Callimachus, Conon and Ptolemy: an Alexandrian epigram between geography and astronomy

Abstract

A neglected, anonymous and undated epigram on the world map of Ptolemy’s Geography, here critically edited for the first time on the basis of all existing manuscripts, proves a rare case of reception of Callimachus’ Lock of Berenice, with an emphasis on the bonds between geography and astronomy, and with so-called ‘geographical astrology’. It may stem from Late Antique Alexandria.

I. A neglected epigram on Ptolemy’s Geography

Ptolemy’s Geography has inspired a handful of Greek epigrams, among which no less than five by the great scholar Maximos Planoudes († ca. 1305), who famously rediscovered the Geography in Byzantium; ¹ hardly any of these, however, are transmitted in manuscripts alongside Ptolemy’s text itself. ² The sole exception is a seven-line poem that, like Planoudes’ epigrams 6–8 Taxidis, celebrates a geographical diagram of the world.

This hexameter text, which has attracted virtually no scholarly attention, ³ appears at the end of no less than 25 manuscript witnesses of Ptolemy’s Geography, all obviously later than Planoudes, and belonging to seven different families of the so-called Ω recension in Schnabel’s classification. ⁴ Below I present the text (admirably and consistently preserved in the older manuscripts, and therefore in no need of a proper apparatus criticus), ⁵ a working translation and a list of the manuscript witnesses.

Ἐν γραμμαῖς τὸν κόσμον ἀριθμηθέντα νόησον·

ἄρκτους, ὠκϵανόν, δύσιν, ἀντολίην τϵ νότον τϵ,

χϵῖμα, θέρος, φυσικάς τ᾽ ἀτραποὺς σκολιάς τϵ κϵλϵύθους,

Αἰθίοπάς τ᾽ ἀδρανϵῖς, Γϵρμανῶν δύσμορα φῦλα,

Σαυρομάτας χοίροισιν ἐοικότας ἠδὲ καὶ αὐτῆς

αἰνομόρου Σκυθίης χαλϵπὸν γένος, ἄχρις ἐς ἠῶ

Ἰνδῶν τϵ Σηρῶν τϵ· τὸ γὰρ πέρας ἀντολίης γῆς.

Behold the world arithmetically disposed in a diagram:

the Bears, the Ocean, the Sunset, the Sunrise and the South,

the winter, the summer, the natural roads and the winding paths,

the weak Aithiopians, the unlucky tribes of the Germans,

the Sarmatians similar to pigs, and the rude race

of doomed Scythia, all the way to the dawn

of the Indians and the silk people, for that is the limit of the eastern land.

The families and manuscripts are: ⁶

- α: v = Londiniensis Burney 111, fol. 114r (late 14th century, Constantinople), and its apograph A = Vaticanus Palatinus Graecus 388, fol. 149v (1435–1437, Constantinople); likely from A (the codex used by Erasmus for the editio princeps of the Geography in 1533) derives the copy of the epigram in fol. 22r–v of Vaticanus Barberinianus Graecus 74, a collection of Byzantine poetry compiled by the erudite Vatican librarian Leone Allacci in the 17th century;

- ζ: Z = Vaticanus Palatinus Graecus 314, fol. 223r (1460–1470, Crete: Michael Apostolis), its apograph E = Parisinus Graecus 1403, fol. 225v (1472–1473, Crete: Michael Apostolis) and E’s apograph H = Parmensis Palatinus 9, fol. 205r (post-1473, Crete: Antonios Damilas); ⁷

- κ: K = Istanbul, Seragliensis G.I.57, fol. 122r (fragmentary) (1295–1303, Constantinople);

- ν: f = Parisinus Coislinianus 337, fol. 264r (early 14th century, Constantinople);

- ρ: C = Parisinus Supplementi Graeci 119, fol. 231v (early 14th century, Constantinople); V = Vaticanus Graecus 177, fol. 240v (early 14th century, Constantinople) and its apograph p = Marc. Gr. 388, fol. 101r (ca. 1453, Italy: John Rhosos); R = Marcianus Graecus 516, fol. 116r (14th century: Andreas Telountas); other possible members of this family (but the philological evidence is too slim) may be Scorialensis Graecus Ω.I.1, fol. 182r (anno 1523, Carpi: Donato Bonturellio) and Bodleianus Laudianus 52, fol. 77r (anno 1568, Venice: Antonios Episkopoulos); ⁸

