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Callimachus, Aetia Fr. 1.9–12

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

A. S. Hollis
A. S. Hollis
Affiliation:
Keble College, Oxford
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Extract

Both and are guaranteed by the London scholia (Pfeiffer vol. i, p.3), so the gap is reduced to the tantalizingly small one of a monosyllabic feminine noun in the accusative case, most probably of four letters. The number of possibilities cannot be unlimited. My own suggestion must necessarily remain in limbo in the present state of our knowledge concerning the poet or poets whom Callimachus is talking about, but at least it seems to me less bizarre than other restorations currently in the field.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 28 , Issue 2 , December 1978 , pp. 402 - 406
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1978

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References

1 Mr. Parsons warns me how dangerous it is to be dogmatic on this point. The line-beginnings are lost in the papyrus. One can reconstruct the left margin by reconstructing the lines which can be supplemented with certainty (2, 3, 6), and, from a tracing of the letters lost, try to estimate the initial lacuna in the other lines - remembering always that scribes are not regular in their letter–sizes and spacing, and that the margin may slope leftwards as the column goes down. So it works out that the letters before occupied approximately the same space as in line 6. But of course some letters are wider than others. In Mr. Parsons's tracing, both and (which Pfeiffer calls ‘brevius spado’) occupy exactly the same space; if one is palaeographically possible, so is the other. In fact they both come out as one letter too long for the space, which just shows the difficulty of reaching certainties!

2 For the reading () see below.

3 The demand on Callimachus' readers would be considerably lightened if Philetas had used the words together at some important place in the Demeter, e.g. at or near the beginning, so that they became a recognizable ‘tag’ for identifying the whole poem. Thus Roman poets can refer to the Aeneid with ‘arma virumque’, or even ‘arma’, and Ovid identi fies the de Rerum Natura by ‘Aeneadum genetrix ‥ alma Venus’ (Tristia 2.261–2, from Lucr. 1.1–2).

4 It is virtually certain that Apollonius did not figure in the Florentine Scholiast's list of the ‘Telchines’. Vogliano ap. J. G. Milne (JEA 17 (1931), 118) preferred in the same sense; likewise, presumably, A. P. Smotrytsch () in ‘Miscellanea di Studi Alessandri in memoria di A. Rostagni’ (1963), 250–1, who adds the unhelpful remark that is often used of ships – in the literal sense of drawing them down to the sea.

5 Vitelli's (PSl vol.xi, p.141 n.2) would postulate a foundation-poem by Philetas on his homeland. ‘Brevius spatio’, says Pfeiffer, but see n.l above.

6 And not much better of Lyde. A writer of bygone days can be called ‘an old man’ in both Greek and Latin, but 1 do not know a parallel for calling the female subject of an old poem ‘an old woman’.

7 It is interesting that an ancient com mentator cited the Frogs in connection with Call, fr.398 (see Pfeiffer ad loc).

8 Rostagni's supplement – not certain, but highly attractive, gaining support from Call.'s praise of the of Aratus in epigram 27.3–4 Pf.

9 Like the short poems of Aratus, and those ascribed to Virgil.

10 Some would have the words mean ‘the fine utterances of the two books of Mimnermus’, based upon the ‘duo libri’ ascribed to him by Porphyrio on Horace, Epist. 2.2.101. This seems clumsy. M. L. West's sober but gloomy comment on the whole couplet of Callimachus in his Testi-monia to Mimnermus (Iambi et Elegi Graeci, vol. ii, p.82) is ‘locus non jntelligitur’.

11 If so, it was apparently a hexameter poem, not an elegy, since at one point there seem to be two consecutive hexameters (fr. 174Wyss).

12 Thus, Pfeiffer supplements the beginning of line 9 e.g. . Wimmel (p.87 favours ; the latter only really fits the view that short poems of Philetas are set against long poems of different authors – there would be little point in calling Philetas if he were also .

13 His remark that can be taken either with or with hardly inspires confidence.

14 has been alternatively taken to mean (a) ‘he is saying that Mimnermus is delightful <in his short poems, but not in his long ones>’ or (b) ‘he is saying that Mimnermus is delightful <and not the author of the … , i.e. Antimachus>’.

15 It is part of a peculiar system used in scholia and such, quite distinct from the system used in documents.

16 Which can only mean ‘of Mimnermus and Philetas’, not, surely, ‘of the poets opposed to Callimachus who have been mentioned above in the scholium’.

17 Things might be a little easier if Antimachus had been brought to readers' minds by the previous couplet (e.g. with and a reference to the Artemis), but not much.

18 I am grateful to Professor Lloyd-Jones, Messrs. W. S. Barrett, J. Griffin, and P. J. Parsons for valuable comments.