for the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon which dominated the plot of the Iliad, thus foreshadowing the events in book 24; Richardson (1993: on Il.23.499-652); Erbse (1993: 403), who also observes that Antilochus’ last appearance in Il.23.785-795 is in line with his earlier behaviour. Here he accepts that he has lost the footrace and reacts with an elegant short speech, praising the winners and Achilles, who offers him a golden half-talent as a token of his appreciation. See also Ulf (2004: 77-80), who in a similar vein argues that the funeral games show a way of wellbalanced thinking and acting which may prevent quarrels as in Iliad 1 and prepare the reader for the events of book 24. Apparently the lack of attention for ‘winners’ in the funeral games was also noticed in antiquity, as, as Lohmann (1992: 312) shows, Virgil in the fifth book of his Aeneid is ‘correcting’ Homer in this point. 10. It may be worth noticing that in Aetia fr. 54.8-10 there are also allusions to the chariot race in Il. 23.380-381, where Diomedes, who will win the race, is closely following Eumelus, and in 23.422, where Menelaus tries to avoid colliding with Antilochus. One may wonder whether this was supposed to remind the reader of the cluster of allusions in the sixth hymn. In this respect the mule which Heracles sends to Molorcus after his return to Argos (fr. 54i.19) is also of interest: was the prize for Molorcus in some way connected with the horse pregnant with a mule in the Iliad?

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do you also see them?’) spoken by Idomeneus, who — rightly as it soon turns out — thinks that he is seeing the horses of Diomedes running first in the chariot race. Now, this may at first sight seem accidental, but if one investigates all the allusions in this hymn in a systematic way it turns out that the scenes about Antilochus’ behaviour in the same chariot race, which precede and follow this line, are often evoked, so that the reader really seems to be invited to read or remember this episode in Homer along with the hymn. These allusions do not appear in the order of the story in the Iliad, but taken together may be regarded as evoking this scene: after the reference to the end of the chariot race in line 4 and a possible reference to Antilochus’ reaction to the death of Patroclus (in 10), there are references to the first mention of the prizes in the chariot race (in 100), to Antilochus’ irresponsible behaviour in the race (in 44 and 97), to the scene with Menelaus after the race (in 22 and 77) and to Antilochus’ death (in 94-96). In all instances, except line 10, Callimachus’ phrasing recalls Homeric hapax legomena or phrases used only once in Homer in this particular manner. A detailed discussion of the allusions in the order in which they appear in the hymn may clarify this further. After line 4 the first possible allusion is in h. 6.10 πόδες φέρεν ἔστ’ ἐπὶ δυθμάς (‘your feet carry you as far as the sun’s setting’), where the words πόδες φέρεν recall a phrase used six times in the Iliad, once of Antilochus, who at the request of Menelaus goes to tell Achilles about the death of Patroclus (Il. 17.700). Now, the fact that there are several other passages where the expression occurs makes the allusion less cogent than in cases where we have a hapax, but because of the frequent allusions to the Antilochus scenes elsewhere in the hymn it seems worth considering the expression in this light. This passage follows a description of Antilochus’ speechless horror when he hears about the death of Patroclus in 694-696, a passage which also seems to be alluded to in h. 5.83-84 ἑστάκη δ’ ἄφθογγος, ἐκόλλασαν γὰρ ἀνῖαι | γώνατα καὶ φωνὰν ἔσχεν ἀμαχανία (‘he stood there, unable to speak, for anguish stuck fast his limbs, and helplessness took his voice’),11 about the reaction of Teiresias to his blindness. Thus Antilochus may appear as a foil for both young men in the hymns of Callimachus.12 In h. 6.22 ἵνα καί τις ὑπερβασίας ἀλέηται (‘so that one may avoid transgressions’) the noun is a Homeric hapax and recalls Il. 23.589 οἶσθ’ 11. The translation is by Bulloch (1985). 12. Further investigation of this idea would be worthwhile, but lies outside the scope of the present article.

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οἷαι νέου ἀνδρὸς ὑπερβασίαι τελέθουσι (‘you know what the transgressions of a young man can be like’), where Antilochus offers his apologies and prize to the angry Menelaus, after which Menelaus accepts his apologies and gives the horse back to Antilochus. The effect of this allusion is that immediately at the beginning of the story of the ὑπερβασίαι of Erysichthon, where the purpose of telling this story is announced, a connection between him and Antilochus is established. Moreover, in connection with the interpretation of Erysichthon in terms of Callimachean poetics,13 it is striking that Antilochus explains the tendency to ὑπερβασίαι of young men in Il. 23.590 with the words κραιπνότερος μὲν γάρ τε νόος, λεπτὴ δέ τε μῆτις (‘for his mind is quicker, but his good counsel is meagre’). While the young Antilochus admits to a λεπτή ... μῆτις as the cause of his reproachable behaviour, he shows himself at the same time in possession of a positive qualification in terms of Callimachean poetics. Thus Antilochus is the opposite of Erysichthon on two levels, moral as well as aesthetic: he corrects his ὑπερβασίαι and his mind is tuned, albeit unwittingly, to the subtle demands of Callimachean poetics.14 In h. 6.44 κατωμαδίαν δ’ ἔχε κλᾷδα (‘hanging the key from her shoulder’) the adjective is a Homeric hapax and recalls Il. 23.431-433 ὅσσα δὲ δίσκου οὖρα κατωμαδίοιο πέλονται, | ὅν τ’ αἰζηὸς ἀφῆκεν ἀνὴρ πειρώμενος ἥβης, | τόσσον ἐπιδραμέτην (‘as far as the throw of a discus, thrown from the shoulder by a young man trying his strength, they ran next to each other’) about the horses of Menelaus and Antilochus, when the young man does not make room for Menelaus on the narrow stretch of road and thus achieves his victory in the chariot race by means of a dangerous kind of hybris. In h. 6.77 τέλθος ἀπαιτησῶν ἑκατὸν βόας (‘to demand a debt of a hundred oxen’) the verb shows great similarity to another Homeric hapax and recalls Il. 23.591-595, where Antilochus is addressing Menelaus after the chariot race and offers to give him back the horse he has taken as an undeserved prize by means of his irresponsible behaviour: ἵππον δέ τοι αὐτὸς δώσω, τὴν ἀρόμην. εἰ καί νύ κεν οἴκοθεν ἄλλο 13. See Müller (1987), Murray (2004); Faulkner (2011), who draws attention to the parallels between the stories of Demeter’s fasting and Erysichthon’s hunger and the metapoetical implications, which because of Erysichthon’s eventual thinness are “ultimately destabilizing rather than confirmatory of a sharp distinction between the two” (2011: 92). 14. For a similar kind of re-evaluation of terminology cf. Aetia fr.1.9-10, where the ‘lightness’ which was a negative characteristic of Euripides in Aristophanes’ Ranae appears as a positive characteristic in terms of the new Callimachean poetics.

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μεῖζον ἐπαιτήσειας, ἄφαρ κέ τοι αὐτίκα δοῦναι βουλοίμην ἢ σοί γε διοτρεφὲς ἤματα πάντα ἐκ θυμοῦ πεσέειν καὶ δαίμοσιν εἶναι ἀλιτρός ‘I myself will give you the horse, which I got. And if you would ask for something else and bigger from my possessions I would be willing to give it at once rather than be out of favour with you, fostered by Zeus, and a sinner in the eyes of the gods forever.’

The last words clearly present Antilochus as the opposite of Erysichthon, who decidedly was ‘a sinner in the eyes of the gods’, and recalls also Hymn 2.2, where those who are ἀλιτρός must leave the scene of Apollo’s epiphany. In h. 6.94-96 κλαῖε μὲν ἁ μάτηρ, βαρὺ δ’ ἔστενον αἱ δύ’ ἀδελφαί χὠ μαστὸς τὸν ἔπωνε καὶ αἱ δέκα πολλάκι δῶλαι. ‘his mother wept; and his two sisters and the breast which had nursed him and the many tens of slave-girls all uttered heavy groans’

the phrasing as well as the pattern of several people crying and then special attention for one of them in particular recalls Od. 4,184-186 κλαῖε μὲν ᾿Αργείη ῾Ελένη, Διὸς ἐκγεγαυῖα, κλαῖε δὲ Τηλέμαχός τε καὶ ᾿Ατρεΐδης Μενέλαος, οὐδ’ ἄρα Νέστορος υἱὸς ἀδακρύτω ἔχεν ὄσσε ‘Argive Helen cried, the daughter of Zeus, and Telemachus cried and Menelaus the son of Atreus, nor did the son of Nestor keep his eyes free of tears.’

This is the only Homeric instance of a line beginning with κλαῖε μὲν. Here Menelaus has recognized Telemachus and everyone is moved. Then the narrative focuses on Pisistratus, the son of Nestor, who remembers the killing of his brother Antilochus by Memnon and refers to him at the end of his speech to Menelaus in 199-202: καὶ γὰρ ἐμὸς τέθνηκεν ἀδελφεός, οὔ τι κάκιστος ᾿Αργείων· μέλλεις δὲ σὺ ἴδμεναι· – οὐ γὰρ ἐγώ γε ἤντησ’ οὐδὲ ἴδον· – περὶ δ’ ἄλλων φασὶ γενέσθαι ᾿Αντίλοχον, περὶ μὲν θείειν ταχὺν ἠδὲ μαχητήν ‘For my brother also died, not the worst of the Argives; you will know him — for I never met him nor saw him — and they say that Antilochus surpassed all others, as a quick runner and as a fighter.’

Menelaus answers him politely, but tactfully avoids further mention of Antilochus — and readers like Callimachus may have remembered the somewhat painful scene of the Iliad.

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Then again in h. 6.97 τὸν οὐκ ἀίοντα Ποτειδάωνα (‘the unheeding Poseidon’) the use of the participle with the negation is a phrase used only once in Homer, in Il. 23.429-430 about Antilochus misbehaving in the race and ignoring Menelaus’ urgent request not to endanger them both: ᾿Αντίλοχος δ’ ἔτι καὶ πολὺ μᾶλλον ἔλαυνε | κέντρῳ ἐπισπέρχων ὡς οὐκ ἀΐοντι ἐοικώς (‘but Antilochus drove much more fastly even, urging the horses on with his lash, giving the impression of not hearing him’). Soon afterwards in h. 6.100 we find βρέφος (‘child’ or rather ‘baby’), which is hapax in Il. 23.265-266 ἀτὰρ αὖ τῷ δευτέρῳ ἵππον ἔθηκεν | ἑξέτε’ ἀδμήτην βρέφος ἡμίονον κυέουσαν (‘and for him who came second he promised a horse as prize, six years old, untamed and pregnant with a mule-foal’) about the second prize in the chariot race, which afterwards will be disputed because Antilochus acquires it by his irresponsible overtaking of Menelaus (534-615).15 Summarizing one may say that Antilochus is evoked quite consistently throughout the hymn and that the way in which he is able to respond in a proper way to Menelaus’ criticism may be regarded as a contrast with Erysichthon’s aggressive reaction to the rebuke of Demeter/Nicippe. Here we have a young man who like Erysichthon also behaves badly, but unlike Erysichthon is able and willing to admit that he was at fault and to be reconciled with his opponent. By means of a number of allusions to this episode in the Iliad the reader seems to be invited to make the comparison and the story of Erysichthon may acquire a further layer of meaning, suggesting ways to limit the bad effects of ὑπερβασίαι. The further implications of this state of affairs will be discussed below in section 5.

4. The violence of man and nature: Achilles and the river Scamander We will now look at the episode of Achilles and Scamander. In Hymn 6 there is also a considerable number of allusions to the violent episode in Iliad 21.1-382, where Achilles is filling the river Scamander or Xanthus with the dead bodies of his Trojan victims (among them Lycaon and Asteropeaus, whose deaths are described at some length), so that the river gets very angry and overflows and starts attacking and persecuting Achilles, until, at Hera’s request, Hephaestus stops the river, almost destroying it with his fire. 15. A particular point of interest here is that the noun is usually used of people, as in h.6.100, but occasionally of animals, as in Il. 23.266 of the mule. Elsewhere, in h.2.51 and Aetia fr. 62a (formerly fr. 60 Pfeiffer) Callimachus too used the noun of an animal.

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On a general level there is a certain parallel between Scamander and the locus amoenus of Demeter in Callimachus’ hymn: both are described as beautiful and both are threatened with violent destruction. The beautiful grove of Demeter with its water and trees is described explicitly in h. 6.25-30, while as observed by Mackie (1999: 493) “both within this book [sc. Iliad 21], and more widely in the rest of the poem, much attention is directed toward the beauty of Scamander and its fundamental role in the life of Troy. … there is clearly tremendous attention paid to the unusual beauty of Scamander”.16 When violence is applied nature cries out in both cases: in h. 6.39 the first tree that is hit κακὸν μέλος ἴαχεν ἄλλαις (‘shrieked miserably to the others’) and the phrasing recalls Il. 21.9-10 βράχε δ’ αἰπὰ ῥεέθρα,| ὄχθαι δ’ ἀμφὶ περὶ μεγάλ’ ἴαχον (‘the steep streams roared, and on both sides the riverbanks shrieked loudly’), when the victims begin to fall into the river. Both Achilles and Erysichthon ignore the entreaties and increasing anger of Scamander and Demeter acting on behalf of her trees respectively and the death of the men who apply this excessive violence is hinted at in the course of the poems, although it does not take place within the hymn or in the Iliad. Hephaestus, who acts on behalf of Achilles, almost destroys Scamander altogether with his fire and in this respect it is interesting that in h. 6.67 Erysichthon’s hunger is called αἴθωνα ‘burning’, recalling his other name Aethon.17 When we collect the allusions to this scene throughout the hymn, the first are found in h. 6.13-15, a passage in which rivers and springs are the landmarks in Demeter’s vagaries: τρὶς μὲν δὴ διέβας ᾿Αχελώϊον ἀργυροδίναν τοσσάκι δ’ ἀενάων ποταμῶν ἐπέρασας ἕκαστον, τρὶς δ’ ἐπὶ Καλλιχόρῳ χαμάδις ἐκαθίσσαο φρητί Three times, indeed, did you cross silver-eddying Achelous; just as often you forded each ever-flowing river; three times … you sat on the ground at the well of Callichorus

The adjective ἀργυροδίνης is found three times in Homer and two of these passages refer to the river Scamander.18 Il. 21.7-8 ἡμίσεες δὲ | ἐς ποταμὸν εἰλεῦντο βαθύρροον ἀργυροδίνην (‘half of them were chased 16. For evidence see Mackie (1999: 493 with n.20). 17. See on this adjective and on the name Hopkinson (1984: ad loc.). 18. The other occurrence is in Il. 2.753 οὐδ’ ὅ γε Πηνειῷ συμμίσγεται ἀργυροδίνῃ (‘but he does not mix with the silver-eddying Peneius’). The fact that the adjective is there used of Peneius may connect our passage with h. 4.109-152. There this river almost receives the pregnant Leto, which leads to an earthquake caused by the war-god Ares, who supports Hera, in a scene of almost ‘epic’ wildness and violence.

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into the deep silver-eddying river’), where Achilles chases the Trojans into the Scamander, and 130-131 οὐδ’ ὑμῖν ποταμός περ ἐΰρροος ἀργυροδίνης | ἀρκέσει (‘and the quickflowing silver-eddying river will not help you’). The latter passage is part of the scene where Achilles rejects Lycaon’s request to let him live and says that the river Scamander will carry him to the sea (124-127) and that no ἀργυροδίνης river will protect him. The result of this is that Scamander’s anger increases (136-138),19 like that of Demeter after Erysichthon’s insolent answer to her in h. 6.57. Other words in this passage also recall Achilles’ conflict with Scamander. The name of the river Achelous is found twice in the Iliad and φρητί is a Homeric hapax. Both appear in Il. 21.192-197: καὶ γὰρ σοὶ ποταμός γε πάρα μέγας, εἰ δύναταί τι χραισμεῖν· ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἔστι Διὶ Κρονίωνι μάχεσθαι, τῷ οὐδὲ κρείων ᾿Αχελώϊος ἰσοφαρίζει, οὐδὲ βαθυρρείταο μέγα σθένος ᾿Ωκεανοῖο, ἐξ οὗ περ πάντες ποταμοὶ καὶ πᾶσα θάλασσα καὶ πᾶσαι κρῆναι καὶ φρείατα μακρὰ νάουσιν ‘…for there is a big river at your side, if it can help you at all; but it is not possible to fight with Zeus the son of Cronus and for him not even the mighty Achelous is a match nor the great power of the deep Oceanus, from which all rivers flow and the whole sea and all the springs and deep wells’.

In this passage Achilles scornfully addresses Asteropaeus,20 whose death is described after that of Lycaon, and tells him that as the son of a river he is no match for Achilles as a son of Zeus. In the sequel Scamander becomes very angry and asks Achilles to stop filling him with dead bodies (212-221).21 A second group of references to Achilles and Scamander is found in h. 6.27-29: ἐν πίτυς, ἐν μεγάλαι πτελέαι ἔσαν, ἐν δὲ καὶ ὄχναι, ἐν δὲ καλὰ γλυκύμαλα· τὸ δ’ ὥστ’ ἀλέκτρινον ὕδωρ ἐξ ἀμαρᾶν ἀνέθυε 19. It may be worth noticing that lines 130-135 were athetized by Aristophanes of Byzantium, who thought that they were added to explain the river’s anger (see Richardson 1993: ad loc.) 20. The character of Asteropaeus provides an interesting link between the allusions to Antilochus and to Achilles’ fight with Scamander: in Il. 23.560-562 Achilles offers Asteropaeus’ armour, which he has taken from him in Il. 21.182-183, to Eumelus instead of the horse to which Antilochus regards himself as entitled. 21. Perhaps also τοσσάκι (attested three times in Homer) leads one to the struggle of Achilles and Scamander, as in Il. 21.268 it is used in the context of Scamander attacking Achilles.

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within were pines, large elms, and pear-trees, and fair sweet-apples; and the amber-coloured water boiled up from ditches

As a whole the passage, with its emphasis on water and trees, recalls the description of Scamander in Il. 21,350-352 καίοντο πτελέαι τε καὶ ἰτέαι ἠδὲ μυρῖκαι,| καίετο δὲ λωτός τε ἰδὲ θρύον ἠδὲ κύπειρον,| τὰ περὶ καλὰ ῥέεθρα ἅλις ποταμοῖο πεφύκει (‘the elms burned and the willows and the tamarisks, and the lotus burned and the rushes and the grass’), from the scene where Hephaestus burns everything that grows on the river banks and thus helps to check the river’s force. Details of phrasing seem to underline the connection between the Callimachean passage and the Scamander episode even further. In 27 μεγάλαι πτελέαι recalls Il. 21.242-243 ὃ δὲ πτελέην ἕλε χερσὶν | εὐφυέα μεγάλην (‘with his hands he grasped a sturdy big elm’), where Achilles tries to hold on to an elm, but uproots it and thereby blocks the river so that it starts following him across the plain, as well as Il. 21.350 καίοντο πτελέαι, where the form is hapax.22 In 29, ἐξ ἀμαρᾶν ἀνέθυε the noun ἀμαρᾶν refers to a hapax in a simile in Il. 21.257-264: ὡς δ’ ὅτ’ ἀνὴρ ὀχετηγὸς ἀπὸ κρήνης μελανύδρου ἂμ φυτὰ καὶ κήπους ὕδατι ῥόον ἡγεμονεύῃ χερσὶ μάκελλαν ἔχων, ἀμάρης ἐξ ἔχματα βάλλων· τοῦ μέν τε προρέοντος ὑπὸ ψηφῖδες ἅπασαι ὀχλεῦνται· τὸ δέ τ’ ὦκα κατειβόμενον κελαρύζει χώρῳ ἔνι προαλεῖ, φθάνει δέ τε καὶ τὸν ἄγοντα· ὣς αἰεὶ ᾿Αχιλῆα κιχήσατο κῦμα ῥόοιο καὶ λαιψηρὸν ἐόντα· θεοὶ δέ τε φέρτεροι ἀνδρῶν as when a man in charge of irrigation guides a stream with water along plants and gardens from a dark-flowing spring, holding a spade in his hands, clearing obstacles from the ditch; and while the water is flowing all the little stones roll with it and quickly pouring down the water roars on the sloping space and it is quicker than the man who guides it; thus the waves of the stream always caught up with Achilles, even though he was quick, for gods are stronger than men.

Here Achilles is running away from the river Scamander, who keeps overtaking him just like a ditch full of water, dug by a gardener, runs in front of him on sloping ground. The verb ἀνέθυε may recall the use of the simplex in Il. 21.234 ὃ δ’ ἐπέσσυτο οἴδματι θύων (‘he rushed on, raging with his swollen stream’) of Scamander making his first attack on Achilles and 324 ἐπῶρτ’ ᾿Αχιλῆϊ κυκώμενος ὑψόσε θύων (‘he attacked 22. Apart from these two instances the noun is found in Homer only in Il. 6.419, where elms are planted around the tomb of Andromache’s father.

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Achilles, seething high and raging’),23 where the river attacks once again, after invoking the help of his brother Simoeis and just before Hera asks Hephaestus to stop him and put an end to the conflict. A third cluster of allusions to this episode is found in h. 6.41-45: εἶπε δὲ χωσαμένα· ‘τίς μοι καλὰ δένδρεα κόπτει;’ αὐτίκα Νικίππᾳ, τάν οἱ πόλις ἀράτειραν δαμοσίαν ἔστασαν, ἐείσατο, γέντο δὲ χειρί στέμματα καὶ μάκωνα, κατωμαδίαν δ’ ἔχε κλᾷδα. φᾶ δὲ παραψύχοισα κακὸν καὶ ἀναιδέα φῶτα. …and said angrily, ‘Who is felling my lovely trees?’ She straightaway made herself like Nicippe, her public priestess appointed by the city, taking in her hand garlands and a poppy-stalk, and hanging the key from her shoulder. In soothing tones she addressed the wicked, shameless man.

Here the angry Demeter changes into her priestess Nicippe and warns Erysichthon, who has just started to cut down her sacred grove. The passage contains several words which refer to the scene of Achilles and Scamander. First of all the participle χωσαμένα resembles a Homeric hapax in Il. 21.211-213: καί νύ κ’ ἔτι πλέονας κτάνε Παίονας ὠκὺς ᾿Αχιλλεύς, εἰ μὴ χωσάμενος προσέφη ποταμὸς βαθυδίνης ἀνέρι εἰσάμενος …and now quick Achilles would have killed even more Paeonians, if the deepflowing river had not spoken to him angrily having made himself like a man.

Here Scamander is going to address Achilles with a last request to stop filling his streams with dead bodies, before he will attack him. Not only the hapax in the same metrical position, but also the pattern of the divinity resembling a mortal and warning a young man violating him is similar to the passage in Callimachus. Then the noun ἀράτειραν is of some interest. This noun is the feminine form of ἀρητήρ (‘priest’), which occurs three times in the Iliad: we find it twice in Il. 1.11 and 94 of Chryses24 and then in Il. 5.77-78 ὅς ῥα Σκαμάνδρου | ἀρητὴρ ἐτέτυκτο, θεὸς δ’ ὣς τίετο δήμῳ (‘he was a priest of Scamander and honoured by the people like a god’), about Hypsenor, a Trojan killed by Eurypylus soon after the killing of a certain Scamandrius by Menelaus in Il. 5.49. These passages from Iliad 5 are not connected with the 23. The use of this verb is not limited to those two passages. 24. On the relevance of Chryses, another offended priest, for Hymn 6 see Bulloch (1977: 102-104), who on p.103 also observes that Arist. Po. 1457b33-35 regards the word as very rare.

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fight of Achilles and Scamander, but may provide some background to the river losing sons and namesakes. The form φᾶ is another hapax, found in Il. 21.361 φῆ πυρὶ καιόμενος, ἀνὰ δ’ ἔφλυε καλὰ ῥέεθρα (‘he spoke burning with fire and his beautiful streams were boiling high’) about Scamander asking Hephaestus, who has just burned all the dead bodies as well as the vegetation on his banks and threatens to scorch the river itself, to stop. Towards the end of the story of Erysichthon in h. 6.113 ἀλλ’ ὅκα τὸν βαθὺν οἶκον ἀνεξήραναν ὀδόντες (‘but when his teeth had dried up that deep wealth’) there is a final reference to the scene with Scamander as the verb recalls a hapax (involving the simplex as well as the compound verb) in Il. 21.345-348: πᾶν δ’ ἐξηράνθη πεδίον, σχέτο δ’ ἀγλαὸν ὕδωρ. ὡς δ’ ὅτ’ ὀπωρινὸς Βορέης νεοαρδέ’ ἀλωὴν αἶψ’ ἀγξηράνῃ· χαίρει δέ μιν ὅς τις ἐθείρῃ· ὣς ἐξηράνθη πεδίον πᾶν, κὰδ δ’ ἄρα νεκροὺς κῆεν· ὃ δ’ ἐς ποταμὸν τρέψε φλόγα παμφανόωσαν …the whole plain was dried up and the shining water was held. And as when the autumnal north wind quickly dries a just watered vineyard and the man who looks after it is happy, thus the whole plain was dried up and he burned the corpses; and he directed his shining fire towards the river.

Here Hephaestus is attacking Scamander at Hera’s request. The threefold repetition of the verb in the Iliad is striking and Callimachus seems to have re-used it in what Hopkinson (1984: ad loc.) rightly calls a “complex” image, in which the verb “suggests a body of literally ‘deep’ water consumed by E.’s parching thirst.”25 The words τὸν βαθὺν οἶκον denote the house’s wealth,26 but the literal meaning of βαθύς may also be present in the background and remind one of the deep-flowing or deep-eddying Scamander (Il. 21.8 βαθύρροον and 15 βαθυδινήεντος). Summarizing, the allusions to Achilles’ fight with Scamander seem to be carefully distributed over the introduction, the description of Demeter’s grove, the warning of Erysichthon and the final part of the story, where his punishment reaches its completion and he has virtually destroyed himself and his family. The interpretion of the allusions to this scene will be discussed in the next section.

25. Stephens (2015: ad loc.) refers to Hdt. 7.109.2, where Xerxes’ animals dry up a lake by drinking from it. 26. For evidence see Hopkinson (1984: ad loc.).

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5. Further layers of meaning by means of allusions to Antilochus and Achilles? 5.1. Some general observations We have seen how by referring to certain passages in the archaic epic of Homer in his sixth hymn Callimachus seems to evoke these texts for his readers. It seems likely that he is doing that in order to give an extra dimension to his poem. In this way he may position his poetry in the literary and cultural tradition and/or in the political and ideological context of his time and stimulate the reader to detect further layers of meaning. It is striking that the hymn gives prominence to two scenes from Homer, which also in the Iliad are connected in several ways. At first sight there is a strong contrast between the violence of Iliad 21 and the harmonious atmosphere of Iliad 23, but there are also details in the text which connect the two books. One of these connections is provided by the armour of Asteropaeus: in Il. 21.182-183 Achilles has killed Asteropaeus and taken his armour on the banks of the river Scamander, where he is raging, and in Il. 23.555-565 Achilles smiles again and at the request of Antilochus offers this armour to Eumelus, which suggests a new kind of relaxation and social order.27 Generally speaking and arguing from more explicit references in his other poems one may in any case expect three kinds of issues to be of interest for Callimachus and therefore likely to be brought to the reader’s attention by means of allusions. A first possibility is that we have to do with Ptolemaic issues, e.g. with some kind of Fürstenspiegel, in which Callimachus by means of the behaviour of the various characters mentioned or alluded to in this hymn shows how a good king should behave. A second possibility is that Callimachus evokes issues of the apparently turbulent intellectual life in Alexandria in which heated arguments and envy may have loomed large. A third possibility is that the issues addressed here are of a metapoetical nature. As we will see in the following sections, all three possibilities seem to be present in some way and in fact to be closely intertwined: what applies to kings will turn out to apply to scholars and poets as well and moral and aesthetic values will be hard to separate.

27. See also Ulf (2004: 80-83).

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5.2. Royal ideology? The idea that the sixth hymn may, through the allusions discussed above, present views about Ptolemaic leadership is a first possibility to be considered. Given the attention for the Ptolemies in the first, second and fourth hymns, which explicitly address various aspects of kingship,28 the idea that some of the other hymns may also be relevant for Ptolemaic ideology is in itself a plausible one. References to Homer are also easily conceivable in Hellenistic texts about kingship, as we may observe for instance in Theocritus’ Idyll 17, where we find evidence that the Ptolemies were presented as kings in the possession of Homeric virtues. There, however, the emphasis is on “the fighting prowess, the munificence, the wealth, the genesis from divinity, with which we associate Homer’s kings” (according to Samuel 1993: 181),29 and not really on the idea of civilized and harmonious interaction and the capacity to admit and repair one’s mistakes or to forgive those who acted wrongly.30 In fact it seems that by selecting the episode from Iliad 23 with its focus on concord, while also evoking the preceding quarrel and violence of books 1 and 21, Callimachus presents the last part of the Iliad as foreshadowing later political theory in which the notions of justice and concord became increasingly important. In a recent article about the leadership of Jason in Apollonius’ Argonautica Ross Jaffe (2017) shows, by means of a number of references to Plato, Xenophon, Aristotle and Isocrates, how in texts dealing with political theory in IV BC there is a great deal of emphasis on the ‘softer’ virtues of leaders, such as concord, justice, good counsel and responsibility, and how Jason, as a leader of the Argonauts, exhibits these same characteristics. He infers: “in Apollonius’ portrayal of Jason, we see the revival of 4th-century political ideals. The Heraclean model of kingship exits the scene with Heracles in the epic, replaced by Jason and his recognition of the importance of diplomacy, fairness, consultation and responsibility” (Jaffe 2017: 269).31 Particular passages in which this view of leadership becomes clear are the election scene, where Jason asks the Argonauts to choose the leader for the 28. See e.g. h. 1.85-88; 2.26-27; 4.162-195. 29. See also Hunter (2003: 60) about the effects of the use of Homeric language in Theocritus 17: “This very strong Homeric linguistic flavor goes together with the presentation of Philadelphus as a latter-day Agamemnon or Achilles, and thus as the true heir of Alexander; the Macedonian monarchy saw itself as a continuation of the Homeric situation, and this is here reflected in linguistic form”. 30. See on this concept in general e.g. Konstan (2008) (who does not discuss the Antilochus episode). 31. It should be noticed, though, that on another level Heracles was still relevant as a prestigious ancestor of the Ptolemies; for references see e.g. Harder (2012: 2,214).

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expedition and Heracles declines (AR 1.331-362), and the building of the ‘temple of Concord’ (Ὁμονοίης ἱρόν), when the Argonauts swear that they will always help each other (AR 2.714-719). Also the brief picture of Amphion and Zethus on Jason’s cloak in AR 1.735-741 and Jason’s approach of Aeetes announced in AR 3.188-190 seem to show “the triumph of words over strength” (Jaffe 2017: 257-258). If this view on kingship is found in the Argonautica it is conceivable that it resonated in some ways with Ptolemaic views on leadership32 and that Callimachus too made himself part of this discourse. The allusions in his sixth hymn suggest that he did this by means of allusions to the episode in the Iliad where the notion of conciliatory kingship seems to be foreshadowed and contrasted with the earlier quarrel of Agamemnon and Achilles33 and the violent fury of Achilles after the death of Patroclus. The reference to concord in h. 6.134 τάνδε σάω πόλιν ἐν ... ὁμονοίᾳ (‘save this city in concord’) may help to make his intention more explicit.34 This approach seems to fit in with a tendency to use Homer as a moral teacher, of which the clearest exponent is the treatise ‘on the good king according to Homer’ by Philodemus, written during the later years of the Roman Republic (so, admittedly, some centuries later than Callimachus).35 In this philosophical discussion of the characteristics of a good king the notion of just and benevolent rule plays an important part (particularly in col. 24-30), as “Philodemus has Homer emphasize the kingly virtue of a magnanimous, conciliatory justice” and seems to propagate the view that “a conciliatory, fair-minded gentleness leads to a stable monarchy” (Asmis 1991: 26 and 39). These ideas are supported by references to, e.g., the conciliatory role of Nestor or the mild rule of Odysseus. 36 It may of course well be that Philodemus adjusted his line of argument to the political situation of his own time and it cannot be established with 32. On earlier Greek texts about kingship see Adam (1970: 12-18), who on p.15 offers evidence of Demetrius of Phaleron advising Ptolemaeus I Soter to read such works. 33. Also for Apollonius the quarrel of Agamemnon and Achilles may have figured as an example of the way in which one should not behave, as the reconciliation of Telamon and Jason in AR 1.1329-1344, after Telamon had wrongly accused Jason of leaving behind Heracles on purpose, shows how a conflict can also be solved by admitting one’s fault and accepting apologies. Here Jason’s promise that he will not nurse bitter ‘wrath’ (1339 μῆνιν) and his statement that the quarrel was not about possessions (1341) help the reader to remember the different situation in the Iliad. 34. For further references to the concept of ὁμόνοια and its importance for Ptolemaic politics see Hopkinson (1984: ad loc.); Hunter (2008: 268-269). 35. See on this treatise Murray (1965); Asmis (1991); Fish (2018). The notion of Homer as a moral guide is also found in e.g. Hor. Epist. 1.2.1-22, adduced by Asmis (1991: 20-21 n. 95); on the reception of Homer as an authority on leadership see now in general Klooster – Van den Berg (2018). 36. On the importance of good counsel in the treatise see also Fish (2018: 146-147).

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certainty whether he had earlier examples for his approach, but even so “the emphasis on ἐπιείκεια, πραότης, justice … – none of these topics would have been out of place in a work addressed to a Hellenistic monarch”, as Murray (1965: 176) argues, and they fit in nicely with what was said above about IVth century political theory. 5.3. Views on the sociology of intellectual life in Alexandria? The emphasis on a harmonious solution and making allowances for others in the Antilochus scene in Iliad 23, in contrast with the quarrel in 1 and the violent anger in 21, may also be considered as relevant for aspects of intellectual life in Alexandria. This is a theme which is also found elsewhere in Callimachus. In his Aetia fr. 1 and the thirteenth Iamb (Ia.fr. 203) the notion of literary quarrels and aggression is clearly present and in the first Iamb (Ia.fr. 191) the quarrelling scholars of Alexandria are reproached by Hipponax coming from Hades in order to tell them the cautionary tale of the golden cup of Bathycles, which was to go to the best of the Seven Wise Men, but was modestly passed on from one to the other until it came back to Thales, to whom it had been offered first, and was finally dedicated to Apollo. The message of Hipponax has been neatly described as the need of attention for “Friedfertigkeit und gegenseitige Anerkennung”,37 which ties in nicely with the attitudes in Iliad 23. Apart from Callimachus also Timon of Phlius touched on the quarrelsome behaviour of the Alexandrian intellectuals δηριόωντες | Μουσέων ἐν ταλάρωι (‘quarrelling in the birdcage of the Muses’, SH 786,2-3).38 On the other hand there is much emphasis on the harmony of the Argonauts in Apollonius Rhodius’ Argonautica: quarrels are solved peacefully before they get out of hand,39 Heracles allows Jason to be the leader of the expedition even though the Argonauts seem to prefer him (AR 1.336-350), and the Argonauts swear that they will always help each other and build a temple of Concord (2.714-719). All this suggests that quarrelsome competition may have been an issue in Alexandria and that 37. Schmidt (1990: 126) quoted at length by Kerkhecker (1999: 42-43). There is a hint of a similar attitude in Ia. fr. 202.45-46 about the “sweet competition” of the gods in offering gifts to the new-born Hebe. 38. For further discussion of this passage see Mineur (1985). 39. E.g. in AR 1.492-518, where Orpheus restores harmony when a quarrel between Idmon and Idas seems imminent; 1289-1344, where a quarrel between Jason and Telamon ends peacefully (see above n. 31), and 2.161 and 4.1159, where the Argonauts sing harmoniously, led by Orpheus.

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by means of his allusions to the scene in Iliad 23 Callimachus may well have taken part in that debate and argued for the same cause as he did more explicitly in his first Iamb.40 5.4. Metapoetical messages? Considering the fact that there are good arguments for a metapoetical interpretation of the story of Erysichthon (see n. 13) it is worth investigating whether the allusions to the episodes in Iliad 21 and 23 could contribute to this view of the poem. Particularly the allusions to the Scamander-episode seem relevant in this respect, as they evoke elements of the poetic discourse of Callimachus, particularly the metaphor of various kinds of waters as an indication of poetic quality and the issue of poetic contents. If we start from the contrast between the big and polluted rivers and the small drops from a pure spring offered to Demeter at the end of Hymn 2, we may first of all relate the swollen Scamander, filled with dead bodies, to these rivers and contrast it with the small drops and with the small rivulets in the grove of Demeter in h. 6.28-29. At the same time, however, Scamander seems to take part in both kinds of streams: in Iliad 21 it becomes a dirty, swollen river, but elsewhere in the Iliad it is a small river, surrounded by vegetation described in terms recalled by Callimachus by means of allusions, so that it becomes related to the grove of Demeter (see section 4). Angered by the epic violence applied to it the river desperately tries to get back to its original state and finally succeeds.41 Thus one could argue that by means of the allusions Callimachus draws attention to the opposition between various kinds of waters at the end of his second hymn and to the poetological issues connected with it there. Besides, he also seems to raise the question of the dangers of pollution surrounding small rivers as well as smallscale poetry and to connect it with a certain kind of contents with a focus on war and violence. In connection with this metapoetic interpretation of the allusions 40. It should be noted, though, that there is a contrast here with the angry behaviour of Apollo at the end of the second hymn and of the Callimachean persona in Aetia fr.1; see on this issue further Harder (forthcoming). 41. In Hymn 4 the river Peneius may show a similar ambiguitiy: the river wants to receive Leto so that she can give birth to Apollo, but apparently is not the place for her to bear her children. The attempt leads to a scene of almost epic violence and eventually the small island Delos turns out to be the right place for the god to be born. Here the river Peneius and the violence it unwittingly triggers may bear metapoetic connotations, as opposed to the ‘slender’ island Delos/Asteria, which will be the birthplace of Apollo. For a metapoetic interpretation of Hymn 4 along these lines see Slings (2004).

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to the Scamander scene it is worth noticing that Il. 21.192-197 (where Achilles boasts that Asteropaeus as the son of a river is no match for him as a son of Zeus, after which the man’s dead body is covered by the water of the angry Scamander) may also be evoked at the end of Hymn 2, where in h. 2.105-112 the metaphors of sea, rivers and springs have been thought to be inspired by this passage in Homer.42 As to contents, the Scamander scene as a violent warlike episode may be connected with the kind of poetry associated with Aeschylus by Aristophanes, which in Aetia fr.1 is alluded to at several points43 and is rejected in favour of the subtle poetry of Euripides. This opposition may therefore be evoked by the allusions as well. The evocation of a particularly violent scene of the Iliad would show the reader the difference between poetry inspired by the Homeric war scenes and Callimachus’ choice of subjects. This of course need not imply a negative judgment about the Homeric epic. In fact other allusions, as we have seen, point to the young epic hero Antilochus as a positive foil for Erysichthon and to a scene in which the epic heroes, including Achilles, behave in a sensitive and civilized manner. The apparently contradictory signals may serve to draw the reader’s attention to the variety of tone and contents within the Homeric epic, for which the different appearances of the Scamander as a small stream and a swollen river may also act as a metaphor. On the one hand there are the civilized and small-scale scenes, such as the scene with Antilochus, which a Hellenistic poet could very well be inspired by. On the other hand there is epic fury and violence, as is manifest in the behaviour of Achilles in Iliad 21, from which the small river Scamander suffers greatly and which a Hellenistic poet like Callimachus tends to avoid. As said above, this need not imply a negative judgment of the scene in Homer, but it may be based on the idea that in the hands of poets other than Homer this kind of scene could easily become pompous and bombastic, as is also suggested in Theoc. 7.47-48 about Μοισᾶν ὄρνιχες ὅσοι ποτὶ Χῖον ἀοιδόν | ἀντία κοκκύζοντες ἐτώσια μοχθίζοντι (‘those cocks of the Muses who lose their toil with crowing against the bard of Chios’).44 Such an interpretation would fit in with the observations by earlier scholars about Demeter standing for pure poetry which is under

42. See Williams (1978: ad. loc.); for criticisms of his point of view Poliakoff (1980); Cameron (1995: 403-407). 43. E.g. Aetia fr. 1.9 (referring to the weighing scene in Aristophanes Ranae, where Aeschylus in 1382-1383 throws the first line of his Philoctetes about the river Spercheius into the scales) and 19. 44. Translation by Gow (1950).

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attack from the glutton Erysichthon, who stands for the wrong kind of pompous poetry (see n. 13). In fact the above idea fits in neatly with the reception of the Scamander episode elsewhere in Greek and Latin poetry. There is a number of passages in Greek literature where the fights near the Scamander stand for the Trojan war; e.g. in Bacch. Ep. 13.164-166 it is told how the dying Trojans, killed by the Greeks, colour it purple.45 Callimachus himself refers to Scamander in his seventh Iamb (fr.197), about a statue of Hermes, made by Epeius before he made the Trojan horse, carried to the sea by the swollen Scamander, just like the dead body of Lycaon thrown into it by Achilles (Il. 21.124-125), and then turned into a cult object by the fishermen who found it. In Ia. fr. 197.13 Σκάμα[ν]δρος ἀγριωμένος (‘savage Scamander’) recalls the wild and angry river of the Iliad46 and the Diegesis conveys the same idea in 2-3 (the statue of Hermes made by Epeius) ὃν ὁ Σκάμανδρος πολὺς ἐνεχθεὶς κατέσυρεν (‘which the big and swollen Scamander carried off’). Latin references to the Scamander may support the notion that the allusions in Hymn 6 may also be taken as metapoetic. In Propertius’ poetry similar imagery occurs in poems where small streams and big rivers are contrasted and stand for different kinds of poetry. In Prop. 3.1.3 the words puro de fonte (‘from a pure fountainhead’)47 claim adherence to the pure springs of Callimachean poetry, but later in the poem Homer’s fame is acknowledged as well and one of the scenes mentioned as still worth recalling in his work is the episode of Achilles and Scamander in 3.1.26-27 fluminaque Haemonio comminus isse uiro, | Idaeum Simoenta Iouis cum prole Scamandro (‘of rivers fighting an Haemonian hero, Idean Simoïs and Jove’s offspring Scamander’). In Prop. 3.3 the notion of rivers as opposed to the Callimachean poetry the poet is going to write is evoked in Apollo’s reproach in 15 quid tibi cum tali, demens, est flumine (‘idiot, what right have you to such a stream?’) when the poet attempts to write in the style of Ennius and in 45-46 barbarus aut Sueuo perfusus sanguine Rhenus | saucia maerenti corpora uectet aqua (‘or how the barbarous Rhine ran red with Swabian blood, rolling maimed bodies down his grieving tide’), where the river Rhine, described in terms that

45. See further the list in Sistakou (2008: 163 n.162), to which one may add Pl. Prt. 340 a 6. 46. See also Acosta-Hughes (2002: 299), who refers to Il. 21.273-283, where Achilles prays that he may not be carried away by the swollen river. 47. Translations of Propertius are by Lee (1994).

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recall Scamander filled with dead Trojans, is one of the subjects forbidden by the Muses.48 Earlier the Scamander-scene had also been mentioned in Cat. 64.357360 as part of the prophecy about the life of Achilles, sung by the Fates at his parents’ wedding (303-383): testis erit magnis uirtutibus unda Scamandri, quae passim rapido diffunditur Hellesponto, cuius iter caesis angustans corporum aceruis alta tepefaciet permixta flumina caede the water of Scamander will be witness to his great virtues, which, covering a wide area, flows into the rapid Hellespont and its riverbed, narrow because of the piles of dead bodies, will warm the deep water as their blood is mixed with it.49

One could regard the striking opposition between the unhappy love-story of Ariadne and the heroic career of Achilles, including the grim Scamander scene, as a metapoetic element in this poem. These ideas about the Scamander fit in with earlier observations about the Achelous, mentioned briefly in h. 6.13 and then appearing again in Ov. Met. 8.738-878, where the river Achelous is the one who tells the story of Erysichthon. As Murray (2004: 223-233) argues, Achelous may be chosen here as a narrator who represents the swollen, un-Callimachean style50 and is telling the story of the un-Callimachean Erysichthon in the grand epic manner. It is conceivable that Ovid, who was a careful reader of Callimachus, chose Achelous as his narrator because through him Callimachus alluded to one of the most violent scenes of the Iliad and thus reminded his readers of the fact that his story of Erysichthon was written in a different, ‘slender’ style.

48. For further discussion of the water-metaphors in Callimachus see Asper (1997: 109-134); for Latin poetry Wimmel (1960: 222-233) is still useful. The Scamander-scene is also mentioned in Cat. 64.357-360 as part of the prophecy about the life of Achilles, sung by the Fates at his parents’ wedding (303-383): one might regard the striking opposition between the unhappy love-story of Ariadne and the heroic career of Achilles (on which see in general Syndikus (1990: 112-113)) in this poem as a metapoetic element in this poem. The notion of the swollen river recurs of Pindar in Hor. C. 4.2.5-8 (and may have inspired 10-11 noua ... uerba deuoluit as well), here too in opposition to the poet’s own work, which resembles that of a bee gathering honey (27-32). 49. On the connections with Homer in this passages see Syndikus (1990: 183-184), who also mentions an earlier treatment of the Scamander scene in Accius’ Epinausimachia and the reference to the episode in Verg. A. 5.806-808. 50. Cf. also Ov. Met. 8.582-587 about the angry and swollen Achelous, where 582 intumui may recall Il. 21.234 οἴδματι θύων of the angry Scamander.

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6. Conclusion There is a considerable number of allusions to the episode of Achilles and the river Scamander in Iliad 21 and to the chariot race in Iliad 23 in Callimachus’ sixth Hymn and there are several possible interpretations of these allusions, which seem to partly overlap and need not exhaust the possibilities. One gets the impression that the reader was invited to think about issues of leadership, the sociology of intellectual life in Alexandria and metapoetics, guided by the references to Homer, but eventually left free to pick up as much as he saw fit for himself. Taken together the allusions suggest a view of Erysichthon as a character which both on a moral and on a metapoetic level is acting against the standards set by Homer and, therefore, of Demeter as acting rightly in punishing him. On a social and moral level the allusions to the behaviour of Antilochus and Achilles in books 21 and 23 of the Iliad may remind the reader of different ways of behaviour, both for kings, who may aim for a conciliatory and just kind of leadership, refraining from aggression and anger, and for men as part of a larger community, where harmony and concord should take the place of quarrels and fierce competition. Though written forty years ago the conclusions of Bulloch (1977: 114) on the poem’s social aspects still seem relevant and are in fact confirmed by these further investigations: “the allusions to Homeric passages make clear that the emphasis is not in fact on the mysterious ritual and moral relationship between man and god, but on the specifically human psychology of how people behave in testing circumstances. The personae of the Erysichthon episode are provided by the old world, but their concerns are those of contemporary Alexandrian society”.

On a metapoetic level the violence of Erysichthon, mirrored in the violence of the Scamander scene, recalls forms of poetry different from those favoured by Callimachus, not wrong in the capable hands of Homer, but very wrong in the hands of later bombastic poets. Last, but not least the evidence also tells us something about Callimachus’ treatment of Homer. To perceptive readers of Callimachus’ ‘un-Homeric’ hymn to Demeter Homer seems to appear as a living presence in the work of the later poet, thanks to the many allusions, and these readers are stimulated to regard Homer as a poet of continuing importance and relevance. Clearly he is there to influence and inspire the later poet and to provide a background to his work and it is precisely the way in which Homer is made part of the later poet’s work that turns the hymn into more than a one-dimensional scholarly poem and creates additional layers and depth of meaning.

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REFERENCES Acosta-Hughes, B., 2002, Polyeideia. Berkeley – Los Angeles – London. Adam, T., 1970, Clementia Principis. Stuttgart. Asmis, E., 1991, “Philodemus’s Poetic Theory and On the Good King According to Homer”. Classical Antiquity 10, 1-45. Asper, M., 1997, Onomata allotria. Stuttgart. Bulloch, A.W., 1977, “Callimachus’ Erysichthon, Homer and Apollonius Rhodius”. AJPh 98, 97-123. Bulloch, A.W., 1985, Callimachus. The Fifth Hymn. Cambridge. Cameron, A., 1995, Callimachus and his Critics. Princeton. Dunkle, R., 1987, “Nestor, Odysseus, and the METIS : BIE Antithesis: The Funeral Games, Iliad 23”. CW 81, 1-17. Erbse, H., 1993, “Nestor und Antilochos bei Homer und Arktinos”. Hermes 121, 385-403. Faulkner, A., 2011, “Fast, Famine, and Feast: Food for Thought in Callimachus’ “Hymn to Demeter””. HSCPh 106, 75-95. Fish, J., 2018, “Some Critical Themes in Philodemus’ On the Good King According to Homer”, in Klooster – Van den Berg (2018), 141-156. Gow, A.S.F., 1950, Theocritus. Cambridge. Harder, M.A., 2002, “Intertextuality in Callimachus’ Aetia”, in F. Montanari – L. Lehnus, Callimaque. Vandoeuvres – Genève, 189-233. Harder, M.A., 2012, Callimachus. Aetia. Oxford. Harder, M.A., forthcoming, “Aspects of the Interaction between Apollonius Rhodius and Callimachus” (forthcoming in Aevum). Hopkinson, N., 1984, Callimachus. Hymn to Demeter. Cambridge. Hunter, R., 2003, Theocritus. Encomium of Ptolemy Philadelphus. Berkeley – Los Angeles – London. Hunter, R., 2008, On Coming After. Berlin. Jaffe, R., 2017, “Jason the Farmer-King”, in M.A. Harder – R.F. Regtuit – G.C. Wakker, Past and Present in Hellenistic Poetry. Leuven – Paris – Bristol, CT, 247-271. Kerkhecker, A., 1999, Callimachus’ Book of Iambi. Oxford. Klooster, J.J.H. – B. van den Berg (edd.), 2018, Homer and the Good Ruler in Antiquity and Beyond, Leiden – Boston. Konstan, D., 2008, “Assuaging Rage: Remorse, Repentance, and Forgiveness in the Classical World”. Phoenix 62, 243-254. Lee, G., 1994, Propertius. The Poems. Oxford. Lohmann, D., 1992, “Homer als Erzähler. Die Athla im 23. Buch der Ilias”. Gymnasium 99, 289-319. Mackie, C.J., 1999, “Scamander and the Rivers of Hades in Homer”. AJPh120, 485-501. Mineur, W.H., 1985, “From Book-Worms to Reed-Warblers”. Mnemosyne 38, 383-385. Müller, C.W., 1987, Erysichthon. Der Mythos als narrative Metapher im Demeterhymnos des Kallimachos. Mainz. Murray, J., 2004, “The Metamorphoses of Erysichthon: Callimachus, Apollonius, and Ovid”, in M.A. Harder – R.F. Regtuit – G.C. Wakker, Callimachus II, Leuven – Paris – Dudley MA, 207-242.

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Murray, O., 1965, “Philodemus on the Good King according to Homer”. Journal of Roman Studies 55, 161-182. Poliakoff, M., 1980, “Nectar, springs and the sea; critical terminology in Pindar and Callimachus”. ZPE 39, 41-47. Richardson, N., The Iliad: A Commentary. VI. Cambridge. Samuel, A.E., 1993, “The Ptolemies and the Ideology of Kingship”, in P. Green, Hellenistic History and Culture, Berkeley, 168-210. Schmidt, E.A., 1990, Notwehrdichtung. München. Sistakou, E., 2008, Reconstructing the Epic. Leuven – Paris – Dudley, MA. Slings, S.R., 2004, “The Hymn to Delos as a Partial Allegory of Callimachus’ Poetry”, in M.A. Harder – R.F. Regtuit – G.C. Wakker, Callimachus II, Leuven – Paris – Dudley MA, 279-298. Stephens, S.A., 2015, Callimachus. The Hymns. Oxford. Syndikus, H.P., 1990, Catull. Eine Interpretation. Zweiter Teil. Darmstadt. Ulf, C., 2004, “Ilias 23: Die Bestattung des Patroklos und das Sportfest der ‘Patroklos-Spiele’ – Zwei Teile einer mirror-story”, in H. Heftner – K. Tomaschitz, Ad fontes!, Wien, 73-86. Willcock, M.M., 1973, “The Funeral Games of Patroclus”. BICS 20, 1-11. Williams, F., 1978, Callimachus, Hymn to Apollo. A Commentary. Oxford. Wimmel, W., 1960, Kallimachos in Rom. Wiesbaden.

CALLIMACHUS EP. 32 Pf. (AP 12.148) AND MENIPPUS OF GADARA Alex HARDIE

1. Introduction AP 12.148 is addressed by Callimachus to a ‘Menippus’. Here is the text, with a provisional translation:1 οἶδ’ ὅτι μευ πλούτου κενεαὶ χέρες· ἀλλά, Μένιππε, μὴ λέγε πρὸς Χαρίτων τοὐμὸν ὄνειρον ἐμοί. ἀλγέω τὴν διὰ παντὸς ἔπος τόδε πικρὸν ἀκούων· ναὶ, φίλε, τῶν παρὰ σεῦ τοῦτ’ ἀνεραστότατον. I know that of wealth my hands are empty. But Menippus, tell not in the name of the Graces my own dream to me. I am anguished through and through [or, ‘I am suffering chronic anguish’] from hearing that bitter utterance. Oh yes, my friend, of all that’s come from you, this is the most unlovely.

The epigram is revealed at the very end to be addressed by an adult lover to an adolescent boy-friend who is motivated by greed and not love.2 Its location in Book 12 of the Palatine Anthology shows that it was recognised and read as a pederastic piece in antiquity;3 and yet it exhibits no sexual content and only one overt association with eros, a feature which may have prompted one or two older attempts to deny the erotic dimension outright.4 Such efforts, though ultimately unpersuasive, highlighted an issue that in my view remains unresolved: the apparent disguise of the erastes/eromenos relationship until the final word. The ordering of material and related issues of overall coherence have been approached from various angles. One scholar has drawn attention to the implications of

1. Translations, unless otherwise stated, are my own. Antisthenes and the Cynics are cited from Giannantoni (1990) = Giann.; other Hellenistic fragments are cited from Powell (1925) = Powell, and from Lloyd-Jones & Parsons (1983) = SH. 2. Cairns (2016: 380) “the protagonists … are stock characters of ancient erotic poetry.” For a commentary, see Gow-Page (1965: Vol II.161-162). 3. For a general account of Cephalas’ assemblage in relation to AP 12, see Cameron (1993: 239-245). 4. Reported by Fraser (1972: Vol. II.839, n. 295), citing Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (1879: 165).

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what is said for the social and economic status of the parties involved.5 On another view, the epigram offers an inversion of the traditional paideutic role of the older lover, so that the erastes emerges as the one being taught.6 The most recent appreciation focuses on the emotional interest of “gradual revelation”, and traces the steps by which the relationship between speaker and addressee is disclosed.7 The range of perspective represented in these three treatments is testimony in itself to the depth and complexity of the quatrain. But the possibility that it might be susceptible of interpretation at a level other than that of erotic convention has not been fully explored. In what follows, I offer a supplementary reading in which the name ‘Menippus’ will be associated with the Cynic Menippus of Gadara, the author of prosimetric works of satire that are referred to elsewhere as ‘Charites’.8 The proposal is not new. Recalling the biographical tradition that Menippus was a money-lender (see below), Giuseppe Giangrande suggested that Callimachus accuses a mercenary eromenos of “unbecoming” behaviour that “cannot but invite a comparison with his homonymous — and notorious — usurer”. The play on homonyms has not been refuted in the fifty years since it was proposed; but for reasons to do with Giangrande’s reading of the epigram as an attack on “unbecoming conduct”, it has not been generally accepted either.9 Menippus is of course a common name (over 200 entries in the Lexicon of Greek Personal Names; and three others are addressed in the Palatine Anthology, including the recipient of a pederastic epigram by Strato [12.176]). But the case for reading the epigram in a literary-critical context can in my view be formulated more persuasively and in greater detail. My contention will be that the epigram may be read at two levels, erotic and ethical-philosophical, and that the phrasing, while consistent 5. Gutzwiller (1998: 215-216) suggests that the poet articulates knowledge of his own poverty and its impact on his erotic relationship with a boy in “Menippus’ economic position”; for her later views, see below, n. 32. 6. Acosta-Hughes (2002: 249-250). 7. Cairns (2016: 379-380). 8. The evidence for Menippus’ ‘Charites’ is reviewed below (§ 2). In view of uncertainty over the status of this term, it is cited within quotation marks throughout. 9. Giangrande (1968: 136-139). Gutzwiller (1998: 216 n. 68) notes Giangrande’s “interesting point that Menippus is a homonym for the famous Menippus of Gadara”, but finds it “insufficient reason … for giving ἀνεραστότατον a passive translation, “most unbecoming””. McKay (1970: 40 n. 5) observes “it is curious that the Cynic of the same name had a reputation for φιλαργυρία”, but sees no connection. Schmidt (1976: 152) challenges Giangrande’s reading of ἀνεραστότατον, without comment on the homonym. Relihan (1989: 55, n. 1) discounts a connection with the satirist, but without reference to Giangrande.

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with an erotic scenario, is largely chosen for resonances with the language of contemporary Cynicism. The speaker, we initially infer, is responding to a reproach of illiberal conduct from the mouth, or pen, of a Cynic diatribist, here implicitly caricatured as an avaricious beggar; and he seeks to deflect the attack through expressions appropriated from Cynicism. The relationship between the philosophical and the erotic dimensions, as also that between the historical Menippus and the eromenos, is the subject of separate discussion (§ 6); but I conclude that the drama is indeed revealed, in the final word, to involve erastes and eromenos as protagonists. The disclosure invites the reader to re-assess the ‘Cynic’ component and to reflect on its function as an indirect critique of the Gadaran satirist and his so-called ‘Charites’. The potential interest of the epigram as literary testimonium requires a separate word of introduction. Despite his extraordinary influence on the content and form of Greek and Roman ‘satire’, Menippus of Gadara ranks among the least accessible figures in the Hellenistic literary landscape. For his origins, philosophical training and career, we are largely dependent on a tendentious account by Diogenes Laertius (6.99-101) who transmits an allegedly contemporary view of his subject as an avaricious usurer nicknamed ‘ἡμεροδανειστής’ (‘lender on daily interest’). Menippus, he adds, was no true Cynic and his books were wholly frivolous with no claim to serious content. This polemical verdict is not readily tested since the satirist’s productions now survive as little more than a bare (and incomplete) list of titles. Modern reconstruction of the foundational Menippean oeuvre is for that reason indebted to inferential readings of ‘Menippus’ as a character in the essays of Lucian.10 A further consequence of the losses is the difficulty of assessing Menippus’ role in developing the remarkable body of innovative Cynic literature which had started to emerge in the final decades of the fourth century.11 His own period of activity is uncertain, but is generally assigned to the first half of the third century, making him a near-contemporary of Bion of Borysthenes.12 Significantly, a paired reference to Bion and Menippus can be recovered from a papyrus fragment of Philodemus, offering 10. Relihan (1993: 39-48); Relihan (1996: 265-293); Desmond (2008: 36-39). For what might be recoverable from the Lucianic ‘Menippus’, see (as a corrective to Helm (1906)), McCarthy (1934); Hall (1981: 64-94; 74-79 on the external evidence for his life). 11. Oltramare (1926: 16-17). On the tragedies attributed to Diogenes, see Noussia (2006). For overviews of Cynic authors as literary innovators, see Branham (1996: esp. 83-86); Bosman (2012: 793-794). 12. Dating: thus, for example, Brill’s New Pauly s.v. Menippus [4]. Menippus presumably wrote Acusilaus after its subject became head of the Academy in 264: Ath. 664e; cf. Relihan (1996: 229, n. 7).

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early testimony to their association and status as second-generation Cynics.13 From the surviving fragments of Bion, and from some at least of the iambography that emerges later in the third century (Cercidas, for example) we can get an outline sense of the contents of Cynic writings.14 Much less clear is what Menippus’ contemporaries at Alexandria, those in the vanguard of Hellenistic literary refinement, made of such innovative productions, and indeed of Menippus’ own work. Herein, as I hope to show, lies the literary-critical interest of our epigram.

2. Meleager, Menippus and ‘Charites’ In responding to a notional prior utterance from Menippus, Callimachus appeals to him ‘in the name of the Graces’ (2, πρὸς Χαρίτων) not ‘to tell my own dream to me’. The Graces’ association with Aphrodite as agents of adornment, charm and persuasion has been cited as a covert clue to the erotic situation.15 But their main interest for present purposes lies in evidence that Menippus of Gadara referred to his own writings as ‘Charites’. These literary ‘Charites’ will supply a corner stone for the analysis of AP 12.148 offered here, and the relevant testimonia must be reviewed by way of introduction. They appear in a series of four autobiographical epigrams by Meleager (himself a native of Gadara). In the first two (AP 7.417-418), Meleager acknowledges the help of the Muses in emulating the ‘Menippean Charites’.16 Here is what he says: (a) Εὐκράτεω δ’ ἔβλαστον ὁ σὺν Μούσαις Μελέαγρος πρῶτα Μενιππείοις συντροχάσας Χάρισιν·

13. Phld. Rh. 2.55 Sudhaus τ[ί] γὰρ μᾶλλον αἰσχρὸν/ἦν] σιωπᾶν Ἰσοκράτην/δ’ἐᾶν λέγειν ἢ κατὰ πό-/λιν ζ[ῆν], Μάνην δὲ [σ]κα-/π[αν]εύειν ἐᾶν, κ[ἀν τ]ῇ/γῇ] διατρ[ί]βειν, ἐπ[ικ]υ-/μα]τί[ζ]εσθαι δὲ τὸν [Φο]ίνι-/[κα καὶ τὸν Βορυσθε[νείτην. This is a reductio ad absurdum of Aristotle’s dictum ‘disgraceful to remain silent and let Isocrates speak’, with three analogous, equally absurd, areas of inactivity contrasted with specialist activity on the part of a named person. Thus, as second comparator, ‘[disgraceful] to live on land and let the Phoenician and the Borysthenite be tossed on the waves’: τὸν [Φο]ίνι[κα, I suggest, is to be read as an ethnic and not as ‘Phoenix’ (sc. of Colophon, as Gigante & Indelli (1978: 126); for Menippus’ birth in Gadara, D.L. 6.99 (Φοίνικα τὸ γένος), St.Byz. s.v. Γάδαρα. ἐντεῦθεν ἦν Μένιππος ὁ σπουδογελοῖος. Cf. Isaac (2011: 494-495). Philodemus is having fun: διατρ[ί]βειν plays on Bion’s διατριβαί, and ἐπ[ικ]υ[μα]τί[ζ]εσθαι on philosophical ‘submersion’: cf. Moles (1985: 35-36) on Hor. Ep. 1.2.22 (Odysseus) adversis rerum immersalibis undis. With the admission of reference to Menippus, objections to identifying the Borysthenite as Bion, raised by Kindstrand (1985), fall away. 14. Kindstrand (1976); Williams (2006). Cf. Long (1978). 15. “Covert clue”: Cairns (2016: 379). Aphrodite: cf. MacLachlan (1993: 56-72). Petrovic and Petrovic (2003: 187-189). 16. The series is helpfully analysed by Gutzwiller (1998a).

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I am sprung from Eukrates, Meleager who with the aid of the Muses was first to run side by side with the Menippean Charites. (b) Μοῦσαι δ’ εἰν ὀλίγοις με τὸν Εὐκράτεω Μελέαγρον παῖδα Μενιππείοις ἠγλάισαν Χάρισιν. The Muses adorned me, Meleager child of Eukrates, among few, with the Menippean Charites.

In the first passage, literary emulation is figured as parallel (chariot) running, no doubt prompted by the ‘equine’ (Μενιππείοις) nomenclature of the model, so that the written ‘Charites’ are identified with their author as agonistic ‘competitors’.17 In the second, the Muses’ actions are assimilated to the domain of the goddess Graces (ἠγλάισαν, with allusion to the Grace Aglaia), reminding the reader of the close association of Muses and Graces as patron divinities of song and poetry, and no doubt hinting at the inspired status of the ‘Menippean Charites’ as products of divine favour.18 The twofold Μενιππείοις … Χάρισιν in the same metrical sedes suggests that Meleager is echoing a term known to have been used by Menippus with reference to his own work (possibly, though not necessarily, as a book title).19 Meleager himself is attested both as a Cynic and as author of Charites, and Diogenes Laertius (6.99) associates him with Menippus as authors of books that ‘brim with laughter’.20 The term “Menippean Graces” troubled a scholar who has done much to illuminate Menippean satire, Joel Relihan, on the grounds of Menippus’ reputation for aggressive attack.21 Kathryn Gutzwiller offered a way through the issue in focusing on Μενιππείοις … Χάρισιν as an expression of the ‘charm’ or ‘grace’ that Meleager claimed for his own prose and verse writings. That approach can also embrace what I take to be a core moral-didactic function of Menippus’ work: his ‘Charites’ will have marked serio-comic satire as a ‘charming’, hence efficacious and persuasive, vehicle for moral-philosophical comment and for the transmission of frank truths about contemporary men and their failings.22 17. For the image of chariot and poetic creation, see Williams (1996). Cf. also Prop. 3.1.9-14, where Propertius’ poetry is figured in a triumphal chariot as divine Musa, then as Amores with their author, and following rivals are warned against seeking to pass. 18. Cf., with Gutzwiller (1998a: 81-82, n. 3), AP 7.416 (anon.) Εὐκράτεω Μελέαγρον ἔχω, ξένε, τὸν σὺν Ἔρωτι / καὶ Μούσαις κεράσανθ’ ἡδυλόγους Χάριτας. 19. Gutzwiller (1998a: 83): “Charites may well have been known in antiquity as a title for Menippus’ writings, or at the very least it is likely the Graces played some part in his unique brand of literary composition.” Gutzwiller also notes Charites as the attested title of a work by Aratus. 20. Meleager’s Charites are cited at Ath. 4.157b. 21. Relihan (1998: 41) ““Menippean Graces” seems … an oxymoron”. 22. For the Charites as agents of the persuasiveness of poetry, see Steiner (1986: 42); cf. Booth (2006). I am uncertain what to make of a tantalising reference by Philodemus,

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The ideal of graceful persuasiveness is implicit in Demetrius’ discussion of laughter and stylistic χάριτες (‘charms’) as an extension of their joint deployment in comedy (On Style 170): he cites Crates of Thebes to exemplify the Κυνικὸς τρόπος (‘Cynic manner’) of deploying humour as a ‘substitute for maxims and gnomic wisdom’ (trans. Innes). More explicit treatments of χάρις (‘charm’) as a departure from the ‘barking’ associated with the Cynics’ harsh παρρησία (‘frankness of speech’) surface in imperial-era expositions which evidently draw upon lively Hellenistic debates around the subject of liberal humour.23 Two examples must suffice, both touching on the caricature of the Cynic beggarphilosopher who turns up uninvited and proffers unsolicited advice of a moralising character. Julian portrays Crates of Thebes as a reconciler of quarrels (Or. 6. 201b-c): ἐπορεύετο δὲ ἐπὶ τὰς τῶν φίλων ἑστίας ἄκλητος καὶ κεκλημένος ... ἐπετίμα δὲ οὐ μετὰ πικρίας, ἀλλὰ μετὰ χάριτος (‘he proceeded to the hearth-homes of friends, uninvited or invited … and he rebuked them not with harshness, but with charm’). 24 Again, Athenaeus’ account of the tussle between the Cynic ‘Cynulcus’ and his fellow-symposiasts illustrates the positive connections between stylistic χάρις (‘charm’) and social invitation, and between χάρις and the goddess Charites (163a, on Ctesibius the Cynic): … ἦν δ’ εὔστοχος ὁ Κτησίβιος καὶ χαρίεις περὶ τὸ γελοῖον· διὸ καὶ πάντες αὐτὸν ἐπὶ τὰ συμπόσια παρεκάλουν· οὐχ ὥσπερ σύ, κυνικέ [sc. Cynulcus], ὁ μηδέποτε ταῖς Χάρισιν, ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ ταῖς Μούσαις θύσας (‘... Ctesibius’ use of laughter was apposite and charming, for which reason everyone invited him to their symposia; not like you, Mr. Dog-cynic, who have never sacrificed to the Graces, nor even to the Muses.’).25 Callimachus’ appeal ‘by the Graces’ to a ‘Menippus’ thus calls for closer investigation than it has received. The invocation itself reappears in the context of a comparison of Bion and (?) Theophrastus, to τῶν χαρίτω[ν / μετέχον]τας: on this difficult fragment (PHerc 223 fr. 7), see Gigante & Indelli (1998: 129-130). 23. Cf. Platonius’ assessment of Aristophanic χάρις in lampoon, removing vulgarity, as contrasted with Cratinus’ emulation of Archilochean abuse (Crat. Test. 17 K-A); Freudenburg (1993: 75; cf. 83 on Platonius’ “very early source”). Cf. AP 9.186.3-4 (Antipater of Thessalonica on Aristophanes) μῦθοι … φοβερῶν πληθόμενοι χαρίτων. 24. Crates as ‘Door-opener’, the welcome reconciler: Plut. Moralia 2.1.6, etc. (V H 18 Giann.). For the uninvited sermoniser, cf. also Hor. S. 1.3.63-65, with Gowers ad loc. 25. Cf. Lucian Symp. 12 …ἐπεισέπαισεν ὁ Κυνικὸς Ἀλκιδάμας ἄκλητος, ἐκεῖνο τὸ κοινὸν ἐπιχαριεντισάμενος, “τὸν Μενέλαον αὐτόματον ἥκοντα”; D.L. 6.34 (Diogenes, turning convention on its head): κληθεὶς ἐπὶ δεῖπνον οὐκ ἔφη παρέσεσθαι· μηδὲ γὰρ πρῴην αὐτῷ χάριν ἐγνωκέναι. For Charites, the persuasive charm (charites) of song and Cynic addressee, cf. Ath. 669e, a toast to ‘Cynulcus’ cited from Dionysius of Chalcus (see below, § 4): δέχου τήνδε προπινομένην / τὴν ἀπ’ ἐμοῦ ποίησιν. ἐγὼ δ’ ἐπιδέξια πέμπω / σοὶ πρώτῳ Χαρίτων ἐγκεράσας χάριτας. / καὶ σὺ λαβὼν τόδε δῶρον ἀοιδὰς ἀντιπρόπιθι, / συμπόσιον κοσμῶν ...

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in an opening address to the Lucianic ‘Menippus’ (Icar. 1, πρὸς Χαρίτων, ὦ Μένιππε: ‘in the name of the Graces, Menippus’).26 Of more immediate significance however is a Socratic antecedent in Theaetetus. Socrates alludes to Protagoras’ Aletheia (‘Truth’) conveyed privately to his disciples, and exclaims (152c) ἄρ’ οὖν πρὸς Χαρίτων πάσσοφός τις ἦν ὁ Πρωταγόρας (‘In the name of the Graces, what an almighty wise man Protagoras must have been!’; trans. Jowett). Within this ironic invocation, the Charites/Graces are evidently patron divinities of σοφία (‘wisdom’);27 but they are patrons of wisdom dispensed free of charge, contrary to the Sophists’ practice, satirised elsewhere by Socrates, of making disciples pay for their services.28 The Socratic parallel throws valuable light on ‘Charites’ as a Hellenistic book-title (see below, § 4 on Theocritus’ Charites or Hieron): circulated as ‘Charites’, within the Socratic tradition of teaching without payment, Menippus’ satirical work will have been offered to readers as a figurative gift of wisdom.29 Relihan has separately observed that “the origins of Menippean satire are Platonic”; and Socrates’ importance as mentor and model for the early Cynics will be kept in view in assessing Callimachus’ appeal ‘in the name of the Graces’.30 In depicting Menippus the eromenos as an avaricious money-grubber, it will be argued, Callimachus suggests (seriously or otherwise) that the satirist himself is vulnerable to charges of hypocrisy and betrayal of the Socratic tradition. 26. The parallel is suggestive of reference to the Menippean ‘Charites’, but not decisively so: Lucian deploys πρὸς Χαρίτων in five non-Menippean contexts (Hist.Conscr. 14, Bacch. 5, Herm. 36, Scyth. 9, Alex. 4). A TLG search also throws up Plut. Moralia 762e, and three occurrences in Themistius. In discussing ‘Charites’ as a Menippean title, however, Hall (1981: 491-492 (n. 77)) goes beyond the evidence of pre-third century BC usage in claiming that it is “quite normal in Greek to swear ‘by the Graces’”. 27. At Clouds 773, ‘Socrates’ exclaims σοφῶς γε νὴ τὰς Χάριτας (‘wisely, by the Graces!’) in response to Strepsiades’ device for escaping a ‘five talent lawsuit’. A scholium ad loc. refers to the tradition that Socrates carved a group of Charites in the Propylaia (Paus. 1.22.8, 9.35.7; Dover ad loc. traces the traditions and comments “It is by no means necessary as an explanation of the admiring oath ν.τ.Χ.”). Meleager again juxtaposes Charites with σοφία in the fourth autobiographical epitaph (AP 7.421.13-14), and may ironically recall the Socratic hinterland in referring to himself as σοφιστάς (7). 28. Pl. Sph. 222e-224e (Socrates and Theaetetus); Crat. 384b-c; 391b-c; Ademollo (2011: 28, 147-148). For the literary hinterland, cf. Kurke (1991: 103-104), with reference to Pindar’s epinician poem-gifts as Charites. 29. For χάρις as δωρεά, cf. Ath. 669e, cited above, n. 25; AP 5.149.3-4 (Meleager); 12.214 (Strato). Suda χ 124 ...διότι δωρεὰν δεῖ χάριτας τίθεσθαι. Ps-Pl. Def. 414a; EM p. 806.57 K.; cf. Pl. Lg. 844d; Plt. 300a ἢ κέρδους ἕνεκέν τινος ἢ χάριτος ἰδίας; Cash for teaching features alongside usury, in a stock charge of avarice and hypocrisy against Stoic philosophers at Lucian Symp. 36; Cairns (2016: 14). 30. Relihan (1996: 265 n. 2); cf. id. (1993: 33-34). There are relevant treatments of Socrates by Long (1996) and Schaps (2003).

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The appeal is incorporated within a re-worked proverb which has a Socratic pedigree of its own. The only extant antecedent for μὴ λέγε ... τοὐμὸν ὄνειρον ἐμοί (‘tell not … my own dream to me’) appears in Plato’s Republic: Socrates recounts an interlocutor’s assent, from his own experience, to the observation that street pedestrians are jostled by horses and donkeys (563d): τὸ ἐμόν γ’, ἔφη, ἐμοὶ λέγεις ὄναρ· αὐτὸς γὰρ εἰς ἀγρὸν πορευόμενος θαμὰ αὐτὸ πάσχω (‘and he said, “you are telling me my own dream; I myself when I go to the country often experience the same thing”’). The context of the Socratic exchange, specifically its emphasis on the interlocutor’s ‘knowledge’, from his own experience, of the truth of Socrates’ political observations, would seem to support the view that Callimachus quotes directly from the Platonic text, and that he leads up to the reference with his opening οἶδ’ (‘I know’).31 With this further pointer to the philosophical interest of the epigram, we may move on to consider the opening couplet as a whole, and the significance of the quoted proverb for reconstruction of the dramatic exchange.

3. Menippus’ attack and Callimachus’ response AP 12.148 challenges the reader at the outset, and at each step thereafter, to work out for him/herself what is going on. We infer, from the address to Menippus (1-2), that an exchange is in progress, but we are required to supply the context, and to reconstruct the terms of what is said on each side, from such clues as are vouchsafed by the poet. In the second couplet, we find Callimachus responding with dismay to a (notional) reproach from Menippus:32 ‘that bitter utterance’ (3); ‘this is the most unlovely’ (4). σεῦ (4, ‘from you’), responding to μευ (1, ‘my’), sharply underscores a tone of irony and bitterness. But to what do the demonstratives ἔπος τόδε (3, ‘that utterance’) and τοῦτ’ (4, ‘this’) refer, and what exactly has Menippus said? I take the antecedent to lie in μὴ λέγε … τοὐμὸν ὄνειρον ἐμοί, that is, in whatever statement is denoted by ‘tell not … my own dream to me’. This appeal is generally taken to mean, ‘don’t tell me something I know already’, and thus to supplement the opening οἶδ’ (‘I know’): Menippus, it is assumed, has said ‘your hands are empty’. Yet the proverb which is incorporated into Callimachus’ appeal properly 31. Socrates appeals to his interlocutor’s existing knowledge (οἶσθ’), drawing the emphatic response καὶ μάλ’ ... οἶδα; see below (§ 3) for Callimachus’ οἶδ’. 32. Pace Gutzwiller (2007: 325) Callimachus cannot in my view be anticipating Menippus’ ‘bitter word’.

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applies to an exchange in which one party states, as personal to him, something that the other then claims to have experienced for himself.33 That the proverbial reference is to matching experiences is put beyond doubt by the Republic antecedent (above, § 2), where αὐτὸ πάσχω expresses the interlocutor’s claim to personal experience of the phenomenon described by Socrates. Menippus, then, has spoken of suffering a condition which the speaker too is experiencing. The shared condition in question plainly lies in the ‘empty hands’ referred to in line 1. Menippus, we may infer, has complained of his ‘empty hands’ because he has received nothing; and Callimachus’ quotation of the proverb acknowledges that his own hands, too, are empty of wealth.34 The significance of this reconstruction can be recovered from earlier instances of κενεαὶ χέρες in contexts referring to ‘empty-handed’ return from the pursuit of spoils: thus, Odysseus’ foolish companions complain of his presumed enrichment by Aeolus in contrast to their own return home ‘with empty hands’; and in a probable echo of that passage, Herodotus speaks of Scythians returning from a hunt ‘empty handed’.35 Prior usage thus favours the characterisation of Menippus as an avaricious, but unsuccessful, seeker after wealth/spoils (whether as eromenos or Cynic). The further implication is that like Odysseus’ companions, he believes that Callimachus has wealth to bestow, is failing to do so, and requires admonition for lack of generosity.36 33. At AP 6.310.6 (also Callimachus), the proverb is spoken by a tragic mask of Dionysus, dedicated to the Muses (1-2) in a schoolroom, on hearing the boys’ recitation of the Bacchae at line 494 ἱερὸς ὁ πλόκαμος; Dionysus, as stranger, there warns Pentheus that his hair is ‘grown for the god’ (494, τῷ θεῷ ... τρέφω) i.e. ‘sacred’ (ἱερός) to Dionysus. The mask’s hair too is sacred, but to the Muses as dedicatees; and the proverb points up the shared experience of ‘sacred hair’ by the enacted god and the mask. Gow & Page (1965: 162) cite Cic. Att. 6.9.3 as a likely quotation of AP 12.148.2: the sense there is that Cicero has independently reached the same view as Atticus on the matter in question. Cf. also Suda τ 186, s.v. ταὐτὸν πέπονθα. 34. Tibullus’ plena manus, applied both to the mercenary Marathus and elsewhere to an aspirant lover, points to Hellenistic interest in complementarity of ‘hands’, whether full or empty, perhaps encouraged by our epigram: Tib. 1.5.68 (of the beloved’s ianua) plena est percutienda manu. 1.9.52 (Marathus’ aim) pretium plena grande referre manu. Cf. AP 12.42.1 (Dioscorides) βλέψον ἐς Ἑρμογένην πλήρει χερί. 35. Od. 10.42-44 (the companions speak among themselves while Odysseus sleeps, wrongly suspecting that the bag of winds Aeolus has given Odysseus contains unshared gold and silver) οἴκαδε νισσόμεθα κενεὰς σὺν χεῖρας ἔχοντες· / καὶ νῦν οἱ τάδ’ ἔδωκε χαριζόμενος [n.b.] φιλότητι / Αἴολος. Cf. Hdt. 1.73.4 (Scythians returning from the hunt) νοστήσαντας δὲ αὐτοὺς κεινῇσι χερσί …. For the outstretched ‘hollow hand’ of the mercenary eromenos, AP 12.212.3 (Strato); Tib. 2.4.14 illa cava pretium flagitat usque manu. 36. The topic next appears in a pederastic epigram by Rhianus (AP 12.146), applied to the unsuccessful poet-erastes who has ‘hunted’ an eromenos, has been cheated of his prey by (presumably rich) rivals, and departs with empty hands (3, σὺν κενεαῖς χείρεσσιν

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I turn now to the implications for our reading of the first line (οἶδ’ ὅτι μευ πλούτου κενεαὶ χέρες). The traditional translation (‘I know that of wealth my hands are empty’) remains basically sound: Callimachus opens by acknowledging the corollary of Menippus’ ‘empty hands’ complaint, the fact that his own hands are ‘empty of wealth’ while pleading that he has nothing to give. But πλούτου (1, ‘wealth’) calls for further investigation. The word is rare in erotic epigram (it appears only in two later pieces), and in our context it seems oddly redundant alongside the self-explanatory ‘empty hands’.37 Its opening prominence, moreover, and its metrical location in one of just three spondaic feet in an otherwise strikingly dactylic quatrain, would seem to indicate something more pointed than a simple confession of material poverty. πλούτου appears, in fact, to import an ethical dimension; and significantly for the erotic scenario, it enriches comparison of the epigram to the third Iamb. There, the impoverished poet-erastes laments the loss of an eromenos to a rich rival and reflects on the deleterious effects of πλοῦτος (‘wealth’) on the present age.38 The Iamb has some affinity with moralising references to wealth and avarice in Hellenistic iambography, where Cynic influence is certainly in play.39 Though not, of course, the exclusive concern of any one philosophical school, ‘wealth’ and its uses had assumed special prominence in Cynic teaching on austerity and disregard for material possessions.40 On that basis, I suggest that πλούτου is a marker-term that places the exchange in a well-defined area of contemporary ethics. Callimachus has been charged with failing to share wealth, and he counter-charges Menippus with avarice (φιλαργυρία) while proclaiming his own poverty. As regards possible Cynic colouring, the intertextual presence of Odysseus, the authentic Cynic hero, is of particular interest (assuming the Homeric original of κενεαὶ χέρες is in view).41 To that may be added the ἀπέρχομαι). Rhianus appears to look back through Callimachus’ erastes to Homer’s κενεὰς σὺν χεῖρας and Herodotus’ Scythian hunters. 37. πλοῦτος in an erotic context only here in Meleager’s anthology (or in AP 12); later instances at AP 5.30.6 (Antipater of Thessalonica) and 5.113.1 (Marcus Argentarius) have no bearing on the Callimachean scenario. 38. Affinities between AP 12.148 and Iamb 3 are observed already by Acosta-Hughes (2002: 249-250) in a valuable survey of Callimachus’ persona as impoverished poeterastes. 39. Observed in general terms by Clayman (1980: 66-67). Iamb 3 also engages directly with Platonic texts: see Acosta-Hughes (2002: 237, 239). The eromenos is named Euthydemus, a ‘Socratic’ name: Clayman (1980: 21). 40. See Desmond (2006: esp. 164-167). Kindstrand (1976: 243-255). For Socrates as exemplar of the ascetic life, see e.g. Schaps (2003: 140-142). 41. Above, § 3, with n. 35. Odysseus: Höistad (1948: 94-102); Moles (1985: 47); Desmond (2006: 138-139).

