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Tradition et nouveauté dans l’épigramme, l’art et leur réception à Rome

“Harvesting from a New Page.” Philip of Thessalonike’s Editorial Undertaking

« La récolte d’une nouvelle page ». L’entreprise éditoriale de Philippe de Thessalonique
« La messe di una nuova pagina ». Il lavoro editoriale di Filippo di Salonicco
Regina Höschele

Résumés

Le motif de la nouveauté et divers aspects de l’innovation litteraire (vis-à‑vis du Stephanos de Méléagre) dans la Couronne de Phillipe de Thessalonique sont examinés par une lecture approfondie de AP 4, 2 et une série d’épigrammes, dont la première lettre est omega, qui servent de jalon programmatique à la fin de la collection.

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Texte intégral

Philip’s Helikonian Flowers: The Prologue (AP 4.2)

  • 1 A. Cameron, The Greek Anthology from Meleager to Planudes, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1993, p. 5–7, r (...)
  • 2 On floral metaphors in early Greek poetry, cf. R. Nünlist, Poetologische Bildersprache in der frühg (...)
  • 3 On the motif of the garland in Meleager’s Stephanos, R. Höschele, Die blütenlesende Muse. Poetik un (...)
  • 4 The word anthologion is first attested in Greek for an epigram collection by Diogenianus (second ce (...)
  • 5 F. Reiske and F. Jacobs, who suggested emending νεόγραφα to νεόδροπα or νεότροφα respectively (cf. (...)

1In uniting epigrams of his own with poems by his predecessors, Meleager of Gadara (ca. 100 BC) created something distinctly novel: a literary anthology, the first of its kind, which was to have a profound impact on the subsequent history of the genre, not least of all its reception in Rome. To be sure, epigrams by different authors had been combined before in any number of contexts, but never, as far as we can tell, on such a scale, nor with such artistry and literary ambition.1 In a long and elaborate preface, Meleager lists the poets included in his collection, each equated with a flower or different kind of plant. While it is impossible to determine whether the image of a “garland of singers” (AP 4.1.2: ὑμνοθετᾶν στέφανον), which underlies our own notion of an anthology or florilegium, originated with Meleager,2 the conspicuous role it plays within his oeuvre well beyond its proem3 in all likelihood contributed to the later establishment of these very terms.4 The novelty of Meleager’s enterprise is highlighted, not least, by repeated reference to the fresh newness of the plants plaited into his Garland: νέον οἰνάνθης κλῆμα Σιμωνίδεω, “the young branch of Simonides’ vine” (v. 8); ῥοιῆς ἄνθη πρῶτα Μενεκράτεος,“the first flowers of Menekrates’ pomegranate” (v. 28); Ἀλεξάνδροιο νέους ὄρπηκας ἐλαίης, “the young shoots of Alexander’s olive” (v. 39); φοίνισσάν τε νέην κύπρον ἀπ᾽ Ἀντιπάτρου, “the young purple henna of Antipater” (v. 42); φοίνικος . . . πρωτογόνους ἕλικας, “the firstborn fronds of [Aratus’] palmtree” (v. 50); τάν τε φιλάκρητον Θεοδωρίδεω νεοθαλῆ / ἕρπυλλον, “the newly-flowering wine-loving thyme of Theodoridas” (v. 53–54). After thus enumerating 47 poets by name, Meleager summarily evokes the rest through the expression ἄλλων τ᾽ ἔρνεα πολλὰ νεόγραφα, “and many newly written shoots of others” (v. 55), which intriguingly breaches the proem’s extended metaphor by conflating the vegetal imagery with an explicit reference to writing: these shoots, we should note, are of a special kind—not newly grown, but newly written.5

  • 6 Philip’s Garland has commonly been dated to ca. 40 AD, cf. A. Hillscher, “Hominum litteratorum Grae (...)

2A still newer crop of poems is presented to us by Philip of Thessalonike, who set out to weave a poetic garland of his own about a century and a half after Meleager.6 Appropriating the latter’s floral metaphor, he prefaces his collection with a proem that is strongly reminiscent of Meleager’s, though considerably shorter (AP 4.2 = 1 G‑P):

              Ἄνθεά σοι δρέψας Ἑλικώνια καὶ κλυτοδένδρου
       Πιερίης κείρας πρωτοφύτους κάλυκας
              καὶ σελίδος νεαρῆς θερίσας στάχυν, ἀντανέπλεξα
       τοῖς Μελεαγρείοις ὡς ἴκελον στεφάνοις.
5            ἀλλὰ παλαιοτέρων εἰδὼς κλέος, ἐσθλὲ Κάμιλλε,
       γνῶθι καὶ ὁπλοτέρων τὴν ὀλιγοστιχίην.
              Ἀντίπατρος πρέψει στεφάνῳ στάχυς· ὡς δὲ κόρυμβος
       Κριναγόρας, λάμψει δ᾽ ὡς βότρυς Ἀντίφιλος,
              Τύλλιος ὡς μελίλωτον, ἀμάρακον ὣς Φιλόδημος·
10   μύρτα δ᾽ ὁ Παρμενίων, ὡς ῥόδον Ἀντιφάνης·
              κισσὸς δ᾽ Αὐτομέδων, Ζωνᾶς κρίνα, δρῦς δὲ Βιάνωρ,
       Ἀντίγονος δ᾽ ἐλάη καὶ Διόδωρος ἴον·
              Εὐήνῳ δάφνην συνεπίπλεκε· τοὺς δὲ περισσοὺς
       εἴκασον οἷς ἐθέλεις ἄνθεσιν ἀρτιφύτοις.

Picking Helikonian flowers for you and plucking the first-grown blossoms from Pieria famed for its trees, harvesting the ears of a new page, I have plaited in rivalry garlands similar to those of Meleager. But you, noble Camillus, who know the glory of older writers, get to know the oligostichia (brief verses) of the younger ones, too. Antipater will stand out of the garland as an ear of corn, Krinagoras like a cluster of ivy-fruit; Antiphilus will shine forth like a bunch of grapes, Tullius like melilot, like marjoram Philodemus; Parmenion is myrtle, like a rose Antiphanes; Automedon is ivy, Zonas a lily, Bianor an oak, Antigonus an olive tree, and Diodorus a violet; weave in laurel for Euenus; as for the rest, compare them to freshly grown flowers, as you wish.

  • 7 Cf. Francisci Passovii quaestio de vestigiis coronarum Meleagri et Philippi in anthologia Constanti (...)
  • 8 A. S. F. Gow, D. L. Page (eds.), op. cit., II, p. 329.

3Philip’s explicit mention of his poetic model clearly attests to a spirit of emulation: his Garland, while similar to Meleager’s (τοῖς Μελεαγρείοις ὡς ἴκελον στεφάνοις, v. 4), is woven in rivalry with the former, its competitive stance emphatically expressed by the hapax legomenon ἀνταναπλέκω (v. 3). Nonetheless, his words serve only to confirm the negative view held by many philologists, who have been quick to dismiss Philip as a perpetuus imitator Meleagri7 qua editor, and a “second-rate dealer in second-hand materials” qua poet.8 To this date, scholars, indeed, have paid only meager attention to the literary merits of this second Garland, whose poems—if they elicit any interest at all—have been scoured more for historical data (such as proper identification of addressees named or events evoked within them) than examined with a view to their poetic technique, intertextuality, or verbal virtuosity.

  • 9 Thus A. Hillscher, art. cit., p. 421. If Camillus is to be identified with the consul of 32, the co (...)
  • 10 Suggested as an alternative by C. Cichorius, op. cit., p. 355, and A. S. F. Gow, D. L. Page (eds.), (...)
  • 11 A. Cameron, art. cit., p. 62, favors identification with the Arval brother Camillus or a son of his
  • 12 E. Magnelli, “Il proemio della Corona di Filippo di Tessalonica e la sua funzione programmatica,” I (...)

4Consequently, the question that has been of greatest interest to scholars with regard to Philip’s proem seems to have been the identity of its dedicatee, Camillus (v. 5), and its implications for the collection’s date: could it be L. Arruntius Camillus Scribonianus, the consul of 32 AD, who died in 42 after a failed revolt against Claudius?9 Or maybe his (half‑)brother, M. Furius Camillus, frater arvalis of 38 AD?10 Or possibly a son of the latter?11 While this is, no doubt, a legitimate and important issue to ponder, the proem’s significance hardly ends here. Building upon an essay by Enrico Magnelli,12 one of the very few to explore Philip’s work from a literary perspective, I would like to consider the programmatic nature of this introductory poem together with a series of epigrams, which, I think, had a similar programmatic function in marking the collection’s end. What, we might ask, is novel about Philip’s undertaking vis-à‑vis Meleager’s? How does the art of the younger authors (ὁπλοτέρων, v. 6) included in his Garland differ from “the glory of the older ones” (παλαιοτέρων κλέος, v. 5) known to Camillus?

  • 13 While modern readers and scholars, guided by Romantic notions of originality, tended to frown upon (...)
  • 14 Cf. A. S. F. Gow, D. L. Page (eds.), op. cit., II, p. 605: “the word, suitable enough of sprays of (...)
  • 15 As Pieria replaces the Aratean palm-tree, it is, moreover, worthy of note that this toponym is char (...)

5As mentioned above, Philip has commonly been viewed as an unoriginal and slavish imitator of Meleager, who even—for shame!—openly admits the great debt owed to his model.13 Yet this proem, like his anthology as a whole, is far from being a sterile replica of the former’s work. Even as Philip re-uses Meleagrean tropes of novelty, he emphasizes the very newness of the poems woven into his Stephanos. The preface is pointedly framed by references to “first-grown blossoms” plucked from Pieria (πρωτοφύτους κάλυκας, v. 2) and “freshly grown flowers” (ἄνθεσιν ἀρτιφύτοις, v. 14; note, too, how the poem’s penultimate word ἄνθεσιν picks up the incipit, ἄνθεα). Its first couplet echoes Meleager’s description of how he plucked “the first-born fronds of Aratus’ palmtree” (φοίνικος κείρας πρωτογόνους ἕλικας, AP 4.1.50 ~ Πιερίης κείρας πρωτοφύτους κάλυκας, AP 4.2.3), and it does so with a notable “twist”: while transforming the somewhat puzzling noun at the end of Meleager’s line, ἕλικες,14 into the more straightforward κάλυκες, Philip punningly recalls the model’s “windings” through his opening image of Helikonian flowers (Ἄνθεά . . . Ἑλικώνια15). In addition, the second couplet presents Philip as harvesting (θερίσας, v. 3) from a new page (σελίδος νεαρῆς, v. 3), which, similar to Meleager’s ἔρνεα νεόγραφα, conflates purely metaphorical speech with an explicit mention of the written medium from which the poems were excerpted for his collection.

  • 16 On the date and life of Philodemus (born ca. 110 BC), cf. D. Sider (ed.), The Epigrams of Philodemo (...)
  • 17 The only poets mentioned in Meleager’s proem that can be dated to the second century BC are Antipat (...)

6In a way, Philip gives novel meaning to “the new.” For the three adjectives used to highlight the work’s newness (πρωτόφυτος, νέαρος, and ἀρτίφυτος) have a concrete referent, distinct from that of similar expressions in the first Garland: the poems contained herein are written by authors who came after Meleager, from the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus of Gadara in the first half of the first century BC16 down to Philip’s own time; for this editor and his readers, they are, quite literally, the works of ὁπλότεροι as opposed to the παλαιότεροι assembled by Meleager. In fact, it bears remarking that Meleager himself had selected many more epigrams by earlier authors (of the late fourth and early third century BC) than by more recent ones; the number of actual νεόγραφα in his anthology seems, indeed, to have been relatively small.17 By way of contrast, Philip’s collection covers a much shorter time-span and appears to be a lot more “up-to-date” than that of his predecessor, presenting the reader with the products of a more contemporary muse.

