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Callimachus and His Critics ALAN CAMERON Callimachus and His Critics Callimachus and His Critics ALAN CAMERON PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY Copyright 01995 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, Chichester, West Sussex All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-ln-Publicatton Data Cameron, Alan. Calliniachus and his critics / Alan Cameron. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-691-04367-1 (alk. paper) 1. Callimachus—Criticism and interpretation—History. 2. Greek poetry, Hellenistic— Egypt—Alexandria—History and criticism—Theory, etc. I. Title PA3945.Z5C28 1995 881-.01-dc20 95-2674 This book has been composed in Times Roman, using Nota Bene 4, on a Hewlett-Packard LaserJet 4M The publisher would like to acknowledge Alan Cameron for providing the camera-ready copy from which this book was printed Princeton University Press books are printed on acid-free paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources Printed in the United States of America by Princeton Academic Press 13579 10 8642 For Geoff and Jean CONTENTS PREFACE ix FREQUENTLY USED ABBREViAnoNs xi CHRONOLOGIA CALUMACHEA xiii Chapter I Cyrene, Court and Kings 3 Chapter II The Ivory Tower 24 Chapter III The Symposium 71 Chapter IV Prologue and Dream 104 Chapter V The Ician Guest 133 Chapter VI Epilogue and Iambi 141 Chapter VII Callimachus Senex 174 Chapter VIII TheTelchines 185 Chapter IX Mistresses and Dates 233 Chapter X Hellenistic Epic 263 Chapter XI Fat Ladies 303 Chapter XII One Continuous Poem 339 νύϊ Contents Chapter XIII Hesiodic Elegy 362 Chapter XIV The Cyclic Poem 387 ChapterXV The Hymn to Apollo 403 Chapter XVl Theocritus 410 Chapter XVII Hecale and Epyllion 437 Chapter XVIII Vergil and the Augustan Recusatio 454 Appendix A Hedylus and Lyde 485 Appendix B Thin Gentlemen 488 Appendix C Asclepiades's Girlfriends 494 BIBLIOGRAPHY 521 INDEX 525 INDEX LOCORUU 533 PREFACE Books (mine anyhow) have a way of growing in unexpected directions. This one started life as a reinterpretation of the Aetia prologue, its limited purpose to show that Callimachus's concern was elegy, not epic. But I soon realized this could not be done without a more detailed examination of the curious modern preoccupation with Hellenistic epic and epyllion, held to be so important for the understanding of Roman as well as Hellenistic poetry (Ch. X; XVI-XVIII). For these misconceptions appear at their starkest in modern scholarly writing on Catullus and the Augustans. The identification of Callimachus's Telchines led me to reconsider the dates, works, interrelationships and ancient biographies of most of the other leading poets of the age; and thence to a wider study of the transmis­ sion and interpretation of their works in the later Hellenistic and Roman age (Ch. IV and VIII). Thus the "Critics" of my title, originally just the Telchines of the prologue, ended up with a far wider reference, ancient and modern. No new papyri of Callimachus have appeared since Lloyd-Jones and Parsons published their Supplementum Hellenisticum in 1983, but a number of other new texts help to cast welcome (if sometimes unexpected) new light on the picture I have tried to draw. Callimachus has generally been considered the archetypal ivory tower poet, his work identified as the first appearance of art for art's sake, poetry for the book rather than fellow citizens. He has been damned with faint praise as a scholar writing for libraries, a court sycophant writing to flatter divine kings. Ch. I-III present a very different perspective, based on the abundant evidence instead of twentieth-century rationalisation of nineteenth-century prejudice against the postclassical. Much of the book is in fact more of a prolegomena to the study of Hellenistic (and so also Roman) poetry than a study of Callimachus alone. It is a social as much as a literary history of Greek poetry in the early third century. I have tried to situate Callimachus as firmly as I could in the real world in which he lived as well as in his real literary context, a world of cities as well as courts, a world of private symposia and public festivals, in which poetry and poets continued to play a central role. As a result, the book has turned out much longer than I had planned or hoped. I trust no one will quote F 465 at me; for wherever Callimachus's mind was when he said that a big book was a big bore (p. 52), his tongue was firmly in his cheek. The notion that he was the uncompromising apostle of the short poem dies hard, but anyone who can count can work X Preface out for himself that none of his contemporaries wrote more books or longer poems than Callimachus. Even Apollonius's Argonautica was little if at all longer than the four books of the Aetia. Many friends answered questions, discussed problems, gave me