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ultra-realistic references to ‘hands’ in Cynic admonitions on the sharing of wealth. Crates’ response to the question ‘what’s in it for me in being a philosopher?’ is reported thus (ap. Teles p. 38.5-8 Hense; V H 44 Giann.): δυνήσῃ … τὸ φασκώλιον ῥᾳδίως λῦσαι καὶ τῇ χειρὶ ἐξελὼν εὐλύτως δοῦναι, καὶ οὐχ ὥσπερ νῦν στρέφων καὶ μέλλων καὶ τρέμων, ὥσπερ οἱ παραλελυμένοι τὰς χεῖρας (‘you will be able … easily to loosen your purse, and extracting from it with your hand to give liberally, not as now twisting and hesitating and trembling like people with paralysis of the hands’).42 One further, and more speculative, suggestion about πλούτου can be registered. Might the juxtaposed μευ qualify and accentuate ‘wealth’ as well as, or instead of, ‘hands’?43 This would yield a figurative reference to non-material wealth, implicitly of intellectual or spiritual gifts.44 Directly in point is a proto-Cynic stance attributed to Antisthenes in Xenophon’s Symposium (4.40): τῷ ἐμῷ πλούτῳ (‘the wealth that is mine’). There, the emphatic possessive alone marks πλούτῳ as non-material, with back-reference to Antisthenes’ earlier ‘wealth of the soul’ speech (4.34; V A 82 Giann.): νομίζω ...τοὺς ἀνθρώπους οὐκ ἐν τῷ οἴκῳ τὸν πλοῦτον καὶ τὴν πενίαν ἔχειν ἀλλ’ ἐν ταῖς ψυχαῖς (‘I consider that men hold wealth and poverty in their souls and not in the household’). Were Callimachus’ μευ πλούτου (‘the wealth that is mine’) to echo a Cynic source, or indeed Antisthenes’ own phrasing, the reference would be to his non-material wealth qua poet.45 The references to Cynicism inferred for the first couplet, if valid, are scarcely self-evident, and must be further tested for plausibility and 42. PLond. 155.8, (p. 214 Powell) ]χειρες ὥ[σπ]ερ Ἅρπυιαι; ibid. 20-22 (imaginary interlocutors) ἀναπέτασο]ν τὴν χεῖρ’ ὁκοῦ λαβεῖν δεῖ τι / ὅκου [δ]ὲ δοῦν[αι] μηδ’ ὅλως φόρει χεῖρα, / ἐροῦσι πολλοί. D.L. 6.29 (V B 277 Giann.) (Diogenes) ἔλεγε δὲ καὶ δεῖν τὰς χεῖρας ἐπὶ τοῦς φίλους ἐκτείνειν μὴ συγκεκαμμένοις τοῖς δακτύλοις. 43. With the juxtaposition, cf. AP 12.73.1 (Callimachus) ἥμισύ μευ ψυχῆς ἔτι τὸ πνέον. If Callimachus intended an unambiguous reference to ‘my hands’, he could have written οἶδ’ ὅτ’ ἐμαὶ .... κενεαὶ χέρες. Notwithstanding Callimachus’ use of ἐμεῦ and μευ elsewhere, there may be a case for exceptionally retaining the μου of Codex P: the lumpy μου πλούτου would further mark the intrusion of ‘wealth’, and accentuate the juxtaposition. 44. Figurative intellectual πλοῦτος already in Emp. 129.2, 133.1 D-K (πραπίδων πλοῦτον). Latin parallels are more plentiful: cf. e.g. TLL V.1.1636.46-55. For a precise parallel, of a poor love-poet, cf. Stat. Silv. 1.2.255 divesque foco lucente Tibullus, with Tib. 1.1.1-6. 45. For a later instance of ἐμὸς πλοῦτος in this sense, cf. Lucian Tim. 36 (on the new attractions of poverty and the loss of material possessions). But cf. Lucian Cont. 10, 12 (Croesus) for conventional πλοῦτος with possessive. For the concept ‘wealth of the soul’, see Desmond (2006: 38-39). At Him. Or. 18.19 Col., ἡμέτερος πλοῦτος is ‘not the gold of Gyges’, but the speaker’s own pupils.

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coherence in analysis of the second (below, § 5). But the proposition that Callimachus is responding to a moralistic reproach in terms that resonate with Cynic terms and values would seem to open up a new and promising line of approach to the epigram. In the next section, I outline a possible ‘Menippean’ context for such an exchange, embracing the published ‘Charites’.

4. A ‘Menippean’ scenario? What kind of utterance is referred to in ἔπος τόδε πικρόν, and in what medium has ‘Menippus’ given expression to it? On the face of things, we have to do with a verbal exchange involving prior speech (λέγε, 2), the spoken word (3, ἔπος), and listening (3, ἀκούων). Yet to assume a literal reading would be to ignore Callimachus’ use of ἔπος to refer to literary works, including his own Aetia (fr. 1.5 Ha.), as well as to oral utterances (cf. AP 9.566.6).46 Similarly, ἀκούων does not necessarily indicate the auditor in a spoken exchange. A reader’s familiarity with a written text can be expressed in terms of ‘listening’;47 and references to ‘hearing’ may preserve the fiction of oral delivery within ‘the strident homilies of Cynic street philosophers’.48 Callimachus’ language thus appears to be consistent with reference either to verbal or to literary attack. A further ambiguity seems to arise in the placement of πρὸς Χαρίτων after the negative request μὴ λέγε, contrary to normal prose and verse word order.49 Unless this reflects metrical exigency, it is sufficiently unusual to suggest, as a possible secondary construction, the attachment of πρὸς Χαρίτων to λέγε, implying that Menippus’ reproaches are themselves uttered ‘in the name of the Graces’. Taken together with the ‘Socratic’ colouring of invocation and proverb (above, § 2), the apparent ambiguity is consistent with veiled reference to the Menippean ‘Charites’. 46. Acosta-Hughes & Stephens (2001). 47. Cf. Pl. R. 407a (on the subject of wealth) Φωκυλίδου γάρ ... οὐκ ἀκούεις, πῶς φησὶ δεῖν, ὅταν τῳ ἤδη βίος ᾖ, ἀρετὴν ἀσκεῖν; 48. PLond. 115.5 (p. 214 Powell); Phoenix fr. 1.13 Powell; Var. Men. 431 Cèbe (on a philosophical dispute) id ut scias, audi … Hor. S. 1.1.14-15 audi / quo rem deducam; 1.10.8. Gowers (2012: 58). Pers. 1.120-121, 125, 126 (inde vaporata lector mihi ferveat aure). 49. Four of the five uses of πρὸς Χαρίτων by Lucian (Hist.Conscr. 14, Bacch. 5, Scyth. 9, Alex. 4) precede negative requests/commands. Cf. e.g. Ar. Ra. 41; Dem. Fals. Leg. 78; Lept. 74; Boeot. 53, 61; Eub. 50, 59. Occasionally the invocation may fall between μή and the verb: e.g. Lib. Decl. 6.44; 48.27.

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Readers alert to the old verbal interplay between Χάριτες (χάρις) and χέρες (‘hands’) might well associate these ‘Charites’ with the ‘empty hands’ reproach.50 This would entail collapsing the distinction between speaking author and written ‘Charites’, a device paralleled in Meleager’s later claim to ‘run side by side with the Menippean Charites’ (AP 7.417.2; above, § 2). As a contemporary comparandum, however, Theocritus’ Charites or Hieron (Idyll 16) stands out. The impoverished poet there disseminates poem-Charites to potential patrons, ostensibly as free gifts but in reality as beggars seeking reciprocal generosity in cash. The book-roll/Charites fail to win reward and, personified as travellers, they return home to abuse their own poet. The poet proceeds to emulate their abuse in a moralistic attack on his erstwhile praise-subjects: ‘everyone’, he claims, ‘keeps his hands out of sight’ (16, πᾶς δ’ ὑπὸ κόλπου χεῖρας ἔχων). But just as his Charites had failed to win patronage on the doorstep, so Theocritus fails to persuade his auditors that patronage of poets represents an appropriate use of their wealth. Detailed comparisons with the epigram, and documentation of the Cynic affinities of the Theocritean persona loquens, lie beyond the scope of this essay.51 Suffice to observe the traditional association of χάρις and Χάριτες (‘charm’ and ‘Graces’) with gift-giving in both contexts, the mendicant resort to moralising abuse when frustrated of cash reward, and the betrayal of the Socratic legacy of free teaching that it entails. To which may be added the implication in each case of a failure in the persuasive efficacy traditionally conferred upon song by the divine grace of the Charites:52 in the Idyll, as in the epigram, the divine Charites can have had no part in the flawed works that boast their name. The interplay of poem-gifts, Charites as the goddesses of literary charites, and expectations of reciprocity are nicely encapsulated in Athenaeus’ account (669e) of an exchange involving the Cynic ‘Cynulcus’. Fellowsymposiast Democritus responds to his request for help in understanding 50. Il. 22.511 (Od. 10.42-44, discussed above, οἴκαδε νισσόμεθα κενεὰς σὺν χεῖρας ἔχοντες· / καὶ νῦν οἱ τάδ’ ἔδωκε χαριζόμενος φιλότητι / Αἴολος, reflects the word play and appears relevant); h.Ap. 515. AP 5.15.1-2; 6.61.6; 6.338.5; 8.128.1-2; 9.250.5; 9.542.4; Call. Aet. fr. 7.14 Ha. Erotic: AP 12.121.2-4; 12.122.1-2; 12.195.4. There appears to be no attested ancient etymology. 51. I intend to deal with Idyll 16, its contemporary context and its indebtedness to Cynicism, in a separate article currently in preparation. 52. Contrast Meleager’s implicit identification of Menippean Charites and goddesses in AP 7.418, above § 2). Cf. Schol. Hes. Theog. 64 κατὰ λόγον δὲ Ἵμερος καὶ Χάριτες συνοίκουσι ταῖς Μούσαις, ἤγουν ἡ χάρις καὶ ἡ ἐπιθυμία, ὧν ἄνευ οὐδὲν τῶν Μουσῶν δῶρα. Ἢ ὅτι ὁ χρηστὸς ποιητὴς οὐ μόνον ἐστι πολυμαθὴς καὶ δυνατός, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐπίχαρις καὶ στωμύλος…

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a reference to lovers’ garlands in a pederastic epigram of Callimachus (AP 12.134), and prefaces his commentary by citing an elegy of Dionysius Chalcus: ‘receive this poem pledged as a toast from me. I am sending it from left to right for you, first, having mixed in the graces of the Graces. Do you take this gift and pledge me songs as a toast in return …’, trans. Gerber).53 The item elegantly recalls a reference to the goddess Charites in the insults directed earlier to the parasitical ‘Cynulcus’ (163a, cited above, § 2). Moreover, Cynulcus’ claim to have read the epigrams of Callimachus while still a boy (ἐν παισί, 669c), though clothed as intellectual curiosity, is surely suggestive of this future Cynic’s interest in the conduct of eromenoi and his use of Callimachus for the purposes of erotic paideia. It offers a revealing parallel for the analogy between the Cynic satirist and the eromenos to be proposed below (§ 6).54 To sum up this part of the argument, the first couplet appears to offer the reader good grounds for associating Menippus’ prior attack with the satirist, and for inferring that the appeal, in the name of the Graces, to desist is a veiled reference to the Menippean ‘Charites’.

5. Menippus as moral ‘physician’ Callimachus claims to experience ‘anguish through and through from hearing this bitter utterance’ (3, ἀλγέω τὴν διὰ παντὸς ἔπος τόδε πικρὸν ἀκούων). The prosaic διὰ παντός may carry temporal or spatial reference, both senses being attested (the former more extensively) in the Hippocratic corpus as well as in Plato.55 Callimachus seems to suggest total physical/mental anguish: an extension, perhaps, of a headache as a symptom of love, if he has in view Theocritus’ ἀλγέω τὰν κεφαλάν (‘I have a headache’).56 If the alternative sense ‘unremitting’, or ‘chronic’, is also 53. For the Greek text, see above, n. 25. On Dionysius’ poem, see MacLachlan (1993: 83-84). 54. Cf. AP 12.208 (Strato, imagining his book in the hands/lap of an adolescent). 55. Spatial: Pl. Prm. 152e, R. 407d (medical), Ti. 34b, 40c, 78a, 88d. Hp. Morb. 1.34, de Art. 72, Epid. 2.3.3, 3.3.7, 6.1.4 (?). For διὰ παντός of ‘unremitting’ medical symptoms, cf. e.g. Hp. Epid. 2.3.1, 3.3.17, 6.7.1, 6.7.13, 7.1.3, 7.1.5 (x4), 7.1.50. 56. Theocr. 3.52 (unsuccessful komast; the only other occurrence of uncontracted ἀλγέω before Eustath. Macr. Hys. 6.3 (cited by Hunter ad loc.), also of an erotic headache). Both spatial and temporal senses are consistent with an erotic scenario. For unremitting Eros, cf. e.g. AP 5.212 (Meleager). For total physical consumption by love, cf. Prop. 1.5.22 toto corpore nullus ego, where Fedeli compares AP 12.71.3 (Callimachus) and Theocr. Id. 2.89; cf. also AP 5.162.2 (Asclepiades, on a wound of love) ὁ πόνος δύεται εἰς ὄνυχα. For unremitting erotic anguish figured as medical condition, Prop. 1.1.7. For total, physical and mental, anguish, cf. e.g. AP 5.212 (Meleager).

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present, it would imply that Menippus’ complaint has been voiced not once but repeatedly over a period of time. Callimachus’ anguish would in either case seem to have acquired medical colouring; and ἔπος πικρόν (‘bitter utterance’) can thus be read within a Cynic context as a medical figure for the bitterness entailed by a course of moral improvement. Asked why he reproved his pupils so ‘bitterly’ (πικρῶς), Antisthenes is said to have replied ‘just like doctors with their patients’.57 Cynic ‘bitterness’ might be tempered by humour and ‘charm’ (charis), just as doctors sugar their pills.58 But the Charites/Graces notwithstanding, Menippus’ ‘bitter utterance’ evidently eschews ‘charm’ and is anything but curative. Callimachus’ ἄλγος (‘anguish’) may represent a variant of the ‘philosopher as physician’ motif in which the patient is warned that his cure will entail pain.59 At all events, and contrary to the standard philosophical aim of bringing peace of mind to the disciple, Menippus’ corrective πικρία (‘bitterness’) has left Callimachus in a state of total pain.60 Such, at any rate, is his hyperbolic complaint.

6. Callimachus, ‘Menippus’ and Menippus of Gadara In responding to Menippus, as I see it, Callimachus appropriates ideas and language associated with the early Cynics, and with Socrates and Antisthenes as their intellectual forerunners. To be sure, no single item can be read as distinctively or uniquely Cynic. Rather, the parallel 57. D.L. 6.4 ἐρωτηθεὶς διὰ τί πικρῶς τοῖς μαθηταῖς ἐπιπλήττει, ‘καὶ οἱ ἰατροὶ τοῖς κάμνουσιν.’ 58. Cf. a saying attributed to Diogenes by Antonius Melissa (2.32.61; V B 330 Giann.): οἱ μὲν ἰατροὶ τὰς τῶν ἐκλεικτῶν φαρμάκων πικρίας μέλιτι, οἱ δὲ σοφοὶ τὰς τῶν δυσκολωτέρων ἀνθρώπων ὁμιλίας ἱλαρότητι γλυκαίνουσιν (‘Just as physicians sweeten the bitterness of their medicinal lozenges with honey, so philosophers sweeten their lectures to irritable people with lightheartedness.’). Diogenes as physician: D.Chr. Or. 8.5; 9.2. 59. Epict. Diss. 3.23.30: ἰατρεῖόν ἐστιν, ἄνδρες, τὸ τοῦ φιλοσόφου σχολεῖον· οὐ δεῖ ἡσθέντας ἐξελθεῖν, ἀλλ’ ἀλγήσαντας. ἔρχεσθε γὰρ οὐχ ὑγιεῖς, ἀλλ’ ὁ μὲν ὦμον ἐκβεβληκώς, ὁ δ’ ἀπόστημα ἔχων, ὁ δὲ σύριγγα, ὁ δὲ κεφαλαλγῶν. 60. Though ἄλγος is not prominent as a Cynic term, Crates of Thebes (SH 347.1; V H 67 Giann.) satirises Stilpo as χαλέπ’ ἄλγε’ ἔχοντα parodying Od. 11.582 (Tantalus in the underworld; cf. Hor. S. 1.1.68-70 for this Cynic exemplar, with Gowers ad loc.). Stilpo’s ‘griefs’ arise from his errant approach to philosophy, and are mental in character; cf. Long (1978: 75). Cf. D.Chr. Or. 9.15 (V B 586 Giann.) οὐδ’ ἔλαττον ἀλγεῖς, where ‘Diogenes’ decries an athletic victor on grounds that include the victor’s undiminished level of mental pain. Among the acknowledged disincentives to the Cynic life was the high level of physical discomforts (ἀλγηδόνες) it entailed: D.L. 6.55; Julian Or. 6.181d. The Lucianic ‘Diogenes’, up for auction (Vit. Auct. 9-10) includes a somewhat obscure play between mental and physical ἄλγος in his ‘sales pitch’.

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materials assembled here suggest that Cynic colouring is cumulatively applied (and unlikely to be fortuitous), but that Callimachus avoids any expression that might definitively locate the exchange in that technical arena. If the Cynic dimension is accepted, the figure of Menippus of Gadara necessarily enters the frame, together with his ‘Charites’. But how, in that case, does the ‘Menippean’ dimension relate to the erotic? And how is the reader to understand the relationship between the Gadarene and the addressee? That Callimachus should name a living writer in an epigram is of course uncontentious (Aratus at Epigr. 27.4 Pf.). That he should address a living writer in the unflattering terms suggested here for the Menippean scenario is a rather different matter; and to suppose that Menippus of Gadara should be cast in the role of a current eromenos, albeit in a fictitious relationship, would stretch credulity to breaking point. For that reason, it might fairly be asked whether the erotic scenario is, after all, illusory. The incidence of neutral, non-erotic phraseology might be held to point in that direction, as might the intrusion of πλούτου (‘wealth’) and the variation of conventional Ἔρως πικρός (‘bitter Eros’) in ἔπος πικρόν (‘bitter utterance’). But any such notion founders on the final word: even though ἀνεραστότατον (‘most unlovely’) can be paralleled in a non-erotic context, it would be difficult to refute the communis opinio that this massive word represents the surprise revelation of the true scenario. And while Rhianus’ apparent borrowing of ‘empty hands’ (AP 12.146.3, κενεαῖς χείρεσσιν) cannot count as confirmation, its deployment with reference to himself as erastes suggests that he had read AP 12.148 in pederastic terms. Although disguised for most of the quatrain, then, the erotic scenario is not to be wished away: ‘Menippus’ is an eromenos, and as such cannot in my view be directly identified with the Gadarene. An alternative, and more promising, approach is to consider whether in revealing the erotic scenario, ἀνεραστότατον (‘most unlovely’) also dispels a deliberately misleading suggestion that a ‘Menippean’ scenario is in play. Ambiguity as to the medium of Menippus’ original attack was observed earlier (§ 3), and it appears to be sustained even in the final line: τῶν παρὰ σεῦ (‘of all that’s come from you’), might refer either to earlier utterances by the eromenos or to materials from the Gadarene.61 On that view, the delayed final disclosure involves more than the withholding of information: rather, active ‘deception’ will be in play.62 The 61. With παρὰ σεῦ of an addressee as source of philosophical teachings, cf. e.g. Pl. Phdr. 266c Grg. 499c; Smp. 175e; Euthd. 12e, 14c, 15e; Ti. 27a. 62. For a survey of ‘deception’ as a literary device to misdirect the reader prior to undeceiving him/her, generally at the conclusion of a poem, see Cairns (1979: 187-191).

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reader is led to infer that Menippus of Gadara is being charged with an attack (fictitious or otherwise) on Callimachus for illiberal conduct; and that the poet’s response is designed to expose the avaricious hypocrisy of such a charge, and its betrayal of Socratic ideals, through the appropriation of Cynic-Menippean positions. The proposition, then, is that for those equipped to recognise it, an allusion to the homonymous Gadaran lies behind Μένιππε (1), but that the phrasing that sustains the allusion amounts to deliberate misdirection.63 Such a procedure would confer the formal benefit of deniability (‘οὐδὲν πρὸς τὸν Φοίνικα’, as it might be); but more realistically, it would discount the awkwardness of reading a direct address to a living writer into the oblique phrasing of the first couplet. No proven Hellenistic parallel can be cited for this proposed play on names, but a possible comparandum is available in AP 12.230 (Callimachus), addressed to a ‘Theocritus’ in overtly homoerotic terms. The case for identifying that eromenos as the poet is flimsy; but the possibility, canvassed long ago, that Callimachus used the names of literary figures for fictitious eromenoi would seem to be well worth revisiting. 64 Much might depend on the circumstances of first performance in each case, if, as seems very likely, figures ‘named’ in this oblique fashion might have participated in recitations as members of elite audiences on royal or private occasions.65 As things stand, however, we know too little about the Gadaran’s career to assess the likelihood of a sojourn at Alexandria, or to speculate further about performance conditions and immediate audience-reactions to the Μένιππε address (1). Perhaps the best place to start in bringing the (actual) erotic and (nowdiscounted) Cynic scenarios together is with the intrusive πλούτου (1, ‘wealth’), and the parallel it sets up with the moralising, but impoverished, poet-erastes of Iamb 3 (above, § 3). With the benefit of last-line hindsight, the epigrammatic speaker emerges as similar in character to the iambic persona loquens; and Menippus, now revealed to be a mercenary eromenos, is assimilated in part to his Cynic namesake. In the final line (4), ναὶ, φίλε, τῶν παρὰ σεῦ τοῦτ’ ἀνεραστότατον implies a consistent record of conduct and utterances hostile to eros, now capped

63. I am grateful to Kathryn Gutzwiller for focusing my attention on this approach. 64. On AP 12.230, see Gow & Page (1965: Vol. II.161). On friends’ names and eromenoi, see Gow & Page (1965: Vol. II.156) on ‘Lysanies’. 65. See esp. Cairns (2016: 5-6) on social events as contexts for recitation to elite audiences. AP 12.230, in which Callimachus appeals to Zeus for assistance in his love for ‘Theocritus’ would work well as a reference to Ptolemaic patronage (cf. Theocr. Id. 7.93, with Gow’s commentary), if performed before Philadelphus and with Theocritus as a member of the audience.

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by the offending attack on Callimachus.66 The implication is that in his conduct towards Callimachus, the eromenos has revealed himself to be an opponent of eros/Eros, a ‘non-lover’.67 Herein lies a key to the analogy between eromenos and Cynic, recalling as it does the Cynics’ advertised rejection of pederasty and other forms of eros.68 It should be stressed that the ‘Menippean’ approach offered here is not intended to displace the erotic readings summarised earlier (§ 1).69 Rather, it may enrich all three. It adds to the contemporary socio-economic interest of the epigram, and illuminates an emerging, wider-Greek, reaction to the socio-sexual relationships traditionally fostered in the homoerotic milieu of the polis.70 The Cynic flavouring of the reproach and its rejection, and the suggested assimilation of the beloved Menippus to greedy Cynic preacher, add a new dimension to the interplay of mentor and mentored, and to observed parallels with the moralising speaker/ erastes and the mercenary Euthydemus in Iamb 3. Finally, Cynic attitudes to eros will be seen (below, § 7) to deepen the pathos of Callimachus’ emotional dependence on his beloved.

7. AP 12.148 and the ‘Menippean Charites’ The wider interest of the epigram, as stated at the outset, lies in what it might have to tell us about Menippean satire and its contemporary reception. The revelation that Callimachus’ exchange is not, after all, with the Gadaran does not detract from its potential value in this respect, for in setting up the appearance of such a scenario, he might be supposed to 66. Implicit tension between ἀνεραστότατον and ἔρως might well reflect Menippean phrasing: cf. esp. Lucian DMort. 8.1 (‘Menippus’ to Cheiron, a ‘god’ who has chosen to die) τίς δαί σε ἔρως τοῦ θανάτου ἔσχεν, ἀνεράστου τοῖς πολλοῖς χρήματος; 67. Cf., perhaps, AP 12.146.4 (Rhianus’ prayer to Eros for harsh treatment of his rivals). 68. Diogenes V B 196-219 Giann. Crates SH 363 (V H 79 Giann.) ἔρωτα παύει λιμός, cited by Jul. Or. 6.198d and D.L. 6.86 (and cf. esp. AP 12.150.5-6 (Callimachus) λιμός ….ἐκκόπτει τὰν φιλόπαιδα νόσον); SH 352 ψυχή (?)... / οὔθ’ ὑπὸ χρυσείων δουλουμένη οὔθ’ ὑπ’ Ἐρώτων / τηξιπόθων ... Bion frr. 57-61B Kindstrand; Kindstrand (1976: 273-274). A related point underlies AP 6.293 (Leonidas), a satire on the Cynic Sochares’ seduction by a beautiful boy; cf. also AP 12.101 (Meleager) where a previously immune philosopher, probably a Cynic (thus Cairns (2016: 72, 137-138)), succumbs to Eros. For homoeroticism as a subject of earlier moralising discussion, see Cairns (1979: 22 with nn. 98 and 99). 69. The treatments referred to in what follows are by Gutzwiller (1998: 216), AcostaHughes (2002: 249-250), and Cairns (2016: 379-380). 70. Fraser (1972: Vol. II.790-792). Cairns (1979: 22) observes “Some Hellenistic poets … seem almost to have been propagandising on behalf of pederasty.”

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reflect recognisable features of Menippean style and content. Some preliminary observations are thus in order, making due allowance for the possibility of deliberate misrepresentation on Callimachus’ part.71 Parody may be suspected in ἀλγέω τὴν διὰ παντὸς ἔπος τόδε πικρὸν ἀκούων (3), where ἀλγέω (‘I am anguished’) with participle recalls tragic diction, yet is oddly incongruous in the rare uncontracted form and with prosaic διὰ παντὸς (‘through and through’).72 The repeated demonstratives (τόδε, τοῦτ’), suggestive of mounting emotion, are paralleled in diatribe.73 Again, the culminating ἀνεραστότατον substitutes for ἀνιηρότατον (‘most grievous’) in the same pentameter sedes in early Greek elegy, and thereby mimics the parodic practices of Cynic authors.74 The very high proportion of dactyls stretches even Callimachus’ known preference for βραχυσυλλαβίη (‘short syllables’) and suggests that some metrical point is being registered;75 but if so, the point is lost on us. Our highly concentrated quatrain might however reflect on the garrulousness associated with Cynic diatribe;76 if so, we might compare Horace’s critique of length in Lucilius, the diatribists’ Roman successor.77 The reference to Cynic πικρία (‘bitterness’) touches on a topic of literary theory, the appropriate use of liberal humour, in particular the judicious combination of harshness and playfulness, and of the serious with the provocation of laughter.78 Callimachus prays the Graces in aid of relief from the pain caused by the ἔπος πικρόν (‘bitter utterance’), implicitly 71. For such ‘misrepresentation’ in Augustan poetry, see Cairns (2006: 489, Index III s.v. deformazione). 72. E. Hec. 1283 ἀλγεῖς ἀκούων; cf. S. OC 420. Giangrande (1968: 136 n. 3) cites A. Pers. 844, S. Ph. 86 (ἀλγῶ [contracted] κλύων). For Callimachus, cf. SH 257.30 … ἀλγήσαι πᾶς κεν ἰδὼ[ν . I agree with Giangrande that ἀλγέω τὴν διὰ παντός involves (colloquial) ellipse of ἄλγησιν, a refined tragic term for physical or mental ‘pain’, already subject to Aristophanic parody. S. Ph. 791-792 (Philoctetes to Neoptolemos, of physical pain) εἴθε σοῦ διαμπερὲς / στέρνων ἔχοιτ’ ἄλγησις ἥδε. Ar. Th. 146-147 (Agathon to Inlaw, of mental pain) τοῦ φθόνου μὲν τὸν ψόγον / ἤκουσα, τὴν δ’ ἄλγησιν οὐ παρεσχόμην. The word does not appear in medical writers, other than Ps-Galen (x3). 73. Cf. e.g. Teles p. 50.11-13 Hense. (Ps.-)Crates V H 96.6-7 Giann. The stylistic feature is especially prominent in Horace’s critique of Lucilius: S. 1.4.6, 85, 100, 134-135; 1.10.17. 74. First observed by McKay (1970: 40-41); accepted by D’Alessio ad loc. 75. See Cairns (2016: 224-233), on AP 9.566.6. 76. For the polemical appropriation of signature stylistic features, symbols and terminology in Hellenistic epigram, see now Cairns (2016: 125-186, esp. 127, 140-141, 147159). 77. S. 1.10.9. See Gowers (2012: 10-11, 65-66, 155-157, 313-315) on Hor. S. 1.1.1314, 1.4.6-13, 1.10.7-15. 78. Fraenkel (1957: 128-129); Freudenburg (1993: 52-108, esp. 55-61 on the Aristotelian tradition; 1993: 92-96 on Aristotelian theory in Hor. S. 1.4); Gowers (2012: 314-315) on Hor. S. 1.10.11-15.

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overturning the Cynic claim (above, § 2) to temper πικρία with persuasive protreptic ‘charm’ (χάρις).79 His strictures, if that is what they are, foreshadow a later, overtly hostile, view of Menippus as a dangerous dog who ‘bit as he laughed’ (γελῶν ἅμα ἔδακνεν).80 Thus, the possibility cannot be discounted that the epigram attacks the satirist’s παρρησία (‘frankness’) in his treatment of living contemporaries (perhaps, a forerunner of Horace’s treatment of Lucilian libertas). Yet ἀκούων (3, ‘hearing’; a participial hapax in the poet) sounds like a pun on ‘hearing’ the Cynic ‘dog’ (κύων) barking, a witty line-end to this ostensible expression of dismay.81 Again, it is true that Menippus acquired a reputation for begging and φιλαργυρία (‘love of money’) the vice that Bion himself (fr. 35 b Kindstrand) dubbed ‘the metropolis of all evil’.82 The point might well have a bearing on the unflattering interplay with ‘Menippus’ as mercenary eromenos; but we do not know whether the biographical record represents an aspect of his literary persona inferred from his own work, and thus fair game for epigrammatic mockery.83 Callimachus’ persona as erastes must also be taken into account in assessing the tone of this epigram and its literary-critical direction. He “does not have the resources to retain the compliance of his beloved”; and he “suffers the added agony of knowing that Menippus is a cheap money-grubber while being unable to stop loving him” (Cairns).84 As hyperbole mounts in the second couplet, and the pathos of failure deepens, the poet reveals an emotional dependence which is a world away from Cynic self-sufficiency in matters of eros, and which appears to undercut any claim he might have to non-material ‘wealth’. Callimachus’ self-irony would be difficult to reconcile with a serious expression of 79. Πικρία and χάρις: Julian Or. 6, 201b-c (Crates); 7.207d (rejecting the true Cynic’s need for myths in speaking frankly) πότερον ἵνα τὸ πικρὸν καὶ δάκνον τῆς συμβουλῆς ἡδονῇ καὶ χάριτι κεράσας … ὀνήσῃ ...; Lucian Icar. 31. 80. Lucian BisAcc. 33 (Dialogue, speaking for the ‘prosecution’). For ‘biting’, cf. Pers. 1.114-115, with Bramble (1974: 152 n. 4). 81. Barking Menippus: Lucian Bis Acc. 33 … Μένιππόν τινα τῶν παλαιῶν κυνῶν μάλα ὑλακτικὸν ὡς δοκεῖ ... (above, nn. 79, 80). Pun: for Greek parallels, admittedly thin, cf. D.L. 2.140 κύων καὶ λῆρος ὑπὸ τῶν Ἐρετριέων ἀκούων; Diogenes V B 147 Giann. (Gnom. Vat. 743 n. 175) of Diogenes: ἀριστῶν ἐν ἀγορᾷ ἀκούων παρὰ τῶν παρεστώτων κύων εἶπε ...; cf. 532.4. Lucian Peregr. 3 ἐπήκουον ... Κυνικοῦ τινος μεγάλῃ καὶ τραχείᾳ τῇ φωνῇ ... ἐπιβοωμένου ...; cf. 5. For Cynic ‘dog’ puns, cf. AP 7.67.2 πορθμίδι κυανέῃ and 4 κύνα (Leonidas on Diogenesͅ/Charon); also Hor. S. 1.3.107 cunnus, with Gowers ad loc. 82. D.L. 6.99 ἀτηρότερον δ’ αἰτῶν ὑπὸ φιλαργυρίας ἴσχυσε Θηβαῖος γενέσθαι. 83. Philodemus (of Gadara) puts a self-deprecatory (and humorous) charge of usury (τοκογλύφος) into the mouth of his own wife/partner (AP 9.570.7; Cairns (2016: 14)). One wonders if he had Menippus in view; cf. Sider (1997: 4). 84. Cairns (2016: 380).

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antipathy towards the work of Menippus of Gadara.85 Indeed, we may not go far astray in seeing AP 12.148 as the forerunner of a phenomenon observed by Relihan in Menippus’ later followers:86 “loyalty to the example creates not pious adulation but criticism and ironic distance, a willingness to mock Menippus’ pretensions as a mocker.” In the absence of any representative sample of Menippus’ prosimetric work, further speculation as to reflections and connections in Callimachus’ short poem is unlikely to be very useful. The principal gain from the reading of AP 12.148 advanced here lies in any case in the bare fact that it opens a contemporary perspective, from the leading literary critic of his day, on an author who is otherwise lost to view for some one hundred and fifty years. That said, if the association between the Charites-invocation and the Menippean ‘Charites’ is sound, there may be grounds for optimism as to the recovery of further such references in Hellenistic poetry.87 As and when they materialise, we may be better placed than at present to assess Menippus’ visibility in his own lifetime, hence also the foundations of his legacy to successor satirists in the Greek world and at Rome.88 REFERENCES Acosta-Hughes, B. 2002, Polyeideia: the Iambi of Callimachus and the archaic iambic tradition. Berkeley-Los Angeles-London. Acosta-Hughes, B. & S. Stephens, 2001, “Aetia fr. 1.5: I told my story like a child”, ZPE 136, 214-216. Ademollo, F., 2011, The Cratylus of Plato. Cambridge. Bing, P. & J.S. Bruss (eds), Brill’s companion to Hellenistic epigram down to Philip. Leiden-Boston, 2007. Booth, J., 2006, “Amazing grace: reading between the lines in Propertius 1.13.29-32”, CQ 56, 528-537. Bosman, P., 2012, “Lucian among the Cynics: the Zeus Refuted and Cynic tradition”, CQ 62, 785-795. Bramble, J., 1974, Persius and the programmatic satire: a study in form and imagery. Cambridge. Branham, R.B., 1996, “Defacing the currency: Diogenes’ rhetoric and the invention of Cynicism”, in Branham & Goulet-Cazé (eds), 81-104.

85. Self-irony: cf. Acosta-Hughes (2002: 247-248). 86. Relihan (1996: 275). 87. See above, n. 51. 88. My thanks to Ewen Bowie and Fred Williams for comment on an early draft of this essay, and to Kathryn Gutzwiller for her help in re-shaping the main argument. The conclusions are offered on my own responsibility.

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Branham, R.B. & M.-O. Goulet-Cazé (eds), 1996, The Cynics: the Cynic movement in antiquity and its legacy. Berkeley-Los Angeles-London. Cairns, F., 1979, Tibullus. A Hellenistic poet at Rome. Cambridge. ―, 2006, Sextus Propertius: the Augustan elegist. Cambridge. ―, 2016, Hellenistic epigram: contexts of exploration. Cambridge. Cameron, A., 1993, The Greek Anthology from Meleager to Planudes. Oxford. Clayman, D.L., 1980, Callimachus’ Iambi (Mnemosyne Supplementum 59). Leiden. ―, 2007, “Philosophers and philosophy in Greek epigram”, in Bing & Bruss (eds) 497-517. Desmond, W.D., 2006, The Greek praise of poverty: origins of ancient Cynicism. Notre Dame. ―, 2008, Cynics. Stocksfield. Fraenkel, E., 1957, Horace. Oxford. Fraser, P., 1972, Ptolemaic Alexandria. Oxford. Freudenburg, K, 1993, The walking Muse: Horace on the theory of satire. Princeton. Giangrande, G., 1968, “Sympotic literature and epigram”, in L’Epigramme Greque (Fondation Hardt Entretiens 14). Geneva, 91-177. Giannantoni, G., 1990, Socratis et Socraticorum reliquiae Vol. II. Naples. Gigante, M. & G. Indelli, 1978, “Bione e l’epicureismo”, CErc 8, 124-131. Gow, A.S.F. & D.L. Page, 1965, The Greek Anthology: Hellenistic epigrams. Cambridge. Gowers, E., 2012, Horace. Satires book 1. Cambridge. Gutzwiller, K.J, 1998, Poetic garlands: Hellenistic epigrams in context. BerkeleyLos Angeles-London. ―, 1998a, “Meleager: From Menippean to epigrammatist”, in M.A. Harder et al. (eds) Genre in Hellenistic poetry (Hellenistica Groningana 3). Groningen, 81-91. ―, 2007, “The paradox of amatory epigram”, in Bing & Bruss (eds), 313-332. Hall, J., 1981, Lucian’s satire. New York, NY. Harder, M.A., et al. (eds), 2006, Beyond the canon (Hellenistica Groningana 11). Leuven-Paris-Dudley, MA. Helm, R., 1906, Lucian und Menipp. Berlin. Höistad, R., 1948, Cynic hero and Cynic king: studies in the Cynic conception of man. Uppsala. Isaac, B., 2011, “Attitudes towards provincial intellectuals in the Roman Empire”, in E.S. Gruen (ed), Cultural identity in the ancient Mediterranean. Los Angeles, 491-518. Kindstrand, J.F., 1976, Bion of Borysthenes (Studia Graeca Upsaliensia 11). Stockholm. ―, 1985, “A supposed testimony to Bion of Borysthenes”, CQ 35, 527-529. Kurke, L., 1991, The traffic in praise: Pindar and the poetics of social economy. Cornell. Lloyd-Jones, H. & P.J. Parsons, 1983, Supplementum Hellenisticum. Berlin-New York. Long, A.A., 1978, “Timon of Phlius: Pyrrhonist and satirist”, PCPhS 24, 68-91. ―, 1996, “The Socratic tradition: Diogenes, Crates, and Hellenistic ethics”, in Branham & Goulet-Cazé (eds) 28-46.

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McCarthy, B.P., 1934, “Lucian and Menippus”, YClS 4, 3-55. McKay, K.J., 1970, “Callimachea”, SO 45, 38-48. MacLachlan, B., 1993, The age of grace: charis in early Greek poetry, Princeton, NJ. Moles, J., 1983, ““Honestius quam ambitiosius”? An exploration of the Cynic’s attitude to moral corruption in his fellow men”, JHS 103, 103-123. ―, 1985, “Cynicism in Horace Epistles I”, PLLS 5, 23-60. Noussia, M., 2006, “Fragments of Cynic ‘Tragedy’”, in Harder et al. (eds), 229248. Oltramare, A., 1926, Les origines de la diatribe romaine. Lausanne. Petrovic, I. and A. Petrovic, 2003, “Stop and smell the statues: Callimachus’ Epigram 51 Pf. reconsidered (four times)”, MD 51, 179-208. Powell, J.U., 1925, Collectanea Alexandrina. Oxford. Relihan, J.C., 1989, “Menippus the Cynic in the Greek Anthology”, SyllClass 1, 55-61. ―, 1993, Ancient Menippean satire. Baltimore, Md. ―, 1996, “Menippus in antiquity and the Renaissance”, in Branham & GouletCazé (eds), 265-293. Schaps, D.M., 2003, “Socrates and the Socratics: when wealth became a problem”, CW 96, 131-157. Schmidt, E.A., 1976, “Interpretationen Kallimacheischer Epigramme”, Hermes 104, 146-155. Sider, D., 1997, The epigrams of Philodemos: introduction, text, and commentary. New York-Oxford. Steiner, D., 1986, The crown of song: metaphor in Pindar. London. Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, U. von, 1879, “Parerga”, Hermes 14, 161-186. Williams, F., 1996, “In and out of the rut: Callimachus fr.1.25-28 and Anniceris of Cyrene”, ZPE 110, 40-42. ―, 2006, “Cercidas, the man and the poet”, in Harder et al. (eds.), 346-356.

READING AND CITING THE EPIGRAMS OF CALLIMACHUS Richard HUNTER

1. Introduction Our picture of the Greek reception of Callimachus’ poetry in the three or four centuries which followed him is desperately thin. This is not (principally) because far more scholarly energy has been devoted to the Roman reception of the poems; rather, it is because far too little of the Greek literature where we might expect to look for that reception has survived. A certain amount can be (and has been) done with imitations of Callimachus in what survives of later Hellenistic poetry, notably in Euphorion and in Greek epigram (from both before and after Augustus), but Callimachus is to us (and was in antiquity) such an important figure that we need to know far more than we do about his reception in literary culture beyond poetic mimesis. We know rather more, if still very little, about the position in later antiquity and Byzantium.1 The excellent survey ‘Callimachus cited’ by Filippomaria Pontani (2011) offers the chance (not yet, I think, really taken up) to consider what more the indirect tradition might be able to tell us about how Callimachus’ poetry was read and used in the high Hellenistic and early imperial period, although one lesson which emerges from Pontani’s survey is (again) how very scarce are the traces of Callimachus’ poetry, particularly if we discount the grammatical tradition (but on this see below). In this paper I want to follow up a few leads offered by the indirect tradition of (in particular) the Epigrams to see if any more colour can be added to our almost disappearingly faint picture. The Epigrams offer both a particular challenge and an opportunity, as we know that the poems which we have (or indeed that we know about) are only a selection of what was known in antiquity; speculation about how high (or low) a percentage has survived is just that, speculation, though not necessarily idle.2 It can still come as something of a shock to recall that one of the epigrams which seems to have been most important in Callimachus’ Roman poetic reception and/or reputation, the poem on 1. For some soundings here cf. Hunter (2011a). 2. Cf. Parsons (2002: 100-1, 137-8).

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Antimachus’ Lyde (the subject of an important discussion by Nita Krevans in the very first Hellenistica Groningana volume), did not survive the cuts which eventually resulted in our Anthology and that we only have part of (almost certainly) the first verse (fr. 398 Pf.), thanks to the scholarly tradition on Dionysius Periegetes. We also know a little (far too little, of course) about the reception and imitation of the Epigrams before the high period of Roman and Greek imperial poetry.3

2. Callimachus and the grammatical tradition More attention is now paid to the extent to which the Alexandrian grammatical and interpretative tradition, here represented not by chance papyrus finds (such as the famous ‘Oyster’, SH 983-4) but by the information largely offered by the extant Homeric scholia, concerned itself with Hellenistic poetry, whether for the purposes of settling issues in the text of Homer or ‘for its own sake’, though the dichotomy is very far from a neat one.4 Unsurprisingly perhaps, Callimachus seems to have been the Hellenistic poet most exploited by the grammatical tradition,5 but whether it was qua poet that he most appealed must remain a moot point. An interesting case is offered by the citation of two epigrams in Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Grammaticos; both epigrams have multiple citations in the indirect tradition but only one of them made it to the Anthology. Sextus is discussing the etymology of the term γραμματική, which, so he explains, is standardly derived from γράμμα in the sense of ‘letter of the alphabet’ (στοιχεῖον). There is, however, an alternative etymology: τάχα δέ, ὥς φασιν οἱ περὶ τὸν Ἀσκληπιάδην, καὶ αὐτὴ ἀπὸ μὲν γραμμάτων ὠνόμασται, οὐκ ἀπὸ τούτων δὲ ἀφ’ ὧν καὶ ἡ γραμματιστική, ἀλλ’ ἐκείνη μέν, ὡς ἔφην, ἀπὸ τῶν στοιχείων, αὕτη δὲ ἀπὸ τῶν συγγραμμάτων περὶ οἷς πονεῖται. γράμματα γὰρ καὶ ταῦτα προσηγορεύετο, καθὰ καὶ δημόσια καλοῦμεν γράμματα, καὶ πολλῶν τινὰ γραμμάτων ἔμπειρον ὑπάρχειν φαμέν, τουτέστιν οὐ τῶν στοιχείων ἀλλὰ τῶν συγγραμμάτων. καὶ Καλλίμαχος δέ, ποτὲ μὲν τὸ ποίημα καλῶν γράμμα ποτὲ δὲ τὸ καταλογάδην σύγγραμμα, φησί (Epigr. 6 Pf. = HE 1293-6)· 3. Cf. Parsons (2002: 102-3). Parsons’ claim, however, that ‘within a generation, Epigr. 19 inspired an inflated imitation at Kios [i.e. SGO 09/01/03 = GVI 661] …’ is very far from secure, both chronologically and poetically; it seems to me far from certain that the inscribed epitaph (in iambic trimeters) imitates Callimachus. So too, the alleged echo of Epigr. 16 in (?) Agatharcides seems anything but certain. 4. Cf., e.g., Montanari (1995; 2002); Rengakos (2000). 5. The survey by Pfeiffer (1949: II xxix-xxxiii) remains the fundamental starting-point; the earliest attestations seem to be in the work of Aristophanes of Byantium (frr. 224, 543 Pf.).

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Κρεωφύλου6 πόνος εἰμί, δόμῳ ποτὲ θεῖον ἀοιδόν δεξαμένου, κλείω δ’ Εὔρυτον ὅσσ’ ἔπαθεν καὶ ξανθὴν Ἰόλειαν, Ὁμήρειον δὲ καλεῦμαι γράμμα· Κρεωφύλῳ, Ζεῦ φίλε, τοῦτο μέγα. καὶ πάλιν (Epigr. 23 Pf. = HE 1273-6) εἴπας ‘Ἥλιε χαῖρε’ Κλεόμβροτος Ἀμπρακιώτης7 ἥλατ’ ἀφ’ ὑψηλοῦ τείχεος εἰς Ἀίδην, ἄξιον οὐδὲν ἰδὼν θανάτου τέλος,8 ἀλλὰ Πλάτωνος ἓν τὸ περὶ ψυχῆς γράμμ’ ἀναλεξάμενος. Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Grammaticos 1.47-8 Perhaps, as the school of Asclepiades says, this art too was named from letters, but not those letters from which grammatistike was named; that art, as I said, was named from the elements, whereas the former [i.e. grammatike] was named from the compositions with which it is concerned. For these also were called letters, just as we refer to public letters and say that someone is skilled in many letters, meaning not the elements but compositions. Callimachus also on one occasion calls a poem a letter and on another a prose composition: I am the labour of Kreophylos who once received the divine bard into his home; I sing of all that Eurytos suffered and of blonde-haired Iole. I am called a composition of Homer: for Kreophylos, dear Zeus, that is really something. And in another poem: After saying ‘Sun farewell’, Cleombrotus of Ambracia jumped from a high wall into Hades. He had not seen any event worth dying for, but had read one work of Plato, the On the Soul.

It is standardly assumed that οἱ περὶ τὸν Ἀσκληπιάδην refers to Asclepiades of Myrlea (second half of 2nd cent. – 1st half of first BC),9 presumably from the work περὶ γραμματικῆς to which Sextus elsewhere makes explicit reference.10 We cannot of course be certain that the citation of the two epigrams also goes back to Asclepiades, but the circumstantial case is in fact a strong one. In the first place, it seems quite likely, as Rudolf Pfeiffer and others have argued,11 that a good part of our information, largely to be found in Sextus and the scholia to Dionysius Thrax, about the history of the term γραμματική does in fact derive from Asclepiades, who seems to have 6. The alternative reading, τοῦ Σαμίου, is almost universally accepted by editors into Callimachus’ text. 7. Editors generally accept ὡμβρακιώτης as the true reading. 8. The correct reading is θανάτου κακόν. 9. On the (disputed) chronology cf., e.g., Pagani (2007: 12-13). 10. Cf. Blank (1998: 118), Pagani (2007: 31-4). 11. Cf. Pfeiffer (1968: 158, 162).

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written not just ‘On grammar’ but also ‘On the grammarians’, which was presumably biographical in orientation (cf. further below). The definition of grammar which Sextus ascribes to Asclepiades stands in a clear relation to other important stages in that history: Eratosthenes defined γραμματική as a ἕξις παντελὴς ἐν γράμμασι, using, as the ancient sources explain, γράμματα in the same sense in which Callimachus does,12 and the τέχνη of Dionysius Thrax, a work which (in some form) Asclepiades may well have known, begins: γραμματική ἐστιν ἐμπειρία τῶν παρὰ ποιηταῖς τε καὶ συγγραφεῦσιν ὡς ἐπὶ τὸ πολὺ λεγομένων. Dionysius Thrax, Techne 1 Grammar is the empirical knowledge of what is for the most part being said by poets and prose writers (trans. R. Pfeiffer).13

The equal status given to prose-writers alongside poets is shared with the ‘Asclepiadean’ definition; Rudolf Pfeiffer suggested that Dionysius put prose-writers second ‘because they had not been treated by any scholar before [Dionysius’ teacher] Aristarchus’,14 noting that ἐμπειρία τῶν ποιητῶν is still a definition of μεγάλη γραμματική found in the scholia to Dionysius (cf. Cicero, De oratore 1.187).15 There is, of course, a complex history concerning the inclusion of prose-writers within the legitimate area of philological attention (the Platonic Protagoras’ claims (Pl. Prt. 338e78) about being δεινὸς περὶ ἐπῶν are one famous stage before the journey has really begun), but Pfeiffer’s view cannot, I think, be correct, even if Aristarchus was in fact the first Alexandrian scholar to write a commentary on a prose work. παντελής in the definition of Eratosthenes might well be thought implicitly to include prose-works, and if we needed an example of a scholar whose activities embraced both poetry and prose, then we need of course look no further than Callimachus; for what it is worth (admittedly not much), the Suda-life labels Callimachus a γραμματικός and the pupil of a γραμματικός before anything else,16 and, after dealing with his family, notes that he was ἐπιμελέστατος (‘sehr fleissig’ is perhaps the best translation) and that he ‘composed poems in every metre and wrote very many works in prose’. I suspect, in fact, that Asclepiades (and perhaps others before him) had given Callimachus a prominent 12. Gr. Gr. I iii. 160.10-12, cf. Pfeiffer (1968: 162). 13. Cf. Pfeiffer (1968: 268). 14. Pfeiffer (1968: 268). 15. Cf. the definition of μεγάλη γραμματική at Gr. Gr. I iii. 114.27-34 Hilgard and also Gr. Gr. I iii. 164. 3-4 Hilgard, the γραμματικός is πολλῶν ποιημάτων ἐπιστήμων. 16. Cf. below on Hermocrates of Iasos.

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place in the history of γραμματική and/or in a catalogue of the leading γραμματικοί; we know in any case that the term was applied to Alexandrian scholars and poets at a date contemporary with Callimachus.17 The choice of two epigrams of Callimachus to illustrate the use of γράμμα to refer to a work of ‘literature’, whether in poetry or prose, will not have been fortuitous. Strabo, who elsewhere refers to Asclepiades of Myrlea (3.4.3, 12.4.9), included both Callimachus and Eratosthenes in his list of famous Cyreneans, describing the former as ποιητὴς ἅμα καὶ περὶ γραμματικὴν ἐσπουδακώς (17.3.22), and however much the famous epigrams of Philip and Antiphanes (Τ69, 71 Pf.) attacking both Callimachus and the γραμματικοί owe to a later period, they may be added to the cumulative (and, of course, unsurprising) case for believing that Callimachus was afforded a prominent place in the history of γραμματική from a relatively early date. In Cicero’s De oratore, Lucius Crassus names Callimachus and Aristophanes of Byzantium as pre-eminent in the discipline (3.132), just as the Suda seems to reflect a roll-call of the greatest γραμματικοί of each generation — Zenodotus, Callimachus, Aristophanes (T17 Pf.). Dionysius of Halicarnassus names ‘Callimachus and the γραμματικοί from Pergamum’ in such a way as to suggest that they represent his principal forerunners in ‘bio-bibliography’ (Deinarchos 1). If anyone, then, offered a ‘killer quotation’ in an argument about the meaning of γραμματική, that was Callimachus. Asclepiades’ interest in what we call Hellenistic poetry is well attested, though the scope and nature of that work remains inevitably uncertain: Aratus, Theocritus and Apollonius of Rhodes all fell within his scholarly purview,18 and the long extract from his work ‘On the Cup of Nestor’, cited and paraphrased by Athenaeus (11.489a-92a = Asclepiades fr. 4 Pagani), includes citations from (inter al.) Aratus, Simmias and Posidippus. Asclepiades is in fact found once elsewhere in connection with Callimachus, and specifically with the epigrams. This is a passage from the beginning of the ancient Vita of Aratus (Vita I Martin): Ἄρατος ὁ ποιητὴς πατρὸς μὲν ἦν Ἀθηνοδώρου, μητρὸς δὲ Λητοφίλας. ἀδελφοὺς δὲ ἔσχε τρεῖς, Μύριν καὶ Καλιόνδαν καὶ Ἀθηνόδωρον ὁμώνυμον τῷ πατρί. μέμνηται δὲ αὑτοῦ τῶν ἀδελφῶν ἐν ταῖς εἰς αὐτὸν ἀναφερομέναις ἐπιστολαῖς. Ἀσκληπιάδης δὲ ὁ Μυρλεανὸς ἐν τῷ ἑνδεκάτῳ περὶ γραμματικῶν Ταρσέα φησὶν αὐτὸν γεγονέναι, ἀλλ’ οὐ Σολέα, Καλλιμάχου πολυΐστορος ἀνδρὸς καὶ ἀξιοπίστου Σολέα λέγοντος αὐτὸν γεγονέναι διὰ τούτων (Epigr. 27.2-3 Pf. = HE 1298-9)·

17. Philicus, SH 677, cf. Pfeiffer (1968: 157). 18. Cf., e.g., D’Alessio (2000), Pagani (2007: 27-31).

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ἀλλ’ ὀκνέω μὴ τὸ μελιχρότατον τῶν ἐπέων ὁ Σολεὺς ἀπεμάξατο, καὶ τῶν ἄλλων σχεδὸν πάντων. Vita Arati I, p.6.6-13 Martin = 1.2 Di Maria The poet Aratus’ father was Athenodorus and his mother was Letophila. He had three brothers, Muris, Kaliondas and Athenodoros, who had the same name as his father. He mentions his brothers in the letters which are ascribed to him. In Book 11 of the ‘On Grammarians’ Asclepiades of Myrlea says that [Aratus] was a Tarsian, not a citizen of Soloi, although Callimachus, a man of great learning and deserving trust, says in the following verses that he was from Soloi: ‘It may be that the man from Soloi has caught the sweetest of verses’,19 and virtually everyone else agrees with this.

Pontani, noting that Strabo (9.5.17) also calls Callimachus πολυίστωρ (in the context of citing the poet for the cult celebrated in Iambus 10),20 assigned the judgement about Callimachus in the Aratean Life to Asclepiades.21 On the face of it, this seems improbable. Callimachus’ verses, together with the judgement about his creditworthiness, are cited in order to illustrate a view of Aratus’ origin other than that promoted by Asclepiades and one which the author of the Life (? Achilles)22 appears to accept, namely that Aratus came from Soloi in Cilicia; it might therefore seem doubtful whether Asclepiades would have praised Callimachus’ creditworthiness at this point in his discussion of Aratus (presumably in one of his grammatical works).23 It is not, however, out of the question. Asclepiades may have cited and praised Callimachus as an exponent of the standard view, in order to give greater weight to his own (unique) knowledge of the true position; in view of his likely attitude to Callimachus’ evidence with regard to the origin of γραμματική, it may be thought unlikely that he was harshly critical of Callimachus anywhere. There are, of course, the inevitable problems of the text and structure of the Aratean Life, a subject which cannot be pursued in any detail here; in such texts, which are ultimately put together by processes of selection, paraphrase and epitomisation, processes very visible in the fact that all of Epigram 27 Pf. is cited later in the Life to illustrate Aratus’ debt to Hesiod, gaps 19. On the meaning of these very disputed verses cf. Hunter (2014: 292-4). 20. On this citation and its implications cf. Hunter (2011b: 111-12). 21. Pontani (2011: 100 n.28). 22. Cf. Di Maria (1996: vii-xii). 23. For Aratus as γραμματικός cf., e.g., Vita I, p. 8.18-24 Martin. Martin (1998: I xxi) suggests that Asclepiades’ view of Aratus’ hometown is less aberrant than it appears; he notes that Chrysippus too is assigned to both Tarsus and Soloi, because his father originally came from the former.

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in the argument very often do not imply lacunae in the text which has survived, but rather point to that process of selection. In the present case, however, it may be worth suggesting that there is indeed a lacuna, whether of text or argument or both, before the reference to Asclepiades’ view, as it seems odd to introduce Asclepiades’ ‘aberrant’ view, ‘he was from Tarsus, not Soloi’, before a statement of what was to become the standard view; the δέ in Ἀσκληπιάδης δὲ ὁ Μυρλεανός would then be adversative rather than continuative. What does seem very likely, regardless of the history and state of the text of the Life, is that, in his discussion of Aratus (probably in the biographical work ‘On Grammarians’), Asclepiades will have cited Callimachus’ epigram, even if in rather different terms than those found in the Aratean Life. It is clear from the preserved extract of ‘On Nestor’s Cup’ that Asclepiades peppered his writing with poetic quotations, and Callimachus’ epigram was, in any case, a near contemporary witness to Aratus’ place of origin and poetic affiliations. Whoever first described Callimachus as ‘a man of great learning and deserving trust’ cited him as an authority, as someone (not improbably Asclepiades) had done on the meaning of γράμμα, and as Strabo was soon enough to do. Callimachus was, as Strabo puts it, ‘both a poet and a very serious γραμματικός’ (17.3.22, cf. above), and it was the second half of that pairing which gave citations from his poetry particular force and particular authority. Callimachus was a doctus poeta, long before the idea was current, and that idea did not merely derive from the character of his poetry or from the declaration of the primacy of τέχνη in the ‘Reply to the Telchines’. Critical and rhetorical arguments about the relative roles of φύσις and τέχνη, of ars and natura,24 normally apply to the relative contributions which each make to a particular literary form or one example of it, but the two parts of Callimachus’ activity which Strabo identifies were formative in the reception of his work long before the programmatic utterances of the Roman ‘Callimacheans’. Modern students of Callimachus are (perhaps understandably) a bit vague about what the poet means by τέχνη in v. 17 of the ‘Reply to the Telchines’: to what qualities of poetry is he there referring, except that, whatever they are, his own poetry is the prime exhibit? There is, of course, a very long backstory here, in which Socrates’ denial of τέχνη to the rhapsode Ion plays an important role,25 but if Housman’s κρίνετε at the head of v. 18 is correct (and it is very hard indeed — at least for me — to think of a plausible 24. Cf. Brink (1971: 394-5) for a helpful survey. Ovid, Am. 1.15.13-14 applies the dichotomy to Callimachus himself (qua poet). 25. Cf. Hunter (1989).

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alternative), then we are firmly in the world of κριτικοί and the τέχνη γραμματική, whether or not that phrase was in current use.26 Commentators on the ‘Reply’ naturally (and rightly) turn to Pindar and Aristophanes’ Frogs at this point,27 but the combination of τέχνη and κρίνειν points in a decidedly more contemporary direction. Callimachus here all but invites ‘commentary’ on his own poetry. There is a further aspect of Asclepiades’ citation of Epigrams 6 and 23 which deserves a moment’s attention. As is well known, Epigram 23, on Cleombrotus’ suicide, has a very rich ancient tradition, largely though not exclusively in philosophical texts,28 and it will almost certainly have been cited in philosophical contexts long before Asclepiades (or someone else) paired it with Epigr. 6 for a completely different reason. Our earliest witness to its ancient tradition is Cicero, who uses the story as an exemplum in Pro Scauro 4 and, in TD 1.84 does so again, explicitly ascribing it to an epigram of Callimachus:29 a malis igitur mors abducit, non a bonis, uerum si quaerimus. et quidem hoc a Cyrenaico Hegesia sic copiose disputatur, ut is a rege Ptolomaeo prohibitus esse dicatur illa in scholis dicere, quod multi is auditis mortem sibi ipsi consciscerent. Callimachi quidem epigramma in Ambraciotam Cleombrotum est, quem ait, cum ei nihil accidisset aduersi, e muro se in mare abiecisse, lecto Platonis libro. eius autem, quem dixi, Hegesiae liber est Ἀποκαρτερῶν, in quo a uita quidem per inediam discedens reuocatur ab amicis, quibus respondens uitae humanae enumerat incommoda. Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 1.83-4 Death therefore removes us from bad things, not good, if it is the truth we pursue. This matter is discussed at such length by the Cyrenaic Hegesias that it is said that King Ptolemy stopped him from lecturing on the subject, because many who heard the lectures then killed themselves. There is an epigram of Callimachus on Cleombrotus of Ambracia who, according to Callimachus, threw himself from the wall into the sea after he had read Plato’s book, though nothing bad happened to him. There is a book by this Hegesias, called Ἀποκαρτερῶν, in which someone who is trying to kill himself by fasting is called back by his friends, and in answer to them he catalogues the miseries of human life. 26. I do not, of course, refer to the euphonist κριτικοί now made famous by the remains of Philodemus, On Poems, but Kathryn Gutzwiller’s attempt to place Callimachus, and Hellenistic poetry more generally, within the principal strands of Hellenistic criticism (including euphonist criticism) is an important and suggestive contribution, Gutzwiller (2010: 342-54). Cf. further Steiner (2015). 27. Cf. also Pfeiffer (1968: 137). 28. Cf. White (1994), Williams (1995). 29. The difference in technique of citation is in keeping with Cicero’s standard practices for formal, public speeches and the philosophical dialogues, cf. Jocelyn (1973). Beyond these references, Cicero’s only citation of Callimachus is at TD 1.93, where the proverbial fr. 491 Pf. appears in Latin translation and is explicitly ascribed to Callimachus.

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Cicero links Callimachus’ epigram to Hegesias, a ‘Cyrenaic’ if not actually, like Callimachus, from Cyrene, in such a way that we might be tempted to think that he found the epigram cited in Hegesias’ book; as, however, the Ptolemy of the anecdote is probably Soter, rather than Philadelphus, chronology seems against the idea that Hegesias might have cited a Callimachean epigram.30 The reverse, i.e., the possibility that Callimachus found the story of Cleombrotus in Hegesias, cannot however be ruled out, though any number of other possible sources can of course be imagined.31 Stephen White raises the possibility of a borrowing from the biographical works of Hermippos of Smyrna, ὁ Καλλιμάχειος, a younger contemporary and presumably ‘pupil’ of our poet, but it seems equally likely that Hermippos in fact cited the epigram and that it passed from there into philosophical literature.32 However that may be, it seems very likely that the epigram on Cleombrotus was cited in biographical/ philosophical texts very near in time to Callimachus’ own lifetime.33 One at least of Asclepiades’ chosen epigrams was thus very well known.

3. Callimachus and the philosophical tradition As the case of Asclepiades of Myrlea and Epigram 27 demonstrates, epigrams were a particularly valuable resource for scholars of all kinds, in part because they very often concerned (or mentioned) important historical and literary figures. The same is true for iambic poetry. One of the most remarkable citations of Callimachus occurs in the chapter (1.7) τίς ὁ θεός;, contained in the Pseudo-Plutarchan ‘Opinions of the Philosophers’ (880d-f), an essay which — ever since the work of Hermann Diels — has been taken to be a principal source for the doxography ascribed to Aëtius, which Diels and those who have followed him trace back to ultimate origins in Theophrastus.34 Two extracts from this chapter, coming very close to each other in the text, are relevant here: ἔνιοι τῶν φιλοσόφων, καθάπερ Διαγόρας ὁ Μήλιος καὶ Θεόδωρος ὁ Κυρηναῖος καὶ Εὐήμερος ὁ Τεγεάτης, καθόλου φασὶ μὴ εἶναι θεούς· τὸν δ’ Εὐήμερον καὶ Καλλίμαχος ὁ Κυρηναῖος αἰνίττεται ἐν τοῖς Ἰάμβοις γράφων (fr. 191.9-11 Pf.)·

30. Cf., e.g., White (1994: 142). 31. Cf. White (1994: 151-2). 32. Hermippos frr. 40-1 Wehrli concern Plato’s life. 33. Cf. Cameron (1995: 223-4); Cairns (2016: 67-8) sees the epigram as a product of Callimachus ‘the court poet’. 34. Cf. Mansfeld-Runia (1997-2000).

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εἰς τὸ πρὸ τείχευς ἱερὸν ἁλέες δεῦτε, οὗ τὸν πάλαι Παγχαῖον ὁ πλάσας Ζᾶνα γέρων ἀλαζὼν ἄδικα βιβλία ψήχει. [Plutarch], Opinions of the Philosophers 880d-e Some philosophers, such as Diagoras of Melos and Theodoros of Cyrene and Euhemeros of Tegea, deny absolutely the existence of gods. Callimachus of Cyrene alludes to Euhemeros in the Iambi: ‘Come all of you to the sanctuary before the wall, where the deceitful old man who fashioned the ancient Zeus Panchaios scribbles his impious books.’ ἀναιρείσθω γάρ, φησίν, ὁ ποιητικὸς λῆρος σὺν Καλλιμάχῳ τῷ λέγοντι (fr. 586 Pf.)· εἰ θεὸν οἶσθα, ἴσθ’ ὅτι καὶ ῥέξαι δαίμονι πᾶν δυνατόν’. οὐδὲ γὰρ ὁ θεὸς δύναται πᾶν ποιεῖν· ἐπεί τοί γε, εἰ θεὸς ἔστι, ποιείτω τὴν χιόνα μέλαιναν τὸ δὲ πῦρ ψυχρὸν τὸν δὲ καθήμενον ὀρθὸν καὶ τὸ ἐναντίον. [Plutarch], Opinions of the Philosophers 880f Away, he says, with the poetic nonsense of such as Callimachus who says: ‘If you acknowledge a god, acknowledge also that a divinity can do anything.’ For god is not able to do everything: if a god does exist, let him turn snow black and fire cold and upright the man who is seated and vice versa.’

V. 11 of Iambus 1 also occurs in an identical context in two other texts (Schol. Clem. Alex. Protrep. 2.24.2, Sext. Emp. Adv. Math. 9.51), and it seems very likely that all three share a common source;35 the earliest extant witness to this tradition of an ‘Atheistenkatalog’, Cicero, De natura deorum 1.117-19 (spoken by the Academic Cotta), does not cite Callimachus in association with Euhemeros, but is nevertheless still of considerable interest in this connection: quid, qui aut fortis aut claros aut potentis uiros tradunt post mortem ad deos peruenisse eosque esse ipsos, quos nos colere, precari uenerarique soleamus, nonne expertes sunt religionum omnium? quae ratio maxime tractata ab Euhemero est, quem noster et interpretatus est et secutus praeter ceteros Ennius; ab Euhemero autem et mortes et sepulturae demonstrantur deorum; utrum igitur hic confirmasse uidetur religionem an penitus totam sustulisse? Cicero, De natura deorum 1.119 Those who claim that men who are brave or famous or powerful join the gods after death and that it is these very ones whom we are accustomed to worship and pray to and venerate — are they not devoid of all religious 35. Diels (1879: 58) took Aetius to be responsible for the citation of vv. 9-11, not just v. 11.

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sense? This argument was principally developed by Euhemerus, whose main translator and imitator was our Ennius. Euhemerus, however, describes the deaths and burials of gods: does he, then, seem to have upheld religion or to have utterly destroyed it?

There may be several reasons for Cicero’s omission (if that is what it is) of a quotation from Callimachus: Cicero never cites Greek verse in the original in his philosophical dialogues, only in Latin translation,36 and perhaps the Callimachean verse (even in Latin translation) was ruder about Euhemerus than Cicero thought appropriate. It is, however, also possible that the evocation of Ennius’ Euhemerus replaces a reference to a Greek poet in Cicero’s source with a Latin work (note noster … praeter ceteros) suitable for the style of the De natura deorum. If there is anything to this speculation, then (paradoxically perhaps) even Cicero’s silence may be suggestive of Callimachus’ presence in the tradition. At the very least, the absence of Callimachus from Cicero’s discussion of atheists is no argument against a relatively early date for his inclusion in such discussions. The ultimate source of this chapter of Pseudo-Plutarch and of the other related ‘catalogues’ cannot be established with any certainty, and it is in any case very unlikely that only one ‘common source’ is involved, but a not implausible case can be made out for the importance of the work of Clitomachus, an Academic philosopher of the late second century BC; some of our extant texts may derive from him directly, and some will (also) have used intermediary sources.37 It is, for example, clear that, in the relevant chapter of Pseudo-Plutarch, there is an Epicurean text (and epitome) lying between ‘Aëtius’ and the ‘common source’, perhaps Clitomachus. If indeed Clitomachus is the key figure here, then it is at least to be noted that his teacher and promoter, Carneades, came from Cyrene, and it may thus have been he who introduced Clitomachus to Callimachus’ poetry, which he could of course have done in conversation (Carneades was believed to have written nothing down, Diog. Laert. 4.65).38 The citation of Callimachus certainly stands out markedly in the Pseudo-Plutarchan essay; the other poets cited in our extant text are Aratus (twice), Euripides (five times), Hesiod (once),39 and Homer (four times). As for the citation of fr. 586 Pf., this need not of course go back ultimately to the same source as the quotation of Iambus 1, but I cannot suppress the admission that, if asked ‘blind’ to identify the poet of this 36. 37. 38. 39.

Cf. Jocelyn (1973, esp. 73). Cf. Diels (1879: 58-9), Winiarczyk (1976), Whitmarsh (2016: 165, 213). For Carneades’ ‘atheism’ cf. Sedley (2013: 147-50). On this citation cf. Hunter forthcoming.

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verse and a bit, Callimachus would have been very low on my list of guesses, despite the elegiac metre. Nothing in the pentameter seems to suggest Callimachean refinement of diction, word order or wit. Such speculation is of course not to be pushed very far: we lack any context, we do not know who is speaking or to whom, and Callimachus certainly has more than one style in elegiacs. I have (inevitably) toyed with the notion that Καλλιμάχωι is an error for another name, the error arising from the preceding quotation of the Cyrenean poet. The doxographical and biographical turn of Hellenistic philosophy means that collections of epigrams focusing on individuals might well have been fertile ground for historians of the subject. Let me illustrate this from the fragments of one of Callimachus’ epigrams which did not make the cuts through to the Anthology. Two citations about Diodorus Cronus, the logician who was an older contemporary of Callimachus, are preserved, one by Diogenes Laertius and the Vatican scholia to Dionysius Thrax and one by Sextus Empiricus: αὐτὸς ὁ Μῶμος ἔγραφεν ἐν τοίχοις ‘ὁ Κρόνος ἐστὶ σοφός’. ἠνίδε κοἰ40 κόρακες τεγέων ἔπι ‘κοῖα συνῆπται’ κρώζουσιν καὶ ‘κῶς αὖθι γενησόμεθα;’. Callimachus fr. 393 Pf. = HE 1333-6 Momos himself used to write on the walls ‘Kronos is wise’. Look! The ravens on the roofs croak ‘of what kind are the joinings?’ and ‘How shall we be in the future?’

There is virtually universal critical agreement that these two citations come from the same epigram, but considerable disagreement about the order in which they are to be read and whether or not they are consecutive. Here again, I think, there are good grounds for guessing that this hypothesized epigram was taken into a doxographical work at a relatively early date (perhaps second century BC) and is thus another example of an early use to which Callimachus’ poetry was put. Be that as it may, it is of some interest to see Callimachus in an epigram using (even semiseriously) serious logical puzzles, even if we remain very unclear as to the interpretation and point of the second of the ravens’ questions.41 40. κοἰ Wilamowitz: κου codd. Gow-Page prefer Fabricius’ καί. 41. Cf., e.g., Sedley (1977: 108 n.35), White (1986), Blank (1998: 342-5), Kurzová (2009). Cairns (2016: 66) endorses (without argument) Gow-Page’s observation (HE II 216) that ‘we need not suppose that C[allimachus] fully understood what he merely ridicules as a catch-phrase’, but, leaving aside the question of ‘ridicule’, I see no reason to suppose (and good reason for the opposite view) that Callimachus did not know what he was doing.

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Diodorus’ teacher Apollonios Kronos came, as did Callimachus, from Cyrene, and Strabo (17.3.32) includes them both in his list of notable Cyreneans; moreover, Diodorus himself came from Iasos, the hometown, for what it is worth, of Hermocrates ὁ γραμματικός whom the Suda states was Callimachus’ teacher. There is, then, at least a circumstantial case for thinking that Callimachus may have had personal, as well as intellectual, reasons for his interest in Diodorus. Be that as it may, one anecdote about Diodorus which gained notoriety at least later and which Diogenes Laertius puts alongside his quotation from Callimachus’ epigram, and which was even used to explain how he came to inherit his teacher’s nickname,42 concerned his embarrassment at a symposium of Ptolemy I: When he was at the court of (διατρίβων παρά ...) Ptolemy Soter,43 he was questioned on certain dialectical arguments by Stilpo. As he was not able to solve them on the spot, he was criticised by the king and in particular was given the mocking name Kronos; he left the symposium, wrote a logos on the problem, and ended his life in despondency. Diogenes Laertius 2.111-12

A version of the anecdote occurs already at Pliny, HN 7.180 (= Diodorus fr. 100 Döring), where Diodorus is one of only three Greeks, alongside very many Romans, in a catalogue of those who died a sudden and quick death. How far back the epigram goes we can hardly say, but David Sedley at least is prepared to accept the chronology that such an anecdote implies, even if the detail of what happened at the symposium may have been embroidered and fictionalised.44 If the anecdote seems in part to breathe some of the spirit of Machon’s Χρεῖαι or any number of pages of the reminiscences preserved in Athenaeus’ Deipnosophistai, rather than that of Timon’s Silloi,45 the setting at a symposium, where so many epigrams are set, is at least suggestive for the context of Callimachus’ epigram. The survival of nearly four verses of an epigram inevitably invites speculation about the original poem, and I am certainly not going to refuse. The verses are usually thought to be mocking, i.e. this is a Spottepigramm,46 but the point of the reference to Momos might rather be that even Momos, who normally did not have an undiluted good word 42. Sedley (1977: 78 n.27) enjoins caution about simply accepting this explanation. 43. For such language in connection with presence at Hellenistic courts cf. Herman (1980/1: 105-6). 44. Cf. Sedley (1977: 80, 109 n.37). 45. Diodorus appears in Timon, SH 805, 806. 46. Cf. Wilamowitz (1906: 172 n.1), Clayman (2007: 504-5), Cairns (2016: 66).

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for anyone, had had (in the past) to acknowledge Diodorus’ wisdom;47 instead of scratching καλός and the name of a beautiful young boy on walls, his graffito praises the wisdom of someone whose name proclaims him to be a Methuselah. Momos’ action took place in the past, whereas the ravens croak Diodoran logical puzzles in the present tense. That the ravens are familiar with Diodorus’ teaching (and dialect) is particularly appropriate if Diodorus, like Socrates, wrote nothing and all his teaching was oral, but the difference of tense perhaps suggests that this poem celebrates Diodorus’ enduring fame after death48 — his kleos lives on, preserved by his puzzles, just as Herakleitos’ ‘nightingales’ (i.e. his poems) live on after his death (Epigr. 2 Pf.). If it is correct that this epigram was epitaphic (though whether or not it had anything to do with Diogenes’ anecdote about his death we cannot say), then the couplet about the ravens is likely to have been the final couplet, i.e. Pfeiffer’s ordering of the verses will be correct, though the preserved couplets may not have been contiguous.49 Beyond the ‘Herakleitos’ epigram, we may also compare Epigram 23 (cited above) on the suicide of Cleombrotus after reading Plato’s Phaedo and (just possibly) fr. 396 (= Menander T 23 K-A), which offers some very fragile evidence suggesting that Callimachus may have written an epigram on the death of Menander. The fragility is such that nothing can hang on this, but Pfeiffer is surely correct that it is “veri non omnino dissimile” that Callimachus should have written an epigram on the death of the famous dramatist. Finally, it is perhaps worth noting that Sextus does not apparently see the irony of attacking the ignorance and inadequacy of the γραμματικοί through a ‘philosophical’ epigram of Callimachus, who — as we have seen — deserved the title ὁ γραμματικός, if anyone did. It is very clear why this example appealed to Sextus — when he describes it as τὸ τυχὸν ἐπιγραμμάτιον, ‘a random epigram’ (chap. 309), he is being disingenuous at best - but when he writes that a γραμματικός, confronted with the ravens’ second question, ‘will fall silent, being unable to explain the reference’ (chap. 311, cf. 309 ‘they are unable to understand’), we may 47. So Sedley (1977: 108 n.35), White (1994: 144). 48. Sedley (1977: 109 n.36) rightly raises the possibility that Diodorus was dead at the time of the epigram. 49. The strongest case for the other ordering is that of Diehl (1937: 365). He points out (inter alia) that Sextus’ introduction to the couplet he cites, ‘the epigram written by Callimachus on Diodorus Cronus’, most naturally suggests that Sextus then proceeds to cite the opening of the poem, in accordance with normal ancient habits of citation. As, however, this is indeed the couplet concerned with logical puzzles which Sextus alleges to be beyond grammarians, i.e. this is the couplet that is germane to the point that Sextus is making, Diehl’s point cannot be thought probative.

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at least wonder whether he (or his sources) in fact knew of any such silences in the grammatical tradition. The identity of the Hedylos who is credited in part of the etymological tradition with a commentary on the Epigrams (T 45 Pf. = SH 458) is a familiar problem of Callimachean scholarship,50 but there is no good reason to doubt that such a work (whatever its date and authorship) had once existed, any more than we need doubt the reality of the commentary (ἐξήγησις) ascribed in the Suda to ‘Archibios, son of Apollonios, γραμματικός’ (T 44 Pf.). It is certainly not necessary to suppose that Sextus had any particular commentary or commentaries in mind, but the possibility that we have here a witness to the Callimachean commentary tradition cannot, I think, be dismissed out of hand.

4. Callimachus and the ethical tradition My final example is the famous epigram to Archinos: εἰ μὲν ἑκών, Ἀρχῖν’, ἐπεκώμασα, μυρία μέμφου, εἰ δ’ ἄκων ἥκω, τὴν προπέτειαν ἔα. ἄκρητος καὶ Ἔρως μ’ ἠνάγκασαν, ὧν ὁ μὲν αὐτῶν εἷλκεν, ὁ δ’ οὐκ εἴα τὴν προπέτειαν ἐᾶν. ἐλθὼν δ’ οὐκ ἐβόησα, τίς ἢ τίνος, ἀλλ’ ἐφίλησα 5 τὴν φλιήν· εἰ τοῦτ’ ἔστ’ ἀδίκημ’, ἀδικέω. Callimachus, Epigram 42 Pf. = HE 1075-80 If willingly I came on the revel, heap endless reproach upon me, but if I came unwillingly, forget my rashness. Unmixed wine and Love compelled me: one of them dragged me forward and the other would not allow me to drop my rashness. When I came, I did not call out your name or that of your father, but I kissed the doorpost; if this a crime, I am a criminal.

The rich modern discussion of this poem has focused upon its relation to Asclepiades, AP 5.167 (= HE 870-5), the text of vv. 3-4, in the light of the striking difference between the text of the Anthology and that of the inscription of this poem on a Roman wall of late Republican – early imperial date (see further below), the remarkable sound effects of the verses, and the background to the ideas and language of the poem and in particular whether these are to be sought in what we might call a poetic and popular tradition or rather in something more explicitly philosophical and ‘technical’. This last issue and that of the text of v. 4 are, of course, intimately related, and it is on the possible philosophical affiliations of the 50. Cf., e.g., Gutzwiller (1998: 183-4).

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poem that I wish to focus, both because, particularly when placed alongside the epigram for Diodorus Cronus, this may shed light upon an aspect of Callimachus’ poetry which does not always receive its proper due, and also because it too might lead us towards Callimachus’ early reception. Georg Kaibel pointed to the Stoic affiliations of προπέτεια, ‘hastiness, over-rashness, lack of judgement in assenting’ and its opposite ἀπροπτωσία (cf. SVF II 130, 131, III 281), as well as to ‘technical’ uses of ἕλκειν found in the same Stoic contexts, and he argued that Callimachus was to some extent teasing Archinos with a Stoic education.51 Kaibel’s identification of Stoic terminology has often been accepted, even if the interpretation of the poem which he drew from it has not.52 προπέτεια is, however, not solely a Stoic term (in the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle makes it one form of akrasia, EN 7.1150bff),53 and some have looked rather to the Aristotelian account of types of fault to understand the rhetoric of the poem.54 However familiar in poetic and popular morality ideas of the ‘unwilling fault’ may be (cf., e.g., Eur. fr. 272b K), it is indeed hard to think away the Peripatetic tradition when reading Callimachus’ epigram. In 1135a-b of Book 5 of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle distinguishes between types of fault on the basis of whether or not they were committed willingly; ἀδικεῖν (and indeed δικαιοπραγεῖν) are not applicable to actions done ἄκων, and any action done under compulsion (or because of the exercise of βία) is an ‘unwilling’ action performed κατὰ συμβεβηκός. It is only true ἀδικήματα which should be the subject of censure (ψέγεται, cf. μυρία μέμφου in v. 1 of Callimachus’ epigram). In these chapters Aristotle produces a threefold division of βλαβαί into μετ᾽ ἀγνοίας ἁμαρτήματα, ἀτυχήματα and ἀδικήματα. In a closely related discussion in Book 1 of the Rhetoric (1374b), Aristotle considers which types of human action it is ‘reasonable/equitable (ἐπιεικές) to pardon’; ἁμαρτήματα will clearly fall under this category, whereas ἀδικήματα will not, because they arise from ‘viciousness’, πονηρία. If it is impossible to disregard the Aristotelian discussions in considering Callimachus’ epigram, then we will accept that Callimachus here alludes to more than one ethical tradition in making his case to Archinos. The clinching argument of the final words obviously draws on the very rich poetic tradition of erotic ἀδικεῖν (Sappho fr. 1 etc.), but Callimachus’ point seems to be that his silent kiss upon the doorpost would not have attracted

51. Kaibel (1896: 266-8). 52. Helpful account in Gutzwiller (1998: 217-18). Gow-Page dismiss Kaibel’s discussion (‘seems very far-fetched’), without engaging seriously with it. 53. I have (very) idly wondered whether ἄκρητος in v. 3 might suggest ἀκρασία. 54. Cf., e.g., Barigazzi (1984).

