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Corinna

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

M. L. West
M. L. West
Affiliation:
University College, Oxford
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Extract

In the controversy over the date of Corinna, the following points may be taken as agreed:

1. An edition was made in Boeotia about the end of the third or beginning of the second century B.C.

2. The texts of Corinna current in the late Hellenistic and Roman periods were all descended from that Boeotian edition.

3. Before its dissemination, Corinna was unknown in Greece at large. If she wrote at an earlier period, she must have been remembered only locally.

The difference between Boeotian spelling of the fifth century and that of the fourth is very great: but the difference in this respect between the mid-fourth century and the late third or early second is comparatively slight. It is therefore tenable that whereas there would be a good reason for the re-spelling of fifth-century Boeotian into the later convention of any period, there would be no obvious or adequate reason for re-spelling Boeotian of the fourth century into the orthography of the third, or that of the third into that of the second. Even those features of fourth-century spelling which have ceased to preponderate are by no means unknown or even uncommon at the end of the third century.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 20 , Issue 2 , December 1970 , pp. 277 - 287
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1970

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References

page 277 note 1 Wilamowitz, , Homerische Untersuchungen, 321 f.; Textgesch. d. gr. Lyriker, 21–4; D. L. Page, Corinna, 65 ff.Google Scholar

page 277 note 2 Hermes, lxv (1930), 356–65Google Scholar. Only P. Guillon has embraced the late dating with decision, BCH lxxxii (1958), 47–60Google Scholar, and Annales Fac. des Lettres d'Aix, xxxiii (1959), 155–68. It has been opposed by Bowra, C. M., CR xiv (1931), 4;Google ScholarLatte, K., Eranos lii (1955), 57–67Google Scholar = Kl. Schr. 499–507; A. Lesky, Gesch. d. gr. Lit., 2nd edn., 205 (180 of the English version).

page 277 note 3 654 2 12 (references are to Page's Poetae Melici Graeci);(?) 655 fr. 1 top;690;692 fr. 2;692 fr. 36;694 fr. 13. (These are only the titles attested in dialect posform.) Dialect titles for dialect poems are not the norm; we do not find them in Stesichorus (e.g.despitefrequently in the text) or the bucolic poets (Theoc. 28codd. saec. xv, but]P.Oxy.). I can only cite the plays of Epicharmus and the mimes of Sophron—both, like Corinna, comparatively recherché authors (cf. Wilamowitz, Textgesch. d. gr. Lyr. 24–9).

page 277 note 4 An Alexandrian grammarian might be expected to treat Boeotian as Aeolic; cf. Wilamowitz, in Berliner Klassiker-Texte, 5 (2), p. 42. What we find in the papyri is more like what we might ourselves expect for Boeotian: Doric accents (but not as much as in the papyri of Alcman, Stesichorus, and Ibycus), side by side with an occasional Aeolic barytonesis (692 fr. 8. 4posform.) sibly 654 i 29but cf. Chandler, Greek Accentuation, 2nd edn., 150). There is a peculiarity about enclitic accentuation 654 i 16, 3 50). This all shows special knowledge: may it not go back to the arche- type ? In general, accents only began to be written in poetic texts in the second century B.C., but in these dialect poets the peculiar accents were written for a different purpose, for flavour rather than clarity.Google Scholar

page 278 note 1 655 fr. 4 is taken by Lobel and Page as Boeotian prose, but I do not see why it cannot be verse, whether or not the colometry is in order; it has accents in it. 655 fr. I is preceded by remains of prose which may be more than a title; there are grounds for thinking that this was the first poem of the first book (below, p. 283), and a hypothesis would not be the only possibility. If Apollonius Dyscolus and his son Herodian really used Boeotian datives in quoting titles (658660‘nicht glaublich’, Maas,RE11. 1396. 66), it may have been a family pedantry, or modelled on some specimen of Boeotian philology preserved in conjunction with the text of the poems. In 659,Apollonius uses as the dative of

page 278 note 2 Page, 65 exaggerates the non-vernacular element in her dialect (cf. Latte, 57–61 = 499–502), and unfairly quotes a sentence out of context to suggest that Wilamowitz was blind to it.

page 278 note 3 Aristophanes and Thucydides used à for the Laconian at an earlier date, but I do not think it likely that it intruded into texts of Alcman in their time. Risch has shown how the Alexandrian text of Aleman was also influenced by acquaintance with the ‘Doric’ of Cyrene (Mus. Helv. xi [1954], 30–Google Scholar).

page 278 note 4 PSI 1174, P-Oxy. 2371–4; Lobel on p. 60 of P.Oxy. 23. Page in his Melici calls them Boeotica incerti auctoris.

page 279 note 1 Like Lobel and Hephaestion, I use ‘glyconic’ here to include the ‘choriambic dimeter’ or ‘wilamowitzianus’.

page 279 note 2 The statement in P.Oxy. 2438 2 that Pindar's father was called Scopelinusis not of a form to inspire confidence. In any case it is not said that this strangely unanimous host of poetesses wrote in Boeotian.

page 279 note 3 See Page, , 71–3; Prop. 2. 3. 21 antiqua Corinna, vague as it is, may suggest the same.Google Scholar

page 280 note 1 Latte, 66 = 506, argues ‘Kroisos und Chrysipp zusammenzubringen, versucht keine antike Anekdote’. No indeed, but the case is scarcely parallel.

page 280 note 2 Ad Graecos 33, p. 34.Google Scholar 16 Schwartz; Page, 73 n. 6.