- ψ: U = Vaticanus Urbinas Graecus 82, fol. 110v (1295–1303, Constantinople), its apograph d = Laurentianus Conventi soppressi 626, fol. 104v (ante 1434, Florence), d’s apographs m = Vindobonensis historicus Graecus 1, fol. 98v (anno 1454, Florence: John Scoutariotes) and D = Parisinus Graecus 1402, fol. 71v (15th century, Florence: John Scoutariotes), as well as m’s apograph Bodleianus Archivi Seldeniani B 45, fol. 176v (anno 1482, Buda: John Athesinos); ⁹

- ω: O = Laurentianus 28.49, fols 110v–111r (early 14th century, Constantinople), its three apographs s = Ambrosianus D 527 inf., fols 89v and 2v (ca. 1361–1381, Constantinople), S = Laurentianus 28.9, fol. 132r (early 15th century, Florence) and Vaticanus Reginensis Graecus 82, fol. 166v (early 16th century, Rome?: Michael Rhosaitos); S in turn has two apographs, B = Laurentianus 28.38, fol. 177v (early 15th century, Florence) and P = Laurentianus 28.42, fol. 147v (anno 1445, Florence: Demetrios Kykandyles); finally, codex Vaticanus Barberinianus Graecus 163, fol. 231v (15th century, Florence: John Scoutariotes) is an apograph of B. ¹⁰

In a number of manuscripts the epigram is written as prose, with no distinction of lines, although they are mostly separated by dots. A title, στίχοι ἡρωϊκοὶ ϵἰς τὴν Πτολϵμαίου Χωρογραφίαν, ‘Hexameters on Ptolemy’s Chorography’ (but manuscript R gives Γϵωγραφίαν, ‘Geography’, probably a learned conjecture by Andreas Telountas) appears in just two of the families (α and ρ; family ζ has στίχοι ἡρωϊκοί), and is probably secondary: the term χωρογραφία rather than γϵωγραφία is particularly absurd in light of the discussion on the disciplines of learning in Ptol. Geog. 1.1 (and of the title unanimously transmitted by manuscripts Γϵωγραφικὴ Ὑφήγησις, ‘Geographical Instruction’), but it corresponds to what we find in the 12th-century scholar John Tzetzes. ¹¹

More importantly, in virtually all manuscripts the epigram either immediately follows (ψ and manuscript C) or, more commonly, precedes (α, κ, ν, ρ, ω) the hotly debated subscription by a mysterious Alexandrian engineer named Agathodaimon, who presents himself as the producer of a world map:

ἐκ τῶν Κλαυδίου Πτολϵμαίου γϵωγραφικῶν βιβλίων ὀκτὼ τὴν οἰκουμένην πᾶσαν Ἀγαθὸς Δαίμων Ἀλϵξανδρϵὺς μηχανικὸς ὑπϵτύπωσα. ¹²

I, the engineer Agathodaimon from Alexandria, drew the entire oikoumenē on the basis of the eight books on geography by Klaudios Ptolemaios.

This world map must be the same one for whose production instructions are given by Ptolemy in Geography 7.5–7. ¹³ Given that our epigram evidently describes a world map, and that it consistently features in close proximity to a subscription referring to the ὑποτύπωσις (‘template’) referred to by Ptol. Geog. 7.4.14, ¹⁴ one may well surmise that the two texts originally went hand in hand (their respective positions may vary, as in ψ and C, but their proximity is a constant). Agathodaimon cannot be dated with any degree of precision, but he certainly lived prior to Alexandria’s fall to the Arabs (641), most likely some time between the third and the fifth century CE. ¹⁵ A date in late antiquity is also entirely compatible with the metrical facies of the epigram, ¹⁶ as well as with its linguistic features (see below sections II–III); ¹⁷ indeed, it ties in well with the taste for hexameter (rather than elegiac) that surfaces in Greek epigrammatic poetry in the third century CE. ¹⁸ But whereas exact date and authorship of this ‘traditional allographic paratext’ ¹⁹ are bound to remain obscure, the epigram’s literary texture, with its undeclared but unmistakable Alexandrian flavour, has more to tell.