  • 18 E. Magnelli, art. cit., p. 400 n. 33, observes, following a suggestion by M. Fantuzzi: “Con questo  (...)
  • 19 Could the noun kleos in Philip on some level also recall the name of Meleager’s dedicatee, Diokles (...)
  • 20 On the commemorative function of Meleager’s Garland, expressed in its preface and epilogue, cf. R.  (...)
  • 21 Meleager’s proem starts with questions to the Muse concerning the dedicatee and author of this coll (...)

7However, Philip’s proem hardly aims to dismiss Meleager’s anthology as antiquated. Far from it: through his reference to the “glory of the older poets,” he equates the commemorative function of Meleager’s editorial enterprise with the admirable activity of an epic poet celebrating and preserving the kleos of ancient heroes—something, we may infer, he himself hopes to do for the younger generation of epigrammatists.18 Meleager had conceived his Garland as a μναμόσυνον for Diokles19 (AP 4.1.4), and it is due to his “ever-remembering” (ἀείμνηστον, AP 12.257.5) Stephanos that Camillus, and others, know (εἰδώς, AP 4.2.5) the epigrams of earlier ages (in keeping the memory of those poems alive, Meleager’s Garland, one might say, does for epigram what individual epigrams do for their subjects in funerary, honorific or dedicatory contexts).20 Significantly, Philip names his model in the second couplet, the same couplet which heralds the name of Meleager in the proem to the first Garland.21 But while our poet-editor emphatically announces his poetic agenda through the use of a first-person verb, ἀντανέπλεξα, coupled with three essentially synonymous participles (δρέψας, κείρας and θερίσας), he nowhere offers a similar sphragis in his own right. As we shall see below, he may have concluded his Garland with a punning allusion to his own name, but it is conspicuously absent from this introductory poem.

  • 22 As the anonymous referee has pointed out to me, it is not immediately evident that the παλαιότεροι (...)
  • 23 On the relation of Philippan authors to the Roman world, cf. E. Bowie, “Luxury Cruisers? Philip’s E (...)
  • 24 Livy 5.49.7 says of Camillus: Romulus ac parens patriae conditorque alter urbis haud uanis laudibus (...)

8Whatever the dedicatee’s precise identity, it is crucial to note that he is presented to us as a connoisseur of the genre, as one who knows.22 His name, Camillus, characterizes him as a member of the Roman elite in anticipation of the prominent role that Roman patrons and themes will play in the epigrams to follow.23 This focus on imperial Rome, which supersedes the Hellenocentric Eastern Mediterranean background of earlier epigram, constitutes a fundamental difference between Meleager’s and Philip’s Stephanoi. Philip doubtlessly addressed his proem to a contemporary figure (presumably a patron of his), someone known to first-century readers, if no longer identifiable for us. The fact that it is a Camillus who serves as dedicatee of Philip’s collection may, however, have particular resonance in view of its poetic program, regardless of his specific identity. For could it not be that Philip exploited the addressee’s cognomen to recall, on some level, the famous Roman hero Marcus Furius Camillus, who saved Rome from the Gauls in 390 BC and had, by the Augustan age, come to be celebrated as the city’s second founder? In selecting a namesake of the conditor alter urbis24 as dedicatee of this new, second Garland, Philip may, I suggest, implicitly assimilate the refounding of Rome through the legendary Camillus with his own re-establishment of the epigrammatic genre in a Roman context.

  • 25 As F. Pelliccio well puts it: “Camillo è infatti presentato come lettore dotto che, conoscendo già (...)
  • 26 Cf. C. Radinger, Meleagros von Gadara: Eine litterargeschichtliche Skizze, Innsbruck, Wagner, 1895, (...)
  • 27 Cf. W. Peek, “Philippos Nr. 36,” RE XIX, 2, 1938, p. 2341; A. S. F. Gow, D. L. Page (eds.), op. cit (...)

9Be that as it may, Camillus is invited to acquaint himself with the work of younger epigrammatists, more specifically with their ὀλιγοστιχία (v. 6).25 The echo of the Callimachean adjective ὀλιγόστιχος, prominently featured in the Aitia-prologue (fr. 1.9 Pf), is immediately evident (more on this below), but what exactly does the term ὀλιγοστιχία, itself a hapax legomenon, imply in the Philippan context? Scholars have proposed various explanations. According to Radinger, the expression points to the smaller number of poems contained in Philip’s Garland in comparison with the more voluminous Stephanos of Meleager, a hypothesis that has not found much favor with later critics.26 Instead, some prefer to view the term simply as a general description of the epigrammatic genre, which distinguishes itself from other poetic forms precisely through its brevity, and they argue against understanding ὀλιγοστιχία in any comparative sense, i.e. as a characteristic feature of Philip’s Garland as distinct from Meleager’s.27 However, there is good reason for such an understanding, if somewhat different from the one advocated by Radinger.

  • 28 Cf. M. Lausberg, Das Einzeldistichon. Studien zum antiken Epigramm, Munich, W. Fink, 1982, p. 37–44 (...)
  • 29 As L. Argentieri, Gli epigrammi degli Antipatri, Bari, Levante Ed., 2003, p. 70, observes, the leng (...)
  • 30 Cf. A. S. F. Gow, D. L. Page (eds.), op. cit., I, p. xxxvii. They observe the same pattern for poet (...)
  • 31 Cf. the instructive comparison of epigrams by Posidippus transmitted through Meleager vis-à‑vis the (...)
  • 32 Cf. A. S. F. Gow, D. L. Page (eds.), op. cit., I, p. xxxvii, n. 2: 48 epigrams with 10 lines, 14 wi (...)
  • 33 As F. Pelliccio, “Rappresentazione dei dedicatari e auto-rappresentazione dei poeti negli epigrammi (...)
  • 34 For this poem, cf. the excellent analysis by M. Lausberg, op. cit., p. 37–41. Notably, none of the (...)

10Marion Lausberg convincingly showed that Philip placed even greater value on briefness in epigram than Meleager:28 only one of the poems transmitted from his Stephanos (Antipater of Thessalonike, AP 9.26 = 19 G‑P29) exceeds the length of eight verses, which Philip seems to have imposed as an upper limit for his selection. Among the texts that can be securely attributed to the second Garland, Gow-Page count 327 epigrams of six lines (57%), 112 of four (19%), 98 of eight (17%) and 39 of two verses (7%).30 While Meleager, in compiling his anthology, also showed a general preference for shorter over longer texts (of which we find more examples transmitted through other sources31), his Stephanos contained at least 70 epigrams of more than 8 lines.32 Meleager’s editorial choices, no doubt, contributed towards establishing brevity as an increasingly important criterion in epigram composition, but, as far as we can tell, ὀλιγοστιχία played a distinctly greater role during the imperial period, not least of all in Philip’s Garland. Whether this is because post-Meleagrean epigrammatists on the whole tended to write shorter epigrams, or because Philip decided to exclude epigrammata longa from his anthology, is impossible to determine, and the prevalence of shorter epigrams (comprising between two and eight lines) may well result from a combination of these two factors.33 At any rate, it is surely no coincidence that one of the texts selected by Philip, a four-line poem by Parmenion, emphatically rejects πολυστιχία in epigram, which, the author declares, should be swift and short like a stadion sprint, not long-winded like the dolichos (AP 9.342 = 11 G‑P):34

  • 35 With Lausberg, I follow the emendation ἐλαυνομένοις of P. Waltz, Anthologie grecque. I, Anthologie (...)

φημὶ πολυστιχίην ἐπιγράμματος οὐ κατὰ Μούσας
   εἶναι· μὴ ζητεῖτ᾽ ἐν σταδίῳ δόλιχον·
πόλλ᾽ ἀνακυκλοῦται δολίχου δρόμος, ἐν σταδίῳ δέ
   ὀξὺς ἐλαυνομένοις35 πνεύματός ἐστι τόνος.

I say that epigrams containing many lines do not accord with the Muses: don’t seek the long-distance run (dolichos) in a stadion race. The course of the dolichos turns back and forth many times, in the stadion the force of the runners’ breath is sharp.

  • 36 As the anonymous reader has noted, there may be another Callimachean echo in Parmenion’s poem, with (...)

11In using the term ὀλιγοστιχία, Philip looks to Parmenion’s doctrine with its explicit condemnation of πολυστιχία. At the same time, however, the noun also evokes the famous passage that stands behind the latter’s rejection of many verses: the prologue to Callimachus’ Aetia, where the corresponding adjective ὀλιγόστιχος has a clearly programmatic function (fr. 1.9 Pf).36 Though its context is tantalizingly fragmentary, the word evidently served to introduce a passage contrasting longer and shorter works by some of Callimachus’ literary predecessors (fr. 1.9–12 Pf):

......].. ρεην [ὀλ]ιγόστιχος· ἀλλὰ καθέλ⌊κει
....πο⌋λὺ τὴν μακρὴν ὄμπνια Θεσμοφόρο[ς·
τοῖν δὲ] δυοῖν Μίμνερμος ὅτι γλυκύς, α⌊ἱ γ᾽ ἁπαλαὶ [
......] ἡ μεγάλη δ᾽ οὐκ ἐδίδαξε γυνή.

  • 37 Transl. and text from A. Harder (ed.), Callimachus. Aetia, I, Oxford, OUP, 2012.

. . . of a few lines, but the nourishing Lawgiver by far outweighs the long . . . ; and of the two the delicate . . . showed that Mimnermus is sweet, but the big woman did not.37

  • 38 Ibid., II, p. 37. The adjective was probably preceded by the third-person singular imperfect verb ἔ (...)
  • 39 Does Callimachus declare his preference for the shorter compositions of Philetas and Mimnermus over (...)

12As Annette Harder notes in her recent commentary, the adjective in the Aitia prologue must “refer to the shortness of poems and be used either of the poems themselves or of a poet who composes such poems.”38 Much ink has been spilled over the question which texts are evoked in these lines, and to what effect they are juxtaposed,39 but for our purposes the precise details do not matter. Whatever its actual referent, there can be no doubt that the adjective ὀλιγόστιχος is associated with a key element of Callimachean aesthetics: brevity combined with stylistic refinement.

  • 40 For the concept of συντομία, see also Callimachus’ epigram AP 7.447 (= 11 Pf), an epitaph on a σύντ (...)
  • 41 According to a comic fragment (Philemon 99 K‑A), a bad poet quickly comes across as tedious, wherea (...)
  • 42 M. Lausberg, op. cit., p. 39, rightly distinguishes Parmenion’s program from that of Callimachus: “ (...)
  • 43 M. Lausberg, op. cit., p. 41.
  • 44 Considering the epic character of παλαιοτέρων κλέος and the Callimachean resonance of ὀλιγοστιχία, (...)