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any attention (unlike calling out his name) and so he avoided bringing any notoriety upon the beloved boy. Unfortunately, we can only guess why someone painted this epigram (in careful and elegant lettering)55 on an outside wall of the so-called ‘Auditorium of Maecenas’.56 The walls of Pompeii also offer many familiar passages of high Latin poetry painted or scratched by people of (apparently) very varying educational levels, and there are also two Greek epigrams of Leonidas (or one of Leonidas and one of Euenus).57 My concern here is rather with a citation of the final couplet which we find in Plutarch’s work, ‘On the restraint of anger’: ἔστι γάρ τις, ὦ ἑταῖρε, πρώτη καθάπερ τυράννου κατάλυσις τοῦ θυμοῦ, μὴ πείθεσθαι μηδ’ ὑπακούειν προστάττοντος αὐτοῦ μέγα βοᾶν καὶ δεινὸν βλέπειν καὶ κόπτειν ἑαυτόν, ἀλλ’ ἡσυχάζειν καὶ μὴ συνεπιτείνειν ὥσπερ νόσημα ῥιπτασμῷ καὶ διαβοήσει τὸ πάθος. αἱ μὲν γὰρ ἐρωτικαὶ πράξεις, οἷον ἐπικωμάσαι καὶ ᾆσαι καὶ στεφανῶσαι θύραν, ἔχουσιν ἁμωσγέπως κουφισμὸν οὐκ ἄχαριν οὐδ’ ἄμουσον· ἐλθὼν δ’ οὐκ ἐβόησα τίς ἢ τίνος, ἀλλ’ ἐφίλησα τὴν φλιήν. εἰ τοῦτ’ ἔστ’ ἀδίκημ’, ἀδικῶ. αἵ τε τοῖς πενθοῦσιν ἐφέσεις τοῦ ἀποκλαῦσαι καὶ ἀποδύρασθαι πολύ τι τῆς λύπης ἅμα τῷ δακρύῳ συνεξάγουσιν· ὁ δὲ θυμὸς ἐκριπίζεται μᾶλλον οἷς πράττουσι καὶ λέγουσιν οἱ ἐν αὐτῷ καθεστῶτες. ἀτρεμεῖν οὖν κράτιστον ἢ φεύγειν καὶ ἀποκρύπτειν καὶ καθορμίζειν ἑαυτὸν εἰς ἡσυχίαν, ὥσπερ ἐπιληψίας ἀρχομένης συναισθανομένους κτλ. Plutarch, On the restraint of anger 455b-c The first way, my friend, to overthrow anger, as you would a tyrant, is not to obey or listen to it when it bids you shout out loud and look fierce and beat your breast, but to keep quiet and not to aggravate the emotion, as if a disease, by tossing around and calling out. Lovers’ actions, such as komoi and singing and garlanding doors, do in some way offer an alleviation which is neither charmless nor remote from the Muses: When I came, I did not call out your name or that of your father, but I kissed the doorpost; if this a crime, I am a criminal. So too, weeping and lamentation carry away from those who are grieving much of the pain, together with the tears. Anger, however, is rather fanned by the deeds and actions of those in that state. The best course, therefore, is to remain calm or to flee and hide and seek anchor in tranquillity, as though we had realised that an epileptic fit was imminent … 55. Cf. Kaibel (1876: 3). 56. It is now normally assumed that the graffito shows that the ‘auditorium’ had something to do with dining and sympotic practice, cf., e.g., Steinby (1996: 74), but the argument is not a strong one. Murray (1985: 43) misrepresents the substance of the epigram, but suggests that the scribe ‘recreates the original function of the literary genre by actually writing the poem on a wall (leaving it as a ‘kiss on the doorstep’)’. I am grateful to Emily Gowers for allowing me to read a draft of her forthcoming discussion of the ‘auditorium’. 57. Cf. Epigr. 1103, 1104 Kaibel, Gow-Page, Hellenistic Epigrams II 342.

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Whereas, so Plutarch argues, the indulgence of eros or grief leads to some not unpleasant alleviation of suffering,58 anger is merely increased and made wilder by its indulgence. Plutarch’s citation of the Callimachean couplet, coming as it does from a poem recalling a κῶμος, is entirely appropriate to the point he is making, and may be thought to be pointedly introduced by οὐδ’ ἄμουσον, and yet there is something remarkable about the fit between poem and context. On the one hand, although it is not unreasonable to sense κουφισμός in the poet’s kissing of the beloved’s doorpost, this is not made explicit either in the cited couplet or elsewhere in the poem. We might argue that, whereas most komasts seek the κουφισμός which admission to the beloved’s bedroom would bring, for Callimachus the simple and silent kiss of the doorpost was (unusually) an end in itself which he could fulfill without restraint; unlike most komasts, he achieved what he wanted and so felt a lightening of the pain. If so, then Plutarch has, with fine judgement, chosen a κῶμος-epigram which does indeed illustrate the point he is making. On the other hand, anger, according to Plutarch, wants the sufferer (inter alia) to ‘shout loudly’ (μέγα βοᾶν, διαβόησις), which is precisely what, in the epigram, Callimachus asserts to Archinos that he did not do. Callimachus’ epigram recalls a very unusual κῶμος, which itself in fact staged a display of control (though not, or at least not primarily and/or explicitly, over anger), a refusal to ‘shout out’ and a model of ἡσυχάζειν, which makes the citation’s relationship to the surrounding Plutarchan context much richer and multi-layered than is often the case in Plutarch’s quotations of poetry.59 Two (unanswerable) questions arise. At some earlier stage of the tradition on this subject (i.e. in one of Plutarch’s sources) was the whole epigram, not just the final couplet, quoted? Does Plutarch (and/or whoever first embedded just the final couplet in this discussion) expect readers to remember the rest of the poem from which it comes?60 The sources of ‘On the restraint of anger’ have been much discussed, and this is certainly not the place to add to that bibliography. The possibility, however, that the final couplet of the poem (or perhaps even the whole poem) was embedded in a discussion of restraint, perhaps even the 58. With regard to eros, this is a version of the familiar doctrine of, e.g., Theocritus 11.1-3 (with my note on v. 3). 59. ‘Control’ is also central to Propertius’ rewriting of Callimachus’ epigram at 1.3.9-14; commentators on Propertius do not seem to discuss whether v. 11 of that poem implies a particular text in v. 4 of the Greek epigram, but the matter is at least worth pondering. 60. ἐπικωμάσαι in Plutarch’s introduction to the citation from Callimachus is a verb he uses elsewhere also, but it may also prepare for the citation, as it appears in v. 1 of the epigram. If this is correct, we would have a ‘glide’ into the citation of a kind familiar both from Plutarch and from other prose texts, cf. Hunter (2010).

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‘control of anger’, well before Plutarch cannot, I think, be discounted. Here too is where the philosophical texture of the poem again becomes relevant, a texture which might well have attracted attention in Hellenistic ethical treatises. My guess — and it is of course nothing more than a guess — is that the citation of Callimachus’ epigram came to Plutarch through an earlier tradition in which this poem was indeed cited in an ethical or moralizing tradition. Whoever painted it on a Roman wall may well have known that tradition also. This of course is just (one more) speculation. As far as quotation of Callimachus is concerned, Plutarch to some extent stands out from other writers of the imperial age; Pontani went so far as to suggest that Plutarch is ‘perhaps the only ancient Greek writer who not only betrays direct familiarity with Callimachus but also refers to his poetry not merely in order to display his erudition’.61 Of certain citations, however, it is the Aitia which takes the lion’s share; no other epigram is certainly cited,62 though Plutarch presumably knew the epigrams well. This paper has been built on a quicksand of speculation and fragile inference, but these are one’s inevitable companions in any investigation of this kind. What I hope has nevertheless emerged is that the indirect tradition still has things to teach us about how Callimachus was received, used and cited in the centuries which succeeded him, even though we have lost all but the tiniest fraction of the literature where we might most naturally look for him. It is neither surprising nor regrettable that the search for Callimachus’ Nachleben in Greek and Latin poetry takes the lion’s share of scholarly attention, but Callimachus’ importance for other traditions deserves our attention also. Callimachus is for us so central a figure that we tend in fact to take that centrality for granted; seeking to know as much as we can of what antiquity made of him is the very least we can do to acknowledge his importance. REFERENCES Barigazzi, A. 1984, ‘Callimaco, Ep. 42 (A.P. 12.118): Non sono colpevole’. In Lirica greca da Archiloco a Elitis. Studi in onore di Filippo Maria Pontani. Padua, 197-204. Blank, D.L. 1998, Sextus Empiricus. Against the Grammarians. Oxford. Brink, C.O. 1971, Horace on Poetry, the ‘Ars Poetica’. Cambridge. Cairns, F. 2016, Hellenistic Epigram. Contexts of Exploration. Cambridge. 61. Pontani (2011: 101). 62. Moralia 13f need have nothing directly to do with Epigr. 1, just as the reference to the ‘cup of Bathycles’ at Moralia 155e (cf. Solon 80e) need not derive from Iambus 1.

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Cameron, A. 1995, Callimachus and his Critics. Princeton. Clayman, D.L. 2007, ‘Philosophers and philosophy in Greek epigram’. In P. Bing and J.S. Bruss eds., Brill’s Companion to Hellenistic Epigram. Leiden, 497517. D’Alessio, G.B. 2000, ‘Le Argonautiche di Cleone Curiense’. In R. Pretagostini ed., La letteratura ellenistica. Problemi e prospettive di ricerca. Rome, 91-112. Diehl, E. 1937, ‘Hypomnema. De Callimachi librorum fatis capita selecta’. Acta Universitatis Latviensis, Philologorum et Philosophorum ordinis series IV.2. Riga, 305-476. Diels, H. 1879, Doxographi Graeci. Berlin. Di Maria, G. 1996, Achillis quae feruntur Astronomica et in Aratum Opuscula. Palermo. Gutzwiller, K.J. 1998, Poetic Garlands. Hellenistic Epigrams in Context. Berkeley. ―, 2010, ‘Literary criticism’. In J.J. Clauss and M. Cuypers eds., A Companion to Hellenistic Literature. Malden MA, 337-65. Herman, G. 1980/1, ‘The “friends” of the early Hellenistic rulers: servants or officials?’. Talanta 12/13, 103-49. Hunter, R. 1989, ‘Winged Callimachus’. Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 76, 1-2 [= Hunter 2008, 86-8]. ―, 2008, On Coming After. Berlin. ―, 2010, ‘Rhythmical language and poetic citation in Greek narrative texts’. In G. Bastianini and A. Casanova (eds.), I papiri del romanzo antico. Florence, 223-45. ―, 2011a, ‘The reputation of Callimachus’. In D.Obbink and R. Rutherford eds., Culture in Pieces. Oxford, 220-38 [= Hunter 2008, 537-58]. ―, 2011b, ‘Festivals, cults, and the construction of consensus in Hellenistic poetry’. In G. Urso (ed.), Dicere Laudes. Elogio, comunicazione, creazione del consenso. Cividale del Friuli, 101-18. ―, 2014, Hesiodic Voices. Cambridge. ―, forthcoming, ‘Hesiod and the Presocratics: a Hellenistic perspective’. H. Koning and L. Iribarren Baralt eds., Hesiod and the Presocratics. Leiden. Jocelyn, H.D. 1973, ‘Greek poetry in Cicero’s prose writing’. Yale Classical Studies 23, 61-111 Kaibel, G. 1876, ‘De Callimachi epigrammate XLIII ed. Schneid.’. Hermes 10, 1-6. ―, 1896, ‘Zu den Epigrammen des Kallimachos’. Hermes 31, 264-70. Krevans, N. 1993, ‘Fighting against Antimachus: the Lyde and the Aetia reconsidered’. In M.A. Harder, R.F. Regtuit and G.C. Wakker eds., Callimachus. Groningen, 149-60. Kurzová, H. 2009, ‘What worried the crows in Callimachus’ epigram?’. GraecoLatina Brunensia 14, 125-9. Mansfeld, J. and Runia, D.T. 1997-2000, Aëtiana. The Method and Intellectual Context of a Doxographer. Leiden. Martin, J. 1998, Aratos, Phénomènes, Paris. Montanari, F. 1995, ‘Filologi alessandrini e poeti alessandrini: la filologia sui “contemporanei”’. Aevum Antiquum 8, 47-63. ―, 2002, ‘Callimaco e la filologia’ in Callimaque (Entretiens sur l’antiquité classique XLVII). Vandoeuvres-Geneva, 59-97. Murray, O. 1985, ‘Symposium and genre in the poetry of Horace’. Journal of Roman Studies 75, 39-50.

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Pagani, L. 2007, Asclepiade di Mirlea. I frammenti degli scritti omerici. Rome. Parsons, P.J. 2002, ‘Callimachus and the Hellenistic epigram’. In Callimaque (Entretiens sur l’antiquité classique XLVII). Vandoeuvres-Geneva, 99-141. Pfeiffer, R. 1949, Callimachus. Oxford. ―, 1968, History of Classical Scholarship. Oxford. Pontani, F. 2011, ‘Callimachus cited’. In B. Acosta-Hughes, L. Lehnus and S. Stephens eds., Brill’s Companion to Callimachus. Leiden, 93-117. Rengakos, A. 2000, ‘Aristarchus and the Hellenistic poets’. Seminari Romani 3, 325-35. Sedley, D. 1977, ‘Diodorus Cronus and Hellenistic philosophy’. Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 23, 74-120. ―, 2013, ‘From the Pre-Socratics to the Hellenistic age’. In S. Bullivant and M. Ruse eds., The Oxford Handbook of Atheism. Oxford, 139-51. Steinby, E.M. 1996, Lexicon topographicum Urbis Romae III. Rome. Steiner, D. 2015, ‘The Poetics of Sound: Callimachus’ rereading of Pindar fragment 70B S.-M.’. Classical Philology 110, 99-123. White, M.J. 1986, ‘What worried the crows?’. Classical Quarterly 36, 534-7. White, S.A. 1994, ‘Callimachus on Plato and Cleombrotus’. Transactions of the American Philological Association 124, 135-61. Whitmarsh, T. 2016, Battling the Gods. Atheism in the Ancient World. London. Wilamowitz, U. von 1906, Die Textgeschichte der griechischen Bukoliker. Berlin. Williams, G.D. 1995, ‘Cleombrotus of Ambracia: interpretations of a suicide from Callimachus to Agathias’. Classical Quarterly 45, 154-69. Winiarczyk, M. 1976, ‘Der erste Atheistenkatalog des Kleitomachos’. Philologus 120, 32-46.

NEW BORDERS OF FICTION? CALLIMACHAEAN AETIOLOGY AS A NARRATIVE DEVICE IN OVID’S METAMORPHOSES Robert KIRSTEIN

1. Introduction: Callimachus and Ovid as Aetiological Writers Callimachus’ Aitia represent something new and strikingly different in literary history. New is the idea of composing an elegiac poem consisting exclusively of aetiological stories. New is also the selection of the individual mythological narratives presented within the Aitia. Callimachus’ literary invention turned out to have an enormous and far reaching impact on both the history of literature and the history of literary criticism. The ever-enlightening Shadow of Callimachus (Hunter 2006) was of key importance for the poets of the Hellenistic age, but also for the literary transformation process of Roman literature in the Augustan and the imperial age. Roman poets like Catullus, Propertius and Ovid, to mention a few, drew inspiration from the Hellenistic period, from Callimachus and his Aitia. When Callimachus composed the Aitia, thereby founding a seminal literary genre, he not only initiated a different form of writing fiction, but he also created an entirely new poetic way of looking at the world with all of its intellectual, anthropological, and historical dimensions. He built, as Annette Harder has stated, a kind of “aitiological world history”.1 Perhaps no other author of ancient times has followed the Callimachean path so closely as the Augustan poet Ovid. In both of his major works, the Fasti and the Metamorphoses, Ovid undertook to recreate a poetic world history inspired by the myth-aetiological tradition of Greek and Roman culture, a world which was both similar to, but also different from Callimachus. The Fasti closely follows Callimachus’ model of aetiological poetry in elegiac couplets. The Metamorphoses, on the other hand, is not only indebted to Callimachus, but also to a tradition of hexametric metamorphosis-poetry exemplified in works such as Nicander’s Heteroioumena. And while Callimachean aetiology displays a significant amount of aetiologies connected to cult and religion, Nicander’s Heteroioumena 1. Harder (2010: 97).

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and Ovid’s Metamorphoses are characterized by a heightened interest in nature, in nature itself and in the anthropological dimension of nature, notably depicted in the idea that nature in some way mirrors human behavior.2 Another general observation needs to be mentioned here. While the Greek poet Callimachus sought the extraordinary, the remote and the far-fetched in his aetiological stories, Roman poets focused mainly on the city of Rome and its established and prominent cults.3 In the 4th book of his Elegies Propertius organized his ‘Roman’ aetiologies according to aspects of space. In his Fasti Ovid did so according to the calendric principle of time. Given the use of aetiological thinking, it is not surprising that Ovid is most ‘Callimachean’ at the beginning and at the end of his poem Metamorphoses — in the opening book 1 and in the final books 14 and 15. Here the poet sets foot in his contemporary time or, in other words, he enters the realities of the Augustan age.4 In the following I would like to explore the relationship between Callimachus and Ovid further and more deeply. I will focus on the aspect of fiction itself and surmise how both poets determine and thematize the boundaries of fiction in their aetiological stories, with emphasis on the Aitia and the Metamorphoses.5 This seems especially worthwhile, since very few writers have explored these boundaries as deeply as Callimachus and Ovid did: “In his Aitia Callimachus gives a great deal of attention to the presentation of the stories. This results in a refined narrative technique of a highly ‘selfconscious’ character, in the sense that much attention is given to the process of storytelling and the activities of the narrator as well as to the transmission 2. Loehr (1996: 56). For an anthropological interpretation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses cf. Schmidt (1991): “Die poetische Leistung Ovids besteht in dieser Transformation der aitiologischen Tradition. Es ist eine Transformation durch Universalisierung (Welt / Menschheit), Generalisierung (der Mensch / Psychologie als anthropologische Hermeneutik), Humanisierung (Anthropomorphisierung der Welt auf menschliche Bedeutung hin) sowie Totalisierung und Vertiefung des Begründungsanspruchs durch Verschiebung von vorrangiger Erklärung der Faktizität partikulärer Ausnahmen zu wesentlichem Verstehen des Menschen, wie er sich im Spiegel der Welt deuten läßt” (74). 3. For the Callimachean preference of the extraordinary and remote cf. e.g. Asper (2004: 28), on Ovid’s Fasti in comparison to Callimachus: Loehr (1996: 112). Cf. also Schmidt (1991: 72-73). 4. This paper avoids, however, a generalizing on ‘Callimachean’ and ‘anti-Callimachean’ marks in Ovid’s poetry, not least because Ovid seems to be very Callimachean in passages which look ‘anti-Callimachean’ at first sight; cf. also Barchiesi (2011: 529-530). It also avoids the category of ‘new and old’ for the poetic self-understanding of the Hellenistic poets, cf. Hunter (2006: 3-5). On aetiology and closure cf. Asper (2013). 5. Cf. in general Feeney (1991: 229-232); Myers (1994: 91-93); Waldner (2007: 216220). – For the terminology of fiction I follow Schmid (2010: 21-22): “A novel is fictional, the world it portrays fictive”, “Where the fictive is contrasted with the real, the opposite of the fictional is the factual” (italics by the author of this paper).

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and reception of knowledge. Callimachus creates an impression of authority, which forces his readers to discover and accept the ‘truth’ and relevance of the stories and helps to get his multi-layered messages across.” (Harder) “Ovid perhaps exploited this paradox (i.e. on fiction in aitiological stories) beyond all earlier poets. Although one often reads that it is part of Ovid’s poetic ‘agenda’ to point out the fictitious nature of mythology, we should rather understand that Ovid reveals ‘a keen awareness of the suspension of disbelief and belief which constitutes fiction.” (Myers)6

2. The Narrative Attractiveness of Aetiology As a starting point, let us take a look at Marco Fantuzzi’s definition of aetiology in Brill’s New Pauly. It states: “Aetiology is the term given to an explanation, generally referring to a mythical past (aetiological myth), of the αἴτιον (aítion), i.e. of the origin, of some phenomenon affecting the present-day situation of the author and his public, whether it be an object, a city, a custom, or, as is frequently the case, a religious ritual.”7

Here, as in similar definitions by Gerhard Binder and Fritz Graf, a key element of aetiology is time.8 On a temporal axis, the difference between the past and the present is established. Often there is the notion of the past as being ‘mythical’ or fictive and of the present as being ‘nonmythical’ or real. The movement from past into present can be either explicit or implicit. In the latter case, it is up to the recipient to make the connection between past and present.9 In some cases, when the text describes the status nascendi of a cult, a special version of aetiological storytelling occurs which Loehr defines as “futurische Einsetzung” and which is especially connected to the motive of catasterismos (Verstirnung).10 In The Invention of Past, Present and Future Harder describes this kind of future aetiology with the example of the Coma Berenikes in Callimachus’ Aitia: “The readers of the Aitia, particularly those who have read the whole work, may have realized that after all the stories about present rituals or objects 6. Harder (2012: 1.51-52); Myers (1994: 19-20). On Ovid cf. also Solodow (1988: 64); Feeney (1991: 225); on Ovid and Callimachus cf. Wilkinson (1999); Hutchinson (1988: 329); Thomas (1993: 201); Barchiesi (2011: 517-518); Acosta-Hughes (2009); AcostaHughes & Stephens (2012: 257-269). 7. Fantuzzi (2006). 8. Binder (1988); Graf (2002: 115). 9. Asper (2004: 30). 10. Loehr (1996: 48); Graf (2002: 116).

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explained by events from the past they were now witnessing the emergence of a new story which would become the past for future generations […]”11

Most aetiological objects — such as cults, rituals, statues, etc. — can be found balanced on the boundary between the past and the present. ‘Presence’ as a category of time has been used so far with regard to the time of the author of a text. This is, for example, the case in the Coma Berenikes which tells a story in which the time of the narrated event and the time of the author are more or less identical. There is, however, also the possibility of a relative chronology within a narrative itself. This is especially prevalent in epic texts such as Apollonius’ Argonautika. To clarify this significant difference in perspective between Apollonius and Callimachus more precisely, Köhnken has used the terms Rückgriff and Vorgriff: “Bei Kallimachos finden merkwürdige Einrichtungen, Kulte und Gebräuche der zeitgenössischen Gegenwart durch den Rückgriff auf eine mythische Vergangenheit ihre Erklärung, bei Apollonios werden in der Regel Details der Argonautenerzählung im Vorgriff und Ausblick auf die zukünftige Entwicklung zum Ursprung ständiger Einrichtungen erklärt. Die Aitiologie des Kallimachos geht aus von der Frage wie kommt es, daß […], die des Apollonius läuft zu auf die Fragestellung so kam es, daß […].”12

The very fact that poets like Callimachus experiment in moving aetiological objects toward new boundaries like the border between the present and the future (from the standpoint of text production) in works such as the Coma Berenikes show a heightened awareness of and interest in the special character these objects have. The general narrative attractiveness of aetiological objects can partly be described as a result of the particular properties they carry as ‘border objects’. Regarding writers such as Callimachus and Ovid who have repeatedly been characterized as ‘border crossing poets’ (Grenzgänger) the interest in such objects does not come as a surprise.13 Not only do 11. Harder (2003: 303). 12. Köhnken (2006: 110). On aitia in epic poetry cf. Harder (2012: 1.32-34); on the Aeneid cf. Binder (1988: passim and esp. 261): “Im Überschreiten der zeitlichen Ebene der Erzählung durch Aitiologien eröffnet der Erzähler dem Hörer/Leser des Epos mehrere Perspektiven: Aus der Sicht der epischen Handlung wird die historische Gegenwart (= Gegenwart des Dichters/Publikums) zur Zukunft; aus der Sicht der Gegenwart (des Dichters/Publikums) wird die Zeitebene der epischen Erzählung zur (eigenen) Vergangenheit. In aitiologischen Erzählungen des Epos werden also gleichsam drei zeitliche Ebenen übereinander projiziert, eine Erzähltechnik, die Vergil nicht erfunden, in der Aeneis aber konsequent genutzt hat.” 13. Cf. Albrecht (2000: 305) and Fränkel’s interpretation of Ovidian figures as being characterized by a “wavering identity”, with Schmidt (1991: 48-55).

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such objects stand between the present and past or between the present and future, but they also imply other dimensions of fundamental oppositions such as the local versus the universal, the peripheral versus the central, the known versus the unknown, the extraordinary versus the normal. This list gets even longer when one includes the poetic practices and the social dimensions of literary texts from the Hellenistic and the Augustan age. There is, for example, an opposition between the scientific and the mythical, the highly educated and the less learned (in terms of an implied or real audience), between legitimation and de-legitimation in terms of possible functions of aetiological stories, an opposition between pretext/hypotext and present text/hypertext in intertextual constellations, or, as in case of the Roman appropriation of Greek literature, the opposition between two literary traditions which are distinct and yet interwoven at the same time.14 All of these possible oppositions are, in one way or the other, closely intertwined with the universal problem of fact and fiction.15 This is in particular the case with regard to the opposition between past and present, because it is often the mythic past which is judged as fictive while the aetiological object itself in its given or felt presence is regarded as real. This explains why aetiological objects tend to be stable and unchanging, while the stories which explain the origins and causes are rather fluid and changeable.16 Finally, the way we define the fictional status of an aetiological story and its aetiological objects has consequences as to how we define the literary character of a text as a whole, on an axis between fictional and factual narrative.17 Regarding a theory of fiction, it turns out to be quite a tricky task to locate the exact position of aetiological objects between fact and fiction. Since they reside on the boundary of fiction and reality, they combine properties which belong fundamentally to ontologically distinct worlds. In the first book of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, we encounter the story of Apollo and Daphne (Met. 1.452-567). Here, the laurel which is a direct result of Daphne’s metamorphic escape is both real and fictive. The 14. On the tension between a scientific and a mythical understanding in aetiological thinking cf. Myers 1994: 19; Fantuzzi & Hunter (2004: 50): “The aetiological mode of explanation suits the boundless curiosity of the scholar and the child — Callimachus’ two most prominent modes of self-presentation — but it also offers a world which is ‘invented’ and then remains without change”; Sistakou (2009); Harder (2012: 27-30) on the relation of the Aitia to didactic poetry. On the contemporary audience of Callimachus cf. Harder (2010: 94-95 and 2012: 1.39-41); Stephens (2010). 15. On the aspect of intertextuality cf. for Callimachus e.g. Harder (2012: 1.49-51). 16. Loehr (1996: 25). 17. ‘Fiktionales versus Faktuales Erzählen’: cf. the Freiburg DFG Research Training Group 1767 Faktuales und fiktionales Erzählen.

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laurel tree itself is a tangible, real object belonging to the realm of everyday life, while Daphne is a mythical figure and the process of her metamorphosis belongs exclusively to the fictive world of the Metamorphoses. In Ovid’s time, the laurel was a symbol of the god Apollo and an emblem of the Augustan empire. This exemplifies a typical sliding transition from an aetiology of nature to a cultural aetiology (Natur- und Kultaitiologie). Thomas Pavel coined the term “surrogate object” to define objects that ‘migrate’ from the real world into the textual world and are significantly modified by this migration process: “Surrogate objects are fictional counterparts of real objects in those fictional texts that substantially modify their descriptions”.18 In Pavel’s model, these surrogate objects stand in a middle position between “native objects” and “immigrant objects”. While native objects are exclusively at home in the fictive world of the text, such as gods and other divine powers, immigrant objects migrate from the real world to the textual world like the surrogate objects, but are only altered very little, or not at all. In the story of Apollo and Daphne, the god Apollo and the nymph Daphne are native objects, while the laurel, the aetiological result of the story, is more a surrogate than an immigrant object, because it carries an aition which is not connected to the actual plant found in the real world. Of course, literature has always been full of objects that combine properties from the real world in one way or the other; this applies for example to objects like cities, countries, figures, objects of daily use, etc. Aetiological objects, however, are of special interest to a theory of fiction, because the idea of aetiological thinking itself creates objects that are not incidentally, but rather fundamentally positioned at the borders of fiction. If one accepts this thesis of aetiological objects as eminent fictive objects, one might conclude that aetiological thinking and aetiological story writing, especially, open doors to metafictional or metapoetic reflections on the fictional status of poetic texts. Two aspects of aetiology seem of special interest when metapoetic structures come into play. First, the problem of unreliable narration (chapters 3 and 4) and, secondly, the framing of books or other textual unities (chapter 5) by passages that carry some kind of message about the text and its positioning within a wider literary world of predecessors, fellow poets, and implied or real audiences.

18. Pavel (1986: 29); cf. Zipfel (2001: 97).

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3. Aetiology and the Problem of Unreliability It has already been observed that aetiological narratives are often connected to the notion of unreliability.19 Since legitimation is one of the traditional key functions of aetiology, unreliability is of particular importance here due to its destabilization and undermining effect.20 In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, for example, the first love story (primus amor, 1.452) introduces the reader to the god Apollo not only as a god who fails in the business of love, but also as a god who — despite his position as an Olympian oracular god of prophecy — proves to be unable to control his own future: Phoebus amat visaeque cupit conubia Daphnes, quodque cupit sperat suaque illum oracula fallunt. […] Phoebus caught sight of her, fell in love and longed to possess her. Wishes were hopes, for even his powers of prophecy failed him. (Met. 1.490-491, transl. by Raeburn 2004: 29-30)

Apollo does not appear here as a narrator of an aetiological story in the Metamorphoses. Nevertheless his failure is noteworthy and has an indirect, yet momentous effect on the aetiological storytelling in the Metamorphoses. Since Apollo is not only the god of oracle, but also, in a very Callimachean sense (cf. Aitia frg. 1.22 Harder), the inspiring divinity of poetry, the story of Apollo and Daphne may very well be read as a marker which gives the reader an idea about the possibly unreliable nature of the primary narrator himself, thereby providing direction on how to read the Metamorphoses as a whole. This seems to be even more relevant if one takes into account that the preceding story, also presented by the primary narrator, recounts the aetiological story of the origins of the Pythian Games as a result of Apollo’s slaying of the Pythian dragon.21 19. Solodow (1988: 64): “The poet of the Metamorphoses never makes himself more evident than when he turns on his own narrative and criticizes it. Not only does he remind us again and again that he is telling the story; he also frequently hints that it is not altogether reliable, but instead is merely a story that he is telling. By wondering aloud about it, the poet calls into question the truth of mythology. At least he seems to deny its literal truth. And when he does this repeatedly he reinforces the implicit, unspoken assumption that literal truth is the only kind, as if there were no symbolic truths, and once one has cast doubt on whether a reported event took place it is robbed of the values traditionally ascribed to it. Such literalization is characteristic of Ovid.” For ancient texts in the light of modern theories of unreliability one can think of Lucian’s Verae historiae or Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, cf. Martinez & Scheffel (2009: 100); cf. also Kimmerle (2015); Morgan (2004: 497 and 508); Pausch (2010); Slater (2017: 444 s.v. unreliable author). On Booth’s theory of unreliability and his concept of the “implied author” cf. below chapter 4. 20. On the legitimizing function of aetiology cf. e.g. Waldner (2014: 28). Cf. also note 75. 21. On the preceding embedded narrative of Jupiter telling the story of Lycaon (Ov. Met. 1. 211-239) cf. note 46.

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There are various modes of generating unreliable narration in literary texts. One technique is the embedding or framing of subordinated narratives within a larger context, a literary technique which was fashionable among Hellenistic poets.22 The reader is confronted with two (or more) narrative voices which offer different or even opposing views and evaluations of a given context. An example can be found in the eighth book of the Metamorphoses. The book concludes with three embedded (or framed) narratives, as part of the story of Theseus visiting the river god Achelous (Met. 8.547-884). All three narratives recount a metamorphosis, two of them are told by the host Achelous himself and one by a figure called Lelex, an aged and distinguished man and an old friend of Theseus. In terms of the disposition of the passage as a whole, it is clearly highly complex and noticeably ‘Callimachean’, carrying a wealth of intertextual references especially to Callimachus’ Hymn to Apollo and to the Hecale.23 An Ovidian invention of some irony seems to be the choice of the river-god Achelous as internal narrator, because he is introduced at the beginning using rather non-Callimachean metapoetic words such as ‘swollen’ river (imbre tumens, Ov. Met. 8.550). Stephen Hinds interprets this as “a self-referential comment” on the epic style of the passage which sounds, as some scholars have argued, almost ‘Ennian’. According to Hind’s interpretation, Ovid is here “de-Callimachizing Callimachus.”24 Perhaps it is no coincidence that this Callimachean passage stands almost exactly in the middle of the Metamorphoses which can easily be interpreted as a structural marker in line with the Callimachean passages at the beginning and at the end of the work.25 Of special interest here is the middle of the entire passage in which Lelex recounts the story of Philemon and Baucis in an embedded narrative (Met. 8.547-884). At first sight Lelex’s story seems to be of decent origin and solid reliability. His speech is the direct reply to a brief statement by the son of Ixion, Pirithous. Pirithous, as a spretor deorum, had discredited Achelous’ previous story of the 22. Myers (1994: 20): “Ovid’s frequent use of framed narratives, a feature indebted to Alexandrian techniques, is another indicator of this narrative self-reflexivity. Like the Alexandrian poets, Ovid uses scholarly aetiological and etymological detail to play with suggestions of veracity and credibility, while eschewing an authoritative epic posture.” For voices and narrative instances in the Metamorphoses cf. in general Wheeler (1999: 185193 and passim); Barchiesi (2006). On framed narratives in Hellenistic poetry cf. Goldhill (1991: 240 and passim). 23. Hollis (1970: ad locum); Hutchinson (1988: 345-352); Myers (1994: 90 with further bibliography). 24. Hinds (2006: 36); cf. Barchiesi (2006: 276-284) on “A River as Narrator”, here esp. 277: “a most blatant negative symbol according to the poetics of Callimachus.” On “Ennius as a post-Callimachean?” cf. Barchiesi (2011: 515-517). 25. Holzberg (2007: 79).

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origin of two islands (Echinades, Perimele, Met. 8.577-610) by calling into question the power of the Olympian gods: Amnis ab his tacuit, factum mirabile cunctos moverat; inridet credentes, utque deorum spretor erat mentisque ferox, Ixione natus: ‘ ficta refers nimiumque putas, Acheloe, potentes esse deos’ dixit, ‘si dant adimuntque figuras.’ obstipuere omnes nec talia dicta probarunt, ante omnesque Lelex animo maturus et aevo sic ait: ‘inmensa est finemque potentia caeli non habet et quicquid superi voluere peractum est. […]

615

The river-god held his peace. His amazing story had moved the whole of the company. One poured scorn on their credulous wonder, Pirithoüs, a young tearaway, who had no use for the gods. ‘Pure fiction!’ he said. ‘Acheloüs, you credit the gods with too much power, if you think they create and then alter the shapes in Nature.’ 615 All were aghast at these blasphemous words and voiced disapproval, especially Lelex, whose mind reflected his riper years. ‘The power of heaven cannot be measured,’ he answered firmly. ‘lt knows no bounds. Whatever the gods decree is accomplished […] (Ov. Met. 8.611-619, transl. by Raeburn 2004: 323)

This seems to be the beginning of a reliable story and Lelex does everything to affirm his claims regarding the veracity of his tale: he believes in the power of the gods, he has been told the story by old men who have no reason to lie, and he has been in Phrygia and seen the trees into which Philemon and Baucis had been transformed with his own eyes (Ov. Met. 8.620-22: tiliae contermina quercus / collibus est Phrygiis, medio circumdata muro. / ipse locum vidi, cf. 722-723 narravere senes; equidem pendentia vidi / serta super ramos). Through this affirmation Lelex connects the reality outside of the story with the story itself in a manner typical for aetiological storytelling.26 The conventional phrasing of the transition between the here and now of the aetiological object and the explanatory story of the past is depicted in the adverb adhuc, ‘until now’ (Ov. Met. 8.719-720 ostendit adhuc Thyneius illic / incola de gemino vicinos corpore truncos).27 The local flavor and the rich detail of the story support the story’s trustworthiness. However, if one looks at this embedded narrative more closely doubts arise as to whether this story and also the two other stories are told by a reliable narrator. The very fact 26. Cf. for the phrasing Waldner (2007: 219). 27. For aetiological formulas like adhuc, nunc quoque, etc. cf. Solodow (1988: 176 note 30); Loehr (1996: 35 and 134-136 with note 215). For the formula quia, quod, etc. cf. Loehr (1996: 82).

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that Pirithous classifies Achelous’ preceding story about the origin of the two islands as ficta (Ov. Met. 8.614) leaves the reader with an uneasy feeling and a general sense that there is the possibility of non-factuality in the story of Philemon and Baucis (and in the two related stories). The reader is confronted with two possible, but opposing views and evaluations of a given context: “Readers tend,” as Feeney has put it, “to be either Lelex or Pirithous.” The Lelex-passage has been interpreted in this metapoetic and disillusioning sense by Otis, Solodow, Feeney, Myers, and Waldner.28 It is, however, as Feeney and Myers point out, not Ovid’s agenda to destabilize and deconstruct what remains, even in an embedded story, but rather to make visible the (poetic) mechanisms in which aetiological storytelling works. Here, and in many other passages, Ovid gives us a glimpse into the poetic ‘workshop of fiction’. “By splitting our response up into these two polarized alternatives he (i.e. Ovid) is making us realize that to swim successfully in the sea of the Metamorphoses we must be both Lelex and Pirithous. […] The double vision that comes from being both Lelex and Pirithous may indeed be seen as a necessary condition for reading any fictions.” (Feeney) “Ovid here self-consciously uncovers the use of an aition as a stratagem for verification by reference to extend reality. He makes explicit the mechanisms by which narrative authenticates in fictions, by providing in the framed narrative a possible audience-response to his own stories.” (Myers)29

Two other aspects need to be taken into consideration. First, though the key-word ficta belongs primarily to the voice of Pirithous in the Lelex and Pirithous episode (Ov. Met. 8.614), it can also be read as an ‘atmospheric marker’ for the entire passage in the sense of Genette (Vorhalte, amorces).30 And secondly, what Feeney convincingly explains as “double vision … as a necessary condition for reading our fictions” can also be described as ‘strategic ambiguity’ which seems to be a key feature of Ovid’s Metamorphoses.31 The technique of using embedded or framed narratives is, however, not the only way through which texts can produce unreliability. Unreliability also occurs, for example, when a text offers a multiplicity of views, explanations, and evaluations. This narrative device — often called multiple explanations (Mehrfacherklärungen) — seems to have been highly popular among authors of the Hellenistic and the Augustan 28. Cf. Feeney (1991: 230); Myers (1994: 91-93); Waldner (2007: 219). 29. Feeney (1991: 230-231), with reference to Newsom (1988: 134-135); Myers (1994: 93), cf. also ibid. 19, and Waldner (2007: 217-218). 30. Genette (2010: 45); cf. also Barthes (1966: 7), who uses the term germe. 31. Cf. Bauer et al. (2010); Knape & Winkler (2015).

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age.32 Multiple explanations can, but do not have to be narrated by means of multiple narrative voices, as is the case when, for example, embedded or internal narratives are applied. Multiple explanations can also be presented using one and the same narrative voice. As an example, one might take a look at the three aetiological stories in the first book of the Metamorphoses which tell the story of the creation of humans (Ov. Met. 1: v. 76-88, 158-162, and 367-415).33 All three stories belong to one and the same narrative voice, the primary narrator of the Metamorphoses, interrupted only by Jupiter telling the story of Lycaon (Ov. Met. 1.211-239).34 There is some evidence that this technique of multiple explanations also dates back to Callimachus: the Milan Diegesis reports a triple explanation of the cult of the Diana Lucina and there was also a multiple explanation of the origins of the Charites.35 In addition to the techniques of embedded narrative and of multiple explanations, there is yet another way of generating unreliability. Often the narrative voices are characterized as unreliable not because of the content of their narration and aspects which might not be in accordance with other voices and views, but rather through their direct characterization. The literary tradition of aetiological storytelling has one particular kind of figure that invites the question of unreliability: aetiologies are often narrated in a dialogue configuration of question and answer.36 The responsibility of the answer is given to a voice which has characteristics making them especially reliable with regard to the aetiological story being told. In the first two books of Callimachus’ Aitia, the Muses take over this role of answering. In the story of Philemon and Baucis in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, it is the character’s old age that makes the figure of Lelex a trustworthy senior informant. When we look at religious aitia (‘Kult-Aitien’) explaining the origins and institutions of cults, rituals, and other practices, statues of gods and goddesses are often used as narrators. Such speaking statues or objects were popular among Hellenistic poets 32. For Callimachus’ use of direct speech to generate multiple perspectives cf. Harder (2012: 1.55). 33. Schmidt (1991: 35-36) reads this key passage in the light of his anthropological interpretation: “Die dreifache Variation der Wesensaussage über den Menschen in Entstehungsgeschichten präludiert der Vielfalt der Gestalten des Gedichts. […] Die Erschaffung des Menschen in ihrer dreifachen Variation, vom Sinn und Ziel der Kosmogonie an über den Ursprung aus Gigantenblut und Steinen, ist die dichterische Herstellung des Gegenstandes der Verwandlungen — das ist der Mensch — und des Themas der Dichtung — das ist der Mensch in der Mannigfaltigkeit seines Wesens und Schicksals, wie sie sich in den Gestalten der Verwandlungen vom Stein bis zum Gott spiegeln.” 34. Loehr (1996: 168-170). 35. Loehr (1996: 194-198). 36. Cf. in general Harder (2012: 1.51-56).

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in general. One only needs to think of their extensive use in the literary epigram, and it is likely that Callimachus deliberately played with elements deriving from different genres, as Annette Harder has argued.37 In aetiological texts like Callimachus’ Aitia the authoritative character of the divinity speaking to him- or herself has mostly been exploited for narrative purposes. Unreliability (or the possibility of unreliable narration) comes into play when a statue speaks not only in a limited, ‘personal’ perspective about its own (local) cult, but also when it extends the general and aetiological information it offers beyond its proper area of influence and control.38 When this happens, one might suspect that the authoritative voice is being undermined or destabilized by an untrustworthy expansion of possible knowledge. In a surviving fragment of the Aitia Callimachus applied this technique of speaking statues in an interplay of questions and answers. In this story, which may have been part of the third book, a statue of the Delian Apollo answers the question of an unidentified interlocutor (frg. 114 Harder).39 Propertius, in his Elegy 4.2, transforms this motif when he gives voice to the statue of Vertumnus. In Rome, the statue of Vertumnus, the god of seasons, gardens, and fruit, had a prominent location in the city, thus fitting perfectly into the Propertian program of creating a ‘nationalized’ Roman aetiological world history.40 Clearly this is a reference to the Callimachean model of Apollo speaking.41 In Ovid examples of speaking statues are more prevalent in the Fasti than in the Metamorphoses.42 Still, in the Metamorphoses the god Vertumnus appears again, noticeably in the last love story of the work in the 14th book (Ov. Met. 14.622-771). Here, the reader sees Vertumnus in the role of a lover which reminds us of the first love story of the Metamorphoses in which Apollo unsuccessfully desires Daphne.43 Vertumnus has fallen in love with Pomona, but 37. Harder (1998; 2012: 2.894-895 with further parallels). On Hellenistic epigrams cf. also Tueller (2008); Männlein-Robert (2007a/b). 38. Cf. Waldner (2007: 223), and Barchiesi (1997). One could, tentatively, apply here Genette’s term paralepse. Genette (2010: 126) uses paralepsis as part of his theory of focalization to describe situations in which a figure offers more information than it ought properly to have. This happens, for example, when an external focalization slides into internal focalization and the figure keeps speaking like an external voice. 39. The statue carries a bow and the Charites in his hands; cf. the commentary by Harder (2012: 2.892-906). 40. For literary and epigraphical evidence on the Roman cult of Vertumnus cf. Myers (1994: 117-118); Hutchinson (2006: 86-87); Waldner (2007: 22 note 78). 41. Myers (1994: 113-132, here 120); Loehr (1996: 82-84.198-206); Barchiesi (1997: 186-187). 42. Myers (1994: 120). 43. The last love story of the Metamorphoses ends somewhat more positive than the first one, as Holzberg (2007: 108) points out; cf. also Myers (1994: 125 and 114): “The

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he cannot win her over. He disguises himself as an old (Italian) woman and gives her a warning by telling the story of Iphis and Anaxarete: Anaxarete does not respond to Iphis’ love, Iphis hangs himself, and Anaxarete is turned into a stone (Ov. Met. 14.698-764). In the story Anaxarete is described as dura in the well known terminology of Roman love elegy.44 Vertumnus affirms that his story is not fictive and that even in his time a statue of Anaxarete can be visited in Salamis in a temple of Venus (Ov. Met. 14.759-761 neve ea ficta putes, dominae sub imagine signum / servat adhuc Salamis, Veneris quoque nomine templum / Prospicientis habet). In the Ovidian version of Vertumnus, the god does not speak as a statue, but narrates an aetiological story revolving around another statue, the statue of Anaxarete. Although Vertumnus does not speak via a statue, the intertextual link to Propertius’ Elegy 4.2 and through Propertius also to Callimachus’ Aitia, enables the reader to think of the Ovidian Vertumnus “as both a statue and an aetiological internal narrator” (Myers).45 As a result in Ovid’s Metamorphoses Vertumnus appears as an aetiological storyteller of reduced and questionable reliability.46 Again Ovid metapoetically opens a glimpse into the making of aetiologies and into his workshop of fiction. In summary, one might identify three distinct, though partly interconnected means of generating unreliability in literary texts in which aetiologies are presented: (1) embedded (or framed, internal) speech (2) multiple explanations (‘Mehrfacherklärungen’), within one and the same narrative voice or being split over multiple voices, by means such as embedding (3) direct characterization of narrative voices story of Vertumnus and Pomona not only inverts the amatory norms established by the first love story but contains a number of parallels and echoes of this story that suggest it performs a similarly programmatic function in highlighting themes that are important in the remainder of the poem: Italian and Roman religious and topographical aetia.” 44. Myers (1994: 123). For a gendered reading cf. Wheeler (1999: 57-58). 45. Myers (1994: 120, ibid. 119) on the intertextual links to Propertius in Ovid’s version. On the etymological wordplays in the elegy of Propertius with its multiple explanations cf. Loehr (1996: 206), and Barchiesi (1997: 187). 46. Similar to the Vertumnus-episode is the Lycaon-episode in the first book of the Metamorphoses (Ov. Met. 1. 211-239). The story is narrated by Jupiter as internal narrator. When he finishes, the applause is described as being somehow divided among the public: Dicta Iovis pars voce probant stimulosque frementi / adiciunt, alii partes adsensibus inplent (1.244-245). Cf. Anderson (1997: 175 ad locum): “Ovid analyzes the response of Jupiter’s audience. This council, like the Roman senate in so much of Tacitus’ Annales, consists of yes-men and who merely explore the possibilities of obsequiousness. frementi: not a dignified word to describe the tone and manner of Jupiter’s speech.”

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So far it has been argued that aetiological story-telling is of special interest for a theory of fiction due to the particular position of aetiological objects on the boundary of fiction between the here and now of the object and the historicizing story explaining its causes and origins. We have also seen that the poets of the Hellenistic and Augustan age such as Callimachus and Ovid displayed a heightened interest in aetiology as a narrative device for metapoetic reflections on the fictional status of their texts. We also argued that unreliable narration is one aspect of aetiological storytelling which enables the poet to cause the reader to reflect upon the fictional status of the text by breaking the illusion of a concordant or unified world view. The popularity of embedded narratives with its potential of generating unreliability is in line with the Hellenistic preference for intertextuality. Both techniques — which are distinct in principle, but often intertwine — are similar in their effect of creating through a multiplicity of voices and viewpoints a highly complex and dense textual universe.47

4. Modern Narrative Theories on Unreliability Modern theories of narrative unreliability were initiated by Wayne Booth’s monograph The Rhetoric of Fiction, first published in 1961. Booth takes his starting point from the difference between, “self-conscious narrators, […] aware of themselves as writers” (e.g. Tristram Shandy or Dr. Faustus) and “narrators […] who rarely if ever discuss their writing chores” (e.g. Huckleberry Finn).48 Apart from the question of whether the narrator is part of the story (homodiegetic) or not (heterodiegetic), there is always a “degree and kind of distance that separates them from the author, the reader, and the other characters of the story”.49 Booth explores the aspect of distance further and argues that a narrator is reliable when and in so far as he/she narrates in compliance with the norms of the work as a whole. If he/she deviates from this norm, modes of unreliability evolve. The effect of such deviation is a kind of dramatic irony, “and a secret communion occurs between the latter (i.e. the implied author) and the reader behind the narrator’s back.”50 Since Booth relates the narrator to the implied author of the text, his line of argumentation is based upon an inner-textual understanding. His theory has initiated a wide-ranging 47. 48. 49. 50.

For intertextual voices in Callimachus cf. e.g. Cusset (2011). Booth (1983: 155). Booth (1983: 155). Shen (2013: [4]).

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and ongoing discussion on the mechanisms of literary unreliability. Today and especially in postmodern discourses unreliability is recognized as a fundamental category of narrative.51 One of the changes since Booth’s Rhetoric of Fiction has been a shift away from the implied author as point of reference to the real reader of the text, thus replacing the original inner-textual model with an extra-textual one.52 In complex texts with embedded narratives, the norm giving reference can then be located both outside the text in the reader’s world or within the text among the inner-textual recipients of the embedded narrative. This shift to the real audience is not without hazards for historical philology, yet offers ways of interpretation especially with regard to intertextuality. A modification has been proposed by Phelan and Martin who established three axes: an axis of facts, an axis of value, and an axis of knowledge. This taxonomy results in a distinction of six types of unreliability falling into two major groups. Dan Shen uses this approach for a basic definition of unreliability: “In its narratological sense, unreliability is a feature of narratorial discourse. If a narrator misreports, -interprets or -evaluates, or if she/he underreports, -interprets or -evaluates, this narrator is unreliable or untrustworthy.”53

How would this differentiation apply to a text like the Vertumnus-episode in the 14th book of the Metamorphoses? Certainly, one could argue that Vertumnus uses or rather abuses the aetiological story of Iphis and Anaxarete for the purpose of courtship. Thus, on the axis of value, one might assume that he misevaluates the story, because the emphasis is put on his personal moral of the metamorphosis (‘don’t be a dura puella!’).54 On the other hand, given the practices of Hellenistic intertextuality, he fully complies with what Ovid advises to lovers in his Amores. On the axis of 51. On the concept of unreliability and its various modifications since Booth’s The Rhetoric of Fiction cf. Nünning (1997; 1998); Kindt (2008: 28-67); Shen (2013); Kimmerle (2015: 117-130) on Lucan’s Bellum civile; Margolin (2015); Nünning (2015b); Sternberg & Yacobi (2015). Schmid has introduced the term “abstract reader” to avoid the moral aspect coming along with Booth’s model of the “implied reader”, cf. Schmid (1973; 2010: 36-51, here esp. 40-42). A reaction to Schmid is offered by Berendsen (1980). For a criticism of both the concept of implied and the abstract author cf. Bal (1981: 208-209). 52. For this approach cf. Nünning (1997). 53. Shen (2013: [5-6]), with reference to Phelan & Martin (1999) and Phelan (2005: 34-37. 49-53); cf. Phelan & Martin (1999: 94): “narrators may deviate from the implied author’s view in their roles as reporters, as evaluators, and as readers or interpreters. […] the metaphor of axes of unreliability helps to differentiate among these kinds: unreliable reporting belongs to the axis of facts/events; unreliable evaluating occurs along the axis of ethics/evaluation; and unreliable reading occurs along the axis of knowledge/perception.” 54. Myers (1994: 123): “Vertumnus underlines the moral lesson of this metamorphosis, a maneuver unusual in the rest of the Metamorphoses.”

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knowledge, one could argue that the Ovidian Vertumnus does not underreport, but in contrast rather over-reports. In the story of Anaxarete and her image at the temple of Venus Prospiciens at Salamis he displays a kind of far-reaching knowledge which seems to be beyond his natural sphere. In the Lelex-episode in the eighth book of the Metamorphoses it is again the axis of evaluation that is of importance. Much like the god Vertumnus (who uses his story in the attempt to win love) the aged Lelex introduces his story of Philemon and Baucis for the purpose of refuting Pirithous’ criticism of the gods. The possibility that Lelex misevaluates his story arises less from the story itself, but rather from the story’s context and its intratextual references to the two other stories within the same passage, which are told by the swollen river god Achelous (Ov. Met. 8.550). The characterization of Achelous as ‘swollen’ has been interpreted as an intertextual reference to the metaphorical categories of Callimachean poetics, holding a prominent position in the middle of the Metamorphoses. Since the entire passage transports a plethora of intra- and intertextual references which are decoded and supplemented in the reader-response-activities, the Lelex-episode rather displays a mode of over-reporting than of under-reporting. Intertextuality seems to be of central importance for an understanding of the narrative mechanisms of unreliability in ancient texts. Hansen has introduced a model of unreliability which lends itself well for this purpose. His model contains a taxonomy of four categories: (1) Intranarrational: “[…] designates the ‘classical’ definition — that is unreliability established and supported by a large stock of discursive markers.” (2) Internarrational: “[…] designates the situation in which a narrator’s version of incidents is contrasted by another or several other narrators’ versions. […] In opposition to the intranarrational version, internarrational unreliability is not necessarily marked discursively in the unreliable narrator’s discourse, but comes into being by the framing of other voices and a non-correspondence with what is taking form as the factual story on their behalf […].” (3) Intertextual: is “based on manifest character types that, on behalf of their former existence, in their configuration or paratextual mentioning […] already direct the reader’s attention towards their reliability.” (Examples provided by Hansen are typical figures as Naïfs and Clowns). (4) Extratextual: “designates unreliability depending on the reader’s direct implementation of own values or knowledge in the textual world. […] this category is the most ambiguous.”55 55. Hansen (2007: 241-243).

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The value of this model is that it does not center on the typical textual markers of unreliability as such (1: intranarrational). Instead it lays emphasis on the communication between different voices, be they part of one and the same text (2: internarrational) or generated in part by the reader’s knowledge which is positioned outside of the text itself (4: extratextual).56 What Hansen classifies as internarrational describes unreliability as it occurs in the aforementioned passages of Vertumnus and Lelex, because in both instances unreliability is, at least partly, the outcome of framing (embedding) of voices or the confrontation of accumulated framed voices. The third and especially the fourth category of extratextual unreliability is suitable for describing the mechanisms of intertextuality as in case of the complex double reference to Propertius and Callimachus in Ovid’s Vertumnus-episode. Hansen also discusses an approach by Dorrit Cohn that offers a distinction between unreliable and discordant narration.57 Discordance is used here to determine unreliability when it occurs not on an axis of facts, but rather on an axis of ideology creating a distance between the author and the narrator of a text. “It suggests the reader’s sense that the author intends his or her work to be understood differently from the way the narrator understands it: in a way that can only be discovered by reading the work against the grain of the narrator’s discourse, providing it with a meaning that, though not explicitly spelled out, is silently signaled to the reader behind the narrator’s back.”58

Hansen points to the historical axis of interpretation and as an example he uses the interpretation of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and the ideological problem of colonialism which it may or may not be criticizing. In the example of the Ovidian Vertumnus-episode one could argue that Ovid, through an intertextual reworking of Propertius, evokes the possibility of a discordant unreliability in the referred text: having read Ovid’s Metamorphoses a reader may be able to detect and decode silent signals of discordance in Propertius’ Elegy 4.2. At the same time Ovid opens a metapoetic view of his own poetry as well as of poetical production in general. This way of interpretation falls in line with observations that Ovid uses the Vertumnus-episode explicitly to overwrite Propertius’ decisively Roman approach in order to enact a de-centering by widening the view to the Greco-Roman world and its literary tradition as a whole.59 56. The third category (intertextual unreliability) suits, for example, for typical figures such as in Comedy and the Novel. 57. Hansen (2007: 243); cf. also Fludernik (2005) and Cohn (2000). 58. Cohn (2000: 307). 59. A mode of de-centering and overwriting (“Überschreibung”, Walde 2000) is very Ovidian and can be found in different parts of his oeuvre, notably in the Heroides and his

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Booth’s theory of unreliability in the Rhetoric of Fiction (Booth 1983) and the ongoing development of this approach is a promising narratological tool for the interpretation of literary aetiology and its potential to metapoetically decode and explicate the mechanisms of fiction. The discussed examples of aetiological storytelling that carry signals of unreliability and offer metapoetic readings, display a tendency of over-reporting rather than of under-reporting. The reason for this finding is evidently the high degree of intertextuality and the preference for embedded narratives which is typical for the literary production of the Hellenistic and the Augustan age. Since modern theories of unreliability build upon modern texts (mainly the modern novel) this says much about the special features of this époque. It might also be seen as an affirmation that ancient texts can contribute to overall theory building in a diachronic narratology. Does Ovid, in the end, fall victim to his own playfulness with the borders of fiction? Does his voice as the implied author of the Metamorphoses become unreliable itself? In the first instance unreliability bears a negative tone that asks for a counterbalance of some kind (though this is not a granted aesthetic principle). Critics have, however, also taken a more positive approach to it. Solodow understands unreliable narration in Ovid as part of poetic self-doubt and self-criticism: “The poet of the Metamorphoses never makes himself more evident than when he turns on his own narrative and criticizes it. Not only does he remind us again and again that he is telling the story; he also frequently hints that it is not altogether reliable, but instead is merely a story that he is telling. By wondering aloud about it, the poet calls into question the truth of mythology.”60

This fits well with Mieke Bal’s general observation that unreliability is connected to self-analysis.61 Furthermore, narratological model building on unreliability in the wake of Booths’ Rhetoric of Fiction has also emphasized possible bonding effects of unreliable narration in contrast to its distancing and estranging effects. Phelan proposes six sub-types of such a bonding unreliability: “literally unreliable but metaphorically reliable”, “playful comparison between implied author and narrator”, “naïve defamiliarization”, “sincere but misguided self-deprecation”, “partial progress toward the norm”, and “bonding through optimistic exile poetry where he gives a voice to those who are unheard otherwise. Another theoretical approach to describe the shifting of the borders of fiction into the textual world itself by giving attention to the (unfulfilled) wishes, dreams and fears of figures offers the Possible Worlds Theory (cf. e.g. Kirstein 2015). 60. Solodow (1988: 64). 61. Bal (2009: 131), with particular regard to autobiographical genres.

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comparison.”62 Especially aspects like “playful comparison” or “bonding through optimistic comparison” seem to be promising categories for Ovid’s intertextual poetry.

5. Conclusion: Ovid as a Callimachean poet and the Narrativization of Aetiology It has been noted that Ovid is most ‘Callimachean’ in book one and then again in the ‘Roman’ books 14 and 15, possibly underlined by the Callimachean Achelous-passage in the middle of the Metamorphoses (book 8, s. above). In the first book, we find the aetiological story of the Pythian games (Ov. Met. 1.416-451, esp. 445-451), a theme which resembles the Victoria Berenices (frg. 54-60j Harder) at the beginning of the third book of Callimachus’ Aitia. Since books three and four of the Aitia are normally regarded as a unit equal to books one and two, there is an intertextuality of patterns between the beginning of the Metamorphoses with the Pythian games and the beginning of the second half of the Aitia with the Nemean games.63 Furthermore, the episode of Apollo’s victory over the Pythian dragon is placed in an eminent position within the first book, namely between the early history of the world from cosmogony to flood (the Urgeschichte, Ov. Met. 1.5-415) and the first love story, the story of Apollo and Daphne with the aetiology of the laurel. This episode can in many ways be regarded as a key passage for the understanding of the Metamorphoses (Ov. Met. 1.452-567). At the end of the Metamorphoses Callimachean influence is even more prevalent when Ovid finally reaches Rome and his own times at the end of his ‘world history’. Alessandro Barchiesi has remarked that the Metamorphoses span, on an axis of time, “from the creation of the world to its own conception.”64 Ovid’s approach of Rome has both a temporal and spatial dimension, as is evident in the Glaucus-episode (Ov. Met. 14.1-74) in which Italian borders are reached for the first time in the narrative. Here we find, among others, the extended Vertumnus-episode with the aetiological story of Iphis and Anaxarete in book 14 (Ov. Met. 14.622-761) and the Aesculapius-episode in book 15 (Ov. Met. 15.622-744). The story of the origins of the Aesculapius cult in Rome stands out in the Metamorphoses, because it is the only aition 62. Phelan (2007: 226-232); cf. Phelan & Rabinowitz in Herman et al. (2012: 33-37); Nünning (2015b: 10; 2015c: 102). 63. For Callimachus cf. Harder (2012: 2.384-388 and 495 on frg. 60c). On the relation between Ovid and Callimachus cf. Loehr (1996: 47. 139); Barchiesi (2011: 533). 64. Barchiesi (1997: 75); cf. Holzberg (2007: 113).

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of a cult (Kult-Aition) which is introduced as such in the typical Callimachean manner of question and answer.65 In addition, the framing of books 3 and 4 of Callimachus’ Aitia with the connecting theme of the Victoria and Coma Berenikes may have served as another model for Ovid’s own composition, especially since with Berenike a contemporary subject matter is given.66 Richard Thomas has shown that in his Georgics Vergil imitated these structural patterns in a similar way.67 The borders of Ovid’s Metamorphoses seem to be Callimachean in at least two ways. First, they display aetiological stories that resemble Callimachus’ poetry in general. And secondly, they mirror, on the level of the macro-structure and patterning, the principle of framing the work through related elements. The thesis of a Callimachean framing receives even more support from an analysis of the proem which introduces the work as a Callimachean poem or at least a poem that engages in a dialogue with Callimachean poetics by employing the ambiguous verb deducere (Ov. Met. 14.3-4 primaque ab origine mundi / ad mea perpetuum deducite tempora carmen).68 To sum up, there is a multiplicity of Callimachean framing and patterning in the introductory and concluding parts of the Metamorphoses. It is evident that Ovid used a multi-layered Callimachean framework in his Metamorphoses. That he does so, inter alia, by placing aetiological stories at the borders of his work, seems especially appropriate. Hellenistic poets display a general preference to place meta-poetic reflections at the borders of their books, and what narrative device could serve this purpose better than aetiological stories with their heightened potential of exploring the boundaries of fiction? Another attractive aspect of aetiologies arises from the possibility of introducing Greek themes. It is striking that at the moment when Ovid touches upon Roman grounds he maintains his narration of Greek stories.69 Again the Vertumnus-episode is a great example. Ovid changes the Propertian story with its emphasis on Rome by forcing Vertumnus to tell a story which takes place in Greece and explains the origins of a Greek cult. At the very moment when the disposition of his world history from chaos to Augustus seems to require a zoom-in on Rome, Ovid applies a decisive zoom-out, both in time and in place.70 65. Loehr (1996: 138). 66. On the structure of the Aitia cf. Asper (2004: 28); Fantuzzi & Hunter (2004: 44-49, here 45); Harder (2010: 93. 96-97); Harder (2012: 1.2-12, here 11). 67. Thomas (1983); cf. Thomas (1993: 205-206). 68. Harder (2003: 305-306). On the many discussions of the proem cf. e.g. Wheeler (1999: 8-30). 69. For statistics which show the preponderance of Greek themes in comparison to Roman themes cf. Feeney (1991: 208 note 74); Myers (1994: 126). 70. Myers (1994: 125-126): “Programmatically the story [i.e. of Vertumnus] prepares for Ovid’s predominantly Callimachean treatment of Roman themes in the final books of

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In the systematics of Pavel, the Ovidian Vertumnus appears as a narrative object that is decisively more surrogate than the Propertian version. By applying modes of unreliability in the story of Vertumnus and thus metapoetically making the mechanisms of fiction explicit, Ovid de-centralizes Rome and positions it in a wider Graeco-Roman framework, thus in some way mirroring Callimachus’ own modes of de-centering Greece.71 The aetiological stories in the last two books of the Metamorphoses are part of what seems to be an overall destabilizing of imperial Rome, and once again Callimachus appears as the “code” of discussion (Richard Hunter) through which Romans define their attitude toward Roman values.72 Their manipulative potential and the play of fiction with the past, present, and future, and also with the center and periphery address Roman self-perception at its very core.73 Past and present, old and new played an important role in the Augustan discourse, across a variety of media, most notably in literature and in the monuments of the urbs Roma. Since aetiological stories not only connect different sections on the axis of time, but also connect monuments and literature, their impact reaches beyond the text in a trans-medial way, by extending their metafictional (and potentially manipulative) effects on Roman monumental self-presentation.74 Through the import of Greek mythology to Rome and through the application of these myths onto the city’s monuments the lack of typical Roman myths, on the one side, and the richness of monuments, on the other side becomes strikingly apparent. Keeping this idea in mind, one can interpret the end of the Metamorphoses as a ‘de-monumentalization’ of Rome.75 Ovid’s play with the borders of fiction in the Metamorphoses reaches its climax in book 15 with the aetiological story of the Aesculapius cult the poem, where the stories from Italian legend Ovid chooses to present are almost of religious-aetiological nature.” 71. Cf. Acosta-Hughes & Stephens (2012: 149-155). 72. Hunter (2006: 2). Cf. Myers (1994: 126) on the function of the Vertumnus-story: “Thematically and generically, the Vertumnus-Pomona story, with its erotic content, relegates the surrounding apotheoses in Book 14 to a nonhierarchical position in the poem and does not allow the patriotic Augustan themes to overwhelm the narrative.” 73. On aetiology in imperial discourses cf. Asper (2011) and Klooster (2014), on the manipulation of the past in Apollonius’s Argonautika cf. Stephens (2000). 74. Barchiesi (1997; 2011: 518). On aetiology in Roman discourse cf. also Loehr (1996: 116): “Ovid projiziert die kallimacheischen Aitia mit ihren Tendenzen, Nuancen und Formen auf eine römische Monumentalität”, and Walter (2004: 420): “Die hermeneutische Figur der Aitiologie und die Urgeschichte als Projektionsfläche werden zu maßgeblichen Mustern der Gegenwartsdeutung.” 75. In addition, two more functions of the aetiological stories in the final books of the Metamorphoses can be defined: (1) Aetiology has a momentum of stabilizing, because aetiological narratives normally result in an unchangeable status which might be regarded as suitable for framing purposes (cf. e.g. Schmidt [1991: 62] for this aspect of unalterability). (2) Aetiology has a momentum of intellectual curiosity and thirst of knowledge.

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and its transfer to Rome (Ov. Met. 15.622-744).76 The story is “the summation of a repeated pattern of exodus from Greece to Italy that occurs in the last three books of the Metamorphoses.”77 Furthermore, it stands out because of the invocation of the Muses (line 622), its general Callimachean style and organization, and because it is the first story of the Metamorphoses which dates back firmly to 292/91 BC, thus dividing historical and contemporary Roman times from the mythical past narrated before.78 The transition is smoothly prepared via the story of the legendary Roman commander Cipus and his refusal to become king of Rome (Ov. Met. 15.565-621, only separated from the Caesar-episode by a few lines). Since the story of the introduction of the Aesculapius cult to Rome comes directly before the Caesar-and-Augustus-passage (Ov. Met. 15.745870) and the poet’s epilogue (871-879) it is of even more significance.79 As a whole, it serves as a ‘jumping board’ (Springbrett, Loehr) to the climax of the Metamorphoses.80 It is at this most significant turning point of his narrative that Ovid employs the aetiological story of Aesculapius for a no less significant development of aetiological story-telling as such: he uses the aetiology with its inherent boundary of fiction as a complex narrative device to lead from the fictional part of the Metamorphoses to its final ‘factual’ part. This aetiological story no longer explores the borders of fiction within the story, but the aetiological story as a whole serves as a narrative device to mark the border of fiction. The border of fiction is not in the story, but the story itself has become the border. Once again, this rhetorizing or narrativization of aetiology makes explicit the mechanisms of fiction and of narration in Ovid’s Callimachean Metamorphoses.

76. Cf. Wheeler (1999: 105 and 196); Feeney (1991: 210-213); Fränkel (1956: 108); Loehr (1996: 134.136.139 note 216). 77. Wheeler (1999: 196). 78. On the Callimachean influence cf. Loehr (1996: 138), on the dating Feeney (1991: 208), and Holzberg (2007: 112). On the introduction of Asclepius in Rome and the founding of a temple cf. Edelstein & Edelstein (1998: 431-452, here nr. 850); Beard et al. (1998: 1.69-70); cf. also Broughton (1951: 182). Feeney (1991: 208 note 74) observes that the Asclepius-epsiode takes almost as much lines as Caesar and Augustus together. 79. On the transition in lines 745-746 cf. Solodow (1988: 26); on the word-play urbisorbis in Latin poetry cf. Hardie (1986: 364-366). 80. Loehr (1996: 138). Holzberg (2007: 111) sees also the moment of separation book 15, but rather connects it with the speech of Pythagoras: “Vielleicht hat Ovid die mise en abyme des ganzen Hexameterepos an den Anfang des letzten Buches gestellt, weil er die noch folgenden Abschnitte vom übrigen Werk etwas absetzen wollte. Sie haben gemeinsam, daß sie römische Mythen bieten und aitiologisch nur noch Kulte beziehungsweise Gegenstände erklären, die eine historische Bedeutung haben.”

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Margolin, U., 2015, “Theorising Narrative (Un)reliability. A Tentative Roadmap”. In: V. Nünning, Unreliable Narration, 31-58. Martinez, M. & M. Scheffel (20098), Einführung in die Erzähltheorie. München: C.H. Beck. Morgan, J., 2004, “Part 9: The Novel”. In: I.J.F. Jong, de & R. Nünlist & A. Bowie (eds.), Narrators, Narratees, and Narratives in Ancient Greek Literature (Studies in Ancient Greek Narrative, Vol. 1), Leiden: Brill. Myers, K., 1994, Ovid’s Causes. Cosmogony and Aetiology in the Metamorphoses, Ann Arbor, MA: University of Michigan Press. Newsom, R., 1988, A Likely Story. Probability and Play in Fiction. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Nünning, A., 1997, “‘But why will you say that I am mad?’ On the Theory, History, and Signals of Unreliable Narration”. Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik 22, 83-105. —, 1998, “Unreliable Narration zur Einführung. Grundzüge einer kognitivnarratologischen Theorie und Analyse unglaubwürdigen Erzählens”. In: A. Nünning (ed.), Unreliable Narration. Studien zur Theorie und Praxis unglaubwürdigen Erzählens in der englischsprachigen Erzählliteratur. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 3-40. Nünning, V. (ed.), 2015a, Unreliable Narration and Trustworthiness. Intermedial and Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Berlin: De Gruyter. —, 2015b, “Conceptualising (Un)reliable Narration and (Un)trustworthiness”. In: Nünning, Unreliable Narration, 1-28. —, 2015c, “Reconceptualising Fictional (Un)reliability and (Un)trustworthiness from a Multidisciplinary Perspective. Categories, Typology and Functions”. In: Nünning, Unreliable Narration, 83-108. Pausch, D., 2010, “Libellus non tam diserte quam fideliter scriptus? Unreliable Narration in the Historia Augusta”. Ancient Narrative 8. View date: 26 Aug 2017. Pavel, T. G., 1986, Fictional Worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Phelan, J. & M. P. Martin, 1999, “The Lessons of ‘Weymouth.’ Homodiegesis, Unreliability, Ethics, and The Remains of the Day”. In: D. Herman (ed.). Narratologies. New Perspectives on Narrative Analysis. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 88-109. Phelan, J. (2005), Living to Tell about It. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. —, 2007, “Estranging Unreliability, Bonding Unreliability, and the Ethics of Lolita”. Narrative 15: 222-238. Porte, D., 1985, L’Étiologie religieuse dans les Fastes d’Ovide. Paris: Belles Lettres. Reitz, C. & A. Walter (eds.), 2014, Von Ursachen sprechen. Eine aitiologische Spurensuche / Telling Origins. On the Lookout for Aetiology. Hildesheim: Olms. Schmid, W. 1973, Der Textaufbau in den Erzählungen Dostoevskijs. München 1973 [2nd ed. Amsterdam 1986]. —, 2010, Narratology. An Introduction. Berlin: de Gruyter. Schmidt, E. A., 1991, Ovids poetische Menschenwelt. Die Metamorphosen als Metapher und Symphonie. Sitzungsberichte der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-historische Klasse 1991/2, Heidelberg: Winter.

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Shen, D., 2013, “Unreliability”. In: Peter Hühn et al. (eds.), The Living Handbook of Narratology. Hamburg: Hamburg University Press. URL = hup.sub. uni-hamburg.de/lhn/index.php ?title=Unreliability &oldid=1529 View date: 26 Aug 2017. Sistakou, E., 2009, “Poeticizing Natural Phenomena. The Case of Callimachus”. In: M.A. Harder et al., 177-199. Slater, N. W. (ed.), 2017, Voice and Voices in Antiquity. Leiden: Brill. Solodow, J. B., 1988, The World of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Stephens, S., 2000, “Writing Epic for the Ptolemaic Court”. In: M.A. Harder, et al. (eds.), Apollonius Rhodius (Hellenistica Groningana 4). Leuven: Peeters, 195-215. —, 2010, “Ptolemaic Alexandria”. In: J.J. Claus & M. Cypers, Hellenistic Literature, 46-61. Sternberg, M. & T. Yacobi, 2015, “(Un)Reliability in Narrative Discourse. A Comprehensive Overview”. Poetics Today 36, 327-498. Thomas, R. F., 1983, “Callimachus, the Victoria Berenikes and Roman Poetry”. Classical Quarterly 33, 92-101. —, 1993, “Callimachus back in Rome”. In: M.A. Harder et al. (eds.) 197-215. Tueller, M. A., 2008, Look Who’s Talking. Innovation in Voice and Identity in Hellenistic Epigram, Leuven: Peeters. Walde, C., 2000, “Literatur als Experiment? Zur Erzähltechnik in Ovids Heroides”. Antike und Abendland 46, 124-138. Waldner, K. 2007, “Griechische und römische Aitiologie in Ovids Metamorphosen”. In: A. Bierl et al. (eds.), Literatur und Religion 2: Wege zu einer mythisch-rituellen Poetik bei den Griechen. Berlin: De Gruyter, 203-237. —, 2014, “Aitiologie und Religion in der griechisch-römischen Antike”. In: C. Reitz et al. (eds.), 25-57. Walter, U., 2004, Memoria und res publica. Zur Geschichtskultur im republikanischen Rom. Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Antike. Wheeler, S.M., 1999, A Discourse of Wonders. Audience and Performance in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Wilkinson, L.P. 19992 (19551), “The Poetry of Ovid”. In: L’Influence grecque sur la poésie latine de Catulle à Ovide. Geneva: Fondation Hardt, 223-254. Yacobi, T. 1981, “Fictional Reliability as a Communicative Problem”. Poetics Today 2, 113–126. Zipfel, F., 2001, Fiktion, Fiktivität, Fiktionalität. Analysen zur Fiktion in der Literatur und zum Fiktionsbegriff in der Literaturwissenschaft. Berlin: E. Schmidt.

YOUR OWN PERSONAL LIBRARY OF ALEXANDRIA: CALLIMACHUS’ SCHOLARLY WORKS AND THEIR READERS* Jan KWAPISZ & Katarzyna PIETRUCZUK

It is not that Callimachus’ scholarly fragments (frs. 403-466 Pfeiffer and SH 291A-294) have not been attracting attention in the 25 years since the first Groningen workshop,1 yet Callimachus the scholar remains a tiny dot in the firmament in which the star of Callimachus the poet has been shining so brightly. The few fragments that have reached us do not easily evoke excitement. P.M. Fraser made sure to underscore their “greatest importance, both in our estimate of the poet and in [their] own right”, yet his appraisal was not exactly enthusiastic: “Callimachus’ literary, pinacographical, antiquarian, and paradoxographical work has been overshadowed by his poetical achievement, and indeed we see in its fragmentary remains little trace of the alert and lively intelligence and powerful, egotistical personality which emerge from his poetry.”2

Yet did Callimachus have a horse in this race? If he intended his scholarly works to dazzle the reader, he expected them to shine, we submit, not with his egotism and wit, but rather with the grandeur of the intellectual project which they are a synecdoche of. His Pinakes was, if not the ultimate guide to the resources of the Alexandrian library, then no less than a systematic description of all Greek literature compiled on the basis of the library’s records, a project, as has recently been observed by M. Squire, having much to do with the characteristically Hellenistic drive to capture and encapsulate the universe, the world, the totality, or precisely the grandeur in the human-scaled products of human invention — works of art and literature, or even technological artefacts (the Antikythera mechanism, “a portable cosmos”,3 to which we will later * We are grateful to the respondent to our paper, Hamidou Richer, and the Groningen audience, especially Annemarie Ambühl, Peter Bing, Nita Krevans, Max Leventhal, Thomas Nelson, Ivana Petrovic and Ruth Scodel, for their helpful and stimulating comments. 1. Esp. Krevans (2004; 2005 and 2011); Asper (2004: 47-51; 497-525), and, inter alia, Martínez (2001); Prioux (2009); Sistakou (2009); Acosta-Hughes & Stephens (2012: 15-18). 2. Fraser (1972: I 455). 3. This is the title of the most recent, comprehensive book on the Antikythera mechanism (Jones (2017)).

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return, providing a striking example).4 Unlike the Tabulae Iliacae, to which Squire devotes much attention, the Pinakes is, obviously, hardly a miniature object. Callimachus’ greatest scholarly achievement is a paradox — at once impossibly compressed, as the summa of human knowledge, and stunningly monumental, as an epitome inflated to the size of 120 books. As such, the Pinakes was an unprecedented undertaking. Although we cannot directly contemplate its grandeur, as it has long been lost, its preserved fragments allow us to see how it spoke to ancients readers of later periods, which, in turn, may help us understand Callimachus’ original design. These rhetorics of the Pinakes will be the focus of the first section of the present discussion. If by compiling the Pinakes Callimachus allowed every reader his or her own virtual tour of the Alexandrian library, then Callimachus’ other scholarly works allow us to see what paths he took himself navigating the library’s aisles. R. Blum saw that these writings must have to a significant extent been based on his explorations of the library’s resources.5 This part of Callimachus’ scholarly oeuvre, on which the second section of this discussion will concentrate, is even more obscure to us than the Pinakes, as in some cases what we have is nothing more than a title. Yet these titles alone, we argue, may tell us something about the aims of Callimachus’ scholarship. We will see how the constellations they form dialogue with the patterns that emerge from various contemporary cultural discourses. In short, we will show that there is still much to discover in Callimachus’ scholarly fragments. A question we should like to leave the reader with is whether Pfeiffer’s edition, formidable as it is, remains satisfactory as the basic tool for dealing with these fragments (for one thing, it is customary to refer to them, with Pfeiffer, as fragmenta grammatica, but we will see that in some cases this label simply does not fit, whatever definition of ars grammatica one chooses to apply). We cannot promise to deliver a full-scale commentary on this fascinating material in the near future, but here is a thought worth contemplating.6

4. Squire (2016: 187 and 190). 5. Blum (1991: 134-137). 6. Although we employ ‘we’ rather than ‘I’ throughout this discussion, Jan Kwapisz is responsible for the second part of the present discussion and Katarzyna Pietruczuk is responsible for its first part, which stems from Pietruczuk (2014); an English-language version of this book will soon appear in the series Quaderni dei Seminari Romani di Cultura Greca.

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1. ‘If the Alexandrian Library Does Not Have It, It Does Not Exist at All’ The Suda supplies an extended title of Callimachus’ chief bibliographical work:7 Πίνακες τῶν ἐν πάσῃ παιδείᾳ διαλαμψάντων, καὶ ὧν συνέγραψαν, ἐν βιβλίοις κ′ καὶ ρ′. Tables, in 120 Books, of Those Who Distinguished Themselves in All Branches of Learning and their Writings.

Even if this is unlikely to have been the original title,8 it nevertheless speaks of the grandeur of design, the status Callimachus’ monumental work enjoyed, and its content. Tzetzes provides an account of its origins:9 Ἀλέξανδρος ὁ Αἰτωλὸς καὶ Λυκόφρων ὁ Χαλκιδεύς, ἀλλὰ καὶ Ζηνόδοτος ὁ Ἐφέσιος τῷ Φιλαδέλφῳ Πτολεμαίῳ συνωθηθέντες βασιλικῶς ὁ μὲν τὰς τῆς τραγῳδίας, Λυκόφρων δὲ τὰς τῆς κωμῳδίας βίβλους διώρθωσαν, Ζηνόδοτος δὲ τὰς ὁμηρείους καὶ τῶν λοιπῶν ποιητῶν. ὁ γὰρ ῥηθεὶς βασιλεὺς Πτολεμαῖος ἐκεῖνος, ἡ φιλοσοφωτάτη τῷ ὄντι καὶ θεία ψυχή, καλοῦ παντὸς καὶ θεάματος καὶ ἔργου καὶ λόγου τελῶν ἐπιθυμητής, ἐπεὶ διὰ Δημητρίου τοῦ Φαληρέως καὶ γερουσίων ἑτέρων ἀνδρῶν δαπάναις βασιλικαῖς ἁπανταχόθεν τὰς βίβλους εἰς Ἀλεξάνδρειαν ἤθροισε, δυσὶ βιβλιοθήκαις ταύτας ἀπέθετο, ὧν τῆς ἐκτὸς μὲν ἦν ἀριθμὸς τετρακισμύριαι δισχίλιαι ὀκτακόσιαι, τῆς δ’ ἔσω τῶν ἀνακτόρων καὶ βασιλείου βίβλων μὲν συμμιγῶν ἀριθμὸς τεσσαράκοντα μυριάδες, ἁπλῶν δὲ καὶ ἀμιγῶν βίβλων μυριάδες ἐννέα, ὡς ὁ Καλλίμαχος νεανίσκος ὢν τῆς αὐλῆς ὑστέρως μετὰ τὴν ἀνόρθωσιν τοὺς πίνακας αὐτῶν ἀπεγράψατο. Ἐρατοσθένης δέ, ὁ ἡλικιώτης αὐτοῦ, παρὰ τοῦ βασιλέως τὸ τοσοῦτον ἐνεπιστεύθη βιβλιοφυλάκιον. ἀλλὰ τὰ Καλλιμάχου καὶ τὰ Ἐρατοσθένους μετὰ βραχύν τινα γέγονε χρόνον, ὡς ἔφην, τῆς συναγωγῆς τῶν βίβλων καὶ διορθώσεως, κἂν ἐπ᾽ αὐτοῦ τοῦ Πτολεμαίου τοῦ Φιλαδέλφου.

7. On the Pinakes, see Pietruczuk (2014: 172-197 and forthcoming); Krevans (2011); Blum (1991: 137-142 and 150-160); Regenbogen (1950: 1418-1423); Schmidt (1922). 8. As was argued by Gardthausen (1922: 76) and Blum (1991: 151); see also n. 37 below. Contra see, e.g., Schmidt (1922: 47-49). 9. The text has come down to us in three versions, which are referred to, since Kaibel’s 1899 edition, as Pb, Ma and Mb. Version Mb quoted here is the most extensive of these variants, moreover, it is the latter variant whose Latin translation, the so-called Scholium Plautinum, was found by Ossann in 1819 in a fifteenth-century ms. containing Plautus’ plays (for the text see Ritschl (1866: 5-8) and also Schmidt (1922: 9-10, T 24d) and Koster (1961: 23-37)). Dziatzko (1891: 350-351) proposed to emend the somewhat awkward syntax of the sentence that refers to Callimachus’ Pinakes by changing ὑστέρως to ἱστορεῖ ὅς, which would make Callimachus Tzetzes’ direct source. This was accepted by Schmidt (1922: 9-10, T 24) and Cantarella (1949: 59, T 14), yet Pfeiffer (1968: 127-128) and Fraser (1972: II 474 n. 108) rejected it. However, according to Fraser (1972: I 321), Tzetzes “evidently reaches back ultimately to some Alexandrian sources of the Ptolemaic period”.

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‘Under the royal patronage of Ptolemy Philadelphus, Alexander of Aetolia edited the books of tragedy, Lycophron of Chalcis those of comedy, and Zenodotus of Ephesus those of Homer and the other poets. That Ptolemy, the king I spoke of, was really the most philosophic and divine soul, and desired everything fine — sights, deeds, and words. Through Demetrius of Phaleron and other councilors, he collected the books at royal expense from all over the world and housed them in Alexandria in two libraries. The public library had 42,800 books; the private library of the court and palace had 400,000 unsorted books, and 90,000 single, sorted books, as was catalogued by Callimachus, once a young man of the court, after the books were edited. His contemporary Eratosthenes was entrusted by the king with the important post of librarian. The work of Callimachus and Eratosthenes took place a short time after the collecting and editing of the books (as I said) – even within the lifetime of Ptolemy Philadelphus himself.’10 (Tz. Proleg. de com. 2)

According to Tzetzes, Callimachus compiled the Pinakes after the Greek writings had been collected and identified in the Alexandrian library, and their editions (diorthôseis) had been prepared. It can be inferred from this information that Callimachus’ undertaking — which should presumably be regarded as, effectively, a bibliography of all Greek literature, based on the library’s holdings11 — was intended to present a certain summa of knowledge, namely to summarize the results of the philological and critical research carried out in the first period of the library, i.e. under Ptolemy II Philadelphus. In what follows our attention will focus on just how efficient this rhetoric, which imposed an image of the Alexandrian book collection as complete and thoroughly investigated by the library’s researchers, proved to be in view of the actual functioning of the Pinakes in later centuries. We will also see that the Pinakes spoke in two rather different tongues, as Callimachus’ double achievement was to create at once a powerful tool of Ptolemaic propaganda and to set a new, enormously influential scholarly paradigm within the nascent discipline of philological studies.

