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Leonidas of Tarentum

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

A.S.F. Gow
A.S.F. Gow
Affiliation:
Trinity College, Cambridge
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Extract

THE surviving century of epigrams by this tedious writer was edited with a commentary by J. Geffcken in 1896, and they were included in A. Veniero's Poeti de l'Antol. Pal. (1905) and A. Olivieri's Epigrammatisti Gr. d. Magna Grecia (1950?), but the inquirer who is not content with Geffcken's explanations or with his frequent silences will rarely find satisfaction in Veniero, and Olivieri's comments are almost exclusively translated from Geffcken. I have not a great deal to offer by way of supplement, but as a preliminary it may be worth while to consider the five epigrams which have been held to throw light on the poet's date, and first A.P. 6. 334, on which the authorities rely with varying degrees of confidence for placing his birth in or before 315 B.C.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 8 , Issue 3-4 , November 1958 , pp. 113 - 123
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1958

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References

1 Fahrb. CI. Phil., Supplementb. xxiii. 1–164, and separately published. Geffcken included seventeen epigrams by L. in his Gr. Epigramme (1916).Google Scholar

2 Geffcken p. 132, and in R.E. xii. 2023, Knaack in Susemihl, Gesch. gr. Lit. d.Alexandrinerzeit ii. 535Google Scholar, Christ-Schmid-Stählin, Gr. Lit. ii. 157Google Scholar, Wilamowitz, Hell.Dicht. i. 139.Google Scholar

3 Susemihl ii. 535.

4 See on him R.E. xvi. 2463Google Scholar, Cross, Epirus, p. 106.Google Scholar

5 Whose Leipzig dissertation of 1914 I have not seen.

6 Somebody, perhaps Cephalas, seems long ago to have felt this doubt, for the epigram appears not only among the of Bk. 6 but also (after 328) among the of Bk. 9.

7 I see nothing to recommend Reitzenstein's view (Ep. u. Skol. p. 191) that L.'s Neoptolemus is an imaginary rustic so named in compliment to the prince, but this argument would still hold good if it were true.

8 (i) The maternal grandfather of Alexander the Great (R.E. xvi. 2463Google Scholar). (ii) The of Alexander killed by Eumenes (ibid. 2464). (iii) The father of the child whose epitaph begins (Peek, Gr.Vers-Inschrift. i. 1063 (1st cent. B.C.?; Macedonian)).Google Scholar

9 Schmidt-Stahlin would push L.'s dates still further back because two flute-girls who, in A.P. 5. 206, dedicate their instruments to the Muses are called . The famous flautist of that name probably died about 370 B.C., but if the phrase is not merely a way of saying that the girls were flautists (so Geffcken), and they were really related to him, they could as well have been great-nieces or great-great-grandaughters. It is also possible that the epigram is epideictic and the girls imaginary. Knaack's guess that the Syracusan Orthon who comes to a bad end in A.P. 7. 660 was Agathocles' envoy to Cyrene in 308 B.C. (Diod. 20. 40) has no particular likelihood, and in any case the epigram is by Theocritus, not by L.

1 Pyrrhus was apparently born in 319 B.C. (Klotzsch, Epeir. Gesch. p. 95); he was killed at Argos in 272.Google Scholar

2 A.P. 6.293, 298; 7. 478, 480; Plan.306 f.; and perhaps A.P. 7. 448 f. (see p. 116 below). Cf. 6. 204 f.

3 R.E. xii. 2023.Google Scholar

4 I do not know that Lucanian mercenaries are anywhere specifically mentioned, but from Italy had fought for Carthage against Dionysius in the fourth century (Diod. 14. 95), and, among other Italians, Agathocles had Samnites, Hannibal Bruttians, in their armies (Diod. 20. 11, 64, Polyb. 11. 19. 3, Liv. 30. 33. 6). There is no reason to suppose that Lucanians would have been harder to recruit.

5 Aratus is praised for his account of , though he himself (454) expressly excludes the planets on the ground that he is incompetent to deal with them.

1 Hell.Dicht. ii. 276Google Scholar; in Gōtt. Nachr. 1894 p. 198 he had said merely ‘after 276 B.C.’,Google Scholar

2 P. 12.

3 Plut, . Pyrrh. 13.Google Scholar

3 A.P. 6. 300, 302, 7. 715, 736. 7. 715 is L.'s epitaph, and it is here unimportant whether L. wrote it himself or not; but Geffcken's argument that he could not have known that he would be buried far from home is absurd. It has been, or seemed, obvious to countless people long before their death that they would never see their homeland again. In the absence of more conclusive evidence for L.'s life too little importance has perhaps been attached to A.P. 9. 719, a couplet on Myron's Cow at Athens, and to A. Plan. 182, an ecphrastic epigram on the Anady-omene of Apelles at Cos. Others, it is true, wrote on the painting (A. Plan. 178 ff.), and the composition of couplets on the Cow was to become a positive tic (A.P. 9. 713 ff., 793 ff.); and no doubt many epigrams on these themes are by authors who had not seen the works in question. The fashions however must have originated from somebody who had seen them, and unless some of the anonymous epigrams on the Cow are earlier, L. seems to have been the first to write on either. L.'s versification of a sentiment ascribed in Diog. L. 4. 49 to Bion the Borysthenite (Stob. 4. 52. 28) might be the product of a visit to Athens, and so might A.P. 7. 472 if Geffcken was right in tracing its ideas back to Crantor. There is nothing to confirm a visit to Cos, but if A.P. 6. 110, which records an exploit on the Meander, is by L. and not by Mnasalces, it suggests wanderings east of the Aegean. The Spartan references in A.P. 7. 19, 9. 320 cannot be considered significant, but the complete absence in so large a body of epigrams of any reference to Egypt is sufficiently noticeable to suggest that, unlike many third-century poets, L. had no contact with Alexandria.