13It is important to note that ὀλιγοστιχία, within the context of Callimachus’ Aetia, has a relative, not an absolute value; it is a matter of concision (συντομία40) and the avoidance of superfluous detail rather than a question of sheer quantity, or lack thereof.41 In the case of epigram, a genre more than any other intrinsically linked with brevity, we are, by way of contrast, dealing with Geringzeiligkeit in a very literal sense,42 and it is precisely this quality that distinguishes the epigrams assembled in Philip’s Garland from those gathered by Meleager. Lausberg is right to connect Philip’s ὀλιγοστιχία with the systematic exclusion of epigrammata longa in the second Garland: “Um eine Gegenüberstellung von Meleagerkranz und Philippkranz geht es in diesem Verspaar [AP 4.2.6–7], nicht um eine Gegenüberstellung des Epigramms zu anderen Gattungen.”43 One might even say that Philip tops Callimachus’ concept of ὀλιγοστιχία, as he does not compare excessively lengthy to shorter poems, but sets his vision of epigrammatic briefness against that in an earlier epigram collection, whose Geringzeiligkeit is thus, somewhat paradoxically, called into question. Not that he dismisses Meleager’s anthology with an earnest severity comparable to that of Callimachus—Philip’s claim to a new and unprecedentedly brief ὀλιγοστιχία in the realm of epigram is a humorous one, distinguishing his own modern concision from the virtually heroic, epic-style kleos of earlier epigram-writers.44

  • 45 Cf. M. Lausberg, op. cit., p. 41–42, and E. Magnelli, art. cit., p. 396–98.
  • 46 Cf. A. S. F. Gow, D. L. Page (eds.), op. cit., II, p. 329: “There is a marked and presumably delibe (...)
  • 47 As far as the order of the enumerated authors is concerned, A. S. F. Gow, D. L. Page (eds.), op. ci (...)
  • 48 M. Lausberg, op. cit., p. 42.

14Our poet-editor demonstrates his adherence to the ideal of ὀλιγοστιχία right away by offering the reader a much briefer preface than Meleager (14 vs. 58 lines).45 Not only does he name far fewer poets (13 instead of 47), but his style is also much more compressed, dispensing with any accompanying epithets or other forms of embellishment.46 As Lausberg has observed, the enumeration starts with a couplet (v. 7–8) listing three poets (Antipater, Crinagoras, Antiphilus), followed by one (v. 9–10) that lists four (Tullius, Philodemus, Parmenion, Antiphanes) and a further one (v. 11–12) listing five (Automedon, Zonas, Bianor, Antigonus, Diodorus)47: “Die Kürze der raffenden Reihung wird also gesteigert, wiederum ein Anzeichen dafür, daß Kürze bewußtes Prinzip ist für Philipp. Es wird immer jeweils mehr auf dem gleichen kleinen Raum eines Verspaares untergebracht.”48

  • 49 Hecker’s emendation Εὔηνον δάφνῃ, συνεπιπλέκτους δὲ περισσόυς is hardly justified. While A. S. F. G (...)
  • 50 Cf. E. Magnelli, art. cit., p. 398–99. On the reader’s active involvement in this Callimachean pass (...)
  • 51 Cf. E. Magnelli, art. cit., p. 400: “elencare τοὺς περισσούς significherebbe rendere περισσόν l’epi (...)

15Philip, moreover, concludes the proem by inviting his addressee (and, through him, the reader) to participate actively in the Garland’s creation: Camillus is told to weave in laurel for Euenus (συνεπίπλεκε, v. 1349) and to compare the rest of the poets, not explicitly named, to whatever “freshly-grown flowers” he wishes. As Magnelli has seen, this prompt closely resembles the famous Abbruchsformel we encounter in Callimachus’ Victoria Berenices, whose narrator asks the reader to imagine for himself the fight between Herakles and the Nemean lion so as to cut short the poem’s length (αὐτὸς ἐπιφράσσαιτο, τάμοι δ ἄπο μῆκος ἀοιδῇ, fr. 57.1 Pf = SH 264.1).50 While Meleager subsumes any remaining, unnamed poets under the label ἄλλων τ᾽ ἔρνεα πολλὰ νεόγραφα, Philip speaks of οἱ περισσοί, an expression that can bear the negative connotation of “excessive, superfluous” and may thus suggest that going on with the enumeration would render the prologue itself περισσόν, as one might, indeed, say of Meleager’s overlong preface.51 By leaving it up to the addressee to match each unnamed poet with a plant of his choosing, Philip also amusingly seems to imply that the metaphorical procedure should by now be clear: just as he himself has learnt from Meleager how to equate poets with flowers, so should the reader be able to continue in the same vein—no need for further elaboration (all the more so in the case of an experienced reader like Camillus, who, we may infere, not only knows the kleos of epigrammatists included in the earlier collection, but also understands its editorial conceit and can thus participate in the creative process!).

New Ways of Weaving: From Alpha to Omega

  • 52 On the four-book division of Meleager’s Garland and its arrangement, cf. A. Cameron, The Greek Anth (...)
  • 53 Cf. A. Cameron, art. cit., p. 333–35, and op. cit., p. 33–35. While we may safely assume that Cepha (...)

16We have seen how Philip introduces his Garland as emulating Meleager’s; the collection’s emphatically proclaimed novelty lies, first of all, in its new, more contemporary chronological range, its focus on Rome represented by the work’s dedicatee Camillus, and its aesthetics of (still greater) brevity. A further, crucial element of Philip’s literary innovation, not immediately evident from the preface, is his particular mode of interweaving poems, which differs greatly from Meleager’s editorial technique. Scholars have well illustrated how the latter arranged the epigrams of his Stephanos thematically in four separate books of ἐρωτικά, ἐπιτύμβια, ἀναθηματικά and ἐπιδεικτικά, with artfully constructed subgroups, which frequently juxtapose variations on a theme with their respective models.52 Philip, by way of contrast, chose to organize his Garland alphabetically by the first letter of each epigram (it is hence no coincidence that the proem’s incipit, ἄνθεα, starts with an alpha). His collection did not, as one might suppose, encompass several thematically different books, each organized by alphabet, but epigrams of all types were intermingled in one continuous alphabetical series. This sequence may well have spanned several books, but the alphabet ran across any potential book divisions.53

  • 54 Cf. E. Hirsch, “Zum Kranz des Philippos,” Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Universität Halle 15, 1 (...)
  • 55 Ibid., p. 40.
  • 56 On epigrammatic variatio, cf. W. Ludwig, “Die Kunst der Variation im hellenistischen Liebesepigramm (...)

17While critics had long dismissed this arrangement as sterile pedantry, two scholars in the 1960s, Eduard Hirsch and Alan Cameron, recognized—independently from one another—that Philip’s design is anything but artless.54 As Cameron remarks, “the grouping of poems by initial letter was merely a preliminary, the framework of his system. It was Philip’s variation on Meleager’s preliminary division of material into four basic categories before addressing himself to the more subtle task of arranging the individual poems inside those categories. Philip too had an internal and an external system.”55 In other words: Just as individual epigrammatists, including Philip himself, frequently vary poems by earlier writers,56 so does Philip’s anthology as a whole constitute a macro-variation of sorts on the first Garland.

  • 57 In the case of Philip’s own rewritings, this was easily achieved. As A. Wifstrand, Studien zur grie (...)
  • 58 For a first overview of Philip’s editorial technique, cf. R. Höschele, “A Garland of Freshly Grown (...)
  • 59 On this poem, cf. P. Bing, op. cit., p. 33–35; R. Höschele, op. cit., p. 172–76. The attempt by D.  (...)
  • 60 L. Argentieri, “Meleager and Philip as Epigram Collectors,” art. cit., p. 162–63.

18Indeed, one might say that by opting for an alphabetical organization, Philip imposed an even greater challenge on himself than Meleager in the form of an additional constraint, as he could only group together poems with the same (or, possibly, subsequent) initial letters.57 Though Hirsch and Cameron correctly identified his general modus operandi, a comprehensive analysis of the Garland’s structure remains a desideratum, a gap I am currently trying to fill within a larger study on Philip’s anthology.58 This is not the place to go into any details about his overall technique of interweaving epigrams, but I would like to draw attention to a group of programmatic texts that, I believe, served to close the Stephanos, or at least played an important role in its concluding sequence. In the case of Meleager’s Garland, the final poem is easily identified, even though it is not transmitted within a Meleagrean section: not only does AP 12.257 (= Meleager 129 G‑P) announce the collection’s finale in the voice of the coronis, a textual symbol commonly used in papyri to mark the end of a work, but it is also ring-compositionally linked with its preface through multiple verbal and thematic echoes.59 Was the end of Philip’s Garland highlighted in a similar way? According to Lorenzo Argentieri, “this time we seem to have lost the closing poem, if there was any.”60 However, while it is true that none of Philip’s own texts explicitly announces the collection’s end, we can, I submit, still find clear signs of closure within a series of epigrams that once constituted the final section of his Stephanos.

Sense of an Ending

  • 61 The book of erotika in Meleager’s Garland, for instance, was opened by a sequence of poems dealing (...)
  • 62 For this concept, cf. F. Kermode, The Sense of an Ending. Studies in the Theory of Fiction, new ed. (...)
  • 63 Cf. R. Höschele, “Priape mis en abyme ou Comment clore le recueil,” in F. Biville, E. Plantade, D.  (...)
  • 64 AP 5.132 (ὤ, Philodemus), 133 (ὤμοσ᾽, Quintus Maecius); 6.198 (ὥριον, Antipater Thess.); 7.405 (ὦ, (...)
  • 65 The third Priapeum, by Erykios (APl. 242 = 14 G‑P), asks the god to cover up his erection, as he is (...)
  • 66 The closural force of the flight motif is also manifest in the escape of Encolpius, Giton and Ascyl (...)
  • 67 On the close connection between fruit and poetry in the Carmina Priapea, cf. R. Höschele, op. cit., (...)
  • 68 My monograph will argue that Philip’s collection was designed to map the Roman Empire in an epigram (...)

19Just as beginnings of artfully designed poetry books typically exhibit a cluster of programmatic texts,61 so do their final poems often engender a distinct “sense of an ending”62 through the evocation of specific motifs, such as death or old age, as well as other closural signals. In the case of the Carmina Priapea, for instance, the approaching end is accentuated, inter alia, through references to the growing impotence of the ithyphallic god, his old age, an impending closure of his garden, and a peculiar sort of sphragis, which characterizes the book’s author as having an even bigger phallus than Priapus.63 The final sequence of Philip’s Garland evidently must have consisted of poems starting with the last letter of the alphabet. 16 epigrams by Philippan authors fulfill this criterion,64 and a considerable number of them (seven to be precise) have something remarkable in common: in one way or another, they are all apotropaic; that is, they all involve some action of turning away. We encounter a text addressed to a patricide, who will not escape death no matter where he flees (Antiphanes, AP 11.348 = 10 G‑P), an epigram on Philostratus exiled from the Egyptian court (Krinagoras, AP 7.645 = 20 G‑P), a warning to refrain from cutting down an oak tree (Diodorus Zonas, AP 9.312 = 7 G‑P), an epitaph on Hipponax telling the passer-by to stay away from his tomb lest he awaken the iambographer’s wrath (ὦ ξεῖνε, φεῦγε, Philip, AP 7.405 = 34 G‑P), and a group of three epigrams (APl 240–42) featuring a statue of Priapus. In the first two, composed by Philip (75 G‑P) and Marcus Argentarius (37 G‑P), Priapus declares that he is keeping close watch on ripe figs (ὡραίας . . . τὰς ἰσχάδας, APl 240.1; ὥριμος, 241.1), threatening the passer-by with anal penetration should he touch the fruit.65 On a figurative level, these epigrams may, I submit, be understood as chasing the reader away and thus herald the anthology’s imminent end.66 And could the reference to the ripeness of the figs in the Priapean epigrams not suggest that the Garland itself, with its underlying vegetative imagery, is “ripe,” i.e. about to be completed, and Priapus’ threats be taken as a metaphorical warning not to meddle with any of its poems?67 It is, at any rate, very tempting to imagine a statue of Priapus standing close by the tomb of Hipponax, himself a Priapic figure, the two of them shooing the reader away towards the book’s exit. In weaving his Garland, Philip has, one might say, created an imaginary space through which the reader moves in the course of his perusal, an epigrammatic universe he is now urged to leave.68

  • 69 Cf. R. Höschele, “Poets’ Corners in Greek Epigram Collections,” in B. Graziosi, N. Goldschmidt (eds (...)
  • 70 On the structure of this book, whose first section was devoted to famous persons and contained at l (...)
  • 71 Even if Philip should have written the poem before conceiving the plan of an alphabetically arrange (...)