10. Trans. S. Levin in E.A. Parsons (1952: 112), slightly adapted. 11. It is notoriously debated whether Callimachus’ Pinakes actually served as the catalogue of the Alexandrian library, which provided an account of its holdings, or whether it was intended to supply a sort of bibliography of Greek literature, which also listed books missing from the Alexandrian library; see e.g. Blum (1991, 227-229); Barnes (2000: 69) and Canfora (1990: 39). I discuss this issue more at length in Pietruczuk (2014: 188-197 and forthcoming), with further bibliography. In short, I believe that the Pinakes must have fulfilled both these functions, in view of the Ptolemies’ ambition to gather all Greek literature in the library. Callimachus’ catalogue work Pinax tôn didaskalôn contained information regarding the preservation of the plays it listed (see below), whose authoritativeness implies the conviction of having gained access to everything there was out there.

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The point of departure for our discussion of the Pinakes is provided by two testimonies related to another bibliographical work of Callimachus, namely his Pinax tôn didaskalôn.12 This work listed Athenian playwrights in order of their debuts and enumerated their plays by prizes won in competitions, separately at the Great Dionysia and the Lenaea. It is reconstructed largely on the basis of a fragmentary inscription from the wall of a public building in Rome, probably a library, whose one fragment was discovered in 1772 and another in 1777 (IG XIV 1097, 1098 and 1098a).13 These fragments dealt with comic poets, yet according to scholarly consensus there is no reason to think that the comedians were the document’s sole concern. The material was derived from Aristotle’s Didascaliae, the only authoritative source providing such information on the Athenian dramatic competitions, which was, in turn, based on the official Athenian archival records, already unavailable to the Alexandrian scholars.14 It is precisely by establishing the link with the Didascaliae, and consequently describing the methodology adopted by the inscriptional document’s author, that A. Körte identified the document as most likely having originated within the milieu of the Alexandrian library. Furthermore, he suggested a correspondence between the epigraphic source and the title of Callimachus’ work, as provided by the Suda (s.v. Καλλίμαχος):15 Πίναξ καὶ ἀναγραφὴ τῶν κατὰ χρόνους καὶ ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς γενομένων διδασκάλων. Table and Chronological Register of the Dramatic Poets from the Beginning.

The Pinax tôn didaskalôn was probably compiled before the Pinakes, at a time when Alexander Aetolus and Lycophron of Chalcis were preparing, at Ptolemy Philadelphus’ behest, the diorthôseis of the Athenian dramatic texts. The comprehensive list of plays by individual dramatic authors, having Aristotle’s Didacaliae as its source, was of crucial usefulness in identifying the collected dramas and inventorying the library’s holdings. The reason why Callimachus’ earlier bibliographical work is of interest to us is that it sheds important light on the situation in which Callimachus was to find himself as author of the Pinakes. As far as the 12. On the Pinax tôn didaskalôn, see Pietruczuk (2014: 197-207 and forthcoming); Blum (1991: 137-142); Körte (1905). On the Pinax tôn didaskalôn as a distinct catalogue, cf. n. 31 below. 13. See Körte (1905: 444-445). Ed. pr. Odericus (1775: 360) and Odericus (1777). The inscription was lost soon after its discovery; see, for a comprehensive treatment, Wilhelm (1906: 195-208), and now Millis & Olson (2012: 225-229). 14. On Aristotle’s Didascaliae, see Jachmann (1909) and Pietruczuk (2014 and forthcoming). 15. Körte (1905).

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extant fragments allow us to judge, the only new element in the Pinax tôn didaskalôn, in comparison with the Didascaliae, was the annotations concerning the plays’ preservation.16 The information these annotations carried was supplied by the Alexandrian library’s resources. What they document, therefore, is a stage of building up the Alexandrian book collection when it was realized that practically no real additions to it were brought with the scrolls of authors of past generations newly acquired by the library. The Alexandrian library may at that point have claimed to have collected the entire literary output of the Greeks within its walls. Certainly, to declare that a book that the library’s acquisitions department was unable to track down had been lost was a bold move. There must have been an element of propaganda in the usurping of the title of the leading, first-reference book collection in the Greek world — ‘if the Alexandrian library does not have it, it does not exist at all’. The difference between the catalogue provided by the Pinax tôn didaskalôn and the library’s main catalogue, i.e. the Pinakes, lay in the availability for the former of the complete list of the results of Athenian dramatic competitions, as provided by Aristotle’s Didascaliae, from which the Alexandrian scholars as well as the catalogue’s readers could easily deduce what was missing. Lost works may, to be sure, have been included in the lists which Callimachus compiled for the Pinakes, but 16. Line 9 of fr. 1097 has ΑΥΤΑΙΜΟΝΑΙΣΩΙ[, which Körte and Wilhelm interpreted as αὗται μόναι σῷαι (Petersen: αὗται μόναι σῴζονται); line 7 of fr. 1098a bears a similar annotation, namely in ΪΟΔΟΙΣΣΩΪΩ Körte saw the word σῴῳ. These annotations presumably refer to the holdings of the Alexandrian book collection rather than book collections gathered in Roman libraries; first, this is what their Graecitas points to, and second, they are parallelled by the information on the preservation of plays we find in two hypotheses probably authored by Aristophanes of Byzantium, namely hyp. I Ar. (ἐδιδάχθη ἐπὶ Εὐθύνου ἄρχοντος ἐν Ληναίοις διὰ Καλλιστράτου· καὶ πρῶτος ἦν· δεύτερος Κρατῖνος Χειμαζομένοις. οὐ σώζονται. τρίτος Εὔπολις Νουμηνίαις. ‘It [sc. Acharnians] was produced in the archonship of Euthynus at the Lenaea through Callistratus. It placed first. Cratinus was second with Tempest-Tossed — it has not been preserved. Eupolis third with New Moons.’ Trans. Storey 2011: 243) and hyp. Eur. Phoen. († ἐπὶ Ναυσικράτους ἄρχοντος [lacuna] δεύτερος Εὐριπίδης [lacuna] καθῆκε διδασκαλίαν † περὶ τούτου καὶ γὰρ ταῦτα ὁ Οἰνόμαος καὶ Χρύσιππος † καὶ σῴζεται. The passage is hopelessly corrupt, but the annotation ‘it has not been preserved’ is clear enough). Choeroboscus (eighth/ninth centuries), as quoted by the Etymologicum Magnum and the Etymologicum Genuinum, testifies to the use of Callimachus’ Pinakes as a source by the author of the hypotheses: ὁ δὲ Χοιροβοσκὸς εἰς τὸ Ἀνεκφώνητον λέγει, πίνακας φησὶν ἐν οἷς αἱ ἀναγραφαὶ ἦσαν τῶν δραμάτων. ῾Ο οὖν Καλλίμαχος [ὁ γραμματικὸς] ἐποίει πίνακας ἐν οἷς ἦσαν αἱ ἀναγραφαὶ παρὰ τῶν ἀρχαίων· οἷς ἐντυχὼν ὁ γραμματικὸς, ἐποιήσατο τὰς ὑποθέσεις τῶν δραμάτων (‘Choeroboscus in the commentary on the Mute Consonants refers as Pinakes to a work containing catalogues of plays. Callimachus wrote Pinakes, which contained catalogues from the oldest times. Having found them, the grammarian wrote the dramatic hypotheses.’ Et. Gen. B and EM s.v. Πίναξ).

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only if he got hold of testimonies pointing to their existence.17 The Athenian dramatic corpus was the only large subset of the Alexandrian book collection whose completeness it was possible to control with relative certainty, owing to Aristotle. As is evidenced by the inscription discovered in Rome, the work which resulted from that controlling procedure could retain its usefulness far outside the library walls. It is of interest, however, that the way in which the Pinax tôn didaskalôn was spreading the propaganda of the Alexandrian collection’s completeness and authoritativeness among the ancient intellectuals was through the dialectics of completeness and absence.18 The absence, non-existence and impossibility of ascertaining crucial facts were inherent in the situation in which Callimachus and the Alexandrian scholars whose research laid the groundwork for some parts of the Pinakes found themselves. In effect, Callimachus, the creator of what boldly usurped the status of the ultimately comprehensive bibliographical tool, had a rather embarrassing confession to make — he had to confess his inability to solve a number of problems due to the lack of sources. By aiming to focus not on selected problems — those cases which allowed Callimachus and his colleagues to reach satisfactory conclusions — but on the whole of the literature of the Greeks, much of what the Pinakes documented was not the current state of knowledge, but rather the state

17. On the structure and contents of the Pinakes, see esp. Blum (1991: 152-160); Pfeiffer (1968: 128-134); Wendel (1949: 24-75); Schmidt (1922: 46-98); Gardthausen (1922: 76-80). 18. This may be the reason why this writing was put on public display in epigraphic form in Rome. This catalogue registered a tension between a picture of the history of Athenian drama, which was presented in its original agonistic context, as a succession of dramatic contests, and a picture of the preservation and functioning of the heritage of Athenian drama in the Hellenistic age, as book-scrolls that were being meticulously collected and studied by the Museum scholars. This inscription was a monument to Alexandrian scholarship portraying a branch of its activity where scholars could make a legitimate claim to have accurately assessed the preservation of the material they studied and to authoritatively declare they had everything there was to have. If we furthermore realize that between the compilation of the Pinax tôn didaskalôn and the carving of the inscription in Rome much of the Alexandrian book collection was presumably lost to the Brucheion fire in the first century BC, then it becomes clear that the time when the Pinax tôn didaskalôn was compiled may easily have come to acquire a legendary aura as a time when scholarly titans were capable of creating the most complete description of Greek literature in its history and when more was known about the Greeks literary production than any time before or after. On the other hand, the reappearance of the Pinax tôn didaskalôn as an inscription should be seen in the context of a long tradition of recording the history of Athenian dramatic contests in epigraphic form; cf. the Fasti and Didascaliae inscriptions, respectively IG II2 2318 and IG II2 2319-2323a (the latter was an epigraphic version of the Didascaliae authored by Aristotle, on which the Pinax tôn didaskalôn was based). The title Pinax itself may point to the epigraphic character of the work it identifies.

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of ignorance. As a consequence, the Pinakes introduced a new paradigm to literary studies — the scholarly paradigm of posing problems rather than giving answers. The extant testimonies may be taken to indicate that for several centuries after its creation, the Pinakes continued to function as a standard reference work in cases when doubts were emerging as to the attribution of some work, at least among more sophisticated readers.19 This is suggested by the fact that in ten cases out of the twenty-four testimonies collected by Pfeiffer (frs. 429-452) it is in the context of a discussion of a work’s authorship or title that the Pinakes is referred to. The following fragments provide apt examples: (1a) Ἑκαταῖος δ᾿ ὁ Μιλήσιος ἐν Ἀσίας περιηγήσει, εἰ γνήσιον τοῦ συγγραφέως τὸ βιβλίον· Καλλίμαχος γὰρ Νησιώτου αὐτὸ ἀναγράφει... ‘Hecataeus of Miletus in the Tour of Asia – if the book is actually his; because Callimachus ascribes it to Nesiotes...’20 (Call. fr. 437 Pfeiffer ap. Ath. Epit. 2.70b) (1b) Δίφιλος Αἱρησιτείχει (τὸ δὲ δρᾶμα τοῦτο Καλλίμαχος ἐπιγράφει Εὐνοῦχον). λέγει δὲ οὕτως... ‘Diphilus in The Man Who Captured Walls – Callimachus gives the title of this play as The Eunuch – says the following...’21 (Call. fr. 440 Pfeiffer ap. Ath. 11.496e-f) (2) ἔγραψε [῎Ιων] μέλη πολλὰ καὶ τραγῳδίας καὶ φιλόσοφόν τι σύγγραμμα τὸν Τριαγμὸν ἐπιγραφόμενον, ὅπερ Καλλίμαχος ἀντιλέγεσθαί φησιν ὑπὸ [Bergk ὡς codd.] Ἐπιγένους. ‘[Ion] wrote many lyric poems, tragedies and a philosophical treatise entitled Triagmos, whose authenticity, according to Callimachus, is questioned by Epigenes.’ (Call. fr. 449 Pfeiffer ap. Harp. s.v. Ἴων)

The picture that emerges from these passages is one of the Alexandrian Pinakes as a basic reference work,22 so easily recognizable that it is sufficient to write ‘Callimachus says’, without mentioning its title. Using this tool speaks of one’s belonging, or aspiring, to the intellectual elite; it is asteion to show that one is aware of problems in properly identifying a literary work under discussion. Certainly, when this comes from Athenaeus’ pen we must be dealing with a display of erudition, and therefore it is difficult to speculate about whether the practice of constantly looking up 19. 20. 21. 22.

On Athenaeus’ use of Callimachus’ catalogue, see Jacob (2000: 94-101). Trans. Olson (2007: 395-397). Trans. Olson (2009: 417). Cf. Jacob (2013: 77).

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authors and titles in the Pinakes extended outside the circle of well-read philologists. Nevertheless, the Pinakes sets a new intellectual standard for discussing the issues of authorship and identification — according to this standard, worldly minds are expected to appreciate the importance of critically approaching literary sources. At the same time, however, the reader who has before him or her a text of dubious identification, unless he or she happens to be in Alexandria, is practically unable to take an informed stance on the problem he or she faces. Callimachus and his collaborators based their conclusions on examining multiple copies of the same books and had access to what was intended to form a complete collection of Greek literature. If they were unable to find a definitive solution, then one without access to that book collection was in no position to properly research the problem.23 Consequently, what the Pinakes managed to achieve was to grant the Museum scholars a monopoly on doing real scholarship, whereas the intellectuals outside the Ptolemaic circle were bound not only to keep track of that scholarship, but also to blindly accept its results — or hop on the first ship leaving for Alexandria.24 The heritage of Callimachus the scholar lived on for at least several centuries. Athenaeus’ use of the Pinakes is testimony to its functioning as late as the second/third century AD, long after the Alexandrian library had been burned during Julius Caesar’s invasion of Egypt in 48/47 BC.25 The extent of the destruction caused by the Brucheion fire remains debated, and in addition Athenaeus’ strong ties to Alexandria derive from his personal knowledge of the city,26 yet there are reasons to think that in that period the Pinakes circulated in book form beyond Alexandria.27 We have already seen that another product of Callimachus’ bibliographic activity in the Alexandrian library, his Pinax tôn didaskalôn, without doubt reached Rome, as it was inscribed on one of the city’s buildings; it is hard to imagine that the Pinakes did not find its way there.

23. Moreover, the Ptolemies and the Museum scholars were also rather brutally preventing the scholars outside Alexandria from doing proper research by physically annexing every old book copy they were able to track down, providing a new copy in exchange (cf. Gal. In Hp. Epid. 3 Comm. 3.17a.607 Kühn). This seriously impaired the value of the other book collections. 24. Montana (2015: 102) underscores the significance of teamwork in conducting textual research in the Alexandrian library. 25. The main sources for this incident are Sen. Dial. 9.9.5; Plut. Caes. 49; D.C. 42.38.2; Amm. Marc. 22.16.15; Oros. 6.15.31. For a discussion, see Barnes (2000: 70-75), with further bibliography. 26. See Thompson (2000: 77-81). 27. Cf. Jacob (2013: 77).

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Furthermore, fr. 439 Pfeiffer implies that Athenaeus had access not only to the Alexandrian Pinakes, but also to its Pergamene counterpart: Ἄλεξις δ᾿ ἐν Ἀσωτοδιδασκάλῳ, φησὶ Σωτίων ὁ Ἀλεξανδρεὺς ἐν τοῖς περὶ τῶν Τίμωνος σίλλων (ἐγὼ γὰρ οὐκ ἀπήντησα τῷ δράματι· πλείονα τῆς μέσης καλουμένης κωμῳδίας ἀναγνοὺς δράματα τῶν ὀκτακοσίων καὶ τούτων ἐκλογὰς ποιησάμενος οὐ περιέτυχον τῷ Ἀσωτοδιδασκάλῳ, ἀλλ᾿ οὐδ’ ἀναγραφῆς ἀξιωθέν τινι σύνοιδα· οὔτε γὰρ Καλλίμαχος οὔτε Ἀριστοφάνης αὐτὸ ἀνέγραψαν, ἀλλ᾿ οὐδ᾿ οἱ τὰς ἐν Περγάμῳ ἀναγραφὰς ποιησάμενοι) – ὁ δὲ Σωτίων φησὶν ἐν τῷ δράματι Ξανθίαν τινὰ οἰκέτην πεποιῆσθαι προτρεπόμενον ἐπὶ ἡδυπάθειαν ὁμοδούλους ἑαυτοῦ καὶ λέγοντα... ‘According to Sotion of Alexandria in his On Timo’s Silloi, Alexis in The Instructor in Profligacy — I never encountered the play myself; despite reading over 800 so-called Middle Comedies and compiling extracts from them, I never came upon The Instructor in Profligacy, and I know of no one who thought it deserved to be catalogued; because neither Callimachus nor Aristophanes catalogued it, and neither did the cataloguers working in Pergamum — but Sotion claims that in the play a slave named Xanthias is represented as encouraging his fellow slaves to live luxuriously and as saying...’28 (Call. fr. 439 Pfeiffer ap. Ath. 8.336e)

Two hundred years earlier, Dionysius of Halicarnassus also was able to study both the Alexandrian and the Pergamene Pinakes: ἅμα δὲ ὁρῶν οὐδὲν ἀκριβὲς οὔτε Καλλίμαχον οὔτε τοὺς ἐκ Περγάμου γραμματικοὺς περὶ αὐτοῦ [sc. Δεινάρχου] γράψαντας, ἀλλὰ παρὰ τὸ μηδὲν ἐξετάσαι περὶ αὐτοῦ τῶν ἀκριβεστέρων ἡμαρτηκότας, ὡς μὴ μόνον ἐψεῦσθαι πολλὰ ἀλλὰ καὶ λόγους τοὺς οὐδὲν μὲν αὐτῷ προσήκοντας ὡς Δεινάρχου τούτῳ προστίθεσθαι, τοὺς δ’ ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ γραφέντας ἑτέρων εἶναι λέγειν. ‘At the same time, I see, too, that neither Callimachus nor the Pergamene scholars wrote anything precise about him [sc. Dinarchus], but, in their failure to inquire about him, committed errors in the more precise details, with the result that they not only have falsified much but also assign speeches to him which are not his at all, while those written by him they say are the works of others.’29 (Call. fr. 447 Pfeiffer ap. D.H. Din. 1)

Although it is theoretically possible that these two authors travelled between Pergamum and Alexandria to do their research, it seems far more likely that they both had book versions of the iconic bibliographical achievements of either library at their disposal. To be sure, there is no need to assume that either Dionysius or Athenaeus was in possession of the complete two sets of the Pinakes, Alexandrian 28. Trans. Olson (2008: 29-31). 29. Trans. Shoemaker (1971: 395).

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and Pergamene. They would have been perfectly content with extracts containing the thematic sections that were of interest to them: the section on logographers in Dionysius’ case and in Athenaeus’ case the sections on gastronomic writers and comedy. Callimachus’ Pinakes, which had been designed as a comprehensive, up-to-date compilation of all knowledge on Greek literary production, encouraged, and even demanded, that the reader use it selectively, so as to compile one’s own Pinax — as very few readers would have been interested in all branches of knowledge at once. It is this practice of the selective use of the Pinakes that made possible its career beyond Alexandria or other great centres of intellectual life (such as Pergamum and later Rome). The facility with which its sections can have been extracted to form self-contained wholes, easily accessible to individual readers, resulted in creating a truly portable tool.30 In the subsequent part of the present discussion we will see that this easy-to-copy format, which, being characteristic of Hellenistic bookish culture, is well familiar to scholars of Hellenistic poetry, finds parallels in Callimachus’ other scholarly works.31 One may wonder when exactly the Pinakes came to be used beyond the Alexandrian library and whether it was already its creator who wanted it to have a wide circulation. Although the earliest testimony to such a use is provided by Dionysius of Halicarnassus (late first century BC), it is a significant circumstance that both he and Athenaeus refer not only to the Alexandrian Pinakes, but also to its Pergamene homologue. The catalogue of the Pergamene library was no doubt created in reaction to its Alexandrian predecessor, which the Pergamene scholars must have been able to examine. To be sure, it is possible to visualize a visitation of the Alexandrian library by Pergamum delegates, yet the actual aim of the creation of the second catalogue was to confront its Alexandrian model, so that they could dialogue with each other. It also seems highly probable that the Pergamene scholars intended to challenge the Pinakes’ status as the only authoritative source of up-to-date knowledge on Greek literary history. On more than one occasion, the Pergamene scholars would have taken part in the scholarly debates that had been initiated in Alexandria. For instance, when Crates of Mallus argued that Euripides’ young age explained the ignorance of astronomy displayed by the author 30. It is in this sense that we would call the Pinakes, with Jacob (2013: 77), “a portable Alexandrian library”. 31. Yet another Callimachean Pinax listed by the Suda is the List of Glosses and Works of Democritus. There is a faint possibility that this was a part of the Pinakes, extracted by some later compiler, which would nicely illustrate our point, but more likely it was, like the Pinax tôn didaskalôn, a distinct and self-contained writing; see Blum (1991: 143-144).

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of Rhesus, this is likely to have been a contribution to the debate on this play’s authenticity.32 Our sources for Callimachus’ Pinakes may be shown to document the process of erosion of this work’s status, which began with the compilation of the rival catalogue in Pergamum — a work of analogous format and probably also having the same aspiration to offer a comprehensive synthesis of Greek literary production. When Callimachus’ original work lost its monopoly, the conclusions he had reached became susceptible to criticism, the more so in view of the fact that between the compilation of his Pinakes in the first half of the third century BC and, for instance, the compilation of the catalogue of the Pergamene library in the second century BC many problems that bothered scholars may have found more satisfactory solutions. We have already seen that Dionysius of Halicarnassus criticized Callimachus’ Pinakes in his On Dinarchus. Similar is the tone and content of the following passage from Photius’ Library, which, since Dinarchus recurs here, may be indebted to Dionysius: Καὶ τὸν ὑπὲρ Σατύρου δὲ λόγον τῆς ἐπιτροπῆς πρὸς Χαρίδημον οἱ μὲν πρὸς τὴν κρίσιν ἔχοντες τὸ ἀσφαλὲς Δημοσθένους λέγουσιν εἶναι, ὁ δὲ Καλλίμαχος, οὐδ’ ἱκανὸς ὢν κρίνειν, Δεινάρχου νομίζει. ‘As for the guardianship speech For Satyros, against Charidemus, those of sure judgement say that it is by Demosthenes, but Callimachus, who is not even capable of judging, thinks that it is by Dinarchus.’ (Call. fr. 446 Pfeiffer ap. Phot. Bibl. cod. 265 p. 491b29-32)

These two fragments register disappointment at the Pinakes’ value.33 This critical attitude arises from realizing that Callimachus conducted no genuine research on the Alexandrian book collection. Even if one person cannot have been reasonably expected to thoroughly investigate all Greek literature, what Dionysius’ attack implies is that it was felt that there was a pretense of authoritativeness surrounding the Pinakes, either undeliberate or consciously kept up by the Ptolemies and the scholars at their court. The format of the Pinakes — the fact that the incipit and stichometric information was provided for each listed work — contributed to its status of a first-reference tool, such as was indispensable not just to scholars in the Alexandrian library, but above all to every fairly knowledgeable 32. Sch. Eur. Rh. 528: Κράτης ἀγνοεῖν φησι τὸν Εὐριπίδην τὴν περὶ τὰ μετέωρα θεωρίαν διὰ τὸ νέον ἔτι εἶναι ὅτε τὸν ῾Ρῆσον ἐδίδασκε (‘According to Crates, Euripides was ignorant of celestial matters because he was still young when he produced Rhesus’). On this scholion, see Ritchie (1964: 18-19); Fries (2014: 22-23). 33. Cf. Whitmarsh (2004: 128-129) on the hostility in the sources preserving the fragments of Callimachus.

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bibliophile outside it. The information on the incipit and number of verses was addressed not to the library reader who held in his or her hand precisely the copy that supplied this information, but primarily to one who had a copy of the work catalogued by Callimachus from another source, so as to provide him or her with an easy means of comparing two versions of the text. This was arguably meant to make readers outside the library realize that the best thing for them to do might be to get hold of the only version of the text bearing an official stamp of approval — that is a copy of the Alexandrian edition.34 Thus Callimachus’ Pinakes was useful as a tool of propaganda on yet another level, as it helped to promote another fruit of the Alexandrian scholars’ work, namely the editions they prepared. Since the Pinakes documented the stage of development the Alexandrian library achieved in the first half of the third century BC, while the collection continued to grow,35 Callimachus’ work was bound to become a historical document, of diminishing relevance for the actual Alexandrian collection. That is, of course, unless care was taken to keep it up to date. Yet whatever the title of Aristophanes of Byzantium’s treatise Πρὸς τοὺς Καλλιμάχου Πίνακας exactly means (On/Against? Callimachus’ Pinakes),36 it suggests that the Pinakes was regarded as a finished work, for Aristophanes’ concern is with Callimachus himself, not with an unspecified team of scholars. As such, the Pinakes was bound to fossilize as a monument to the epoch in which it was compiled. What should we make of the fact, then, that Athenaeus copiously refers to Callimachus, although his reputation as an expert in identifying works of literature and their authors was at that point seriously tarnished? Regardless of whether Athenaeus simply conformed to the current standard of philological erudition or rather aimed at making a show of abovestandard diligence by dusting off what had already become an antiquarian 34. To be sure, the practical effectiveness of such a strategy may have been rather limited — as is suggested, e.g., by the ‘eccentric’ Homeric papyri from the Ptolemaic period (on which see Bird (2010)). We submit, however, that the strategy may have been successful in having a subtle psychological effect on select audiences of (elite, scholarly) readers, i.e. in manipulation through what we refer to as the rhetorics of the Pinakes. 35. For instance, according to Galen, In Hp. Epid. 3 Comm. 3.17a.607 Kühn, it was no earlier than under the rule of Ptolemy III Euergetes that the Athenian archive copies of the plays of the three great tragedians arrived in Alexandria, whereas Tzetzes (quoted above) testifies to the Pinakes’ creation under Ptolemy II. For this reading of Galen, see, inter alia, Montanari (2009: 413); Prauscello (2006: 74); Battezzato (2003: 19); Blum (1991: 42); Pfeiffer (1968: 82). However, some scholars think that the Ptolemy whom Galen had in mind was Ptolemy II; see Carrara (2007: 250-251); Cawkwell (1999); Ziegler (1937: 2068). 36. See Blum (1991: 176 n. 175).

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curiosity, a monument to the age of philology’s birth, there is a deeper significance to his acknowledging the importance of the Pinakes. The work of the first Alexandrian scholars which the Pinakes had been founded on reflected the earliest stage of building the book collection by the Ptolemies. This original collection was bound to suffer damage and losses throughout the centuries, due to a number of random events which tend to affect library collections, and above all due to the disaster of the Brucheion fire in 48 BC, if the accounts of it are reliable. As a result, the book copies that the Ptolemies had been hoarding, with great effort, over the years, which had served as the foundation for Callimachus’ Pinakes, were no longer available to scholars by Athenaeus’ time. Once the original sources of Callimachus’ scholarship had been lost and his conclusions had become hard to falsify, the Pinakes became an indispensable source in its own right. In this context, the Pinakes were capable of acquiring nearly mythical status, even though its shortcomings were becoming more and more obvious.

2. The Cosmos of the Alexandrian Library Callimachus fr. 407 Pfeiffer is an underappreciated gem of a source for third-century BC scholarship. The collection of mirabilia it contains is the most substantial portion of Callimachus’ prose to have reached us — eight pages in Pfeiffer’s edition — even though the fragment can tell us little about what Callimachus’ Thaumasia (or Paradoxa?) which it comes from originally looked like (even the title is uncertain37). The fact that this fragment is preserved as a part of Antigonus of Carystus’ paradoxographical compilation (Mir. 129-173), which reshuffles the material collected by Callimachus, effectively obscures Callimachus’ role as author. One should not think, however, that in view of this complication the fragment completely loses its scholarly appeal, as its real value is that it affords us insight into the relationship between Alexandria and Pergamum 37. See Blum (1991: 134). The extended title provided by the Suda in the entry on Callimachus is probably, like other baroque titles in this list (cf. n. 8 above), not original. These long descriptive titles appear nowhere else than the Suda; instead, various brief titles seem to have been in use in Antiquity, as was the case with the Thaumasia and Paradoxa (the titles supplied by, respectively, Stephanus of Byzantium and Antigonus). The tiresome elaboration of the Suda titles and their somewhat awkward Greek (see Blum (1991: 168 n. 78)) point to their Byzantine origin. An optimistic guess would be that there was a Byzantine edition of Callimachus’ scholarly works in which these were given such elaborate titles; a perhaps more realistic conjecture might be that these descriptive titles were invented by some Byzantine scholar to illustrate the contents of Callimachus’ oeuvre (for didactic purposes?), possibly already lost at that point.

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in the third century BC. After all, how many opportunities do we get to catch a glimpse of how a prominent Pergamene scholar approaches the work of the greatest representative of Alexandrian scholarship? Can we be sure, however, that this is what we are dealing with? The authorship of the collection of which fr. 407 forms part was questioned by O. Musso, who argued that a Byzantine compiler rather than Antigonus was responsible for its creation.38 Although Byzantine alterations in the Antigonus text are possible and Musso rightly calls our attention to the fact that in the context of a Byzantine scriptorium the compilations such as the one under discussion were more likely to have been affected by deliberate modifications than other texts, there are, in the end, good reasons to believe that what we have ultimately reflects, in general outline and in crucial details, Antigonus’ design. The evidence for his authorship is, in fact, rather straightforward: Palatinus Graecus 398, which preserves the collection, ascribes it simply to Antigonus, yet Stephen of Byzantium quotes a passage from this collection attributing it to Antigonus of Carystus (Steph. Byz. s.v. Γύαρος ≈ Antig. Car. Mir. 18).39 Yet there is more, as we are reminded by more recent scholars unwilling to abandon the notion that the collection goes back to Antigonus.40 Although the compiler (and Callimachus, whom he quotes) goes to surprising lengths to identify his sources, no author later than 240 BC is mentioned.41 Moreover, although Callimachus is used as a source, the compiler makes no attempt to hide that he does not hold his Alexandrian predecessor in high regard.42 The clearest example of this is the barefaced Schadenfreude when he points out an alleged error in Callimachus’ work (45): his smug remark on the use of a certain phrase which he finds awkward is that the infelicity is due to Callimachus’ ‘desiring to be overly lucid’ (περίτρανος εἶναι βουλόμενος), and he adds that he could not help criticizing Callimachus as he felt ‘persuaded to do so by his 38. Musso (1976); see also Dorandi (1999: xiv–xvii), whose edition of the fragments of Antigonus does not include paradoxographical fragments, not even as dubia. I am unable to sum up here Musso’s thoughtful argumentation, which is rooted in his expert knowledge of the Byzantine context he postulates for the paradoxographical collection of Palatinus Graecus 398; to be sure, it deserves careful consideration, but I believe that the arguments for Antigonus’ authorship make enough of an opening to allow us to peep behind the door. 39. This connection was first made by Xylander (1568: 328). 40. The subsequent paragraph is indebted to a useful summary of this debate in Żybert (2014: 35-37) (in Polish). 41. Cameron (1995: 190 n. 28) and Leigh (2013: 188 n. 177), who both follow Wilamowitz (1881: 23-24). 42. Cf. Schepens & Delcroix (1996: 401 n. 90), who look back to Wilamowitz (1881: 165-166).

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unpersuasiveness’ (περὶ μὲν οὖν τοῦ Καλλιμάχου διὰ τὸ ἀπίθανον προήχθημεν εἰπεῖν). In addition, in the lengthy extract from Callimachus the compiler did not miss any chance, as E. Żybert notes, to supplement or amend information supplied by his source (145, 146, 152b and especially 161, where he comments with evident self-satisfaction on how ‘both Eudoxus and Callimachus fail to notice’ some fact he himself deems important; τοῦτο ... καὶ Εὔδοξος καὶ Καλλίμαχος παραλείπουσι).43 In effect, one gets the impression that if the collection of mirabilia which Palatinus Graecus 398 ascribes to Antigonus was not made by Antigonus of Carystus, then it must have been compiled by another person of the same name and the same background. What is important to us in this picture is that we see not simply rivalry but also what we might call an unfriendly symbiosis — Antigonus evidently cannot live without the fodder of Alexandrian thought, and at the same time he cannot live without constantly undermining it. Of course, the picture looks familiar to us; it is striking how this recreates the pattern of the rivalry between Pergamum and Alexandria in producing authoritative pinacological works. Let us follow this path a little further. The way in which the extract from Callimachus is introduced by Antigonus deserves our special attention (127): Πεποίηται δέ τινα καὶ ὁ Κυρηναῖος Καλλίμαχος ἐκλογὴν τῶν παραδόξων, ἧς ἀναγράφομεν ὅσα ποτὲ ἡμῖν ἐφαίνετο εἶναι ἀκοῆς ἄξια. ‘Callimachus of Cyrene has put together a selection of wondrous stories; we reproduce here everything that seemed worthy of being heard.’44

Are we to infer from this that some (most?) of what Callimachus wrote was not worthy of reproducing? At any rate, we would like to call attention to the use of the verb ἀναγράφειν here. It belongs to the array of γράφειν-compounds (including the zero-compound, i.e. the verbum simplex) in Antigonus’ Mirabilia whose frequent occurrences reinforce the impression, which we get from the clearly bookish abundance of sources quoted by Antigonus and Callimachus,45 that this compilation takes us into the domain of well-read scholars and well-equipped libraries. By copiously using the phrase ‘so-and-so wrote’ Antigonus underscores the fact that both he and Callimachus drew their knowledge from books (e.g. 20 ὡς ὁ Ἀριστοτέλης καταγράφει; 149 Ἀμώμητόν φησιν [sc. Callimachus] γράφειν). 43. Żybert (2014: 37 with n. 179). 44. Trans. Prioux (2009: 122 n. 4). 45. See Blum (1991: 134); cf. Sistakou (2009: 178 with n. 4).

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What makes the use of ἀναγράφειν in the passage under discussion distinct is not only the fact that Antigonus speaks here of himself rather than of his sources. Of more relevance for us is the precise meaning of this verb. Ἀναγράφειν often conveys the notion of formal writing — as in engraving an inscription, making an archival record, preparing a list.46 The only other occurrence of this verb in Antigonus’ Mirabilia is precisely in reference to a public inscription (15a.1). We may compare the already quoted Suda title for Callimachus’ Pinax tôn didaskalôn (even if we should keep in mind its probable Byzantine origin): Πίναξ καὶ ἀναγραφή..., i.e. Pinax and Register. The ἀναγράφομεν in Antigonus’ short proem to the quotation from Callimachus arguably has this ring too. The word’s choice implies that we are dealing with a serious document having a serious aim, an archival register rather than a piece of literature. What we have before us is, essentially, a library product. It is Callimachus’ paradoxographical writing that Antigonus refers to as ἐκλογή, ‘selection’, not his own writing, yet the term seems to extend to his reworking of that compilation. He is hardly shy about emphasizing that what he does is to recompile the material collected by his rival. We see that the main difference between these two works is that whereas Callimachus ordered mirabilia geographically, as the descriptive title given by the Suda explicitly informs us (Collection of Marvels of the World, Arranged by Location; Θαυμάτων τῶν εἰς ἅπασαν τὴν γῆν κατὰ τόπους ὄντων συναγωγή), Antigonus rearranged them by their types (the bulk of the extract from Callimachus consists of water marvels, 129-164; this is followed by the section on stones, 165-171, and two bird marvels close the collection).47 Other than that, the differences are minimal; Antigonus even reproduced Callimachus’ source references.48 The extent of authorial creativeness may be disappointing for modern readers, but we should view this literary procedure in its right context. Again, we recognize a familiar pattern — we have already seen that Callimachus designed the Pinakes to be used and reused by its readers in a very similar manner. A tantalizing parallel is provided by the third-century BC anthologizing practices, which have received considerable attention from scholars of Hellenistic poetry.49 To return to paradoxography, another illustration of 46. Cf. LSJ and LSJ Suppl s.v. 47. Cf. Fraser (1972: I 454). 48. Cf. Leigh (2013: 189 n. 184). 49. Already classic references are Gutzwiller (1998 and 2005). In the latter volume, note Krevans (2005), who demonstrates, inter alia, tantalizing links between the themes present in the Milan Posidippus’ epigrams and those explored by Callimachus in his scholarly works.

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the recompilation procedure is provided by the Suda’s list of Callimachus’ scholarly works. We find here, alongside the ‘main’ Mirabilia, another paradoxographical writing, entitled On the Marvels and Wonders of the Peloponnese and Italy. This is believed to be “a section of the larger work”;50 we are now better equipped to understand how it may have become an independent writing.51 It is doubtful that Callimachus would want to sue either the compiler of the Mirabilia Peloponnesiaca et Italica or even Antigonus for infringing his copyrights. In fact, such exploitation of his intellectual property is more likely what he hoped for. All evidence points to one conclusion: his was anthologisches Zeitalter, a time when the procedures of anthologization and recompilation were a usual means of doing scholarship. Testimonies on other scholarly works by Callimachus are, unfortunately, much less substantial, but this does not mean that it is not worth digging in that material. A potentially rewarding approach one can take when studying these fragments is to keep one’s eyes open for thematic correspondences, on different levels, between the Callimachus fragments and various literary and cultural discourses in the Hellenistic age. What makes this path promising is the fact that our knowledge of Hellenistic culture and literature has been considerably enriched in the recent few decades, with new evidence coming to light and new areas being explored. To be sure, some of this work has already been done. It is no wonder that points of contact between Callimachus’ prose and Hellenistic poetry has received particular attention.52 Even in this fairly well-trodden field, however, a closer look at details may still bring new insights. In a recent discussion, one of us argued that the poetic fragments of the poet and scholar Simias of Rhodes, who was probably senior to Callimachus by a generation, betrayed his concern with human, animal, and even monster voices.53 This interest was inspired by Aristotle’s research on human speech and animal voice (esp. De anima 2.8 and Historia animalium 4.9); the striking refinement and musicality of some animal voices was attracting attention of scholars musing on the phenomenon of human speech, whereas sophisticated Hellenistic poets did not 50. Krevans (2011: 124 n. 16). 51. For yet another analogous case, cf. Blum (1991: 135) on Callimachus’ three writings referred to as distinct in our sources, On Rivers, On the Rivers in Europe, and On the Rivers in Asia, yet the latter two probably originating as sections in On Rivers. See further Prioux (2009: 123 n. 6). 52. Krevans (2004) offers an important survey of these connections; see also Krevans (2005), Prioux (2009) and Sistakou (2009), and cf. already Fraser (1972, I 455). Relevant is also Harder (2013) on Callimachus and Apollonius of Rhodes (qua poets) in the library. 53. Kwapisz (2018).

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miss the theme’s appeal due to its obvious metapoetic potential. This concern manifests itself particularly in Simias’ pair of curious epigrams on musical animals (AP 7.193 and 203). He uses here information on animal behaviour and physiology supplied by Aristotle to create original poetic images: a locust captured for its song and a decoy partridge, whose ‘resonant cry’ is used by a hunter to lure other partridges. The latter makes one think of Callimachus’ treatise On Birds. The fifteen extant fragments make it his third best-preserved scholarly writing, after the bibliographical and paradoxographical works. S. Martínez demonstrated that Callimachus’ interests in this work no doubt went beyond lexicography (i.e. ars grammatica) and were in fact not much different than those of Aristotle.54 Bird song was among these interests, as it occurs as a prominent theme in two fragments. In fr. 418 Pfeiffer two varieties of owls are distinguished, the criterion being the ability to emit a call, and fr. 421, which virtually reproduces a passage from Aristotle’s Historia animalium (9.616b15-16), describes the eleia’s voice as ‘good’. Fr. 415 on partridges, preserved in Athenaeus (9.389a-b), does not mention their voice, but since Athenaeus tells us that Callimachus provided the same information as Aristotle (a quotation from Aristotle is followed by τὰ αὐτὰ ἱστορεῖ καὶ Καλλίμαχος ἐν τῷ Περὶ ὀρνέων), we can reasonably conjecture that Callimachus also discussed the partridge’s voice in the relevant section of his work. We would not go as far as to claim that bird songs and voices were Callimachus’ main preoccupation in On Birds, but we may use this opportunity to introduce the term ‘strategic intellectual interest’, by which we mean a theme which kept recurring in various areas of culture in the same period and therefore to some extent defined the period’s cultural character. What we can infer from the fact that Simias and Callimachus shared the strategic interest in bird voices is that there was a group of Hellenistic readers for whom this was an important, perhaps even fascinating topic, one they would have been eager to follow up on after they had encountered it in a poem. Let us now modify our approach so as to make our focus not a single theme, but rather a concentration of themes.55 P. Parsons has paved the way for this approach by demonstrating how at least two themes present in a late-third-century BC Egyptian teacher’s notes (the famous P. Cairo

54. Martínez (2001); cf. Krevans (2011: 128) on the problems with classifying On Birds as a lexicographical work. 55. Instructive surveys of the topics of the extant scholarly fragments of Callimachus are provided by Acosta-Hughes & Stephens (2012: 15-18) and Krevans (2011).

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inv. 65445) recur “at a higher level” in Callimachus’ scholarly prose.56 A list of Macedonian months in the schoolbook finds a parallel in Callimachus’ treatise Month Names According to Peoples and Cities (solely the title is extant; since the Suda is the source, this may be believed to faithfully report the work’s content, but the form of the title is unlikely to be original) and a list of Greek and barbarian rivers brings to mind Callimachus’ On Rivers, with its separate sections on the rivers of Europe and Asia.57 As Parsons concludes, these analogies allow us to see Callimachus as one of the educators of the age, sharing intellectual preoccupations with less widely esteemed figures. Months and the multiplicity of Greek calendars (each polis had its own calendar; similarities between them reflected the patterns of the Greek colonization of the Mediterranean) certainly became a theme of strategic importance in the Hellenistic age. Simias of Rhodes, whom we have already encountered, composed a didactic poem entitled Months; it is unclear whether it was in hexameters or elegiac couplets, as only one small fragment is extant (following A. Meineke, I take it to be a part of an elegiac couplet): ὅν ῥ᾿ Ἀμύκλαντος παιδὸς ἀποφθιμένου λαοὶ κικλήσκουσιν. ‘...which (month) people call after the dead son of Amyclas.’

Son of Amyclas is Hyacinth; Simias speaks here of the Dorian and also specifically Rhodian month of Hyacinthius.58 This fragment suggests that unlike Callimachus, whose ambitious aim seems to have been in his writing on months, as in his other scholarly works, to describe the whole Greek world, Simias’ business with calendars was narrowly patriotic. By far the most fascinating evidence for the Hellenistic preoccupation with months, calendars, and time measurement in general is provided by a famous technological object — the Antikythera mechanism, the many secrets of which have recently been unveiled as a result of an amazingly advanced, long-term research project.59 Although the mechanism should probably be dated to a somewhat later period than Callimachus’ scholarly oeuvre — it was recovered from the wreck of a ship which went down about 70 BC and A. Jones convincingly argues that it must have been not 56. P. Parsons (2011: 140-141). For a similar approach, cf. Krevans’ remarks on the relationship between Posidippus’ poetry book and Callimachus’ scholarship (see n. 52 above). 57. On the writings on rivers, see n. 51 above. 58. Cf. Meineke (1842: 100). 59. For a comprehensive account of the recent finds, see Jones (2017) and cf. Almagest 7/1 (2016), a monographic issue devoted to the decipherment of the mechanism’s inscriptions.

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long after its manufacture that it found its way to the bottom of the sea60 — we will see that a number of striking correspondences between the mechanism and Callimachus’ scholarly works suggest its belonging in the same cultural and intellectual context, broadly conceived. Before we get to have a look at these correspondences, we offer a few preliminary remarks on some aspects of this shared context. We have already seen that Callimachus’ Pinakes and the Antikythera device appeared alongside each other in M. Squire’s discussion of the Hellenistic ‘aesthetics of scale’. Both the mechanism and the Pinakes aim to do no less than to boldly capture the whole of the cosmos — the mechanism demonstrates the interconnected workings of time and the universe, whereas the Pinakes encapsulates the cosmos of human literary creation. Less obvious is a shared intellectual ancestry of the mechanism and at least one of Callimachus’ scholarly writings. In De republica 1.21-22, Cicero sketches the history of the construction of what he calls sphaerae — instruments of various mechanical advancement, but in many respects not unlike the Antikythera mechanism and on the whole shedding light on its place in the history of Greek technological thought and practice.61 An important stage in the development of these devices was marked by the making of a sphaira by Eudoxus of Cnidus. Now let us observe that Callimachus quoted the same Eudoxus several times as his source in the Mirabilia. How meaningful is this fact? This connection may lead us to the realization that Eudoxus’ preoccupations with natural mirabilia on the one hand and astronomical devices on the other — the preoccupations to some extent reflected in Callimachus’ scholarly output — had, as a matter of fact, something in common. Artefacts such as the Antikythera mechanism or Eudoxus’ sphaira were regarded as mirabilia, not natural wonders like those catalogued by Callimachus and Antigonus, but wonders nonetheless — marvels of human technological accomplishment. This is clear from how Cicero describes them, but further evidence comes from what may be read as a poetically enhanced response to such artefacts in Apollonius Rhodes’ famous passage on Eros’ marvellous ball (3.132-141), a wonderfully crafted toy which represents the cosmos.62 Apollonius’ description of the fantastic object is notoriously obscure, but at any rate it is explicitly referred to as a sphaira (135) and it is tempting to assume that the poet 60. Jones (2017). 61. This is a locus classicus for scholars of the Antikythera mechanism; cf. e.g. Jones (2017). For other ancient testimonies on similar devices, see Edmunds (2014). 62. On the toy’s cosmic dimension, see, e.g., Hunter (1989: 113) and Campbell (1994: 123-126).

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had in mind mechanical devices such as the one made by Eudoxus.63 Apollonius no doubt wants the reader to visualize a marvel of marvels: one would not expect Hephaestus to make a better toy (135-136). The emphatic characterization of the toy as περικαλλὲς ἄθυρμα, ‘a plaything of utmost beauty’ (132), is particularly telling. We recognize a variant of this phrase in Callimachus’ description of a nautilus shell, a marvel of nature deemed worth offering to Arsinoe-Aphrodite, as περίσκεπτον παίγνιον, ‘a much-admired plaything’ (Ep. 5.8 Pfeiffer).64 Much later Leonides of Alexandria rather boldly reapplied Apollonius’ phrase περικαλλὲς ἄθυρμα to an isopsephic epigram of his creation (2 FGE) — a marvel of poetic ingenuity.65 In effect, there is no clear line dividing mirabilia and the objects of ‘serious’ scholarship. The Antikythera mechanism can be both at once — an intricate instrument of applied science and an almost fantastic creation intended to induce no less (and perhaps even more) awe and wonder than Apollonius’ description of Eros’ marvellous ball ‘of utmost beauty’.66 The harmonious coexistence of the paradoxographical treatise and the treatise on various systems of time measurement in Callimachus’ oeuvre is not a perfect analogy for this combination, yet understanding the eclectic intellectual background of the Antikythera mechanism helps to shed light on the equally complex, and similar in details, model of intellectualism which Callimachus is representative of. This shared intellectual milieu explains the presence of more substantial correspondences between the two cultural phenomena. The Antikythera mechanism, somewhat but not exactly like Danae and Perseus, had been closed in a wooden box. The box, before its disappearance as a result of natural erosion, had the appearance of a double-sided instrument with the total of seven dials on its front and back (the distinction between the two is purely arbitrary). The two front dials simulated the workings of the cosmos, whereas the domain of the five back dials was time. Here is a short inventory: (1) The Zodiac dial simulated the movement of the Sun, Moon and the five known planets through space, i.e. the zodiac. 63. For a discussion of Eros’ ball in the context of the tradition of constructing mechanical sphairai, see Pendergraft (1991) and Irby (2016: 828-829). For another possible allusion to such a device, see Arat. 529-531. 64. On Callimachus’ nautilus as a natural marvel, see Krevans (2004: 176 with nn. 16 and 17); she also notes the relevance of the presence of conventional wonder-book formulae in Posidippus’ epigrams on stones; see further Krevans (2005: 91-92). The scientific source Callimachus explored when composing the nautilus epigram was Aristotle’s Historia animalium; see Kwapisz (2016: 165-167). 65. As Leonides was an astronomer (cf. 21 FGE), it is no wonder that Apollonius’ description of Eros’ cosmic ball stuck in his head. 66. Note that Jones (2017) has “scientific wonder” in the title.

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(2) The Egyptian calendar dial demonstrated the same heavenly bodies’ journey through time, i.e. the Egyptian year (which was commonly used for measuring time by ancient astronomers). The dial was inscribed with the twelve Egyptian month names and an abbreviation for the short intercalary month. (3) The Metonic dial’s main function was to measure time with relative precision. It was inscribed with the month names of the Corinthian calendar.67 (4) The subsidiary Callipic dial made the Metonic dial’s measurement error smaller. (5) The Games dial represented the four-year cycle of the Panhellenic games; besides the Olympic, Pythian, Nemean and Isthmian Games it was inscribed with the names of the local festival in Dodona, Naa, and the Rhodian Halieia. (6) The Saros dial was for predicting solar and lunar eclipses. It was accompanied by a considerably long inscription on the mechanism’s back plate, which supplied a sort of legend for the dial’s indications. The legend contained, inter alia, direction statements, whose precise sense is somewhat obscure, but the most probable interpretation is that they enabled predictions of meteorological phenomena — winds believed to attend eclipses.68 (7) The subsidiary Exeligmos dial was for correcting the indications of the Saros dial. All this may have been used to quite competently illustrate the thencurrent state of astronomical knowledge.69 It is remarkable, however, that besides providing an advanced astronomical study aid, the mechanism, due to its supplying information on the Mediterranean calendars and the cycle of Greek festivals, was deeply rooted in the context of the Greeks’ social and even cultural life. Even though no astronomical treatise is attested for Callimachus, the topics of no less than three of his scholarly writings corresponded with functions of the Antikythera mechanism: (1) The most evident analogy is supplied by the treatise on local month names. It is hard to believe that it did not describe the Egyptian calendar alongside various Greek calendars.

67. Jones (2017) conjectures that the mechanism was manufactured in Rhodes for a client based in a Corinthian colony; see also Iversen (2017). 68. Anastasiou et al. (2016: 201-207). 69. For this theory on the mechanism’s purpose, see Jones (2017).

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(2) The presence of the Panhellenic Games and the two local festivals in the Games dial’s inscription makes one think of Callimachus’ work On Contests (Περὶ ἀγώνων), attested by a single fragment only (fr. 403 Pfeiffer). (3) A less obvious link connects the mechanism’s information on ‘eclipse winds’ and Callimachus’ treatise On Winds (again, only one fragment, fr. 404 Pfeiffer, testifies to its existence). We may note, however, that horology and meteorology were combined in the making of another technological marvel of the ancient world: the Tower of the Winds in Athens, a near contemporary of the Antikythera mechanism, combined the functions of a weather vane and a timepiece. What should we make of the fact that a net of correspondences connects a highly advanced technological artefact, an Egyptian schoolbook and the scholarly production of a leading Alexandrian scholar (not to mention a number of poetic texts)? First of all, we should be able to see by now that the mosaic of the titles of Callimachus’ prose works, even despite their chance preservation, is not a purely random creation. Callimachus’ choice of topics is meaningful; the plan he followed in his exploration of the Alexandrian library’s resources was to focus on various strategic themes of the epoch. The result was not a single consistent work, but an assortment of loosely, yet strategically interconnected treatises, which attempted to describe the world in its complexity, as it was conceived in that period.70 Perhaps we should see in this project, which attempted to pinpoint and to chart what its author recognized as crucial elements of the mechanism of the known world, an overlooked programmatic statement of Callimachus, no less noteworthy than his famed poetic programme. Here is a further parallel between his scholarship and the Antikythera mechanism: we may attempt to visualize Callimachus’ treatises as dials with pointers displaying various sorts of measurements, yet all of them connected and put into motion by one and the same intricately crafted set of hidden gears. Like the Antikythera mechanism, yet at an even higher level and on a bigger scale, this assortment of scholarship, which included prominently the Pinakes, made an unprecedentedly bold attempt to encapsulate a cosmos — the world of nature, the universe of human social and cultural achievements, and, above all, the cosmos of the Alexandrian library. All this available also in a portable format. 70. This description also included the religious topography of the Greek world, which Callimachus explored, in what must have been an intimately local dimension, in his treatise On Nymphs (fr. 413 Pfeiffer).

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REFERENCES Acosta-Hughes, B. & S.A. Stephens, 2012, Callimachus in Context. Cambridge. Anastasiou, M. et al., “The Back Dial and Back Plate Inscriptions”. Almagest 7/1 (The Inscriptions of the Antikythera Mechanism), 138-215. Asper, M., 2004, Kallimachos: Werke. Darmstadt. Barnes, R., 2000, “Cloistered Bookworms in the Chicken-Coop of the Muses: The Ancient Library of Alexandria”. In: R. MacLeod (ed.), The Library of Alexandria: Centre of Learning in the Ancient World. London, 61-77. Battezzato, L., 2003, “I viaggi dei testi”. In: L. Battezzato (ed.), Tradizione testuale e ricezione letteraria antica della tragedia. Amsterdam, 7-31. Bird, G.D., 2010, Multitextuality in the Homeric Iliad: The Witness of the Ptolemaic Papyri. Washington, DC. Blum, R., 1991, Kallimachos: The Alexandrian Library and the Origins of Bibliography, trans. H.H. Wellisch. Madison, WI. Cameron, A., 1995, Callimachus and his Critics. Princeton. Campbell, M., 1994, A Commentary on Apollonius Rhodius Argonautica III 1-471. Leiden. Canfora, L., 1990, The Vanished Library: A Wonder of the Ancient World, trans. M. Ryle. Berkeley. Cantarella, R., 1949, Aristofane: Le commedie, vol. I. Milan. Carrara, P., 2007, “Editori e commentari di Euripide della prima età ellenistica”. In: R. Pretagostini & E. Dettori (eds), La cultura letteraria ellenistica: persistenza, innovazione, trasmissione. Rome, 247-255. Cawkwell, G.L., 2003, “Lycurgus (3)”. In: S. Hornblower & A. Spawforth (eds), Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed. rev. Oxford. Dorandi, T., Antigone de Caryste: Fragments. Paris. Dziatzko, K., 1891, “Johannes Tzetzes und das Plautusscholion über die alexandrinischen Bibliotheken”. RhM 46, 349-362. Edmunds, M.G., 2014, “The Antikythera Mechanism and the Mechanical Universe”. Contemporary Physics 55/4, 263-285. Fraser, P.M., 1972, Ptolemaic Alexandria, vols I-II. Oxford. Fries, A., 2014, Pseudo-Euripides, ‘Rhesus’. Berlin. Gardthausen, V., 1922, “Die alexandrinische Bibliothek, ihr Vorbild, Katalog und Betrieb”. Zeitschrift des Deutschen Vereins für Buchwesen und Schrifttum 5, 73-104. Gutzwiller, K.J., 1998, Poetic Garlands: Hellenistic Epigrams in Context. Berkeley. — (ed.), 2005, The New Posidippus: A Hellenistic Poetry Book. Oxford. Harder, A., 2013, “From Text to Text: The Impact of the Alexandrian Library on the Work of Hellenistic Poets”. In: J. König et al. (eds), Ancient Libraries. Cambridge, 96-108. Hunter, R.L., 1989, Apollonius of Rhodes: Argonautica, Book III. Cambridge. Irby, G.L., 2016, “Greek and Roman Cartography”. In: G.L. Irby (ed.), A Companion to Science, Technology, and Medicine in Ancient Greece and Rome, vol. I. Chichester, 819-835. Iversen, P.A., 2017, “The Calendar on the Antikythera Mechanism and the Corinthian Family of Calendars”. Hesperia 86, 129-203. Jachmann, G., 1909, De Aristotelis Didascaliis. Göttingen.

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Jacob, C., 2000, “Athenaeus the Librarian”. In: D. Braund & J. Wilkins (eds), Athenaeus and his World: Reading Greek Culture in the Roman Empire. Exeter, 85-110. —, 2013, “Fragments of a History of Ancient Libraries”. In: J. König et al. (eds), Ancient Libraries. Cambridge, 57-81. Jones, A., 2017, A Portable Cosmos: Revealing the Antikythera Mechanism, Scientific Wonder of the Ancient World. Oxford. Kaibel, G., 1899, Comicorum Graecorum fragmenta. Berlin. Koster, W.J.W., 1961, “Scholion Plautinum plene editum”. Mnemosyne 14, 23-37. Körte, A., 1905, “Inschriftliches zur Geschichte der attischen Komödie”. RhM 60, 425-447. Krevans, N., 2004, “Callimachus and the Pedestrian Muse”. In: M.A. Harder et al. (eds), Callimachus II. Leuven, 173-183. —, 2005, “The Editor’s Toolbox: Strategies for Selection and Presentation in the Milan Epigram Papyrus”. In: K. Gutzwiller (ed.), The New Posidippus: A Hellenistic Poetry Book. Oxford, 81-96. —, 2011, “Callimachus’ Philology”. In: B. Acosta-Hughes et al. (eds), Brill’s Companion to Callimachus. Leiden, 118-133. Kwapisz, J., 2016, “When Is a Riddle an Epigram?” In: E. Sistakou & A. Rengakos (eds), Dialect, Diction, and Style in Greek Literary and Inscribed Epigram. Berlin, 151-171. —, 2018, “The Three Preoccupations of Simias of Rhodes”. In: J. Kwapisz (ed.), Hellenistica Posnaniensia: Faces of Hellenistic Lyric (Aitia 8/1). Leigh, M., 2013, From Polypragmon to Curious: Ancient Concepts of Curious and Meddlesome Behaviour. Oxford. Martínez, S., 2001, “A propòsit del tractat Sobre les aus de Cal·límac”. Faventia 23/1, 51-69. Meineke, A., 1842, Delectus poetarum Anthologiae Graecae. Berlin. Millis, B.W. & S.D. Olson, 2012, Inscriptional Records for the Dramatic Festivals in Athens: IG II2 2318-2325 and Related Texts. Leiden. Montana, F., 2015, “Hellenistic Scholarship”. In: F. Montanari & A. Rengakos (eds), Brill’s Companion to Ancient Greek Scholarship, vol. I. Leiden, 60-183. Montanari, F., 2009, “L’esegesi antica di Eschilo da Aristotele a Didimo”. In: J. Jouanna & F. Montanari (eds), Eschyle à l’aube du théâtre occidental, Vandoeuvres-Genève, 379-433. Musso, O., 1976, “Sulla struttura del cod. Pal. Gr. 398 e deduzioni storicoletterarie”. Prometheus 2, 1-10. Odericus, G.A., 1775, Dissertationes et adnotationes in aliquot ineditas veterum inscriptiones et numismata. Rome. —, 1777, De marmora didascalia in urbe reperta. Rome. Olson, S.D., 2007, Athenaeus: The Learned Banqueters, vol. I. Cambridge, MA. —, 2008, Athenaeus: The Learned Banqueters, vol. IV. Cambridge, MA. —, 2009, Athenaeus: The Learned Banqueters, vol. V. Cambridge, MA. Parsons, E.A., 1952, Alexandrian Library, Glory of the Hellenistic World: Its Rise, Antiquities, and Destructions. London. Parsons, P., 2011, “Callimachus and his Koinai”. In: B. Acosta-Hughes et al. (eds), Brill’s Companion to Callimachus. Leiden, 134-152.

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Pendergraft, M.L.B., 1991, “Eros Ludens: Apollonius’ Argonautica 3, 132-41”. MD 26, 95-102. Pfeiffer, R., 1968, History of Classical Scholarship: From the Beginnings to the End of the Hellenistic Age. Oxford. Pietruczuk, K., 2014, Dzieje tekstu Ajschylosa, Sofoklesa i Eurypidesa między Atenami i Aleksandrią. Warsaw. —, forthcoming, Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides between Athens and Alexandria: A Textual History. Rome. Prauscello, L., 2006, Singing Alexandria: Music between Practice and Textual Transmission. Leiden. Prioux, É., 2009, “On the Oddities and Wonders of Italy: When Poets Look Westward”. In: M.A. Harder et al. (eds), Nature and Science in Hellenistic Poetry. Leuven, 121-148. Regenbogen, O., 1950, “Πίναξ”. In: RE XX 2, 1408-1482. Ritchie, W., 1964, The Authenticity of Euripides’ Rhesus. Cambridge. Ritschl, F.W., 1866, “Die Alexandrinischen Bibliothek unter den ersten Ptolemaeern und die Sammlung der Homerischen Gedichte durch Pisistratus, nach Anleitung eines Plautinisches Scholions”. In: F.W. Ritschl, Opuscula philologica, vol. I. Leipzig. Schepens, G. & K. Delcroix, “Ancient Paradoxography: Origin, Evolution, Production and Reception”. In: O. Pecere & A. Stramaglia (eds), La letteratura di consumo nel mondo greco-latino. Cassino, 373-460. Schmidt, F., 1922, Die Pinakes des Kallimachos. Berlin. Schoemaker, G., 1971, “Dionysius of Halicarnassus, On Dinarchus”. GRBS 12, 393-409. Sistakou, E., 2009, “Poeticizing Natural Phenomena: The Case of Callimachus”. In: M.A. Harder et al. (eds), Nature and Science in Hellenistic Poetry. Leuven, 177-199. Squire, M., 2016, “Sémantique de l’échelle dans l’art et la poésie hellénistiques”. In: P. Linant de Bellefonds et al. (eds), D’Alexandre à Auguste: dynamiques de la création dans les arts visuels et la poésie. Rennes, 183-200. Storey, I.C., 2011, Fragments of Old Comedy, vol. I. Cambridge, MA. Thompson, D., 2000, “Athenaeus in his Egyptian Context”. In: D. Braund & J. Wilkins (eds), Athenaeus and his World: Reading Greek Culture in the Roman Empire. Exeter, 77-84. Wendel, C., 1949, Die griechisch-römische Buchbeschreibung verglichen mit der des Vorderen Orients. Halle. Whitmarsh, T., 2004, Ancient Greek Literature. Cambridge. Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, U. von, 1881, Antigonos von Karystos. Berlin. Wilhelm, A., 1906, Urkunden dramatischer Aufführungen in Athen. Vienna. Xylander, W., 1568, Stephanus de urbibus. Basel. Ziegler, K., 1937, “Tragoedia”. In: RE VI A 2, 1899-2075. Żybert, E., 2014, Antygon z Karystos: Opowieści niezwykłe. Wrocław.

POETICALLY ERECT: THE FEMALE ORIENTED HUMOR IN CALLIMACHUS’ HYMN TO DEMETER Jackie MURRAY Woman One: Wanna see a movie and get popcorn? Woman Two: Well, … I dunno. I have this rule, see … I only go to a movie if it satisfies three basic requirements. One, it has to have at least two women in it … who, two, talk to each other about, three, something besides a man. Woman One: Pretty strict, but a good idea. Woman Two: No Kidding. Last movie I was able to see was Alien … the two women in it talk to each other about the monster. Woman One: Wanna go to my house and make popcorn? Woman Two: Now you’re talkin’.1

1. Introduction The Bechdel-Wallace test (quoted above) first appeared in 1985 in “The Rule” a comic strip episode of Dykes to Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel. In this episode, when asked by her girlfriend if she wants to watch a movie and get popcorn, the other woman lays out the minimum criteria that would make her willing to see a film: “two women talking to each other about something other than a man.” Bechdel’s punchline — the characters forego seeing the movie and choose to just make popcorn — makes fun of the fact that most film genres are oriented toward men and do not cater to women’s interests or reflect their subjectivities. Moreover, as a comic strip, another male oriented genre, “The Rule” also calls attention to itself. By presenting two women discussing the criteria for appealing to women, it passes its own test. It is this kind of self-referentiality or self-consciousness about how women’s voices and subjectivity are represented in masculine genres that drives Bechdel’s point home. It is also this kind of self-referentiality or self-consciousness that aligns The Rule well with the presentation of female subjectivity in the poetry 1. Dialogue from Alison Bechdel, “The Rule”, Dykes to Watch Out For (1985).

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of Erinna and Nossis. Hence, I argue that The Rule is a perfect gauge for “woman friendliness” in male authored poetry of the Hellenistic era.2 Callimachus’ Hymn to Demeter, at first glance, does not appear to pass the Bechdel-Wallace test. Although he does have a female narrator addressing an all-female audience, the subject of her narrative is the male hero Erysichthon. However, in this paper, I would like to suggest that a deeper look at the way Callimachus handles his narrator’s feminine subjectivity makes it clear that this male poet attempted to create a kind of “authentic” female poetic voice that could have appealed to an audience that included women. A key feature of this female poetic voice, I argue, is the peculiar way it refracts the poet’s own male subjectivity and the traditional male orientation of hexameter hymns. Callimachus’ narrator in the Hymn to Demeter, as I will show, subtly lets the careful reader of the text know that she is the female mask of the male poet. This gendered tension, I argue, reflects the influence of female Hellenistic poets. Callimachus’ hymn appropriates what elsewhere Jonathan Rowland and I have discussed as Erinna and Nossis’ “transgendered poetics.”3 Accordingly, I will begin by briefly rehearsing what I mean by “transgendered poetics” and how Erinna and Nossis differ with respect to it. Then I will consider how the Hymn to Demeter appropriates this poetics.

2. Erinna And Nossis’ Transgendered Poetics Erinna was responsible for introducing an authentic female voice and feminine subjectivity into the traditionally male oriented genres in which she composed, i.e. hexameter verse and epigram.4 The most important feature of her voice was the tension between (a) its double consciousness, i.e. its internalization of aidōs, patriarchal social constraints, and (b) its self-awareness, i.e. the emphasis on the role genre played in reinforcing patriarchal constraints on expressing authentic feminine subjectivity. Kathryn Gutzwiller has argued convincingly that in the Distaff Aidōs is Erinna’s Muse.5 Eva Stehle developed this argument further by showing that in Erinna’s poetry more generally Aidōs-Muse is set in opposition to the destructive power of Aphrodite, the goddess of sexuality that 2. The criteria are not Bechdel’s own, as she admits but can be traced back to Virginia Woolf’s essay, A Room of One’s Own. 3. See Murray and Rowland (2007) for a full discussion of the transgendered poetics of Erinna and Nossis. 4. Gutzwiller (1997). 5. Gutzwiller (1997: 210).

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knows no social bounds.6 Aphrodite led her friend Baucis astray in the same way she led the heroine Helen astray, and in both cases, disastrous consequences ensued. Erinna’s Distaff is as much about the grief she feels at the loss of her friend as it is about the impotence she feels at being prevented by aidōs from lamenting her friend in public. Rowland and I added the observation that Erinna engages this tension between her desire to lament and her obedience to Aidōs self-consciously. Erinna highlights the conflict by turning the male oriented public facing genre inward. Instead of composing the Distaff in lyric verse, the genre Sappho used, the genre that was “more appropropriate” for a woman to use to express her private feelings to an all-female audience, Erinna composed in epic verse, the genre more appropriate to male poets and male audiences. Erinna, as Gutzwiller noted, freed the female voice from its encasement in the ventriloquism of the male narrator and she turned its usual focus on the battlefield and the male hero onto her girlfriend and the domestic sphere. Hence the Distaff foregrounds the tension between gender and genre. Erinna laments her heroine, Baucis, creating a female oriented “epic” perspective. Relevant here also is Erinna’s statement at the end of GP 3, the epigram about the portrait of a certain Agatharchis: “whoever he is, he depicted this maiden truly! if he had added a voice, Agatharchis, you would be complete!” (ταύταν γοῦν ἐτύμως τὰν παρθένον ὅστις ἔγραψεν, / αἰ καὐδὰν ποτέθηκ᾿, ἦς κ᾿ Ἀγαθαρχὶς ὅλα). Read metapoetically, these lines express both Erinna’s admiration for male poets, who like painters, have produced remarkable likenesses of women, and her regret or disappointment that again, like painters, male poets cannot give women authentic voices.7 Nossis followed Erinna in producing a similar self-referential feminine voice in her epigrams. However, in Nossis’ poetry Aphrodite is not a hostile goddess. Aphrodite and Hera, the goddesses of marriage and mature womanhood, are Muses. Nossis constructed her persona as the erotic gynē in opposition to Erinna’s persona, the aidōs-obeying parthenos. At the same time Nossis aligns her persona with Sappho.8 Nevertheless, like Erinna, Nossis too displays the same double consciousness that 6. Stehle (2001: 193–4). 7. Barnaby Chesterton pointed out in his response to this paper at the workshop that he is not convinced that this epigram is by Erinna herself, but is likely the work of an imitator. I remain convinced that the epigram was composed by Erinna, but even if this epigram is not authentic and the composition of an imitator, as Chesterton believes, it nevertheless reflects the imitator’s understanding of Erinna’s aesthetic principles and would function as another witness that Erinna was read as a poet who emphasizes the tension between gender and genre in her poetry. 8. Gutzwiller (1997: 211–22) and (1998: 77–8, 86–7).

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is in tension with her female subjectivity. Rowland and I have argued that this tension is especially evident in Nossis’ dedicatory epigram where she seems to adopt the default male subjectivity about martial valor (2 GP): Ἔντεα Βρέττιοι ἄνδρες ἀπ᾿ αἰνομόρων βάλον ὤμων, θεινόμενοι Λοκρῶν χερσὶν ὕπ᾿ ὠκυμάχων, ὧν ἀρετὰν ὑμνεῦντα θεῶν ὑπ᾿ ἀνάκτορα κεῖνται, οὐδὲ ποθεῦντι κακῶν πάχεας, οὓς ἔλιπον. The Bruttian men off cast their weapons from their ill-fated shoulders because they were being beaten by the hands of the Locrians swift in battle, whose excellence [those shields] hymn as they are lie as dedications in the temple of the gods, and they do not long for the arms of the cowards, whom they left behind.

Marilyn Skinner argued that Nossis’ feminine perspective comes through in what she perceived to be the epigram’s defiant treatment of the heroic code. Nossis reviles the defeated Bruttians with the image of their shields hymning the praises of their conquerors as if the shields cast them off. According to Skinner, Nossis’ defiant treatment of the heroic code shows up in the combination of her Locrian patriotism and her disgust at the code’s equal operations.9 However, Gutzwiller had already suggested more convincingly that Nossis’ voice in the epigram is male, she is simply ventriloquizing the sentiments of the Bruttian’s enemies through the shields.10 Moreover, defiance toward the heroic code, if it can be detected in the epigram, is not a sufficient indicator of a feminine perspective or subjectivity. In fr. 5 West, Archilochus famously takes up the voice of a mercenary whose shocking concept of valor is linked to possessions and allows him to cast away his shield rather than show courage in the face of death. Rather, as Rowland and I argued, Nossis’ epigram can be read as a clever retort to Archilochus’ last line, “To hell with it! I’ll get another one that’s no worse.” It is as if Nossis claps back at Archilochus matching his hypermasculine invective: Yes you can buy another shield that is no worse, but blameless shields eventually cast off cowards like you! Rather than defiance, we argued that Nossis’ feminine subjectivity comes through self-reflexivity toward the hyper-masculine invective voice. The last line of the epigram, οὐδὲ ποθεῦντι κακῶν πάχεας, οὓς ἔλιπον, ends with an erotic metaphor that compares the shields to disillusioned lovers. This switch from a martial to an erotic tone reaches back to Sappho’s priamel 9. Skinner (2005: 123). 10. Guzwiller (1998: 80).

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and signals Nossis’ switch from male to female subjectivity. Nossis drops the mask of a hyper-masculine invective poet as she subtly moves to the erotic in the last line.11 To this last point I would add that once we recall that as a Locrian Nossis most likely claimed Lacedaemonian heritage, the epigram starts to resonate in a higher pitch. Her mockery of the Bruttians for casting away their shields in the heat of battle echoes the famous sayings of the Spartan women: “τέκνον, ἢ τὰν ἢ ἐπὶ τᾶς.”12 As a final point before moving on to Callimachus, what I am calling transgendered poetics is the self-referential creation of tension between gender and genre in the poetic voice. This tension became possible from the fourth century on because the prominence of the text as a vehicle for poetry eroded traditional associations between gender and genre. Since these associations were originally tied to performance, the textuality of the new poetics emancipated the poetic voice from essentialist gendered restrictions on genre. Text created new spaces for poetic experimentation. Erinna and Nossis could thus create authentic feminine voices in traditionally male genres in ways that exploited the possibilities the book culture of the Hellenistic era opened up. This experimentation was, of course, not limited to female poets, male poets also took advantage of the creative potential. Callimachus was no exception.

3. Callimachus’ Hymn To Demeter The cult of Demeter and Kore was already a theme that allowed male poets to experiment with female voice. Old Comedy and Tragedy regularly featured male actors presenting as women on the stage and rhapsodes often spoke for their female characters in hymns and epics. However, these presentations were far from authentic. For, unlike the elite men who recited Sappho’s poetry at symposia, the actors and rhapsodes were not mouthing the words of a “real” woman. In Comedy and Tragedy men merely impersonated what men thought women would or should say. They also focused only on issues of concern to men. For example, both Lysistrata and Ecclesiazousae create a ridiculous caricature of women to mock men who advocate what the playwright deemed dangerous social or political views.13 11. Sappho fr. 16 LP = fr. 16 V. is the locus classicus for the gendered nature of this switch from martial to erotic. 12. For discussion of Spartan women and the heroic code see Fantham (1995); on the Sayings of Spartan Women see Myszkowska-Kaszuba (2014). 13. McClure (1999).

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Among these comedies, however, I would argue, that Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae stands out as an important intertextual foil for Callimachus’ mimetic Hymn to Demeter. Not only is it highly metapoetic in its treatment of the issues involved in male actors playing female characters, Thesmophoriazusae famously makes fun of the way the poet Euripides represented women in his tragedies.14 The play mocks the whole enterprise of male poets and actors representing women characters on stage by having the women characters speak and act out against it. In the play the all-women festival provides the opportunity for the women to come together and plot their revenge against the tragedian. When Euripides learns about the women’s plot and the danger he is in, he gets his relative Mnesilochus to infiltrate the Thesmophoria disguised as a woman. The plan goes awry chiefly because Mnesilochus cannot stay in character. He is betrayed largely by the flawed way he presents himself as a woman. He cannot refrain from using male speech patterns, and he is also incapable of maintaining a believable feminine subjectivity.15 Mnesilochus functions in the metapoetic discourse of the comedy as the male poet’s unbelievable female character. The irony, of course, is that the “women” who detect Mnesilochus are themselves creations of Aristophanes and played by male actors. Thesmophoriazusae thus offers a clever self-conscious critique of the way women were presented on the Athenian stage. However, the critique, clever as it is, is still masculine in subjectivity and orientation. There is nothing authentically feminine about the “real women” in Thesmophoriazusae. Callimachus had the option of doing what had always been done, i.e. following his Homeric model more closely and have a male persona narrate the myth or take the less trodden path. Of course, being Callimachus the latter had more appeal. Yet, following in Erinna’s footsteps is not simply a matter of having a female persona, as I have argued. Many of the Homeric Hymns, including the Homeric Hymn to Demeter itself, feature female voices. However, most of these characters betray no self-awareness about the constraints on female voice and a female subjectivity of their fictional world. The task was thus to create a female voice with some kind of awareness of the genre-gender tensions inherent in letting a woman speak in a traditionally masculine text. In the Hymn to Demeter Callimachus’ female persona is likely a priestess of the cult. She addresses two groups: the all-women celebrants who 14. For an excellent discussion of gendered speech in Attic Comedy see McClure (1999: 205-259); 15. McClure (1999:226-234).

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are separated from a mixed gendered group of observers.16 Thus the implied setting both highlights the tension between an audience that is exclusively one sex, i.e. female, and an audience that included both sexes. Hence the contrast between what would happen in performance and what would happen with the reader is put in relief. The fictive performance requires a separation of sexes, since the female narrator can only have the authority to tell myths to a female audience. However, through the text she speaks to both sexes. After giving instructions about the ritual, the priestess turns to the myth of Persephone’s rape and Demeter’s wandering. According to her, Hesperus was the only one who could persuade Demeter to drink when she was searching for her daughter. The narrator then addresses Demeter as if the goddess were part of her audience, asking how far her feet carried her and whether she ate or drank or bathed during the search. She breaks off the traditional narrative at the point where the goddess sat down at the well and refused to eat or bathe (17-23): μὴ μὴ ταῦτα λέγωμες ἃ δάκρυον ἄγαγε Δηοῖ· κάλλιον, ὡς πολίεσσιν ἑαδότα τέθμια δῶκε· κάλλιον, ὡς καλάμαν τε καὶ ἱερὰ δράγματα πράτα ἀσταχύων ἀπέκοψε καὶ ἐν βόας ἧκε πατῆσαι, ἁνίκα Τριπτόλεμος ἀγαθὰν ἐδιδάσκετο τέχναν· κάλλιον, ὡς (ἵνα καί τις ὑπερβασίας ἀλέηται) π ἰδέσθαι No, no, let’s not speak things that bring a tear to Deo. It’s better to tell how she gave fair laws to cities; better, how she first cut sheaves and holy ears of corn and lay them down for oxen to tread, when Triptolemus was instructed in the noble skill; better, how (so that one may avoid going too far) … to see.

Callimachus’ narrator is presented with four choices: (1) ignore the prohibition and resume telling the wanderings of Demeter; (2) tell the story of how Demeter brought laws to men, (3) tell the story of how Demeter taught Triptolemus agriculture; and (4) tell the story of how Demeter punished Erysichthon. She chooses to tell the story of Erysichthon’s punishment. It is worth first observing that by presenting his female narrator deliberating over which myth about the goddess to tell, Callimachus emphasizes not only a assimilation between his poetic process and that of his narrator, but also his awareness of the social and generic constraints on the female poetic voice. I would note the fact Callimachus as a man cannot 16. Stephens (2015: 265, 277, 294).

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know what myths women actually told during the all-women festivals to the goddess. Accordingly, the only myths about Demeter suggested to his narrator aside from the Rape of Persephone are myths about men. The catalogue of mythical options thus does not reflect, as some have suggested, Callimachus’ apparently unlimited repertoire. Rather, it accurately represents a male poet’s very limited repertoire when it comes to female oriented myths about Demeter. Moreover, the selection of the Erysichthon myth over the other options reveals Callimachus’ engagement with transgendered poetics. The other options highlight, by way of contrast, the Erysichthon myth as the most appropriate of the male oriented options for a female narrator. Both the boulē where legislation was passed and the field where plowing took place were male spheres. A woman would have had no authority to speak about them without posing serious challenges to the believability of Callimachus’ persona. Given the mimetic structure of this text and the traditional male orientation of hexameter hymn, if the narrator related a myth about a male hero interacting with the goddess in a male sphere such as legislation or agriculture, it would be difficult to detect any female subjectivity in the voice. Callimachus’ physical sex would dominate. The Erysichthon myth, by contrast, since it focuses on the collapse of the household, i.e. the feminine sphere, turns out to be the most “woman friendly” for Callimachus to narrate. The effect of switching to the male oriented myth of Erysichthon instead of continuing with the more female oriented myth of Demeter’s wanderings and the effect of switching precisely at this moment in the myth continues the gender-genre tension. The prohibition against continuing to tell the only female oriented myth (μὴ μὴ ταῦτα λέγωμες ἃ δάκρυον ἄγαγε Δηοῖ, 17) occurs right at the point in the myth when the goddess sat down at the well. In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, the moment when goddess sat down marks the point when she begins to put away her wrath. There she meets the daughters of Keleus King of Eleusis who take her to their home where she will eat and become the nurse of their baby brother Demophoön (HH 98-205). So, an initial point to notice is that the Erysichthon myth, as Peter Bing observed, replaces the Demophoön episode. Bing’s observations are worth quoting in full here:17 “In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, the goddess promises to care for Demophoön and keep him from harm: “For I know an antidote far stronger than the wood-cutter” (οἶδα γὰρ ἀντίτομον μέγα φέρτερον ὑλοτόμοιο, 17. Bing (1993:189 n.25).

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229). I think that this baffling “wood-cutter” (ὑλοτόμος), whose precise meaning is far from clear (cf. Richardson ad 228 and 229), intrigued Callimachus and influenced his shaping of the myth of the impious wood-cutter Erysichthon and his terrible punishment at the hands of Demeter.”

Indeed, the swapping out of Demeter caring for baby Demophoön for her punishment of the youthful hero Erysichthon is significant for the gender issues at play in Callimachus’ hymn. Both myths involve an obvious shift from the masculine gendered public sphere to the feminine gendered domestic sphere. In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, Demeter has been wandering all over the world and finally comes to a stop at the well. From this public place, the daughters of Keleus take her to their home where she is coaxed into laughing and having something to drink (198-205): δηρὸν δ’ ἄφθογγος τετιημένη ἧστ’ ἐπὶ δίφρου, οὐδέ τιν’ οὔτ’ ἔπεϊ προσπτύσσετο οὔτε τι ἔργῳ, ἀλλ’ ἀγέλαστος ἄπαστος ἐδητύος ἠδὲ ποτῆτος ἧστο πόθῳ μινύθουσα βαθυζώνοιο θυγατρός, πρίν γ’ ὅτε δὴ χλεύῃς μιν Ἰάμβη κέδν’ εἰδυῖα πολλὰ παρασκώπτουσ’ ἐτρέψατο πότνιαν ἁγνὴν μειδῆσαι γελάσαι τε καὶ ἵλαον σχεῖν θυμόν· ἣ δή οἱ καὶ ἔπειτα μεθύστερον εὔαδ᾿ ἑορταῖς.18

(200)

(205)

For a long time she sat on the chair silent from grief. She did not greet anyone with word or gesture, but sat unsmiling, unwilling to taste food or drink, pining for her daughter with the thick girdle, until at last Iambe knowing clever things by jesting and telling many jokes amused the noble lady so that she smiled and laughed and had a propitious heart — Iambe who ever after delights her festivals.

Iambe in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter corresponds to Baubo in the Orphic versions of the myth. In both versions it is Iambe/Baubo who elicits laughter from Demeter by “jesting and telling many jokes.” Laughing predisposed the goddess to take on the beneficent role of nurse to Demophoön. In the Homeric Hymn it is unclear what Iambe’s jests entail, but in the Orphic tradition it seems that Baubo used obscene gestures, including lifting her skirts, to cheer Demeter.19 In either case, Iambe/Baubo’s behavior and Demeter’s subsequent nursing of Demophoön suggest that these events are set in the women’s quarters. In Callimachus’ Hymn to Demeter the setting of the myth shifts similarly from public to the private domestic sphere. Erysichthon and his men were outside in the grove when they encountered the goddess. His intention 18. I accept Voss’ reading εὔαδ᾿ ἑορταῖς instead of εὔαδεν ὀργαῖς. 19. Clem. Al. Protr. 2.16-17; Euseb. PE 2.3.30-35; Arnob. Advers. Nat. 5.25-26.

