CALLIMACHUS: COMA BERENICES : ORIGINS*

by

STEVEN JACKSON

In the continuing debate on Callimachus’ Coma Berenices (F 110 Pf.) and Catullus’ translation of it ( c. 66),1) one of the most con- troversial elements is that of the ritus nuptialis which we Ž nd described in Catullus lines 79-88 but which is missing from the Callimachus P. Oxy. 2258. Was the ritus nuptialis an invention of Catullus, or was it in the original Callimachus which Catullus had before him and translated? The thought of Catullus himself composing an aetion in the Callimachean manner which was not actually in the Cal- limachean original he was basically translating is intriguing, and, surely, far from impossible—a type of virtuoso composition, or conta- minatio. R. PfeiVer (2. XXXVII) thinks that it was Callimachus who added these lines when he inserted the Coma, until then assumed to be an independent elegy, into a second edition of the Aetia. There is also the evidence in P. Oxy. 2258 C of an additional closing dis- tich, not evident in Catullus, which seems to suggest that Callimachus did make some changes to the Coma at this time. Presumably Pfei Ver is implying that Callimachus added an aetion to make the piece more suitable for the Aetia. Yet, some would argue that if the whole poem was an aetion anyway and therefore had every right to be included in the Aetia, it is puzzling that a second aetion should have been added at all. 2) Some might also argue that the vexed ten lines do not read like translation, while most of c. 66 does, much of it very good translation. And, the ten lines seem to re  ect Catullan idiom

*I wish to express my gratitude to the anonymous reader who commented helpfully on this article. 1)For a bibliography on the Coma see L. Lehnus, BibliograŽa Callimachea 1489- 1988 (Dipartimento di Archeologia, Filologia Classica e Loro Tradizioni, n.s. 123; Genoa 1989), 104-13. See also N. Marinone, Berenice da Callimaco a Catullo (Boulogne 1997), 263-93. I must also record here my gratitude to Professor Annette Harder for giving me (in e-mail conversation) her views on the Coma based on her forth- coming commentary on the Aetia. 2)See T.P. Wiseman, Catullan Questions (Leicester 1969), 21. Also, C.M. Dawson, The Iambi of Callimachus; a Hellenistic Poet’s Experimental Laboratory , YCS 11 (1950),147.

©Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2001 Mnemosyne, Vol. LIV, Fasc. 1 2 STEVEN JACKSON and preoccupations (e.g. the interest in brides’ breasts) more than Callimachean. 3) Catullus, too, could have done much remoulding of a hint in Callimachus. 4) On the whole, though, scholars favour the idea that the ritus nuptialis is a piece of Catullan invention rather than a translation of original Callimachus. 5) Now, the marriage-theme runs through all of Catullus’ long poems (except c. 63). And Catullus links them all with cross-references of words and images. 6) Is it not likely, therefore, that Catullus chose to translate the Coma Berenices precisely because the poem contained an aetion suited to this marriage-theme? If so, he was presumably reading the version which Callimachus had inserted into the Aetia. Perhaps too much stress has been laid by scholars on the contrast between the castum cubile and the impurus adulter (lines 83-4), when more emphasis should be placed on the poet’s extolling of connu- bial sex and, consequently, wedded bliss. For that, surely, is the message contained in lines 79-88: it is a eulogy both on the sanctity

3)I am indebted to Professor Frederick Williams who expressed this opinion in e-mail conversation. Wiseman, op. cit.,21 and 24, also thinks that we should seri- ously consider the possibility that the ten lines were inserted by Catullus himself. This idea is taken up by A.S. Hollis, The Nuptial Rite in Catullus 66 and Callimachus’ Poetry for Berenice , ZPE 91 (1992), 21-8, who suggests that if FF 387-8 Pf. “contain the remnants of an elegy which had several points of close contact with the Coma Berenices, Catullus’ decision to incorporate a passage based upon one of these poems in his translation of the other could be more easily comprehended”. 4)Cp. Cat. c. 51. 13-6 which seems to present a similar problem, and the Ž nal lines of c. 64 where Roman attitudes and experience appear to have been skilfully grafted onto the, surely, Hellenistic material of the poem as a whole. For the now generally recognised freedom of Catullus’ translations from the Greek, see H.Herter, Kallimachos aus Kyrene , RE Suppl. 13 (1973), 205; A. Spira, Dialogos: Festschr. H.Patzer (Wiesbaden 1975), 153-62; S. West, Venus Observed? A Note on Callimachus, Fr. 110 , CQ 35 (1985), 61-6. 5)Cp. E. Lobel in: E. Lobel, E.P. Wegener, C.H. Roberts (edd.), The Oxyrhynchus Papyri part XX (London 1952), 98, who remarks “A poem of which the aàtion is the forming of the constellation BerenÛkhw plñkamow is not improved by the super- position of an aàtion concerning a marriage custom”; M.C.J. Putnam, Catullus 66, 75-88, CP 55 (1960), 223-8; A. Salvatore, Studi Catulliani (Naples 1965), 278-84, esp. 278 n. 22; Wiseman, ibid.;G.O. Hutchinson, Hellenistic Poetry (Oxford 1988), 323. n. 91, who sees the disputed ten lines as an unwelcome rupture by Catullus of what otherwise would have been an “ elegant connection”; A.S. Hollis, op. cit.; L. Koenen, The Ptolemaic King as a Religious Figure, in: A.W. Bulloch, E.S. Gruen, A.A. Long, A. Stewart (edd.), Images and Ideologies: Self-De Žnition in the Hellenistic World (Berkeley 1993), 81-4; A. Cameron, Callimachus and his Critics (Princeton 1995), 105- 6, who comments “To make so pointed and irrelevant an addition to the origi- nal version might be thought to imply that there was some question about Berenice’s Ž delity!”; and Marinone, op. cit., 41-6. 6)Cp. Wiseman op. cit. 20 and 24.