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Alcman 58 and Simonides 37

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2013

P. E. Easterling
P. E. Easterling
Affiliation:
Newnham College, Cambridge
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Extract

ALCMAN 58 (D. L. Page, Poetae Melici Graeci) = 38 Bergk; 36 Diehl.

It is not Aphrodite, but wild Eros plays like a boy (or ‘like the boy he is’), coming down over the tips of the galingale flowers: don't touch them!

There are no serious textual variants; Bentley's παῖς looks a certain supplement. The context in which the fragment is quoted (Hephaestion 13. 6, p. 42 Consbr.) is a discussion of the cretic; the lines are cited as a metrical example, without reference to their meaning.

Meineke's comment on the passage was sensus non plane liquet, but it is tempting to go further, because this is the earliest extant reference to Eros at play, an idea that was to be interestingly influential in later poetry.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society (Second Series) , Volume 20 , 1974 , pp. 37 - 43
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s). Published online by Cambridge University Press 1974

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References

page 37 note 1 Greek lyric poetry2 (1961), p. 32Google Scholar.

page 37 note 2 Greek lyric poetry: a selection (1967), p. 220Google Scholar.

page 38 note 1 Greek lyric poetry2 (1961), p. 34Google Scholar.

page 39 note 1 NH 21. 118, on cyperus: ‘The use of cyperos in medicine is to act as a depilatory. It makes an ointment for hang-nails, sores of the genitals and all sores that are in moisture, such as those in the mouth. Its root affords an effective remedy for the bites of snakes and stings of scorpions. The root taken in drink opens the passages of the uterus [not ‘the veins’, as in Bowra's paraphrase], but if taken in too strong doses its potency is great enough to cause prolapsus. It promotes urine and the passing of stone, and therefore is most useful to sufferers from dropsy. It is applied to spreading sores, but especially to those of the gullet, either in wine or in vinegar.’

NH 21. 168–9, on helichryse: ‘It has sprigs of a shining white and leaves of a dull whitish colour… with as it were clusters hanging down all round it, which glisten like gold when reflecting the light of the sun, and never fade. For this reason they make chaplets of it for the gods… Taken in wine it is diuretic and promotes menstruation. It disperses indurations and inflammations; for burns it is applied with honey. For snake bites and lumbago it is taken in drink. With honey wine it removes congealed blood in the belly or bladder. Three oboli by weight of its leaves, pounded and taken in white wine, check excessive menstruation. It protects clothes by its smell, which however is not unpleasant.’ (The translation is by W. H. S. Jones, 1951.)

page 39 note 2 La figure d'Éros dans la poésie grecque (1946), pp. 30 ffGoogle Scholar.

page 39 note 3 Scholars even wrote treatises on the subject: Athenaeus cites works by Menodotus and Hephaestion (673d–f).

page 40 note 1 Lyra Graeca I (1922), p. 69Google Scholar.

page 40 note 2 Lyra Graeca I (1922), p. 119Google Scholar.

page 40 note 3 Cited by Smyth, H. Weir, Greek melic poets (1904), p. 196Google Scholar.

page 41 note 1 See Helmbold, W. C., Plutarch, , Moralia (Loeb), vol. ix (1961), p. 304 n. a.Google Scholar

page 41 note 2 T.A.P.A. lxxxiv (1953), 135–63Google Scholar.

page 41 note 3 Greek lyric poetry: a selection (1967), pp. 386–7Google Scholar.

page 42 note 1 χαλεπόν(ἐστι) could be used in either sense, according to context; cf. Iliad 16. 620 and 21. 184. One might compare the use of difficile est (see e.g. E. J. Kenney on Lucretius 3. 361) or our own use of ‘it is hard/difficult to…’ as a polite substitute for a more definite negative.

page 42 note 2 I use the conventional translation ‘good’ without wishing to enter the debate over the precise connotations of ἀγαθός in this poem (but cf. p. 43 n. 3).

page 42 note 3 Fränkel, H., Dichtung und Philoscphie des frühen Griechentums2 (1962), p. 352Google Scholar.

page 42 note 4 The term is borrowed from Longo, O., Commento linguistico alle Trachinie di Sofocle (1968) on 1 ffGoogle Scholar.

page 43 note 1 See e.g. Denniston–Page on 757–62.

page 43 note 2 If Aeschylus were dismissing rather than refining the ‘old saying’ it would be much harder to understand the force of 772–81.

page 43 note 3 I cannot accept Adkins's view (Merit and responsibility (1960), p. 197Google Scholar) that in the last stanza Simonides is ‘commending the class immediately below the agathoi’; the structure of the poem seems to suggest that Simonides is elaborating the contrast between an ideal state of perfection and the realities of human life, a contrast which he sees as universally applicable and not confined to a particular class in society.