20As I have argued elsewhere, the alpha-section of Philip’s Garland seems to have contained a striking number of epitaphs on poets,69 which in all likelihood served to mark the collection’s beginning through an homage to literary greats of the past, similar to the long sequence of poets’ epitaphs that opened Meleager’s funerary book.70 While Philip, to my mind, purposefully selected these epitaphs by other authors, which happened to start with the first letter of the alphabet (obviously the choice of initial letter played no role in their composition!), he himself penned the poem on Hipponax’s tomb and probably—though not necessarily—did so with a view to its inclusion in the Garland’s closing sequence.71 By placing this propulsively repellent grave towards the end, he thus not only sends the reader packing, but also picks up a prominent theme from the collection’s beginning.

Helikon’s Italian Wine: The Garland’s Conclusion

  • 72 Cicadas: AP 7.364 (Marcus Argentarius), 9.92 (Antipater Thess.), 9.122 (Euenus); singing birds: 7.1 (...)
  • 73 For the opening of Meleager’s erotika, cf. n. 61.
  • 74 Identified as a Philippan sequence already by F. Passow, Francisci Passovii quaestio de vestigiis c (...)

21Another motif of similar programmatic value, which likewise plays an important role in the first section, reappears as well among the omega-epigrams: It is, I think, no coincidence that Philip’s anthology includes a conspicuous number of alpha-poems on wine, song, the Muses, bees and cicadas,72 themes that lend themselves to reflections on the nature of poetry. We cannot tell precisely how these epigrams (or the poets’ epitaphs, for that matter) were distributed across the alpha-section, but their high frequency suggests that Philip picked up on the programmatic function of such texts in the opening sections of Meleagrean books73 and made a point of weaving them into the introductory sequence of his own anthology. The Garland’s finale was, I suggest, similarly marked, if on a smaller scale. For not only do we encounter here a poet’s tomb but also two epigrams on drinking wine, both by Antipater of Thessalonike, which nowadays appear in Book 11 at the head of an alphabetical series in reverse order taken from Philip’s Stephanos (AP 11.23–46).74 The speaker of AP 11.24 (= 3 G‑P) declares that he prefers one cup of Italian wine served to him by a boy named Helikon to thousands of cups filled with water from the synonymous Boeotian mountain:

       Ὦ Ἑλικὼν Βοιωτέ, σὺ μέν ποτε πολλάκις ὕδωρ
εὐεπὲς ἐκ πηγέων ἔβλυσας Ἡσιόδῳ·
       νῦν δ᾽ ἡμῖν ἔθ᾽ ὁ κοῦρος ὁμώνυμος Αὔσονα Βάκχον
οἰνοχοεῖ κρήνης ἐξ ἀμεριμνοτέρης.
       βουλοίμην δ᾽ ἂν ἔγωγε πιεῖν παρὰ τοῦδε κύπελλον
ἓν μόνον ἢ παρὰ σεῦ χίλια Πηγασίδος.

O Boeotian Helikon, once upon a time you often gushed forth from your springs water for Hesiod, inspiring beautiful speech. Now still does the boy bearing the same name as you pour me Ausonian wine from a source that involves fewer cares. And I would rather like to drink a single cup from him than a thousand from your Pegasos-fountain.

  • 75 Cf. e.g. C. Dilthey, De Callimachi Cydippa, Leipzig, Teubner, 1863, p. 14–16; M. Rubensohn, “Gegen (...)
  • 76 Verse 4 (κρηνῆς ἐξ ἱερῆς πίνετε λιτὸν ὕδωρ) recalls Callimachus, Hymn to Apollo 112: πίδακος ἐξ ἱερ (...)
  • 77 For a similar opposition between water‑ and wine-drinkers from this period, cf. Horace, Epist. 1.19 (...)
  • 78 It has, moreover, been argued that Callimachus presented himself as drinking water from Hippokrene (...)

22This epigram has often been read against the backdrop of a (supposedly) widespread and passionately fought poetological controversy between water‑ and wine-drinkers, the former writing fine, erudite, sober verse in the manner of Callimachus, the latter virile, forceful, inspired poetry à la Homer, or so it is commonly construed.75 Another poem by Antipater (AP 11.20 = 20 G‑P), indeed, seems to confirm the existence of such a debate, since its speaker emphatically chases away the “tribe of thorn-gathering poets” (ποιητῶν φῦλον ἀκανθολόγων, v. 2), who are ridiculed as being obsessed with obscure vocabulary. While pedantic scribblers of this sort are scorned as ὑδροπόται (v. 6), with an unmistakable reference to the water imagery at the end of Callimachus’ Hymn to Apollo, Antipater sets out to celebrate Archilochus and “manly” Homer with a libation of wine.76 It is not least of all on the basis of this polemic, dating to the Augustan age,77 that scholars have read that same dichotomy back into Hellenistic poetry, claiming that already Callimachus had positioned himself as a water-drinker within this allegedly pervasive literary feud.78

  • 79 P. Knox, “Wine, Water, and Callimachean Polemics,” HSPh 89, 1985, p. 107–19, at p. 111. Callimachus (...)

23Peter Knox, however, is surely right to caution against the assumption that such a wine-water polemic was current in the Hellenistic age (or even earlier, as has been claimed), since no actual evidence for it is to be found in Callimachus’ own poetry. While water from a sacred spring is, no doubt, associated with literary style in the Hymn to Apollo, “[i]t is,” as Knox observes, “only Callimachus’s enemies who extend the significance of this metaphor by turning Callimachus into a teetotaler for the sake of ridicule.”79 As a matter of fact, a striking amount of ridicule is heaped on Callimachus, or rather on self-proclaimed, inept followers of his, within the second Garland: Philip’s collection not only includes Antipater’s dismissal of ὑδροπόται, but also an epigram by Antiphanes (AP 11.322 = 9 G‑P) against busybody grammarians (γραμματικῶν περίεργα γένη, v. 1), the “bitter and dry bottom dogs of Callimachus” (πικροὶ καὶ ξηροὶ Καλλιμάχου πρόκυνες, v. 4), as well as two variations on the theme by Philip himself, who rants against the grammarian “soldiers of Callimachus” (Καλλιμάχου στρατιῶται, AP 11.321.3 = 60.3 G‑P) in an epigram juxtaposed to that of Antiphanes (note the identical incipit: γραμματικοὶ Μώμου Στυγίου τέκνα, v. 1) and condemns “Aristarchus’ thorn-gathering bookworms” (οἵ τ᾽ ἀπ᾽ Ἀριστάρχου σῆτες ἀκανθολόγοι, AP 11.347.2 = 61.2 G‑P) and “Über-Callimachuses” (Περικαλλιμάχους, v. 6).

  • 80 Cf. F. J. Brecht, Motiv‑ und Typengeschichte des griechischen Spottepigramms, Leipzig, Dieterich, 1 (...)
  • 81 E. Hirsch, art. cit., p. 402, has made the attractive suggestion that Philip’s chi‑epigram could ha (...)
  • 82 Thus, briefly, E. Reitzenstein, art. cit, p. 57 n. 1. In AP 11.321, for instance, Philip addresses (...)
  • 83 F. J. Brecht, op. cit., p. 32–33.
  • 84 Cf. also E. Magnelli, art. cit., p. 401: “I poeti di questa raccolta si esprimono più volte con ton (...)

24While such anti-grammarian polemic seems to have a long tradition in epigrammatic poetry,80 the motif’s prominence in the Garland of Philip (it notably occurs both in the gamma-section towards its beginning, and the phi‑/chi-sections towards its end81) is something novel and without precedent in Meleager’s Stephanos. His manifest delight in anti-Callimachean invective, which wittily adopts Callimachus’ rhetoric against the Telchines for its own polemical purposes,82 even led Franz Brecht to suppose that Philip deliberately excluded poems by “literary opponents” from his collection.83 Although the satirical tone of this epigram cycle is very strong, one can hardly attribute a systematic anti-Callimachean agenda to the Garland. After all, the poems do not directly target Callimachus, but the sort of Callimacheanism practiced by writers whose excessive use of glossai and preoccupation with abstruse grammatical / mythological questions push various elements of Callimachus’ poetry ad absurdum. Indeed one might compare Philip’s stance towards Callimachus and his followers to that of Callimachus towards Homer and later dabblers in epic verse: in both cases, it is not the master himself but his epigonoi who are rejected. Philip, moreover, would hardly have included an epigram by Krinagoras (AP 9.545 = 11 G‑P) presenting a copy of the Hekale to Marcellus, had he wished to suppress any pro-Callimachean sentiment. His allusion to the Aetia’s preface—that is, the reference to ὀλιγοστιχία—in his own prologue also speaks against the sort of opposition to the Hellenistic poet that Brecht seems to have envisaged.84

  • 85 Cf. A. Kambylis, op. cit., p. 100 and 121. His hypothesis (p. 99) that Callimachus’ Somnium introdu (...)
  • 86 A. Kambylis, op. cit., p. 121. C. Campbell, Poets and Poetics in Greek Literary Epigram, Ph. D. Uni (...)
  • 87 Cf. L. Argentieri, op. cit., p. 97: “ma l’aggettivo potrebbe voler dire semplicemente ‘che desta me (...)
  • 88 I owe this observation to the anonymous reader. On the rejection of moralizing Hesiod in an erotic (...)
  • 89 Honestus may be considered an expert in Helikonian matters, as he is the author not just of 10 epig (...)

25But let us return to Antipater’s epigram on the boy Helikon. What, precisely, is its point, and what function might it have served at the end of Philip’s Garland? Kambylis understands the epigram as a serious poetological proclamation against ὑδροπόται à la Hesiod and Callimachus,85 arguing, inter alia, that the wine’s source is characterized as ἀμεριμνοτέρη (v. 4), because the composition of wine-inspired poetry does not involve such hard, painstaking labor as the “Stilideal des Kallimachos.”86 But should the poem really be read in this manner? More plausible, to my mind, is Argentieri’s suggestion to take it primarily as an amusing declaration of a symposiast, who, comfortably reclining at a drinking party, naturally prefers being served wine by a pretty boy to climbing up a mountain of the same name so as to drink nothing but water87—no matter what its inspirational benefits might be (the more so, as Hesiod’s Heliconian inspiration did not make him a particularly cheerful fellow88)! As it happens, Honestus, another Philippan author, confirms just how strenuous the ascent of Mt. Helikon would be: Ἀμβαίνων Ἑλικῶνα μέγαν κάμες . . . (“Climbing up great Helikon you grew tired . . .,” AP 9.230 = 5 G‑P).89 While his epigram goes on to present the rewards of poetic inspiration as something that is, allegorically speaking, worth the steep climb, Antipater’s speaker has no such lofty ambition but rather wants to stick with the cup of wine served by his boy Helikon.

  • 90 For a series of drinking poems marking the end of a poetry book, cf. Horace, Carm. 1.36–38, with M. (...)
  • 91 Interestingly, Callimachus’ Aitia was also framed by references to Mt. Helikon: παρ᾽ ἴχνιον ὀξέος ἵ (...)