II. Callimachean intertexts

The topos of ‘seeing’ is common in connection with Ptolemy’s world map: it represents, for instance, the thematic backbone of Planoudes’ epigrams 4 and 6. In line 1 of our epigram, Ἐν γραμμαῖς τὸν κόσμον ἀριθμηθέντα νόησον, however, the occurrence of the locution ἐν γραμμαῖς together with a verb of seeing (the imperative νόησον, which also implies a wider act of ‘perception’, ‘understanding’, that may spill over to the deeper comprehension of Ptolemy’s own text, see, for example, νόησον in Aristotle, Problema bovium 11) unmistakably conjures up a ‘parody’ of the famous incipit of Callimachus’ Lock of Berenice (Aitia 4, fr. 110.1 Pf. = 110.1 Harder = 213.1 Massimilla):

Πάντα τὸν ἐν γραμμαῖσιν ἰδὼν ὅρον ᾗ τϵ φέρονται …

Having observed the whole sky divided in lines, and the movements …

Miraculously preserved by a quotation in the Milan papyrus of the Diegeseis (P.Mil.Vogl. I.8, col. V.40; first published in 1934), this verse is the only extant line from the proem to the Lock, itself entirely lost except for two lines (commonly identified as lines 7–8) quoted by the scholia to Aratus’ Phainomena (scholia in Aratum 146, p. 147.15 Martin = fr. 110.7–8 Pf. = 110.7–8 Harder = 213.7–8 Massimilla): ²⁰

†η† μϵ Κόνων ἔβλϵψϵν ἐν ἠέρι τὸν βϵρϵνίκης

βόστρυχον, ὃν κϵίνη πᾶσιν ἔθηκϵ θϵοῖς.

Conon saw me in the sky, the lock of Berenice

which she dedicated to all the gods. (tr. Harder (2012) 1.289)

Even if the exact wording of these lines has sometimes been called into question, ²¹ we can be relatively sure that the speaking lock of Berenice’s hair opened this aition by narrating how it had been discovered in the sky (ἔβλϵψϵν ἐν ἠέρι) by the Alexandrian astronomer Conon of Samos, who had previously seen (ἰδών) the entire heavenly vault (τὸν ὅρον) in a diagram (ἐν γραμμαῖσιν). ²² Modern translations are not always clear on this point, ²³ and it is true that ἐν γραμμαῖσιν (a reference to the lines dividing the sky into regions and connecting stars on charts) ²⁴ might be taken either with ἰδών (as opposed to ἐν ἠέρι in line 7: this is clearly the way our epigrammatist also understands it in his imitation) or, in a more obvious if semantically less satisfying syntax, as an attribute of τὸν ὅρον: ²⁵ in either case, the fact remains that Callimachus started his elegiac poem by praising Conon’s activity as a map-maker of the sky.

As can be gleaned from the comparison with Catullus’ poetic translation of the Lock in his carmen 66, ²⁶ the opening lines of Callimachus’ aition (the extant line 1 and the lost 2–6) were devoted to the presentation of Conon’s astronomical wisdom, clad in a clever effect of suspense that illuminates his ‘savoir total’: ²⁷ that our epigram on Ptolemy’s Geography uses a similar number of lines (7) to celebrate the extraordinary achievement of another Alexandrian scientist might thus not be entirely the fruit of chance. Above all, if we consider the blend of ‘scientific and mythical allusion’, ²⁸ we can see that in Catullus 66 (and so in Callimachus?) lines 2–4 of the poem list the natural elements studied by Conon (constellations, solar eclipses, parapēgmata, all topics on which Conon had written important treatises known to Ptolemy and more widely in the Imperial age) ²⁹ and then lead on to the myth of Selene (the moon) and Endymion in the following couplet. So, too, lines 2–3 of our epigram list the cardinal points and the geographical elements to be found in Ptolemy’s map, and then lines 4–7 introduce by name certain populations that can be traced and found on the same map. It is particularly interesting that precisely the same combination of astronomy and mythology (as a pivotal part of Aratus’ didactic poetry and of the Alexandrian pairing of literature and science) lies at the heart of the intertextual appropriation of the Lock’s incipit recently detected by Richard Hunter in two first-century inscribed poems from Tenos and Corcyra. ³⁰