page 280 note 3 Reinach, S., Rev. arch. 32 (1898)Google Scholar, 161 ff. and pl. v, cf. xxxvi (1900), 169 ff.; Richter, G., The Portraits of the Greeks,i. 144.Google Scholar

page 280 note 4 656cf. 657

page 280 note 5 Cf.Pind, . fr. 94b. 60; Page, 28. The time is spring. We know of a springtime festival at Thebes at which a girls’ choir sang praise of Apollo, the Daphnaphoria. We cannot tell whatis doing in 655 fr. 2.3; but the Orestas might well have ended with glorification of Apollo.Google Scholar

page 280 note 6 Cf.Pind, . 0. 14. 17 (quoted by Lobel), Ar. Th. 954, Melici 936. 7.Google Scholar

page 280 note 7 Sappho 95. 9, 96. 7; Anacr. 349. I, 357. 5.

page 281 note 1 Ph. 202, Or. 807 (Euripides’ most popular play), IA 164, 543. However, I am not impressed by the verbal parallels with Ba. 74 ff. (Page, 20 n. 5).

page 281 note 2 Alem. 60?; Anacr. 347 = 417, 358–62; Aesch. Pers. 65 ff., Suppl. 1018ff.; Ar. Eq. 973 ff, 1111 ff., Eccl. 289 ff; Wilamowitz, , Gr. Verskunst, 446.Google Scholar

page 281 note 3 Powell, Coll. Alex. 162. On the dating see Daux, G., BCH lxvi-vii (1942/1943), 137–40;CrossRefGoogle ScholarCoste-Messeliere, P. de La, BCH lxxiii (1949), 235–8.Google Scholar

page 281 note 4 Melici 935, but better in Maas, P., Epidaurische Hymnen, 134.Google Scholar

page 281 note 5 Maas, , 135: ‘aus 6 Vierzeilern, die teils durch Sinnespause, teils durch Katalexe (22), teils durch beides abgegrenzt werden’.Google Scholar

page 281 note 6 2, 3, 7 look dactylic; 1314look anything but.

page 282 note 1 See Page, 87 f.; Harvey, A. E.,CQ N.S. 5 (1955), 176–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Page again, CQ N.s. vii (1957), 109–12.Google Scholar

page 282 note 2 Cf.Bowra, , CR 45(1931), 4f.Google Scholar

page 282 note 3 ‘Lyric nome’ [Suda] means no more than lyric narrative poems.

page 282 note 4 9corrected frompap.:Lobel, cl. Alc. fr. 339:Lloyd-Jones, (CR 1958, 20)Google Scholar, cf. Ale. fr. 371. In io, Lloyd-Jones suggestsbut initial digamma is nowhere demonstrably neglected, and it seems rash to assume neglect when it is actually written. What scribe would know thatshould have a digamma? I cannot suggest an alternative supplement, exceptwith internal digamma written as in694 fr. 5 (a) 8; but I know no lyric example of epic diectasis except Stesichorus P.Oxy. 2735 fr. 16. 3. (Alexandrian poets use it under certain conditions [K. eister, Die hom. Kunstsprache, 67 ff.]; Hermesianax 7. 13 has uncontractedCercidas 4. 49 Powell has uncontractedin his racy brand of lyric.) The dot written over and to the left of the first iota looks like a trema abandoned half way through; perhaps γ had been misread as ϊ.

page 282 note 5 I transposefrom aftersince mustscan.

page 283 note 1 Bowra, , Heroic Poetry, 549.Google Scholar

page 283 note 2 Eur. Ba. 120 ff.; Palaikastro hymn 17 ff. (Powell, , 160; JHS 85 [1965], 149)Google Scholar; Call. Hymn. 1. 52; Arat. 35; Ap. Rhod. 2. 1234. Wrongly Wilamowitz (BKT), 47, ‘der hesiodischen Theogonie entsprechend’.

page 283 note 3 Cf. Maas, , RE 11. 1394. 21 ff.Google Scholar

page 283 note 4 The crass example of [Xen.]comes to mind.

page 283 note 5 Lobel, , P.Oxy. 23, p. 61. Maas, loc. cit., had divined that Hephaestion's quotation came from a ‘Prooimion, in dem K. den altertümlichen und epichorischen Charakter ihrer Poesie kennzeichnete’;Google Scholar

page 284 note 1 If Libya in 17 is the nymph from whom Cadmus was descended, we might supplyIn 19, the mysteriousmight be interpreted asa title of Kereus that I tentatively conjectured on other grounds at Hes. Th. 234.

page 284 note 2 andare also Hellenistic in this function, as Führer adds in a footnote, except for Tyrt. 4. 10 Bergk. On the date of the Batrachomyomachia cf., if in doubt, Harv. Stud, 73 (1968), 123 n. 35.Google Scholar

page 285 note 1 Melici 708. 12; to be dated to the late fifth century, see Lloyd-Jones, , Cuademo de la Fundacion Pastor, 13 (1966), 15–18.Google Scholar

page 285 note 2 Page, Greek Lit. Pap. 422, Heitsch, no. 6 fr. 1. 49.

page 285 note 3 Not pre-Hellenistic; perhaps as late as the second century A.D., as Latte argues, GGA cxcvi (1934), 405 ffGoogle Scholar. = Kl. Schr. 750 ff.

page 285 note 4 For in non-scholastic Hellenistic lyric cf. Paean, . Delph. 1. 8 and 25, Cere. 5. 32.Google Scholar

page 286 note 1 There are linguists who might say thatcould be re-formed on nom. pl.on the model ofI would call that an abuse of the analogical principle.

page 287 note 1 There is punctuation at the end of 45, so that if I am right about the purport of the ‘until’, one would expect it to be the first word of 46. The beginning of 46 is read asThere is a dialect word meaning ‘until’which begins with a theta and would justify a gloss: it is, found in Alcaeus fr. 70. 8 and 206. 6. The similaris common to Sappho, Alcaeus, and Boeotian.