26Antipater’s epigram is, then, not so much an encoded poetological statement as a lighthearted jeu d’esprit playing on the homonymity of boy and mountain. This is, however, not to say that it carries no metapoetic message. Whatever its original context and semantic potential within a collection of Antipater’s epigrams, the poem, I submit, takes on a new layer of meaning through its placement in the final section of the Garland. Indeed, it strikes me as very likely that this text (together with the following poem) served to conclude Philip’s anthology,90 evoking by way of ring-composition the collection’s beginning, which shows us Philip weaving flowers picked from Mt. Helikon into a garland (ἄνθεά σοι δρέψας Ἑλικώνια, AP 4.2.1): the wreath is complete, one of its final poems, which, somewhat paradoxically, evokes a scene of poetic initiation, leads us back to the anthology’s very incipit. Importantly, the wine poured by Helikon is characterized as “Ausonian.” This image of a Greek boy serving Italian wine (preferable to the waters that once upon a time inspired Hesiod) may function, I suggest, as an emblem for the Garland itself, the work of a Greek who presents us with epigrams of predominantly Roman content. I am—it should be noted—not trying to make any claims about the poem’s original purpose in this regard; evidently, Antipater did not write it with Philip’s poetic project in mind. But, should my hypothesis be correct, our poet-editor purposefully chose this epigram, which happened to start with an omega, to seal his own collection, creating a ring-compositional link with its preface (such as we find between the first and final poem of Meleager’s anthology) and turning Helikon’s Italian wine into a symbol for his own work.91

27The second poem by Antipater (AP 11.23 = 38 G‑P) which I believe to have closed Philip’s collection together with AP 11.24 is transmitted in the same Philippan sequence of AP 11 as its counterpart. While it now precedes the Helikon poem, we may deduce from the section’s reverse aphabetical order that AP 11.23 originally followed AP 11.24. Thematically, the two texts are closely related, as the speaker of AP 11.23 likewise expresses his commitment to wine drinking, even if it should accelerate death’s arrival.

       Ὠκύμορόν με λέγουσι δαήμονες ἀνέρες ἄστρων·
εἰμὶ μέν, ἀλλ᾽ οὔ μοι τοῦτο, Σέλευκε, μέλει.
       εἰς Ἀίδην μία πᾶσι καταίβασις· εἰ δὲ ταχίων
ἡμετέρη, Μίνω θᾶσσον ἐποψόμεθα.
       πίνωμεν· καὶ δὴ γὰρ ἐτήτυμον εἰς ὁδὸν ἵππος
οἶνος, ἐπεὶ πεζοῖς ἀτραπὸς εἰς Ἀίδην.

Men with knowledge of the stars claim that I am to die shortly. And what if I am – it doesn’t matter to me, Seleukos. There is a single way down to Hades, common to all. If mine is quicker, then I will get to see Minos all the more quickly. Let’s drink! For it is true that wine is a horse on the road to Hades, while those going on foot must take a narrow path.

  • 92 Cf. A. S. F. Gow, D. L. Page (eds.), op. cit., II, p. 49: “it cannot be said that A. has expressed (...)
  • 93 “Wine is a swift horse for the graceful singer, you wouldn’t produce anything smart just drinking w (...)
  • 94 Nikainetos explicitly assigns this observation to the playwright: τοῦτ᾽ ἔλεγεν . . . Κρατῖνος (v. 3 (...)
  • 95 Cf. L. Argentieri, op. cit., p. 98.
  • 96 I would like to thank the anonymous reader, Peter Bing, Lucia Floridi, Niklas Holzberg and Francesc (...)

28Though the last two lines are rather obscure and oddly phrased,92 their general sense may be guessed: everyone must die, but the path to Hades is less troublesome and quicker if we drink wine on our way. The equation of wine with a horse in all likelihood goes back to the comic playwright Cratinus, whom the Hellenistic epigrammatist Nikainetos quotes as having said: οἶνός τοι χαρίεντι πέλει ταχὺς ἵππος ἀοιδῷ / ὕδωρ δὲ πινὼν οὐδὲν ἂν τέκοις σοφόν.93 Although only the second (iambic) line is likely to constitute a direct quotation from Cratinus, the wine-horse metaphor is probably his as well.94 While Cratinus’ metaphor describes wine’s inspirational powers, Antipater has transferred the image to the alleviation given to men by wine on their inevitable journey to Hades (Ἀίδην in v. 6 punningly picks up ἀοιδῷ from Nikainetos’ first verse). Once again, I doubt with Argentieri that a serious poetological message lurks behind these lines.95 Like AP 11.24, the epigram may, however, have taken on an additional metapoetic meaning through its inclusion at the end of Philip’s Garland. For could the speaker’s observation that astrologers have declared him ὠκύμορος (“quickly dying”) and the poem’s evocation of Hades awaiting us all not serve as a hidden reference to the fast approaching end of the collection? I would, moreover, like to suggest that Antipater’s epigram has been appropriated by Philip—together with the preceding one—for his collection’s finale not least because both include references to horses, one implicit (Hippokrene in AP 11.24), one explicit (wine = horse in AP 11.23). The twofold horse-motif not only creates an additional link between this textual pair, but “horse-loving” Phil-ippos might also have used it as a sort of sphragis evocative of his own name (a function which Antipater could barely have foreseen when writing the poems). It may well be that further epigrams have been lost from the Garland’s final section, and maybe Philip did compose an explicit closural piece similar to Meleager’s (AP 12.257), but these two epigrams by Antipater are, to my mind, very likely candidates for a final position within his collection. The entertainment provided by Philip’s Garland—figured first as Ausonian wine served by a Greek boy during a symposium, then, on a larger scale, as the vehicle (wine = “horse”) that makes our life’s journey less arduous—is coming to a close, we have reached the book’s end. While this second Garland is clearly modeled on Meleager’s anthology, it is far from being a slavish imitation, but presents the reader with a new crop of epigrams woven together in novel ways from alpha to omega.96

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Notes

1 A. Cameron, The Greek Anthology from Meleager to Planudes, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1993, p. 5–7, rightly distinguishes between the Garland’s artistic design and other pre-Meleagrean forms of conglomeration. As L. Argentieri, “Meleager and Philip as Epigram Collectors,” in P. Bing, J. S. Bruss (eds.), Brill’s Companion to Hellenistic Epigram. Down to Philip, Leiden, Brill, 2007, p. 147–64, at p. 151, notes, “[t]he anthology, a well-structured, complex editorial type, required a long period of incubation, after which Meleager brought it to sophisticated maturity.” For an overview of Greek epigram collections before Meleager, cf. L. Argentieri, “Epigramma e libro: Morfologia delle raccolte epigrammatiche premeleagree,” ZPE 121, 1998, p. 1–20.

2 On floral metaphors in early Greek poetry, cf. R. Nünlist, Poetologische Bildersprache in der frühgriechischen Dichtung, Stuttgart, Teubner, 1998, p. 206–33.

3 On the motif of the garland in Meleager’s Stephanos, R. Höschele, Die blütenlesende Muse. Poetik und Textualität antiker Epigrammsammlungen, Tübingen, Narr, 2010, p. 171–94, with further references.

4 The word anthologion is first attested in Greek for an epigram collection by Diogenianus (second century AD), though it is unclear whether its title goes back to Diogenianus himself or a later lexicographer (cf. A. Cameron, The Greek Anthology from Meleager to Planudes, op. cit., p. 5). However, since Pliny the Elder (NH 21.13) mentions anthologicon as the title of several works by Latin authors, it is likely that the term was in use by the first century AD.

5 F. Reiske and F. Jacobs, who suggested emending νεόγραφα to νεόδροπα or νεότροφα respectively (cf. Friderici Jacobs Animadversiones in epigrammata Anthologiae graecae, secundum ordinem Analectorum Brunckii, I, 1, Leipzig, Dyckium, 1798, p. 14), wrongly doubt the validity of this reading: to my mind, there is no good reason why Meleager should not have disrupted the metaphor proper. As P. Bing, The Well-Read Muse. Present and Past in Callimachus and the Hellenistic Poets, Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1988, p. 22, remarks, novelty is here perceived “in bookish terms” (as it is in Philip’s proem, cf. below).

6 Philip’s Garland has commonly been dated to ca. 40 AD, cf. A. Hillscher, “Hominum litteratorum Graecorum ante Tiberii mortem in urbe Roma commoratorum historia critica,” Jahrbuch für klassische Philologie. Suppl. 18, Leipzig, Teubner, 1892, p. 355–440, at p. 405–31; C. Cichorius, Römische Studien. Historisches, Epigraphisches, Literargeschichtliches aus vier Jahrhunderten Roms, Leipzig, Teubner, 1922, p. 341–65; A. S. F. Gow, D. L. Page (eds.), The Greek Anthology. The Garland of Philip and Some Contemporary Epigrams, I, Cambridge, CUP, 1968, p. xlv–xlix. A. Cameron, The Greek Anthology from Meleager to Planudes, op. cit., p. 56–65, however, convincingly argues for a dating to the Neronian age, some time after 53 AD (thus already in A. Cameron, “The Garland of Philip,” GRBS 21, 1980, p. 43–62).

7 Cf. Francisci Passovii quaestio de vestigiis coronarum Meleagri et Philippi in anthologia Constantini Cephalae, Breslau, Typis Universitatis, 1827, p. 3, and G. Weigand, “De fontibus et ordine Anthologiae Cephalanae,” RhM 3, 1845, p. 161–78, esp. p. 167.

8 A. S. F. Gow, D. L. Page (eds.), op. cit., II, p. 329.

9 Thus A. Hillscher, art. cit., p. 421. If Camillus is to be identified with the consul of 32, the collection must—so the argument goes—have been published before his death and involvement in a revolt against the emperor.

10 Suggested as an alternative by C. Cichorius, op. cit., p. 355, and A. S. F. Gow, D. L. Page (eds.), op. cit., I, p. xlix.

11 A. Cameron, art. cit., p. 62, favors identification with the Arval brother Camillus or a son of his.

12 E. Magnelli, “Il proemio della Corona di Filippo di Tessalonica e la sua funzione programmatica,” Incontri triestini di filologia classica 4, 2004–2005, p. 393–404.

13 While modern readers and scholars, guided by Romantic notions of originality, tended to frown upon texts considered derivative, mimesis or imitatio played a crucial role in ancient rhetorical training and literary production; cf. W. Kroll, “Die Nachahmung,” in Studien zum Verständnis der römischen Literatur, 2nd ed., Darmstadt, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1964, p. 139–78; D. A. Russell, “De imitatione,” in D. West, T. Woodman (eds.), Creative Imitation and Latin Literature, London, CUP, 1979, p. 1–16. Over the past few decades, scholarship has come to a much better understanding of this literary phenomenon and has increasingly turned its attention to explicitly imitative texts. T. Whitmarsh, Greek Literature and the Roman Empire. The Politics of Imitation, Oxford, OUP, 2001, p. 41–89, offers a good overview of common scholarly prejudices against Greek imperial literature and an insightful discussion of mimesis in texts of this period.

14 Cf. A. S. F. Gow, D. L. Page (eds.), op. cit., II, p. 605: “the word, suitable enough of sprays of vine or ivy, seems unsuitable to a palm. Callixenus (ap. Athenaeus 5.206 B) apparently uses the word of a volute on a column, and perhaps we should consider whether M. means the recurved fronds in the crown of a palm.”

15 As Pieria replaces the Aratean palm-tree, it is, moreover, worthy of note that this toponym is characterized by the hapax legomenon κλυτόδενδρος (v. 1), which connects it with trees.

16 On the date and life of Philodemus (born ca. 110 BC), cf. D. Sider (ed.), The Epigrams of Philodemos, Oxford, OUP, 1997, p. 3–12.

