Vergil and the Date of the Theocritean Epigram Book

Philologus

Volumn 140, Issue 1, 1996, Pages 92-188

  Gutzwiller, Kathryn ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI   (United States)

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EID: 85026130098     PISSN: 00317985     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1524/phil.1996.140.1.92     Document Type: Article

References (35)

1. This group of poems is found in three manuscript strands: in the Ambrosian family of manuscripts, of which K (Ambrosianus 886) is the primary exemplar; in the editions of Giunta and Callierges (1516) derived from the lost codex Patavinus, and (together with an additional five epigrams) in various places in the Palatine Anthology. It is clear from the ordering of the Theocritean epigrams in the AP that the poems passed from a collection similar to that in the bucolic manuscripts to the Anthology. See A. S. F. Gow, Theocritus, 2nd ed. (Cambridge 1952) II 523–27, who states (p. 525) that the compiler who added the Theocritean epigrams to the anthology “cannot be shown to be earlier than Constantinus Cephalas in the first half of the tenth century.”
2. A. Cameron, The Greek Anthology from Meleager to Planudes (Oxford 1993) 142 argues that it was Cephalas himself who inserted the epigrams in the collection.
3. The sixty Anacreontic poems constitute an anthology formed in a similar way; see Patricia A. Rosenmeyer, The Poetics of Imitation. Anacreon and the Anacreontic Tradition (Cambridge 1992) 115–46.
4. Gow II 524. It is not now true that the epigrams are entirely absent from the papyri, since Epigr. 27 = AP 9.434 has been found on a papyrus of the second-third century A.D. (P. Oxy. 3726), in what appears to be an anthology of non-Theocritean epigrams or elegiac poems. But the discovery adds nothing to our knowledge of the ancient transmission of the epigrams since there is no evidence that 27 was ever part of the collection of Theocritean epigrams. Composed in the form of a book label, it probably headed a collection of hexameter Idylls; see K. Gutzwiller, The Evidence for Theocritean Poetry Books, Theocritus, Hellenistica Groningana, II, ed. M. A. Harder (Groningen, forthcoming).
5. R. Smutny, The Text History of the Epigrams of Theocritus, University of California Publications in Classical Philology 15 (Berkeley 1955) 68–83. Smutny 68–71 assumes that the epigrams entered an ancient anthology from two different sources, one containing the bucolic 1–6 and headed by Artemidorus' epigram (26) and one containing the remaining epigrams and headed by 27, an epigram differentiating our poet from the Chian Theocritus. But there is no reason to assume that either of the book labels headed collections including epigrams; the fact that 26 was placed by Cephalas within a series of other book labels (most of AP 9.184–214) shows that its inclusion in an epigram anthology has nothing to do with its original use. Smutny's dating of the earlier collection to after 100 A.D. is based on the very doubtful isopsephism of 9 (pp. 72–73, 79–80; on 9, see Gow II 535).
6. G. Tarditi, Per una lettura degli epigrammatisti greci, Aevum(ant) 1 (1988) 47.
7. Noted by J. Conington, P. Vergili Maronis opera, 4th ed. (London 1881) I ad loc;
8. S. Posch, Beobachtungen zur Theokritnachwirkung bei Vergil (München 1969) 27;
9. R. Coleman, Vergil. Eclogues (Cambridge 1977) ad loc;
10. M. Gigante, Le Bucoliche (Naples 1981) 34.
11. U. V. Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Die Textgeschichte der griechischen Bukoliker (Berlin 1906) 120; Gow II 527–28. For the publication of the Pompeii frescoes, see
12. C. Dilthey, Dipinti Pompeiani accompagnati d'epigrammi greci, Annali dell'Istituto di corrispondenza archeologica 48 (1876) 294–314 and
13. Monumenti inediti pubblicati dall'Istituto di corrispondenza archeologica 10 (1874–78), Pll. 35–36.
14. The lemmatist to A sought to read the poem as a typical dedication by interpreting the adjective Δελφίς (4) as the name of the dedicator; see P. Waltz, Anthologie grecque I. 3 (Paris 1931) 162. The tendency to read epigrams as isolated entities or to interpret them through their context in the AP has also led modern commentators, including Wilamowitz and Gow, to overlook the symbolic function assumed by the dedication within the Theocritean collection. But see now Tarditi 47.
