Parthenius Grammaticus

931 22-12-1998 13:15 Page 63

PARTHENIUS GRAMMATICUS

CHRISTOPHER FRANCESE

Parthenius of Nicaea is mainly known as a poet, a follower of Callimachus and, since an influential article by Wendell Clausen in 1964, as the most important Greek poet active in Rome in the late republic. Only fragments of his verses remain; but Roman poetry changes radically in its orientation during his residence in Italy, and Parthenius has been seen by some as an important catalyst in those changes1). I propose to deal here not with Parthenius’ poetry or with any possible echoes of it in Roman literature, but instead with the concrete practicalities of how Parthenius and his Roman friends interacted, a topic that has received much less attention. In particu- lar I want to understand the statement of Macrobius (5,17,18) that Parthenius served as Vergil’s grammaticus in Graecis, his ‘teacher in Greek things’. What does the word grammaticus mean in this con- text, and what does it suggest about Parthenius’ relationship with Vergil? Normally we think of a grammaticus as a primary teacher of language and literature. Roman boys visited the school of a grammaticus after they learned to read, but before pursuing the study of rhe- toric. The grammaticus introduced his pupils to authors such as Homer and Ennius, forced them to memorize some passages, and taught them the rules of correct writing and speaking. Those who progressed that far in education would begin their study at around twelve or thirteen, and continue for two or three years2). Thus most

1) See Suppl. Hell. 605-666 (testimonia and poetic fragments). W. Clausen, Calli- machus and Latin Poetry, GRBS 5 (1964), 181-196. L. Alfonsi, Poetae Novi (Como 1945), 56-72. A. Rostagni, Partenio di Nicea, Elvio Cinna ed i poeti novi, AAT 68,2 (1932-33), 497-545. Lindsay Watson, Cinna and Euphorion, SIFC 54 (1982), 93-110. N.B. Crowther, Parthenius and Roman Poetry, Mnemosyne 29 (1976), 65-71. E. Courtney, The Fragmentary Latin Poets (=FLP), (Oxford 1993), 212-214. 2) On the grammatical curriculum: Stanley F. Bonner, Education in Ancient Rome (Berkeley 1977), 189 ff.; R. A. Kaster, Guardians of Language: The Grammarian and Society in Late Antiquity (Berkeley 1988), 11-14 with earlier literature; Alan D. Booth, The Appearance of the Schola Grammatici, Hermes 106 (1978), 117-125.

64 CHRISTOPHER FRANCESE

scholars have assumed that Vergil knew Parthenius in his youth, at the time when a Roman boy customarily attended a grammaticus’ school3). They have further assumed that, unlike most grammatici, Parthenius taught not Homer but the authors he liked best: Calli- machus, Euphorion, Philetas, and the other Hellenistic masters. Thus there has developed in the scholarship an image of Parthenius as an Alexandrian schoolmaster. A recent article in Vergilius, for example, suggests that Parthenius ran a school in northern Italy, Vergil’s home district, and that many of the neoterics, including Cinna and Catullus, passed through the same school and came out with a keen appreciation of Hellenistic poetry4). This kind of sce- nario subtly shapes our assessment of Parthenius’ role in literary history: captive Greece really does capture the crude victor, in the sense that Parthenius is seen as having a captive audience of teen- agers whom he “indoctrinated with Callimachean and Euphorian ideals”5). Things are not quite that simple, however, since the same word grammaticus was used to refer not only to these rather humble primary teachers but also to very learned scholars and linguists, men who published treatises commenting on classical authors, proposed etymologies and constructed the rules of grammar. These more exalted scholars might teach children occasionally as a favor to a patron, but they were mainly engaged in their own projects6). So the mere appearance of the word grammaticus next to Parthenius’ name does not in itself mean that Parthenius ran a school for boys, since not all grammatici were schoolteachers. Parthenius’ name is not associated with ordinary aristocratic pupils, as we should expect if he ran a prominent school; rather he is associated exclusively with poets, and those who shared his own Callimachean tastes. Parthe- nius’ only extant work is a prose book of love stories called Erotika

3) W. Clausen, Virgil’s Aeneid and the Traditions of Hellenistic Poetry (Berkeley 1987), 5; Nicholas Horsfall, Virgilio: l’epopea in alambicco (Naples 1991), 39-40; and see next note. 4) R. Dyer, Where Did Parthenius Teach Vergil?, Vergilius 42 (1996), 14-24. 5) Brooks Otis, Virgil: A Study in Civilized Poetry (Oxford 1963), 26. Similar language in, e.g., A. Seth-Smith, Parthenius and Erycius, Mnemosyne 34 (1981), 63; J. Griffin, Latin Poets and Roman Life (London 1985), 199. 6) Elizabeth Rawson, Intellectual Life in the Late Roman Republic (Baltimore 1985), chs. 8 and 18. J. Christes, Sklaven und Freigelassene als Grammatiker und Philologen im antiken Rom (Wiesbaden 1979). F. Della Corte, La filologia latina dalle origini a Varrone 2nd ed. (Florence 1981). R. A. Kaster, C. Suetonius Tranquillus. De Grammaticis et Rhetoribus (Oxford 1995).