17 The only poets mentioned in Meleager’s proem that can be dated to the second century BC are Antipater of Sidon, Phanias and Polystratus; others, not named in the preface, whose chronology is mostly uncertain, may well have lived in the second century BC, but they are considerably less prominent (and fewer in number) than the literary greats of earlier times; cf. L. Argentieri, “Meleager and Philip as Epigram Collectors,” art. cit., p. 147–48.

18 E. Magnelli, art. cit., p. 400 n. 33, observes, following a suggestion by M. Fantuzzi: “Con questo . . . Filippo può voler sottolineare anche l’importanza del suo operato editoriale: anche per i poeti della II Corona la fama passerà attraverso la fondamentale tappa dell’antologizzazione, come aveva dimostrato l’esperienza di Meleagro.”

19 Could the noun kleos in Philip on some level also recall the name of Meleager’s dedicatee, Diokles (“the glory of Zeus”)?

20 On the commemorative function of Meleager’s Garland, expressed in its preface and epilogue, cf. R. Höschele, op. cit., p. 188–89.

21 Meleager’s proem starts with questions to the Muse concerning the dedicatee and author of this collection (AP 4.1.1–2), which she answers in the following couplet: ἄνυσε μὲν Μελέαγρος . . . Though his preface features no such dialogue with a Muse, Philip indirectly recalls Meleager’s by beginning his proem with an evocation of two landscapes traditionally associated with the Muses, Mt. Helikon and Pieria. As K. Gutzwiller, “Gender and Inscribed Epigram: Herennia Procula and the Thespian Eros,” TAPhA 134, 2004, p. 383–418, at p. 391, notes, these local references may point to the importance of epigrammatic material by authors from central Greece and Macedonia within Philip’s Garland.

22 As the anonymous referee has pointed out to me, it is not immediately evident that the παλαιότεροι are, in fact, poets (the reference only becomes clear through its antithesis with ὁπλοτέρων . . . ὀλιγοστιχίην in the next line). But while Camillus, on a first reading, might appear to be familiar with the kleos of Roman maiores or epic heroes, he turns out to be a knowledgeable reader of epigram!

23 On the relation of Philippan authors to the Roman world, cf. E. Bowie, “Luxury Cruisers? Philip’s Epigrammatists between Greece and Rome,” Aevum(ant) 8, 2008, p. 223–58; see also D. Meyer, E. Wirbelauer, “Rom und die Römer in griechischen Epigrammen (2. Jh. v.Chr. – 1. Jh. n.Chr.),” in M.‑L. Freyburger, D. Meyer (eds.), Visions grecques de Rome = Griechische Blicke auf Rom, Paris, De Boccard, 2007, p. 319–46; I. Cogitore, “Crinagoras et les poètes de la Couronne de Philippe : la cour impériale romaine dans les yeux des Grecs,” in I. Savalli-Lestrade, I. Cogitore (eds.), Des rois au prince. Pratiques du pouvoir monarchique dans l’Orient hellénistique et romain (ive siècle avant J.‑C. – iie siècle après J.‑C.), Grenoble, ELLUG, 2010, p. 253–69; T. Whitmarsh, “Greek Poets and Roman Patrons in the Late Republic and Early Empire,” in T. A. Schmitz, N. Wiater (eds.), The Struggle for Identity. Greeks and Their Past in the First Century BCE, Stuttgart, F. Steiner, 2011, p. 197–212 [= T. Whitmarsh, Beyond the Second Sophistic. Adventures in Greek Postclassicism, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2013, p. 137–53]; F. Pelliccio, “Rappresentazione dei dedicatari e auto-rappresentazione dei poeti negli epigrammi greci d’età romana,” in R. Grisolia, G. Matino (eds.), Arte della parola e parole della scienza. Tecniche della comunicazione letteraria nel mondo antico, Naples, M. D’Auria Ed., 2014, p. 175–92.

24 Livy 5.49.7 says of Camillus: Romulus ac parens patriae conditorque alter urbis haud uanis laudibus appellabatur. For the origins of the title conditor alter in the first century BC, cf. G. B. Miles, Livy: Reconstructing Early Rome, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1995, p. 98–108.

25 As F. Pelliccio well puts it: “Camillo è infatti presentato come lettore dotto che, conoscendo già la Corona di Meleagro (come è chiaro per via del valore aspettuale del perfetto εἰδώς), deve conoscere anche (forte il καί nel v. 6) questa seconda opera antologica, che Filippo presenta quindi come necessario pendant della Corona di Meleagro” (“L’ὀλιγοστιχίη nella Corona di Filippo,” in C. Urlacher-Becht, D. Meyer (eds.), La rhétorique du ‘petit’ dans l’épigramme grecque et latine de l’époque hellénistique à l’Antiquité tardive, forthcoming).

26 Cf. C. Radinger, Meleagros von Gadara: Eine litterargeschichtliche Skizze, Innsbruck, Wagner, 1895, p. 107–8. Thus already Friderici Jacobs Animadversiones in epigrammata Anthologiae graecae, secundum ordinem Analectorum Brunckii, II, 2, Leipzig, Teubner, 1800, p. 139. It is, however, likely that Meleager’s anthology was indeed longer than Philip’s: the Greek Anthology transmits ca. 4,500 lines of the first vs. ca. 3,000 lines of the second; cf. A. Cameron, The Greek Anthology from Meleager to Planudes, op. cit., p. 24 and p. 34.

27 Cf. W. Peek, “Philippos Nr. 36,” RE XIX, 2, 1938, p. 2341; A. S. F. Gow, D. L. Page (eds.), op. cit., II, p. 330; A. Cameron, art. cit., p. 323–49, at p. 332; also considered by Friderici Jacobs Animadversiones in epigrammata Anthologiae graecae, secundum ordinem Analectorum Brunckii, II, 2, Leipzig, Teubner, 1800, p. 139.

28 Cf. M. Lausberg, Das Einzeldistichon. Studien zum antiken Epigramm, Munich, W. Fink, 1982, p. 37–44, followed by E. Magnelli, art. cit., p. 394–96. On the phenomenon of epigrammata longa, cf. A. M. Morelli (ed.), Epigramma longum. Da Marziale alla tarda antichità, Cassino, Ed. dell’Università degli Studi di Cassino, 2008, 2 vols.

29 As L. Argentieri, Gli epigrammi degli Antipatri, Bari, Levante Ed., 2003, p. 70, observes, the length of 10 lines is easily explained by the epigram’s subject matter, the praise of nine female poets. This is the only text by Antipater of Thessalonike to comprise more than 8 lines (most of his poems, around 65%, are 6 lines long). By way of comparison, his namesake, Antipater of Sidon, a prominent author in Meleager’s Garland, wrote a greater quantity of longer epigrams; for a synkrisis of the two in terms of epigram length, cf. ibid., p. 69–71.

30 Cf. A. S. F. Gow, D. L. Page (eds.), op. cit., I, p. xxxvii. They observe the same pattern for poets whose inclusion in the Garland is uncertain: more than half of their poems comprise 6 lines and none more than 8, except for three epigrams by Archias (9, 16, 19 G‑P); the AP contains multiple poets of this name, none of whom, according to A. S. F. Gow, D. L. Page (eds.), op. cit., II, p. 432–34, is likely to have formed part of Philip’s collection. Cf. also L. Argentieri, op. cit., p. 70 n. 52.

31 Cf. the instructive comparison of epigrams by Posidippus transmitted through Meleager vis-à‑vis the poems of the Milan Posidippus papyrus (which tend to be significantly longer) by D. Sider, “Posidippus Old and New,” in B. Acosta-Hughes, E. Kosmetatou, M. Baumbach (eds.), Labored in Papyrus Leaves. Perspectives on an Epigram Collection attributed to Posidippus (P. Mil. Vogl. VIII 309), Cambridge, Center for Hellenic Studies, 2004, p. 29–41, at p. 39–40.

32 Cf. A. S. F. Gow, D. L. Page (eds.), op. cit., I, p. xxxvii, n. 2: 48 epigrams with 10 lines, 14 with 12, 3 with 14, 3 with 16, 1 with 20, and 1 with 24 (they also mention Theocritus 20 G‑P with 18 lines, though his epigrams were not included in Meleager).

33 As F. Pelliccio, “Rappresentazione dei dedicatari e auto-rappresentazione dei poeti negli epigrammi greci d’età romana,” art. cit., p. 175–92, has importantly noted, the greater briefness of epigrams in Philip’s Garland is not to be understood in an absolute sense. In fact, there is a higher quantity of six-line poems in Philip than in Meleager, where the four-line format prevails (Pelliccio has calculated the average length of Philippan epigrams as 5.7 lines vis-à‑vis 4.7 for Meleagrean ones).

34 For this poem, cf. the excellent analysis by M. Lausberg, op. cit., p. 37–41. Notably, none of the 18 epigrams by Parmenion exceeds four lines. Two further programmatic statements concerning epigrammatic brevity are given by two non-Philippan epigrammatists (cf. ibid., p. 42–44): the Neronian poet Leonidas of Alexandria (AP 6.327) announces a series of two-line isopsephic epigrams (to replace the four-line isopsepha he previously composed) and explicitly rejects δολιχογραφία. For Cyrillus (AP 9.369) a single distich is the ideal epigrammatic form, while a poem exceeding three lines should be called an epic (though we have no way of knowing when Cyrillus lived, he has often been dated to the first century AD due to the poem’s similarity with Leonidas’ and Parmenion’s epigrams; according to D. L. Page, Further Greek Epigrams. Epigrams before A.D. 50 from the Greek anthology and other sources, not included in “Hellenistic epigrams” or “The Garland of Philip,” Cambridge, CUP, 1981, p. 115, the name itself may rather point to a later age). As P. Bing has pointed out to me, these two epigrams may represent a further step towards ever increasing brevity, self-consciously developing the trend started by Meleager and going on in Philip.

35 With Lausberg, I follow the emendation ἐλαυνομένοις of P. Waltz, Anthologie grecque. I, Anthologie palatine. T. VII, Livre IX, Épigrammes 1‑358, 2nd ed., Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 2002, instead of the transmitted nominative ἐλαυνόμενος.

36 As the anonymous reader has noted, there may be another Callimachean echo in Parmenion’s poem, with ἀνακυκλοῦται (v. 3) recalling Callimachus’ rejection of cylic poetry in AP 12.43 (2 G‑P = 28 Pf): ἐχθαίρω τὸ ποίημα τὸ κυκλικόν, v. 1. The repetition of traditional, well-known material appears thus connected with longwindedness.

37 Transl. and text from A. Harder (ed.), Callimachus. Aetia, I, Oxford, OUP, 2012.

38 Ibid., II, p. 37. The adjective was probably preceded by the third-person singular imperfect verb ἔην, but due to the lacuna at the beginning of the line we cannot tell who or what exactly was described as ὀλιγόστιχος. For proposed supplements, cf. ibid., II, p. 36.

39 Does Callimachus declare his preference for the shorter compositions of Philetas and Mimnermus over longer poems of their own making, or over the works of others? For an overview of the extensive scholarly discussion, cf. ibid., II, p. 32–44.

40 For the concept of συντομία, see also Callimachus’ epigram AP 7.447 (= 11 Pf), an epitaph on a σύντομος, for whom even a brief inscription appears too long (δολιχός); on the poem’s programmatic meaning, cf. M. S. Celentano, “L’elogio della brevità tra retorica e letteratura: Callimaco, ep. 11 Pf = A. P. VII 447,” QUCC 49, 1995, p. 67–79, and S. Cannavale, “L’epigramma callimacheo per Theris Cretese: AP VII 447 = Ep. 11 Pf = 35 G.‑P.,” A&R N.S. II 7, 2013, p. 1–23. See, moreover, Callimachus’ praise of βραχυσυλλαβίη in AP 9.566.6 (= 8.6 Pf).