references, read chapters, argued me out of perverse solutions or helped me in one way or another: Roger Bagnall, Richard Billows, Pamela Bleisch, Mary Depew, Matthew Dickie, Marco Fantuzzi, Kathryn Gutzwiller, Christian Habicht, William Harris, Adrian Hollis, Richard Hunter, Richard Janko, Arnd Kerkhecker, Peter Knox, Nita Krevans, Luigi Lehnus, Jen­ nifer Lynn, Oswyn Murray, Carole Newlands, Dirk Obbink, Daniel Selden, Alexander Sens, David Sider, Wesley Trimpi, Martin West, Stephen White, Gareth Williams, Jim Zetzel and no doubt many others whose contributions I can no longer recall individually. Hugh Lloyd-Jones made salutary criticisms of a very early (not to say premature) draft, and Sarah Mace helped eliminate obscurities at the last moment. Guido Bastianini gave me information on the Milan Posidippus papyrus, at the time of writing still mostly unpublished. Claude Meillier, on behalf of the Institut de Papyrologie et d'Egyptologie de Lille, kindly supplied the photo of the Lille papyrus reproduced on the dust-jacket. The camera-ready copy was prepared on a BUS 286 and Toshiba Satellite Tl 800 using Nota Bene 4 and printed on a Hewlett-Packard Laserjet 4. In conclusion, I would like to name three scholars to whom I owe a more general debt of longer standing: W. W. Cruickshank, who at St Paul's School first introduced me to the meaning of scholarship; Eduard Fraenkel, whose unforgettable Oxford seminars exemplified its methods and something of its history; and Arnaldo Momigliano, who always had time for young unknowns with no legitimate claim on it, and who encour­ aged without attempting to direct or influence my own first contributions to fields he knew better than anyone. New York May 1995 FREQUENTLY USED ABBREVIATIONS Callimachus is cited by fragment number from vol. I of R. Pfeiffer's edi­ tion of 1949; references to the extensive prolegomena and addenda in vol. II (1953) usually by page number; more recent discoveries by their number in SH. Pfeiffer 1968 refers to his History of Classical Scholarship from the Beginnings to the End of the Hellenistic Age (Oxford 1968); P.M. Fraser's Ptolemaic Alexandria (Oxford 1972) is cited as Fraser I or II; Herter's con­ tributions (see Bibliography) are cited by name and year; references to CA and FGE are by page number; Lehnus 1989 is L. Lehnus, Bibliografia CaI- limachea 1489-1988 (Genova 1989). Other abbreviations are normally as recommended in L'Annee philologique or the Oxford Classical Dictionary. See too the introduction to the index. AP Anthologia Palatina BMCR Bryn Mawr Classical Review CA Iohannes U. Powell, Collectanea Alexandrina (Oxford 1925) CEG Carmina epigraphica Graeca ed. P. A. Hansen CP Classical Philology CQ Classical Quarterly CR Classical Review CSCA California Studies in Classical Antiquity F Fragment FD Fouilles de Delphes FGrH F. Jacoby, Fragmente der griechischen Historiker (1923-) FPL E. Courtney, Fragmentary Latin Poets (Oxford 1993) FGE D. L. Page, Further Greek Epigrams (Cambridge 1981). GP A.S.F. Gow and D.L. Page, The Garland of Philip I-II (Cambridge 1968). GRBS Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies HE A.S.F. Gow and D.L. Page, Hellenistic Epigrams I-II (Cambridge 1965). IEG Iambi et Elegi Graeci ed. M. L. West, i2 and ii2 (Oxford 1990 and 1992). IG Inscriptiones graecae JHS Journal of Hellenic Studies JRS Journal of Roman Studies KP Der Kleine Pauly LIMC Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae LGPN P. M. Fraser and E. Matthews, A Lexicon of Greek Personal Names (Oxford 1987-) XU Abbreviations PEG Poetae epici graeci ed. A. Bernabe (Leipzig 1987) PMG Poetae melici graeci ed. D. L. Page (Oxford 1962) RE Pauly-Wissowa-Kroll, Real-Encyclopadie der classischen Altertumswissenscha.fi (1894-) REG Revue des Etudes grecques SH H. Lloyd-Jones and P. Parsons, Supplementum Hellenisticum (Berlin 1981) ZPE Zeitschrifi fur Papyrologie und Epigraphik CHRONOLOGIA CALLIMACHEA These dates are collected here for convenience; a few are documented,* but most (inevitably) are conjectural, justified in the following pages: ca320 Birth of Callimachus ca300 Hermesianax Philitas ca 300/270 Asclepiades Lycophron Alexander Aetolus Leonidas of Tarentum 285 Ptolemy Philadelphus co-ruler with Soter* 285/4 Theocritus 24 285/2 Callimachus: Hymn to Zeus 282 Ptolemy Philadelphus sole king* 290/280 Posidippus: Ep. XXIV B-G on Berenice I 279/4 Callimachus: Epithalamium Arsinoes 279/4 Sotades: "Epithalamium " Arsinoes 279/4-68 Theocritus 15, 16 279/4 Theocritus 17 Callimachus: Acontius and Cydippe 275 Callimachus: Hymn to Delos Theocritus: 13, 18, 22 Aratus: Phaenomena ca270 Callimachus: Aetia I-II Callimachus: Hymn to Apollo Apollonius: Argonautica My 268 Death of Arsinoe* ca268 Callimachus: Iambi 267 Chremonidean war Death of Sotades ca266 Callimachus: Hymn ν ca264 Posidippus: AP v.
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