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was to use the wood of the grove to construct a dining hall where he and his companions would hold unending feasts. The dining hall is another masculine gendered space. However, once Demeter curses him the narrator shifts the scene to the palace. There Erysichthon is kept out of public view, secluded in the innermost chambers, while he gorges himself on the household stores. It is only later, when the household cannot support his gluttony that he is expelled and forced into public to live as a beggar. Hence, Callimachus’ female narrator’s break-off highlights the gendered tensions of the hymn. She stops her myth about Demeter’s wandering to avoid making Demeter cry. Yet, where she stops the myth is precisely at the point where Iambe/Baubo usually makes the goddess laugh! Moreover, the explicit occlusion of the Iambe/Baubo scene brings attention to the gender of the voice and physical sex of the poet. For, in the traditional hymns, whether as “Homer” or “Orpheus”, a male rhapsode or singer wore the persona of male narrator, who speaks for all the characters, including the female characters, and including Iambe/Baubo. 20 Yet, Callimachus’ persona breaks off the myth at the point where the narrative usually turns to the feminine sphere. In fact, Callimachus’ female narrator deliberately and self-consciously erases Iambe/Baubo. She emphatically denies the traditional versions and declares that the only person who made the goddess drink was the male figure Hesperus (7-9): Ἕσπερος ἐκ νεφέων ἐσκέψατο, πανίκα νεῖται, Ἕσπερος, ὅς τε πιεῖν Δαμάτερα μῶνος ἔπεισεν, ἁρπαγίμας ὅκ’ ἄπυστα μετέστιχεν ἴχνια κώρας. Hesperus looked out from the clouds when it comes, Hesperus, who alone persuaded the goddess to drink, when she went in search of the tracks of her abducted daughter that she heard from no one.

This occlusion of Iambe/Baubo undermines any quasi-essentialist grounding of gendered voice in physical sex that might be involved in having a female narrator speak for female characters. Callimachus’ female narrator substitutes the male Hesperus for Iambe/Baubo, the female figure who caused the goddess to break her fast by (in some accounts) showing off her genitalia.21 Whereas there is nothing self-referential about “Homer” or “Orpheus” ventriloquizing female voices in the traditional versions, 20. McClure (1999: 49); Foley (1994: 45-46); West (1974: 23-24 and 1977); Richardson (1974: 222). 21. It is probably significant that in the Orphic version Baubo reveals her genitals. Foley (1994: 46); Clem. Al. Protr. 2.20.1-21.2 = Orphic fr. 52 Kern; Arn. Adv. nat. 5.2526; Euseb. Prep. Evang. 2.3.31-35.

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Callimachus is certainly advertising his female narrator as a mask. Hence, the occlusion underscores Callimachus’ appropriation of the transgendered poetics of Erinna and Nossis. Turning to the details of the Erysichthon myth: Callimachus’ persona starts the story from when the Triopidai were prosperous, i.e., when Erysichthon was still an unmarried youth living in his parents house. This allows the narrator to treat Erysichthon as an overgrown baby. And indeed, all the other characters in her myth interact with him as if he were a still a child. Demeter in disguise as her priestess addresses him as τέκνον three times (46-47): τέκνον, ὅτις τὰ θεοῖσιν ἀνειμένα δένδρεα κόπτεις, τέκνον ἐλίνυσον, τέκνον πολύθεστε τοκεῦσι, Child, you there chopping down trees consecrated to the gods, child stop it, child much-longed for by your parents!

His mother keeps him in the innermost part of the house, like a child. Even his father refers to him as a baby, brephos (100). Moreover, the social consequences of Demeter’s curse keep him from growing up. His gluttony prevents him from participating in games, weddings, and feasts, i.e., the activities that bridge childhood and adulthood. Since babies and children were the concern of female members of the household, this infantilization of Erysichthon contributes to the female orientation and subjectivity of Callimachus’ persona. To reinforce this feminine subjectivity, Callimachus’ persona either focalizes her narrative primarily through her female characters or she feminizes her male characters. She begins by telling the story from Demeter’s perspective. The description of the grove, its beauty and bounty, elicit an emotional response in the goddess (29-30): θεὰ δ’ ἐπεμαίνετο χώρῳ ὅσσον Ἐλευσῖνι, Τριόπᾳ θ’ ὅσον ὁκκόσον Ἔννᾳ. Demeter was mad for the place as much as for Eleusis, as much as for Triopas, as much as for Enna.

Likewise, Erysichthon’s attack on the grove damages the harmony of the poetic landscape where choruses of nymphs would sing to the goddess. The audiences (internal and external) of the myth are made to focalize through the goddess and the tree nymph when the tall poplar tree cried out in pain and it let out a κακὸν μἐλος. The location of the grove further adds to the divine perspective. The action happens in Thessaly, where the gods waged war against the Titans. Add to this that Erysichthon and his men are compared to giants, ἀνδρογίγαντας, who could lift up a whole

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city (32). The allusion to the gigantomachy is clear and provides an interpretive frame for understanding Demeter’s rage. However, the mask does slip and Callimachus the learned male poet peeks through. The κακὸν μέλος of the poplar, the allusion to gigantomachy, and Eryischthon’s intention to build a dining-hall for festing and symposia combine into an antiphrastic allusion to Xenophanes’ proscription against telling epic battles in a proper symposium (fr.1.19-24 West): ὡς ᾖ μνημοσύνη καὶ τόνος ἀμφ᾿ ἀρετῆς· οὔ τι μάχας διέπειν Τιτήνων οὐδὲ Γιγάντων οὐδέ Κενταύρων, πλάσμα τῶν προτέρων, ἢ στάσιας σφεδανὰς — τοῖς οὐδὲν χρηστὸν ἔνεστιν — · θεῶν προμηθείην αἰὲν ἔχειν ἀγαθήν. So that there may be memory of and striving for excellence; it is not at all appropriate to conduct battles of Titans or Giants or Centaurs, the fictions of earlier men, or violent factions -- nothing useful is in them. Rather it is appropriate always to have good consideration for the gods.

The allusion suggests that Erysichthon’s intended banquets and symposia probably would have included bad epic poetry about Gigantomachy, Titanomachy or Centauromachy and would have ended in drunken brawls. Erysichthon’s behavior is bad on many levels, both with respect to what is appropriate for men in all-male settings and what is appropriate metapoetically for banquets and symposia. Thus, through the allusion to Xenophanes’ description of the ideal all-male banquet and symposium, the poet’s criticism of Erysichthon’s behavior permeates his female persona just enough to create the desired tension between male and female gendered speech. The same gender tension is foregrounded when Demeter transforms herself into her city priestess. On the one hand, her disguise completes the assimilation of narrator and character: both are now priestesses of the goddess. On the other hand, Erysichthon is also feminized when he speaks. His violent response is compared to the reaction of a lioness (51-52): τὰν δ’ ἄρ’ ὑποβλέψας χαλεπώτερον ἠὲ κυναγόν ὤρεσιν ἐν Τμαρίοισιν ὑποβλέπει ἄνδρα λέαινα ὠμοτόκος, τᾶς φαντὶ πέλειν βλοσυρώτατον ὄμμα He glared at her more fiercely than a lioness who has just given birth glares at a hunter in the Tmarian mountains, her eyes they say are the most fearsome.

Erysichthon’s glare (masculine) is fixed on the goddess disguised as her priestess (feminine); this is compared to the glare of the lioness

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(feminine) fixed on a hunter (masculine). The tension between genders is emphasized on two levels of the text. On the level of the words, the tension between genders is stressed by the position of ἄνδρα beside λέαινα. On the level of content, it is stressed by the fact that the lioness has just given birth, but her glare is said (presumably by hunters) to be βλοσυρώτατον. LJS gives “most hairy,” then by extension “most virile,” “most masculine” as the meaning. The lioness thus has a masculine glare because the male poet behind the female narrator can only make masculine analogies. After Demeter reveals herself and curses Erysichthon, the focalization shifts from the goddess to his mother. Polyxo tries to keep her son’s gluttony a secret by lying to everyone who invites him for a meal. The narrator quotes all of her excuses directly, singling her out for an apostrophe: “Wretched mother, who loves her son, what lies did you not tell?” (83). The effect of addressing Polyxo is threefold. First, the apostrophe reinforces the mock-epic tone of the hymn, evoking the frequent use of the device in the Iliad. Second, it calls attention to the gender of the addressee by using a specifically feminine epithet, φιλότεκνε...μᾶτερ.22 Third, the apostrophe, by breaking the flow of the narrative, calls attention to the narrator as a female persona of the male poet balancing the masculine orientation of the genre and the feminine subjectivity of the narrator and internal audience. The emaciation of Erysichthon contributes to this balancing act. He is compared both to the snow melting on Mt. Mimas, an image appropriate to epic, and to a wax doll wasting away in the sun, an image appropriate to poetry composed by women. Indeed, the image recalls Erinna’s Distaff where girls’ games are prominent. Hence, the image of the doll feminizes Erysichthon as it also reminds the reader that the internal audience of the hymn is made up of women, who are more likely to see wax dolls melting in the sun than they are snow melting on Mt. Mimas. This implied feminine viewer is mirrored by the catalogue of women in Erysichthon’s household who weep when they see him: his mother, his sisters, the ten slave women, and his nurse, who is referred to by a specially feminine metonym, “the breast he suckled” (91-95). Even Triopas is somewhat feminized by the narrator. He keeps the family secret, confining his son in the domestic sphere. He thus prevents him from growing up and taking his place as a man in the community. Triopas does this until he is forced to expel his son from the family, making him a beggar in the street. 22. On apostrophe in Homer see Parry (1972); Block (1982); Yamagata (1989); Grillo (1988: 9–67); Bakker (1997: 172–73); Kahane (1994: 107–13, 153–55).

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In addition to referring to Erysichthon as a baby, as noted already, Triopas also laments for him the way a mother would over her son. He wishes that Apollo had killed Erysichthon before he was cursed (100-101). This type of counter-factual wish resembles the lament of Hecuba over Hector and the appeals girls and women make to Artemis, wishing the goddess had killed them before some disaster had occurred.23 Although in the telling of the Erysichthon story, Callimachus’ female narrator violates the Bechdel-Wallace rule in making a male the central focus of her story, the poet nevertheless achieves something in between: a transgendered subjectivity. By transforming the Erysichthon story into one about the collapse of the household, focalizing the narrative through females or feminized males, and by infantilizing Erysichthon himself, Callimachus creates a perfect balance between his and the genre’s masculinity and the feminine subjectivity and voice of his narrator. Just as Erinna created a tension in the Distaff between the female orientation and subjectivity of her content and the male orientation of the epic language, and just as Nossis, in her epigram praising the Locrians for their victory over the Bruttians, transforms hyper-masculine invective into hyperfeminine invective, so too Callimachus has deployed the same transgendered poetics to create a female voice with an authentic female subjectivity in his Hymn to Demeter.24 REFERENCES Bakker, E., 1997, Poetry in Speech: Orality and Homeric Discourse. Ithaca. Bechdel, A., 1985, “The Rule”, in: Dykes to Watch Out For. Bing, P., 1993, “Impersonation of Voice in Callimachus’ Hymn to Apollo”, TAPA 123: 181-198. Bing, P., 1995, “Callimachus and the Hymn to Demeter”, Syllecta Classica 6: 29-42. Bing, P. and Bruss, J., 2007, (eds.) Brill Companion to Hellenistic Epigrams. Leiden. Block, E., 1982, “The Narrator Speaks: Apostrophe in Homer and Virgil”, TAPA 112:7–22. Fantham, E., 1995, “Spartan Women: Women in a Warrior Society”, In E. Fantham, (ed.) Women in the Classical World: Image and Text. New York. 56‒67.

23. E.g. Iliad 24. 757-759, cf. A.R. 3.771-776. 24. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Dr. Harder for her years of service to the field of Hellenistic poetry and for welcoming me at my first Hellenistic Workshop in 1998. I would also like to express my thanks to Barnaby Chesterton for responding to my paper and to all the participants of the workshop for their comments. Finally, I thank the editors of the series for their input. All errors that remain are my own.

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Foley, H., 1994, The Homeric Hymn to Demeter. Translation, Commentary, and Interpretative Essays. Princeton. Grillo, A., 1988, Tra filologia e narratologia. Rome. Gutzwiller, K., 1997, “Genre development and gendered voices in Nossis and Erinna”, in Yopie Prins, Maeera Shreiber (eds.) Dwelling in Possibility: Women Poets and Critics on Poetry. Ithaca, 202-222. Kahane, A., 1994, The Interpretation of Order: A Study in the Poetics of Homeric Repetition. Oxford. McClure, L., 1999, Spoken Like a Woman: Speech and Gender in Athenian Drama. Princeton. Murray, J. and Rowland, J., 2007, “Gendered voice in Hellenistic Epigram”, in: P. Bing and J. Bruss (eds.) Brill Companion to Hellenistic Epigrams. Leiden, 211-232. Myszkowska-Kaszuba, M., 2014, “The Only Women That Are Mothers Of Men. Plutarch’s Creation Of The Spartan Mother”, Graeco-Latina Brunensia 19: 77-92. Parry, A., 1972, “Language and Characterization in Homer”, HSCP 76:1–22. Richardson, N. J., 1974, The Homeric Hymn to Demeter. Oxford. Skinner, M., 2005, “Nossis Thelyglossos”, in E. Greene (ed.) Women Poets in Ancient Greece and Rome. Norman, Oklahoma. Stehle, E., 2001, “The Good Daughter: Mother’s Tutelage in Erinna’s Distaff and Fourth-Century Epitaphs”, In: A. Lardinois and L. McClure (eds.) Making Silence Speak: Women’s Voices in Greek Literature and Society. City seems to be missing Stephens, S., 2015, Callimachus: The Hymns. Oxford. West, M.L., 1974, Studies in Greek Elegy and Iambus. Berlin. —, 1977, “Erinna”, ZPE 25: 95-119. Yamagata, B. N., 1989, “The Apostrophe in Homer as Part of the Oral Technique”, BICS 36:91–103.

THE DIDACTIC CALLIMACHUS AND THE HOMERIC NICANDER: READING THE AETIA THROUGH THE THERIACA? Floris OVERDUIN

1. Introduction It is hard to overrate the influence of Callimachus on poets both in his own time and in centuries to follow, in Greece as well as Rome.1 Among the many poets affected by Callimachus’ poetics and aesthetics was Nicander of Colophon, who was active in the second century BCE, connected, in some way, to the Attalid court of Pergamum.2 Based on Nicander’s highly learned poetry, most notably his Theriaca, and his strict adherence to Callimachean metre, it is not difficult to see how the two poets are connected.3 Yet how far does such a connection go? In this paper, I will argue that Callimachus’ influence is not limited to lexicalities, but that the Aetia itself connects the two poets, from the particular viewpoint of didactic poetry. Although the Aetia is hardly a straightforward example of a didactic poem — or indeed a straightforward example of any sort of poem —, it can be (and has been) argued that Callimachus’ aetiological masterpiece essentially shares quite a few characteristics of the didactic genre. I will therefore first assess some aspects of the Aetia’s potential position within the didactic tradition, and consider, subsequently, Nicander’s possible response to the Aetia as a didactic poem. Although the evidence is limited, if there is such a connection, it may add to our understanding of Nicander’s position vis-à-vis Callimachus and therefore to Callimachus’ possible status as a didactic poet. 1. This contribution is partly based on an earlier paper presented in Cambridge in September 2016 at the “Casting off Shadows” conference. I would like to thank the organizers and participants for their comments and criticisms, which have been most useful for the approach of this Groningen paper. I would also like to thank the participants of the 2017 Groningen workshop for their helpful comments. 2. Nicander’s Pergamene connection shows most clearly from his Hymn to Attalus (fr. 30 Gow & Scholfield). Colophon’s (or more precisely Clarus’) proximity to Pergamum will have played a role here, but there is no clear evidence that Nicander was the Attalids’ court poet. Jacques’ suggestion (2002: xvi-xx; 2007: 108-109) that Nicander was some sort of court physician, more precisely a theriakos, seems too strong an interpretation. 3. For Nicander’s strict observation of Callimachean metrical principles see Jacques (2002: cxxiii-cxxix); Oikonomakos (2002: 135-152); Magnelli (2006: 198-201). For a more general influence of Callimachus on Nicander see e.g. Toohey (1996: 73-77).

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2. The Aetia as a didactic poem: some parameters 2.1. Categorizing the Aetia Like quite a few other Hellenistic poems, categorizing the Aetia is not a particularly straightforward process. And like quite a few other Hellenistic poems, the generic essence of the Aetia seems to be that it is different from what tradition had offered, much like Lycophron’s Alexandra or Theocritus’ bucolic Idylls are unique creations. Of course their characteristics point at obvious discernible origins (epic, mime, tragedy), and the time-honoured, though criticized, approach of Kreuzung der Gattungen helps to point out what is new and what is not within the framework of categorization.4 However, the nature, the form, the choice of metre, the narrative framework, the poet’s surprising approach to his subject matter and his playful dealings with his audiences, certainly make the Aetia one of a kind. Yet audiences, both contemporary and later ones, must have wondered too what sort of poem this was.5 An elegy of epic dimensions? A prose treatise, on the in itself prosaic subject matter of aetiology, framed in distichs?6 A catalogue, interspersed with Ptolemaic eulogy? Or a didactic poem, albeit of quite a different nature from what the didactic tradition had so far comprised?7 To start with a truism, what is and what is not a didactic poem depends on how one defines didactic poetry.8 It is relatively easy to draw a chronological line from Hesiod’s Works and Days to the poems of Empedocles 4. As introduced by Kroll (1924: 202-224). In categorizing this unique poem, moreover, it makes sense to distinguish between generic games played within the Aetia — of which there are many; see Harder (1998: 95-113) — and the generic encompassing nature of the Aetia as a whole. Cf. Harder (2012: 23-36). 5. Cf. Harder (2007: 24, with references to earlier literature; 2010; 2012: 23-36). 6. That aetiology itself was a suitable subject for a prose work is shown by Callimachus himself, as the titles of his lost prose works amply suggest; see e.g. Krevans (2004: 181-182). 7. Toohey (1996: 75) dismisses the Aetia as a didactic poem straightaway, but only because of the lack of an addressee and extended technical exposition, and the choice for the ‘wrong’ metre. Yet he admits a close relation between the Aetia and the didactic-epic tradition. Cf. Fowler (2000: 206), who conversely shows that in Aeneid 6 the presence of a teacher, a pupil and a body of knowledge alone are not enough to make for didactic epic, despite the fact that these elements are so central to definitions of didactic poetry. See also Kaesser (2005: 97-103), who approaches the Aetia from a functional (‘social potency’; ‘societal agency’) rather than a formal didactic point of view. 8. For various approaches to the genre see Effe (1977: 9-22; 2005); Toohey (1996, briefly summarized in 2005); Dalzell (1996: 9-10); Volk (2002); Gale (2004: xiii-xv); Kruschwitz (2005: 10-15); Harder (2007: 24-30); Sider (2014); Overduin (2015: 12-31). For the — inevitable — issue of circularity in defining didactic see e.g. Harder (2007: 25-26).

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and Parmenides, to continue via Aratus’ Phaenomena to the iological works of Nicander, and to proceed into the Imperial age with the products of Dionysius of Alexandria, the Oppians, and pseudo-Orpheus’ Lithica. Latin poems such as Vergil’s Georgics, Lucretius’ De rerum natura, and the manifold imitations and emulations of Aratus easily fit into this historical didactic thread, as does the Cynegetica of Nemesianus, to name some of the most prominent specimens. What these poems have in common is clear enough: a shared epic metre, a didactic framework (the ‘teacher-student constellation’), a focus on the position of the teacher, ‘suitable’ subject matter, attention to predecessors within the genre, as well as attention to specific elements of the shared tradition (e.g. interest in the Ages of Man myth, the use of mythological digressions) etc.9 Pointing out correspondences between these works is fairly easy. It becomes, of course, more problematic when poems in the grey area are discussed. What to do with Archestratus’ Hedypatheia? Where and how do Ovid’s works fit in? If the Fasti can be considered, to a certain extent, a didactic poem (despite lacking the proper metre), then could one also add the Metamorphoses (being in the proper metre but lacking any evident, that is seemingly practicable lessons)?10 Where to place pseudoScymnus’ Periodos? Is it its use of iambic metre that is problematic, or rather its lack of clear engagement with the literary predecessors — a lack that has, moreover, been questioned?11 Even Hesiod poses problems here, because whereas the Works and Days, the mother, the model of all didactic epic, has a more or less undisputed status, what does one make of the Theogony?12 ‘Labelling’ the latter as narrative epic makes little sense, as there is hardly any narration going on here and its apparent generic kinship with the Catalogue of Women points in a different direction. To allow for a wider definition of didactic poetry, a definition that could help to put certain works (and in particular the Aetia) in perspective, there are some relevant distinctions to make, of which I would like to highlight three: (i) the criterion of metre, (ii) the concept of catalogue poetry, and (iii) the awareness of a didactic genre in hindsight. 9. One could add the notion that didactic poems were often bipartite, if one takes into consideration the Works and Days, Aratus’ Phaenomena and Nicander’s Theriaca. The fact that the Aetia is bipartite as well may, arguably, not be entirely incidental from this point of view. 10. Harder (2007: 37), however, points out that didactic poetry can be just as much a vehicle for information, as it can be for instruction. 11. Hunter (2007). 12. The status of the Works and Days as the standard of didactic epic, has moreover, despite it being a textbook example, been questioned; see e.g. Heath (1985); Nelson (1996).

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2.2. Metre: a strict criterion? Traditionally (or perhaps just initially) didactic poetry was inseparable from didactic epic, for the simple reason that for large scale didactic poems the poets followed the epic convention of applying the dactylic hexameter as their choice of metre. Empedocles and Parmenides had little reason to stray from this convention, and when Aratus brought new life into the didactic genre by composing a work for farmers and sailors, he chose to do so by adhering to the convention of the Works and Days.13 But that is not to say that other metres were by nature unfit or could not be applied successfully or convincingly to didactic poetry. The iambic Periodos of pseudo-Scymnus, already mentioned, is a clear example of what surely can be qualified as a didactic poem. It may not meet all the requirements commonly summed up, but these requirements should be descriptive, not prescriptive. Didactic compositions in iambics appear to have been fairly rare, although one could add to pseudo-Scymnus’ didactic poem the iambic medical recipes of Servilius Damocrates, which served pretty much the same purpose as the elegiac didactic recipe of Andromachus the Elder (62 Heitsch).14 For those willing to stretch the boundaries a little: Annette Harder even makes a case for Lycophron composing his Alexandra in the didactic mode, thus including it among the poems that should be studied within the didactic frame.15 The use of didactic iambics may have been odd, but not impossible. Somewhat more common appears to have been the use of elegiac couplets for the composition of didactic poetry. Ovid’s Ars amatoria and Remedia amoris may seem to be written in elegiacs because of their subject matter, which places them in the realm of erotic elegy. Yet by nature they appear much closer to the genre of ‘didactic elegy’, a genre which may have been initiated (at least from a Roman perspective) by Callimachus. The Fasti’s subject matter, far from the playfulness of the Ars amatoria and the Remedia amoris, and ostensibly a much more serious work, shows many characteristics of didactic poetry. The use of elegy 13. One may also compare the fragment from the Instructions of Cheiron (fr. 283 MW = 218 Most) as an example of early didactic poetry in conventional dactylic hexameters. 14. Which, in turn, was reworked into iambics by Andromachus the younger, constituting another example of didactic iambic — albeit in a less strict sense. See also Effe (1977: 184-187) for, among others, the iambic-didactic Ἀναγραφὴ τῆς Ἑλλάδος of Dionysius, son of Calliphon (fr. 1.238 Müller), and Sider (2014: 29), who adds the example of Mnesitheus (fr. 41 Bertier: a didactic fragment on wine). 15. Harder (2007). As Sider (2014: 20) argues, there is even good reason to consider lyric poets who composed hypothekai and the like among those concerned with writing “useful/beneficial/instructive poetry”, i.e. didactic poetry, albeit from the viewpoint of a didactic genre that had not developed into a highly fixed form yet.

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for didactic purposes, arguably already rooted in archaic paraenetic elegy,16 can also be found in post-Hellenistic medical poetry, quite some of which was composed in elegiacs. Based on the very scanty remains little can be said about Nicander’s Ophiaca, but what can be said is that it is in elegiacs and that it is not unlike Nicander’s didactic works.17 If the Ophiaca was a didactic poem, then it may not only have served as a model of sorts for the imperial medical elegists, but also as an example of the fact that hexametric and elegiac didactic existed more or less side by side, composed, in Nicander’s case, by the same poet.18 The use of dactylic hexameters as the only suitable metre for composing didactic poetry, as the exclusive metre of didactic poetry, is therefore too rigid. Not only was the hexameter used for different genres in general (next to heroic and didactic epic one thinks of its use in early — as well as later — epigram, its use for Roman satire, or for Erinna’s Distaff, a poem almost lyrical in its very personal nature), the use of elegiacs was not very well defined either, encompassing paraenetic poetry (as found in Solon and Theognis), love elegy, sympotic verse, catalogues, didactic pieces, lyric, and even narrative (as in Archilochus’ lines on Telephus in P.Oxy. 69.4708).19 Elegiacs could be used for diverse purposes, but even within a relatively well-defined form as the Hellenistic (elegiac) epigram there is room for a didactic approach, in addition to the traditional epigrammatic genres, such as epitaphs, commemorations, dedications or love poems. As Baumbach and Trampedach point out, there is little reason not to consider some of the epigrams from the Oionoskopika-section of the ‘New Posidippus’ (ep. 21-35 AB) as ‘didactic’, even though they lack the ‘proper’ metre and are composed ‘within’ a different genre.20 They 16. Cf. the ‘didactic’ passages in e.g. Theognis, Solon and even Mimnermus (cf. Kaesser 2005: 97); cf. Noussia (2010: 375) on Solon fr. 27 W.2 17. Frr. 31-2 Gow-Scholfield, nine lines altogether. 18. For elegiac medical poetry cf. Eudemus (SH 412A), Andromachus (62 Heitsch), and, by extension, Philo of Tarsus (SH 690), and Aglaias of Byzantium (SH 18); cf. Overduin 2018b and 2019. See also Sider (2014: 28-29), who adds the elegiac examples of, among others, Anacreon’s Phaenomena (CA 130), Anubion (astrological elegies), Dorotheus of Sidon (astronomical elegy), and Nicomachus (on painters). 19. For a brief summary of the development of elegy into the Hellenistic age see e.g. Murray (2010), who points out just how varied elegy had always been throughout its history. The (post-)Hellenistic use of elegiacs for medical prescriptions shows the flexibility of this metre. Of course there are objections to be made, e.g. in the case of the Roman love elegists, for whom — ostensibly unlike their Greek colleagues — the elegy was a clearly delineated genre, for which Ov. Am. 1.1-4 is a case in point. 20. Baumbach and Trampedach (2004: 150-156). The use of the didactic mode within an un-didactic genre such as Hellenistic epigram mirrors the use of all the different genres used within the Aetia (cf. Harder 1998), thus arguably within the Aetia as didactic poem.

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argue that these epigrams may reflect a tradition of didactic poetry on augury. From this perspective at least, the use of elegiacs can hardly be said to be a serious objection to approaching the Aetia as some sort of didactic poem. As to the formal difference between epic and elegiac poetry, one could add Harder’s observation that, at any rate, this is all dactylic poetry, be it in hexameters or pentameters.21 2.3. Catalogue poetry An element closely connected to, or interwoven with, didactic poetry is the presence of one or more catalogues, to the extent that it makes sense to speak of didactic poetry as catalogue poetry. Whereas in narrative epic minor or major catalogues show up as a conventional element integrated into the narrative, didactic epic mainly consists of catalogues, augmented by proems, epilogues and digressions. This idea, the didactic poem as a catalogue, a list of instructions, a list of possibilities, a list of ingredients, or a list of phenomena, clearly seems to be applicable to just about every single didactic poem.22 Hesiod’s Theogony (catalogue of deities) and Catalogue of Women (catalogue of human offspring from deities), Aratus’ Phaenomena (systematic catalogue of stars and the star signs they form), Nicander’s Theriaca and Alexipharmaca (catalogues of animals, plants, remedies), but also Ovid’s Metamorphoses (catalogue of mythical transformations), Ars Amatoria (catalogue of seductive moves) and Fasti (calendar ~ catalogue of marked days): as catalogues they all have much in common.23 Oppian’s Halieutica and pseudo-Oppian’s Cynegetica (with which one can easily compare the Cynegetica of Nemesianus) certainly fit this typology well, as do the Lithica and even the Sentences of pseudo-Phocylides.24 Even Hesiod’s Works and Days contains a collection of different catalogues, crudely fixed together. Although it is true that some didactic poems can less easily be characterized this way (particularly Lucretius’ De rerum natura), it takes little effort to see a pattern 21. Harder (2007: 25). 22. For discussion of the catalogue in Call. fr. 43 in particular see Harder (1998: 102). 23. That the Catalogue of Women is a catalogue poem is not only reflected by its very title, but it is also confirmed by the Hellenistic catalogue poems following (with slight variations) the use ἢ οἵη as a structural marker of that particular genre. Cf. Phanocles, CA 1.1 p. 107 (Ἢ ὡς), Sostratus, SH 731-4 (Ἠοῖοι), Hermesianax, CA 7.1 p. 98 (Οἵην); in his Γυναικῶν κατάλογος (CA 2 p. 2) Nicaenetus will surely have used a similar approach. 24. One could add the didactic fragment of Marcellus of Side’s De piscibus (63 Heitsch), who aligns his poem with the didactic tradition by presenting a catalogue of fish names (8-40) within a didactic poem consisting of a catalogue of recipes (44-101); see Overduin (2018a: 36-38). For the qualification of pseudo-Phocylides as a didactic poet, see Van der Horst (1978: 77-80).

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here of overlapping genres. Poems essentially made up of catalogues seem to be at home in the realm of didactic poetry, a characterization that fits the core structure of the Aetia: a catalogue of aetia, when stripped from proems and prologues, hairlocks and Muse encounters. And whereas not all catalogues are directly connected to didactic poetry, there is enough generic overlap to consider the use of catalogues (particularly for poems essentially made up of catalogues) as a sign of poetry composed with a didactic intent, or at least as a sign of poetry written with the intent of appealing to readers who recognized such poetry as didactic. 2.4. Generic awareness A third distinction that puts the definition of what is and what is not didactic poetry in perspective, concerns the development of the awareness of didactic poetry as a distinct genre. It has become somewhat of a cliché in studies in didactic poetry to point out that the ancients did not really seem to distinguish didactic as a genre in itself until relatively late.25 Surely an awareness existed that the Works and Days was a different sort of work than the Iliad, an awareness clearly reflected by the verdict that concludes the Certamen Homeri et Hesiodi, but essentially this was all just epic. As Sider argues, the birth of didactic poetry paradoxically took place centuries after the composition of the Works and Days, when Hellenistic poets showed their recognition in hindsight of Hesiod as the creator of a didactic strand of epic.26 The Works and Days may have existed since the dawn of Greek literature, but it was only from the third century on that it existed as a didactic poem, an awareness of which was not so clearly shown earlier. Hellenistic audiences that, by now, felt that the Works and Days was the template of didactic epic, may easily have recognized Aratus’ Phaenomena, with its Hesiodic colourings, as a contemporary protagonist of the genre of didactic epic.27 But Callimachus’ overt nods to Hesiod must have triggered the same approach to the Aetia: an innovative, yet recognizable poem, playing with (and on) the didactic conventions of transmitting knowledge from teacher to pupil.28 Admittedly, the voices 25. The locus classicus here is the Tractatus Coislinianus, together with the remarks of Diomedes and Servius (prooem. ad Georg. 3); see e.g. Effe (1977: 20-21); Kaesser (2005: 95-96); Sider (2014: 15-16). 26. Sider (2014). 27. Cf. Kidd (1997: 8-10), Fakas (2001). 28. For the role of ‘Callimachus’ as teaching narrator, who ‘stays in charge’ in several parts of the Aetia, cf. Harder (1998: 102).

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of teacher and pupil are not consistent throughout, or reliable carriers of the various didactic roles. The Aetia is simply not a straightforward traditional didactic poem. What matters, however, is not so much whether Callimachus stuck to the rules (which he did not), but whether an audience would recognize his innovations as rooted in and playing on traditional didactic poetry. The striking reversal of teacher (the Muses) and pupil (the poet) in e.g. fr. 43 is of course an unexpected turn, but a turn that particularly makes sense from the viewpoint of a didactic mode.29 This is still a setting in which getting across an abstract body of knowledge is central, a body of knowledge for which, moreover, the didactic genre is most suitable. The setting of a young man, being transported in a dream to a goddess who is going to instruct him, is, moreover, already clearly present in the didactic poetry of Parmenides, a poem whose proem may still resonate for Callimachus’ audience.30 Whereas, however, in the case of Parmenides the status of his poem as a didactic one has hardly been disputed, the similar setting has been considered less evidently didactic in the case of the Aetia.31 With metre as a relatively unproblematic criterion, catalogue poetry as a traditional and overlapping dimension of didactic poetry, and a less narrow approach to the didactic mode, there is ample room to study the Aetia as a poem within the didactic tradition, even if more pertinent criteria, such as the absence of a clear addressee, are problematic.32 In what follows I will not discuss the Aetia in detail; plenty of attention has been paid to the Hesiodic-didactic elements of the Somnium, the Muse-encounter and the Hesiodic setting. Instead, I will look at some aspects of the reception of Callimachus in the Theriaca of Nicander of Colophon, and particularly Callimachus’ didactic profile.

3. Nicander and Callimachus 3.1. Theriaca: a Callimachean poem? Although the poet’s voice in Callimachus’ Aetia prologue ostentatiously wallows in answering to its many adversaries and detractors, suggesting that the poet met nothing but criticism, many other poets in the Hellenistic period, including Nicander a century later, appear to have been great 29. 30. 31. 32.

See e.g. Harder (2007: 37-39); Kaesser (2005: 103-109). On this shifting of didactic personae in Parmenides see Sider (2014: 16-17). On Parmenides’ status as a didactic poet see, however, Volk (2002: 49-51). Cf. Toohey (1996: 73-75).

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admirers of Callimachus and his innovative output. As De Stefani and Magnelli put it: “Nicander [ ... ] is as fond of Callimachus as Euphorion was, and his exploitation of Callimachean texts proves as sophisticated as Euphorion’s. He may [ ... ] turn Callimachean hapax legomena into Lieblingswörter of his own”; “the Colophonian poet competes with his model on the very ground of Alexandrianism.”33 The imitation-cumvariation pointed out by Hopkinson serves as a fine example of Nicander’s refined approach, but many other allusions have been observed.34 Nicander was a keen reader of Callimachus, many echoes of whose works have been found in his poetry. This does not, however, mean that Callimachus should be considered a major force in Nicander’s conception of what poetic innovation should look like. The influence of Antimachus, for instance, a poet not to Callimachus’ liking at all, is considerable as well.35 This may or may not be related to Nicander’s appreciation for a fellow poet from Colophon, but it is also interesting to see that for Nicander, proto-Hellenistic poetry, such as that of Antimachus was no less interesting than that of Callimachus. Nicander may have been fond of Callimachus, but he was no less fond of the more bombastic style of poets that were not so λεπτός at all. The baroque lexicon of Antimachus, unlikely to have appealed to Callimachus with his gentle verse indeed, was already noticed as a source for Nicander’s coinages in the scholia.36 Apart from some Doricizing forms Nicander uses, put down by the scholia to Antimachean influence, Nicander is particularly fond of adjectives in -όεις, for which Antimachus appears to have been the most important influence.37 Although this is just an example, it tells us something about the mixed influences of earlier poetry on Nicander’s. Lexically Nicander thus put to good use Callimachus as well as Antimachus. From the viewpoint of 33. De Stefani and Magnelli (2011: 538-539). Cf Hollis (1990: 30): “The Hecale seems to have been Nicander’s favourite reading, to judge from the number of his imitations”. Some references are collected in Overduin (2015: 73-74). 34. See Hopkinson (1988: 145), who showed how Nicander (Ther. 349, Nωθεῖς γὰρ κάμνοντες ἀμορβεύοντο λεπάργῳ) turned the stork from Callimachus’ Hecale (fr. 76 H. = 271 Pf. σὺν δ’ ἡμῖν ὁ πελαργὸς ἀμορβεύεσκεν ἀλοίτης) into an ass. For other allusions to Callimachus see e.g. Magnelli (2006: 187-198), with references to earlier literature. 35. Judging by fr. 398 Pf. Λύδη καὶ παχὺ γράμμα καὶ οὐ τόρον. Matthews (1996: 72-73) qualifies Antimachus’ poetry as “redundant garrulity”, “excessively verbose”, “notoriously prolix”. 36. Σ in Nic. Ther. 3: Ἔστι δὲ καὶ ὁ Νίκανδρος ζηλωτὴς Ἀντιμάχου, διόπερ πολλαῖς αὐτοῦ λέξεσι κέχρηται, διὸ καὶ ἐν ἐνίοις δωρίζει, ὡς καὶ νῦν ἐν τῷ ‘παῶν’· ‘πηῶν’ γάρ ἐστιν ὅ ἐστι ‘συγγενῶν’. For a general overview of Nicander’s borrowings from Antimachus see Jacques (2002: cx). 37. Cf. Matthews (1996: 52 and 94). For Nicander’s fondness of adjectives in -όεις cf. Bartalucci (1963) and Overduin (2015: 65-66).

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the didactic tradition we read the presence of both Aratus and Hesiod, which is not surprising, but also of Homer, who seems very much out of place in a Hellenistic poem that so emphatically aims to be a didactic epic. The sphragis in the epilogue of the Theriaca states: Καί κεν Ὁμηρείοιο καὶ εἰσέτι Νικάνδροιο μνῆστιν ἔχοις, τὸν ἔθρεψε Κλάρου νιφόεσσα πολίχνη. (Ther. 957-958) ‘So now you will treasure ever the memory of the Homeric Nicander, whom the snow-white town of Clarus nurtured.’ (tr. Gow & Scholfield)

Although as a text-internal teacher Nicander generally tells us very little in terms of poetic preference, these two closing lines of the Theriaca show just a tiny part of the poet’s self-positioning. These lines are interesting for several reasons. Firstly, of course, because of the inclusion of the poet’s name. We do not learn very much about the persona of the teacher throughout the Theriaca, but this at least gives us something on the level of the text-internal narrator. What is also striking is the fact that Nicander calls himself Homeric, as ‘the Homeric Nicander’, here: why would a didactic poet call himself Homeric? 3.2. Nicander: a Homeric didactic poet? Nicander is not the only one in antiquity to be called Homeric, and the label is used to qualify or characterize many different poets and prose authors, carrying a wide range of meanings. ‘The most Homeric ones’, an appreciation ostensibly praising the high degree of general Homeric inspired grandeur, is used for Herodotus, Stesichorus, Archilochus and Plato in Ps.-Longinus.38 The epigrammatist Crates calls Euphorion ‘the Homeric gloss-poet’.39 According to Diogenes, Aristotle called Empedocles Ὁμηρικός in his Περὶ ποιητῶν.40 Anyte is called a ‘female Homer’ in an epigram by Antipater.41 Sosates is called the ‘the Jewish Homer’, presumably because he wrote, just like his Jewish-Hellenistic fellow 38. [Long.] 13.3: μόνος Ἡρόδοτος Ὁμηρικώτατος ἐγένετο; Στησίχορος ἔτι πρότερον ὅ τε Ἀρχίλοχος, πάντων δὲ τούτων μάλιστα ὁ Πλάτων. Possible interpretations of Longinus’ use of the Homer label for Herodotus, Stesichorus and Archilochus are discussed by Russell (1964: 115). 39. AP 11.218.1: καὶ κατάγλωσσ’ ἐπόει τὰ ποήματα καὶ τὰ φίλητρα | ἀτρεκέως ᾔδει· καὶ γὰρ Ὁμηρικὸς ἦν. 40. D.L. 8.57; Aristotle’s text itself is lost. It is of course difficult to assess what Diogenes (or rather Aristotle) precisely had in mind when using this adjective. 41. AP 9.26.3-4: Ἀνύτης στόμα, θῆλυν Ὅμηρον, | Λεσβιάδων Σαπφώ. There is, however, no real concensus over whether ‘female Homer’ belongs to the preceding Anyte, or to Sappho in the next line, as Gow & Page (1968: 36-37) maintain. See Greene (2000) for some possible interpretations of Antipater’s qualification of Anyte.

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poets Theodotus and Philo Epicus, Greek epic.42 Heraclitus of Rhodiapolis is called ‘the Homer of medical poetry’.43 Paion of Side is called ‘the New Homer’, as is Nicanor.44 Areios is referred to as ‘the Homeric poet’.45 The phenomenon of qualifying a certain author by means of the label of another author is, moreover, not limited to Homer.46 It seems, however, quite exceptional that Nicander is referring to himself here, considering the fact that all other instances are qualifications by others, the only other exception being Ennius.47 There are many reasons for explaining in each case why author X or poet Y could be considered Homeric, but here I am interested in the question why Nicander calls himself Homeric. Perhaps it is no coincidence that Nicander is referring to his own Colophonian background here, with Colophon claiming — among quite a few other places — to be Homer’s place of origin.48 Indeed Colophon laid a claim on Homer, in addition to being the attested place of origin for many other poets, such as Xenophanes, Hermesianax, Phoenix, Mimnermus, and Antimachus. Nicander was evidently not unaware of this, being the author of a work Περὶ τῶν ἐκ Κολοφώνος ποιητῶν (fr. 13 Gow-Scholfield).49 But such a Homeric connection only makes sense by association. 42. Excerpta Latina Barbari 278: hisdem temporibus Sosates cognoscebatur ille Ebraicus Omirus in Alexandria. 43. IGRR 3.733 = TAM II.2.910 = Samama (2003: no. 290.15-16): ὅν ἀνέγραψαν ἰατρικῶν ποιημάτων Ὅμηρον εἶναι. 44. Bean (1965: no. 107.11); cf. Bowie (1990: 66): Παίονος φιλοκαίσαρος νέου Ὁμήρο[υ. For Nicanor see Steph. Byz. s.v. Hierapolis: Ἱεροπολῖται, ἀφ’ οὗ Νικάνωρ, ὁ νέος Ὅμηρος. 45. Bernand 37; cf. Bowie (1990: 65): Ἀρείου Ὁμηρικοῦ ποιητοῦ. 46. Cf. Flavius Josephus, called ‘the Greek Livy’ (graecus Livius) in Hier. Ep. 22 [ad Eustochium] 35.8. 47. In the case of Ennius (Σ ad Pers. 6.9-11; cf. Aicher 1989: 227), ‘being Homeric’ follows from the alleged metempsychosis of the Greek poet, as Homer was said, in a dream, to have reincarnated into the Roman poet (after an interim spell as a peacock). This image appears to be mainly connected to Ennius’ stylistic imitation of Homer and to the introduction of the dactylic hexameter for Ennius’ Roman epic. 48. Cf. Certamen 2, Str. 14.1.28, Luc. VH 2.20, AP 9.213.3 (FGE 1248), Lobo APl 292.1-2, and 16.295-299, a series of epigrams on Homer’s origin, all affirming the tradition of Homer’s Colophonian roots. Of course, many other places claimed Homer as their son as well, most notably Chios (already in h.Ap. 172) and Smyrna. 49. According to ps.-Plutarch (Vit. Hom. 2) Nicander indeed claimed that Homer was from Colophon: Ὅμηρον τοίνυν Πίνδαρος μὲν ἔφη Χῖόν τε καὶ Σμυρναῖον γενέσθαι, Σιμωνίδης δὲ Χῖον, Ἀντίμαχος δὲ καὶ Νίκανδρος Κολοφώνιον [ ... ]. Tzetzes (Exeg. In Iliad. 131) even stated that Nicander made a comment of this kind at the very end of the Theriaca: Νίκανδρος ὁ Κολοφώνιος ὁ τὰ Θηριακὰ πρὸς Ἑρμησιάνακτα γράψας, [ ... ] ἐν τῶ τέλει τῶν αὐτοῦ Θηριακῶν Κολοφώνιον φησὶν εἶναι τὸν Ὅμηρον, ἐπαίρων κἀκτούτου καὶ ἐγκωμιάζων αὑτόν [ ... ]. Tzetzes was of course wrong, but the error shows that Nicander’s Homeric claim was often interpreted as having to do with Colophon. In Σ Ther. 957, καὶ κεν Ὁμηρείοιο is explained as διὰ τὴν πατρίδα. It must be pointed out,

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From a different angle Nicander could be said to refer to his own diction here, his lexicon being full of Homerisms, Homeric rarities, or Homeric hapax legomena. When browsing through Nicander’s poems, one does get the impression of a poet putting to good use marked epic diction. Wilhelm Kroll in his lemma on Nicander in Pauly’s Realencyclopädie even lists Pasquali’s suggestion that ‘Homeric’ in this case may refer to a Dichterverein of Ὁμήρειοι, taking into account that Colophon’s gymnasium was called, like those of Smyrna and Chios, the Ὁμήρειον.50 It seems highly unlikely that the Homeric label alone should imply that Nicander was part of such an association of Ὁμήρειοι. But even on the level of Homeric style one could ask whether it is really plausible to assume that this would be the reason why Nicander calls himself Homeric. Nicander’s vocabulary is clearly rooted in the epic tradition, and in the epic Kunstsprache, yet his impressive number of coinages shows that it is not plainly Homeric in every sense. There are no Homeric similes at all, and there is no Homeric narrative.51 An exception can be found in Nicander’s use of Homeric depiction of martial elements. In his portrayal of animals the poet conjures up images of Iliadic battle, occasionally depicting snakes as warriors.52 This, however, can hardly be considered a uniting element within the Theriaca and these few instances, striking though they may be, would hardly justify qualifying Nicander as Homeric throughout. To exaggerate somewhat, there is actually very little in Nicander that is really Homeric, apart from the very general observations that we are dealing with epic, epic language, and the occasional borrowing or reworking.53 Whereas Nicander calls himself explicitly Homeric, it would make far more sense for him to call himself the ‘Hesiodic’ Nicander rather than fancying himself Homeric. The Hesiodic nature of the Theriaca is evident in many respects. In its length, its didactic frame, its scope, its incorporation of a fable, its use of kennings, its modes of address, its bipartite structure, as in many other ways, the however, that in this very epilogue Nicander emphatically states that he is from Clarus, not from nearby Colophon. 50. Kroll (1936: 252): “Pasquali führt den Gedanken aus, daß die Ὁμήρειοι ein Dichterverein gewesen seien, und erinnert and die Bezeichnung der Gymnasien von Smyrna, Chios und Kolophon als ῾Ομήρειον [...]”. 51. The Helen episode, dealing with the death of Canobus in Theriaca 309-319, is related to the Trojan cycle, but the very story Nicander relates is not in Homer. 52. Cf. Touwaide (1991: 86-88); Overduin (2014; 2015: 125-127). 53. Of course quite some of these points could be applied to Apollonius too as there are many ways in which the Argonautica is not so very Homeric. But Apollonius is at least close to Homer in his dealings on the level of the interpretation of Homeric words, the use of Homeric similes, and of course with regard to the development of the quite Odyssean story of the Argonauts.

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Theriaca stands in a close connection to the Works and Days, both directly, and through the Phaenomena of Aratus. Why then the Homeric sphragis? My suggestion would be that Nicander, after all somewhat of a literary rebel, is going against the earlier Hellenistic trend of dissociation from Homer. Whereas for the Alexandrians Homer stood on a huge pedestal, a poet inspiring awe and reverence, he was not to be used as a model any longer by any of the moderns. His art was in a different league, and therefore to be left alone. Aemulatio was futile: not only was it impossible to get anywhere near Homer’s qualities, the genre was in a sense exhausted, which seems to be what was meant by Choerilus of Samos, in his famous utterance of poetic despair, already felt late in the fifth century BCE.54 Choerilus may not have known where to go next (at least not initially), but Callimachus surely did. His approach was of course to turn to that other epic poet, old Hesiod, for inspiration. His somnium is an iconic statement of Hesiodic affiliation, and of deliberate contrast, with Homer, and an emphatic turning away from Homer’s Muse. Callimachus was not the only one to endorse this new mode. While Theocritus in his seventh Idyll does not dismiss Homer himself, he does, in the words of Lycidas, criticise those that aim to be like Homer.55 Theocritus’ idea appears to be very similar to Callimachus’ here, and the same could be said about Aratus’ Phaenomena, which is not only Hesiodic in its didactic approach, but, as Fakas has shown, in a much more detailed fashion.56 Its Hesiodic qualities, rather than its Homeric ones, were after all famously praised by Callimachus.57 Association with Hesiod thus became part of the aesthetic programme of at least three of the key hellenistic poets. Homer was of course never absent from any of them, but association with Homer, let alone emphatically claiming to be Homeric, was most exceptional. Nicander too endorses the Hesiodic mode in practice, but goes against the grain, and, I tentatively suggest, against Callimachus, in his selffashioning as a Homeric poet. Nicander’s style is not slender, thin, or refined: it is baroque. His didactic mode may be Hesiodic, but his haughty pose (right from the start of the poem, refraining from Muses, claiming to know all) is not. Nicander wants to be the best, and can therefore only be Homeric, opposing himself to Callimachus and his innovative style.

54. 55. 56. 57.

SH 317. Theoc. Id. 7.45-48. See Fakas (2001). AP 9.507 = ep. 25 Pf. = HE 1297-1300.

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When Nicander does mention Hesiod, it seems, interestingly, to question his authority: Ἀλλ’ ἤτοι κακοεργὰ φαλάγγια, σὺν καὶ ἀνιγρούς ἑρπηστὰς ἔχιάς τε καὶ ἄχθεα μυρία γαίης Τιτήνων ἐνέπουσιν ἀφ’ αἵματος, εἰ ἐτεόν περ 10 Ἀσκραῖος μυχάτοιο Μελισσήεντος ἐπ’ ὄχθαις Ἡσίοδος κατέλεξε παρ’ ὕδασι Περμησσοῖο. (Ther. 8-12) ‘Now I would have you know, men say that noxious spiders, together with the grievous reptiles and vipers and the earth’s countless burdens, are of the Titans’ blood — if indeed he spoke the truth, Ascraean Hesiod on the steeps of secluded Melisseeis by the waters of Permessus.’ (tr. Gow & Scholfield)

Nicander’s reference to Hesiod is brief, but he does not fail to mention the steeps of Melisseeis and the waters of Permessos. The ὄχθαι of Melisseeis are on the Helicon, as the scholia explain, and Permessus is of course the river in which the Muses bathe, as Hesiod states in the opening of the Theogony (5). Nicander has no interest in Muses, neither for inspiration, nor as a source of knowledge, and therefore emphatically leaves them out of his poetry. But not only are there no Muses in Nicander to assist in knowledge: doubt appears to be cast on Hesiod’s own knowledge, if this is to be read into εἰ ἐτεόν περ in line 10.58 Hesiod is a model for catalogue poetry and for didactic epic, but hardly for the contents of his knowledge. In this way, Nicander, rather arrogantly, dismisses knowledge from gods or Muses. This, of course, also reflects on Callimachus’ appropriation of the Hesiodic encounter with the Muses. In the somnium Callimachus evokes Hesiod’s epiphany on that very site on Mount Helicon. Nicander is of course strongly aware of this, but playfully strips the gloss from the divine encounter: true poets, like Nicander, do not rely on the Muses, on meetings, real or imagined on Mount Helicon. Rather than relying on the doubtful statements of an old poet, or reenacting god-inspired meetings, one should align oneself with Hesiod’s counterpart: Homer.59 58. Whether εἰ ἐτεόν περ (Ther. 10) is to be interpreted as a reflection of a genuine critical stance towards Hesiod, or as a mere aside, underlining the vagueness that comes with these sorts of claims about the mythical past, is impossible to decide. Yet the fact that Nicander positions Hesiod in the semi-mystical setting of the Helicon, secluded, and close to the Muses (known for their unreliability), may be meant to underline the discrepancy between the sort of knowledge Hesiod could offer, and the technical, more reliable knowledge Nicander stands for. 59. For the idea of Homer becoming the plaything of post-classical authors taking a stance, be it either in defence of Homer’s reliability (e.g. Strabo), or questioning it (Lucian, Dio, Philostratus), see Kim (2010). For the idea of Hesiod and Homer often being pitted together in the ancient reception of Hesiod, see Koning (2010).

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How does this all relate to Callimachus? If the Aetia was considered a didactic poem, some aspects of which I discussed in the first part of this paper, in addition to the convincing arguments presented by Harder, this means that Nicander had to deal with its position in the didactic tradition. Nicander, well aware of Callimachus’ new take on what a didactic catalogue poem could look like, may not have been pleased with such an approach. Fond as he was of Callimachus’ diction, and appreciative as he was of Callimachus’ metrical practice, Nicander’s imitation of Callimachus does certainly not show in the nature of the Theriaca. This yields a poetry not informed by facts, such as Callimachus’ poetry, but a poem dealing with facts. Nicander’s poem does not present itself as a playful variation on the didactic mode, such as Callimachus’ playful variation in his dealings with the Muses. For Callimachus, the didactic framework of instruction in the Aetia is a novel way of writing poetry. Nicander, on the contrary, presents a much more strict approach to writing didactic poetry: a teacher, a named pupil, a clear and concise subject matter, no Muses, just facts.60 It is a hardcore mode of didactic epic and one could be fooled by taking Nicander earnestly here. But of course Nicander is playful too, not in his presentation, but in his outspoken and rigid way of sounding like a real teacher, without the need to really being one. His association with Homer could then well be reaction to Callimachus’ dissociation from Homer. I have already briefly mentioned the absence of the Muses in Nicander, and the way in which this is connected to Hesiod and Callimachus. From a polemic viewpoint, perhaps a bit more could be said about this. Whereas for Hesiod mentioning the Muses was part and parcel of early epic, for Callimachus it was of course nothing more than an old epic convention. Yet he chose to turn his encounter with the Muses into a programmatic mode of discourse with the Muses, rather than merely spending a perfunctory line or two on them. Callimachus made much more out of the Muse motif than was necessary generically — that is from the viewpoint of didactic poetry. Nicander, on the other hand, and perhaps in response to Callimachus (albeit a century later), made much less of the address to the Muses than was customary, by excluding it altogether. Callimachus 60. From this point of view it is therefore unlikely that Nicander considered Homer to be a didactic poet of sorts. It is true that traditions both ancient (e.g. Ar. Ra. 1034-1036, Certamen) and modern (e.g. Jaeger 1945; Verdenius 1970; Sider 2019) have pointed out how Homer has always been a poet from whose works much could be learned (a view that has, however, never been uncontested; see Verdenius 1970: 4-5), and it cannot be ruled out entirely that Nicander’s allegiance to Homer is partly concerned with Homer’s didactic status, but such a viewpoint is hard to corroborate based on the text of the Theriaca.

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turned his Muses into interlocutors to share in his own knowledge. Nicander goes one step further, underlining his vast knowledge, for which he does not need the Muses at all. Of course it is difficult to argue that Nicander goes against Callimachus in particular here, and the distance in time between the two poets of course rules out any direct polemic, yet his arrogant pose reminds us of the clever way in which Callimachus deals with his Muses. The shift with regard to knowledge and authority from Hesiod to Callimachus, has in Nicander become complete: simply leaving the Muses out, there is no joint effort of the poet and the Muses, as had been the case for Callimachus. Nicander’s idea of a proper literary didactic poem may thus have been very different from Callimachus, and Nicander thus chose a mode that is very unlike Callimachus.

4. Conclusion By common standards the Aetia is not a didactic poem, but this does not mean that a Hellenistic audience will not have recognized many of the features the Aetia shares with the didactic genre, despite the less obvious, but relatively unproblematic choice of metre. Much as the Aetia plays on the tradition of elegiac catalogue poetry, it is also essentially a poem concerned with teaching us about the unifying subject of aetiology, a poem, moreover, that plays on the Hesiodic transmission of knowledge. The inclusion of narrative, encomiastic parts, the programmatic prologue and Callimachus’ many other additions, highlight Callimachus’ talent for variation, but it does not really make a didactic approach problematic. The lack of a proper addressee may be unconventional, but whether that is essential or not is a matter of debate. Within the didactic genre Callimachus’ appreciation of Aratus (in ep. 27 Pf.) may be seen in this generic light, a modernist didactic poet complimenting a colleague that found his own way of dealing with the Hesiodic didactic-catalogical tradition. Nicander, in turn, responded to Aratus and Callimachus by composing a poem that was in a sense equally Hesiodic, but also took a stand against Callimachus’ dissociation from Homer, a stance voiced in the poet’s self-advertisement as the ‘Homeric Nicander’. This conclusion of course remains tentative, as the label ‘Homeric’ carries more than one single meaning. Yet I do think Nicander chose to write his poems with a certain polemic approach in mind. Fond as he appears to have been of Callimachus’ style, he also saw reason to tackle things differently. He chose to write a proper didactic poem, in hexameters, with a proper addressee

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(thus capping Aratus), following the tradition of Hesiod, but aligning himself with the proper fountainhead, i.e. Homer, and assuming a strong, ‘baroque’ style, not slender, thin, or tender. A down-to-earth poetry without Muses — in answer, partly, to the Aetia. REFERENCES Aicher, P., 1989, “Ennius’ dream of Homer”. AJPh 110, 227-232. Bartalucci, A., 1963, “Gli aggettivi in ‘-eis’ in Nicandro”. SCO 12, 118-144. Baumbach, M. & K. Trampedach, 2004, “‘Winged words’: Poetry and Divination in Posidippus’ Oionoskopika”. In: B. Acosta Hughes et al. (eds), Labored in Papyrus Leaves. Perspectives on an Epigram Collection attributed to Posidippus. Washington, DC, 123-159. Bean, G.E., 1965, Inscriptions of Side. Ankara. Bernand, A. & E. Bernand, 1960, Les Inscriptions du colosse de Memnon, Paris. Bertier, J., 1972, Mnésithée et Dieuchès. Leiden. Bowie, E., 1990, “Greek poetry in the Antonine Age”. In: D.A. Russell (ed), Antonine Literature. Oxford, 53-90. Clauss, J. & M. Cuypers (eds), 2010, A Companion to Hellenistic Literature. Malden, MA. Dalzell, A., 1996, The Criticism of Didactic Poetry: Essays on Lucretius. Virgil, and Ovid. Toronto-Buffalo-London. De Stefani, C. & E. Magnelli, 2011, “Callimachus and later Greek poetry”. In: B. Acosta Hughes et al. (eds), Brill’s Companion to Callimachus. LeidenBoston, 534-565. Effe, B., 1977, Dichtung und Lehre. Untersuchungen zur Typologie des antiken Lehrgedichts. München. —, 2005, “Typologie und literaturhistorischer Kontext: zur Gattungsgeschichte des griechischen Lehrgedichts”. In: M. Horster & Chr. Reitz (eds), Wissensvermittlung in dichterischer Gestalt (Palingenesia – Band 85). Stuttgart, 27-44. Fakas, Chr., 2001, Der hellenistische Hesiod. Arats Phainomena und die Tradition der antiken Lehrepik. Wiesbaden. Fowler, D., 2000, “The Didactic Plot”. In: M. Depew & D. Obbink (eds), Matrices of Genre: Authors, Canons, and Society. Cambridge, MA, 205219. Gale, M.R., 2004, Latin Epic and Didactic poetry. Genre, Tradition and Individuality. Swansea. Gow, A.S.F. & A.F. Scholfield, 1953, Nicander. The Poems and Poetical Fragments. Cambridge. Gow, A.S.F. & D.L. Page, 1965, The Greek Anthology: Hellenistic Epigrams. Cambridge. —, 1968, The Greek Anthology: The Garland of Philip. Cambridge. Greene, E., 2000, “Playing with tradition: gender and innovation in the epigrams of Anyte”. Helios 27.1, 15-32. Harder, M.A., 1990, “Untrodden paths: where do they lead?”. HSCPh 93, 287309.

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—, 1998, “‘Generic games’ in Callimachus’ Aetia”. In: M.A. Harder et al. (eds), Genre in Hellenistic Poetry (Hellenistica Groningana 3). Groningen, 95-113. —, 2007, “To teach or not to teach...? Some aspects of the genre of didactic poetry in antiquity”. In: M.A. Harder et al. (eds), Calliope’s Classroom. Leuven-Paris-Dudley, MA, 23-48. —, 2010, “Callimachus’ Aetia”. In: J. Clauss & M. Cuypers (eds), A Companion to Hellenistic Literature. Malden, MA, 92-105. —, 2012, Callimachus: Aetia. Oxford. Heath, M., 1985, “Hesiod’s didactic poetry”. CQ 35.2, 245-263. Heitsch, E., 1964, Die griechischen Dichterfragmente der römischen Kaiserzeit, Band II. Göttingen. Hollis, A.S., 1990, Callimachus: Hecale. Oxford. Hopkinson, N., 1988, A Hellenistic Anthology. Cambridge. Hunter, R., 1999, Theocritus: A Selection. Cambridge. —, 2007, “The Prologue of the Periodos to Nicomedes (‘Pseudo-Scymnus’)”. In: M.A. Harder et al. (eds), Beyond the Canon (Hellenistica Groningana 11). Leuven-Paris-Dudley, MA, 123-140. Jacques, J.-M., 2002, Nicandre. Œuvres. Tome II. Les Thériaques. Paris. —, 2007, “Situation de Nicandre de Colophon”. REA 109, 99-121. Jaeger, W.W., 1945, Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture vol. I. Oxford. Kaesser, Chr., 2005, “The Poet and the ‘Polis’. The Aetia as Didactic Poem”. In: M. Horster & Chr. Reitz (eds), Wissensvermittlung in dichterischer Gestalt (Palingenesia – Band 85). Stuttgart, 95-114. Kim, L., 2010, Homer Between History and Fiction in Imperial Greek Literature. Cambridge. Koning, H.H., 2010, Hesiod: The Other Poet. Ancient Reception of a Cultural Icon. Leiden. Krevans, N., 2004, “Callimachus and the Pedestrian Muse”. In: M.A. Harder et al. (eds), Callimachus II (Hellenistica Groningana 7). Leuven-ParisDudley, MA, 173-184. Kroll, W., 1924, Studien zum Verständnis der römischen Literatur. Stuttgart. —, 1936, “Nikandros [11]”. In: A. Pauly & G. Wissowa, Paulys Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft 17.3, 250-265. Kruschwitz, P., 2005, Das vorklassische Lehrgedicht der Römer. Heidelberg. Lloyd Jones, H. & P. Parsons, 1983, Supplementum Hellenisticum. Berlin. Magnelli, E., 1995, “Le norme del secondo piede dell’esametro nei poeti ellenistici e il comportamento della ‘parola metrica’”. MD 35, 135-164. —, 2006, “Nicander’s Chronology: A Literary Approach”. In: M.A. Harder et al. (eds), Beyond the Canon (Hellenistica Groningana 11). Leuven-ParisDudley, MA, 185-204. —, 2010, “Nicander”. In: J.J. Clauss and M. Cuypers (eds), A Companion to Hellenistic Literature. Malden, MA, 211-223. Matthews, V.J., 1996, Antimachus of Colophon. Leiden. Merkelbach, R. & M.L. West (eds), 1967, Fragmenta Hesiodea. Oxford. Most, G.W., 2007, Hesiod: The Shield, Catalogue of Women, Other Fragments. Cambridge, MA-London. Müller, K., 1855, Geographi Graeci minores, vol. 1. Paris. Murray, J., 2010, “Hellenistic Elegy: Out from Under the Shadow of Callimachus”. In: J. Clauss & M. Cuypers (eds.), A Companion to Hellenistic Literature. Malden, MA, 106-116.

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Nelson, S., 1996, “The drama of Hesiod’s farm”. CPh 91, 45-53. Noussia, M., 2010, Solon the Athenian. The Poetic Fragments. Leiden. Oikonomakos, K., 2002, Προλεγόμενα στὴν κριτικὴ ἔκδοση τῶν Ἀλεξιφαρμάκων τοῦ Νικάνδρου. Athens. Overduin, F., 2014, “The anti-bucolic world of Nicander’s Theriaca”. CQ 64, 623-641. —, 2015, Nicander of Colophon’s Theriaca. A Literary Commentary. LeidenBoston. —, 2018a, “The Didactic Aesthetics of Marcellus’ De piscibus (GDRK 63)”. AJPh 139, 31-57. —, 2018b, “A Riddling Recipe? Philo of Tarsus’ Against Colic (SH 690)”. Mnemosyne 71, 593-615. —, 2019, “Elegiac Pharmacology: The Didactic Heirs of Nicander?” In: L.G. Canevaro & D. O’Rourke (eds), Didactic Poetry from Homer and Hesiod onwards: Knowledge, Power, Tradition. Swansea. Page, D.L., 1981, Further Greek Epigrams. Cambridge. Powell, J.U., 1925, Collectanea Alexandrina. Oxford. Samama, E., 2003, Les médecins dans le monde grec. Sources épigraphiques sur la naissance d’un corps médical. Genève. Sider, D., 2014, “Didactic Poetry. The Hellenistic Invention of a Pre-existing Genre”. In: R. Hunter et al. (eds), Hellenistic Studies at a Croassroards. Berlin, 13-29. —, 2019, “Homerus Didacticus”. In: L.G. Canevaro & D. O’Rourke (eds), Didactic Poetry from Homer and Hesiod onwards: Knowledge, Power, Tradition. Swansea. Toohey, P., 1996, Epic lessons. An Introduction to Ancient Didactic Poetry. London-New York. —, 2005, “Periodization and Didactic Poetry”. In: M. Horster & Chr. Reitz (eds), Wissensvermittlung in dichterischer Gestalt (Palingenesia – Band 85). Stuttgart, 15-26. Touwaide, A., 1991, “Nicandre, de la science à la poésie. Contribution à l’exégèse de la poésie médicale grecque”. Aevum 65, 65-101. Van der Horst, P.W., 1978, The Sentences of Pseudo-Phocylides. Leiden. Verdenius, W.J., 1970, Homer, The Educator of the Greeks. Amsterdam-London. Volk, K., 2002, The Poetics of Latin Didactic. Lucretius, Vergil, Ovid, Manilius. Oxford.

POETRY FOR THE NEW GODDESS: A GIFT THAT KEEPS ON GIVING Ivana PETROVIC

Callimachus not only wrote occasional poetry to celebrate the deification of the individual members of the royal household, he also composed hymns to the traditional Olympian divinities which overtly (Jov. 79-88; Ap. 26-27; Del. 165-190) and covertly1 aligned the rulers with the gods. This paper suggests that when Callimachus compares the value of various types of gifts for the gods, he also makes an important point about the value of his own poetry in establishing and promoting the cult of the rulers. Callimachus’ poetry contains several intriguing passages where material gifts to the gods and poetry are compared and contrasted. I have looked into these comparisons previously.2 In this paper, I return to the twelfth Iambus and to the closing passage of the Hymn to Apollo in order to situate these reflections on the value of poetry as a gift for the gods within the contemporary context of religious innovation, especially with regard to the establishment of the cult of living and deceased members of the Ptolemaic family. 1. The birth of new divinity and mortal birth in the twelfth Iambus In the twelfth Iambus, Callimachus tells a story about a competition of the gods. Hera was celebrating the birth of her daughter Hebe and every deity wanted to present the baby with the most beautiful gift.3 The twelfth Iambus was also composed as a birthday gift for a baby girl: According to the Diegesis, Callimachus wrote it for the seventh-day celebration after the birth of a daughter of his acquaintance, Leon.4 It has been suggested that this celebration corresponds to the ritual ἀμφιδρόμια.5 The sources for Athenian Amphidromia are conflicting and unclear, and it is difficult to ascertain whether it was celebrated on the fifth, seventh, or the tenth 1. See now Stephens (2015: 14-22) for a summary with bibliography and her commentary on specific verses. 2. Petrovic (2011); (2012). 3. Fr. 202.24 Pf.: τις παι.[.καλ]λίστῃ δόσει. 4. Diegesis 9.26-28. 5. Pfeiffer comm. ad v. 5, p. 201; Dawson (1950: 117-120).

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day after the birth of a child, but the timing of the ritual might have been different at various localities.6 The purpose of the ritual was to include the newborn child into the family. Its name was probably derived from the ceremonial running around the hearth with the infant. The visitors brought presents, a celebratory feast was organized and the child was probably also named on that day. In addition, since childbirth was polluting for the entire household,7 the Amphidromia ritual marked the end of the pollution of the house and its inhabitants. Women who assisted at the birth were purified (but the specific means of their purification are not attested) whereas carrying around the fire was probably a form of purification of the child.8 From the perspective of the Amphidromia ritual as the probable occasion of the twelfth Iambus, the invocation of Artemis from Amnisos at the beginning of the poem9 gains in complexity. There was an old sanctuary of a goddess of childbirth and childrearing in the valley of Amnisos river on Crete. Callimachus and Apollonius are the only two authors who identify this deity as Artemis, whereas other texts, from Homer onwards, refer to the cult as one of Eileithyia.10 Furthermore, both Hellenistic poets link this Cretan cult of Artemis with the local river-nymphs: In Callimachus’ Hymn to Artemis, daughters of Amnisos are Artemis’ attendants and Apollonius mentions the bath of Artemis in the river Amnisos and the local spring-nymphs as followers of Artemis. The initial addressee of the twelfth Iambus, Artemis from Amnisos, is probably invoked for multiple reasons: as the goddess of childbirth, as a kourotrophos, as the sister of Apollo, the winner of the contest of the gods, and as a reference to the successful purification and the newly established ritual purity of the household at the time of Amphidromia. If the closing part of the poem returns to Artemis and invites her to come as kourotrophos from her Cretan home (as the extant fragments seem to suggest),11 the purification of the inhabitants and the house on the occasion of Amphidromia is to be 6. Hamilton (1984). 7. Incidentally, one of the principal sources for childbirth and pollution is the Cyrenaean cathartic sacred regulation (LSS 115 A 16-20, B 26-7), which specifies that childbirth pollutes the entire house and whoever comes into the house for three days. On this text, see Parker (1983), Appendix 2. 8. Parker (1983: 51-52). 9. Fr. 202.1 Pf. Ἄρτε⸤μι Κρηταῖον Ἀμνισοῦ πέδον. Artemis is referenced as divinity of childbirth also in Aetia Frgs. 79-79a Harder, where three reasons why women invoke her when they have difficulties with childbirth are given and in Dian. 20-25 where Artemis herself explains why she will be the goddess of childbirth. 10. Call. Dian. 15-17; 162-167; A.R. 3, 876-884. On Artemis and Amnisos in Callimachus and Apollonius, Petrovic (2007: 249-261). 11. See Kerkhecker (1999: 246) with bibliography.

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understood as a prerequisite for the divine appearance, as divinities shun human pollution and require purity. The joyous occasion of childbirth links the human and divine characters in the poem, but the differences between the divine and human realms are also evident, as only humans need ritual purification, whereas the gods are always pure. The purity of the gods is obliquely referenced in the story about the divine contest in gift-giving. Due to the fragmentary state of the poem, we do not have information about every single gift of the gods. We do, however, find out that there was a ‘pleasant strife’ amongst them,12 and that Apollo, despite all the riches of Delphi he had at his disposal, finally decided to offer some other gift, one that would prevail over those of Hephaestus and Athena. He states that his will be the kind of gift that will remain,13 as long as his chin is ‘pure from facial hair’, i.e. beardless, and as long as wolves delight in kids.14 The phrasing of the passage is striking, as it contains a word primarily associated with religious rituals: ἁγνεύω. The verb means ‘I am (ritually) pure’; with genitive, ‘I abstain from’, ‘I keep pure from’ and is used to connote religious purity achieved through abstention from an action or a substance which is considered to be ritually polluting. Having a chin ‘pure from facial hair’ is an odd expression, since in Ancient Greek religion, hair does not feature as one the usual sources of ritual pollution.15 To be sure, Apollo is a god of purity and Callimachus may have used this word in order to draw our attention to the role of the god as purifier, but, nevertheless, the reference to the facial hair as pollutant is odd in a Greek context. However, in Egyptian ritual context, the reference would not be odd at all, since 12. Fr. 202.45-46 Pf. οἱ δ’ ι.[..γ]λυκεῖαν ἀλλήλοις ἔριν / θ]έντες ἡμ[ι]λλῶντο δω[τί]νη[ς πέρι. ‘And they … contended with one another making sweet strife of the gift-giving.’ Text and translation: Acosta-Hughes (2002). 13. The verb is missing, but the sense of the passage, as Kerkhecker (1999: 243) argues must be: “Apollo opposes his gift to the perishable presents of the other gods: his song will remain.” 14. Fr. 202.68-70: ἡ δ’ ἐμὴ τῇ παιδὶ καλλίστη δόσις, / ἔστ’ ἐμὸν γένειον ἁγνεύῃ τριχός / καὶ ἐρίφοις χαίρωσιν ἅρπαγ[ες λ]ύκ[ο]ι. ‘But my gift for the girl, the most beautiful, so long as my chin is innocent of hair, and so long as rapacious wolves delight in kids.’ Text and translation: Acosta-Hughes (2002). 15. On hagnos and cognates, see Parker (1983: 147-52). The new sacred regulation and calendar from Marmarini (eds. Decourt & Tziaphalias (2015)) could represent an exception to the rule, but this text provides regulations for the mysteries of non-Greek deities and demands that the initiates be shaved ‘in three places’. This is hardly what Callimachus had in mind. Susan Stephens suggested to me that ἁγνεύῃ might be a pun on ἀγένειος. ἀγένειοι, the beardless youths, constituted an athletic category roughly overlapping with ephebes in age. While I am not aware of any special connection of adolescent men with ritual purity, we do have sources for participation of ephebes in specific festivals, but this ritual participation does not stand out in comparison with other gendered or agespecific festivals.

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shaving is well attested as one of the means necessary for obtaining ritual purity in Ancient Egyptian culture. Herodotus claims that Egyptian priests shave their whole body every other day16 and the Egyptian purity regulations do feature shaving as a necessary prerequisite for entering temples.17 If ἔστ’ ἐμὸν γένειον ἁγνεύῃ τριχός was meant to evoke the Egyptian purity regulations, it would not quite represent an instance of ‘seeing double’, a code which lends itself to both Greek and Egyptian deciphering.18 Rather it would emphasize the differences between two cultural concepts of purity. From the Greek perspective, the Egyptians were much more concerned with ritual purity than the Greeks.19 However, the same Herodotus who enumerates ‘countless’ Egyptian purity regulations and states that the Egyptians are ‘extremely religious, the most religious nation in the world’ (2.37.1) nevertheless groups Greeks and Egyptians together as the only two nations who consider it impure to have sexual intercourse in sacred precincts (2.64.1). Egyptians may be the purest nation in the world, but the Greeks seem to come second. If Callimachus was using the phrase ἔστ’ ἐμὸν γένειον ἁγνεύῃ τριχός to reference the Egyptian purity norms, he may have also created a pointed contrast between what is measured and appropriate (the Greek way) and the extreme and, at least to Greek eyes, probably unsightly shaving of the whole head as practiced by Egyptian priests. Apollo’s drawing attention to his form, the perfect embodiment of ephebic beauty, corresponds to the occasion of the poem, as the gods are celebrating the birth of Hebe (youth). The motif of eternal youth further accentuates the contrast between the Amphidromia as the setting of the poem and the nested narrative about the divine childbirth. We have seen that references to purity convey a tension between the everlasting purity of the divine and the human sphere, which is subject to pollution. A corresponding tension is established between the eternal divine youth, and the ephemeral and perishable human youth. In general, Callimachus seems to be especially fond of creating a contrast between the ephebic and old poetic figures: According to the Scholia Florentina,20 Callimachus was ἀρτιγένειος when he met with the Muses in a dream, which would make him slightly more ageing than his patron god, Apollo — and equal in age with Teiresias as he is described in the Hymn to the Bath of Athena 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

Hdt. 2.37. Quack (2013), with translation of the Esna inscription p. 120 and discussion p. 141. Stephens (2002). Petrovic & Petrovic (2016: 26-27). Fr. 2d Harder l. 18, p. 128.

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(75-6). Callimachus’ opening of the Aetia strongly suggests that the poet is now old.21 Closely following ἁγνεύω, in the following line of the twelfth Iambus, we find yet another odd expression: the reference to the rapacious wolves ‘rejoicing’ (χαίρειν) in kids’.22 The text has been defended by comparisons to Homeric similes featuring wolves attacking the lambs23 and to Plato’s Phaedrus 241 c6-d1, where the lovers’ pursuit of the boys is compared to the ravenous lusting of wolves for the lambs.24 Both parallels are appropriate to the context of the birth of Hebe, because both imply a pursuit of the young creature. However, there might be an added nuance worth exploring here. It seems to me that, by using the verb χαίρειν in a passage where Apollo discusses the merits of his own gift for the girl, a hymn, and compares it to the gifts of other gods, Callimachus is perhaps also making a broader point about the gifts for the gods. χάρις and χαίρειν are key-terms in Greek hymnic poetry, and in Greek ritual language in general. As argued by Race (1982: 8) χάρις “epitomizes … the relationship which the hymnist tries to establish with the god — one of reciprocal pleasure and good will”.25 The ‘rejoicing’ of the wolves in kids perhaps points towards the animal sacrifice as the type of ritual gift gods accept and rejoice in. Since both ἁγνεύειν and χαίρειν are very suggestive of ritual language, and the context of the passage is about various competing gifts for a goddess, Callimachus may have been obliquely referencing sacrificial ritual as a gift comparable to a hymn. In this context, ritual sacrifice and the hymn are not only analogous, they are the most appropriate and most valuable gifts for Hebe, since they effectively establish her as a goddess. The other gods chose toys and valuable objects, but a hymn, like the first sacrifice, is a gift that not only elevates the recipient to the status of a divinity, it is also a gift that keeps giving: once established, a sacrifice must be offered regularly, and the hymn can be both reperformed and written in order to be reread. When Callimachus has the prophetic god stress that his gift will outlast all others, he is not only making an important point regarding the role of the hymn amongst the gifts for the gods, but he may be even hinting at the ancient etymologies of the word ὕμνος which connect it with 21. Fr. 1.6; 35-36 Harder. 22. Pfeiffer vol. 1, comm. ad Fr. 202, 70 with Lobel’s conjecture noting “non credo κἠλ]άφοις χαίρωσιν ἅρπαγες λύκοι sensum habere posse” 23. Il. 16, 351-356; 24, 262, See Acosta-Hughes (2002: 141). 24. Kerkhecker (1999: 244); Acosta-Hughes (2002: 141-142). 25. On the role of χάρις in Greek hymns see also Furley (1995), Depew (2000: 74-75); Furley & Bremer (2001, vol. I: 60-63).

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ὑπομένω and ὑπόμονος — ‘something which remains’.26 Thanks to the Diegesis, we find out that the victorious gift was indeed a hymn sung by the god himself.27 The eternal purity of the gods and the human life-cycle which starts with the impurity of birth and ends in the impurity of death are starkly contrasted, but poetry bridges the gap between the two worlds. Like in the final part of the Hymn to Apollo and in the Reply to the Telchines, Apollo and Callimachus are paired together in the twelfth Iambus, too, as both the divine and the mortal poet present the newborn girl with a poetic gift. Another common motif to all three poems is the analogy of poetry and other gifts for the gods, and the related concern for purity.

2. Poetry compared with other gifts for the gods in Callimachus As has been noted,28 the collocation of Apollo and the wolves in the twelfth Iambus is reminiscent of yet another programmatic Callimachean passage from the opening of the Aetia, where the Lycian (‘Wolfish’29) Apollo makes a point about a poetic style by comparing sacrificial animal with a Muse: καὶ γὰρ ὅτ˜ε πρώτιστον ἐμοῖς ἐπὶ δέλτον ἔθηκα γούνασι˜ν, Ἀπ[ό]λλων εἶπεν ὅ μοι Λύκιος· ‘……..]…ἀοιδέ, τὸ μὲν θύος ὅττι πάχιστον θρέψαι, τὴ]ν Μοῦσαν δ’ ὠγαθὲ λεπταλέην· ‘For when I put a writing-tablet on my knees for the first time Apollo Lycius said to me: 26. Etymologicum Gudianum 540.38 Sturz: ὕμνος· παρὰ τὸ ὑμένω τὸ ὑπομένω, ὑπόμονός τις ὤν, καὶ ἐν συγκοπῇ ὕμνος, καθὸ εἰς ὑπομονὴν καὶ πρᾶξιν ἄγειν τὰς τῶν ἐπαίνων ἀκοάς καὶ ἀρετάς. ‘Hymn comes from ὑμένω and ὑπομένω “remain”, being something which “remains”, in abbreviated form: “ὕμνος”, because it draws the praiseworthy reputation and the virtues into a durable discourse.’ Similar explanations are offered by Proclus ap. Phot. Bibl. 320a9-10 ἀπὸ τοῦ ὑπόμονόν τινα εἶναι. Ε.Μ. s.v. ὕμνος· κατὰ συγκοπήν, ὑπόμονός τις ὤν, καθὸ εἰς ὑπομονὴν καὶ μνήμην ἄγει τὰς τῶν ἐπαινουμένων πράξεις καὶ ἀρετάς. ‘Hymn: syncopated, a thing which remains, because it draws the deeds and virtues of those praised into a durable and memorable form.’ On the ancient etymologies of the word ὕμνος see Furley & Bremer (2001, vol. 1: 8-14). 27. Diegesis 9.25-31. 28. Acosta-Hughes (2002: 142). 29. The epithet Callimachus uses (Λύκιος) originally meant ‘Lycian’. However, as argued by Nauta (2010), the two epithets of Apollo, Λύκειος ‘wolves’ god’ and Λύκιος ‘Lycian’ conflate already as early as the fifth century BCE and Callimachus is probably using Λύκιος in the meaning ‘wolf-like’. Harder (2012, vol. 2: 57-60) provides a detailed assessment of the range of meanings of this epithet and further testimonies for the association of Apollo with wolves in cult.

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‘…poet, feed the sacrificial animal so that it becomes as fat as possible, but, my dear fellow, keep the Muse slender…’30

In this passage, the synkrisis of poetry and animal sacrifice is overt. Both poetry and animals play an important part in central Greek rituals and can be presented as gifts to the gods. Their pragmatic roles in cult might be comparable, but the standards for judging their quality are markedly different. It was precisely the fat of the sacrificial animals that the gods received as offerings, so the divine recipients would certainly want the animals sacrificed to them to be well fed. This is why Apollo wants θύος ὅττι πάχιστον. Of course, this interpretation does not exhaust the potential of the passage — as has been noted, both λεπτός and παχύς can denote aesthetic, intellectual, and acoustic qualities.31 Poetry and sacrifice are brought even closer together in a fragment which cannot be attributed to a specific Callimachean poem: ἄκαπνα γὰρ αἰὲν ἀοιδοί / θύομεν.32 ‘We bards always offer smokeless sacrifices.’

A further passage in Callimachus’ extant work where poetry is compared to and contrasted with the other gifts to the gods is the closing of his Hymn to Apollo. At the end of the hymn, Envy makes an unexpected entrance and criticizes a poet, but then Apollo utters a puzzling and muchdiscussed proclamation (105-113): ὁ Φθόνος Ἀπόλλωνος ἐπ’ οὔατα λάθριος εἶπεν· ‘οὐκ ἄγαμαι τὸν ἀοιδὸν ὃς οὐδ’ ὅσα πόντος ἀείδει.’ τὸν Φθόνον ὡπόλλων ποδί τ’ ἤλασεν ὧδέ τ’ ἔειπεν· ‘Ἀσσυρίου ποταμοῖο μέγας ῥόος, ἀλλὰ τὰ πολλά λύματα γῆς καὶ πολλὸν ἐφ’ ὕδατι συρφετὸν ἕλκει. Δηοῖ δ’ οὐκ ἀπὸ παντὸς ὕδωρ φορέουσι μέλισσαι, 110 ἀλλ’ ἥτις καθαρή τε καὶ ἀχράαντος ἀνέρπει πίδακος ἐξ ἱερῆς ὀλίγη λιβὰς ἄκρον ἄωτον.’ χαῖρε, ἄναξ· ὁ δὲ Μῶμος, ἵν’ ὁ Φθόνος, ἔνθα νέοιτο.33 Envy spoke secretly into Phoebus’ ear: ‘I do not admire the singer who does not sing even as much as the sea.’ Phoebus pushed Envy off with his foot and spoke the following: ‘The flow of the Assyrian river is vast, but it draws along much filth from the land and much garbage on its waters. Not from any sources do bees carry water to Demeter, But from what comes up pure and undefiled 30. 31. 32. 33.

