Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T17:40:23.624Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

ONE SIGN AFTER ANOTHER: THE FIFTH ΛΕΠΤΗ IN ARATUS' PHAEN. 783–4?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2015

Jerzy Danielewicz
Jerzy Danielewicz*
Affiliation:
Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań
*
[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

      καλὸν δ᾽ ἐπὶ σήματι σῆμα
      σκέπτεσθαι, μᾶλλον δὲ δυοῖν εἰς ταὐτὸν ἰόντων
      ἐλπωρὴ τελέθοι, τριτάτῳ δέ κε θαρσήσειας. (Phaen. 1142–4)

It is a good idea to observe one sign after another, and if two agree, it is more hopeful, while with a third you can be confident.

Appropriately for a poet who is ‘subtly speaking’ (λεπτολόγος), the epithet applied to him by Ptolemy III Euergetes (Suppl. Hell. 712.4), Aratus does not cease offering unexpected material to explore. This statement holds true also for the famous passage containing the acrostic ΛΕΠΤΗ (lines 783–7):

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 65 , Issue 1 , May 2015 , pp. 387 - 390
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 The text and translation of Aratus are taken from Kidd, D., Aratus: Phaenomena (Cambridge, 1997).Google Scholar

2 Jacques, J.-M., ‘Sur un acrostiche d'Aratos (Phén., 783–787)’, REA 62 (1960), 48–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In antiquity, this acrostic was recognized already by contemporary Greek authors (Callimachus, Anth. Pal. 9.507 = Epigr. 27 Pfeiffer; Leonidas, Anth. Pal. 9.25; Ptolemy, Suppl. Hell. 712) who obviously alluded to its keyword. It should be noted, however, that Aratus used it in the sense not necessarily concurrent with Callimachean aesthetics (as suggested by Jacques and his followers) – see, most recently, Volk, K., ‘Letters in the sky: reading the signs in Aratus' Phaenomena’, AJPh 133 (2012), 209–40Google Scholar, at 227.

3 The prospective use of the verb σκέπτεσθαι (in the imperative form) to signpost acrostics in Aratus has been generally recognized. Both the ΛΕΠΤΗ- and the ΠΑΣΑ-acrostic are preceded by σκέπτεο (in lines 778 and 799, respectively).

4 Hanses, M., ‘The pun and the moon in the sky: Aratus’ ΛΕΠΤΗ acrostic', CQ 64 (2014), 609–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar. My thanks go to the author of the article for making available unpublished material.

5 This ‘iconic’ name, referring to the shape of the acrostic, has been coined by Morgan, G., ‘Nullam, Vare... Chance or choice in Odes 1.18’, Philologus 137 (1993), 142–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the use of that poetic device in Hellenistic poetry see, among others, Danielewicz, J., ‘Further Hellenistic acrostics: Aratus and others’, Mnemosyne 58 (2005), 321–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 See Courtney, E., ‘Greek and Latin acrostichs’, Philologus 134 (1990), 3–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 10–11.

7 See Levitan, W., ‘Dancing at the end of the rope: Optatian Porfyry and the field of Roman verse’, TAPhA 115 (1985), 245–69Google Scholar, esp. 258–63 and 266 (where a felicitous definition of Optatian's art is used: ‘joinery’).

8 Another exception is perhaps to be seen at Phaen. 216–17, where we can discern the acronym κύε, | κύ᾽ ἀεί, ‘be pregnant, be pregnant all the time’ (of the spring Hippocrene activated by the Horse). As for the element ΠΤΗ separated from ΛΕ, cf. Verg. G. 1.433–5 (a part of the ‘Aratean’ acrostic in Latin transliteration within the description of weather signs provided by the moon); for further details – including the analogy: first ΠΤΗ, and then ΛΕ – see my article ‘Vergil's certissima signa reinterpreted: the Aratean lepte-acrostic in Georgics 1’, Eos 100 fasc. 2 (2013), 287–95.Google Scholar

9 This arrangement has a precedent in Aratus: Cristiano Castelletti (‘Following Aratus’ plow: Vergil's signature in the Aeneid', MH 69 [2012], 83–95, esp. 85–6) has recently uncovered a boustrophedon acrostic-telestich ΙΔΜΗ(I) at 6–7(8), signposted by βουσί at 8. Cases like this confirm Aratus' intentional inclusion of various forms of ‘visual’ wordplay, a feature rightly emphasised by Hanses (n. 4).

10 Cf. CEG 1, t. 344 Hansen. At a time when the boustrophedon ceased to be normal (in Attica c. 530 b.c.e.), the practice had a sacral air: see Jeffery, L.H., ‘The boustrophedon sacral inscriptions from the Agora’, Hesperia 17 (1948), 85–111CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 103–4.

11 For similar criteria of an intentional acronym, see Hendry, M., ‘A Martial acronym in Ennius?’, LCM 19 (1994), 108–9.Google Scholar

12 Detected by Levitan, W., ‘Plexed artistry: three Aratean acrostics’, Glyph 5 (1979), 55–68Google Scholar, at 57–8.

13 Singled out as semiotically correspondent with the content of the embedding lines by Haslam, M.W., ‘Hidden signs: Aratus Diosemeiai 46ff., Vergil Georgics 1.424ff.’, HSCPh 94 (1992), 199–204Google Scholar, at 201.

14 For yet another possible interpretation of this expression see my article on Virgil (n. 8).

15 Perhaps I should add that the ‘inscription’ itself, treated as a separate unit of text (λεπτὴ εἴη περὶ τρίτον ἦμαρ), makes sense and can be interpreted as a record of the poet's hidden ‘scenario’: ‘apart from the clear (καθαρή) instance of ΛΕΠΤΗ let me inscribe also a faint one in the description of the moon on the third day; let it go circuitously’.

16 Since my shorter note is meant as a supplement to the most recent paper by Mathias Hanses (n. 4), which contains an updated bibliography on the subject, I have confined myself to indicating mainly those publications that are directly connected with the arrangement of the ΛΕΠΤΗ-occurrences at Aratus 783–7.