Making the Hymn: Mesomedean Narrative and the Interpretation of a Genre

chapter 8 Making the Hymn: Mesomedean Narrative and the Interpretation of a Genre M. Brumbaugh This paper aims to investigate aspects of narrative in the heterogeneous collection of short, lyric hymns by the Hadrianic kitharode Mesomedes. Many of these poems deviate substantially from the formal expectations we may have of Greek hymns, particularly hexametric ones. An especially striking feature, particularly in the context of a volume on hymnic narrative, is the scarcity of narration found in Mesomedes’ poems.1 Although the rich muthoi of the longer Homeric Hymns and the hymns of Kallimachos stand out when we think of narrative in hymns, I submit that the crucial aspect of hymnic narrative is the figured relationships the hymnist constructs with his audiences, whether his honorand, his patron, or other members of his listening (or reading) pub- lic. Mesomedes’ poetry offers a ready testing ground for exploring the ways in which narrative relationships evince hymnic qualities in poems that lack formal features common to most Greek hymns. Mesomedes in Context Born in Krete, Mesomedes was a kitharode of great renown who lived in the 2nd Century ad. Although he is virtually unknown today, what we can piece together about his life and work reveals an intriguing figure. Publius Aelius Mesomedes, as he was probably named, was a freedman and intimate of the Roman emperor Hadrian. He enjoyed an imperial salary during his former mas- ter’s rule and continued to receive imperial patronage under Antoninus Pius, despite that emperor’s reputed parsimony.2 Nearly a century later Caracalla reportedly honoured the kitharode with a cenotaph because when learning the kithara, the emperor had found the poet’s collection of kitharodic nomes 1 Purves 2014 provides an excellent discussion (with bibliography) on the challenges posed by examining narrative in lyric poetry. 2 Historia Augusta, Antoninus 7.7; Whitmarsh 2004a: 382 rightly stresses that Mesomedes’ prominence and receipt of imperial patronage continued beyond the reign of Hadrian. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi: 10.1163/9789004289512_010 166 brumbaugh useful.3 Mesomedes was indeed well known for his music, particularly these nomes, of which Cassius Dio and Eusebios make special mention. His popular- ity continued at least through to the early 5th century. In a letter to his brother from 407ad, Synesios of Kyrene, a pagan Neoplatonist turned Christian hymnist, quotes lines from one of Mesomedes’ hymns and gives the sense that they were still commonly sung to the lyre (Epistle 95).4 This evidently continued to be the case for some time, since copyists went to the trouble of reproducing musical notation for some of Mesomedes’ hymns. As a result we still have the scoring for a handful of his poems.5 From Mesomedes’ poetic output, the Suda provides the title of a single work, an epainos εἰς Ἀντίνοον (to Antinoos). From this we imagine that the Praise for Antinoos was his most important work and that its composition relates to the poet’s close friendship with the emperor, his μάλιστα φίλος. This epainos has been lost and the poems that survive come from what the Suda refers to as Mesomedes’ “other miscellaneous poetry,” ἄλλα διάφορα μέλη. These are trans- mitted through three separate traditions: a textbook (?) containing treatises on music and poems with musical notation (1–3), a late thirteenth-century codex containing the passage quoted by Synesios (4–11), and the Greek Anthology (12– 13).6 Altogether we have thirteen texts and likely fourteen poems, the longest of which runs to twenty-five verses.7 The paroemiac and the apokroton are the predominant metres, producing short and often driving verses. Stylistically and thematically, the collection is diverse, but at least half of the poems seem to be hymns—not only because they carry titles to that effect in the manuscripts, but because they read like hymns. The diversity of Mesomedes’ subject matter reveals one apparent difficulty we have reconciling the poet’s work with the Greek hymnic tradition. His poetry is addressed to Kalliope, Apollo, the Sun, Isis, Nemesis, a Pythagorian view of Nature (or perhaps the Kosmos), the Adriatic Sea, a Sun-Dial, a Sponge, a Gnat, and a Swan. If we add in the lost poem for Antinoos, we have the full spectrum of addressees: gods, abstract concepts, a geographic element, a 3 Dio Cassius 78.13.7. 4 Synesios quotes vv. 9–11 of Mesomedes’ Hymn to Nemesis. For discussion of Mesomedes’ influence on the Christian hymnist, see Lanna 2009: 95–113. 5 West 1992: 273 and Pöhlmann and West 2001: 114–115. 6 Both manuscript traditions may derive from a music theory text called ἡ Μουσική, Pöhl- mann and West 2001: 114–115. The poems from the anthology appear there as ap 14.63 and 16.323. 7 I follow the text and numbering in Heitsch 1961 and count 1a and 1b as separate poems, but 2 as a single hymn..

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