For those lacking the skill and self-confidence of Joseph Scaliger and Eric Arthur Barber, ³¹ it is hard to speculate as to what line 2 of Callimachus’ Lock may have looked like, particularly given the uncertainty about the correlative implied by τϵ in line 1 (another object of ἰδών in the accusative, another participle coordinated with ἰδών, for example ϵὑρών or Barber’s δαϵίς, as in Catull. 66.2 comperit?). ³² Still, it is highly probable that the subject of φέρονται was ἀστέρϵς or ἄστρα, and that like Catullus 66 the line contained a reference to the stars’ ortus and obitus, or rather ἀντολίαι and δύσιϵς. ³³ It may be no coincidence that both of these words also appear in line 2 of our epigram on Ptolemy, albeit with the different, geographical, meaning of ‘east’ and ‘west’ in the singular. ³⁴

In other words, it looks as if, however we wish to reconstruct the incipit of Callimachus’ Lock, the author of our epigram followed its pattern quite closely, thus deserving to be defined as its only Greek testimonium (with the possible exception of the aforementioned inscriptions); among the Romans, as demonstrated long ago by Albio Cesare Cassio, ³⁵ line 1 inspired Virgil’s reference to Conon in Ecl. 3.40–41 Conon et—quis fuit alter, | descripsit radio totum qui gentibus orbem.

Two questions arise at this point: why did our epigrammatist choose Callimachus, and why did he choose Conon? As for the first issue, it may be recalled that Callimachus’ Aitia was not only the masterpiece of Alexandrian verse but, as recent scholarship has recognized, a fundamental text in the shaping of the new, Hellenistic geopolitical horizon. While it did not envisage or imply a coherent and systematic description of the world, through its manifold references to local myths and tales the Aitia embodied the Ptolemaic ambition to encompass and foster the Panhellenic heritage by recentring it around its new political and cultural capital, Alexandria. ³⁶ From this perspective, the choice of the Aitia as a primary intertext for an epigram devoted to a map (and a book) bound to revolutionize (once again, from Alexandria) the geographical knowledge of the world seems natural. Whether this resonance also implied political overtones (the relationship between science and power, the shaping of a world-leading authority, etc.) is difficult to say given the lack of a more precise date for our epigram. Yet, in narrower disciplinary terms, the epigram seems to evoke Conon in order to define Ptolemy’s epistemological role at the crossroads of geography and astronomy.

III. Geography and astronomy

We have seen that the allusion to the Lock was an act of literary homage to the most important poet of the Alexandrian age, ³⁷ and particularly to the last part of his masterpiece the Aitia (our epigram also in some way ‘rounds off’ the Geography). But this allusion also served to create a direct connection between Conon and Ptolemy, and thus between the disciplines of geography and astronomy, a mutual bond that lay at the heart of Ptolemy’s scientific agenda and writing: ³⁸ Ptolemy’s other main scientific achievement, the Almagest or μαθηματικὴ σύνταξις, was the standard reference work on ancient astrothesy (see particularly 7.5–8.1), and it included a brief reference to the Lock of Berenice. ³⁹

Both geography and astronomy had recourse to diagrams (γραμμαί, essentially the same lines on the ‘outer’ sphere of the sky and on the ‘inner’ sphere of the earth) ⁴⁰ and to mathematical calculus: this explains the otherwise surprising choice of the participle ἀριθμηθέντα in line 1 of our epigram: the verb does not mean ‘to count’, ‘to number’ here (κόσμος is a conspicuously uncountable noun), but rather ‘to describe through numbers’, much as the method of geography is presented vis-à-vis that of chorography in Geography 1.1.6–7. ⁴¹

Both geography and astronomy produced two-dimensional visual representations of a large surface: Ptolemy himself described the technical and epistemological difference between sketching an external, overarching surface that can be comprehended by the human eye (such as the sky), and that of the earth on which we live, which no human being can possibly view in its entirety. ⁴² But even more importantly, the two representations are so inextricably linked (one sphere being contained in the other), that it is impossible to consider them separately, as Ptolemy argues in Geography 1.1.8. ⁴³ Moreover, the geographical elements enumerated in lines 2–3 of our epigram are closely connected to Ptolemy’s doctrine.