41 According to a comic fragment (Philemon 99 K‑A), a bad poet quickly comes across as tedious, whereas a good poet may safely write long compositions without appearing longwinded, Homer being the best example: οὗτος γὰρ ἡμῖν μυριάδας ἐπῶν γράφει, / ἀλλ᾽ οὐδὲ εἷς Ὅμηρον εἴρηκεν μακρόν, v. 6–7. A. Cameron, Callimachus and His Critics, Princeton, PUP, 1995, p. 334–36, has furthermore drawn attention to a letter by Gregory of Nazianzus (ep. 54), possibly inspired by Callimachus’ prologue, which contrasts Homer βραχυλογώτατος with the garrulous (πολύς) Antimachus.

42 M. Lausberg, op. cit., p. 39, rightly distinguishes Parmenion’s program from that of Callimachus: “Er stellt den geringen Umfang nicht als Grundprinzip der Dichtung überhaupt auf, sondern als spezielle Forderung für eine bestimmte literarische Gattung, eben das Epigramm.” This literal meaning of ὀλιγοστιχία with reference to epigram does, of course, not preclude its application in a wider, Callimachean sense.

43 M. Lausberg, op. cit., p. 41.

44 Considering the epic character of παλαιοτέρων κλέος and the Callimachean resonance of ὀλιγοστιχία, Alexander Sens intriguingly suggests that Philip’s relation to Meleager might be figured here as “analogous to that between Hellenistic poets in general and Homer” (E. Magnelli, art. cit., p. 400 n. 32).

45 Cf. M. Lausberg, op. cit., p. 41–42, and E. Magnelli, art. cit., p. 396–98.

46 Cf. A. S. F. Gow, D. L. Page (eds.), op. cit., II, p. 329: “There is a marked and presumably deliberate contrast between the style of Philip’s Proem and that of Meleager’s. Philip’s introduction (v. 1–6) is the more elaborate, but his list of poets and wreath-components is reduced almost to the minimum possible number of words.”

47 As far as the order of the enumerated authors is concerned, A. S. F. Gow, D. L. Page (eds.), op. cit., II, p. 329, have made the interesting observation that it more or less corresponds to the quantity of poems included in the Garland from each of these authors, with Antipater being “the first both in order and in number.” They also note that the first three poets, who are most copiously represented in Philip’s collection, are fittingly equated with plants (σταχύς, κόρυμβος, βότρυς) that evoke the idea of clusters.

48 M. Lausberg, op. cit., p. 42.

49 Hecker’s emendation Εὔηνον δάφνῃ, συνεπιπλέκτους δὲ περισσόυς is hardly justified. While A. S. F. Gow, D. L. Page (eds.), op. cit., II, p. 330, keep the transmitted text, since the image of the dedicatee joining the weaving process strikes them as “not too absurd for Philip,” I agree with E. Magnelli, art. cit., p. 399 n. 26, that there is nothing particularly absurd about it to begin with.

50 Cf. E. Magnelli, art. cit., p. 398–99. On the reader’s active involvement in this Callimachean passage, cf. P. Bing, “Ergänzungsspiel in the Epigrams of Callimachus,” A&A 41, 1995, p. 115–31, at p. 123–24.

51 Cf. E. Magnelli, art. cit., p. 400: “elencare τοὺς περισσούς significherebbe rendere περισσόν l’epigramma, come era accaduto a Meleagro con i suoi 58 versi.”

52 On the four-book division of Meleager’s Garland and its arrangement, cf. A. Cameron, The Greek Anthology from Meleager to Planudes, op. cit., p. 19–33. For a detailed structural analysis, cf. K. Gutzwiller, Poetic Garlands. Hellenistic Epigrams in Context, Berkeley, California University Press, 1998, p. 276–322, with further references. L. Argentieri, “Meleager and Philip as Epigram Collectors,” art. cit., offers a helpful overview of how to reconstruct Meleager’s and Philip’s Garlands from their remnants in the Palatine Anthology.

53 Cf. A. Cameron, art. cit., p. 333–35, and op. cit., p. 33–35. While we may safely assume that Cephalas excerpted epigrams from Philip’s collection in a linear manner, i.e. without re-arranging them, he had to distribute the texts among his various books according to subject matter. This, unfortunately, means that none of the Philippan sequences found in the AP entirely preserves its original state.

54 Cf. E. Hirsch, “Zum Kranz des Philippos,” Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Universität Halle 15, 1966, p. 401–17, and A. Cameron, art. cit.; see also A. Cameron, The Greek Anthology from Meleager to Planudes, op. cit., p. 33–43.

55 Ibid., p. 40.

56 On epigrammatic variatio, cf. W. Ludwig, “Die Kunst der Variation im hellenistischen Liebesepigramm,” in L’épigramme grecque, Genève, Fondation Hardt, Entretiens sur l’Antiquité classique 14, 1968, p. 299–348; S. L. Tarán, The Art of Variation in the Hellenistic Epigram, Leiden, Brill, 1979; P. Laurens, L’abeille dans l’ambre. Célébration de l’épigramme de l’époque alexandrine à la fin de la Renaissance, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1989, p. 65–96; K. Gutzwiller, op. cit., p. 236–76 on Antipater of Sidon as a main practitioner of variatio.

57 In the case of Philip’s own rewritings, this was easily achieved. As A. Wifstrand, Studien zur griechischen Anthologie, Lund, Gleerup, Lunds Univ. Årsskrift, 1926, p. 6 n. 2 first noted, Philip commonly begins variations with the same letter as their models so as to be able to juxtapose copy and original.

58 For a first overview of Philip’s editorial technique, cf. R. Höschele, “A Garland of Freshly Grown Flowers: The Poetics of Editing in Philip’s Stephanos,” in C. Carey, M. Kanellou, I. Petrovic (eds.), Reading Greek Epigram from the Hellenistic to the Early Byzantine Era, forthcoming. An artful alphabetical arrangement might also underlie Babrius’ Mythiamboi, a second-century AD collection of fables in two books; cf. N. Holzberg, The Ancient Fable. An Introduction, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2002, p. 53–55.

59 On this poem, cf. P. Bing, op. cit., p. 33–35; R. Höschele, op. cit., p. 172–76. The attempt by D. Anderson, “Location and Motif in Meleager’s Coronis (A. P. 12.257),” MD 73, 2014, p. 9–23, to argue for a different (non-final) position of the poem is unconvincing.

60 L. Argentieri, “Meleager and Philip as Epigram Collectors,” art. cit., p. 162–63.

61 The book of erotika in Meleager’s Garland, for instance, was opened by a sequence of poems dealing with wine (AP 5.134–37), song (AP 5.138–41), and garlands (AP 5.142–49); cf. K. Gutzwiller, “The Poetics of Editing in Meleager’s Garland,” TAPhA 127, 1997, p. 169–200, and op. cit., p. 284–86. K. Gutzwiller, op. cit., passim, offers many ingenious observations about the placement of programmatic poems within lost single-authored libelli. On the textuality of ancient poetry books in general, cf. R. Höschele, op. cit., p. 13–26. Another prominent locus for poetic self-reflexivity is the middle, cf. S. Kyriakidis, F. De Martino (eds.), Middles in Latin Poetry, Bari, Levante Ed., 2004.

62 For this concept, cf. F. Kermode, The Sense of an Ending. Studies in the Theory of Fiction, new ed., Oxford, OUP, 2000.

63 Cf. R. Höschele, “Priape mis en abyme ou Comment clore le recueil,” in F. Biville, E. Plantade, D. Vallat (eds.), « Les vers du plus nul des poètes… » Nouvelles recherches sur les Priapées. Actes de la journée d’étude organisée le 7 novembre 2005 à l’Université Lumière-Lyon 2, Lyon, MOM, 2008, p. 53–66, and op. cit., p. 295–307; on the impotence motif in the Priapea, see N. Holzberg, “Impotence? It Happened to the Best of Them! A Linear Reading of the Corpus Priapeorum,” Hermes 133, 2005, p. 368–81. See also R. Höschele, “Sit pudor et finis: False Closure in Ancient Epigram,” in B. Acosta-Hughes, F. Grewing, A. Kirichenko (eds.), The Door Ajar. False Closure in Greek and Roman Literature and Art, Heidelberg, Universitätsverlag Winter, 2013, p. 247–62 on false closure in Martial and the Priapea.

64 AP 5.132 (ὤ, Philodemus), 133 (ὤμοσ᾽, Quintus Maecius); 6.198 (ὥριον, Antipater Thess.); 7.405 (ὦ, Philip), 645 (ὦ, Krinagoras); 9.178 (ὡς, Antiphilus), 311 (ὠκείαις, Philip), 312 (ὦνερ, Diodorus Zonas); 11.23 (ὠκύμορόν, Antipater Thess.), 24 (ὦ, Antipater Thess.), 348 (ὦ, Antiphanes); APl 93 (ὤλεσα, Philip), 216 (Ὡργεῖος, Parmenion), 240 (ὡραίας, Philip), 241 (ὥριμος, Marcus Argentarius), 242 (ὡς, Erykios).

65 The third Priapeum, by Erykios (APl. 242 = 14 G‑P), asks the god to cover up his erection, as he is not hidden away somewhere in the mountains, but watches over the city of Lampsacus.

66 The closural force of the flight motif is also manifest in the escape of Encolpius, Giton and Ascyltus at the end of the Cena Trimalchionis, which S. Tilg, “Die Flucht als literarisches Prinzip in Petrons Satyrica,” MD 49, 2002, p. 213–26, compares with the endings of mimes that were often marked by characters running off stage. A fascinating example for an apotropaic gesture at the conclusion of a book is provided by an Iliad papyrus of the first century AD (PLond. Lit. 11), which ends with a poem spoken in the voice of the coronis: characterizing itself as a guardian of letters, it warns readers from maltreating the book and threatens to slander any culprits to Euripides, its final word being ἄπεχε; cf. P. Bing, op. cit., p. 35 (I owe this observation to Lucia Floridi).

67 On the close connection between fruit and poetry in the Carmina Priapea, cf. R. Höschele, op. cit., p. 279–82. The sense of completion is also highlighted by Philip’s omega-epigram APl 93 (68 G‑P), in which the divinized Herakles recounts his completed labors, while the motif of ripeness also occurs in Antipater, AP 6.198 on Lykon’s dedication of his first beard (starting with ὥριον!).

68 My monograph will argue that Philip’s collection was designed to map the Roman Empire in an epigrammatic kosmos, as many of its poems evoke areas, including the most remote regions, under Roman dominion. On the metaphorical equation of the reader with a passer-by in epigram collections, cf. R. Höschele, “The Traveling Reader: Journeys through Ancient Epigram Books,” TAPhA 137, 2007, p. 333–69, and op. cit., p. 100–46.

69 Cf. R. Höschele, “Poets’ Corners in Greek Epigram Collections,” in B. Graziosi, N. Goldschmidt (eds.), Tombs of the Poets Between Textual and Material Culture, forthcoming. E. Hirsch, art. cit., p. 411, already speculated that these texts “wohl mehr oder weniger alle beieinander gestanden haben.” The following poets’ epitaphs from Philip’s Garland start with an alpha: AP 7.17 (Tullius Laurea) on Sappho, 7.18 (Antipater Thess.) on Alkman, 7.36 (Erykios) on Sophokles, 7.40 (Diodorus) on Aeschylus, 7.49 (Bianor) on Euripides; several further, anonymous poems might have formed part of the group: 7.41 + 42 on Callimachus, 7.47 + 48 on Euripides, 9.187 on Menander. E. Hirsch, art. cit., p. 412, suggests that AP 9.187 and the beta-poem AP 7.370 (Diodorus), likewise on Menander, could have formed a bridge from the alpha‑ to the beta-section. Besides Philip’s epigram on Hipponax in the Garland’s final section, there are only four epitaphs from other parts of his anthology: AP 7.38 (Diodorus) on Aristophanes, starting with theta, and 7.39 (Antipater Thess.) on Aeschylus, 7.51 (Adaios) on Euripides, 7.16 (Pinytus) on Sappho, all starting with omikron.