5 In A.P. 7. 736 L. commends a settled life, however humble, in preference to that of a wanderer, and in 6. 302, as an old man, he tells mice that they will find no pickings in his (an idea suggested perhaps by a joke of Diogenes recorded in Diog. L. 6. 40). It is possible therefore that L. may ultimately have found a resting-place.

1 It is quoted, naturally with no author's name, in Diod. 22. 22, Plut, . Pyrrh. 26, Paus.1. 13. 2.Google Scholar

2 The placing of the two intruders is odd, for if in these contexts at allA.P. 6. 130 should be before 129 or after 132, and 7. 479 before 478 or after 480. It may be seen from p. 114 n. 2 above that if the intruders were removed A.P. would unite all the pairs among L.'s epigrams except 6. 293, 298, which are both in the same unsuitable context. I forbear however to speculate on these mysteries.

1 In my Greek Anthology: sources and attributions (p. 36) I illustrate further the risk of erroneous attribution which arises when epigrams are run together.

4 Geffcken (p. 146 and R.E. xii. 2023) lists the authors with whom he traces connexions in L. To take an example from epigrams already mentioned, L., in the second Lucanian epigram (A.P. 6. 131), says that the dedicated spoils regret their former owners. Nossis, in the following epigram, says that the shields do not regret the cowardly Bruttians, who threw them away, but praise the valour of their Locrian captors, and so, according to Geffcken, ‘overtrumps’ L. It may be reasonable to suspect some connexion between the two epigrams, but I do not myself see how priority is to be established except by chronology.Google Scholar

1 Hell. Dicht. I. 143Google Scholar. Elsewhere he spoke of L.'s ‘hohler Wortschaum’ (Timotheus p. 55) and ‘bombastische Gedankenleere’ (Textg. gr. Bukol. p.114).

2 Reitzenstein's encomium (Ep. u. Skol. p. 145) seems to me quite undeserved.

3 I commend to the attention of scholars more ingenious than I particularly A.P. 5. 188, 7. 472, 648, 9. 320.

4 On ancient planes see Blümner, Techn. ii. 227.Google Scholar

1 Paton translated cottage, but the word is not confined to buildings, as may be seen from Plut. Mor. 508 D, Ditt. Syll3 344. 98.

1 See my notes on Theocr. 5. 86, 18. 32.

1 I hope the editors, who print in v. 5 oi this epigram , could defend the gen., for I cannot. Hecker proposed, a form used (beside) by L. in A.P. 7. 472 and by Hedylus, ap. Ath. II. 473A.Google Scholar

2 In Antipater, I.e., the basket is called. Cf.Cat. 64. 318.

3 Aj. 176,fr. 611.

4 See Meineke, , F.C.G. ii. 1042.Google Scholar

1 Reinach, T.(Rev. Phil. liii. 99) thought it meant dog-muzzle, and hence a bag of that shape, but this does not seem very probable.Google Scholar

2 Soph. Ant. 1O.T. 40, 950, 1207, 1235, O.C. 321, 1657, Eur. Cycl. 438, Hec. 676, Tr. 661, Or. 476.

3 Comm. Crit. 1. 9.Google Scholar

4 See J.H.S. liv. 8.Google Scholar

5 These are pleasantly illustrated by Arist.

1 A.P. 12. 44 (Glaucus). Q.N. 4. 11.

2 Dio Chrys.8.16, Ov.Met. 10.262, Petron. 27.

3 Thes. v. 1205.Google Scholar

4 Hell. Dicht. ii. 110.Google Scholar

5 C.R. xv. 401Google Scholarand on Hdas vi. 13.Google Scholar

6 E.g. (to cite the shortest) A.P. 7. 167 Equally and similarly irrelevant is his citation of Eur. Or. 1479 in defence of A.P. 7. 472.11.

1 A strange and unsatisfactory explanation of the similarity between these two pentameters was advanced by Wilamowitz, (Hell. Dicht. ii. 109).Google Scholar

2 Thes. iv. 1339.Google Scholar

3 So also with (II. 19. 351, Nonn. D. 48. 614, Tryph.478).

4 On which see Spitzner Iliad, excurs. 16.

5 Parol. 313.

6 Duebner said praebuerunt RS et F. I cannot discover any explanation of these sigla but guess them to denote apographa of Planudes.