15. E. g., V. Pöschl, Die Hirtendichtung Virgils (Heidelberg 1964) 10–11; Coleman ad 1; P. Alpers, The Singer of the “Eclogues” (Berkeley 1979) 75; Gigante 23.
16. These passages include Id. 1.20, τᾶς βουκολικᾶς ἐπὶ τὸ πλέον ἵκεο μοίσας; 3.3-4, Τίτυϱ̓, … Τίτυϱε; 7.72, ὁ δὲ Τίτυϱος ἐγγύϑεν ᾀσεῖ; 7.88-89, τὺ δ̓ ὑπὸ δϱυσὶν ἢ ὑπὸ πεύκαις ἁδὺ μελισδόμενος κατεκέκλισο; 12.8, σκιεϱὴν δ̓ ὑπὸ φηγόν. See Posch 19; I. M. Le M. Du Quesnay, Vergil's First Eclogue, PLLS 3 (1981) 36–53;
17. J. Wright, Virgil's Pastoral Programme, PCPS 29 (1983) 108–9, 115–16, 125. Particularly good on showing how Vergil has combined his Greek and Roman models is
18. W. Clausen, A Commentary on Virgil. Eclogues (Oxford 1994). On the complexity of Vergil's allusive technique more generally, see
19. R. F. Thomas, Virgil's Georgics and the Art of References, HSPh 90 (1986) 171–98;
20. G. B. Conte, The Rhetoric of Imitation. Genre and Poetic Memory in Virgil and Other Latin Poets (Ithaca 1986); and
21. J. Farrell, Vergil's “Georgics” and the Traditions of Ancient Epic (New York 1991).
22. Most of the Cephalan books of the Anthology begin with thematic arrangements produced by Cephalas himself, like 7.189-216, and then proceed with long extracts adopted without substantial change from ancient anthologies. On Cephalas's methods of compilation, see Waltz I.1 xxviii–ix; H. Beckby, ed., Anthologia Graeca (München 1957) I 69;
23. F. Lenzinger, Zur griechischen Anthologie (Zürich 1965) 11–12. Cameron 124 argues that Cephalas deliberately intermingled his own thematic arrangements with long extracts from ancient anthologies for the sake of variety.
24. R. B. Egan, Two Complementary Epigrams of Meleager (A. P. vii 195 and 196), JHS 108 (1988) 24–32 has made the clever argument that Meleager 12 and 13 G−P are in fact sepulchral, that the cicada and grasshopper address each other from the grave to request musical relief from love longing. His interpretation depends, however, on the assumption that Meleager himself placed 7.195 and 196 within the sequence of animal epitaphs, and so is ultimately unconvincing. In addition, the linguistic precedents in Theocritus and Mnasalces cited above in notes 13 and 14 induce the reader to expect the speaker in each poem to be human, not an insect.
25. On the musical quality of these insects, see M. Davies and J. Kathirithamby, Greek Insects (Oxford 1986) 117–22, 137–38;
26. I. C. Beavis, Insects and Other Invertebrates in Classical Antiquity (Exeter 1988) 71–72, 76, 99–102.
27. On the similarity in hymnal structure and the parallel vocabulary in Mel. 13 and Cat. 2, see J. D. Bishop, Catullus 2 and its Hellenistic Antecedents, CPh 61 (1966) 158–61. As can be surmised from Martial 4.14. 13–14 and 11.6. 14–16, Catullus' libellus (whatever poems were included in that collection) took its title passer from the opening of poem 2. See
28. A. Wheeler, Catullus and the Traditions of Ancient Poetry (Berkeley 1934) 19;
29. Marilyn B. Skinner, Catullus' “Passer” (Salem, N. H. 1981) 12–13;
30. A. S. Gratwick, Catullus 1.10 and the Title of his Libellus, G & R 38 (1991) 199–202.
31. Based on a close parallel between Longus 2.7 and Eclogue 1.5, scholars have speculated that Vergil may also be alluding to a lost poem by Philetas, who may have provided Theocritus with some of his bucolic themes. See Du Quesnay 39–40; R. L. Hunter, A Study of “Daphnis and Chloe” (Cambridge 1983) 79–81;
32. E. L. Bowie, Theocritus' Seventh Idyll, Philetas and Longus, CQ 35 (1985) 80–81. Was Philetas' poem also an introductory piece?
33. Prepublication by G. Bastianini and C. Gallazzi; “Il poeta ritrovato: scoperti gli epigrammi di Posidippo in un pettorale di mummia,” Rivista “Ca' de Sass” n. 121 (March 1993). The Posidippan epigrams are grouped in thematic sections, each with its own heading: on stones, on omens, dedications, epitaphs for women, on sculptures, on equestrian victories, on shipwrecks, on cures, and a surprising group entitled τρόποι.
34. M. Gronewald, Epigramme des Mnasalkes, Kölner Papyri V, hrsg. v. M. Gronewald, K. Maresch, und W. Schäfer (Opladen 1985) 22–32. On the thematic links between these poems, see Cameron 32.
35. G. Morelli, Origini e formazione del tredicesimo libro dell' Antologia Palatina, RFIC 113 (1985) 295–96 traces the core collection back to the third century B.C. but dates the finished compilation to the late first or second century A. D. Cf. Cameron 142–43.