Aetia I, fr. 1 Harder, ll. 21-24 with Harder’s translation. See Asper (1997: 175-189). Fr. 494 Pf. Text: Pfeiffer (1953).

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From a holy fountain, a small drop, the choicest of waters.’ Hail, Lord. But Blame, let him go where Envy is.34

Even though the precise meaning of these verses is contested, it seems evident that the hymn and its singer are here being approved by the god, who uses the criteria of purity to pass judgement on various poetic compositions. I have argued elsewhere35 that the reason for stressing purity as an essential criterion for poetry in this hymn is not only Apollo’s role as the god of purity, but also the specific character of the local, Cyrenaean, cult of Apollo. Furthermore, the hymn is influenced by the oracular sacred regulations and entry regulations from the great PanHellenic sanctuaries. In addition, the voice of the god who defends the poet and praises the composition echoes inscriptional dossiers, which claim that the Delphic god himself has accepted and approbated hymnic poetry of Isyllus and Philodamos from Skarpheia. Finally, I have argued that the bees (μέλισσαι) in this passage do refer to the priestesses of Demeter, so called because of their purity, and have concluded that this passage, too, refers to poetry as one of the gifts for the gods, and establishes an analogy according to which the priestesses of Demeter are to water as a poet is to the hymn. Both the water and the hymn are gifts for the gods. According to this reading, Apollo appears in order to defend the poet and to announce that purity is an important criterion for judging the quality of a gift for the gods.

3. Inner purity and a Hesiodic resonance at the closure of the Hymn to Apollo I now look further into the specific kind of purity Callimachus references at the end of the poem in order to show that it is inner purity. Inner purity is the expected inner stance of the ancients as they approached the gods and interacted with the divine realm in a ritual context, first attested in Hesiod. As Andrej Petrovic and I have argued,36 inner purity and impurity are broadly attested in Greek philosophy, drama, sympotic poetry, and inscriptions. At the end of the hymn, Callimachus not only references sacred regulations, but also alludes to the passage from Hesiod’s Works and Days, which is one of the earliest attestations of the request for inner purity in Greek literature. In vv. 755-6, Hesiod highlights the importance 34. Translation: Stephens (2015) slightly modified. 35. Petrovic (2011); (2012). 36. Petrovic & Petrovic (2016).

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of mental correctness during ritual performance, and warns that the violation of this requirement provokes divine anger: …μηδ’ ἱεροῖσιν ἐπ’ αἰθομένοισι κυρήσας μωμεύειν ἀίδηλα· θεός νύ τι καὶ τὰ νεμεσσᾷ. ‘When you happen to attend burning sacrifices, do not find fault with what is consumed: the god resents this, too.’

The closing passage of Callimachus’ Hymn to Apollo reflects the precise wording and the broader meaning of the Hesiodic passage. This passage occurs towards the end of Works and Days, where Hesiod presents a set of rules of conduct which a prudent (‘godlike’, v. 731) man should follow in life if he wishes to have the gods on his side and to prosper. This specific warning has been discussed already in antiquity. The commentators attempt to explain the precise meaning of μωμεύειν ἀίδηλα in the following ways: (755-756) μηδ’ ἱεροῖσιν ἐπ’ αἰθομένοισι: οὐ μόνον ὅτι δεῖ μὴ μωμεύειν τὰ ἱερά (τοῦτο γὰρ παντὸς ἦν εἰπεῖν), ἀλλὰ τὸν παραβάλλοντα ἱεροῖς δρωμένοις μηδένα βλάσφημον λόγον λέγειν, μηδὲ ὑβρίζειν μηδένα. καὶ γὰρ ταῦτα ἄδηλά ἐστι, καὶ ἀφανῆ ὄντα ποίαν ἕξει ποινὴν παραιτητέον· νεμεσᾶν γὰρ αὐτοῖς τὸν θεὸν ὡς ἀλλοτρίοις τῆς ἰσότητος. (Proclus) (755a) μηδ’ ἱεροῖσιν: μηδὲ ἐὰν συμβῇ σοι ἐν ἱεροῖς εὑρεθῆναι μέμψῃ τὰ μυστήρια· ταῦτα γὰρ ὁ θεὸς πάνυ μέμφεται. (older scholia) (756a) μωμεύειν ἀίδηλα: μὴ ἀδήλως κατὰ σεαυτὸν καὶ ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ σου μωμεῖν τὰ ἱερά. ἔστι δὲ καὶ τοῖς ἑξῆς συνάψαι· ἀίδηλα θεός νύ τοι καὶ τὰ νεμεσσᾷ, ἀντὶ τοῦ ἀδήλως καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν τοιούτων μέμφεται. ἢ οὕτως· μὴ ἐπὶ τοῖς αἰθομένοις ἱεροῖς ἀίδηλα κηρανθῆναι καὶ ἄξια τοῦ ἄδηλα εἶναι ὅτι μάταια διανοηθῇς· θεὸς γὰρ καὶ περὶ τούτων μέμφεται. (older scholia)37 755-756 (Proclus) Not only that one ought not criticize the rituals — this is common knowledge — but the one who attends ritual actions ought not say any blasphemous words, nor insult anyone: for these (actions) are also uncertain and since it is unclear what kind of punishment they will have, this is to be avoided; for the divinity feels resentment for such people, as enemies of parity. 755a (Older Scholia) if you should happen to be present at a sacrifice, do not censure the mysteries, for the god censures such actions greatly. 756a (Older Scholia) Do not criticize the rituals secretly to yourself and in your soul. It is possible to attach (sc. ἀίδηλα) to the following words, too (sc. like this): ἀίδηλα θεός νύ τοι καὶ τὰ νεμεσσᾷ, ἀίδηλα is used in the meaning ἀδήλως — and against such (actions / people) the god is secretly angry. Or like this: at the burning sacrifices, do not be vexed at ἀίδηλα which should not be taken as equal to nothing, for you are thinking irreverent thoughts; the god censures this too. 37. Ed. Pertusi.

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Whereas the scholia interpret ἀίδηλα as neuter plural used either as a synonym of ἄδηλα or adverbially and as equivalent to ἀδήλως (‘secretly, furtively’), Robertson has argued that such interpretations should be rejected and that ἀίδηλα should be grasped as a direct object of μωμεύειν.38 According to Robertson, the formation of the adjective (α privative + root fιδ + suffix -ηλος) indicates that its primary meaning is ‘that makes invisible’. Since ‘to make invisible’ is a common way in Greek to express ‘to destroy’, ἀίδηλος acquired a more general meaning ‘destructive, hostile.’ The adjective is rare and mostly appears in early epic poetry, three times coupled with πῦρ,39 where it clearly means ‘destructive, consuming’. According to Robertson, this is also the connotation of the Hesiodic passage, where ἀίδηλα serves as nomen actionis and denotes the action of the fire, ‘the consuming’. He understands ἱεροῖσιν ἐπ’ αἰθομένοισι as the stage of the sacrifice “when a libation of wine (or water as a substitute) is poured over the hearth or altar so as to damp the blaze that has consumed the gods’ portion of meat”.40 The sense of the passage, then, is: “‘If you are present when offerings are ablaze on the altar, do not carp at what is consumed; this too the god rather resents.’ The admonition is directed to a hungry peasant, who sees the best meat going in the fire.”41 West (1978) ad v. 756 agrees with Robertson’s rejection of the scholia’s interpretation of the ritual in question as mysteries and of ἀίδηλα as equivalent to ἀδήλως, but rejects Robertson’s understanding of ἀίδηλα as designating the action of the fire, or the offerings, constructed as object of μωμεύειν. West sees it as adverbial (‘carp balefully’). West does, however, agree with Robertson’s observation that the implied object of the complaint is the quantity of meat given to the gods: “This is indeed the likeliest object of criticism at a sacrifice, whether on the ground that too much of the meat was being given to the gods (as Robertson assumes) or too little.”42 However we might understand the meaning and the syntactic role of ἀίδηλα here, the sense of the passage seems to be that one should not criticize the quantity of a sacrificial offering, since god resents this. Callimachus refers to this specific passage by dramatizing and personifying what is impersonal and narrated in Hesiod. However, Hesiod is not the only intertext here — Callimachus replaces Hesiod’s straightforward 38. 39. 40. 41. 42.

Robertson (1969). Il. 2.455; 9.436; 11.155. Robertson (1969: 168). Robertson (1969: 168). West (1978: 343).

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μωμεύειν with a more elaborate set of epinician blame figures, Momos and Phthonos, but with a significant inversion: whereas in Pindar the two figures are prone to condemn the bestowing of too much praise upon humans, Callimachus follows the Hesiodic logic, according to which humans tend to criticize the quantity of the god’s portion.43 As Köhnken (1981) has argued persuasively, Callimachus’ figures of Phthonos and Momos are influenced by Pindar’s and Bacchylides’ poetry, where the two are functionally distinct: Blame (momos) is the consequence of envy (phthonos), so momos follows phthonos.44 Blomqvist (1990), while agreeing with this reasoning, objects to Köhnken’s distinction between the two as open criticism (momos) and clandestine criticism (phthonos).45 Blomqvist points out that envy (phthonos) is an emotion, whereas blame (momos) is an action. In Callimachus’ Hymn to Apollo, momos and phthonos are not two different kinds of criticism, but one and the same — according to Blomqvist (p. 23): “momos is uttered by the same person 43. Bundy (1972: 87-93) argued that Callimachus dramatized a conventional break-off or epilogic pattern and adduced passages from Pindar to illustrate it. He saw Pindar’s O. 8.55 as the closest parallel for Callimachus’ Phthonos and P. 1.82 for Momos. However, Köhnken (1981: 421-2) pointed out that Callimachus uses the break-off differently from Pindar and Bacchylides: “Structurally, the Phthonos-Momos-finale in Callimachus, hy. 2, is indeed a ‘break-off formula’, as Bundy has seen, but it is at the same time a peculiar inversion of the conventional motif. Whereas in Pindar and Bacchylides φθόνος or μῶμος, when occurring in break-off passages, are brought in to explain why the poet is forced to cut a long story short (if he did not, he would risk ennui, ill feeling and criticism from his audience…) in Callimachus it is the other way round: Phthonos would have liked the poem to go on for much longer, and he is rejected because the poet (represented by ‘Apollo’) prefers his poem to be short” (p. 421). In addition, Pindar’s deified Φθόνος is a concept almost opposite to Callimachus’: in Pindar, it is closer to retribution than envy, as it punishes humans for outstanding success, whereas Callimachus’ Φθόνος points out a perceived failure. See on this Lord (1990: 94); on Phthonos in Pindar in general, Bulman (1992) with Most (2003) as important corrective. I argue that Callimachus does employ the break-off pattern and the doublet Momos / Phthonos from the choral poetry, but that the sense of the passage (it is a sacrilege to criticize the gods’ portion) is Hesiodic. While the influence of Pindar in the closing lines of Hymn to Apollo is indisputable, Bundy’s view of ll. 105-112 as “an objective representation of an internal dialogue wherein Apollo decides that the offense offered to his dignity through the poet’s omissions is outweighed by his delight in the purity of the song” (1972: 92) has been (in my opinion rightly) rejected by Köhnken (1981), but has been defended by Cheshire (2008: 372, n. 66), who argues that phthonos “refers to Apollo’s feeling of malevolence as predicted by the narrator towards the chorus”, whereas momos “refers to the manifestation of that malevolence, i.e. the god’s rejection of their performance.” On Pindaric influence on ll. 105-113, see also Fuhrer (1992: 252-226), Acosta-Hughes & Stephens (2017: 239-241); Acosta-Hughes (forthcoming). 44. Köhnken (1981). 45. Blomqvist (1990). Blomqvist argues in favour of the reading φθόρος in the last line of the hymn, which is attested in most manuscripts. This reading makes excellent sense, especially in view of my interpretation of the final lines as referring back to v. 2 of the hymn.

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or group of persons who experience the phthonos.” According to this understanding of the relationship between phthonos as emotion and momos as action, and keeping in mind the Hesiodic verses about proper behavior at rituals, one could argue that Hesiod’s μωμεύειν is equivalent to ὁ Φθόνος … εἶπεν in Callimachus. From the perspective of multiple Callimachean passages where poetry is compared with animal sacrifice, a similar move can be detected here, but operating at the level of allusion: Callimachus replaces Hesiod’s ἱεροῖσιν ἐπ’ αἰθομένοισι with τὸν ἀοιδόν. If we accept Robertson’s and West’s interpretation of the Hesiodic passage, it is the quantity of the gods’ portion of meat that is the cause of resentment, be it that too much, or too little has been apportioned to them. In Callimachus, the objection is that the poet has apportioned too little, not of meat, but of song. Whereas Hesiodic grumblers directly carp at the quantity of meat, and only indirectly blame the religious official who apportions meat at sacrifices, Phthonos’ criticism is directed primarily at the poet, and secondarily at his poem. What is more, the implicit criteria for the judging of the sacrificial offering in Hesiod (the quantity of meat) become more explicit in Callimachus: the quantity, i.e. size / length of the poem (οὐδ’ ὅσα). Finally, it appears that in his dramatization of this precept from Hesiod, Callimachus also made a philological point on how we should grasp ἀίδηλα, namely, in accordance with the opinion expressed in some of the scholia, as equivalent to ἀδήλως, since Callimachus has λάθριος Φθόνος express his criticism in Apollo’s ear. According to Hesiod, critique of a ritual — silent or muttered46 — represents an act of sacrilege and incurs divine anger. In Callimachus, the anger of the god is not a distant future threat as in Hesiod, but immediate (ποδί τ’ ἤλασεν). Phthonos (envy) and its loud expression (momos) are unworthy of divine epiphany, since both the inner feeling of envy and the action of insulting the ritual hymn with blasphemous words are demonstrations of inner impurity. An impure mind in the ritual space constitutes a religious transgression, and in this hymn, a requirement for inner purity is clearly stated as a prerequisite for the divine epiphany at the start of the Hymn (v. 2): ἑκὰς ἑκὰς ὅστις ἀλιτρός.47

46. Andrej Petrovic and I (2016: 51) argue that the verb μωμεύειν does not necessarily connote a loud expression of critique and scholia vetera 756a support this interpretation. On the silent, that is, internalized momos, see Blomqvist (1990). 47. For a full discussion of the religious contexts of the opening lines, Petrovic (2011: 265-270).

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4. A Hesiodic resonance in Iambus 12 Intriguingly, both the kicking with the foot and yet another Hesiodic allusion can be detected in Iambus 12. In the section outlining Apollo’s deliberation about what would constitute the best present for Hebe, the god ponders on the merits and drawbacks of gold: αὐτίκα χρυσὸν μὲν Ἰνδικοὶ κύνες βυσσόθεν μύρμηκες ο[ἴσου]σι πτεροῖς· πολλάκις καὶ φαῦλον οἰκήσει δόμον (60) χρυσός, ἀρχαίους δ’ ἀτιμήσει [ ]ς· καὶ Δίκην καὶ Ζῆνα καὶ [...]ου.α.ας ὑπτίῳ παίσαντες ἄνθρωποι ποδί χρυσὸν αἰνήσουσι τίμιον κ....[. ‘Straightaway the ants, the monsters of India Will bear gold from the depths on their wings. And often gold will inhabit the house of little worth, and will dishonor venerable [usage]. Men, while striking with upturned foot both Justice and Zeus … will praise gold as honorable.’48

As Reinsch-Werner (1976: 359) argues, these verses recall the impious treatment of Dike in Hesiod’s Works and Days (220-224) where the unjust men who take bribes drag away the goddess. The dangers of unjust wealth and the close collaboration of Justice and Zeus are some of the main motifs of the Works and Days. The Hesiodic passage is here fused with the foot-kicking motif, surely as a Callimachean cross-reference.49 As I have argued above, the gift of a hymn elevates the recipient to the status of a deity, whereas this passage represents the gift of gold as having the opposite effect: it leads to irreverence and impiety. The Hesiodic allusion not only additionally exalts Apollo’s poetic gift for Hebe, it juxtaposes two treatments of two pairs of divinities: Zeus and his daughter Hebe in the twelfth Iambus and Zeus and his daughter Dike in the Works and Days. As has been long noted, Callimachus is a careful reader of Hesiod, and tends to allude to (or explicitly mention) Hesiod in his programmatic lines. Reinsch-Werner, who offered a first systematic account of the reception of Hesiod in Callimachus argued that in ll. 105-112 of Callimachus’ Hymn 48. Text and translation: Acosta-Hughes (2002). Papyri offer two different readings of v. 62: θ]εμν and δικην. Kerkhecker (1999: 242) argues for Θέμιν as lectio difficilior; Acosta-Hughes (2002: 110) prints Δίκην. 49. Ambühl (2005: 300-302) offers a review of other references to all Callimachean hymns in the 12th Iambus.

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to Apollo, the Hesiodic influence can be detected in Callimachus’ use of the Hesiodic gloss συρφετός in l. 109.50 More intriguingly, at the beginning of the Aetia, where Callimachus mentions Hesiod by name and apparently compares his own encounter with the Muses with Hesiod’s, he refers to WD 265-6: ‘the man who fashions evil against another fashions evil against himself / and the evil plan is the worst for the one who plans’.51 As Hunter has shown, Callimachus casts Hesiod in a role of his “forerunner and authorizing model”;52 by introducing ‘liver’ in the paraphrase of the Hesiodic precept, Callimachus references the Telchines and the phthonos-theme from the Reply. According to my interpretation of the reference to WD in the closing lines of the Hymn to Apollo, the thought is similar, but the context is different: Whereas in every-day life, evil plotters damage themselves, in ritual space, it is the divinity who censures sacrilegious thought and speech.

5. Poetry as gift for the gods in the contemporary religious context In conclusion, a broader question about the Callimachean passages where different gifts for the gods are implicitly or explicitly compared and evaluated could be posed: To what extent are such comparisons pertinent to the contemporary socio-religious context? What seems relevant to me are the bold strategies of religious innovation and experimentation in the early Hellenistic period, especially with regard to the ruler cult. Alexander the Great and the first generation of Hellenistic kings were all religious innovators, as they were establishing their own cults, or accepted divine honors offered to them by the cities.53 I use the word ‘innovators’ because there was no blueprint for the elevation of the human rulers to the status of divinities. To be sure, there existed mythic parallels and even historical examples of individuals who were elevated to the status of heroes or, rarely and exceptionally, divinities in their own communities, mostly posthumously and, very seldomly, during their lifetime, but 50. ≈ WD 606. Reinsch-Werner (1976: 134-136). 51. οἷ αὐτῷ κακὰ τεύχει ἀνὴρ ἄλλῳ κακὰ τεύχων, / ἡ δὲ κακὴ βουλὴ τῷ βουλεύσαντι κακίστη. Cf. Callimachus, Aetia Fr. 2 Harder l. 5: τεύχω⸥ν ὡς ἑτέρῳ τις ἑῷ ⸤κακὸν ἥπατι τεύχει, ‘that if one prepares evil for another one prepares it for one’s own liver’, (translation: Harder 2012 vol. 1.) 52. Hunter (2008); (2014: 111-115); Quote: Hunter (2014: 113). 53. For a brief overview of Hellenistic deification of rulers with further literature, Chaniotis (2003) and Petrovic (2015). For an accessible and exhaustive historical overview with lists of sources, Buraselis and Aneziri (2014). On the cult of Ptolemaic kings, Koenen (1993), Melaerts (1998), Caneva (2016).

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the Hellenistic kings controlled vast territories inhabited by various nations and the challenge they faced was greater and required significant planning and organizational effort.54 Each Hellenistic dynasty faced this challenge in its own way, and the Ptolemies were path-breaking in several respects: this was the first royal family in which the cult of divine queens was especially prominent,55 the first dynasty which represented royal women on coins,56 and the first to deify rulers as a couple and to attach their cult to that of Alexander the Great, who became the state god in Egypt.57 During Callimachus’ lifetime, a dizzying variety of divinization models was tried and tested: Ptolemaic kings and queens were given divine honors and specific cult-titles by various Greek cities, they were deified posthumously by decrees in Egypt, or even while they were still living, they had official state cults and additional cults instituted by prominent individuals, their statues became synnaoi of other gods in Greek and Egyptian temples, and, in one famous instance, even the royal hair was divinized as a constellation. Royal philoi played a decisive role in the process of deification. The most prominent members of the royal family and the highly ranked philoi became priests of the royal cult and built monuments and temples for the royal gods. Hellenistic poets contributed to the effort, at times writing poetry to celebrate new precincts and temples, at other times referencing or outright celebrating deifications.58 Their poetic works were sometimes as inventive as their subject-matter: Novel religious concepts, such as the catasterism of the royal lock, give birth to new poetic creations, such as Callimachus’ encomiastic catasterism of Berenice’s hair.59 If we accept Mineur’s attractive suggestion that the Hymn to Delos was composed as a genethliakon for Ptolemy Philadelphus in order to be performed on the occasion of his official birthday celebration every year,60 we have an interesting parallel for the twelfth Iambus, insofar as both poems celebrate the birth of new divinities, and in both poems the birth of a traditional divinity (Hebe, Apollo) is juxtaposed to the birth from human parents. 54. On pre-Hellenistic heroization and divinization of mortals, Currie (2005). 55. On the cult of Ptolemaic royal women in the third century BC, Hölbl (2003); Caneva (2012), (2014), (2016); van Oppen (2015). 56. The first living woman to appear on a coin was Berenice I (on coins from Rhodes and Cos, late 4th c. BC, see Müller (2009: 335-380)). During the reign of Ptolemy II, royal women first appear on Egyptian coinage. On the representation of Arsinoe II on coins, Müller (2009: 365-80), Carney (2013: 120-124). 57. On the complicated relationship of the cults of Theoi Soteres, Theoi Adelphoi and the Egyptian cult of divinized Alexander, Caneva (2016: 163-173). 58. See also Acosta-Hughes in this volume. 59. On the Lock of Berenice as court poetry, Harder (2012, vol. 2: 798-799). 60. Mineur (1984: 10-18).

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When Callimachus references ‘sweet strife’ in the twelfth Iambus61 to qualify the competition of the gods in gift-giving on the occasion of the birth of a new goddess, one is reminded of the way the royal cults were instituted and promoted by the figures such as the supreme commander of the Ptolemaic fleet, Callicrates of Samos, who served as the first eponymous priest of the cult of Alexander and the Theoi Adelphoi and founded the shrine of Arsinoe-Aphrodite Zephyritis.62 The prominent poets responded by composing epigrams to commemorate the cult of this new divinity:63 Posidippus’,64 Callimachus’,65 and Hedylus’66 poems are extant. By celebrating the new shrine, the poets entered a contest not dissimilar from the one described in Callimachus’ twelfth Iambus.67 Such contests were certainly very advantageous for the promotion of the cult of divinized members of the royal family. The epigrams provide glimpses of both fabulous and ordinary dedications already placed in the sanctuary and occasionally invite the readers to come and see them for themselves. In marketing terms, they raise awareness of a product or a brand, generate sales (dedications) and create brand loyalty. However, the poets are not only competing with other poets (Hesiodic pun intended), but are also vying with those philoi who, like Callicrates, gave material gifts to the new gods, such as shrines and statues. The twelfth Iambus strongly implies that a hymn plays a unique role among various gifts to the gods, and I read the poem as a valorization of a hymn as a gift that not only delights, but also elevates the recipient to the status of divinity. Conversely, in the closing passage of the Hymn to Apollo, instead of the ‘sweet’ Ἔρις in gift-giving, we witness a begrudging critical reaction motivated by Φθόνος. Recognizing not only the Pindaric, but also the Hesiodic allusion in this passage leads to the interpretation of Apollo’s reply as emphasizing not only the purity of the poetic offering, but also as condemning the 61. 202.45 Pf. [..γ]λυκεῖαν ἀλλήλοις ἔριν... 62. On Callicrates, Hauben (1970), (2013). 63. On Callicrates’ religious activity and the epigrams of Posidippus, see Bing (2009). 64. 12 GP = 116AB; 13 GP = 119 AB; 39 AB and possibly also 36 & 37AB – see Bing (2009). 65. 5 Pf. = 14 GP. 66. 4 GP. 67. A similar instance is the Epithalamium of Arsinoe (Fr. 392 Pf.) Although only the first line of Callimachus’ poem survives, Stephens (2005: 243-244) was able to detect a contextual reference that points towards a competitive performance. There are two other poems commemorating this marriage, one fragmentary by Posidippus (AB 114) and one anonymous (Chic. Lit. Pap. No. II). A different instance of eris at work can be glimpsed in the Lock of Berenice, where Callimachus represents Conon as an extremely erudite astronomer, just as the narrator of the Aetia has proven himself to be extremely knowledgeable in matters of Greek geography, history, cultic lore, and literature. The two experts work hand-in-hand in the process of deification of the royal lock.

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impure mind and ulterior motivation of the envious critic. By attacking the poet, Envy is committing the act of sacrilege, and is promptly expelled from the inner circle of those who have access to the god. The god himself issues the final verdict on the poetic offering. Whereas the defense of the hymn and the acceptance of the gift remains in the domain of poetic fiction and wishful thinking in the case of Olympian divinities, the Ptolemies as the earthly gods were actually able to express satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the gifts they received.

Abbreviations & Editions Harder = Harder, A., 2012, Callimachus, Aetia, 2 vols. Oxford. LSS = Sokolowski, F., 1962. Lois sacrées des cités grecques. Supplément (École française d’Athènes, Travaux et mémoires des anciens membres étrangers de l’École et de divers savants 11). Paris. Pertusi = Pertusi, A., 1955, Scholia vetera in Hesiodi opera et dies. Milan. Pf. = Pfeiffer, R., 1949-1953, Callimachus, 2 vols. Oxford.

REFERENCES Acosta-Hughes, B. & S.A. Stephens, 2017, “Callimachean ‘Lyric”. Trends in Classics 9.2, 226-247. Acosta-Hughes, B. forthcoming, “In the Glassy Stream”. Acosta-Hughes, B., 2002, Polyeideia. The Iambi of Callimachus and the archaic Iambic Tradition. Berkeley / Los Angeles / London. Ambühl, A., 2005, Kinder und Junge Helden. Innovative Aspekte des Umgangs mit der literarischen Tradition bei Kallimachos. Leuven / Paris / Dudley, MA. Asper, M., 1997, Onomata Allotria. Zur Genese, Struktur und Fuktion poetologischer Metaphern bei Kallimachos. Stuttgart. Bing, P., 2009, “Posidippus and the Admiral”. In: P. Bing (ed.), The Scroll and the Marble. Studies in Reading and Reception in Hellenistic Poetry. Ann Arbor, 234-252. Blomqvist, J., 1990, “The Last Line of Callimachus’ Hymn to Apollo”. Eranos 88, 17-24. Bulman, P., 1992, Phthonos in Pindar. Berkeley / Los Angeles / Oxford. Bundy, E., 1972, “The ‘Quarrel between Kallimahos and Apollonios” Part I: The epilogue of Kallimachos’s ‘Hymn to Apollo’”. CSCA 5, 39-94. Buraselis, K. and S. Aneziri, 2004, “Die griechische und hellenistische Apotheose”, ThesCRA 2: 158-186. Calame, C., 2011, “The Homeric Hymns as Poetic Offerings: Musical and Ritual Relationships with the Gods”. In: A. Faulkner (ed.) The Homeric Hymns. Interpretative Essays, Oxford. 334-358. Caneva, S. 2012. “Queens and Ruler Cults in Early Hellenism: Festivals, Administration, and Ideology”, Kernos 25, 75-100.

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Caneva, S. 2014. “Courtly Love, Stars, and Power: The Queen in 3rd-century Royal Couples, through Poetry and Epigraphic Texts.” In M.A. Harder et al. (eds.), Hellenistic Poetry in Context, Hellenistica Groningana 20, Leuven 25-57. —, 2016. From Alexander to the Theoi Adelphoi. Foundation and Legitimation of a Dynasty. Leuven / Paris / Bristol. Carney, E.D., 2013. Arsinoë of Egypt and Macedon. A Royal Life. Oxford. Chaniotis, A. 2003. “The Divinity of Hellenistic Rulers”. In A. Erskine (ed.), A Companion to the Hellenistic World, Malden, MA, 431-446. Cheshire, J., 2008, “Kicking Φθόνος: Apollo and His Chorus in Callimachus’ Hymn 2’. CPh 103, 354-373. Currie, B. 2005. Pindar and the Cult of Heroes. Oxford. Dawson, C.M., 1950, The Iambi of Callimachus. A Hellenistic Poet’s Experimental Laboratory. New Haven. Day, J., 2000, “Epigram and Reader: Generic Force as (Re/)Activation of Ritual”. In: M. Depew and D. Obbink, (eds.), Matrices of Genre. Authors, Canons and Society, Cambridge MA / London, 37-57. Decourt, J.C. / A. Tziaphalias, 2015, “Un règlement religieux de la region de Larissa: cultes grecs et ‘orientaux’”. Kernos 28, 13-51. Depew, M., 2000, “Enacted and represented dedications: genre and Greek hymn”. In: M. Depew and D. Obbink, (eds.), Matrices of Genre. Authors, Canons and Society, Cambridge MA / London, 59-79. Fuhrer, T., 1992, Die Auseinandersetzung mit den Chorlyrikern in den Epinikien des Kallimachos. Basel / Kassel. Furley, W.D. / Bremer, J.M. 2001, Greek Hymns, Selected Cult Songs from the Archaic to the Hellenistic Period, 2 vols. Tübingen. —, 1995, “Praise and Persuasion in Greek Hymns”. JHS 115, 29-46. Hamilton, R., 1984, “Sources for the Athenian Amphidromia”. GRBS 25, 243-251. Harder, A., 2012, Callimachus, Aetia. 2 vols. Oxford. Hauben, H. 1970, Callicrates of Samos: A Contribution to the Study of Ptolemaic Admiralty, Studia Hellenistica 19, Leuven. —, 2013, “Callicrates of Samos and Patroclus of Macedon, Champions of Ptolemaic Thalassocracy. In: K. Buraselis et al (eds.), The Ptolemies, the Sea and the Nile: Studies in Waterborne Power, Cambridge, 39-65. Hölbl, G. 2003. “Ptolemäische Königin und weiblicher Pharao”. In N. Bonacasa (ed.), Faraoni come dei, Tolemei come Faraoni. Atti del V Congresso Internazionale Italo-Egiziano, Torino, Archivio di Stato, 8-12 Dizembre 2001, Torino, 88-97. Hunter, R., 2008, “Hesiod, Callmachus, and the invention of morality”. In R. Hunter (ed.), On Coming After: Studies in Post-Classical Greek Literature and its Reception. Berlin / New York, 559-571. —, 2014, Hesiodic Voices. Studies in the Ancient Reception of Hesiod’s Works and Days, Cambridge. Kerkhecker, A., 1999, Callimachus’ Book of Iambi. Oxford. Koenen, L., 1993. “The Ptolemaic King as a Religious Figure”. In A. Bulloch / E.S. Gruen / A.A. Long / A. Steward (eds.), Images and Ideologies: SelfDefinition in the Hellenistic World, Berkeley, CA, 25-111. Kohnken, A., 1981, “Apollo’s Retort to Envy’s Criticism: (Two Questions of Relevance in Callimachus, Hymn 2, 105ff.). AJPH 102, 411-422.

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Lord, K.O., 1990, Pindar in the Second and Third Hymns of Callimachus, Dissertation, The University of Michigan. Malearts, H., 1998. Le culte du souverain dans l’Égypte ptolémaïque au IIIe siècle avant notre ère, Louvain. Mineur, W.H., 1984. Callimachus, Hymn to Delos. Introduction and Commentary. Leiden. Most, G., 2003, “Epinician Envies”. In D. Konstan / N. Keith Rutter (eds.), Envy, Spite, and Jealousy. The Rivalrous Emotions in Ancient Greece. Edinburgh, 123-142. Müller, S., 2009. Das Hellenistische Königspaar in der medialen Repräsentation – Ptolemaios II und Arsinoë II. Berlin. Nauta, R.R., 2010, “Callimachus’ Sacrifice to Apollo Lykios (Fragment 1,21-24)”. In: J. Dijkstra et al. (eds.), Myths, Martyrs, and Modernity. Studies in the History of Religions in Honour of Jan N. Bremmer. Leiden / Boston, 167-177. Nicolai, R., 1992, “La fondazione di Cirene e i Karneia cirenaici nell’Inno ad Apollo di Callimaco”. MD 28, 153-173. Parker, R., 1983, Miasma. Pollution and Purification in Early Greek Religion, Oxford. Petrovic, A. / Petrovic, I., 2016, Inner Purity and Pollution in Greek Religion. Oxford. Petrovic, I., 2007, Von den Toren des Hades zu den Hallen des Olymp: Artemiskult bei Theokrit und Kallimachos. Leiden / Boston. —, 2011, “Callimachus and Contemporary Religion”. In: B. Acosta-Hughes et al., (eds.), Brill’s Companion to Callimachus. Leiden / Boston, 264-284. —, 2012, “Callimachus’ Hymn to Apollo and Greek Metrical Sacred Regulations”. In: M.A. Harder et al. (eds.), Gods and Religion, Proceedings of the Ninth Groningen Workshop on Hellenistic poetry. Leuven / Paris, 281-306. —, 2015. “Gods or men – deification”. In: J. Kindt / E. Eidinow (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Greek Religion, Oxford, 429-443. Pulleyn, S., 1997, Prayer in Greek Religion. Oxford. Quack, J., 2013, “Conceptions of Purity in Egyptian Religions”. In: C. Frevel / C. Nihan (eds.), Purity and the Forming of Religious Traditions in the Ancient Mediterranean and Ancient Judaism. Leiden / Boston, 115-58 Race, W.H., 1982, “Aspects of Rhetoric and Form in Greek Hymns”. GRBS 23, 5-14. Reinsch-Werner, H., 1976, Callimachus Hesiodicus. Die Rezeption der hesiodischen Dichtung durch Kallimahos von Kyrene, Berlin. Robertson, N., 1969, “How to Behave at a Sacrifice: Hesiod Erga 755-56”. CPh 64, 164-169. Stephens, S., 2002, Seeing Double. Intercultural Poetics in Ptolemaic Alexandria. Berkeley. —, 2005, “Battle of the Books”. In: K. Gutzwiller (ed.), The New Posidippus. A Hellenistic Poetry Book. Oxford, 229-248. —, 2015, Callimachus, The Hymns, Edited with Introduction, Translations, and Commentary, Oxford. Van Oppen, B. 2015. Berenice II Euergetis: Essays in Early Hellenistic Queenship. Paris. West, M.L. (ed.), 1978, Hesiod, Works & Days, Oxford. Williams, F., 1978, Callimachus, Hymn to Apollo. A Commentary. Oxford.

SOME ASPECTS OF CLOSURE IN CALLIMACHUS’ EPIGRAMS Alexander SENS

1. Introduction: closure and continuity In this paper, I want to consider some issues of closure in Hellenistic epigram, and in Callimachus’ epigrams in particular.1 There is, as Kathryn Gutzwiller and others have demonstrated,2 much room for thinking about the way that the individual collections and sub-collections of poems that constitute the Anthology may have concluded, and indeed the Milan Posidippus contains some clear examples of interesting closural strategies at the level of the ensemble, but my interest here is rather in how individual poems create or resist a sense of completeness and finality. By ‘closure,’ I mean two separate but closely inter-related issues: first, most basically and literally, how individual epigrams conclude at the level of language; second, since so many real and fictive epitaphs include, in one way or another, the voice of the deceased, the way that epitaphs treat the question of the continuity or finality of the speaker’s voice. That latter issue is in a sense baked into the form that Hellenistic poets inherited and manipulated, for at the heart of inscriptional epigram is a tension between continuity and finality, since epitaphs by their very nature often simultaneously mark the loss of the deceased and continue to speak in his or her voice. The tension between finality and continuity is visible in inscribed epitaphs in other ways as well. One can see the duality play out in the well-known epitaph for Phrasicleia from the mid 6th c: σῆμα Φρασικλείας. κόρη κεκλήσομαι αἰεί (CEG 24.1). In making the point that Phrasicleia’s demise has consigned her to perpetual virginity, the poem also enacts its content, since passersby who read the poem aloud reiterate the claim that she will always be called a virgin even as they do so. In this sense, the act of re-performance by the reader preserves the voice of the deceased beyond the grave.3 In much the same way, inscribed 1. I am grateful to the Workshop participants for their comments, and especially to Chiara Bonsignore both for her formal response and for her reaction to an early version; Hayden Pelliccia also offered helpful criticisms and suggestions on a draft. Claire Healy provided invaluable research assistance. 2. Gutzwiller (1998: passim); Argentieri (1998); Höschele (2016). 3. See Day (1989: 26).

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dedicatory poems, in practice, do not merely record a finite event in the past but constantly participate in its reiteration. Joseph Day has argued that every time an inscribed dedicatory epigram was read aloud by a viewer, the reading amounted to a re-performance of the original do ut des cultic gift-giving and concomitant request for divine favor.4 At the formal level, too, the end of individual epigrams can be a marked space. A number of epigrams end by explicitly signaling that the attention of the passerby, to which the speaker regularly appeals at the opening of the poem, is no longer needed by encouraging him to fare well and move on. Other poems end by implicating the reader in lamentation by having him or her read aloud expressions of mourning, while still others resist closure by pointing to the continued legacy of the deceased: it seems unlikely to be merely a product of the convenience with which the aorist active forms of λείπω fit the end of a pentameter, for example, that forms like ἔλιπον (-ες, ε), λιπών and the like appear frequently as the final word or occupy the final hemistich of a funerary epigram; instead, the position reflects the use of the last words of a poem to underscore the ways in which the deceased, though gone, continues to resonate via the qualities, the fame, or the grief he or she has left to survivors, even after death. Such features thus link the death in the past to conditions in the present and the future, and implicitly include the reader/viewer in the act of mourning and remembrance. It is not surprising, therefore, that a poet like Callimachus, in whose work etiology regularly links the Hellenistic present to the mythological past, would exploit the continuity of the epigrammatic voice in a poem like AP 7.271 (45 Gow–Page, 17 Pfeiffer), in which an evocation of Euripides’ Medea links the invention of ships in the distant past to the current mourning of a wider community that includes the speaker (cf. 2 ἐστένομεν), and in which the final word, παρερχόμεθα (4), not only engages with conventional addresses to the passerby, but also constructs a community of readers passing by the epigram5 — almost certainly on their way through a poetry book rather than on the road — in the imagined hic et nunc.6 In what follows, then, I hope to explore some of the other ways Callimachus’ epigrams handle closure at the thematic and structural levels. The discussion does not claim to be an exhaustive study of the closural

4. Day (2010). 5. Cf. Bing (2009: 92). 6. The assertion of Cairns (2016: 268–269) that the poem shows all signs of being an inscriptional poem is unjustified.

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strategies of Callimachus’ epigrams, but instead is intended as a set of discrete readings of select individual poems, with some observations about how they relate to one another and about the broader issues they raise.7 Two examples may serve to introduce some of the range of ways in which Callimachus engages with the inherited closural strategies of inscribed epigrams. Although several of Callimachus’ dedicatory epigrams end by adverting in a traditional way to the reciprocal relationship between donor and honorand,8 in AP 6.351 (22 Gow-Page, 34 Pfeiffer), Callimachus plays with this feature in a different way: τίν με, λεοντάγχ’ ὦνα συοκτόνε, φήγινον ὄζον θῆκε — “τίς;” — Ἀρχῖνος. — “ποῖος;” — ὁ Κρής. — “δέχομαι.” To you, oh lion-throttling boar-killer, I, an oaken branch, was dedicated by … “whom?” “Archinos,” “of what nationality?” “the Cretan” “I accept it.”

Scholars have well noted the way in which the poem engages with the conventional features of epigrammatic language, and my focus here is only on the final word and how it reconfigures the usual dynamics of dedicatory poetry. It is customary in dedications for the speaking voice to ask the recipient deity to ‘accept’ the offering (CEG 345 δήξαι, 367, 418), so that the poem amounts to a prayer for the god to enter a reciprocally beneficial relationship with the dedicator (cf. Call. AP 6.347.2 [21 Gow–Page, 33 Pfeiffer] ἀλλὰ σὺ μὲν δέξαι, πότνια, τὴν δὲ σάου). As was observed above, in such poems, the act of dedication is constantly reiterated as readers pronounce the words, and so it remains timeless and unfulfilled. Here, by contrast, the recipient, perhaps impatient with the grandiose hymnic address, tersely interrupts the speaker.9 Heracles’ δέχομαι not only anticipates and renders unnecessary the request that is a feature (whether made explicitly or left implicit) of real dedications, but also transforms the open-endedness of dedicatory inscriptions, in which the god’s response is unstated and uncertain, into an event that has done its work and is now over. 7. My focus is more on theme than structure. For a broader discussion of closure in epigram, see Nelson (forthcoming), with bibliography. I am grateful to the author for providing me a copy of that discussion in advance of its publication. Other important studies of closure in ancient literature include Fowler (1989) and the essays in Grewing et al. (2013). 8. E.g. AP 13.25.6 (19 Gow–Page, 39 Pfeiffer); AP 6.146.4 (23 Gow–Page, 53 Pfeiffer), which envisions the relationship extending into the future. 9. For discussion, see Luck (1968: 392–393); Fantuzzi in Fantuzzi and Hunter (2004: 217); Tueller (2008: 107), Schmitz (2010: 380). I am not persuaded by Cairns’ view (2016: 285–289) that the poem celebrates a real dedication.

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A different dynamic plays out in a ‘funerary’ context in AP 7.518 (36 Gow–Page, 22 Pfeiffer), which tells of the death of Astacides the Cretan goatherd: Ἀστακίδην τὸν Κρῆτα τὸν αἰπόλον ἥρπασε Νύμφη ἐξ ὄρεος, καὶ νῦν ἱερὸς Ἀστακίδης. οὐκέτι Δικταίῃσιν ὑπὸ δρυσίν, οὐκέτι Δάφνιν, ποιμένες, Ἀστακίδην δ᾽ αἰὲν ἀεισόμεθα. A nymph snatched Astacides, the shepherd from Crete, from the mountain, and now Astacides is sacred. No longer, under the Dictaean oaks, no longer, shepherds, will we sing Daphnis, but always Astacides.

The precise significance of this epigram, including the identity of the figure known as Astacides and the poem’s relationship and attitude toward Theocritean pastoral, has been much debated.10 Without entering into the question of what its attitude toward pastoral poetry is or whether the figure in question is a historical individual, dead or alive, I want to underscore the way in which the final words of the prologue perform work similar to κόρη κεκλήσομαι αἰεί in the Phrasicleia epigram, promising and simultaneously embodying the act of singing about Astacides. In the context of an epigram, the first couplet resembles narratives found in both inscribed (IMEGR 16.2, 64.5–6) and literary epigrams (e.g. Leonidas AP 7.13 [98 Gow–Page]).11 The adverb οὐκέτι in 3 thus initially may lead to the expectation that the second couplet will treat activities in which Astacides can no longer participate, as is common in funerary poetry (e.g. CEG 680.6–9, Anyte AP 7.215.1 [12 Gow–Page]). Only in the final clause (Ἀστακίδην ... ἀεισόμεθα) does it emerge that the goatherd is not the subject and that the meaning is that he will replace Daphnis as the object of pastoral song. In making the accusative Ἀστακίδην at the head of the clause the object of ἀεισόμεθα at its conclusion, this final clause resembles the hymnic language that concludes the Dichterweihung of the Theogony (34–35 σφᾶς δ᾽αὐτὰς πρῶτόν τε καὶ ὕστατον αἰὲν ἀείδειν; cf. e.g. hh. 6.1–2, 10.1; Cleanthes fr. 1.7 αἰὲν ἀείσω), and thus resonates against the assertion that Astacides has become ἱερός — he has, in other words, become the possession of the nymph12 and thus achieved a divine association that makes him worthy of hymnic praise. At the same time, like κεκλήσομαι in the Phrasicleia poem, the final word is fundamentally self-referential,13 since the singing 10. 11. 12. 13.

See Bing (2009:101–105); Cairns (2016: 201–210). For epigram as narrative, cf. Bowie (2010). Cairns (2016: 210). Cf. Cairns (2016: 201).

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to which it refers is the poem itself — in the sense that Ἀστακίδην in 4 may be read as the title of a poem, it inevitably looks back to the opening word of the epigram as a whole. As often, in the final words, the ‘poetic’ voice comments on and attempts to control its own reception: the song to be sung is the epigram, and that will persist for ever. Thus, whereas the Heracles dedication creates closure absent in inscriptional models, the Astacides poem resists closure in a way that offers a wry comment on the poet’s own work.

2. Reflections on poetry The dynamic observable in the Astacides poem is, in fact, a basic feature of Hellenistic literary epigrams celebrating dead poets of the past, since these poems, by speaking in the voice of the deceased or of the tomb that contains him or her, assimilate the poet’s own voice with that of his predecessor, and so make an implicit claim about its continuity that locates the author in an ongoing tradition and in suggesting the ongoing vitality of a predecessor’s work, makes an implicit assertion about the epigrammatist’s own reception. Sometimes, indeed, the claim that a poet’s voice has continued past his or her death is made explicitly.14 The typical placement of such assertions is significant: a cursory glance at epigrams for dead poets at the opening of the seventh book of the Greek Anthology reveals how often these poems place reflections on the continued and future vitality of the honorand’s poetry in their final verses. I offer a few select examples to which numerous others could be added:15 Alcaeus (?) AP 7.5.5–6 (22 Gow–Page, on Homer) τἀμὰ δέ, Μοῦσαι καὶ Χίος, Ἑλλήνων παισὶν ἀείσετ’ ἔπη. You, Muses and Chios, will sing my poems to the children of the Greeks. adesp. AP 7.12.5-6 (on Erinna) σὸς δ’ ἐπέων, Ἤριννα, καλὸς πόνος οὔ σε γεγωνεῖ φθίσθαι, ἔχειν δὲ χοροὺς ἄμμιγα Πιερίσιν. The beautiful labor of your verses, Erinna, cries out that you have not died, but conduct your choruses with the Pierian Muses.

14. For a late but very explicit assertion of the dynamic, cf. adesp. ap. Possidius Vit. Aug. 31: vivere post obitum vatem vis nosse viator? / quod legis ecce loquor, vox tua nempe mea est. 15. Cf. e.g. Posidipp. 17 HE (122 A-B), which ends with a reflection on the survival of Sappho’s poetry and thus of Doricha’s name; see Dale (2016).

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Antip. Sid. AP 7.14.6–8 (11 Gow–Page, on Sappho) Μοῖραι … πῶς οὐκ ἐκλώσασθε πανάφθιτον ἦμαρ ἀοιδῷ ἄφθιτα μησαμένᾳ δῶρ᾽ Ἑλικωνιάδων; Fates … how did you not spin an immortal life for the poet who contrived the undying gifts of the Heliconian Muses? Simias AP 7.21.5–6 (4 Gow–Page, on Sophocles) τύμβος ἔχει καὶ γῆς ὀλίγον μέρος, ἀλλ’ ὁ περισσὸς αἰὼν ἀθανάτοις δέρκεται ἐν σελίσιν. A tomb and a small lot of earth hold (you), but your extraordinary life is visible in your immortal papyrus columns. ‘Simonides’ AP 7.25.9–10 (4 Gow–Page, on Anacreon) μολπῆς δ’ οὐ λήγει μελιτερπέος, ἀλλ’ ἔτ’ ἐκεῖνον βάρβιτον οὐδὲ θανὼν εὔνασεν εἰν Ἀίδῃ. He doesn’t stop his delightful song, but not even dead did he put his lyre to rest in Hades.

The final position of these passages is perhaps a reflection of the convention that poets sometimes conclude their own works, or sections of their work, by commenting on, and thus attempting to shape, their subsequent reception (cf. Bundy 1972). But their position also reflects a broader set of tendencies and conventions about the way that epitaphs end: as was observed above, Greek inscribed epigrams often conclude by reflecting on the virtues that guarantee continued renown of the deceased or on the qualities or grief that the deceased has transmitted to his or her heirs. The backdrop they provide helps explain the structure of Callimachus’ famous poem on his friend, the poet Heraclitus, where the conclusion is that Hades, the snatcher of all things, will never lay a hand on the dead man’s poetry. Thus, the structure of the poem and its concluding reflection on poetic reception must be included among the other features of the poem that reflect the tendencies of epigrammatic, and especially epitaphic, communication more broadly, though of course Callimachus engages with them in a particularly sensitive and original way.16

3. The poem calls attention to its own end Inscribed epigrams often explicitly mark their ends by bidding the passerby, to whose attention they have appealed explicitly or implicitly in 16. See, in general, Meyer (1993, 2005); Schmitz (2010); on the Heraclitus poem, see Hunter (1992).

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the opening line, to rejoice and move along. That closural strategy is taken over by literary epigrammatists as well, as in Call. AP 7.728.6 (48 Gow–Page, 40 Pfeiffer). But Hellenistic epigrams sometimes call attention to their own endings in more subtle, self-reflexive ways. In Asclepiades AP 5.150 (10 Gow–Page, Sens), the frustrated speaker’s command for his slaves to turn out the light by which he has been waiting in vain marks the end of his evening and of his voice.17 Similarly, Asclepiades AP 7.500 (31 Gow–Page, Sens), a cenotaph for Euhippus, contains a request that the passerby carry news of his death to his parents. The poem, more probably a literary fiction rather than a commissioned epitaph,18 concludes by self-consciously evoking its own structure: ‘only the name of Euhippus is left’ is both a statement of fact and a meta-statement about the way the information in the poem has been organized, with the name of the dead man delayed until the end.19

17. So too Asclep. AP 5.7 (9 Gow–Page, Sens). 18. Sens (2011: 207–208); contra Cairns (2016: 266–267). 19. The point at which a dedicatory or funerary epigram has fully provided the information necessary to identify the dedicator and honorand (in the case of votives) or the deceased (in the case of epitaphs) is a natural terminus, and poems in which the last identifying information coincides with the final word thus have a clearly marked closing. Given the diversity of inscriptional epigrams, firm conclusions about the formal contents of the end of individual poems are tricky, but for the most part, inscribed epitaphs that consist of more than a single couplet and that provide the name of the deceased within the poem itself (as opposed to extra-metrically) tend not to defer the name of the deceased until the final words, or even the final couplet (some exceptions include SGO 01/20,/21-2, 30; 17/01/07). Shorter poems, on the other hand, somewhat more frequently place the name of the deceased in final position (e.g. CEG 475, 697). The tendency against delaying the name of the deceased in longer poems naturally reflects the dynamics of epigrammatic communications: in an inscribed landscape, poems must capture the passerby’s attention and convey their information quickly and efficiently, and longer poems thus generally name the deceased earlier rather than later. In shorter poems, by contrast, the deferral of the name may generate pathos, as is the case of one of Callimachus’ most famous epitaphs, AP 7.453 (46 Gow–Page, 19 Pfeiffer), on the twelve-year-old Nicoteles, in which the second element of the proper name placed in the final position of the line may create additional point. While the majority of Callimachus’ epigrams similarly name the deceased early on, AP 7.521 (43 Gow–Page, 12 Pfeiffer), itself modeled on Asclep. AP 7.500 (31 Gow– Page, Sens), notably delays the name of the deceased to the final verse, which then constitutes a mini-epitaph embedded as indirect speech. Here the postponement of the name within the poem is perhaps to be read against the speaking voice’s recognition of the difficulty the news will cause the recipients; even the stone hesitates to give the information. By way of other examples, AP 6.149 (25 Gow–Page, 56 Pfeiffer), discussed below, pp. 324–325 ends with the name of the dedicator’s father — a name that itself explains the speaker’s confidence about the accuracy of the information he gives — and AP 7.522 (40 Gow–Page, 14 Pfeiffer) distributes Timonoe’s data over the entire poem, which begins with her name and concludes with that of her husband.

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A similar phenomenon is operative in a series of epitaphs purporting to record the last words of the deceased. Probably the first of these is Anyte, AP 7.646 (7 Gow–Page): λοίσθια δὴ τάδε πατρὶ φίλῳ περὶ χεῖρε βαλοῦσα εἶπ᾿ Ἐρατὼ χλωροῖς δάκρυσι λειβομένα, ῾ὦ πάτερ, οὔ τοι ἔτ᾿ εἰμί, μέλας δ᾿ ἐμὸν ὄμμα καλύπτει ἤδη ἀποφθιμένας κυάνεος θάνατος.᾿ These last words did Erato say to her dear father, having thrown her arms around him and shedding fresh tears: “o father, I no longer exist for you, but blue-black death covers my eyes as I am already dead.”

The studied structure of the poem — likely the earliest of several Hellenistic ‘last words’ epigrams preserved in the Anthology and the Milan Posidippus — calls direct attention to the issue of closure. The epigram, which is itself divided equally between narrative and reported speech, opens, perhaps paradoxically, with an adjective that means ‘last’ and that thus advertises the content of the entire poem. It closes, on the other hand, with the word for death, which brings to an end both the poem and the embedded voice of the dead girl. In this sense, then, the structure of the poem iconically marks its ending as coterminous with Erato’s life. The pathetic finality of the girl’s words is, moreover, underscored by the poem’s use of earlier literature. On the one hand, the representation of the dying words of a young woman seems especially resonant of Attic tragedy, where young women on the verge of death sometimes bid farewell to members of their family, and indeed in several respects the language is distinctly tragic in coloring. But the most striking reuse of the literary tradition appears to be περὶ χεῖρε βαλοῦσα (1), which evokes Odysseus’ poignant words to the shade of his dead mother in the Underworld at Od. 11.211, where the hero expresses anguish at their inability to embrace one another. Anyte reverses the relationship; whereas in the Odyssey, a son laments his inability to embrace his dead mother, here an unmarried girl embraces her father at the moment of her death. The allusion, evoking as it does the unbridgeable divide between the living hero and his dead mother, underscores the pathos of the separation of parent and beloved child and the finality of the father’s loss: not only are Erato’s words her last to her father, but this will be her last opportunity to embrace him in any meaningful way. At both structural and intertextual levels, then, the epigram carefully marks the finality of Erato’s death. Several of Callimachus’ epigrams operate in a cognate way. A straightforward case is an erotic epigram, AP 12.230 (6 Gow–Page, 52 Pfeiffer): τὸν τὸ καλὸν μελανεῦντα Θεόκριτον, εἰ μὲν ἔμ᾽ ἔχθει, τετράκι μισοίης· εἰ δὲ φιλεῖ, φιλέοις·

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ναίχι πρὸς εὐχαίτεω Γανυμήδεος, Οὐράνιε Ζεῦ, καὶ σύ ποτ᾽ ἠράσθης. οὐκέτι μακρὰ λέγω. If beautifully dark Theocritus rejects me, may you hate him four times over, but if he loves me, may you love him. By fair-haired Ganymede, Olympian Zeus, you too once loved. I don’t go on at further length.

The poem plays on a theme found elsewhere in Hellenistic epigram, that Zeus’s passion for Ganymede justifies the speaker’s own feelings and, concomitantly, ought to make the god a natural ally.20 Here, the speaker’s reticence resembles other moments of feigned discretion (cf. especially fr. 75.4–9). In this, the poet engages with a long tradition of “break-off” formulae in which the speaker seeks to avoid the censure of his internal or external audience for going on too long,21 but for our purposes an obvious point is that the speaker’s assertion that he will go no further is simultaneous with the end of the poem. A similar, if subtler, example of the phenomenon in a funerary context occurs in AP 7.459 (37 Gow–Page, 16 Pfeiffer), on the death of a girl called Crethis: Κρηθίδα τὴν πολύμυθον ἐπισταμένην καλὰ παίζειν δίζηνται Σαμίων πολλάκι θυγατέρες, ἡδίστην συνέριθον ἀείλαλον· ἡ δ’ ἀποβρίζει ἐνθάδε τὸν πάσαις ὕπνον ὀφειλόμενον. The daughters of the Samians often look for Crethis, she of many words, knowing how to play beautifully, their sweetest, always babbling comrade. But she slumbers here the sleep owed by all.

The issue of speech and its loss is paramount. The description of the girl sought by her companions emphasizes her loquaciousness: she is not merely a person of many words, but babbles without stopping. The basic point of the poem thus hinges on the contrast between the alleged continuity of her speech in life and her current silence in death. Here, ἀείλαλος and the other descriptors are focalized by the ‘daughters of the Samians’ who perceive, naively, that her chatter is eternal. The narrator’s voice at the conclusion in the second couplet amounts to an implicit correction of their misperception. In this context, δίζηνται is not merely a synonym for ποθοῦσι or the like, but may be taken literally: the girls are trying to find a companion of whose death they are unaware.22 Whereas her companions imagined her as a continuous source of chatter, the reality is quite different. The final words of the poem, which emphasize 20. Cf. Asclep. AP 5.64 (11 Gow-Page, Sens), Tarán (1979: 7–51), Sens (2011: 74). 21. See Fuhrer (1992); Bing (2009: 96). 22. In this sense, the passage is not wholly dissimilar from Il. 3.236–244, where the narrator corrects Helen’s speculation about the cause of her brothers’ absence from Troy.

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the universality of death, simultaneously explain Crethis’ absence and her silence. But they also bring the poem to a close, and thus amount to a self-referential comment on the end of the poet’s own voice.23 Indeed, the language with which Crethis is described is equally appropriate to poetic voices. Whether Crethis is to be imagined as a courtesan, a profession for which Samos was well known,24 or merely a woolworker (cf. Gow-Page ad loc.), adjectives denoting speech style may also entail a self-referential reflection on the poet’s own voice.25 Indeed, the phrase ἐπισταμένην καλὰ παίζειν, however appropriate it might be for a courtesan, is also appropriate for the voice of the epigrammatist, as is suggested by Callimachus’ fictive self-epitaph, in which the poet describes himself as knowing (εἰδότος) not only serious poetry (ἀοιδήν) but also how to laugh at the appropriate moment (καίρια συγγελάσαι), a category of poetic activity that must include epigram itself. A one-to-one correspondence to Callimachean poetics is unlikely,26 given how ill πολύμυθος and ἀείλαλος fit the poet’s self-representation elsewhere, but the final implication that all human voices come to an end is nonetheless synchronized, in the poem itself, with the conclusion of the voice of the poem.

4. Irony, self-referentiality and closure Related to the previous group of poems are epigrams in which the closing words reveals something about the speaker that resonates ironically against what proceeds. The locus classicus for this is the famous and much discussed AP 12.43 (2 Gow–Page, 28 Pfeiffer) (ἐχθαίρω κτλ.), where, however we print, punctuate and understand the problematic final couplet (5–6),27 the (allegedly) echoing revelation that another holds Lysanies, the boy found attractive by the speaker, undermines his claim to dislike things favored by others. Insofar as what precedes mirrors the poet’s stated preference for the road less traveled, the final words adopt a more distanced and ironic take on his claim to having uniquely exquisite taste.28

23. Asclep. AP 12.50 (16 Gow–Page, Sens) similarly closes with a reference to the death that will bring the ultimate end of sympotic “play.” 24. White (2001: 79–81). 25. For πολύμυθος, cf. Sens (1997: 179–180, 2007: 378–379). 26. Chiara Bonsignore astutely suggests that there is perhaps an implicit contrast between the ephemerality of Crethis’ voice to that of a good poet. 27. Pelliccia (forthcoming). 28. For the importance of the final position, e.g. Giangrande (1975: 115).

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Although the context in which the speaker is to be imagined is never made explicit, the praise of Lysanies befits a sympotic gathering. Whatever the case, in laying out the speaker’s preference and state of mind, the poem shares much in common with Theognidean elegy and indeed has specific models in Theognis 579–582 in which a female speaker criticizes sexual behavior of which she disapproves and 959–962. One of the realities of such elegiac poetry is that although it regularly represents itself as part of a conversation with one or more people, the poet’s interlocutors normally remain silent and are not granted an opportunity to assent, disagree, or correct. The interruption of Echo in Callimachus’ epigram thus plays on the formal features of a generic antecedent by granting a different speaker a response in the final words; in this sense, the end of the poem reflects the dynamics of actual sympotic banter. More usually, however, the response invited at the end of the poem is left implicit, as in AP 12.51 (5 Gow–Page, 29 Pfeiffer), an epigram that resonates against the Lysanies poems in interesting ways: ἔγχει καὶ πάλιν εἰπέ ῾Διοκλέος᾽· οὐδ᾽ Ἀχελῷος κείνου τῶν ἱερῶν αἰσθάνεται κυάθων. καλὸς ὁ παῖς, Ἀχελῷε, λίην καλός, εἰ δέ τις οὐχὶ φησίν, ἐπισταίμην μοῦνος ἐγὼ τὰ καλά. Pour and say again, “To Diocles!” Achelous does not even perceive his sacred cups. The boy is beautiful, Achelous, too beautiful. But if someone denies it — may I alone know beauty.

The precise specifics of the situation and the meaning of the opening couplet have been widely discussed. Whatever the correct interpretation, the second couplet shares both verbal and thematic points of contact with the Lysanies poem. In addition to the geminated exclamation of a young man’s beauty, the imagined response (εἰ δέ τις οὐχὶ / φησίν) that immediately follows resembles, at the level of diction, the actual response that immediately follows the assertion in AP 12.43 (ἀλλὰ πρὶν εἰπεῖν / τοῦτο σαφῶς Ἠχώ, φησί τις ἄλλος ἔχειν).29 More important, in AP 12.51, the speaker’s final wish for an exclusive appreciation of esthetics resembles the esthetic fastidiousness of the speaker of AP 12.43. We may thus be encouraged to read the poems against one another. In AP 12.43, the speaker’s claims to an exclusive appreciation of beauty are brutally exposed by the interruption of another’s voice in the concluding words the poem. By contrast, in AP 12.51, the speaker concludes by wishing to be alone in understanding beauty. As usual in sympotic elegiac 29. The text is that of Petersen, defended by Pelliccia (forthcoming).

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contexts, no response is forthcoming, but the links to the discomfited speaker of AP 12.43 and the address to Achelous encourage the conclusion that the speaker’s wish will be unsuccessful. As the end of the epigram brings the speaker’s words to a conclusion, we are invited to hear, echoing in the distance, the reaction of an equally admiring fellow-symposiast, or even of the addressee Achelous himself. All of this inevitably operates against the backdrop of Callimachus’ literary program. The speaker’s fastidiousness in the first two couplets of AP 12.43 is couched in language and imagery elsewhere used to define Callimachus’ own poetic program (cf. Cameron 1995: 396–399). But although his loathing for the commonplace and for the road traveled by many, among other things, aligns him with Callimachus’ broader programmatic posture, the speaker is also a persona separable from the poet himself. Much of the wit lies in the exposure of his erotic alienation and discomfiture in the final words,30 but insofar as the preceding verses evoke Callimachean literary fastidiousness, they also, in my view, slyly and ironically poke fun at the poet’s own programmatic stance. Thus, rather than being a facile manifesto of literary exclusivity, the epigram depends on the poet’s posture in other self-reflexive passages, and turns it to a new purpose.31 A similar distancing of the speaker from the programmatic language of the poet himself may be found in AP 12.51, where the speaker’s final wish for exclusive appreciation of the beautiful also evokes the elitism of the poet’s own literary posturing; and yet both form and content leave open, at the close of the poem, room to doubt that what he wishes for will come true. Something similar may be said about the concluding wish of another epigram, AP 9.566 (58 Gow–Page, 8 Pfeiffer), in which the last word simultaneously affirms “Callimachean” values and slyly pokes fun at them: μικρή τις, Διόνυσε, καλὰ πρήσσοντι ποιητῇ ῥῆσις· ὁ μὲν ῾νικῶ᾽ φησὶ τὸ μακρότατον, ᾧ δὲ σὺ μὴ πνεύσῃς ἐνδέξιος ἤν τις ἔρηται ῾πῶς ἔβαλες;᾽ φησί· ῾σκληρὰ τὰ γιγνόμενα.᾽ τῷ μερμηρίξαντι τὰ μὴ ἔνδικα τοῦτο γένοιτο τοὖπος· ἐμοὶ δ᾽, ὦναξ, ἡ βραχυσυλλαβίη. The speech of a poet who does well is a brief thing. The most he says is “I win”. But if someone asks a poet on whom you don’t breathe favorably 30. For Callimachean ‘Selbstironie’ in the final words, cf. Giangrande (1975: 115 and passim). 31. Cf. Barigazzi (1975); Pretagostini (2007: 138–140). Some scholars restrict the irony merely to erotic and not literary matters: Giangrande (1975: 123); Henrichs (1979; Cameron 1995: 387–399).

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‘how did you do?”, he says, “what’s happening is tough”. Let that be what someone plotting injustice says; but for me, lord, may there be brevity of syllables.

Here the speaker represents himself as a dramatic playwright who prefers the disyllabic νικῶ ‘I win’ to a phrase occupying the whole hemistich of a pentameter, σκληρὰ τὰ γιγνόμενα ‘what’s happening is tough.’ The privileging of brevity clearly matches the programmatic values asserted elsewhere in the corpus, and so, as Marco Fantuzzi has observed,32 in the final words of the poem, ‘Callimachus as passionate champion of his personal poetics consciously supplants the Callimachus who seems concerned about the fortune of one of his plays.’ But if the speaker of the poem at first glance sounds like Callimachus of the Aetia prologue, the final word of the poem slyly pushes against the absolute assimilation of the two, for the last word of the poem, and the word that encapsulates the brevity for which the speaker wishes, is also the longest of the poem, occupying, with its article, the whole final hemistich.33 Put differently, at the formal level the final word of the poem lacks the very quality that it itself defines, and that fact may reasonably leave us to wonder how seriously we should take the wish for brevity as an assertion of poetic program. The complex interplay of focalization and tone at the end of the poem is relevant for thinking about a thorny (and ultimately insoluble) problem in a poem that, though nominally Callimachus’ epitaph for his father, celebrates the author’s own poetic achievement (AP 7.525 [29 Gow– Page, 21 Pfeiffer]): ὅστις ἐμὸν παρὰ σῆμα φέρεις πόδα Καλλιμάχου με ἴσθι Κυρηναίου παῖδά τε καὶ γενέτην. εἰδείης δ’ ἄμφω κεν· ὁ μέν ποτε πατρίδος ὅπλων ἦρξεν, ὁ δ’ ἤεισεν κρέσσονα βασκανίης. οὐ νέμεσις, Μοῦσαι γὰρ ὅσους ἴδον ὄμματι παῖδας μὴ λοξῷ, πολιοὺς οὐκ ἀπέθεντο φίλους. 5–6 athet. Pfeiffer 5 οὐ νέμεσις PPl : ἄχρι βίου ex 6 Faraone 6 μὴ λοξῶι Σ Hes., cf. Aet. fr. 1.38 : ἄχρι βίου PPl

You who bear your foot past my tomb, know that I am child and father of Cyrenaean Callimachus. Know both: the one led the army of his fatherland and the other sang greater than envy. There’s no need for resentment: those whom the Muses look on when they are children without averting their eye, they do not reject as friends in old age.

32. Fantuzzi (2007: 487); cf. Acosta-Hughes and Stephens (2012: 61). 33. Cf. Cairns (2016: 226).

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The epigram is, as has been widely observed, closely connected at the verbal and thematic level to AP 7.415 (30 Gow–Page, 35 Pfeiffer), Callimachus’ mock-epitaph for himself. There, the poet is named only by virtue of the patronymic Battiades, whereas here the father is named only in relationship to his own father and his son. The two poems thus function as a unit, with the poetic achievement of Callimachus himself as the culmination of each.34 In this sense, the father’s proud claim that the poet has won a victory over Envy locates his poetry in a longer line of familial excellence that includes his homonymous ancestor; it seems reasonable to compare the way epinician poetry celebrates the victor in relationship to his household. The end of the poem, however, is problematic. As transmitted in the manuscripts of the Greek Anthology, the text of the last couplet is virtually identical to what has survived in the final verses of the Aetia prologue, with the principal difference being that ἄχρι βίου ‘while alive’ appears instead of μὴ λοξῶι at the head of the final pentameter. The resemblance of the two passages leaves open the possibility that the final lines of the epigram are interpolated, especially because they involve several interpretive difficulties. Most obvious of these is the implausibility of the phrase ἄχρι βίου ‘while alive,’ in a clause talking specifically about children, and it is hard to see how those words can be tolerated at the head of the pentameter, in which something has clearly gone awry. More difficult still is the sense of οὐ νέμεσις, which has been held to be inappropriate to the context, since that phrase, as Annette Harder (2012: 2.84) has put it, is ‘normally used to justify a situation which might arouse the reader’s indignation’.35 Christopher Faraone (1986) sought to solve both problems simultaneously by proposing that ἄχρι βίου (transmitted at the end of pentameter) was originally to be found at the opening of the hexameter instead of οὐ νέμεσις and was displaced by it under the influence of the Aetia prologue. The resulting text of lines four to six thus reads, “and the other sang greater than envy throughout his life. For as many as the Muses look on not askance as children, they do not abandon as friends in old age.” On this reading the final polar expression explains ἄχρι βίου: the Muses looked on Callimachus with favor in his youth, and kept on doing so until he was old, that is, throughout his life.

34. Cf. Bing (2009: 99–101), Scodel (2003). 35. Finally, a reference to Callimachus’ own old age has seemed to be illogical in a poem honoring his dead father, though this objection depends on the view that the poem was composed around the time of the father’s death, which it need not have been.

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Faraone’s suggestion offers a plausible explanation of the paradosis, and may well find some support from a series of Latin poems that emphasize that invidia or livor is restricted to the living and can do no harm after death (e.g. Ov. A. 1.15.39–42). It has also been held that the entire final couplet has been wrongly interpolated by someone who remembered the thematic link to the poet’s response to invidious readers in the Aetia prologue. In that case, the poem will conclude with the poet’s victory over Envy. Such an end would make good sense. At the conclusion of the Hymn to Apollo, for instance, Apollo’s treatment of Phthonos is, as Bundy has shown, a reflex of traditional ‘break-off’ formulae in which the poet concludes his work, or a section of it, by commenting on its reception by both the internal honorand and the external audience (see above, 309). Since the form of the poem and its thematic links to Callimachus’ self-epitaph presume that Callimachus, like his father, is already dead, the epigram then looks at the whole of the poet’s oeuvre from the standpoint of one already deceased, and in this sense, offers the sort of positive retrospective assessment to which living poets can only aspire. But it is also possible to vindicate a variation of the transmitted text, so long as we are willing to postulate that ἄχρι βίου is an intrusive gloss on the last line that has supplanted μὴ λοξῷ or the like. Kathryn Gutzwiller, who argues, following Gabathuler, that the poem formed the capstone of his epigram collection, suggests that in this final position, ‘the reader is likely to hear the authorial voice of Callimachus strongly superimposed on the fictive voice of his father,’ and that the reference to victory over Baskanie ‘lifts the veil covering Callimachus’ covert presence.’36 Though there are good reasons to be cautious about any reconstruction of an original epigram book on the basis of the extant poems in the Anthology,37 Gutzwiller’s reading of voice in the poem is worth teasing out, as it may have the merit of offering a plausible explanation of the problematic phrase οὐ νέμεσις. The speaking voice, nominally the poet’s father, but with a heavy overlay of the poet’s own, has just made the bold claim that Callimachus conquered resentment. At what would be a satisfying moment of closure, the voice of the poet intrudes with a parallel point, namely that what the father has just been made to say by the poet should not in itself be a source of divine or human resentment. On this reading, οὐ νέμεσις (like the claim that the poet has defeated resentment) serves a traditional closural function of trying to shape the poem’s own reception: neither gods nor humans should respond in a hostile way to 36. Gutzwiller (1998: 211–212). 37. Cf. Sens (2011: xcii-xcv).

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the boldness of the claim, which is itself justified by the favor the poet received from the Muses throughout his life, in which the entirety of the poet’s corpus, from juvenilia to the compositions of old age, was favored by the Muses and favorably received, and never was successfully damaged by the sort of envy against which the poet defends himself in the Aetia prologue. That is, if the final couplet is retained without Faraone’s intervention, οὐ νέμεσις and the closing claim it introduces might be read as witty and self-referential: having just made (in the voice of the father) a bold assertion about Callimachus’ success in avoiding envy from the perspective of one already dead, the still-living poet takes steps to explain why what he has just said should not itself attract a hostile reaction.

5. From specific to generic We noted above that the final words of AP 7.271 (45 Gow–Page, 17 Pfeiffer) connect the fate of a specific dead man in the ongoing present to a mythological moment in the past. A different approach is may be found in AP 7.272 (38 Gow–Page, 18 Pfeiffer), a cenotaph for Lycus, who has died at sea: Νάξιος οὐκ ἐπὶ γῆς ἔθανεν Λύκος ἀλλ’ ἐνὶ πόντῳ ναῦν ἅμα καὶ ψυχὴν εἶδεν ἀπολλυμένην ἔμπορος Αἰγίνηθεν ὅτ’ ἔπλεε· χὠ μὲν ἐν ὑγρῇ νεκρός, ἐγὼ δ’ ἄλλως οὔνομα τύμβος ἔχων κηρύσσω πανάληθες ἔπος τόδε· ‘φεῦγε θαλάσσῃ συμμίσγειν Ἐρίφων, ναυτίλε, δυομένων.’ Naxian Lycus died not on land, but in the sea he witnessed both his ship and soul perishing together, when he was sailing as a trader from Aegina. And he is a corpse in the water, but I, a tomb containing only a name, announce this completely true line: ‘avoid mingling with the sea, sailor, when the Kids are setting.’

The poem is, as S. Tarán observed (1979: 137–139), a variation of Asclepiades AP 7.500 (31 Gow-Page, Sens), in which the final claim that ‘only the name is left’ is not merely an observation about the loss of Euhippus’ body, but also a self-reflexive comment about the poem’s own end. That epigram is a cenotaph whose narrator, paradoxically speaking in the voice of the deceased, asks the passerby to carry news of his death and the loss of his ship and cargo to his family.38 In Callimachus’ 38. See above, p. 311.

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version, by contrast, the speaker is the tomb, which provides details of the death directly and represents itself as a herald offering a generic warning of the dangers of seafaring during the unseasonable months. In this sense, the poem plays both on the regularity with which the voice of the deceased and that of the tomb were intermingled in inscribed epigrams, and on poems containing an ‘epigram within an epigram,’ though here the embedded message is didactic rather than epigrammatic. Indeed, the entire epigram uses the epic tradition as a foil. The narrative that reports Lycus’ death contains a number of pointedly epic phrases and variations thereof (for ἐπὶ γῆς … ἐνὶ πόντῳ, cf. Od. 12.27 ἢ ἁλὸς ἢ ἐπὶ γῆς ἀλγήσετε; 4.354, 821 ἐνὶ πόντῳ; verse 4 ἐν ὑγρῇ varies the commonplace epic ἐφ᾽ ὑγρῇ, pathetically underscoring Lycus’ position ‘in’ rather than ‘on’ the water), and indeed its opening lines evoke the proem of the Odyssey (cf. 1.4-5 πολλὰ δ’ ὅ γ’ ἐν πόντῳ πάθεν ἄλγεα ὃν κατὰ θυμόν, / ἀρνύμενος ἥν τε ψυχὴν καὶ νόστον ἑταίρων), in which the opposition between land and sea is implicit in the claim that the hero both ‘saw’ (ἴδεν) the cities of many men and suffered much on the sea (ἐν πόντῳ) trying to preserve his soul (ἥν τε ψυχήν) and the return of his companions. The contrast between Lycus and Odysseus is pointed: unlike Odysseus (but like his crew), Lycus is witness (εἶδεν) only to the loss of his vessel and his own soul. At the same time, Lycus’ ill-fated journey evokes and stands in contrast with Sleep’s account of Hera’s assault on Heracles as he was sailing from Troy at Il. 14.250–251 (with 3 Αἰγίνηθεν ὅτ’ ἔπλεε, cf. ἤματι τῷ ὅτε κεῖνος ὑπέρθυμος Διὸς υἱὸς / ἔπλεεν Ἰλιόθεν Τρώων πόλιν ἐξαλαπάξας). The contrast is pointed: unlike Heracles, who is merely separated from his companions after a heroic city sacking, Lycus dies while engaging in commerce. Taken as a whole, the reformulated epic language presents Lycus as a sort of Homeric hero manqué, and his disappearance at sea represents the sort of horrible, unmarked death that such heroes dread. All of this lends special point to the final couplet, where the epigram adopts the voice of a didactic poet. Inscribed epigrams sometimes represent themselves as heralds with a message about the deceased, as in CEG 632.5–6 (“Θηβαῖοι κρείσσονες ἐν πολέμῳ” / καρύσσει Λεύκτροις νικαφόρα δουρὶ τρόπαια; cf. ‘Simon.’ AP 7.431 [5 Gow–Page]; Theodoridas AP 7.479 [16 Gow–Page] ἀγγέλλω δὲ βροτοῖσι). Here, by contrast, the tomb offers not reflections on the deceased, but a broader, timeless piece of advice that both obliquely makes clear the circumstances of Lycus’ death and raises questions about the dead man’s own judgment. Greek poets sometimes represent themselves as heralds (cf. Pi. fr. 70b23– 25 ἐμὲ δ᾽ ἐξαίρετο[ν] / κάρυκα σοφῶν ἐπέων / Μοῖσ’ ἀνέστασ᾽), and

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the final quotation is, self-reflexively, couched as an epos. Whereas the Asclepiadean model had called attention to its own end by deferring the name, Callimachus’ epigram, which names the deceased almost immediately, ends with the speaker becoming, as it were, a didactic poet, appropriating a Hesiodic voice to offer general advice directed to the sailor, as at Hes. Op. 641–642 (though the specific content of the advice varies the astronomical recommendations found in the Works and Days). The poem thus juxtaposes a narrative epic mode with a didactic one: the specific, para-epic death treated in the opening couplets thus becomes, in the final words of the epigram, a timeless, didactic memento of the dangers of seafaring in the winter.

6. From ignorance to knowledge A distinctive feature of Callimachus’ epigram-corpus is that, in several poems, the speaker begins by asserting his ignorance and concludes by proclaiming his understanding, and in these the final assertion of the newly recognized truth provides resolution and closure in ways that look back to the opening.39 Thus in AP 12.73 (4 Gow–Page, 41 Pfeiffer), the final words δυσέρως οἶδ᾽ ὅτι που στρέφεται provide the answer to the speaker’s initial aporia about the location of half his soul (οὐκ οἶδ᾽/ εἴτ᾽ Ἔρος εἴτ᾽ Ἀίδης ἥρπασε). Such poems, as scholars have recognized, reflect a particularly Hellenistic, and especially Callimachean, mode, in which the speaker’s words reflect his thought-process as he uses available signs to uncover a previously revealed truth (cf. Walsh [1990], Fantuzzi in Fantuzzi and Hunter [2004: 338–339]), as in AP 12.134 (13 Gow–Page, 43 Pfeiffer), where the speaker trumpets discovery of a stranger’s amatory wound, and where the final proverbial expression φωρὸς δ᾽ ἴχνια φὼρ ἔμαθον, explains the speaker’s ability to decipher signs of a malady that in the opening line was said to have been hidden (ἐλάνθανεν) … like the steps of a thief. This final, gnomic reflection provides new information about the speaker’s own emotional state, and so creates an analogy between his relationship to the unnamed stranger, whose previously hidden wound he has now recognized, and that between the reader, newly informed about a condition previously undisclosed, and him. 39. The frequency of such movement is so pervasive in the extant corpus (in addition to the poems discussed here, cf. AP 6.149, 7.522) that it should caution one against following Cairns (2016) and historicizing any particular poem.

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In AP 12.71 (12 Gow–Page, 30 Pfeiffer) the speaker’s final realization looks back to what proceeds in a different way: Θεσσαλικὲ Κλεόνικε, τάλαν τάλαν, οὐ, μὰ τὸν ὀξὺν ἥλιον, οὐ σ᾽ ἔγνων. σχέτλιε, ποῦ γέγονας; ὀστέα σοι καὶ μοῦνον ἔτι τρίχες. ἦ ῥά σε δαίμων οὑμὸς ἔχει, χαλεπῇ δ᾽ ἤντεο θευμορίῃ; ἔγνων· Εὐξίθεός σε συνήρπασε· καὶ σὺ γὰρ ἐλθὼν τὸν καλόν, ὦ μόχθηρ᾽, ἔβλεπες ἀμφοτέροις. Thessalian Cleonicus, wretched, wretched man, by the sharp sun, I didn’t recognize you. Miserable one, where have you gone? There’s nothing left of you but bones and hair. Does my deity hold you? Did you meet with a tough divine lot? I know: Euxitheus snatched you, for you also, wretched man, went and looked on the beautiful boy with both eyes.

Here, too, the speaker moves from ignorance — though the opening words enact his recognition of Cleonicus, he professes not initially to have known who he was (οὐκ ἔγνων), and wonders what has caused him to change so much — to understanding. In the second couplet, the speaker, having remarked on Cleonicus’ sorry state, wonders whether he might have experienced an identical fate to his own, but leaves the nature of that fate unexpressed, even if readers who encountered the epigram in a book might easily guess at the identity of the speaker’s own difficult divine fate (δαίμων οὑμός … θευμορίῃ) from passages like AP 12.102.5 (1 Gow–Page, 31 Pfeiffer) χοὐμὸς Ἔρως.40 In the final line, however, the speaker expresses his understanding (ἔγνων) that Cleonicus has been struck with desire for Euxitheus after seeing the boy. The final clause, of course, depends on the idea that love enters through the eyes, and the entire couplet seems likely to look to Asclepiades AP 5.210.1 (5 Gow– Page, Sens) τὠφθαλμῷ Διδύμη με συνήρπασεν. At the same time, for all that the poem makes visible the speaker’s discovery, the final words of the poem clarify its beginning. Gow and Page disclaim any significance of the oath to the ‘bright Sun’ in the opening couplet, explaining it (on the basis of comic examples) as a ‘fashion of speech growing common in the Hellenistic age.’ It may be the case that the expression was growing in popularity, but the oath also resonates retrospectively against the final words of the poem, in which the speaker concludes, based on his own experience, that Cleonicus has received a full blast of Euxitheus’ desire-inspiring beauty — the point being the usual one about love entering through the eyes: the implication is perhaps 40. Cairns (2016: 371–373) historicizes the circumstances and relationships expressed in the poem.

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that what both speaker and addressee have experienced is like looking straight into the piercing rays of the sun. Finally, we may note AP 6.149 (25 Gow–Page, 56 Pfeiffer), which purports to record a dedication to the Dioscuri in celebration of an athletic victory: φησὶν ὅ με στήσας Εὐαίνετος (οὐ γὰρ ἔγωγε γιγνώσκω) νίκης ἀντί με τῆς ἰδίης ἀγκεῖσθαι χάλκειον ἀλέκτορα Τυνδαρίδῃσι· πιστεύω Φαίδρου παιδὶ Φιλοξενίδεω. The one who dedicated me, Euaenetus, says (for I don’t know) that I, a bronze rooster, have been offered to the Tyndarids in exchange for his own victory. I believe the son of Phaedrus son of Philoxenides.

The speaker is the rooster itself and in this sense the poem plays on dedicatory epigrams in which the dedicated object speaks in the first person, but here the identification of the dedicator and recipient is embedded in an indirect speech that the rooster, who explicitly acknowledges that he lacks firsthand knowledge of the truth, attributes to the dedicator. By declaring his own ignorance of the actual truth of the claim, the speaker raises the possibility that the information might not be accurate, and Callimachus thus playfully distances his speaker from the sort of simple declarations characteristic of inscribed epigram and calls attention to the fact that, whatever their truthfulness, they are artificial creations and thus potentially subject to false claims.41 In the case of Callimachus’ poem, however, there is a pointed irony: the poem is a literary fiction that cannot be the record of an actual dedication, and when, at the conclusion of the poem, the speaker claims to trust Euaenetus, he explicitly puts his faith in a person who is surely the product of the poet’s creative imagination. In this context, the language of the reported speech is significant. Gow and Page take ἰδίης in verse 2 to be equivalent to ἐμαυτῆς on the ground that it would be otiose if the adjective referred to Euaenetus. The matter about which the speaker claims ignorance seems to be the reason for the dedication, and if the rooster describes the victory as ‘my own’ he speaks as a doublet of his real-life exemplar; but it is at least plausible to suppose that what the speaker must take for granted is Euaenetus’ claim to have won a victory of his own. On such a reading, some of the point of the speaker’s uncertainty derives from the proverbial tendency of athletes to brag about and overstate their accomplishments. In an Aesopic fable 41. See Meyer (1993: 166–167; 2005: 196–198).