First of all (I owe this point to Fabio Guidetti), the mention of the Ocean in line 2 interrupts the canonical quadripartite enumeration of the cardinal points ⁴⁴ by adding an element that has a special role in the Geography as a case of explicit denial of earlier doctrine: the Ocean is, for Ptolemy, exclusively what we call the Atlantic (in all its various parts), ⁴⁵ not the all-encircling river that surrounds the entire oikoumenē, ⁴⁶ as was the case for example in Dionysius the Periegete, who famously started his own geographical poem precisely from the Ocean (line 3 μνήσομαι Ὠκϵανοῖο βαθυρρόου, ‘I shall name deep-flowing Ocean’). Therefore, its mention between the north (ἄρκτοι) and the west (δύσις) represents an accurate description of Ptolemy’s image of the world, and a statement of belief in Ptolemy’s doctrine.

Furthermore, line 3 of our epigram lists the two tropics (χϵῖμα and θέρος evidently do not stand for the respective seasons, ⁴⁷ but for the χϵιμϵρινός τροπικός and the θϵρινὸς τροπικός, Capricorn and Cancer, respectively), whose exact position is discussed as a pivotal element in Ptolemy’s refutation (by means of astronomical arguments) of Marinos’ world map and geographical projection in Geog. 1.7–9: as a matter of fact, one of the main conclusions of Ptolemy against Marinos was that the oikoumenē did not stretch south as far as the Tropic of Capricorn, but only to the so-called Anti-Meroe parallel. ⁴⁸ As for the following φυσικαὶ ἀτραποί and σκολιαὶ κέλϵυθοι, while they have been interpreted as purely astronomical features (the tropics and the ecliptics), ⁴⁹ it is more likely that they refer to the natural roads leading from one continent to the other, and to the winding paths of rivers or other physical features: these certainly figured to some extent in the world map, as documented by Geog. 7.5.5–7. Moreover, σκολιάς τϵ κϵλϵύθους looks like an explicit verbatim quotation from Dionysius’ Periegesis 62–63 (ὑμϵῖς δ᾽ ὦ Μοῦσαι σκολιὰς ἐνέποιτϵ κϵλϵύθους, | ἀρξάμϵναι στοιχηδὸν ἀφ᾽ ἑσπέρου Ὠκϵανοῖο, ‘And you, o Muses, tell the twisted paths, / In linear course from Ocean in the west’), ⁵⁰ where this rather obscure expression refers to the paths of the rivers and gulfs deriving from the Ocean, ⁵¹ and features at the beginning of the poet’s invocation to the Muse, a ‘second proem’ as it were. ⁵²

Finally, in Ptolemy’s view, geography and astronomy work together in what is called ‘geographical astrology’, namely the doctrine that informs a large section of his Tetrabiblos (or Apotelesmatica), and according to which the ethos and customs of each population depend on the physical characteristics of the land it inhabits, as well as on the zodiacal signs presiding over it. This combination, which is instrumental to the presentation of the southern European peoples as ‘normal’ and the ‘marginal’ peoples as variously eccentric (see Ptolemy, Apotelesmatica 2.2), lies behind lines 4–7 of our epigram. On the one hand, the choice of the populations named here closely matches the paragraph of Ptolemy’s Geography listing the limits of the known world, ⁵³ the only significant deviation being the reference to the Γϵρμανοί instead of the βρϵττανοί or other northern peoples (a choice for which I have no real explanation, the idea of a reference to the central role of Magna Germania in the political and ethnic turmoil of the late Imperial age being highly speculative). ⁵⁴ By contrast, the more or less conventional attributes accompanying each population find no match in the Geography (where ethnographic interests are altogether absent), but prove often (though not always) comparable with the relevant paragraphs of the Tetrabiblos: the weak Aithiopians, ⁵⁵ the unhappy Germans, ⁵⁶ the wild Sarmatians, ⁵⁷ the rude Scythians, ⁵⁸ the ‘extreme’ Indians and silk people, ⁵⁹ who live on the edge (πέρας) of the known world. ⁶⁰

IV. Conclusion

By interweaving reminiscences of Callimachus and Dionysius the Periegete, by establishing a link with the geopolitical dimension of the Aitia, by finding inspiration in Ptolemy’s doctrine and by indirectly paying tribute to Conon, our epigram on the world map of the Geography boasts so many links to Alexandrian science and literature that it is hard to imagine that it could have been written anywhere else but in the Egyptian capital. That its author may have been the same Agathodaimon who proudly defines himself as Ἀλϵξανδρϵύς in the subscription to the work and to the map, may be more than a simple guess.