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An anthology of early Latin epigrams? A ghost reconsidered*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Amiel D. Vardi
Amiel D. Vardi
Affiliation:
The HebrewUniversity of Jerusalem, [email protected]
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Extract

In Book 19, chapter 9 of the Nodes Atticae Gellius describes the birthday party of a young Greek of equestrian rank at which a group of professional singers entertained the guests by performing poems by Anacreon, Sappho, ‘et poetarum quoque recentium ⋯λεγεῖα quaedam erotica’ (4). After the singing, Gellius goes on, some of the Greek συμπόται present challenged Roman achievements in erotic poetry, excepting only Catullus and Calvus, and criticized in particular Laevius, Hortensius, Cinna, and Memmius. Rising to meet this charge, Gellius’ teacher of rhetoric, Antonius Julianus, admits the superiority of the Greeks in what he calls ‘cantilenarum mollitiae’ in general (8), but to show that the Romans too have some good erotic poets, he recites four early Latin love epigrams, by Valerius Aedituus (frs. 1 and 2), Porcius Licinus (fr. 6), and Lutatius Catulus (fr. I). The same three poets are listed in the same order in Apuleius’ Apology in a list of amatory poets which he provides in order to establish precedents and thus invalidate his prosecutors’ referral to his erotic poems in their accusation (Apul. Apol. 9). Catulus is also enumerated in Pliny's list of Roman dignitaries who composed ‘uersiculos seueros parum’ like his own (Ep. 5.3.5), and an amatory epigram of his is cited by Cicero in De Natura Deorum 1.79 (fr. 2). We possess no further evidence connecting the other two with the composition of either erotic or, more generally, ‘light’ verse, but a poem by Porcius Licinus on Roman literary history is attested by several sources including Varro, Suetonius, and Gellius himself.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 50 , Issue 1 , May 2000 , pp. 147 - 158
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2000

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References

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2 FPL frs. 1–5 (Courtney 1–6).

3 M. J. Hertz in his 1883—5 edition of Gellius, vol. 2, p. vi, and especially Marache, R., La critique littèraire de langue latine et le dèveloppement du goût archaïsant au IF siécle de notre ére (Rennes, 1952), 331Google Scholar; id., ‘Fronton et A. Gellius (1938–1964)’, Lustrum 10 (1965), 229–31 (a survey of bibliography); and his edition of Gellius, vol. 1 (Paris, 1967), x-xii.

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36 Hutton, J., The Greek Anthology in Italy to the Year 1800 (Ithaca, NY, 1935), 10–19Google Scholar; Ross, D. O. Jr, ‘Nine epigrams from Pompeii (CIL 4.4966–73)’, ITS 21 (1969), 127–42.Google Scholar

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38 Cameron (n. 35), 50.

39 See n. 33 above.

40 Gell. 9.4; see Holford-Strevens, Aulus Gellius (n. 5), 50–1.

41 ‘D. Chr.’ Or. 31.21: οὐδ⋯ν τò παιδευθ⋯ναι το⋯ φ⋯ναι πρòς τò δοκεῖν διαφ⋯ρει; see Barigazzi, A., Favorino di Arelate: Opere (Florence, 1966), 77–8, 329.Google Scholar

42 The attribution of harsh sound to Iberian Latin poetry is traditional; see Cic. Arch. 26.

43 See especially Perutelli (n. 37).

44 For the manner in which Gellius uses his sources, see Holford-Strevens, Aulus Gellius (n. 5), 52–8.

45 see West, M. L., Carmina Anacreontea (Leipzig, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ix-x; id., ‘The Anacreontea’, in Murray, O. (ed.), Sympotica: A Symposium on the Symposium (Oxford, 1990), 272–3Google Scholar; and for epigrams ascribed to Anacreon in the Greek Anthology, Page, D. L., Further Greek Epigrams (Cambridge, 1981), 123–1.Google Scholar

46 Corpus Paroemiographorum Graecorum, ed. E. L. von Leutsch and F. G. Schneidewin (Göttingen, 1839), 1.148–9; Holford-Strevens, Aulus Gellius (n. 5), 62 and n. 6. See also ibid., 53–4, 175, for a line Gellius ascribes to Parthenius in 13.27.1 which is imitated in AP 6.164.1.

47 Or perhaps in Favorinus’ Παντοδαπ⋯ ‘Iστορία, as suggested by E. Maas, De Biographis Graecis Quaestiones Selectae (Berlin, 1880), 105, n. 112. See also Page (n. 45), 129.

48 see Mejer, J., Diogenes Laertius and his Hellenistic Background (Wiesbaden, 1978), 86–7Google Scholar; Cameron, (n. 35), 37; Hunink, V., Apuleius of Madaurus, Pro se de Magia (Amsterdam, 1997), 2.49–50.Google Scholar

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50 Quint. Inst. 10.1.58 ‘quod in cenis grandibus saepe facimus, ut, cum optimis satiati sumus, uarietas tamen nobis ex uilioribus grata sit. Tune et elegiam uacabit in manus sumere, cuius princeps habetur Callimachus, secundas confessione plurimorum Philetas occupauit.’

51 If, as I believe, the text in Gell. 19.9.10 should read ‘quibus mundius, uenustius, limatius, pressius Graecum Latinumue nihil quicquam reperiri puto’ (pressius Fγ: persius Q: pessius Z: tersius Salmasius followed by most editors; see A. D. Vardi, ‘Brevity, conciseness and compression in Roman poetic criticism and the text of Gellius, Nodes Atticae 19.9.10’, AJPh 121 [2000], forthcoming), the mention of the quality of conciseness (pressius), characteristic of epigrams, lends further support to the assumption that the chapter deals with Greek and Latin erotic epigrams.

52 Cameron (n. 35), 26–33. One aspect in which Meleager's thematic arrangement differed from later collections is that it did not separate heteroerotic poems from paidika, a distinction which Gellius’ source certainly did not maintain either. Of the four epigrams Gellius cites, the first is addressed to a woman, the fourth is homoerotic, and the second and third do not disclose the gender of the beloved, Phileros the torch-bearer in Aedituus’ second epigram being probably a slave accompanying the lover rather than his beloved.

53 For the text of this line, see Holford-Strevens, L. A., ‘Adversaria minora Gelliana et Apuleianum’, LCM 10 (1985), 112.Google Scholar