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‘The Braggart Pentathlete’ (33 Perry), for instance, an athlete returning home after a long absence claims to have leapt an unmatched distance in Rhodes, and promises to provide witnesses, to which a bystander remarks that there is no need for witnesses, since ‘both Rhodes and the leap are here.’ Interpretation of the epigram, however, depends on how one reconstructs its imagined circumstances. Critics generally assume that the rooster has been dedicated in honor of a victory in cockfighting, but the poem, unlike real epigrams celebrating athletic victories, does not explicitly specify the event, and roosters, notoriously pugnacious, sometimes served as symbols of victory in general:42 whether Euaenetus won a victory on his own (in another event) or only as the owner of a rooster in a cockfight affects how ἰδίης is to be understood; if Euaenetus claims victory for himself in a fight won by his rooster, the adjective will be pointedly ironic, since the winner was in fact not Eueaenetus but the bronze rooster’s real-life doublet,43 but if the victory was in another event, the speaker professes genuine aporia about the details of a victory in which neither he nor a real-life doublet played any part. On any reading, the conclusion of the poem marks the speaker’s final movement from uncertainty to trust. In this case, as critics have observed,44 the enumeration of Euaenetus’ family line is not otiose, but provides the foundation of the speaker’s newfound confidence. Indeed, the final word of the epigram, whether Φιλοξενίδεω be understood as a patronymic adjective (‘son of Philoxenos’) or a proper name (‘[son] of Philoxenides’), is significant in the context of a dedication to the Dioscuri, who were commonly connected to hospitality (e.g. Simon. PMG 510, Theoc. 22.132–133) and represented as rewarding with athletic prowess the individuals who treated them and their descendants well (e.g. Pi. O. 3.34–41, N. 10.49–51). Read against this backdrop, the final word of the poem provides both the last information necessary to identify the dedicator and the ultimate explanation of the rooster’s trust: Euaenetus (itself a speaking name in context) is to be believed because he is the descendant of a man whose very name embodies a quality prized by the gods who are, it is implied, responsible for the victory. 42. Roosters were regularly depicted on Panathenaic prize amphorae (Popkin 2012: 216–221), and may there stand as generic symbols of victory, as they seem to do in the case of a bronze jumping-halter engraved on both sides with a rooster (Miller 2006: 64, 65 fig. 119). 43. Hayden Pelliccia will argue in detail that Euaenetus has stolen the rooster’s valor by claiming his cock-fighting victory as his own. 44. Cf. Livingstone and Nisbet (2010: 55).

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REFERENCES Acosta-Hughes, B. & S. Stephens, 2012, Callimachus in Context. Cambridge. Argentieri, L., 1998, “Epigramma e libro”, ZPE 121, 1–20. Barigazzi, A., 1975, “Amore e poetica in Callimaco (ep. 28 e 6)”. RFIC 101, 186194. Bing, P., 2009, The Scroll and the Marble: Studies in Reading and Reception in Hellenistic Poetry. Ann Arbor. Bowie, E., 2010, “Epigram as Narration”. In: M. Baumbach et al. (eds), Archaic and Classical Greek Epigram. Cambridge, 313-377. Bundy, E., 1972, “The ‘Quarrel between Kallimachos and Apollonios’ Part I: The Epilogue of Kallimachos’s ‘Hymn to Apollo’”. California Studies in Classical Antiquity 5, 39-94. Cairns, F., 2016, Hellenistic Epigram: Context of Exploration. Cambridge. Cameron, A., 1995, Callimachus and His Critics. Princeton. Dale, A., 2016, “Posidippus on the Infamy of Doricha: Ep. XVII G.–P. = 122 A.–B.”. CQ 66, 134-139. Day, J., 1989, “Rituals in stone: early Greek grave epigrams and monuments”. JHS 109, 16–28. —, 2010, Archaic Greek Epigram and Dedication. Cambridge. Fantuzzi, M. & R. Hunter, 2004, Tradition and Innovation in Hellenistic Poetry. Cambridge. Fantuzzi, M., 2007, “Epigram and the Theater”. In: P. Bing & J.S. Bruss (eds), Brill’s Companion to Hellenistic Epigram. Leiden, 477–495. Faraone, C., 1986, “Callimachus Epigram 29.5–6 (Gow–Page)”. ZPE 63. 53–56. Fowler, D., 1989, “First Thoughts on Closure: Problems and Prospects”. MD 22, 75-122. Fuhrer, T., 1992, Die Auseinandersetzung mit Chorlyrikern in den Epinikien des Kallimachos. Basel. Giangrande, G., 1975 “Callimachus, Poetry, Love and Irony”. QUCC 19, 111-125. Grewing, F. et al. (eds), The Door Ajar: False Closure in Greek and Roman Literature and Art. Heidelberg. Gutzwiller, K., 1998, Poetic Garlands: Hellenistic Epigrams in Context. Berkeley. Harder, M.A., 2012, Callimachus: Aetia. Oxford. Henrichs, A., 1979, “Callimachus Epigram 28: A Fastidious Priamel”. HSPh 83, 207-212. Höschele, R., “‘Unplumbed Depths of Fatuity?’: Philip of Thessaloniki’s Art of Variation”. In: E. Sistakou & A. Rengakos (eds.), Dialect, Diction, and Style in Greek Literary and Inscribed Epigram. Berlin and New York, 105-117. Hunter, R., 1992, “Callimachus and Heraclitus”. MD 28, 113–123. Larsen, J., 1997, “Astacides the Goatherd (Callim. Epigr. 22 PF.)”. CP 92, 131137. Livingstone, N. & G. Nisbet, 2010, Epigram. Cambridge. Luck, G., 1968, “Witz und Sentiment im griechichen Epigramm”. In: L’Épigramme grecque. Vandoeuvres-Geneva, 387-408. Meyer, D., 1993, “Die Einbeziehung des Lesers in den Epigrammen des Kallimachos”. In: M.A. Harder et al. (eds), Callimachus. Groningen, 161–175. — 2005., Inszeniertes Lesevergnügen. Das inschriftliche Epigramm und seine Rezeption bei Kallimachos (Hermes Einzelschriften 93). Stuttgart.

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Miller, S., 2006., Ancient Greek Athletics. New Haven. Nelson, T., forthcoming, “Clôture, Fermeture”. In: C. Urlacher & D. Meyer (eds), Dictionnaire analytique de l’épigramme littéraire dans l’antiquité grecque et romaine. Turnhout. Pelliccia, H., forthcoming, Callimachus Epigram 28 Pf. Popkin, M.L., (2012), “Roosters, Columns, and Athena on Early Panathenaic Prize Amphoras: Symbols of a New Athenian Identity”. Hesperia 81, 207– 235. Pretagostini, R., 2007, “Vita e poetica negli Epigrammi 1 e 28 Pf. di Callimaco”. In: G. Lozza & S. Martinelli Tempesta (eds), L’epigramma greco: problemi e prospettivi. Milan, 137–147. Schmitz, T.A., 2010., “Epigrammatic Communication in Callimachus’ Epigrams”. GRBS 50, 370–390. Scodel, R., 2003, “Two Epigrammatic Pairs: Callimachus’ Epitaphs, Plato’s Apples”. Hermes 131, 257-268. Sens, A., 1997, Theocritus: Dioscuri (Idyll 22). Göttingen. —, 2007, “One Thing Leads (Back) to Another: Allusion and the Invention of Tradition in Hellenistic Epigrams”. In: P. Bing & J.S. Bruss (eds), Brill’s Companion to Hellenistic Epigram. Leiden, 373-390. —, 2011, Asclepiades of Samos. Oxford. Tarán, S.L., 1979, The Art of Variation in Hellenistic Epigram. Leiden. Tueller, M., 2008, Look Who’s Talking: Innovations in Voice and Identity in Hellenistic Epigram (Hellenistica Groningana 13). Groningen. Walsh, G.B., 1990, “Surprised by Self: Audible Thought in Hellenistic Poetry”. CP 85, 1–21. White, H., 2001, ‘Philological and interpretative problems in Greek epigrams,’ Myrtia 16, 77-103.

DENARRATING THE NARRATABLE IN THE AETIA: A POSTMODERN TAKE ON CALLIMACHEAN AESTHETICS EVINA SISTAKOU*

Callimachus is an avant-garde poet in the modern sense of the term, which suggests a tendency towards artistic experimentation. This assertion is nowhere more evident than in the innovative and self-reflexive Aetia. Despite being preserved in a bulk of fragments, first organized into a structured and comprehensive ‘whole’ by the editorial genius of Rudolf Pfeiffer, the Aetia has revealed to us many of its secrets thanks to the application of narratological theory to the interpretation of the poem during the last three decades.1 Beginning with the presence of an authoritative, first-person narrator in Books 1-2, who engages in a dialogue with the Muses, and moving to the multiple narrators of Books 3-4, Callimachus explores the potential of narrating through different identities and personae. He assigns a great variety of roles and functions to his primary and secondary narrators, who are almost always dramatized, overt and self-conscious.2 The bulk of the material presented in the Aetia is diversely incorporated in the macro-design of the poem, which has obvious similarities with archaic catalogue-poems. Yet, once this material breaks up into micro-narratives, the unconventional storytelling of the Aetia comes to the fore. The intrusion of the narrator into the world of the characters, the intertextual dialogue and generic games, the anomalies in the selection and ordering of the narrated events are only part of the Aetia’s neoteric storytelling. If we add to these strategies the ironic

* The present paper has been significantly improved by the insightful comments of Annette Harder, Peter Bing and Susan Stephens during the Workshop; it also shares an intellectual affinity with Robert Kirstein’s presentation “New borders of fiction? Callimachean aitiology as narrative device”, on which see Kirstein (this volume: 193-219). 1. Annette Harder has significantly promoted the narratological analysis of the Aetia by exploring the narrative technique of Books 1-2 (1988) and the question of narrators and narratees (2004), by studying the generic games in the poem (1998) and the use of direct speech (2002-2003), by focusing on the temporal levels of past, present and future (2003) and more recently by analyzing the notions of time (2007) and space in the narrative (2012b). For an updated summary of the narrative challenges of the Aetia, see Harder (2012a: 1.51-56). 2. A detailed study of the narrators in the Aetia is Morrison (2007: 178-199), cf. the dissertation by Lynn (1995: 118-262).

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and playful stance of Callimachus, the result is a multi-layered, complex narrative experiment. The rich philological production of editions, commentaries, monographs and articles focusing on the narrative design of the Aetia provides a point of departure for developing my argument in the present paper. Through the wordplay in the title, I wish to express a paradox. On the one hand, the Aetia is not a mere catalogue of aitiological explanations, but a work comprised of fascinating stories from the entire Greek world — this aspect of the poem is what I call ‘the narratable’. On the other hand, however, Callimachus masterminds his new generic concept, the making of a collective poem by use of narratives as raw material, by deconstructing the very notion of narration — in my view this can be labelled as a process of ‘denarration’.3 To explain this contradictory reading of the Aetia, I will describe the strategies that heighten the tension between the desire to tell stories and the need to reveal the artificiality of their telling; at the end I will venture a hypothesis on what renders the Aetia a postmodern poem.4 1. ‘Why do the Parians want no flutes, no garlands at their sacrifice?’ The narrative structure underlying the Aetia is not entirely Callimachus’ invention. It is modelled on a distinct category of archaic, and later Hellenistic, multi-versed poems extending across multiple books. Catalogue poetry is based on the notion that a plethora of stories is collected and narrated (or merely summarized) around a core idea. The criterion for the inclusion of the stories is their thematic coherence and the existence of an organizing principle, such as the didactic intention or a genealogical/chronological structuring of the material. Not surprisingly Callimachus does much more than just mold his aitiological stories into the generic pattern established by Hesiod’s Theogony and the Catalogue of Women or the lost collective elegy Nanno by Mimnermus.5 The achievement of the Aetia 3. I only partly use the term ‘denarration’ with the narrow sense it has in narratology denoting the contradictory statements of the narrator regarding events of his story: see Richardson (2001). 4. The chapters are named after three selected passages from the Aetia (fr. 3.1-2 κῶς ἄν[ις αὐλῶν ῥέζειν καὶ στεφέων εὔαδε τῷ Παρίῳ; 108 Ἀργὼ καὶ σέ, Πάνορμε, κατέδραμε καὶ τεὸν ὕδωρ; 43b.84-85 ὣ]ς ἡ μὲν λίπε μῦθον...ἦ γάρ μοι θάμβος ὑπετρέφ[ε]το). For the translation of the Aetia in the present paper I have used the rendition of Nisetich (2001) with minor alterations; for the numbering and editing of the fragments I refer to Harder’s edition without any further indication. 5. Hunter (2005) offers a comprehensive account of how Hellenistic poets, and especially Callimachus, modelled their catalogue-poems on Hesiod’s Catalogue of Women.

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depends largely on the dynamic presence of the narrator(s) and the steering of the reader’s attention towards the production of the encyclopedic poem itself. The stories and the mechanisms behind their telling interact with each other to create a new type of plot. Therefore, what I will address in the present chapter is whether the Aetia, besides being a metapoem, also qualifies as a narrative and, if so, what constitutes its plot. The narrative of the Aetia develops on different levels, conventionally divided into the frame and the aitiological stories embedded in it. It is generally argued that the frame of Books 1-2 only represents the voice of the narrator and therefore lacks narrativity, an argument supported by Callimachus’ decision to eliminate it from the subsequent books and replace it with unconnected narrative frames. What further complicates the status of the frame is the hypothesis that the Prologue was a later addition, serving as an introduction to the omnibus edition of the Aetia, whereas the speculations about the contents and positioning of the conversation with the Ician guest (fr. 178) and especially the epilogue (fr. 112) pose extra difficulties as regards the reconstruction of the overall design of the Aetia. However, if we adopt a unitarian approach and suppose that the frame, despite its protean changes, was functional throughout the four books of the Aetia and embraced the narrated stories, this begs the question: how does it relate to the configuration of the Aetia plot? Leaving the investigation of the other narrating I’s aside for the moment, I will first discuss the dominant frame of Books 1-2 where ‘Callimachus’ appears as a character of his own narrative and operates as a primary internal narrator of his own story.6 As a character the fictional ‘Callimachus’ is younger than the first-person narrator. In effect, the ‘senior Callimachus’ narrates the life of the ‘younger Callimachus’ to monitor his gradual growing from a child into a mature poet. The reviewing of the earlier self by the ‘author’ by use of retrospective discourse and the emphasis on the temporal distance dividing the experiencing-I and the narrating-I are typical features of an autobiography.7 These can be traced in the Aetia frame, especially in temporal markers suggesting the various age stages of the narrator/character’s life: his earliest poetic experience during his youth (fr. 1.21-22 ‘the very first time I sat down and put a writing table on my lap’, cf. Schol. Flor. on fr. 2 ἀρτιγένειος ὤν) is succeeded by his more mature habit of participating in symposia and engaging in sophisticated conversations (fr. 43 and 178),8 whereas 6. On ‘Callimachus’ as a narrator, see Morrison (2007: 182-195). 7. For these features and the related bibliography, see Löschnigg (2008). 8. Harder (2012a: 2.on fr. 178.29-30) argues that Strabo’s comment πάντα τὸν βίον on this passage is a clear indication that the speaker has a longer experience of life as

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on the other hand the narrating-I stresses his distinctly old age and hence claims wisdom (fr. 1.35-36 ‘the years that weigh on me like Sicily on Enceladus’). The story spans almost a lifetime from the beginnings of the poet’s career in Cyrene to his coming to Alexandria and his final establishment at the Ptolemaic court and its literary circles (fr. 1, 2 and 112).9 In contrast to other autobiographical accounts where time freezes on an extraordinary yet unique event, such as Hesiod’s initiation by the Muses at the opening of the Theogony or the supernatural encounter between Simichidas and Lycidas in Theocritus’ Thalysia, Callimachus shapes the primary narrative of the Aetia as a chain of events that are not only temporally but also causally connected to each other and aim at recounting ‘the whole story’. However, Callimachus ironizes the biographical veneer and the pretense of factual accuracy in highlighting the fictionality of his story. He constantly reminds the reader that this is no ordinary autobiography, for it contains purely imaginary episodes, such as the dialogue with Apollo and the dream sequence, and is clearly metafictional in thematizing literature. In blurring the boundaries between fact and fiction, between life and art, Callimachus introduces autofictional narration to forge a self-identity. To reinforce the image of a poet who during a lifetime progresses from ignorance to knowledge and hence to the composition of refined poetry, Callimachus repeats a single plotline: how in various ‘biographical’ situations he encounters those possessing the desired knowledge and becomes an eager listener until he eventually transcribes the stories witnessed into text, the finalized Aetia poem. Some of the stories though, especially in Books 3-4, are transmitted in all possible ways: through reading, as is the case with the chronicles of Xenomedes in the aition of Acontius and Cydippe, through the personified sources themselves, such as the lock of Berenice, or through archives and inscriptions, like the one carved on Simonides’ tomb. This mixing of realistic, illusionary and imaginary events turning on the acquisition of knowledge as a mechanism for the creation of poetry results into an autofictional narrative documenting the inner rather than the real life of the poet. compared to the ἀρτιγένειος of the Prologue and therefore proves his lifelong curiosity. 9. The following passages from the Aetia allude to the autobiographical space: a) fr. 2: the poet is transferred from Cyrene (or Alexandria) to Helicon during a dream (cf. the epigram AP 7.42); b) fr. 2a: the ancient Scholia suggest that Arsinoe II was worshipped as the tenth Muse at the Museum (Harder [2012a: 2. on fr. 2a.1 δεκάς]); c) fr. 1: some of the Telchines, at least Asclepiades and Posidippus, were active at the Museum; and d) fr. 112: the Epilogue refers to one of the Ptolemaic queens, Berenice or Arsinoe (Harder [2012a: 2. on fr. 112.2-3]).

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The Aetia, in thus dramatizing the process of its writing, introduces what I would term the reflexive plot.10 Against Aristotle’s preconceptions about the mimetic nature of narratives, the reflexive plot of the Aetia consists of the narration of numerous mini-stories by various tellers who act as secondary characters or inner voices in the overarching autofictional narrative. Tellability is not just an undercurrent sensed throughout the Aetia, but the raison d’être of the poem as a whole.11 The need to discover the causes behind the perceived reality, the essence of aitiology, sets the plot in motion. In the autofictional narrative the desire of the I to bring the origins of things to light is communicated through a series of why-questions:12 Why do the Parians want no flutes, no garlands at their sacrifice? (fr. 3.1-2) But why, goddesses, does the Anaphaean sacrifice to Apollo with insults, and Lindus make offering ... to Heracles with curses? (fr. 7c.1-3) So she spoke, but another question to ask them leapt to my mind ‒ the Artemis in Leucas, what happened to her? (fr. 31c+31g) She stopped her story there but wonder kept on growing with me: I wanted additional knowledge: ‘Why does Haliartus, the city of Cadmus, celebrate the Cretan Theodaesia by the stream Kissousa, and ... incense, only in the cities ... and the land of Minos offers it in huge censers ... ?’ (fr. 43b.1-6) Tell me what I’m dying to hear from you: Why do you Icians worship Peleus, the Myrmidon king? What has Thessaly to do with Icus, and why ... does the girl with an onion ... in the hero’s procession ... ? (fr. 178.21-26)

Apart from the first two passages, where the context is missing, all other questions are represented as a result of a mental process; like the dream, the clusters of questions in the Aetia qualify as mental events. Although tellers and listeners appear to be part of staged dialogues, in effect they are mental constructs in the narrator’s mind. Thus, the Aetia can be seen as the telling of a series of mental processes such as perception, volition, thought, language use and memory.13 A striking example is the introduction to fr. 43.12-17, where the physical experiences during a symposium 10. A very close notion to my own conception of the reflexive plot is what Alastair Fowler has termed the poioumenon, referring to a narrative which narrates the making of the work of art or a work-in-progress novel: see Fowler (1989). In theoretical treatises the most quoted example for this type of narrative is Laurence Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759-1767), which is as experimental and postmodern as the Aetia. 11. On tellability, see Ryan (2008). 12. Meyer (1993: 325-329) highlights the orality of such questions and of similar scenes of wisdom communication in Callimachus, which are typically introduced by ‘the desire to hear’ (ποθὴ ἀκοῦσαι). 13. The reflexive plot of the Aetia should be associated both with the tradition of didactic poetry and with the reception of the scientific spirit and data as raw material for poetry; moreover, aitiology denoting ‘the search for the first cause’ has scientific

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(‘for what I put on my head at the time ... faded on the spot ... and the food ... of that too nothing remained in the morning’) are deemed inferior to the mental process of perceiving knowledge and preserving it in memory (‘what I put in my ears alone stays with me still’). In another passage from the Acontius and Cydippe aition (fr. 75.53-77), memory as preserved in writing (the mythographical memory of Xenomedes is an equivalent to the ‘Cean Chronicles’ of Xenomedes) becomes a vehicle for the acquisition of knowledge (Calliope should be understood as a metaphor for the narrator’s mind or the finalized poem).14 On the one hand, then, what is tellable in the Aetia is the cognitive process per se; on the other hand, tellability of the aitiological stories is reflected in their bizarre manifestations in the present world. The aitia, in reversing the causal ordering of events, are acknowledged as worth narrating on account of their final outcome: an outlandish custom, an odd offering, an obscure name, an unconventional ritual arouse the curiosity of the narrator and the eagerness of the reader to keep on reading. The aitiological stories themselves also possess narrativity, in the sense that they can be turned into well-structured plots of causally related events. Indeed, the aitiological material, drawn from historical, mythographical and archaeological sources, is by definition worth telling.15 Its culturally oriented thematics revolves around religious and civic affairs, involves motifs such as power, love and death, and features either unknown episodes linked to celebrated characters or anecdotal stories about unheard-of personages; all of them are ‘interesting’ because they elicit the cognitive and emotional response of the narratee.16 Callimachus in the Aetia establishes the reflexive plot — the plot that tells of narrators who tell stories and at the same time reflects on their textualization — as a fascinating narrative; a concept which he masterfully deconstructs during the course of the poem. connotations since Aristotle: see Sistakou (2009). That knowledge is the central theme of the Aetia as stated already in the Prologue is convincingly argued by Hutchinson (2003). 14. Calliope is typically identified with Callimachus’ memory or his poem, cf. Harder (2012a: 2.on fr. 75, 77). An exception is Morrison (2007: 197) who views Calliope as a continuation of the dialogue with the Muses which frames Books 1-2 ‒ only here the narrator-poet has a more active, autonomous role towards the acquisition of knowledge. 15. Hutchinson (2003) explores the mega-themes of the Aetia which encompasses the entire cosmos: the divisions of human existence, human and divine knowledge, the problem of human time. 16. The notion of ‘interestingness’ in literature comprises both themes that are deemed ‘absolute interests’, such as sex, death etc., as well as events described as surprising, anomalous, novel or unexpected, and may correspond either to cognitive or emotional interest for the reader: for a short overview of the theoretical approach to this notion, see Hidi & Baird (1986).

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2. ‘To you, Panormus, and to your water came the Argo’ Unlike archaic catalogue poetry which is rather impersonal, Callimachus opts for a personalized voice that dominates the narrative-world.17 The stories collected in the Aetia, stories potentially interesting, are undermined by the compelling presence of the I narrator. The reader’s attention is oriented towards his craftiness, his telling strategies and his interaction with secondary narrators and characters to such a degree that the aitiological stories per se are underplayed. As a consequence, the Aetia lacks an essential quality of the classical plot, namely the transparency that ensures the immersion of the reader in the story-world.18 The narrative-world with its autofictional plot and the omnipresent narrator in Books 1-2 as well as the independent narrating voices in Books 3-4 widen the distance between the reader and the narrated stories. In the present chapter I will address the stratagems employed by the narrator in order to emphasize the gap between his discourse and the narrated stories and thus alert the reader to the storytelling process and eventually to the fictionality of the literary text. The originality of the Aetia does not simply reside in the prominent role of the autofictional narrator, the author who is incorporated in his own work as a dramatis persona. This device was first introduced by the Theogony and the Works and Days that feature ‘Hesiod’ as a narrator as well as by the personalized voices of the archaic lyric poets. In fact, Callimachus subverts the convention that a single voice, possessing unquestionable authority and unlimited knowledge, can have absolute control over text and story. To this end he destabilizes the authority of the textual ‘Callimachus’. That ‘Callimachus’ is lectured by the Muses during his sleep is probably an ironic take on the elevated scene of poetic initiation on Mount Helicon from the Theogony where ‘Hesiod’, formerly a shepherd, becomes the mouthpiece of the Muses.19 But even their authority is questioned in the Aetia, once the narrator alternates between the role of the teller and that of 17. Hunter (2005: 260-265) juxtaposes the first-person material of the Theogony and Works and Days with the ‘impersonal’ poetic voice of the Catalogue of Women and argues that Hellenistic poets, especially Callimachus in the Aetia, recreate the ‘idea of Hesiod’ in their personalized narrators. 18. For an illuminating introduction to transparency, see Lowe (2000: 73-78). 19. Whether the Callimachean Muses are to be understood as divinities or metonymies for the poet’s knowledge has also been disputed. Nisetich (2001: xli) argues that Callimachus internalizes the Muses in the sense that “they do not come to Callimachus from without, invading his personality as they had Hesiod’s before him, but from within” and Harder (2012a: 2.94) claims that despite their direct speeches the Muses “are always subject to the narrator’s control and may be understood as an extension of the narrator rather than as an outside force”. As regards the Hesiodic prototype, there was already a

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the listener. The aition of the Sicilian cities is a striking example of how knowledge is divided between a human and a divine entity (fr. 43). Here the I narrator exhibits his vast knowledge about numerous cities of Sicily in a many-versed catalogue where the formula ‘I know’ is emphatically repeated (42-55 ‘nor will I leave out Kamarina ... I know the city lying by the mouth of Gelas and Cretan Minoa ... I know of Leontinoi ... I can tell of Euboia and Eryx ...’); it is only one particular story that he claims ignorance of — and Clio is invited to fill the gap in his memory (56-57 ‘I finished there and Clio ... began her second answer’).20 The Muses are not the only secondary narrators in the Aetia nor do they possess superior knowledge in comparison to other narrators.21 Numerous secondary narrators acquire their own voice during the course of the poem: they may be depicted as real people such as the Ician guest (fr. 178), they may be dead poets like Simonides who speaks from the tomb (fr. 64), they may only be a metonymy for the concept of scholarship (such is the voice of the scholar possessed by Calliope in fr. 75.76-77) or a generically defined narrator (the epinician speaker in Victoria Berenices fr. 54 is a telling example) or simply an inanimate object like the lock of Berenice’s hair (fr. 110) or the Pelasgian wall (fr. 97). What can we infer from this list of narrative voices in the Aetia? First that the criteria for selecting the potential narrators are far from uniform: the narrators may be external as agents of the narrative-world (‘Callimachus’, the Ician guest) or internal as characters of the story-world (like Simonides and the lock) or may belong to non-identifiable entities — does the voice in the Victoria Berenices correspond to the court poet of the Ptolemies or to the generic voice of the epinician poet who claims the status of Pindar and Simonides? As a consequence, they do not possess the whole narrative truth nor are they always reliable but represent only a limited point of view. This leads to the second point, namely that the Aetia is not just a polyphonic text, in the sense that several of Theocritus’ bucolic idylls are, but is essentially multiperspectival.22 Yet in contrast to the debate in antiquity as to whether the poet was awake or dreaming during his encounter with the Muses: see Kambylis (1965: 55-59). 20. On how the narrator takes over the role of the Muses here, see Harder (2012a: 2.301-303). 21. On the role of the Muses as secondary narrators in the Aetia, see the seminal article by Harder (1998). Morrison (2007: 195-197) detects the presence of the Muses also in Books 3-4, by claiming first that Berenice operates as a surrogate Muse and second that the reference to Calliope in the Cean archaeology (fr. 75.76-77) is a reminiscent of the speaking Calliope of Book 1. On the changed role of the Muses as regards authority and inspiration in Alexandrian poetry, see Klooster (2011: 209-238). 22. Bakhtin’s well-known notion of polyphony, first used to describe the existence of many voices in Dostoyevsky’s novels (Bakhtin 1984: 5-46), has been employed as a

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equal status of the narrators in the Theocritean idylls, Callimachus plays with the notion of authority, hierarchies and reliability of his narrators: in the narrative universe of the Aetia every voice, and not just the Muses or the scholarly persona of ‘Callimachus’, is entitled to the truth, and every narrated truth can be put to the test as subjective, partial or insufficiently founded on knowledge. What furthermore complicates the narrative universe of the Aetia is the access of the narrators to another authority of encyclopedic poetry, namely the scholarly and scientific sources. In these cases Callimachus has recourse to another device, the quotation, in which a written source is more or less verbatim represented as an inset in the narrative.23 The hypertext of this collective poem is the vast corpus of aitiological lore, which comprises mythography, historiography, chronography, any kind of written evidence — a scientific treatise, an epigraph, a chronological record or even a statue; in essence, the Aetia is not a poem documenting an external reality but a text relating to other texts.24 But since the written records are only witnessed by the narrator who is the mediating consciousness between what is attested and what is communicated, Callimachus subtly undermines their reliability. Berenice’s lock, animated as a young maiden, tells of the background to her catasterism (fr. 110).25 In this monologue the factual evidence provided by the astronomer Conon is reflected through the female point of view of the lock (1-8). The narrated events preceding the metamorphosis are highly subjective; the discourse of the lock is sentimental, whereas the description of how Conon witnesses the rising of the lock to the sky may just be the result of royal propaganda.26 The lock of Berenice operates as a reflector of her own experiences as well as a narrator of the incidents at the Ptolemaic heuristic tool for the interpretation of the various singing voices resonating throughout the bucolic idylls of Theocritus: see Goldhill (1991: 223-246), cf. Morrison (2007: 253-268). 23. On the device of quoting other texts, see Sternberg (1982). 24. It theorizes on textuality as the only ‘world’ for postmodernist thought as Butler remarks (2002: 32): “As Umberto Eco, a significant postmodern theorist, put it in his amazingly popular postmodernist novel The Name of the Rose: ‘books always speak of other books, and every story tells a story that has already been told.’ This view ends up in a kind of textual idealism, because all texts are seen as perpetually referring to other ones, rather than to any external reality. No text ever finally establishes anything about the world outside itself.” 25. On the ideological and emotional properties of the lock as a narrator, see the analysis by Gutzwiller (1992). 26. Gutzwiller (1992: 362-373) rightly points out that the ‘discovery’ of the constellation of the lock was a hoax staged by the Ptolemaic court, in which a scientist (Conon) and a court poet (Callimachus) had to play a part. That The Lock of Berenice relates to the erotic portrayals of royal women in contemporary Hellenistic literature is argued by Acosta-Hughes (2010: 71-75).

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palace; factual truth, if there is any, is humorously filtered through the consciousness of the lock. A similar case of narrative mediation can be found in the Simonides aition (fr. 64). Here the dead poet warns a historical personage, the tyrant of Acragas named Phoenix, that he will be punished for demolishing his tomb during the war with the Syracusans.27 To substantiate his accusation ‘Simonides’ incorporates in his discourse the inscription that was supposedly carved on his now ruined gravestone (3-10): My tomb was demolished, once: an evil man named Phoenix (maybe you’ve heard of him), a general tough as nails, threw it down and cobbled it into a tower, my tombstone reared before their city to the glory of Zeus Xenios by the Acragantines — whose inscription (that the son of Leoprepes, a man from Ceos, genius inventor of memory, lay there) he ignored ...

Callimachus conflates two modes of discourse here: first, the conventional rhetoric of the funerary epigram according to which a dead person addresses the passerby, and second, the sermon delivered by a poet who returns as a ghost from Hades to address the living on a moral issue. Not only is the aition narrated from the point of view of the enraged poet (as is the anecdote of the Scopads whose truthfulness is questionable),28 but moreover the sole witness to the inscription quoted is the same narcissistic Simonides who claims to be the favorite of the gods and, as his rescue by the Dioscuri shows, the chosen one (1-2 ‘Afraid, as they say, to Disturb Camarina? They don’t disturb the tomb of a man dear to the gods!’). The narrative is ironic through and through,29 and the reader is urged to believe that the aition, based on quotations and reports of neverheard-of stories by a biased narrator, is a fiction forged by Callimachus to challenge his/her sophistication. Narrative mediation is carried to extremes in the much-discussed passage, where the romance of Acontius develops into a chronographical account of the island of Ceos (fr. 75).30 The greatest part of the storytelling is assigned to an external omniscient narrator who makes his presence felt through apostrophes to the characters and himself, and by dominating 27. For a discussion of the aition, see Harder (2012a: 2.513-529). 28. On the various ancient sources for, and partly conflicting versions of, this anecdote, see Harder (2012a: 2. on fr. 64,11-14). 29. According to Klooster (2011: 31-34) the irony of this aition lies in the tension between the epitaph claiming eternal fame and the destruction of the monument upon which it is inscribed. 30. On the narrative technique of the Acontius and Cydippe aition, see especially Harder (2012a: 2.541-659); cf. also Magnelli (2005) for its classification as a Hellenistic catalogue elegy and Kuhlmann (2005). An extensive analysis of the aition from a narratological viewpoint can be found in Lynn (1995: 192-262).

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the story-world with his authority (fr. 67-75.52).31 His identity remains unknown until the last part of the poem, where it is revealed that he is a scholar doing research on the ancient history of Ceos and has discovered the romantic episode among other local stories recorded in the ‘Cean Chronicles’ of Xenomedes (fr. 75.53-56): And the tale of your passion came to my ears from old Xenomedes, who once set down the whole island in a mythological memoir, beginning from the moment Corycian nymphs settled there ...

The subsequent verses may be seen as a direct quotation from the ‘Cean Chronicles’ where a series of mythographical and historical events are listed. Yet it is obvious that the catalogue of events has been chosen and compiled by the narrator himself. Once the narrator finishes reading this ancient book (54 ἀρχαίου Ξενομήδεος ‘the old Xenomedes’, 76 πρέσβυς ‘the old man’) he announces the denouement of his poem as well (fr. 75.74-77):32 ... and he told, Acontius, of your sharp love and the pain it gave you, that old man tending the truth, from whom the girl’s tale ran to my Calliope.

It is not evident which part of the narration has been a quotation and to what extent the narrator has mediated by anthologizing, adapting or composing the Cean episodes. Although the reader is led to believe that the romantic-elegiac first section revolving around the love story of Acontius and Cydippe is the narrator’s own creation and that Xenomedes enters the poem only at the concluding coda, it is safer to surmise that Callimachus merges both voices, blends his perspective with that of Xenomedes and eventually creates a multi-layered narrative.33 As he ironically discloses at the end, the love of Acontius has always been part of the initial historical treatise (75 ξυγκραθέντ’ αὐταῖς ὀξὺν ἔρωτα σέθεν ‘the history of these towns was mixed up with your difficult love’), thus leaving us wondering about the amount of his original contribution; besides, as he 31. As Lynn (1995: 193) appositely remarks the narrator “has left his fingerprints all over his narrative, contained in the kind of information he chooses to give and the manner in which he chooses to give it”. 32. The old age and ancientness of the historian Xenomedes is emphasized in juxtaposition to the new approach of Callimachus to local history: for this dialogue between old and new sources in the Aetia and also in the Hecale, see the excellent analysis by Greene (2017). 33. This is how Sternberg (1982: 109) describes the effect of this strategy: “What is from one standpoint a falling short of identity is from another an expressive repatterning, a perspectival montage between the original subject and the quoting subject who cites and manipulates his discourse within its new frame: between quotee and quoter, reportee and reporter, represented and representing voice.”

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elsewhere declares with tongue-in-cheek seriousness, he does not sing of anything unattested (fr. 612 Pf.).34 What the narrative of the Acontius and Cydippe aition also illustrates is Callimachus’ eccentric tendency to embody his sources (‘Xenomedes’), his stories (‘Acontius’) and his poems (‘Calliope’), to breathe life into the means of narration that become animate in the teller’s mind and acquire an almost material presence in the narrative-world.35 In this context, the most recurrent narrative strategy in the Aetia is the direct apostrophe to the entities (gods, fictional characters, written sources, places, statues and objects) represented in the aitiological stories. Given the abundance of passages concerned, I only cite some examples from Book 1: How you [Charites] came, with Eileithyia’s blessing, from your mother’s womb, naked (fr. 7.9-10) Be gracious now, [Charites], and wipe your shining hands on my elegies (fr. 7.14-15) If you would drive the swirling darkness from the ship ... for it was thanks to you, Phoebus, and your oracles ... (fr. 18.6-9) Hail [Heracles], wielder of the heavy club! Twelve times you toiled on demand, but over and over at your own initiative! (fr. 23.21-22) But the baby in a hungry fit took hold of the hair on your chest and pulled. And then you [Heracles] were torn between laughing and crying, until you reached a field ... (fr. 24.1-5) Lambs were your playmates, dear boy [Linus], lambs your comrades, your bed the folds and pastures (fr. 25e) He had a falling out, a mighty quarrel with the sons of Atreus and was on his way back home, when — O daughter of Zeus [Athena] — you intervened ... (fr. 190a.14-15) As you [Athena] were then, near the waters of Triton Asbystes — Hephaistos had his birthing axe sharpened — when you sprang, armed from the forehead of your divine father ... (fr. 37)

The list can be enriched with numerous examples which are scattered throughout all four Books of the Aetia. These addresses may operate at a large part of the narrative or appear suddenly in the course of a third-person narration and stop abruptly; they may be directed to one or more characters within the same story or even to the consciousness of the narrator himself.36 This technique is so typical of Callimachus’ 34. On the staged representation of the transmission of knowledge in Callimachus, see Meyer (1993). 35. I have termed this device ‘deictic presentification’ in the sense that Callimachus synchronizes distant temporal realities with his own present through heightened deixis, see Sistakou (2017: 4-9). 36. On the diversity of the second-person fiction in literature and how it forms an essential feature of postmodernist writings, see Fludernik (1994).

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discourse that many aitia in Books 3-4 are actually introduced with the apostrophe-formula and may have been entirely rendered in second-person address.37 On a narratological level this strategy is much more complicated than a mere stylistic device: it affects the ontological status both of the narrator and the characters that interact in the same universe.38 Given its pervasive presence in the Aetia, alongside other narrative strategies such as the blending of narrative voices and the fade-out technique, we may read the poem as a study on metalepsis.39 Indeed, blending of voices is richly attested in the Aetia, as the paradigm of the Acontius and Cydippe aition has demonstrated. Fade-out concerns the interaction between the narrated world and the world of the narrator at the end of the poem, especially in hymnic contexts: a striking example in the Aetia is the closure to the Charites aition (fr. 7), where we suddenly realize that the Graces have left the story-world (the telling of their birth) to enter the narrator’s universe (as they wipe their shining hands on his elegies).40 In many passages the extradiegetic narrator (‘Callimachus’) intrudes into the diegetic universe, thus transgressing the boundaries between the narrative-level and the story-level; its effect has been described by narratologists as ranging from comical to fantastic, and, at any rate, as a violation of natural narration and a representational paradox. Metalepsis is usually catalogued under the distinctive features of postmodernism: in my view, the Aetia can definitely be classed as a postmodern poem avant la lettre, as I will attempt to demonstrate in the concluding chapter.41

37. These include: Victoria Berenices (fr. 54-60j), Fontes Argivi (fr. 65-66), Acontius et Cydippa (fr. 67-75e), Isindius hospes (fr. 78-78c), Euthycles Locrus (fr. 84-85a), Abdera (fr. 90-90b), Melicertes (fr. 91-92a), Theudotus Liparensis (fr. 93-93b), Iunonis Samiae simulacrum antiquissimum (fr. 100-100a), Pasicles Ephesius (102-102a), Androgeos (fr. 103-103a), Ancora Argis navis Cyzici relicta (fr. 108). On the so-called Du-Stil in the Aetia, cf. Harder (1998: 106-110). The apostrophe in Callimachus as a metaleptic narrative device is now discussed in Klooster (2013: 166-171). 38. For a fresh look on how this rhetorical mode became a narrative strategy as metalepsis, see Nauta (2013). 39. Apart from apostrophe these are the types of metalepsis in ancient Greek poetry identified by de Jong (2009: 93-113). 40. The loss of the majority of the aitia-endings leaves us in the dark as to the extent of fade-out in the Aetia; and yet it can be traced in all the preserved hymnic closures (fr. 23, 20-21 the farewell to Heracles, fr. 66 where the narrator bids farewell to the fountains of Argos, fr. 110,94 etc.). On this kind of hymnic closure in the Aetia, see Harder (1998: 107-110; 2012a: 2. on fr. 110,94a). 41. See e.g. McHale (1987: 119-121). However, metalepsis is a recurrent phenomenon in ancient aesthetics as well; see de Jong (2009) and Eisen & Möllendorff (2013).

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3. ‘She stopped her story there but wonder kept on growing with me’ The Aetia purports to be a literary version of a chonicle, to provide access, through the obscure aitiological stories, to the universe of the mythical/historical past in the ‘Greek wide web’ of Greece, Asia Minor and the Mediterranean.42 It claims authority and professes to be documenting names and rites by extracting all types of oral and written sources, albeit through a poetic, rhetorically determined, medium. The epistemological orientation of the work is reflected in the reception of the Aetia already in antiquity, as attested by the anonymous epigram 7.42 from the Greek Anthology (1-2): τοῖα γὰρ ἄμμιν ἔφηνας, ἅτ᾽ οὐ πάρος ἀνέρες ἴδμεν ἀμφί τε ἀθανάτους ἀμφί τε ἡμιθέους ‘such were the things you have told us about the gods and the semi-gods that we men did not know before’. Through the Aetia Callimachus not only discredits Aristotle’s dichotomy between history and poetry, but moreover experiments with their ontological interaction, the possibility of a symbiotic relationship between factual truth and literature within the same semiotic and communicational system. Callimachus introduces the ‘author’ and the ‘narrators’ to configure the facts with their verbal representation as poetry and to foreground their narrativity.43 Yet a series of narrative strategies, orchestrated by the author and narrator ‘Callimachus’, operate as disrupting frames between the documented material and the narrated version presented to the reader.44 Autofiction, the reflexive plot, the foregrounding of the artificiality of the narrativization, the devices of quotation and narrative mediation, the questioning of the narrators’ authority, the metaleptic intrusions to the stories are, as argued above, the strategies developed by Callimachus to heighten the distance between poem, poet and audience. Aesthetic illusionism is based on the notion that, though the work of art is de facto an artificial recreation of reality, at the time of its reception it ought to create in its recipient the illusion that he experiences the represented world ‘from within’.45 Can a 42. The term has been coined by Harder (2016: 259-268) to describe the reconstruction of Greece as a network of settlements and cities illustrating the historical reality of the archaic period in the Aetia. 43. According to modern philosophy of history and postmodernist historiography, every historical account qualifies as a narrative and verbal structure; what Hayden White has described as ‘metahistory’ (White [1973]). That the Aetia may also be interpreted as a metahistorical work has been compellingly argued by Goulas (2014). 44. Some of the most common narrative devices in the Aetia and the other works of Callimachus are brilliantly reviewed by Harder (2004). 45. On the immersion of the reader in the narrative-world, examined from a psychological and literary-theoretical viewpoint, see the monograph by Gerrig (1993). For a general introduction, see Schaeffer & Vultur (2008).

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reader of any of the Aetia immerse him/herself in the story, be transported to the narrative-world and empathize with the characters which in his/her imagination ought to appear real? The answer is negative, since the triggering of emotions that goes hand in hand with representational, serious and realistic narratives of the Aristotelian type is inconsistent with the aesthetic ideology of the Aetia.46 Decoding the Aetia calls for the active participation of the reader who is prevented from losing him/herself in the stories told.47 Callimachus urges this sophisticated, vigilant reader to interact with the text in order to re-imagine the original story and produce meaning within the text and not in reference to his/her own reality.48 To challenge the reader’s intellect and imagination he has developed certain techniques which I have collectively termed the ‘denarration of the narratable’ and which establish the Aetia as an early version of postmodernism.49 Almost every story in the Aetia is narratable in the sense that it has the potential of a well-constructed and interesting plot. This is illustrated by striking examples: The Return of the Argonauts (fr. 7c-21d), a story that has a rich mythographical and literary legacy, for whose rendition Callimachus draws on a large part of Apollonius’ Argonautica Book 4 and numerous poetic and prose sources;50 Acontius and Cydippe (fr. 67-75e), a love-and-adventure story which could provide material for a New Comedy play or even a prose romance against the background of Hellenic local history;51 The Lock of Berenice (fr. 110-110f), which consists of 46. That the illusionist effect is a concomitant of mimetic literature and is best expressed in nineteenth-century novel, whereas it collapses in Romantic, modern and especially postmodern writings, is a view widely held by theorists; see e.g. the meticulous analysis on ‘mimesis as make-believe’ by Walton (1990). 47. Butler (2002: 69-73) rightly argues that the postmodernist novel invalidates the so-called ‘realist illusion’ of the readers who instead experience an ontological uncertainty between the text and their own world: the same effect can also be traced in the Aetia. 48. Postmodernism proclaims the liberation from the authorial intentions and invites the active participation of the reader in the interpretation of the literary text: the idea was introduced by Roland Barthes in his 1967 essay “The Death of the Author”. 49. The very conception of the narrative as a ‘compilation’, an ‘encyclopedia’ or a ‘dictionary’ as exemplified by the Aetia is a postmodern one, because it emphasizes the gap between the idealized immersion in the temporal line of traditional fiction and the ‘broken time of reading’; on this aspect of postmodern literature, see Connor (2004). For an overview of the main features of postmodern culture, see Butler (2002). 50. Harder (2012a: 2.139-141) gives a meticulous account of Callimachus’ sources; Harder moreover emphasizes that Callimachus includes at least three episodes from Argonautica 4 in his 150-verse elegy (the angry speech of Aeetes, the Colchian colonization and the episode at Anaphe), and hence “his Argonautic aition looks like a condensed elegiac version of Apollonius’ epic ... or alternatively the Argonautica may be looked upon as an extended and complete version of Callimachus’ cursory treatment”. 51. Cf. Harder (2012a: 2.541-542) who notes that “the plot of this story recalls the plots of thwarted love and happy ending in New Comedy and seems to foreshadow the

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the romantic love affair between Ptolemy Euergetes and his queen Berenice and the catasterism of the lock set against the background of the Third Syrian War, a story that could be part of a collection of historical anecdotes and paradoxa or even develop into a metamorphosis narrative.52 What all of these examples have in common is that they belong to the large-scale narratives of the Aetia (by consisting of 150-200 verses each) and hence allow us to form an idea about their configuration as narratives. Indeed, these stories could have formed fully developed mythological, romantic or historical narratives; instead Callimachus undermines their emotional and ideological potential by foregrounding scholarly and cultural references. From the above-mentioned narratives, The Return of the Argonauts and Acontius and Cydippe become the occasion for accessing bookish knowledge such as the double naming of Phygadon/Polae for the newly-founded Illyrian city (fr. 11) and the archaeology of Ceos (fr. 75.5474), whereas The Lock of Berenice begins as a comment on the astronomical work of Conon (fr. 100.1-7). These are not mere aitiological digressions; on the one hand they reflect the rich hypertexts underlying the narratives (linguistics, geography, local history, astronomy) and on the other they bring to light the tension between different kinds of reality (the story-world reality as opposed to epistemic reality). As a consequence, the mimetic, Aristotelian-type plots, even in miniature form, become secondary ingredients for the making of the aitiological narratives. In a highly selective manner the narrator does not present us with the whole story but rather focuses on discontinuous episodes picked out from an imaginary chain of events. Lacunose storytelling is typical for the Aetia and is best illustrated by The Return of the Argonauts. The plotline of the Argonautic story with its protagonists and its spatiotemporal coordinates is summarized in the opening verses of Calliope’s speech (fr. 7c.5-8): ‘Aegletes and Anaphe, neighbour to Laconian Thera, set down in your memoir first, and the Minyans, beginning with how the heroes were sailing back to ancient Haemonia from Cytaean Aeetes ...’

In rapid succession follows the first episode which consists of Aeetes’ angry reaction to Medea’s flight as expressed in an extensive direct speech (fr. 7c.9-16, cf. 8).53 The presence of Aeetes, rather than contributing to plots of the romantic Greek novel” and that the story, like the romance of Phrygius and Pieria “belongs to the tradition of Ionian storytelling”. 52. For its place in the tradition of Alexandrian court-propaganda poetry, see Harder (2012a: 2.798-799). 53. Direct speech in Callimachus, as is apparent from its extensive use in the Hymns and in the Aetia, is not a naturalistic way of portraying the thoughts and feelings of the

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the development of the plot, recalls the typical tyrannical father-figure which draws on tragic patterns.54 The continuation of the narrative and the ordering of events are unknown. What must have followed is the pursuit of the Argonauts by the Colchians through the Adriatic Sea (fr. 9-15). Evidently plot was not the primary concern of Callimachus here either, since a series of aitia, and especially the Colchian colonization of the Illyrian coast, were recounted at this point in the style of local history exposition (fr. 16-21). It is characteristic of the temporal distortion observable in Callimachus’ aitiological narratives that another aition, the foundation of Amantine by Colchians, that will be fulfilled in the distant future, is proleptically inserted here (fr. 12.4-7). After this eventless middle of the Argonautic plot, the Argonauts are speedily transferred to the Aegean and hence the narrative moves over to the Anaphean episode and its epic-like culmination.55 Some traces of action can be found in the surviving fragments, namely Tiphys’ failure to steer the ship, the darkening of the sky and the subsequent despair of the Tyndarids (fr. 17), until the aition reaches its climax: the desperate prayer of Jason and the intervention of Apollo, all reported in a second-person apostrophe addressed by the narrator to the god himself.56 Discontinuous narrative, where attention oscillates between the fictional plot and the archaeological data, is also the rule in Acontius and Cydippe. The narrative pattern recalls the structuring of The Return of the Argonauts. Likewise this aition begins with a short summary of the plot (fr. 67.1-4): Eros himself instructed young Acontius, burning for the girl Cydippe, in the art of love (at least, he wasn’t a schemer before), helped him ... earn the name of husband till his dying day.

The aition consists of a seemingly linear account of the romance from the first meeting and love-at-first-sight scene (fr. 67.5-21) to the falling in love of Acontius (fr. 68-74) until, after certain mishaps in the relationship of the young lovers (the three diseases of Cydippe, fr. 75.10-19), characters as it is in the Homeric epics, but instead is a stylized tool further enhancing the selectivity of Callimachean narratives: see Harder (2002-2003). 54. On this and other father-figures and their tragic undertones in Aetia 1, see Sistakou (2016: 100-101). 55. Nisetich (2001: 71) shrewdly observes that, whereas Apollonius in the Argonautica dedicated five hundred lines to narrate the voyage of the Argo from Corcyra to the north of Crete, “Callimachus took no more than six lines to bring her here”. On the constant change of the narrative tempo in the Aetia, see Harder (2012a: 1.54). 56. For a reconstruction of The Return of the Argonauts, see the detailed analysis by Harder (2012a: 2.139-147); cf. Livrea (2006) for the attribution of another episode to this aition, namely the building of a temple for Apollo by the Argonauts.

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the god Apollo guarantees the happily-ever-after ending leading to marriage and the birth of the Acontiads (fr. 75.20-50). The narrative develops in a non-comprehensive, selective way through the citation of direct speeches (the soliloquy of Acontius in fr. 73-74 and the oracle of Apollo in fr. 75.21-37) and the constant change of narrative speed.57 Subjectivity dominates the telling of the story, either in passages where the events are focalized through the character of Acontius or when the narrator intervenes by apostrophizing his characters and thus conflating the narrative levels. Another narrative strategy exploited by Callimachus is the non-temporal linking of the narrative segments. A striking example is the performance of a wedding ritual at Naxos which motivates a scholarly parenthesis on the unholy wedding between Zeus and Hera (fr. 75.4-9): in contrast to mimetic narratives which favor the temporal-causal linking, Callimachus clearly opts for a postmodern technique by thematically associating temporally distant or otherwise unrelated events.58 Moreover, with a high dose of self-referentiality, the scholarly narrator breaks the coherence of the romantic plot by articulating his opinions and knowledge (e.g. in fr. 75.4-9) and by juxtaposing the story of Acontius with segments from the historical account of Xenomedes (fr. 75.53-77). Thus the narrative forks into diverse directions and the narrator challenges the notion of wholeness in storytelling; fragmentariness characterizes the fracturing of the aitiological narratives into segments, a strategy omnipresent in the Aetia.59 The third of the three paradigms, The Lock of Berenice, consists of a simple storyline whose narration is assigned to a single voice without the intervention of the scholarly narrator. It lacks therefore the oscillation between different voices: the story about the love between queen Berenice and Ptolemy Euergetes, as reflected in the dedication and catasterism of the queen’s lock of hair, has only one teller, the lock itself. Having a speaking object take over as a narrator may be a standard convention of the dedicatory and funerary epigram and not surprising for ancient readers per se.60 57. On the chronological disorders in the Aetia narratives, see Harder (2007); cf. especially pp. 93-96 for the variegated narrative rhythm in the Acontius and Cydippe story. 58. For the non-temporal linking in narration, termed ‘parallelism’ and ‘equivalence’ by the Russian formalists, especially Viktor Sklovskij and Roman Jacobson, see Schmid (1977). 59. The aesthetics of fragmentation in the narrative and structuring of the Aetia, as a response to the wholeness professed by large-scale epic and mimetic narratives, is discussed by Sistakou (2009: 394-401). 60. The term ‘speaking object’ may have originated from an article on Greek epigraphy by Burzachechi (1962) and is now seen as a standard technique of ancient Greek epigrams, on which see Tueller (2008).

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Yet the preference for this type of animation in the Aetia reaches beyond the epigrammatic tradition and is more than mere play on part of Callimachus.61 In the context of Romanticism it may mark a narrative as fantasy or satire; yet in the postmodern understanding of literature this type of animated narrator suggests unnatural narration, a narration that points towards nonrealistic, anti-mimetic conceptions of storytelling.62 The aition reads, moreover, as a dual biographical narration about queen Berenice and about Berenice’s lock, divided between the narration of the passionate love of Berenice for Ptolemy, their marriage and the separation of husband and wife when the king sets off to war (fr. 110.15-38), and of the lock’s misfortunes, from the moment it was cut off from Berenice’s head, separated from her sister locks, and ascended to heaven in the form of a star (fr. 110.3994). Both narratives are highly emotional and told from a female viewpoint; to this end, Callimachus employs rhetorical and thematic patterns from lyric, especially the love poetry and epithalamia of Sappho and the laments of Erinna, as well as from dedicatory epigrams.63 In the merging of lyric and epigrammatic style with elegiac narrative lies the generic liquidity of The Lock of Berenice, a trend that is palpable throughout the Aetia.64 What Callimachus achieves through generic blending here is to conflate the identities of the two ‘women’ — Berenice, a historical personage, and ‘the lock’, a feminized talking object — and thus enter into the minds of both his romantic heroines. The lock, thanks to its privileged position on Berenice’s head, has access to the queen’s reflections and emotions (fr. 110.15-32); after its violent cutting-off, the lock turns to its own emotional state by expressing sadness and anger for its separation from the queen’s head (fr. 110.39-50); on top of the lock’s longing for Berenice comes its metamorphosis into a constellation which adds more crisis to the story (fr. 110. 51-68). This ‘ontological drama’ has an ambivalent effect: it apparently recreates the emotional atmosphere of its literary models, 61. To give voice and emotions to an inanimate entity, like the lock, to ‘animate’ an object in a narrative has ontological implications, since it allows for interaction between a world here and a world beyond: see Sistakou (2017: 7-9). 62. Richardson (2006) has dedicated a monograph to the analysis of unnatural voices as extreme forms of narration in modern and contemporary fiction. The study of ‘natural’ narratology by Fludernik (1996) is essential, especially her chapter on the unrealistic, anti-illusionistic properties of postmodern fiction and their relation to human experientiality (pp. 203-233). 63. How this aitiological narrative is filtered through a woman’s life experiences and psychology and has recourse to women poets such as Sappho and Erinna is compellingly argued by Gutzwiller (1992: 373-384). For Acosta-Hughes (2010: 63-82) The Lock of Berenice illustrates how the lyric genre, especially the poetic voice of Sappho, is incorporated into the elegy. 64. On the generic games in the Aetia the analysis by Harder (1998) is fundamental.

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especially the lament, yet it eventually becomes a source of surrealistic humor due to the unnatural identity of its narrator, the animated lock. The Aetia is a work that begins as an epistemological survey of reality — ‘why has a custom, a name or an object come into existence in our world?’ — and develops into a series of ontological questionings — ‘are there possible worlds and alternative realities? What is their status in reference to historical truth and literary fiction? Who has the ability to perceive them and the authority to recreate them?’65 The experimental narrative devices explored by Callimachus in the Aetia, termed here strategies of ‘denarrating the narratable’, blur the distinction between reality and fiction and foreground the role of the narrator and the reader in the reconstruction of possible story-worlds and their scenarios. I am convinced, despite the risks involved in such methodological anachronisms, that the notion of narrating as developed in the Aetia qualifies as essentially postmodern — and I hope that future studies will bring to light the full potential of a postmodern reading of this fascinating poem.

REFERENCES Acosta-Hughes, B., 2010, Arion’s Lyre. Archaic Lyric into Hellenistic Poetry. Princeton. Bakhtin, M.M., 1984, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, trans. by C. Emerson. Minneapolis. Burzachechi, M., 1962, “Oggetti parlanti nelle epigrafi greche”. Epigraphica 24, 3-52. Butler, Ch., 2002, Postmodernism. A Very Short Introduction. Oxford. Connor, S., 2004, “Postmodernism and Literature”. In: S. Connor (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Postmodernism. Cambridge, 62-81. Eisen, U.E. & P. von Möllendorff (eds), 2013, Über die Grenze. Metalepse in Text- und Bildmedien des Altertums. Berlin. Fludernik, M., 1994, “Second-Person Narrative as a Test Case for Narratology: The Limits of Realism”. Style 28, 445-479. ―, 1996, Towards a ‘Natural’ Narratology. London. Fowler, A., 1989, “The Future of Genre Theory: Function and Constructional Types”. In: R. Cohen (ed.), The Future of Literature Theory. New York, 291-303. Gerrig, R.J., 1993, Experiencing Narrative Worlds: On the Psychological Activities of Reading. New Haven.

65. This distinction between modernist fiction which is concerned with epistemological matters and postmodernist fiction which focuses on ontological questions is made by a prominent theorist of postmoderism, Brian McHale (1987: 3-42).

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Goldhill, S., 1991, The Poet’s Voice. Essays on Poetics and Greek Literature. Cambridge. Goulas, G., 2014, History and Metahistory in the Work of Callimachus [in Modern Greek]. Diss. Thessaloniki. Greene, R.J. 2007, “Callimachus and New Ancient Histories”. Aitia [Online] 7.1. Gutzwiller, K., 1992, “Callimachus’ Lock of Berenice: Fantasy, Romance and Propaganda”. AJPh 113, 359-385. Harder, M.A., 1988, “Callimachus and the Muses: Some Aspects of Narrative Technique in Aetia 1-2”. Prometheus 14, 1-14. ―, 1998, “Generic Games in Callimachus’ Aetia”. In: M. A. Harder et al. (eds), Genre in Hellenistic Poetry (Hellenistica Groningana 3). Groningen, 95-113. ―, 2002-2003, “Allowed to Speak: The Use of Direct Speech in Callimachus’ Hymns and Aetia”. Hermathena 173-174, 49-60. ―, 2003, “The Invention of Past, Present and Future in Callimachus’ Aetia”. Hermes 131, 290-306. ―, 2004, “Narrator, Narratees and Narrative in Callimachus”. In: I. J. F. de Jong et al. (eds), Narrators, Narratees and Narratives in Ancient Greek Literature. Leiden-Boston, 63-81. ―, 2007, “Callimachus”. In: J. F. de Jong, & R. Nünlist (eds), Time in Ancient Greek Literature. Leiden-Boston, 81-96. ―, 2012a, Callimachus: Aetia. Vols. 1-2. Oxford. ―, 2012b, “Callimachus”. In: I. J. F. de Jong (ed.), Space in Ancient Greek Literature. Leiden-Boston, 77-98. ―, 2014, “Spiders in the Greek Wide Web”. In: R. Hunter et al. (eds), Hellenistic Studies at a Crossroads. Exploring Texts, Contexts and Metatexts. BerlinBoston, 259-271. Hidi, S. & S. Baird, 1986, “Interestingness ‒ A Neglected Variable in Discourse Processing”. Cognitive Science 10, 179-194. Hunter, R., 2005, “The Hesiodic Catalogue and Hellenistic Poetry”. In: R. Hunter (ed.), The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women. Cambridge, 239-265. Hutchinson, G.O., 2003, “The Aetia: Callimachus’ Poem of Knowledge”. ZPE 14, 47-59. Jong, I.J.F. de, 2009, “Metalepsis in Ancient Greek Literature”. In: J. Grethlein & A. Rengakos (eds), Narratology and Interpretation: The Content of Form in Ancient Literature. Berlin, 87-115. Kambylis, A. 1965, Die Dichterweihe und ihre Symbolik. Heidelberg. Klooster, J., 2011, Poetry as Window and Mirror. Positioning the Poet in Hellenistic Poetry. Leiden-Boston. ―, 2013, “Apostrophe in Homer, Apollonius and Callimachus”. In: U.E. Eisen & P. von Möllendorff (eds), Über die Grenze. Metalepse in Text- und Bildmedien des Altertums. Berlin, 151-173. Kuhlmann, P., 2005, “Akontios und Kydippe bei Kallimachos (67-75Pf²) und Ovid (epist. 20-21): Eine romantische Liebesgeschichte?”. Gymnasium 112, 19-44. Livrea, E., 2006, “Il mito argonautico in Callimaco. L’episodio d’Anafe”. In: G. Bastianini & A. Casanova (eds), Callimaco. Cent’anni di papiri. Firenze, 89-99.

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Löschnigg, M., 2008, “Autobiography”. In: D. Herman et al. (eds), Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. London-New York, 34-36. Lowe, N.J., 2000, The Classical Plot and the Invention of Western Narrative. Cambridge. Lynn, J.K., 1995, Narrators and Narrations in Callimachus. Diss. New York. Magnelli, E., 2005, “Callimaco, fr. 75 Pf, e la tecnica narrativa dell’elegia ellenistica”. In: A. Kolde et al. (eds), Κορυφαίῳ ἀνδρί. Mélanges offerts à André Hurst. Geneva, 203-212. McHale, B., 1987, Postmodernist Fiction. London. Meyer, D., 1993, “Nichts Unbezeugtes singe ich: Die fiktive Darstellung der Wissenstradierung bei Kallimachos”. In: W. Kullmann & J. Althoff (eds), Vermittlung und Tradierung von Wissen in der griechischen Kunst. Tübingen, 317-326. Morrison, A.D., 2007, The Narrator in Archaic Greek and Hellenistic Poetry. Cambridge. Nauta, R., 2013, “The Concept of ‘Metalepsis’: From Rhetoric to the Theory of Allusion and to Narratology”. In: U.E. Eisen & P. von Möllendorff (eds), Über die Grenze. Metalepse in Text- und Bildmedien des Altertums. Berlin, 469-482. Nisetich, F., 2001, The Poems of Callimachus. Oxford. Richardson, B. 2001, “Denarration in Fiction: Erasing the Story in Beckett and Others”. Narrative 9, 168-175. ―, 2006, Unnatural Voices: Extreme Narration in Modern and Contemporary Fiction. Columbus, OH. Ryan, M.-L., 2008, “Tellability”. In: D. Herman et al. (eds), Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. London-New York, 589-591. Schaeffer, J.-M. & I. Vultur, 2008, “Immersion”. In: D. Herman et al. (eds), Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. London-New York, 237–239. Schmid, W., 1977, Der ästhetische Inhalt. Zur semantischen Funktion poetischer Verfahren. Lisse. Sistakou, E., 2006, “Poeticizing Natural Phenomena: The Case of Callimachus”. In: M.A. Harder et al. (eds), Nature and Science in Hellenistic Poetry (Hellenistica Groningana 15). Leuven 2009, 177-199. ―, 2009, “Fragments of an Imaginary Past: Strategies of Mythical Narration in Apollonius’ Argonautica and Callimachus’ Aitia”. RFIC 137, 380-401. ―, 2016, Tragic Failures. Alexandrian Responses to Tragedy and the Tragic. Berlin-Boston. ―, 2017, “From Present to Presence: Modes of Presentification in Hellenistic Poetry”. In M.A. Harder et al. (eds), Past and Present in Hellenistic Poetry (Hellenistica Groningana 21). Leuven-Paris-Bristol, CT, 1-22. Sternberg, M., 1982, “Proteus in Quotation-Land: Mimesis and the Forms of Reported Discourse”. Poetics Today 3, 107-156. Tueller, M.A., 2008, Look Who’s Talking: Innovations in Voice and Identity in Hellenistic Epigram (Hellenistica Groningana 13). Leuven-Paris-Dudley, MA. Walton, K.L., 1990, Mimesis as Make-Believe: On the Foundations of the Representational Arts. Cambridge, Mass. White, H., 1973, Metahistory. The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Baltimore-London.

CELEBRATING THE GAMES Susan STEPHENS

1. Introduction Plutarch in his Life of Alcibiades tells us: Never did anyone but he, either private citizen or king, send seven chariots to the Olympic games. And to have carried away at once the first, the second, and the fourth place, as Thucydides says, or the third, as Euripides relates it [in his epinician], outdoes by far every distinction that ever was known or thought of this kind.1

The ostentation of Alcibiades’ victory was recorded by more than one source, but not even so famous a celebrant as Euripides could guarantee survival of this epinician beyond the few lines quoted in Plutarch. In general, survival of victory odes was precarious. Only those victories inscribed on stone or celebrated by a few poets whose works were later collected and recopied have made the cut: and of the three best known — Pindar, Bacchylides, and Simonides, Bacchylides owes the survival of fifteen now fragmentary epinicia to a serendipitous papyrus find, while Simonides comes to us only in occasional lines cited by other ancient writers or scholia. Modern consensus has it that the kinds of victory odes these men wrote died out by the end of the fifth century to be largely replaced by prose encomia. This could be true. But athletic competitions continued to flourish and to increase in number and prestige throughout the Hellenistic Period. The name of so distinguished a poet as Euripides could not guarantee the survival of his epinician for Alcibiades and the works of no poet from the fourth century, regardless of the genre, survive intact, which should sound a note of caution. More likely epinicia were composed for individual victors, but they have simply not survived, in part because of the local and personal nature of the topics, or because their authors were only occasional writers of encomiastic poetry as Euripides seems to have been.2 1. §11.3 where Plutarch quotes the opening lines of this ode. Mentioned again in his Life of Demosthenes §1.1 (= frr. 755-56 PMG). 2. See Lowe (2007: 167-177) on the vagaries of classification and transmission of “epinician”.

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The now extant epinicia of Pindar provide us with a variety of examples of how to celebrate victors, and his influence on Callimachus has been well documented, though before the discovery and publication of Posidippus’ roll of epigrams with its dedicated section on equestrian victories at Panhellenic crown games, Callimachus’ poems were regarded as bookish experiments. Since that publication, a great deal of attention has been lavished on the Ptolemies and their penchant for equestrian competition, with the salubrious result that we are in a much better position to appreciate the historical contexts of Callimachus’ poems. But even without Posidippus there are factors in Callimachus’ biography that might have encouraged his interest in epinicia. As a Cyrenean, Callimachus may well have been familiar with Pindar’s 4th, 5th and 9th Pythian odes not as part of his scholarly activities,3 but simply because they contained the myths about the foundation of Cyrene, a topic that he reprises in his Hymn to Apollo, 65-96. In a thought-provoking article written in 2012, Simon Hornblower makes a case for epinicians written by Pindar (and other poets) being kept within families and re-performed on special occasions. One of the families that he singles out is the Battiadae of Cyrene, and, if any epinicia were likely to survive in local reproduction, it would have been these. Despite the fact that the reign of the Battiad kings ended in the fifth century, claims to descent from the family persisted even into the Roman period.4 Callimachus identifies himself as Battiad in ep. 35.1 Pf. and his great grandfather may have been Anniceris, who competed in the tethrippon teleion at Olympia, later giving an exhibition of chariot racing in Plato’s Academy.5 It is, therefore, not outside the realm of possibility that his interest in Pindar and his decision to write an epinician in the Pindaric manner was conditioned by a heritage that included familiarity with earlier epinicia as well as continued family participation in Crown Games.

2. Background Competing in athletic events had a long and distinguished history for tyrants and elites of Greek city states. Bacchylides, Pindar, and Simonides celebrated the victories of Sicilian tyrants in the early fifth century BCE; 3. He is said to have organized Pindar’s epinicia by site — Olympia, Delphi (Pythian games), Isthmia, and Nemea (fr. 450 Pf.). But see Blum (1991: 179n205), who raises the possibility that the organization belonged to earlier writers on crown games. 4. Hornblower (2012: 96-97), and see below. 5. Williams (1996: 8); the incident is recorded in Aelian VH 2.27 and DL 3.20.

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Simonides the Scopadae of Thessaly; Pindar the Battiad house of Cyrene (Pythian 4,5,9). The Spartan kings of the fourth century — Archidamas II, Agesilaus II, Agis II, and their sister Cynisca — dedicated at least one inscribed statue group at Olympia (Paus. 6.1.6), and Philip II of Macedon, an assiduous competitor, had a shrine built at Olympia (the Philippeum) that included himself and family (Pausanias 5.17.4; 20.910); images of his victory in the sunôris appear on his coins and on his tomb. In the third century victories are recorded for the Attalids of Pergamum. Like their predecessors the Ptolemies entered the Panhellenic stage early and often. The first five Ptolemies, their female relatives, mistresses, and high level ministers participated in numerous Panhellenic games over the course of the third century BCE, where they competed in all the harness events: the four-horse race for adult horses (tethrippon teleion), the four-horse race for foals (tethrippon pôlikon), the two-horse chariot race (sunôris); and, when it was introduced, the two-horse race for foals (sunôris pôlikê). They posted victories in at least ten events that we know of.6 As it had been for earlier tyrants, the Panhellenic stage, especially Olympia, was a central location that facilitated the interaction of an international aristocracy; it served to announce the arrival of a new ruling house, and was a way of attracting elite talent. Victories by elites associated with the throne (i.e., Callicrates, Sosibius, Etearchus) in turn promoted the city. For the Ptolemies, in particular, who were new rulers of a non-Greek space, it was a means of asserting their ethnic identity as Greek, particularly after 305/304 BCE when Ptolemy I abandoned the pretext of ruling as a Macedonian satrap and assumed the Egyptian throne.7 But at the same time Panhellenic competition allowed the Ptolemies to assert their Macedonian roots, as Posidippus insists, since they apparently claimed descent from Alexander’s line and were vying with other Successors for political domination over regions of Alexander’s now fragmented empire. Finally, these games provided a Panhellenic stage on which to proclaim legitimacy of one’s children and heirs. Legitimacy was a special challenge for the early Ptolemies, since Ptolemy I had at least three wives, less formal relationships with a few other women, and sons by more than one 6. At Olympia: Berenice I, Ptolemy I, Ptolemy II, Arsinoe II (all three harness events), Berenice Syra and Ptolemy II’s mistress, Bilistiche. At Nemea: Berenice Syra and Berenice II. Based on Moretti (1957), Bennett (2005), van Bremen (2007:363-375), and Remijsen (2009). On Berenice I’s victory, see Stephens (2018). 7. The pharaonic trappings that were a necessary part of an Egyptian kingship might have been a further stimulus to present oneself as Greek/Macedonian at every opportunity.

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of them. His choice of Ptolemy II, his youngest son by Berenice I, as his heir over sons by an earlier wife (Eurydice) was controversial. A victory of Ptolemy II at Olympia in 284, for example, could have reinforced his position as heir apparent.8 The frequent appearances of Berenice Syra at Crown games will have served to mark her legitimacy (and hence eligibility for a royal marriage); this was essential since her mother Arsinoe I had been exiled shortly before 275 BCE for an attempted palace coup. The problematic status of Syra and her brother Ptolemy III is the reason they were “adopted” and proclaimed the children of Ptolemy II and Arsinoe II (though Arsinoe was dead by the time they were so designated). 3. The Victoria Berenices (VB) It is in this context that Callimachus wrote his elegiac epinician for Berenice II, the daughter of Magas, the king of Cyrene, and wife of Ptolemy III, whom she married in 246. Lucia Criscuolo has challenged this identification on the grounds that Callimachus’ poem was more likely to have been for Berenice Syra. She points out that the Nemean games after 271 were held in Argos, and during the 240s, the period during which Berenice II would have been competing as the wife of Ptolemy III, Argos was controlled by an anti-Ptolemaic faction that would have precluded Ptolemaic participation in the games.9 But the political situation remains murky as allegiances were hardly written in stone. To what extent these political clashes affected participation in the Nemean games is a separate question. Even assuming the validity of Criscuolo’s basic premise, whether or not these factional divisions persisted during the whole of the 240s is by no means clear.10 An important consideration is that, like the Olympian and Pythian games, the Nemean games began with the proclamation of a truce that requested safe passage for participants to attend. This did not require a complete cessation of all local hostilities, but allowing attendees and competitors to pass unharmed through whatever territory was necessary. These truces were usually honored.11 Further, while one of Posidippus’ epigrams states that Ptolemy accompanied his daughter to the Isthmian games where she won the tethrippon teleion as a child (82 A-B), this was 8. See Remijsen (2009: 253) for the most likely date of Ptolemy II’s victory. 9. If this Nemean victory were earlier, e.g., in the 250s, it would preclude Berenice II, see Criscuolo (2003: 313-315, 328-330). 10. See now Cazzadori’s thoughtful assessment (2016: 322-324). 11. According to Plutarch (Life of Aratus §28) the first time that the privilege of safe conduct for the Nemean Games was violated was in 235 BCE. And see Xenophon’s Hellenica (4.5.1-2) for an earlier martial disruption that did not violate the right to participate.

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exceptional. For Panhellenic competitions only the teams and drivers needed to be in attendance, not the owners of the team.12 Prima facie a team under Ptolemaic auspices wishing to compete in the Nemean games ought to have been permitted entry. For these reasons, the remarks that follow are premised on Berenice II as the laudanda of the Victoria Berenices. The VB was clearly written under the influence of Pindar and a consideration of recent trends in Pindaric scholarship will be helpful for understanding how Callimachus’ epinicia situate themselves within his contemporary context. For the last twenty-five years Pindaric scholarship has looked at the epinician in terms of reintegration of the victor into his community, a manoeuver that requires the poet to flatter the victor in a way that it conveyed distinction on his city but deflected envy from his person. This could be especially challenging when writing for elites within the court of a tyrant. More recent work has turned to considering the role that athletics played in creating and maintaining local elites and the interrelationship of multiple epinicia when written for families or groups within a community.13 Although considerable energy has been devoted to discussing Pindaric deixis in an attempt to recover a primal moment of performance, an emerging focus is on the multiple possibilities for re-performance from a sung choral event, to a recitation at a festival honoring the victor, to performance within the victor’s oikos, to symposiastic recitation.14 For our purposes much of what was true for Pindar would also have been applicable to a later age. Even if we disallow the possibility of choral performance in the Hellenistic period, other Pindaric options for re-performance remain viable in Hellenistic courts, festivals, and family groups. Epinicia (and encomia) regardless of their formal features, must function in similar ways in what they can say and how they can say it. They all deploy a set of strategies to effect political and/ or social outcomes of interest to the composer within the context of a particular patron (read laudandus). Whether it is Pindar as a guest celebrant in an Archaic court or Callimachus among the Ptolemies, the goals and the poetic options are more or less the same. Just as with Pindar, we can assume that some of Callimachus’ goals were the reflection of aristocratic desires while others (call them reintegration into community) were about modeling socially responsible behaviors. 12. See Kyle (2014: 30). 13. See, e.g., Morgan (2015), Nicholson (2016). 14. Agócs (2012), Morrison (2012). Callimachean scholarship vis-à-vis Pindar, in contrast, tends to be focused on formal questions: identifying intertextual borrowings, exploring Callimachus’ use of specific Pindaric features like Abbruchsformel, and discussing Callimachus’ Kreuzung der Gattungen.

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For Callimachus writing about Berenice would not have been straightforward. In her person she represented the healing of the long-standing breach between Cyrene and Egypt, but the immediate task would have been to insert her into the Ptolemaic family in such a way as to deflect animosity from her outsider status and to praise her in a way that did not seem to undermine previous Ptolemaic victors, particularly Berenice Syra, who is credited with a number of Nemean victories. Since Pindar had already faced these and similar challenges, turning to him as a marked model accomplished several goals: it elevated the Ptolemies to the status of earlier victors celebrated by Pindar; via Berenice II it aligned them particularly with the Cyrenean victors of an earlier generation; it asserted Berenice II’s legitimacy and that of the royal marriage; and by choosing to write an epinician Callimachus sets her apart from the royal women already celebrated by Posidippus in epigram. At the same time the choice of the elegiac meter could both signal the modernity of the epinician and subtly align Berenice with those earlier women. Callimachus’ intertextual borrowings from multiple Pindaric odes have been well mapped,15 but intertextuality alone does not present a full picture, since it misses the social and political contexts in which epinicia play a central role. In what follows I want to consider how Callimachus deploys various Pindaric strategies for praising victors, particularly a victor who is not a king. Nemean 1 will serve as my main exemplar for the VB, since it was structured to praise a man who was part of the inner circle of a tyrant or king, but not a royal, a category that in most respects fits Berenice as well. Pindar wrote Nemean 1 for Chromios, the brotherin-law of Hieron I of Syracuse and the regent of Aetna, though his presence is not robust in his own victory ode. This seems to have been a deliberate strategy to deflect any potential for rivalry with Hieron. Berenice, to judge from the extant fragments has an equally small role in her epinician. In place of praise of the victors, Pindar’s and Callimachus’ narratives behave in similar ways and comparison of the two in several categories will be instructive for understanding the narrative trajectory of the VB. 3.1. Situating the Victor Pindar’s ode was written for Chromios of Aetna’s victory in the tethrippon at Nemea; Berenice also won the tethrippon at Nemea. But Nemean 1 is set in Syracuse and praises Sicily; Berenice was newly the wife of 15. See especially Fuhrer (1992: 86-138).

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Ptolemy III, but a Cyrenean. The VB opens in Alexandria and would seem to praise Egypt (frr. 54, 54a Harder). Both epinicia begin with a movement that in effect binds old Greece to a new place. In Nemean 1 the river Alpheus flows underground from Elis to the island of Ortygia in the Syracusan harbor (Nem. 1.1-4). In the VB news comes to Helen’s island located at the Canopic mouth of the Nile and to the home of Pallenean Proteus, i.e., the Alexandrian Pharos (fr. 54.1-6 Harder). Pallenean is an allusion to Proteus’ migration from his homeland of Pella in Macedon to Egypt via an underground river connected to the Nile. Both Olympia and Pallene are different places from the site of the victory (Nemea, Argos), and from the location where victory is celebrated (Syracuse, Alexandria). Pindar’s Olympic opening is thought to be a compliment to Hieron’s victory in the keles, the subject of Olympian 1 and Bacchylides 5; the reference to Proteus is a reminder of the Ptolemies and their Macedonian origins. Pindar continues with a description and praise of Sicily as given by Zeus to these particular “horse-loving” people (Nem. 1.8-18). The VB is badly broken but it would seem to rehearse the genealogy of Argive kings starting with “cow-born Danaus,” an allusion to his mother Io, and his genesis in Egypt.16 3.2. Hospitality Chromios is praised for his hospitality, specifically in terms of a banquet: “I [sc. Pindar] have taken my stand at the courtyard doors of a man who welcomes strangers, singing fair songs, where a fitting dinner has been set for me” (Nem. 1.19-21), and “I do not love to keep great wealth hidden in the hall, but to be well off in my possessions and be well spoken of while helping friends. For common hopes come to men who toil much” (Nem. 1.31-33). Hospitality is the central focus of Callimachus’ double myth (frr. 54b.15-30, 54c-d): the story of Heracles killing the Nemean lion is interwoven with his entertainment by a local named Molorchus (fr. 54e). The latter is a man of little means who nevertheless offers Heracles what hospitality he can. Molorchus cannot produce a banquet or indeed very much in the way of nourishment because mice have destroyed his stores. His struggle against these invasive rodents is a neat, non-heroic parallel to Heracles slaying the lion.

16. The Argive line and its connection to Egypt is also detailed in the first twenty lines of Nemean 10. For the narrative order of the VB fragments see Harder (2012.2: 384-387).

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3.3. Myths of Heracles Pindar’s myth is that of the newborn Heracles who slays the snakes sent by Hera to kill him (Nem. 1. 33-59). From antiquity the relevance of the myth to the victor in this ode has puzzled commentators and attempts to explain the link remain forced.17 In contour the VB is similar in that both protagonists — Heracles, Molorchus — must triumph over a decidedly unheroic domestic threats: snakes and mice. Also the domestic location of both is important: for Chromios a myth of childish accomplishment removes him some distance from competition with Hieron I; in Callimachus the extraordinary generosity of an average man serves as a counterweight to the luxury that is normally associated with the Ptolemies. Callimachus’ Heracles is not a baby, but we do meet him at the beginning of his labors. He is off to defeat the Nemean lion that, like the snakes, was sent by Hera in her hatred to be a τρηχὺς ἄεθλος (fr. 55.3 Harder), though it is unclear if Heracles strangles the lion as he did the snakes. If the rationale for Pindar’s myth is not immediately apparent, there are several justifications for Callimachus’. It would be especially appropriate if this were Berenice’s first victory at Nemea, thus imitating Heracles’ first victory (at Nemea). Then the choice of the myth of Heracles as killer of the Nemean lion may be intended as a reminder of Cyrene, the eponymous nymph of Berenice’s homeland, whose slaying of a lion ravaging the flocks captured the attention of Apollo, who made her his bride (hApollo 90-95). Such an allusive compliment to Berenice would not intrude upon the Ptolemaic focus of the whole. Finally, there is the intriguing suggestion of A. Kampakaglou that the Nemean lion at death became a constellation (Leo).18 This cluster was originally associated with the stars that the court astronomer, Conon, subsequently identified as Berenice’s catasterized lock and celebrated by Callimachus in the final elegy of the Aetia (fr. 110.7 Harder). 3.4. Prophecy A final oddity of Nemean 1 is its closure: it ends with Tiresias’ prophecy of Heracles’ future greatness19 and his eventual immortality, but without returning to any mention of the laudandus (Nem. 1. 60-72). For Pindar 17. The best explanation being that the steadfastness of Heracles from infancy throughout his life parallels that of Chromios’ life, so Morgan (2015: 387), following Braswell (1992: 56). 18. Kampakaglou (2013: 127-134). 19. Theocritus uses Tiresias and his prophecies to similar effect in the Heracliscus 64-102.

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this avoided the awkwardness of praise that might inadvertently offend Hieron. While it is impossible to be certain, it does look as if Callimachus’ epinician ended with Heracles having returned from slaying the lion, and repeating to Molorchus Athena’s prophecy to him (which may or may not have included the establishment of the Nemean Games, frr. 54h, 54i Harder). Within this framework we learn that the Isthmian games will, in future, adopt the wild celery crown for victors that Nemea now uses. It is not clear when that change took place, but it is clear that the subject of the crown used for the Isthmian games was a much discussed topic.20 Why would Callimachus include this information in his epinician? Nemea was the latest and least distinguished of the periodos, but the Argive location of a Nemean victory was a gold mine for Ptolemaic ancestral and dynastic claims. Promoting the Nemean crown by asserting that Isthmia imitated it would serve to enhance the status of the Nemean victory and by extension the victories of all who won them.21 Within the framework of Callimachus’ argument, the importance of Argos (the site of the Nemean games) is an anchor for the ethnic/dynastic claims of the Ptolemies and a reason to include this epinician within his Aetia. Previously Theocritus was heavily indebted to Nemean 1 in Idyll 24 (the Heracliscus), a poem in which the myth of the infant Heracles throttling snakes and Tiresias’ prophecy were central. This Idyll was early; most likely it had been written for the accession of the young Ptolemy II and, if we can trust the annotation at line 171, for a competition, thus publicly performed.22 For both Theocritus and Callimachus Heracles was an excellent subject for song since the Ptolemies cultivated him as an ancestor (and, as is relevant to the opening of the VB, an ancestor with close connections to Argos). More importantly, Theocritus seems to have treated the young Heracles in his poem as a model for young princes, in a way that imitated the behavior of epinician or encomium.23 The fact that Nemean 1 already maintained an intertextual presence in the Hellenistic landscape of imperial poetry might well have influenced Callimachus. But even if Pindar’s Nemean 1 was not a conscious model for Callimachus, it can serve modern critics as a useful example of the ranges of Archaic epinician and of the possibilities for experiment within

20. E.g., Euphorion is credited with a tract On the Isthmian Games (FGrH 334, fr. 107 Lightfoot) and he mentions the celery crown in a poetic fragment (fr. 104 Lightfoot). 21. So Harder (2012.2: 475-476). 22. Gow (1950: 436n141ff.) and Koenen (1977: 79-86). 23. Stephens (2003: 141-46).

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the epinician framework. As a result, Callimachus’ VB may look less like a fringe poem than part of a naturally evolving generic process.

4. The Sosibius Callimachus’ other surviving Panhellenic epinician was written for Sosibius,24 the identity of whom has been subject to considerable debate.25 The Sosibius (frr. 384-385 Pf.) is not an epinician for a single or even a double victory, but like Nemean 10 it traces a trajectory of athletic accomplishment from the time that the laudandus competed as a pais or a youth. Although the epinician owes a substantial debt to Pindar, as T. Fuhrer observed, it also seems to incorporate hymnic elements, a dedicatory epigram, and prosopography. The extant fragments fall into five sections derived from two separate papyri:26 4.1. POxy 2256 fr.2 back (a) + POxy 1793 col. vi. It opens with a libation (line 2: σπεί[σωμεν]) and the poet reflecting upon the time when news came to Egypt of Sosibius’ Isthmian victory in the tethrippos.

5

σπεί[σωμεν ].ετελειο[ . . σε . .ουπι[ ].τ.νον[ ᾧ τὸ μὲν ἐξ Ἐφύρης ἅρμα σελινοφόρον νεῖον ἀπ’ οὖν μέμβλωκεν· ἔτι χνόον [ ‒⏒ ἄξονος Ἀσβύστης ἵππος ἔναυλον ἔχει. σημερινὸν δ’ ὡσεί περ ἐμὸν περὶ χεῖλος ἀίσσει

24. According to the scholium he was the son of Dioscurides. Whether or not he would have competed as a citizen of Alexandria or under his family’s ethnic identity is unclear this early in the dynasty. 25. Athenaeus (4.144) thought the epinician was written for the Sosibius who dedicated his tract περὶ βασιλείας to Cassander of Macedon. But Cassander died in 297 BCE, which requires a very early date for the epinician. In the ode itself, Sosibius is celebrated as an Alexandrian, so Athenaeus’ Sosibius is not a good biographical fit. The poem is much more suitable for the Sosibius who was a high-ranking member of the Ptolemaic court, but written relatively early in his career. A reasonable date for the ode would be around 240, perhaps as late as 230. Subsequently, Sosibius became the chief minister of Ptolemy IV, who according to Polybius (15.34.4) was responsible for the death of Berenice II. See Polybius 15.25.2 and Fuhrer’s thorough assessment (1992: 144-149). 26. POxy 2258 is a codex from the seventh century CE that contains the opening of the ode (where it follows the Coma). POxy 1793 is a roll from the first century CE that partially overlaps 2258 and contains the last section that we have. Both papyri are accompanied by scholia that have proved useful in supplementing lines. The lines are numbered continuously across the fragments.

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τοῦτ’ ἔπος ἡδείῃ λεχθὲν ἐπ’ ἀγγελίῃ· ‘δαῖμον ὃς ἀμφοτέρωθεν ἁλιζώνοιο κάθησαι στείνεος, ἀρχαίοις ὅρκιε Σισυφίδαις…’

Let us pour a libation…for whom the celery-wreath-bearing chariot recently returned from Ephyra (i.e., Corinth); the Asbystian horse still has the residual dust of the axle…Just as if spoken today this word in a sweet announcement springs to my lips: “O Daimon, who is seated on either side of the sea-beaten narrows, witnesser of oaths for the ancient sons of Sisyphus (i.e., Corinthians)…”

The initial speaker (Callimachus?) calls for the libation, then quotes lines ostensibly composed on the occasion of the Isthmian victory. They began with a praise of Poseidon as Lord of the Isthmus and of Corinth, namely, the deity to whom the Isthmian games were dedicated (9-15). The section apparently continues with a gnomic statement: “a fair judgment outruns gold” before breaking off. 4.2. POxy 2256 fr.2 front (a) + POxy 1793 col. vii. (About five lines are missing.)

25

30

]υσεν, ἐπ’ αὐτί[κα δ’ ἀλ]λα σέλινα τοῖς ἀπὸ Πειρήνης ἤγαγεν Ἀ[ργο]λικά, ὄφρα κε Σωσίβιόν τις Ἀλεξάνδρου τε πύθηται γῆν ἐπὶ καὶ ναίων Κίνυφι διστρεφέα ἀμφοτέρῳ παρὰ παιδί, κασιγνήτῳ τε Λεάρχου καὶ τὸ Μυριναῖον τῷ γάλα θησαμένῳ, θηλύτατον καὶ Νεῖλο[ς ἄ]γων ἐναύσιον ὕδωρ ὧδ’ εἴπῃ· “καλά μοι θρεπτὸς ἔτεισε γέρα [‒⏒⏑? οὐ] γὰρ πώ τις ἐπ[ὶ] πτόλιν ἤγαγ’ ἄεθλον [‒⏑⏑ | ‒]. ταφίων τῶνδε πανηγυρίων

…and immediately added the Argive celery crown to that from Pirene, so that an Alexandrian and one who dwells on the banks of the Kinyps might learn [of his victories?] alongside both children — the brother of Learchus and the one who suckled the Myrinaean milk.27 So that the Nile might say, as it brings the fertilizing waters each year: “a fair prize has my nursling given me…for never has anyone brought a [double] trophy to this city from these funeral festivals.”

27. The syntax is convoluted, possibly because of the break, but the sense is clear (lines 25-6 are a mythological expansion of 20-21). The brother of Learchus was Melicertes, at whose death the Isthmian games were inaugurated. Opheltes was the nursling of Hypsipyle, the daughter of Myrina; at his death the Nemean games were established. Apparently Sosibius won these two victories in succession: the Isthmian games were held in April-May of one year and the Nemean in July-August of the next (with a resulting year and three month gap between the two victories).

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4.3. POxy 1793 col. viii (about eight lines are missing.) 35

40

καὶ παρ’ Ἀθηναίοις γὰρ ἐπὶ στέγος ἱερὸν ἧνται κάλπιδες, οὐ κόσμου σύμβολον, ἀλλὰ πάλης ἄνδρας ὅτ’ οὐ δείσαντες ἐδώκαμεν ἡδὺ βοῆσαι νηὸν ἔπι Γλαυκῆς κῶμον ἄγοντι χορῷ Ἀρχιλόχου νικαῖον ἐφύμνιον· ἐκ δὲ διαύλου, Λαγείδη, παρὰ σοὶ πρῶτον ἀεθλοφορεῖν εἱλάμεθα, Πτολεμ[αῖ]ε, …

For in Athens also the kalpides are kept under a holy roof, not for ornamentation but for the wrestling28 — when without fearing adult males we gave the opportunity to the chorus leading the kômos to the temple of Glauce (i.e., Athena) to shout Archilochus’ sweet victory ode. In the diaulos, Ptolemy, son of Lagus, by you we first chose to win a victory…

The first-person plurals (ἐδώκαμεν, εἱλάμεθα) seem to indicate that Sosibius is now the speaker (unless in the break Callimachus has somehow collapsed his persona with that of the laudandus). The speaker recalls Sosibius’ two prior victories: one at the Greater Panathenaea in the men’s πάλη (wrestling), although he seems to have originally entered in the category of ἀγένειοι (“unbearded”, i.e., youths). For this he received a κῶμος that progressed to the Parthenon.29 The second victory noted is temporally prior: it was in the δίαυλος in a competition located in Egypt, either the Ptolemaia or the Basileia. 4.3. POxy 1793 col. ix. (Thirteen lines are missing.) 46

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ὡς φαμένῳ δώσει τις ἀνὴρ ὁμόφωνον ἀοιδήν. τοῦτο μὲν ἐξ ἄλλων ἔκλυον ἱρὸν ἐγώ, κεῖνό γε μὴν ἴδον αὐτός, ὃ πὰρ ποδὶ κάτθετο Νείλου νειατίῳ, Κασίην εἰς ἐπίκωμος ἅλα. ‘Κυπρόθε Σιδόνιό[ς μ]ε κατήγαγεν ἔνθαδε γαῦλος ...

A man shall give forth a song in unison with him (?) who is saying this. From others I heard about this holy dedication, but I myself saw that which he dedicated at the uttermost foot of the Nile, celebrating his kômos at the Kasian sea. “From Cyprus a Sidonian ship brought me here…”

An unidentified speaker (the poet?) tells us that Sosibius set up offerings in Argos, presumably in the temple of Hera after his victory in the 28. Callimachus’ description of the Panathenaic amphorae here echoes Nemean 10.3537, though his use of kalpis for these vessels is unique. 29. The Archilochean victory song (τὸ Ἀρχιλόχον μέλος) occurs at Olympian 9.1; it appears to have been sung as part of a victory kômos and attested for many sites. See Agócs (2007: 214-215).

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Nemean games, and at Pelusium. For the latter he quotes the inscription from the base of his dedication, though only one line of it has survived. Here too a kômos seems to have been part of the dedicatory celebration. 4.4. POxy 1793 col. x. (About thirteen lines are missing.) These lines praise the victor as:

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καὶ τὸν ἐφ’ οὗ νίκαισιν ἀείδομεν, ἄρθμια δήμῳ εἰδότα καὶ μικρῶν οὐκ ἐπιληθόμενον παύριστον τό κεν ἀνδρὶ παρ’ ἀφνειῷ τις ἴδοιτο ᾧτινι μὴ κρε[ί]σσων ᾖ νόος εὐτυχίης. οὔτε τὸν αἰνήσω τόσον ἄξ[ι]ος οὔτε λάθωμαι, δείδια γὰρ δήμου γλῶσσαν ἐπ’ ἀμφοτέροι

We shall sing of him for his victories, as friendly to the people and not forgetting the lowly, something that one would least often see in a rich man whose mind is not superior to his fortune. I shall not praise him as much as he deserves, nor forget him, for I am afraid of the people’s tongue in either case…

Like Nemean 10, this shows us a non-royal athlete’s competitive trajectory over time. Sosibius competed in three different types — running (light), wrestling (heavy), and hippic events. He must have entered as a youth at the Greater Panathenaea, but was bumped up to compete in wrestling with adult males during the process of scrutinizing the potential competitors. He won but we do not know what prize.30 Earlier he seems to have begun his career at a far less prestigious local game and won in a different event (the diaulos, or twice the length of the stadion course).31 The social status of Sosibius becomes clear from his next two victories — chariot competitions at the lesser crown games — that put him on a par with the Berenices (Syra and II), who also won at Nemea, and therefore among the Ptolemaic elite. If he is indeed the minister of Ptolemy II, he was still alive in 203, so these harness victories would have been at an early stage of his life, perhaps as he was launching his public career. Sosibius was not unique in being celebrated as winning in both gymnic and hippic competition: Pindar’s Isthmians 3 and 4 celebrate the victories of Melissus of Thebes in the pancration at Isthmia (Isth. 4) and at another Isthmia his victory in the chariot race (Isth. 3). Pindar even extends his laudandus’ biography to include information on family members who 30. The Panathenaea gave money prizes — 20 amphorae of olive oil for first prize in the pale, 8 amphorae for second place. 31. A decree of the Islanders in 280 BCE proclaimed the Ptolemaia “isolympic” (SIG 390), which meant that cities whose citizens won an event at these games were accorded the same privileges and emoluments as victors in crown games.

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competed at the games in Athens and in Sicyon as well as the Isthmian games (Isth. 4.18-33).32 Spatially, Callimachus embeds his victor in Egypt. Sosibius is celebrated at home as news of his Nemean victory is received by individuals from Alexandria to the Kinyps (the westernmost border of the Ptolemaic empire).33 In the other direction, Sosibius made a dedication at Pelusium after his Nemean victory, a location situated on the easternmost mouth of the Nile, and doubtless at the temple of Zeus Kasios. These coastal celebrations are echoed by the personified Nile, who declares his pride in Sosibius as a local boy. As a result of these victories the Nile can hold up his head in the presence of other rivers. Further, references to local spaces (at least from what we can see in the fragments) seem to alternate with locations in mainland Greece: the Isthmian victory with Asbystian (i.e., Libyan) horses; praise of Poseidon at the Isthmus versus the Egyptian Nile’s speech; competition at Athens versus the local games (Ptolemaia or Basileia); dedication in Argos versus dedication at Pelusium. This gesture has the effect of making Egypt and Alexandria sites commensurate with those in mainland Greece, thus reinforcing the importance of the new imperial power on the Panhellenic stage. Temporally, Callimachus structures his epinician around previous moments of performance. The initial σπείσωμεν requires us to imagine a symposium or at least the location where the celebration of the new Nemean victory is taking place; but before that victory is celebrated, the poet recalls the hymn from the earlier Isthmian victory; since that is a hymn to Poseidon, by implication it was sung at the site of the Isthmian games. The Nemean victory is obviously being celebrated in Alexandria, where the personified Nile proclaims his delight. Later, Sosibius (if he is the speaker) recalls another performance, the reception of a kômos after his Athenian victory; in the next fragment, the rare term, ἐπίκωμος, should indicate that he was a participant in a kômos at the time of his dedication for his Nemean victory, now at Pelusium. While these are types of performance for three different victories (and another may have occurred the lost section on the Basileia or Ptolemaia), their incorporation into one epinician functions to recall moments of past performance. One further point: given the existence of a real laudandus (Sosibius) it would seem perverse to view these embedded moments of performance as fictional; rather they should confirm the existence of a lived practice. 32. Whether or not Isthmian 3 and 4 comprise one poem or two is disputed. See Golden 1999: 119 for other men who proceeded from gymnic events to win harness victories. 33. The news of Berenice’s victory was similarly localized, but in a smaller compass — the distance from the Pharos to Helen’s island (at Abukir Bay, near Arsinoe’s temple at Cape Zephyrium) was about 15 miles.

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Finally, a point that I made in another place in greater detail,34 but I think important to reiterate: while there is no doubt that dedicatory epigram has influenced Callimachus’ epinician (as the embedded epigram reminds us), the overall shape of the ode is reminiscent of honorific career inscriptions that became popular in the Hellenistic period.35 But the fact that the laudandus himself seems to speak is unique. There is, however, a well-known Egyptian parallel: the autobiographical inscription, in which the subject makes a case for his own worthiness, particularly in caring for the poor and supporting the weak against the strong. This seems to be precisely the claim that Sosibius makes in the last few surviving lines.

5. Conclusion These epinicia must have been written near or shortly after the death of Ptolemy II, when the position of the Ptolemies in old Greece had been eclipsed by Antigonus II Gonatas of Macedon, and after the disastrous attempt of Apamê II in Cyrene to broker a marriage between her daughter Berenice II and Demetrius the Fair (Antigonus’ brother). This ended in Demetrius’ murder (ca. 249 BCE), and Berenice was thought to have been complicit. Given this history, Berenice II was both a valuable commodity and a potential liability for the Ptolemies. Her epinician therefore needed to steer a delicate course between too much praise, her Cyrenean background, and what that might mean for the Ptolemies. In this context Callimachus uses the occasion of Berenice’s Nemean victory to locate her firmly as a Ptolemy (“holy blood of the sibling gods”) and a bride (nympha), but (from the fragments that we have) he spends no time praising her; rather he takes the occasion to reassert the ancestral relationship of Egypt and Argos (i.e., old Greece) at a time when it was frayed, employing a mythological exemplum that narrates a labor of Heracles. Heracles was an important heroic ancestor claimed by the Ptolemies (and virtually all of the other dynasts), and he was relevant to the origins of the Nemean Games. But Callimachus does so in such a way that he incorporates an object lesson in hospitality and kindness (Molorchus), not as specifically addressed to the laudanda, but in keeping with moral positions that he has staked out in other poems (most obviously the Hecale). If Berenice appears to have been mostly missing from her epinician, Sosibius is repeatedly present, so much so that he even seems to have a 34. Stephens (2002: 259-261). 35. See van Bremen’s discussion (2007: 352-354).

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speaking part. Callimachus’ strategy for the Sosibius is to showcase him in several ways: as a fine representative of Alexandria, winning in multiple events as youth and man, receiving a kômos in Athens, making dedications to Argive (Greek) Hera and Egyptian Zeus,36 and as a man who “supports the weak against the strong”. Callimachus is much more present in the Sosibius, seemingly re-performing his Isthmian remarks, and recalling celebrations and dedications elsewhere, as well as celebrating the more recent Nemean victory. Both odes belong to the tradition of epinicia, whether lyric or elegiac, but the different encomiastic strategies are a necessary accommodation to the status of the subjects, and to their circumstances. The question, of course, is to what extent these epinicia were unique events after a long hiatus, or were simply part of an on-going but now largely invisible practice of celebrating athletic victors. In what I have set out above, I think the latter is true: that Callimachus was on a well-trodden path and one with well-established formulae that could be adapted as the occasion dictated. I would further suggest that to think of his epinicia as generic blending (Kreuzung der Gattungen) does them a disservice, implying as it does, the deliberate grafting from one generically unique type to another. I would propose a more flexible biological model, that of selective adaptation. In this model forms (read genres) and formulas evolve over time as occasions permit or demand. It can account for the varieties of Pindaric epinicia that do not fit models fixed by critics (whether ancient or modern) as well as our two extant examples of what Callimachus chose to write. REFERENCES Agócs, P., 2012, “Performance and Genre: Reading Pindar’s κῶμοι”. In: P. Agócs, C. Carey & R. Rawles (eds), 191-223. Agócs, P., C. Carey & R. Rawles (eds), 2012, Reading the Victory Ode. Cambridge. Austin, C. & G. Bastianini (eds), 2002, Posidippi Pellaei quae supersunt omnia. Milan. Bennett, C., 2005, “Arsinoe and Berenice at the Olympics”. ZPE 154, 91-96. Blum, R., 1991, Kallimachos. The Alexandrian Library and the Origins of Bibliography. Tr. H. Wellisch (U Wisconsin Press). Braswell, B. K., 1992, A Commentary on Pindar Nemean 1. Freibourg, Switzerland. Bremen, R. van, 2007, “The Entire House is Full of Crowns: Hellenistic Agônes and the Commemoration of Victory”. In: S. Hornblower & C. Morgan, 345-376. 36. Zeus Kasios was thought to have been the Egyptian Harpocrates.

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Cazzadori, L., 2016, “Callimachus on Agones and Athletes”. In: C. Mann, S. Remijsen, and S. Scharff (eds), Athletics in the Hellenistic World, Stuttgart, 315-330. Criscuolo, L., 2003, “Agoni e politica alla corte di Alessandria. Riflessioni su alcuni epigrammi di Posidippo”. Chiron 33: 311-333. Fuhrer, T., 1992, Die Auseinandersetzung mit den Chorlyrikern in den Epinikien des Kallimachos. Basel. Golden, M., 1999, Sport and Society in Ancient Greece. Cambridge. Gow, A.S.F., 1950, Theocritus. Vol. II Commentary. Cambridge. Harder, M. A., 2012, Callimachus, Aetia. 2 vols. Oxford. Hornblower, S., 2012, “What happened later to the families of patrons?” In: P. Agócs, C. Carey & R. Rawles, 93-107. Hornblower, S. & C. Morgan (eds), 2007, Pindar’s Poetry, Patrons & Festivals. From Archaic Greece to the Roman Empire. Oxford. Kampakoglou, A.,2013, “Victory, Mythology, and the Poetics of Intercultural Praise in Callimachus’ Victoria Berenices”. Trends in Classics 5.1, 112-143. Koenen, L., 1977, Eine agonistische Inschrift aus Ägypten und frühptolemäische Königsfeste (Beiträge zur klassischen Philologie 56). Meisenheim am Glan, 79-86. Kyle, D., 2014, “Greek Athletic Competitions. The Ancient Olympics and More”. In: P. Christesen and D. Kyle (eds.), A Companion to Sport and Spectacle in Greek and Roman Antiquity. Wiley Blackwell, 21-35. Lightfoot, J. L., 2009, A Hellenistic Collection. (Loeb Classical Library). Cambridge, MA. Lowe, N. J., 2007, “Epinikian Eidography”. In: S. Hornblower & C. Morgan, 167-176. Moretti, L., 1957, “Olympionikai: I vincitori negli antichi agoni olimpici”. Atti della accademia nazionale dei Lincei: Mem. scienza morali 8, 53-198. Morgan, K., 2015, Pindar and the Construction of the Syracusan Monarchy in the Fifth Century BC. Oxford. Morrison, A., 2012, “Performance, re-performance, and Pindar’s audience”. In: P. Agócs, C. Carey & R. Rawles, 111-133. Nicholson, N., 2016, The Poetics of Victory in the Greek West. Epinician, Oral Tradition, and the Deinomenid Empire. Oxford. Remijsen, S., 2009, “Challenged by Egyptians: Greek Sports in the Third Century BC”. The International Journal of the History of Sport 26.2, 246-271. Stephens, S., 2002, “Egyptian Callimachus”. In: F. Montanari & L. Lehnus (eds.), Callimaque. Entretiens sur l’antiquité classique. Geneva, 235-270. —, 2003. Seeing Double. Intercultural Poetics in Ptolemaic Alexandria. Berkeley and Los Angeles. Thompson, D., 2005, “Posidippus, Poet of the Ptolemies”. In: K. Gutzwiller (ed.), The New Posidippus. A Hellenistic Poetry Book. Oxford, 269-83. —, 2018, “P. Oxy. 17.2082 and Berenice I’s Victory with Foals (Posidippus 87 A-B).” ZPE 206, 35-39. Williams, F., 1996, “In and out of the rut: Callimachus fr. 1.25–8 and Anniceris of Cyrene”. ZPE 110, 40-42.

DID ERYSICHTHON EAT THE CAT? SOME REFLECTIONS ON CALL. H.6.110 Frederick WILLIAMS

I am delighted to have been invited as a guest speaker at the Workshop in honour of Professor Annette Harder, and to be able to thank her for all she has done to further the study of Hellenistic poetry. I imagine that everyone present will be aware of how much of Annette’s time and energies in recent years have been devoted to Callimachus; I imagine that most of them will also be aware of the important role in her life that is played by her cats (my wife’s photograph shows how her affection for the species was also lavished on our tabbies Leto and Theseus when she visited us in Ireland: I trust she approved of the Callimachean allusions in their names.). So I would like to examine the point at which those two important subjects come together, the only place where Callimachus mentions, or seems to mention, a cat.

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You will remember that in the moral tale embedded in Callimachus’ Hymn to Demeter, Erysichthon committed a series of blasphemies against Demeter, first by cutting down a grove of trees which were sacred to her in order to build himself a grandiose banqueting-hall,1 and when, in disguise, she attempted to intervene to stop him, he threatened her with violence; she retaliated by inflicting on him an attack of “violent, ferocious hunger”, the melodramatic consequences of which eventually drove his father Triopas to despair, and to pray to his father Poseidon. His anguished prayer has a striking conclusion: χῆραι μὲν μάνδραι, κενεαὶ δέ μοι αὔλιες ἤδη τετραπόδων· οὐδὲν γὰρ ἀπαρνήσαντο μάγειροι. ἀλλὰ καὶ οὐρῆας μεγαλᾶν ὑπέλυσαν ἁμαξᾶν, καὶ τὰν βῶν ἔφαγεν, τὰν Ἑστίᾳ ἔτρεφε μάτηρ, καὶ τὸν ἀεθλοφόρον καὶ τὸν πολεμήιον ἵππον, καὶ τὰν αἴλουρον, τὰν ἔτρεμε θηρία μικκά.’ (h. 6.105-110) ‘My sheep-pens are devastated, my folds now empty of beasts; for the cooks never say “No” to him. Instead, they have even taken out the mules from the great wagons; and he has eaten the heifer his mother was fattening up for Hestia, and the racehorse, and the warhorse, and even the cat, that the little varmints used to tremble at.’

That (more or less) is what all our predecessors read until 1948, and they therefore might have been perplexed by the question I have posed in the title of this paper: the text clearly said that Erysichthon ate the cat, for that is what αἴλουρον means. The medieval manuscripts offered no variants, and the many great scholars, from Poliziano onwards, who have laboured to interpret Callimachus for the modern world, found no problem in line 110 and proposed no emendations to it. Only one person, as far as I have been able to discover, felt any philological discomfort about it (I hope that the distasteful thought of a man eating a cat gave them all, as it gives us, moral and aesthetic qualms).2 This was Richard Dawes, a man of sharp mind and even sharper tongue.3 In his only major work 1. A splendid modern reworking of the Erysichthon story presents him, aptly enough, as a property developer: see Hofmann, M. and J. Lasdun [edd.] (1994: 198-212). 2. Hopkinson (1984: 167) and Engels (1999: 76c) observe that weasels and cats were ‘a food-source in times of famine’, both citing Plutarch, de soll.an. 2 (= Mor. 959e). No doubt their observation is correct, for desperate people will resort to desperate measures, as in the 1870 siege of Paris, vividly documented by Baldick (1964: 146-152), but here Plutarch is writing not about humans killing weasels and cats for food, but about weasels and cats being driven by hunger to kill other animals. 3. On Dawes, see the learned and entertaining article by C. Collard in R. B. Todd [ed.], (2004: 231-232). His principal work, Miscellanea Critica, (Cambridge, 1745) has been recently reprinted (in 2015) by a publisher who goes by the lugubrious name of “Forgotten Books”.

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(1745: 478–480) he complains that “in stolidissimo quodam hymno Callimachi” — meaning, this sixth hymn — the poet uses the word αἴλουρον as trisyllabic, instead of the quadrisyllabic form αἰόλουρον, which he was proposing to restore to the texts of two writers of comedies, Anaxandrides and Timocles. Dawes may have been wrong in this, but we should at least give him credit for smelling a rat, even if he did not catch it. What changed the situation in 1948 was the publication by Edgar Lobel of P.Oxy. 2226 which very clearly reads in line 110: και τ[.]νμαλουριντ[ .4 Now μαλουρίς (or μάλουρις: there is something to be said for each accentuation) is not exactly a common word, occurring elsewhere only in the dictionary of Hesychius (ii 626 Latte): μαλουρίς· λευκόκερκος. καὶ ἥτις τὴν οὐρὰν ἔχει λευκήν. Hesychius’ explanation seems at first to make reasonable sense of our text: the ‘white-tailed creature who used to terrify the vermin’; there is some very tenuous evidence for μαλός = ‘white’, but this looks like a back-formation of a misunderstanding of the word μαλοπάραυος: see Chantraine (1980: 663a). Despite these difficulties, every subsequent editor of this hymn, as far as I have been able to ascertain, has adopted the papyrus reading: Pfeiffer (Oxford, 1953), Howald-Staiger (Zürich, 1955), Hopkinson (Cambridge, 1984), D’Alessio (Milan, 1996), Asper (Darmstadt, 2004), and Stephens (Oxford, 2015).5 In our age, which has shown a disturbing tendency towards extreme conservatism in textual criticism, such unanimity in accepting a problematic reading, and in rejecting the comprehensible manuscript reading as an intrusive gloss, seems to me remarkable, and deserving of respect. However, μαλουρίς presents a further, non-linguistic problem, in that allegedly Egypt did not produce white-tailed cats6 (and the scholion on this line certainly assumed that the animal in question was a cat: τὸν ἰδιωτικῶς λεγόμενον κάττον ‘what in ordinary speech is called cat’; the use of κάττος probably dates the note to no earlier than the fourth century A.D.7

4. The papyrus (P.Oxy.2226) can be inspected at www.papyrology.ox.ac.uk/P.Oxy. 5. To this worthy company may be added McKay (1962: 112); Fernandez-Galiano (1978: 408-409); and Nisetich (2001: 230). 6. Though the evidence for this is not impressive: see Gow (1967: 195): “Knowing … that Sir T. C. S. Morrison-Scott, Director of the British Museum (Natural History), had unwrapped a large number of cat-mummies I inquired of him what light they threw upon coloration, and he replied that they threw none since the wrappings preserved nothing but dust and bones.” 7. The first literary occurrence of cattus is in Palladius, a 4th/5th century writer on veterinary medicine; for other early instances see Souter (1949); Maltby (1991: 115) quotes from Isidore of Seville etymological theories deriving the word from captura or cattat (‘id est uidet. nam tanto acute cernit ut fulgore luminis noctis tenebras superesset.’)

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The question of the ultimate geographical provenance of cats is nowadays much debated; but for the Greeks the animal was essentially Egyptian, like the crocodile and the hippopotamus; hence it is treated by Herodotus along with the other weird and wonderful features of that country.8 The cat’s prowess at killing the rodents which would otherwise deplete stocks of grain presumably won it acceptance from the farmers of that fabulously fertile land, which owed its enormous wealth and its magnetic attraction of economic migrants to its provision for storage of grain harvested in good years,9 and so the cat appears to have been thoroughly domesticated by 2000 B.C.10 After achieving utility it advanced to membership of the bourgeoisie, in which capacity it is often depicted sitting under the chair of the mistress of the prosperous household,11 and finally to divinity, and as such it shared the worship, and the physical attributes, of the goddess Bastet. The first mention of the word αἰέλουρος in extant Greek literature suggests however that it was still regarded, at least by fifth-century Satyrs in Arcadia, as a wild and exotic creature.12 Greek visitors to Egypt such as Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus remarked on the reverence that was shown towards cats.13 A documentary papyrus14 shows that professional cat-feeders could claim, in a plaintive appeal to a very senior official, that their calling entitled them to exemption from compulsory labour. (They were presumably minor officials in the service of Bastet, rather than unpaid amateurs like ourselves.) Aristotle duly described the species,15 but gave no indication of where he had studied them. Line 110 raises the vexed question of whether the cat, after conquering Egypt, had colonized Greece by the classical period, though perhaps we should be asking whether Callimachus had grounds for believing that cats had made their way into Thessaly in the heroic age. Some scholars (whom I presume to be cat-lovers) are prepared to believe that cats had indeed been assimilated into Greek life at quite an early stage. For example Hugh Lloyd-Jones, in his commentary on Semonides 7, which he Greek seems to have taken over the word from Latin: Sophocles (1914: 654b) lists early examples of its use. 8. Hdt. 2.66 9. Cf. the stories of Joseph’s organization of the corn stocks in Genesis 41.47-49; unfortunately the text does not mention what steps were taken to control rodents. 10. Malek (1993: 56). 11. Illustrations in Malek (1993: 57, 58, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 71). 12. Sophocles, Ichneutae 303 (Diggle). 13. Hdt. 2.66, Diodorus 1.83. 14. P.Cairo. Zenon 59451.2, edited by Edgar (1928) in Catalogue général des antiquités égyptiennes du Musée du Caire: Zenon Papyri (Cairo, 1928). 15. Hist. Anim. 580a24 and elsewhere.

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called Females of the Species and published in 1975 (which had been designated ‘International Women’s Year’ by the United Nations), makes this comment on lines 50-56, the ‘weasel woman’: “Keller I.160f.16 maintains that the weasel was the ordinary domestic mouse-killer of the ancient world as late as the fifth century B.C. If true, that is surprising. Since the reign of Psammetichus in the middle of the seventh century the Greeks had been in close contact with Egypt ... and must have been familiar with the cat; and what civilised human being could prefer the weasel, with its foul smell and thievish habits, when a cat was available? ... The weasel was proverbial for darting about, for lasciviousness, for stealing and for stinking; see Keller 1.164f ... But one feature of Semonides’ γαλῆ hardly suits the domestic weasel: its extreme ugliness:17 The domestic weasel is rather a pretty little creature; but the ferret, called by the Greeks Ταρτησσία γαλῆ or ἀγρία γαλῆ, originating in Spain and North Africa and known to them as early as Herodotus ... is a repulsivelooking beast ... the hideousness of Semonides’ beast sounds more like the ‘wild’ or ‘Tartessian’ weasel, i.e. the ferret, than the ordinary variety.”18

“Must have been” is a form of words that betrays lack of actual evidence, and “what civilised human being could prefer the weasel… when a cat was available?” is highly subjective; as for the weasel’s “foul smell”, were seventh-century Greeks, who, after all, knew nothing of toothpaste or deodorants, so very fastidious? And how would a “civilized human being” react to the distinctive fragrance of an unneutered tomcat? I would like here to make a few observations, in no particular order, on the disputed question of whether Classical Greece knew and loved the cat, which was taken up by Dr Hopkinson in a characteristically learned footnote to his lengthy commentary on line 110. I am in principle dubious about the validity of taking artistic representations of animals as evidence for their creator’s familiarity with live specimens: for example, Professor Jocelyn Toynbee (1973: 90) describes a funerary stele from Bordeaux with “a particularly realistic rendering” of a cat. Catherine John has since re-examined it and declared that it is a puppy.19 Also, depicted animals may even be non-existent: many of the coins both of Scotland and of the (still just) United Kingdom depict a unicorn; but, I regret that, despite frequent visits and extensive journeys throughout both territories, I have yet to catch sight of that wondrous 16. The reference is to Keller (1909), a monumental but obsolescent work which I hope to see superseded in the not too distant future. 17. “Nothing about her is beautiful or desirable, pleasing or lovable,” says the poet in Lloyd-Jones’s translation (p.46) of lines 51-2. 18. H. Lloyd-Jones (1975: 76-77). 19. See M. Henig’s introduction to the second edition (2013) of Toynbee (1973: p.vi).

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beast. (I confess that I have not so far extended my searches to Sauchiehall Street late on Saturday night.) One of the procedures I personally apply to the study of Hellenistic poetry, and commend to others, is this: do not neglect the evidence of the Septuagint, which consists of two thousand or more pages of Greek written in the very period that we profess to study. Sometimes it may help to solve our problem; but at the very least it may turn up something interesting. Alas, the question of the cat comes into the second category. In spite of the provocative title of an informative book, Why are there no cats in the Bible?,20 the Septuagint does indeed mention cats — once only, and in an obscure and almost inaccessible place — but that should not surprise any cat-owner who has had to rescue a cat from the top of a wardrobe, or extricate her from what had seemed an unprepossessing empty cardboard box. It comes in the Epistle of Jeremiah, (which is neither an epistle nor by Jeremiah, but a Cynic-seeming diatribe against pagan idolatry)21; verse 21 reads: ἐπὶ τὸ σῶμα αὐτῶν καὶ ἐπὶ τὴν κεφαλὴν ἐφίπτανται νυκτερίδες, χελιδόνες καὶ τὰ ὄρνεα, ὡσαύτως δὲ καὶ οἱ αἴλουροι. “Bats, swallows and birds fly up to their [i.e. the pagan gods’] bodies and their heads, just as also the cats do.”22

I confess that this verse, plucked from a problematic work (we do not know whether it was a translation of a lost Hebrew text, or was originally written in Greek by someone who did not know the language, or indeed either language, very well), does not help us very much; but what of the real Bible, the place where ancient truths could be read by one and all, even by the illiterate or the presbyopic? I mean of course the night sky: there sailors and farmers and the night watchman on Agamemnon’s palace roof could gaze, and remind themselves of the great exploits of the gods and heroes. They would see there a Dog, a Ram, a Lion, a Bull, a Scorpion, a Winged horse, a Centaur, and many others, all with stories attached; but no cat. Cats simply do not play any part in Greek folklore, and there is no cat among the catasterisms.23 20. Davidson (2009). Davidson does in fact mention the verse in question, on p. 50: “The ‘cats’ in Baruch 6.22 is thought by many to refer to wild cats”; modern usage would, I think, prefer the term ‘semi-feral’. 21. In some versions of the Bible (e.g. the Vulgate) it is treated as c.6 of Baruch, which itself is regarded as apocryphal in most English editions. 22. I have slightly modified the translation of Wright, in Pietersma and Wright (2007: 944), in order to bring out the incongruity of the noun αἴλουροι governing the verb ἐφίπτανται. For attempts to emend away the textual problem see Lee (1971). 23. In 1799 the French astronomer and cat-lover Jérôme de Lalande sought to remedy this deficiency, and recorded the existence of a constellation which he named Felis, but in 1922 the International Astronomical Union decided to disallow it.

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When one is searching for a missing cat, it is sensible to bear in mind the places the animal usually frequents. So I have searched in some of the likely spots where, to judge from the habits of English cats, one might expect to find some trace of their Greek counterparts, if that is cats had been allowed to assume the sort of role that they play in English, or, I believe, in Dutch life and culture. (Here I would like to express my admiration for the Poezenboot in Amsterdam, a floating sanctuary for lost and stray cats; it is on the Singel, quite near the Central Station, and well worth a visit.)24 One such spot is in the short and pithy sayings, the adages that are passed on from one generation to another to encapsulate the accumulated wisdom of the race, proverbs. Cats have found their way into a number of our English proverbs:25 “a cat in gloves catches no mice” is one I have never heard in living speech, but we do often nowadays accuse timid people of “pussyfooting”; “a cat may look at a king” neatly expresses the compatibility of a constitutionally monarchical state with healthy democratic attitudes. “The cat would eat fish, but would not wet her feet” is one we borrowed from medieval Latin: cattus amat piscem, sed non vult tingere plantas. Self-explanatory are: “curiosity killed the cat”; “when the cat’s away, the mice will play” and “keep no more cats than will catch mice”, or: “all cats are grey in the dark”. In Greek however I have found only Ἀθηνᾷ τὸν αἴλουρον (Zenobius, Cent.ii 25 = Diogenianus Cent.i 63),26 If γαλέαι were cats, as used to be thought, one could enlist as a proverb Praxinoa’s wise words in Theocritus, Id.15.28: αἱ γαλέαι μαλακῶς χρῄζοντι καθεύδειν.27 But proverbs are not the only province that cats have invaded and made themselves comfortable in. Ordinary English speech contains a huge tribe of feline idioms which have, I think, no parallel in Greek or for that matter in Latin. Most obviously, the adjective “catty”, applied to persons who make insulting remarks about other people. An unhappy relationship is “a cat and dog life” (I am however happy to report that my own dogs and cats have lived on amiable terms with each other, only occasionally resorting to affectionate contempt). Those ingenious devices 24. For details, see https://depoezenboot.nl/en. 25. I am indebted here to J.A. Simpson (1982). 26. Leutsch-Schneidewin, (1839: i 39, ii 10): ἐπὶ τῶν συγκρινόντων τὰ κρείττω τοῖς ἥττοσι διὰ μικρὰν ὁμοιότητα· ὡς εἴ τις διὰ γλαυκότητα τὸν αἴλουρον τῇ Ἀθηνᾷ συμβάλοι. 27. Gow (1952: ii 111) did indeed translate this as “Cats like soft beds”, but insisted in his commentary (ii 276) that γαλέαι were “weasels or martens, the domestic mousers of antiquity”, incurring the disapproval of Benton (1969: 261); for Gow’s (partial) palinode, see Gow (1967). Praxinoa is, of course, like Sancho Panza, much given to clichés and phrases which sound rather like proverbs: see Williams (1973: 52-67, esp. 58 and n.20).

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of rubber and reflective glass that are set in the middle of roads, especially in the countryside, are called “cats’ eyes”, reasonably enough, since they enable us humans, less well-endowed than our cats, to see in the dark. A few minutes with one’s eyes closed (during an over-long lecture, for example) is a “catnap”. If, as happens all too often, we are afflicted with heavy rain, “it is raining cats and dogs”. An early form of radio communication depended on “cat’s whiskers”, though the phrase has more recently also been used to denote a precious possession or attribute; in this latter sense, it seems to be giving way to the puzzling expression the “cat’s pyjamas”. If an agile criminal is able to climb into a difficult building to steal its contents, he is a “cat burglar”. Many other examples could be cited of the enormous linguistic debt we owe to our feline companions and their ways.28 Another area where the cat shows its cultural importance in a catfriendly society is popular literature. I do not know if other cultures have an equivalent to the English nursery rhymes, that body of very varied and often nonsensical traditional ditties, orally transmitted at least to the seventeenth century, and passed on to pre-school children by their parents and other carers, so constituting for most English-speaking children their first experience of literature. The standard collection of this corpus was edited by Iona and Peter Opie, who devoted their lives to the study of children’s games, lore, and language:29 it contains 550 rhymes; cats are mentioned in 39 of them, reflecting how frequently the cat is a member of the household and indeed is for many children (as it was for me) their first and closest acquaintance with animal life. Two examples of this genre: Pussy cat, pussy cat, where have you been? – I’ve been to London to look at the queen. Pussy cat, pussy cat, what did you there? – I frightened a little mouse under her chair.30

Another example has for centuries attracted much ingenious but misplaced scholiastic activity: Hey diddle diddle, The cat and the fiddle, The cow jumped over the moon; 28. I concede that to a very small extent the γαλῆ did give rise to some vivid Greek expressions, especially but not exclusively deriving from its notorious penchant for breaking wind malodorously; see Taillardat (1965: § 47 (with footnote), 495, 823), Henderson (1991: 195-199). 29. (1951). I record with sadness that Iona Opie died on 23 October 2017, a few weeks after our meeting. 30. Opie and Opie (1951: 357 [no. 428]).

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The little dog laughed To see such sport, And the dish ran away with the spoon.

(This poetic gem has led the author of a recent book on cats in the ancient world31 to propose that the rhyme is all about the worship of Isis, which, he suggests, persisted in some form or other well into the Middle Ages:32 it is a pity he did not ponder the Opies’ verdict on the ditty: “Probably the best-known nonsense verse in the language, a considerable amount of nonsense has been written about it.”33 Their succinct dismissal of the pretentious nonsense of some commentators, as opposed to the imaginative nonsense of the rhymester, is a precious masterpiece.) It may seem disrespectful to compare this body of homespun verse with the Greek Anthology, but I note that the only poems on cats contained in the latter are about the murder by the 6th century A.D. poet Agathias’ cat of his pet partridge.34 While the death of any companion animal is a distressing event, and often gives rise to poetic expression, there is no elegy to a deceased cat in that vast collection. One peculiarly English art form in which cats have made themselves at home is the pantomime, a quasi-Aristophanic theatrical performance staged in mid-winter (traditionally starting on 26 December, but commercial pressures have recently led to an earlier starting date). It is a very lowbrow sort of drama, featuring much earthy humour, cross-dressing, some semi-ritual audience participation, and a lot of popular songs, sung, or amplified, very loud. The plots are normally taken from folklore, or well-known children’s stories such as Cinderella, Aladdin, Peter Pan, Robin Hood, Sleeping Beauty. Two of the most popular examples feature cats (played of course by a male human actor): Puss in Boots, which is essentially a reworking of Perrault’s story, and Dick Whittington and his cat. This is a dramatic version of a much-loved story of how Dick Whittington (traditionally played by a nubile young woman), a poor orphan boy born in the countryside, makes his way to the great city of London, where he believes that all the streets are paved with gold, in search of a better life. He is eventually given a home by a rich merchant who 31. Engels (1999: 42-43). 32. Engels (1999: 162-170). 33. Opie and Opie (1951: 203-204). 34. A.P. 7.204-206. A.P. 11.359 compares a rapacious ruler to a thieving cat. Cf. Douglas (1974: 14): “They seem to have made no pet of this ailouros ...The modern gatta is still no great favourite in Greek households.” Though those of us who remember Psipsina in Louis de Bernières’ novel Captain Corelli’s Mandolin (1994), might wish to challenge that second sentence.

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employs him in the kitchen; he is assigned a bedroom high up in the house, under the roof; but he cannot sleep because of the noise made by the mice and rats which scamper about throughout the night. Undaunted, Dick earns a penny by cleaning shoes, and with it he buys a cat, who makes short work of the problem. Some time later, his patron announces that he is going to make a trading journey to the East and invites any of the servants to entrust him with goods which he can take on board his ship and sell to the foreigners on their behalf. All that Dick can think of to offer is his super-efficient cat; but, bereft both of his pet and his patron, he becomes so miserable that he decides to run away back to his old home in the country. On Highgate Hill, then just outside London, he pauses, and listens to the church bells ringing; one of them seems to him to be saying, over and over again “Turn again, Whittington, thrice [three times] mayor of London”. (Clocks which chime to this same rhythm can still be bought.) Moved by this omen, he goes back to the merchant’s house, where he finds his patron has returned from the East; what is more, he has sold Dick’s cat to the sultan of Barbary, who had been suffering from a severe rodent problem, and paid handsomely for the foreign animal who could solve it for him. So, thanks to his cat, Dick suddenly finds himself a rich man, able to marry Alice, his master’s daughter, and to make a very successful career in business. That is the μῦθος, which gives the starring role to the admirable cat who enables Dick to make the spectacular move from rags to riches; but history tells a different, but still remarkable, story; the real Richard Whittington was born about 1350, but to wealthy parents; however, being a younger son he did not inherit his father’s substantial estate, and, perforce, became a mercer (trader in cloth) in London. He turned out to be a shrewd businessman; in addition to exporting the fashionable English broadcloth to the continent, he supplied cloth to the king, and indeed lent large sums of money to him and to successive kings. He did, as the bells had predicted, become mayor of London, not three but four times, and held other offices in the City and state. In private life he was perhaps less fortunate, since he and Alice had no children to inherit their fabulous fortune; Sir Richard died in 1423, leaving in his will the huge sum of £7000 to be used for charitable purposes (including the building of a public toilet with accommodation for 120 of London’s citizens). It is pleasing to record that the Charity of Sir Richard Whittington still exists, almost six hundred years after his death: it has an annual income of about £3 million, much of which is used to house and support a hundred or so elderly women in London and the rural delights of Sussex. Let us hope they are allowed to keep cats.

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Conclusion: the grafting of the cat-story (not altogether dissimilar to Perrault’s later version of the tale) onto the notable account of a strikingly successful entrepreneur is strong evidence for a general attitude of sympathy, even admiration of the intelligence and usefulness of the cat for which there seems to be no parallel in classical Greece. One would like to think that one of the masters of Old Comedy could have produced a memorable play with such a plot, possibly even that Aristophanes might have written lyrics for a chorus of cats. It is of course true that Aristophanes does use the word αἰέλουρος once in his surviving comedies, when a travelling salesman from Boeotia lists, in his own dialect, the goods he has for sale: καὶ μὰν φέρω χᾶνας λαγὼς ἀλώπεκας σκάλοπας ἐχίνως αἰελούρως πικτίδας ἰκτίδας ἐνύδριας ἐγχέλεις Κωπαΐδας. Aye, an’ I’m bringing maukins, geese, an’ tods, easels an’ weasels, urchins, moles, an’ cats, an’ otters too, an’ eels frae Loch Copais. (Acharnians 878880, tr. Rogers)35.

But that is all, and Aristophanes’ failure to recognize the comic potentialities of cats must be added to the many argumenta ex silentio that can be amassed to suggest that those animals, to us so endearing and intriguing, did not touch the Athenians’ or indeed the Greeks’ hearts, that in fact once cats had made their way to Greece, they were valued only as killers, not as companions. So it would seem that Erysichthon is not condemned because he offended against sentimental regard for a treasured pet, but because he destroyed an economically valuable member of the royal household, on a par with the mules who provided transport, or the ox that laboured in the fields.36 At this point, I should like to observe an oddity in Triopas’ prayer which has not previously, as far as I know, attracted comment: the king complains that all his quadrupeds have been consumed by his ravenous son, but he does not mention the dogs, who would have played a very important role or roles in the life of a royal household of the heroic age as in their modern counterparts: they served as guards, as participants in that quintessentially royal pastime of hunting, and as status symbols. Can it be that the arch-villain Erysichthon actually had a soft spot for the 35. Rogers in his translation (London, 1910), chose Scots dialect to represent Boeotian: maukin is ‘hare’ ; tod is ‘fox’, urchin is ‘hedgehog’. 36. So Ovid’s Pythagoras condemns animal sacrifice as a form of cannibalism: cumque boum dabitis caesorum membra palato, / mandere uos uestros scite et sentite colonos. (Met. 15.141-142)

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dogs, and spared them? If he did, the archaeologists have shown us some suggestive parallels.37 Alternatively could some bowdlerizing scribe who was also a dog-lover have removed offending line or lines? Admiration of the dog is of course at least as old as the Odyssey. On his return to Ithaca, Odysseus is, at first, unrecognized by his friends and family members, but his old dog Argos (note he has a flattering name, whereas we know of no cat in Greco-Roman antiquity who is given any name at all) acknowledges his master even after many years of absence; he then dies, and both Eumaeus and Odysseus praise his prowess as a hunter.38 Their eulogies are matched almost a millennium later by the fulsome language of Arrian’s moving obituary notice of his hound Hormé, “πρᾳοτάτη τε καὶ φιλανθρωποτάτη ... ὠκυτάτη τε καὶ σοφωτάτη καὶ ἱερωτάτη”, who in retirement after a distinguished hunting career became a devoted companion dog, escorting her master to the gymnasium, sharing his meals and sleeping, it would appear, on his bed.39 For comparable praise of a cat as the cherished partner of a human being, we must wait several centuries.40 And when it comes, it is not in Greek or Latin, but in Old Irish, the vernacular of the many hundreds of scholarly and pious monks who left their native Ireland to baptize and to civilize the barbarous continent of Europe, establishing monasteries which became great centres of learning for hundreds of years: Bobbio, Luxeuil, St. Gall and many others.41 We do not know the author’s name, though we can deduce from the contents of the notebook in which he wrote this poem that he was struggling somewhat with the Greek of the Pauline epistles. But we do know his cat’s name: Pangur Bán.42 As Old 37. Clark (2001: 51) mentions that at the Neolithic site of Jarmo, in Iraqi Kurdistan, figurines of ‘doglike animals were found, but no teeth or bones of dogs, suggesting that dogs’ carcasses ‘must have been disposed of away from the village’; again (53) at Qermez Dere in Iraq, ‘more than 4000 fragments of animal bones were identified, including those of foxes, hares, and cats, but ‘dogs ... appear not to have been eaten or if they were kept for hunting, guarding or cultic purposes their remains were not buried at the site.’ 38. The words put into Eumaeus’ mouth by Homer are echoed in Cercidas, Antoninus Liberalis, Appian, and Oppian: see Williams (2002: 40). 39. Arrian, Cyn. 5; Arrian recommends in c. 9 that hounds should sleep on their master’s bed. 40. To the best of my knowledge; but if any reader is aware of an older eulogy of a cat, in whatever language, I would be most grateful and interested to know of it. 41. For a brief survey of the Irish contribution to the preservation of classical culture, see Reynolds and Wilson (1968: 74-75); for its spiritual dimension, von Padberg (2006: 42-46). 42. Bán means ‘white’, and Pangur seems to be a Celtic word, more Welsh than Irish, for ‘fuller’, so we have at last discovered our white cat. I entertain a private, and unprovable, theory that his name contains an almost Callimachean punning allusion to Bangor, the town in County Down at whose abbey many Irish missionaries, possibly including our poet, were trained.

DID ERYSICHTHON EAT THE CAT?

381

Irish is these days no better known than Greek or Latin, I quote the poem in the translation made by Robin Flower, one of the English litterateurs who in the early years of the twentieth century encouraged the revival of interest in the Irish language and its literature:43 I and Pangur Bán my cat, ‘Tis a like task we are at: Hunting mice is his delight, Hunting words I sit all night. Better far than praise of men ‘Tis to sit with book and pen; Pangur bears me no ill-will, He too plies his simple skill. ‘Tis a merry sight to see At our tasks how glad are we, When at home we sit and find Entertainment to our mind. Oftentimes a mouse will stray In the hero Pangur’s way; Oftentimes my keen thought set Takes a meaning in its net. When a mouse darts from its den, O how glad is Pangur then! O what gladness do I prove When I solve the doubts I love! So in peace our task we ply, Pangur Bán, my cat, and I; In our arts we find our bliss, I have mine and he has his. Practice every day has made Pangur perfect in his trade; I get wisdom day and night Turning darkness into light.

My ramble has brought us back to our starting-point in Ireland, where we noted the mutual affinity felt by cats and classical scholars, so I hope this is a fitting note on which to wish Annette, in whose honour we have come together, many happy and productive years of retirement; and 43. Robin Flower (1881-1946) was a Keeper of Manuscripts in the British Museum, and one of the first Englishmen to show a scholarly interest in the Irish language and its literature; he encouraged the Greek scholar George Thomson and the novelist E.M. Forster to follow his example. His translation of the poem is the best-known, though it now seems a little dated. There is a more modern version by the Nobel Prize winner Seamus Heaney at https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/48267/pangur-ban.

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whatever his (or her) colour, may there always be a Pangur Bán beside you to share your labours and your triumphs. I trust that the two of you will produce a solution to the intriguing problem which I have done no more than survey. REFERENCES Baldick, R., 1964, The Siege of Paris (Cited from NEL paperback edition of 1974). London. Benton, S., 1969, “Pet Weasels: Theocritus xv.28”, CR 19, 260-263. de Bernières, L., 1994, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. London. Clark, T., 2001, “The Dogs of the Ancient Near East”. In: Douglas Brewer, Terence Clark, Adrian Phillips (eds), Dogs in Antiquity: Anubis to Cerberus: The origins of the domestic dog. Oxford, 49-80. Davidson, G., 2009, Why are there No Cats in the Bible? London. Dawes, R., 1745, Miscellanea Critica. Cambidge; reprinted 2017[?] (Forgotten Books, London). Douglas, N., 1974, Birds and Beasts of the Greek Anthology. London (earlier edition, Italy 1928). Edgar, C.C. (ed.), 1928, Catalogue général des antiquités égyptiennes du Musée du Caire: Zenon Papyri. Cairo. Engels, D., 1999, Classical Cats: The rise and fall of the sacred cat. London and New York. Fernandez-Galiano, E., 1978, Léxico de los Himnos de Calímaco iii. Madrid. Gow, A.S.F., 1952, Theocritus, edited with a translation and commentary, two volumes, 2nd edition. Cambridge. Gow, A.S.F., 1967, “Mousers in Egypt”, Classical Quarterly 17, 195-197. Henderson, J., 1991, The Maculate Muse: Obscene Language in Attic Comedy. 2nd edition. Oxford. Hofmann, M. and J. Lasdun (edd.), 1994, After Ovid: New Metamorphoses. London. Hopkinson, N., 1984, Callimachus, Hymn to Demeter: edited with an introduction and commentary. Cambridge. Keller, O., 1909, Die antike Tierwelt. 2nd edition. Leipzig. Lee, G.M., 1971, “Apocryphal Cats: Baruch 6:21”, Vetus Testamentum 21, 111-112. Leutsch, E.L. and F.G. Schneidewin, 1839, Corpus Paroemiographorum Graecorum 2 vols. Göttingen (repr. Hildesheim, 1965). Lloyd-Jones, H., 1975, Females of the Species: Semonides on Women. London McKay, K.J., 1962, Erysichthon: A Callimachean Comedy. Leiden. Malek, J., 1993, The Cat in Ancient Egypt. London. Maltby, R., 1991, A Lexicon of Ancient Latin Etymologies. Leeds. Nisetich, F., 2001, The Poems of Callimachus, translated with introduction, notes, and glossary. Oxford. Opie, I. and P. Opie, 1951, The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes. Oxford. Padberg, L.E. von, 2006, Christianisierung im Mittelalter. Darmstadt. Pietersma, A. and B.G. Wright (edd.), 2007, A New English Translation of the Septuagint. New York and Oxford.

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Reynolds, L.D. and N.G. Wilson, 1968, Scribes and Scholars: a Guide to the Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature. Oxford. Simpson, J.A., 1982, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs. Oxford. Sophocles, E.A., 1914, Greek Lexicon of the Roman and Byzantine Periods. Cambridge, MA, and Leipzig (repr. Hildesheim 1983). Souter, A., 1949, A Glossary of Later Latin to 600 A.D. Oxford. Taillardat. J., 1965, Les Images d’Aristophane: Études de Langue et de Style. 2nd ed. Paris. Todd, R.B. (ed.), 2004, The Dictionary of British Classicists. 3 vols. Bristol. Toynbee, J.M.C., 1973, Animals in Roman Life and Art. London (republished with new introduction by Martin Henig (Barnsley, 2013)). Williams, F., 1973, “ Ὦ in Theocritus”, Eranos 81, 52-67. —, 2002, “Canine Language in a Cynic Poet?”, ZPE 139, 40-42.

INDEXES INDEX RERUM ET NOMINUM

Abortion (in Aristaenetus): 46-48 Achilles: 123-143 Achilles Tatius: 51, 60, 62-63 Acontius and Cydippe: 30-34, 37-38, 40, 43-46, 59, 82-85, 332-334, 338346 Adonis: 20-21 Aeneas: 52, 82 Aesculapius: 211, 213-214 Aetiology: 65-94, 105, 193-219, 266 fiction: 193-195, 197-198, 202, 205207, 210, 212-214 surrogate objects: 198, 213 unreliable narrative/unreliability: 199, 202-210 embedded/framed narrative: 200-212 metapoetics: 198, 200, 202, 205-206, 209-210, 213 mythical: 195-198, 213-214 wordplay: 65-94 Aidos: 250-251 Alcibiades: 43, 351 Alexander the Great: 18, 298-300 Alexander of Aetolia: 224-225 Alexandria: 12-13, 15-16, 21-22, 135, 138-139, 143, 172-175, 221-236, 244, 277, 357, 364 grammatical tradition: 172-175 intellectual life in: 135, 138-139, 143 Library: 221-236, 244 Amphidromia ritual: 285-288 Andromache: 16-17 Anerastos: 54-55, 147, 162-165 Anthologizing practice: 101, 237-239 Antigonus of Carystus: 234-237 Antikythera Mechanism: 240-244 Antilochus: 124-129, 135, 138, 140 Antisthenes: 157, 161 Aphrodite: 8, 18-21, 70, 110, 150, 242, 250-251, 300

Apollo: 9, 15, 57-58, 81, 84-85, 128, 197-199, 204, 211, 286-292, 295300, 319, 345-346, 358 Lycian/Lycius Apollo: 290 Delphic Apollo: 292 Phoebus: 199, 291, 340 Apollo and Daphne (Ovid): 197-199, 204, 211 Apollonius Rhodius: 136-138, 175, 196, 241-242, 286, 343 Argonautica: 136-138, 343-345 Aratus: 175-177, 267-268, 270-271, 274, 277, 280-281 Arcadia: 75-76, 372 Archebulean metre: 6-8 Aristaenetus: 27-48, 59 abortion: 46-48 Acontius and Cydippe (Ep. 1.10): 30-34, 37-40, 46 date of Epistles: 29-30 Epistles: 27-48 Hippocrates as source: 46 influenced by Callimachus: 27-28, 30-32, 36-46, 48 intertextual technique: 36-38 life and name: 28-29 marriage: 33-36 Melissarion and Charicles (Ep. 1.19): 29-30, 34-36, 46-48 paraphrase of poetry: 37-38 Phrygius and Pieria (Ep. 1.15): 30-48 thematic links in Epistles: 32-36 Aristophanes: 32, 140, 178, 254, 379 Thesmophoriazusae: 6, 254 Aristophanes of Byzantium: 175, 233 Aristotle: 186, 225-227, 238-239, 274, 333, 342-344 Didascaliae: 225-227 Arsinoe-Aphrodite Zephyritis: 110, 300 Arsinoe II: 5-24

386

INDEXES

Artemis: 30-31, 44, 56, 262, 286 cult at Amnisos in Crete: 286 kourotrophos: 286 ‘Neleid’ Artemis: 44 Artigeneios: 51-53, 56, 62-64, 288, 331 Asclepiades of Myrlea: 173-179 Asclepiades of Samos: 185, 311, 323 Athenaeus: 152, 159, 175, 183, 228234, 239 Athenian plays (catalogue of): 225227 Battiadae (kings of Cyrene): 352-353 Baubo: 257-258 Bees: 57, 77-78, 113, 291-292 Berenice I: 18, 20 Berenice II: 31, 42, 48, 104, 109-111, 344, 346-347. 354-356, 365 Berenice Syra: 354, 356 Bion of Borysthenes: 149-150, 166 Bird’s song: 239 Blame (Momos): 182-184, 295-296 Branchus: 15, 51, 57-58, 63 Calendars: 240-243 Caligula: 23 Callicrates of Samos: 300 Callimachus: passim Aetia as didactic poem 266, 270-272, 279-280 allusions to Homer: 121-143 and ‘deception’: 162-163 epigrams, reception of: 171-189 as erastes: 147-148, 160-161, 164, 166-167 Icus: 91-93 influence on Aristaenetus: 27-28, 30-32, 36-46, 48 influence on Longus: 51-64 influence on Meleager: 97-118 influence on Nicander: 272, 277281 influence on Ovid: 193-214 Hymn to Demeter: 121-143 Hymn to Zeus: 65, 75-78 as literary critic: 164-167 Mirabilia: 234-238, 241 naming living authors: 162, 163 On Birds: 239 Pinakes: 221-234, 237, 241, 244

Pinax ton didaskolon: 225-227, 229, 237 Prologue (Aetia): 90-91, 98-118, 272273, 318-320, 331 scholarly works: 221-244 Sicilian Towns: 79-82 Victoria Berenices: 12, 17, 60, 211, 336, 354-360 wordplay in Aetia: 79-93 Camarina: 80, 338 Carneades: 181 Cats: 369-382 considered Egyptian by Greeks: 372 in English proverbs: 375 in English idioms: 375-376 in English nursery rhymes: 376-7 in English pantomimes: 377-378 in Greek society: 371-374, 379 Pangur Bán (a cat eulogized by anonymous Irish monk): 380-381 Catalogues: 79-81, 181, 226, 256, 270271, 278-280, 330-336 Catane: 79-80 Catasterism: 23, 101, 195, 299, 337, 344, 346, 374 Ceos: 31, 82, 84, 338-339, 344 Charicles: see Melissarion and Charicles Charites (Graces): 7, 87-89, 103-105, 109-111, 147-148, 150-53, 158-61, 165, 203, 340-341 Chariton: 59-60, 62 Chariot race (Hom. Il. 23): 124-129, 143, 151 Chariot racing (games): 351-353, 361363 Charis: 10-13, 16, 103-105, 109-110, 150-152, 159, 166, 289 Chloe: see Daphnis and Chloe Cicada: 102, 111-113 Cicero: 175, 178-181, 241 Clio: 79, 81-82, 87, 336 Clitomachus: 181 Closure (in epigrams): 305-327 Coma Berenikes: see Lock of Berenice Continuity of voice: 305-306, 313 Coroebus: see Linus and Coroebus Crete: 76-77, 286 Cyclopes: 53, 69-70 Cydippe: see Acontius and Cydippe

INDEX RERUM ET NOMINUM

Cynicism: 147-167 and Antisthenes: 157, 161 and diatribe: 158, 165 and Hellenistic literary output: 149150 and liberal humour: 152, 165-166 and love: 164 and ‘moral physician’: 160-161 and Odysseus: 156 and Socratic tradition: 153, 154, 161 and wealth: 156, 157, 163 Cyrene: 55, 175, 179-183, 352-358, 365 Daphnis and Chloe (Longus): 3, 51-64 Deaths, simultaneous: 55 Deification of rulers / ruler cult: 5-6, 12-13, 16-24, 285, 298-301 Ptolemies (deification): 12-13, 17-24, 110, 299-301 Demeter: 7-8, 12, 121-123, 129-134, 139-140, 143, 253-262, 291-292, 370 Demetrius: 103, 152 Deucalion and Pyrrha: 72-73 Didactic poetry: 266-281 Didascalic inscriptions: 225, 227 Dike (Justice): 297 Diocles: 98-99, 108-111, 113 Diodorus Cronus: 182-184, 186 Dionysius Chalcus: 160 Dionysius of Halicarnassus: 103, 175, 230-232 Dionysius Thrax: 173-174, 182 Dionysophanes: 52, 55, 61, 63-64 Dioscorides: 51 Dogs: 85, 166, 379-380 apparently not eaten by Erysichthon: 380 esteemed by Greeks: 379-380 Double consciousness (in female poetry): 249-252 Egyptian literature: 66-67, 75, 78, 94 Eileithyia: 88, 286 Envy (Phthonos): 38, 291-292, 295-296, 298, 301, 317-320 Epigrams: passim funerary: 306-314, 320-323, 338, 346 dedicatory: 108, 252, 306-309, 324325, 346-347, 360, 365 sympotic: 315

387

Epinician: 295, 318, 336. 351-366 Epiphany: 18, 128, 278, 296 Eratosthenes: 174-175, 224 Erinna: 117, 250-251, 253-254, 261262, 269, 309, 347 Strife (Eris): 287, 300 Eros: 53, 83-85, 105, 111-112, 147, 162-164, 166, 188, 241-242, 345 Erysichthon: 57, 122-143, 255-262, 370, 379 Eryx: 80, 336 Etymology: 67, 70, 76-77, 80-89, 172, 185, 298-290 Euboea: 80-81 Eudoxus: 236, 241-242 Euhemeros: 180-181 Female voice in poetry: 249-258, 262 Feminine subjectivity in poetry: 249262 Fürstenspiegel: 135-138 Gaia: 70, 76, 82 Gela: 80 Genethliacon: 299 Gold: 19, 297 Graces: see Charites Haliartus: 93, 333 Hapax legomena: 41, 42, 85 121-134, 166, 273, 276 Hare: 114-115 Harmony (as opposed to conflict): 48, 138-139, 143 Hebe: 18, 285, 288-289, 297, 299 Hebrew literature: 68-69, 71-74, 374 Genesis: 71-74 Flood Story: 71-74 Hector: 16-17, 262 Hegesias of Cyrene: 178-179 Heliodora: 108-111 Heliodorus: 51, 59-60, 62 Hesiod: 62, 69-71, 176, 266-267, 270272, 276-281, 292-298, 300, 322, 330, 332, 335 Catalogue of Women: 72, 267, 270, 330 as example for didactic poetry: 266267, 270-272, 277-281 influence on Callimachus: 62, 292298, 300, 330, 335 Theogony: 69, 267, 270, 278, 308, 330, 332, 335

388

INDEXES

Works and Days: 69-70, 266-268, 270-272, 277, 292-293, 297, 322, 335 Hermippos of Smyrna: 179 Hipponax: 138 Historia: 59-60, 62-63 Homer: 16-19, 70, 114, 121-143, 172173, 254, 258, 274-281, 289 allusions in Callimachus: 121-143 as a moral teacher: 137-138 Odysseus’ name: 70 influence on Nicander: 274-277 ‘Homeric poets’: 274-275 Horace: 14, 106, 165-166 Iambe: 257-258 Iapetus: 72 Irony (in epigrams): 314-320 Jason (as a leader): 136-137 John the Baptist: 74 Kronos: 70 Leleges: 72-73 Lelex and Pirithous (Ovid): 200-203, 208-209 Leon: 285 Leptos: 60-61, 114, 273, 291 Linus and Coroebus: 85-87 Lock of Berenice: 22-23, 31, 101, 111, 114-115, 195-196, 212, 299, 332, 336-337, 343-348, 358 Longus: 51-64 Meleager: 97-118, 150-151 Melissarion and Charicles: 29-30, 3436, 46-48 in Aristaenetus (ep. 1.19): 29-30, 34-36, 46-48 Menelaus: 17, 21, 123-129 Menippean Satire: 148, 149, 150-151 Menippus of Gadara: 147-167 biographical tradition of: 148, 149150 Charites: 148, 150-151, 158-159 as Cynic: 148-149 and Meleager: 150-151 and Philodemus: 149-150 Metapoetics: 102-105, 109, 111, 139143, 198, 200, 202, 205-206, 209210, 213, 239, 251, 254, 260 Minos: 57, 87, 103, 333 Momos (Blame): 295-296

Muses: 79, 85, 87, 90, 93, 98-105, 108, 112, 138, 140, 142, 150-152, 203, 250-251, 272, 278-281, 288, 290, 298, 309-310, 318, 320, 332, 335-337 Myrtle: 105-106 Narrative technique in Aetia (Call.): 194, 329-348 animation: 347 apostrophe: 340-341, 345-346 autofictional narration: 332-335 ‘denarration process’: 330, 343, 348 discontinuous narrative: 344-345 fragmentariness: 346 generic liquidity: 347 ‘I’ narrator: 331-333, 335-336 mental events: 333-334 metalepsis: 341-342 ‘narratable aspect’: 330, 343, 348 narrative frame: 331, 342 narrative mediation: 338, 342 non-temporal linking: 346 postmodern aesthetics: 341-348 quotation: 337-339 reflexive plot: 333-334 self-referentiality: 346 subjectivity: 337, 346 tellability: 333 334 voice: 335-341, 346 Nemean games: 17, 211, 354-366 and Ptolemies: 354-355, 359, 364367 Sosibius as victor: 363-365 Chromios as victor: 356-357 Berenice II as victor: 17, 211 354, 356, 365 New Testament: 74 Nicander of Colophon: 193, 265, 269, 272-281 influenced by Antimachus 273 influenced by Call. 272, 277-281 as ‘Homeric poet’: 274-281 Ophiaca 269 Theriaca 272-274, 276-279 Nile: 78, 357, 361-362, 364 Nossis: 250-253, 262 Odysseus: 70, 123, 137, 155-156, 312, 321, 380 Olympia: 352-354, 357

INDEX RERUM ET NOMINUM

chariot victories at: 351, 353-354, 357 dedications at: 353 Ouranos: 70 Ovid: 23, 65, 73-74, 82, 142, 193-214, 267-268, 270 Apollo and Daphne: 197-199, 204, 211 Fasti: 193-194, 204, 267, 270 influenced by Callimachus: 23, 142, 193-214, 268 Lelex and Pirithous: 200-203, 208209 Metamorphoses: 23, 73, 193-214, 267, 270 Philemon and Baucis 200-203 Vertumnus: 204-205, 207-209, 211213 Palimpsest: 98, 107-118 Panacra: 77 Paradoxography: 234, 237-239, 242 Paros: 87-89, 103, 105 Peleus: 91, 93 Pergamum: 175, 230-236, 265 library: 230-232, 234-236 Persian chain: 61 Pieriphilos (Hellenistic court title): 299300 Pieria: see Phrygius and Pieria Philemon and Baucis (Ovid): 200-203, 208 Philicus: 7-8 Philip of Thessalonica: 117-118, 175 Philodemus: 115-117, 137-138, 149 Philotera: 8, 11-13, 16 Phrygius and Pieria: 30-48 in Aristaenetus (ep. 1.15): 30-48 Phthonos (Envy): 38, 291-292, 295-296, 298, 301, 317-320 Pinacological works: 221-234 Pindar: 73, 295, 351-360, 363, 366 influence on Call.: 295, 352, 355360, 363, 366 Plutarch: 30, 44-46, 179-181, 187-189, 351 Poetry as sacrifice: 285-301 Political theory: 136-138 Pollakis (in Longus): 60, 63 Pollution as ritual category: 286-288 pollution from childbirth: 286-287

389

inner pollution (impurity of mind): 287, 292 296, 301 Posidippus: 5, 175, 269, 300, 352-354, 356 Proclus: 293 Prologue (Aetia): 90-91, 98-118, 272273, 318-320, 331 Prometheus: 72 Proteus: 11-12, 17, 357 Ptolemaic kingship: 17-22, 31, 48, 78, 94, 109-110, 135-138, 224-225, 299, 353-359, 365 Ptolemies (ruler cult / deification): 12-13, 17-24, 110, 299-301 Ptolemy I Soter: 18, 109, 179, 183, 353 Ptolemy II Philadelphus: 8-12, 17-21, 23, 78, 224-225, 299, 354, 359, 365 Ptolemy III Euergetes: 31, 48, 354, 357 Puns: 65-94, 330 paronomasia: 74, 89 polysemy: 74, 85, 92 rootplay: 89 Purification (ritual): 86, 286 purification of the household after childbirth 286-287 purification by shaving 287-288 Purity (ritual): 286-292, 296, 300 Egyptian purity regulations: 288 purity regulation from Cyrene: 292 inner purity: 287, 292 Pyrrha: see Deucalion and Pyrrha Rhea: 19, 76-78 Rome: 23, 194, 204, 211-214, 225, 227, 229, 231, 265 Sacrificial ritual: 285-301 critique of the sacrificial ritual: 293296, 300-301 poetry as sacrifice: 285-301 sacrificial animal: 289-291, 296 ‘smokeless’ sacrifice: 291 Sacrilege: 296-298, 301 Sappho: 7, 16, 20-21, 57, 116, 186, 251253, 310, 347 Scamander: 129-134; 139-143 Self-epitaphs: 112-113, 314, 319 Self-referentiality: 97, 200, 249-253, 258, 308, 311, 314-320, 322, 329, 346 Sextus Empiricus: 172-174, 182-185

390

INDEXES

Simias of Rhodes: 238-240, 310 Socrates: 43, 136, 153-155, 177, 184 Sosibius: 360-366 Statues, speaking: 203-205 Stoicism: 186 Strabo: 72, 175-177, 183 Sumerian literature: 67-68, 70, 76-77 Synnaos theos: 8, 18, 21, 299 Syracuse: 79-80, 356-357 Techne: 61-63, 174, 177-178 Telchines: 90, 99-100, 177, 290, 298 Themis: 74 Theodora, empress: 30, 46-48 Theoi adelphoi: 300 Theogenes of Icus: 93, 104, 107-108 Time measurement: see Calendars Timon of Phlius: 138

‘Transgendered poetics’: 250-253, 256, 259, 262 Triopas: 122, 124 261-262, 370, 379 Tripodiscus: 85 Tzetzes: 223-224 Vertumnus: 204-205, 207-209, 211-213 Victory ode: see Epinician Wordplay: see Puns Wound: 53-54, 83, 109, 322 Xenophon (of Athens): 53, 136, 157 Xenophon of Ephesus: 55, 60, 62 Zancle: 79-82 Zenophila: 105, 110 Zeus: 19-20, 70, 72-78, 297, 313, 346, 366 Zoology: 238-239

INDEX LOCORUM

Alcaeus of Messene AP 7.5.5–6 (22 Gow–Page, on Homer): 309 Anthologia Graeca 7.42 (anonymous): 342 Antipater of Sidon AP 7.14.6–8 (11 Gow–Page, on Sappho): 310 Anyte AP 7.646 (7 Gow–Page): 312 Archilochus fr. 5 West: 252 Aristaenetus 1.9: 34 1.10: 30-34, 37-40, 46 1.14: 34 1.15: 30-48 1.18: 35 1.19: 29-30, 34-36, 46-48 1.22: 32 1.26: 29 2.3: 32 2.12: 32 Aristophanes Ach. 878-880: 379 Aristoteles EN 5.1135a-b: 186 Rh. 1.1374b: 186 Asclepiades AP 5.150 (10 Gow–Page, Sens): 311 AP 7.500 (31 Gow–Page, Sens): 311, 320 Athenaeus 163a: 152 Bible (Hebrew) Gen. 2.7: 68 Gen. 3.19: 68 Gen. 2.23: 68 Gen. 9.26-27: 71 Gen. 10.2, 6: 72 Gen. 25.19-34: 68

Bible (New Testament) Matthew 3.9: 74 Callimachus Aetia (numbers refer to Harder’s edition unless otherwise indicated) fr. 1.1-6: 90, 99 fr. 1.17-18: 61 fr. 1.29-34: 111 fr. 1.37-38: 100 fr. 3.1-2: 333 fr. 3-7b: 87-89, 103 fr. 7c.1-3: 333 fr. 7c.5-8: 344 fr. 7.9-10: 340 fr. 7.12: 111 fr. 7.13-14: 103 fr. 7.14-15: 340 fr. 18.6-9: 340 fr. 23.21-22: 340 fr. 24.1-5: 340 fr. 25e-31b: 85-87 fr. 25e: 340 fr. 31c, g: 333 fr. 37: 340 fr. 43.12-17: 104 fr. 43.42-57: 336 fr. 43: 79-82, 272 fr. 43.12-17: 333-334 fr. 43b.1-6: 333 fr. 54, 54a: 17, 354-360 fr. 54b27-32: 60 fr. 64.3-10: 338 fr. 67.1-4: 345 fr. 67-75e: 30-34, 38, 82-85 fr. 75.6-7: 59 fr. 75.53-77: 334, 339 fr. 80-83b: 27-48 fr. 110-110f : 23 fr. 110.45: 22 fr. 110: 347 fr. 110.1-8: 337 fr. 110.77-78: 111

392

INDEXES

fr. 178.11-12: 107 fr. 178.21-26: 333 fr.178-185b: 91-93 fr. 190a.14-15: 340 fragmenta incerta fr. 226-229 Pf. : 14-15 fr. 228 Pf.: 5-24 fr. 393 Pf.: 182 fr. 398 Pf.: 172 fr. 407 Pf.: 234 fr. 437: 228 fr. 439: 230 fr. 440: 228 fr. 446: 232 fr. 447 : 230 fr. 449: 228 fr. 494 Pf. : 291 Sosibius fr. 384-385 Pf.: 360-365 Hymn to Zeus 75-78 Hymn to Apollo 105-113: 291-300 Hymn to Artemis 57, 286 Hymn to Delos 299 Hymn to Athena 56 Hymn to Demeter 57, 121-143, 250, 253-262, 370-373, 379-380 Ia. Ia. Ia. Ia.

fr. 203 Pf: 138 fr. 191Pf: 138 fr. 191.9-11 Pf.: 179 12: 285-290, 297-300

epigrams (numbers according to Pfeiffer unless otherwise indicated) 6 (Strab xiv 638): 178 8 (AP 9.566 = 58 GP): 316-317 17 (AP 7.459 = 37 GP): 313-314 18 (AP 7.272 =38 GP): 320-321 20 (AP 7.517= 33 GP): 55 21 (AP 7.525 =29 GP): 317-320 22 (AP 7.518 36 GP): 308, 309 23 (AP 7.471=53 GP): 178, 184 27 (AP 9.507=56GP): 175-176 28 (AP 12.43 = 2 GP): 314-315-316 29 (AP 12.51 =5 GP): 108, 315 30 (AP 12.71=12 GP): 323 32 (AP 12.148 = 7GP): 54, 147-150 34 (AP 6.351= 22 GP): 307, 309 35 (AP 7.415 = 30 GP): 112-113, 318 41 (AP 12.73= 4 GP): 322

42 (AP 12.118= 8 GP): 185 43 (AP 12.134 =13 GP): 54, 322 52 (AP 12.230 =6 GP): 163, 312-313 56 (AP 6.149=25 GP): 324-325 Catullus 64.357-360: 142 Cicero Tusc. 1.83-4: 178-179 Nat. D. 1.117-119: 180-181 Demetrius Eloc. 170: 152 Diodorus Anth. Pal. 9.219 (= GP 2100-2105): 52 Diogenes Laertius 2.111-112: 183 6.99-101: 149 Dionysius Thrax Techne 1: 174 Erinna Distaff: 250-251 GP 3: 251 Hesiodus Th. 28: 69 Th. 139-146: 69 Th. 166: 70 Th. 180-181:70 Th. 190-195: 70 Op. 1-5:70 Op. 1.60-62: 70 Op. 220-224: 297 Op. 265-266: 298 Op. 755-756: 292-294 Catalogue of Women 4 M&W/5 Most: 72 Catalogue of Women 9 M&W/ Most: 72 Catalogue of Women 10a.21-24 M&W/ Most: 72 Catalogue of Women 234 M&W/ 251 Most: 72-73 Homerus Il. 14.250–251: 321 Il. 21.1-382: 129-134 Il. 22.437-471: 16-17 Il. 23.262-650: 124-129 Od. 1.4-5: 321

393

INDEX LOCORUM

Od. 2.602-604: 18 HH Dem.: 256-257 Julianus imperator Or. 6.201b-c: 152 Longus 1.9.1: 57 1.10.2: 60 1.14.1: 53 1.15.1: 51-53, 56 1.18.1: 54 2.7.6: 58 2.18.1: 56 2.20.3: 56-57 2.22.2: 57 2.31.2: 61 3.3.4: 60 3.11.3: 54 4.2.4-6: 61 4.10.1: 51-53, 56 4.17.6: 57 4.24.2: 55 Meleager [Garland 55-58: 98] AP 4.1.1-4: 99, 108-109 AP 4.1.57-58: 100 AP 4.1.21-22: 105 AP 5.136-137: 108, 110, 116 AP 5.147: 110-111 AP 5.147-149: 110 AP 5.148.2: 110 AP 5.149.4: 110 AP 7.196: 111, 112 AP 7.207.1-2: 114 AP 7.416: 112-113 AP 7.417-418: 150-151 AP 7.421: 113 AP 12.49: 107 Nicander Th. 8-12: 278 Th. 957-958: 274 Nossis GP 2: 252 Ovid Met. 1.400-415: 73-74 Met. 1.452-567: 197, 199

Met. Met. Met. Met. Met. Her.

8.547-884: 200-202 8.738-878: 142 14.622-771: 204-205 15.622-744: 213-214 15.843-851: 23 21.209-12: 82

P. Oxy. 2226: 371 P. Oxy. LXXVII 5105: 24 Philicus Demeter (SH 680): 7-8 Philip of Thessalonica AP 4.2: 117-118 Philodemus AP 11.34: 115-117 Pindarus O. 9.42-53: 73 N. 1: 356-360 N. 10: 360-363 Plato Phdr. 240c-e: 35 Phdr. 241 c6-d1 289 R. 5.474d-475a: 35 R. 563d: 154 Tht. 152c: 153 Plutarch De mul. vir. 16 = Mor. 253f-254a: 44-46 De coh. ira 455b-c: 187 Pseudo-Plutarch Opinions of the Philosophers 880d-e: 179-180 Procopius Caesariensis Arc.: 10.3: 47 Arc.: 9.19: 47 Arc.: 17.16: 47 Arc.: 17.17: 47 Propertius 1.18.19-32: 58-59 3.1.3: 141 3.1.26-27: 141 3.3: 141 Quintilian Inst. 9.2-3: 37-38 Sappho fr. 44: 16 Semonides fr. 7.50-56: 373

394

INDEXES

Sextus Empiricus Epigr. 6 Pf. = HE 1293-6: 172 Adversus Grammaticos 1.47-8: 173 Simias AP 7.21.5–6 (4 Gow–Page, on Sophocles): 310 ‘Simonides’ AP 7.25.9–10 (4 Gow–Page, on Anacreon): 310 Strabo 7.7.2: 72 17.3.22: 175, 177 Theocritus Id. 11.7–9: 52-53 Id. 11.15-16: 53 Id. 15: 106-111: 20

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