70 On the structure of this book, whose first section was devoted to famous persons and contained at least 60 epitaphs on poets, cf. K. Gutzwiller, op. cit., p. 307–15 with Table V.

71 Even if Philip should have written the poem before conceiving the plan of an alphabetically arranged anthology, this would not lessen its programmatic potential, triggered in particular by its combination with other apotropaic poems belonging to the final section. While it strikes me as very likely that Philip intentionally began this epigram with an omega, the genesis of this (and any other) poem is not what matters, but its interactions with the surrounding context created by the poet-editor.

72 Cicadas: AP 7.364 (Marcus Argentarius), 9.92 (Antipater Thess.), 9.122 (Euenus); singing birds: 7.191 (Archias, whose inclusion in the Garland is uncertain), 9.343 (Archias); poetic locations: 9.225 (Honestus), 9.230 (Honestus); Muses: 9.43 (Parmenion), 9.234 (Crinagoras); bees: 9.226 (Diodorus Zonas), 9.404 (Antiphilus); wine and drinking: 9.229 (Marcus Argentarius), 9.231 (Antipater Thess.), 9.232 (Philip), 9.403 (Quintus Maecius), 9.406 (Antigonus of Carystus), 11.45 (Honestus), 11.46 (Automedon), APl 235 (Apollonides).

73 For the opening of Meleager’s erotika, cf. n. 61.

74 Identified as a Philippan sequence already by F. Passow, Francisci Passovii quaestio de vestigiis coronarum Meleagri et Philippi in anthologia Constantini Cephalae, 1827, Breslau, Typis Universitatis, p. 8: “non enim turbatus est alphabeticus epigrammatum ordo, sed inversus.”

75 Cf. e.g. C. Dilthey, De Callimachi Cydippa, Leipzig, Teubner, 1863, p. 14–16; M. Rubensohn, “Gegen die Wassertrinker,” Hermes 26, 1891, p. 153–56; E. Reitzenstein, “Zur Stiltheorie des Kallimachos,” in E. Fraenkel et al. (eds.), Festschrift Richard Reitzenstein zum 2. April 1931, Leipzig, Teubner, 1931, p. 23–69, at p. 54–58; W. Wimmel, Kallimachos in Rom. Die Nachfolge seines apologetischen Dichtens in Rom, Wiesbaden, F. Steiner, 1960, p. 225; A. Kambylis, Die Dichterweihe und ihre Symbolik. Untersuchungen zu Hesiodos, Kallimachos, Properz und Ennius, Heidelberg, C. Winter, 1965, p. 100–2 and 118–22.

76 Verse 4 (κρηνῆς ἐξ ἱερῆς πίνετε λιτὸν ὕδωρ) recalls Callimachus, Hymn to Apollo 112: πίδακος ἐξ ἱερῆς ὀλίγη λιβάς.

77 For a similar opposition between water‑ and wine-drinkers from this period, cf. Horace, Epist. 1.19.2–3 (nulla placere diu nec vivere carmina possunt, / quae scribuntur aquae potoribus) and 6–8 (laudibus arguitur vini vinosus Homerus: / Ennius ipse pater numquam nisi potus ad arma / prosiluit dicenda).

78 It has, moreover, been argued that Callimachus presented himself as drinking water from Hippokrene in the dream he relates at the beginning of the Aetia (thus E. Reitzenstein, art. cit., p. 52–69, followed by A. Kambylis, op. cit., p. 98–102), which is, however, not supported by the fragments; against this hypothesis, cf. A. Cameron, Callimachus and His Critics, op. cit., p. 363–69.

79 P. Knox, “Wine, Water, and Callimachean Polemics,” HSPh 89, 1985, p. 107–19, at p. 111. Callimachus’ self-epitaph, in fact, presents the poet as someone who loved to banter about οἴνῳ (AP 7.415.2 = 35.2 Pf). N. B. Crowther, “Water and Wine as Symbols of Inspiration,” Mnemosyne 32, 1979, p. 1–11, at p. 5, is similarly skeptical. M. Asper, Onomata allotria. Zur Genese, Struktur und Funktion poetologischer Metaphern bei Kallimachos, Stuttgart, F. Steiner, 1997, p. 128–34, has convincingly shown that wine and water were traditionally associated with different lifestyles rather than poetological issues: “Die spätere Polemik, die unter dem Leitbegriff ὑδροπόται Kallimachus und seine Anhänger angreift, kann also wahrscheinlich die Prägung des Begriffs nicht aus diesem ableiten, sondern dürfte auf die ältere Begriffsgeschichte und vor allem das charakteristische πόνος-Konzept zurückgreifen . . .” (p. 131). L. Argentieri, op. cit., p. 94–98, also argues against reading Antipater’s pro-wine / anti-water epigrams (AP 9.305, 11.20, 23, 24 and 31) as serious poetological statements. A. Sens, “Hedylus (4 and 5 Gow-Page) and Callimachean Poetics,” Mnemosyne 68, 2015, p. 40–52, has, moreover, recently argued that two epigrams by Hedylus, which invoke wine as a source of poetic inspiration, are not to be understand as “a wholesale rejection of Callimachean aesthetic values” (p. 49), but playfully engage with Callimachean imagery.

80 Cf. F. J. Brecht, Motiv‑ und Typengeschichte des griechischen Spottepigramms, Leipzig, Dieterich, 1930, p. 30–37; G. Mazzoli, “Epigrammatici e grammatici: Cronache di una familiarità poco apprezzata,” Sandalion 20, 1997, p. 99–116; L. Floridi (ed.), Lucillio, Epigrammi, Berlin, De Gruyter, 2014, p. 268–74 on Lucillius, AP 11.140.

81 E. Hirsch, art. cit., p. 402, has made the attractive suggestion that Philip’s chi‑epigram could have been coupled with Antipater’s phi‑poem, creating a transition from one letter section to the next.

82 Thus, briefly, E. Reitzenstein, art. cit, p. 57 n. 1. In AP 11.321, for instance, Philip addresses the grammarians as “children of Stygian Momos” (Μώμου Στυγίου τέκνα, v. 1), which recalls the expression Βασκανίης ὀλοὸν γένος from the Aitia-prologue (fr. 1.17 Pf) as well as the reference to Momos at the end of the Hymn to Apollo (v. 113). He also alludes to the first verse of the Aitia, when calling his adversaries “Telchines of books” (τελχῖνες βίβλων, v. 2) and wishing that they spend their lives muttering against each other (κατατρύζοντες, v. 7 ~ ἐπιτρύζουσιν, fr. 1.1 Pf).

83 F. J. Brecht, op. cit., p. 32–33.

84 Cf. also E. Magnelli, art. cit., p. 401: “I poeti di questa raccolta si esprimono più volte con toni virulentemente anticallimachei e ostentano un rifiuto per i gusti letterari dell’età ellenistica; e per certi aspetti la loro versificazione non può dirsi di stampo alessandrino. Ma nell’impostazione fondamentale, ossia nella concezione che hanno del ‘genere’ epigrammatico e delle sue caratteristiche distintive, l’eredità alessandrina si rivela in loro assai forte.”

85 Cf. A. Kambylis, op. cit., p. 100 and 121. His hypothesis (p. 99) that Callimachus’ Somnium introduced the notion of Hesiod drinking from Hippokrene, an act not featured in the Theogony, is questionable; cf. n. 78. That Antipater evokes an existing tradition is, however, shown by two epigrams which envision Hesiod as drinking from the spring during his initiation scene: Alcaeus of Messene, AP 7.55.6 (καθαρῶν γευσάμενος λιβάδων) and Archias (or Asklepiades), AP 9.64.5 (δῶκαν δὲ κράνας Ἑλικωνίδος ἔνθεον ὕδωρ).

86 A. Kambylis, op. cit., p. 121. C. Campbell, Poets and Poetics in Greek Literary Epigram, Ph. D. University of Cincinnati, 2013, p. 218–21, likewise reads the epigram within this poetological framework. The water, in his view, stands for Hesiod’s moralistic didactic epic, which is rejected in favor of sympotic epigram represented by the cup of wine.

87 Cf. L. Argentieri, op. cit., p. 97: “ma l’aggettivo potrebbe voler dire semplicemente ‘che desta meno preoccupazioni,’ riferendosi naturalmente alla comodità di avere lì al simposio la propria fonte piuttosto che dover salire su un monte per bere!”

88 I owe this observation to the anonymous reader. On the rejection of moralizing Hesiod in an erotic context, cf. R. Gagné, R. Höschele, “Works and Nights (Marcus Argentarius, AP 9.161),” CCJ 55, 2009, p. 59–72.

89 Honestus may be considered an expert in Helikonian matters, as he is the author not just of 10 epigrams transmitted in the AP, but also of a series of poems inscribed in the Valley of the Muses near Mt. Helikon; cf. R. Höschele, “Honestus’ Heliconian Flowers: Epigrammatic Offerings to the Muses at Thespiae,” in M. A. Harder, R. F. Regtuit, G. C. Wakker (eds.), Hellenistic Poetry in Context, Leuven, Peeters, 2014, p. 171–94.

90 For a series of drinking poems marking the end of a poetry book, cf. Horace, Carm. 1.36–38, with M. S. Santirocco, Unity and Design in Horace’s Odes, Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1986, p. 78–81.

91 Interestingly, Callimachus’ Aitia was also framed by references to Mt. Helikon: παρ᾽ ἴχνιον ὀξέος ἵππου (“near the footprint of the swift horse”), a periphrasis of Hippokrene, in the epilogue (fr. 112.6 Pf) echoes the identical expression in the Somnium, which directly follows the prologue (fr. 2.1 Pf).

92 Cf. A. S. F. Gow, D. L. Page (eds.), op. cit., II, p. 49: “it cannot be said that A. has expressed himself very clearly.” Various explanations / translations of the couplet are conveniently summarized in M. Albiani, “Antip. Thess. 38 G‑P (= AP 11.23),” Lexis 1, 1988, p. 61–66, at p. 61. I follow Argentieri’s understanding (op. cit., p. 68–69 n. 50): “beviamo, perché è proprio vero che, (per andare) all’Ade, il vino è (come) un cavallo su una strada, mentre che per chi va a piedi (= gli astemi) c’è (solamente) uno stretto sentiero.”

93 “Wine is a swift horse for the graceful singer, you wouldn’t produce anything smart just drinking water” (AP 13.29.1–2 = 5.1-2 G‑P).

94 Nikainetos explicitly assigns this observation to the playwright: τοῦτ᾽ ἔλεγεν . . . Κρατῖνος (v. 3–4). The iambic line is commonly attributed to his Pytine or Bottle (fr. 203 K‑A), though Z. P. Biles, “Intertextual Biography in the Rivalry of Cratinus and Aristophanes,” AJPh 123, 2002, p. 169–204, at p. 173, rightly notes that “the fragment would be appropriate in any place where Cratinus clarified his poetics.” Some have taken it as early evidence for the wine/water-drinker debate, a view rightfully disputed by P. Knox, art. cit., p. 109–10, and M. Asper, op. cit., p. 128–29.

95 Cf. L. Argentieri, op. cit., p. 98.

96 I would like to thank the anonymous reader, Peter Bing, Lucia Floridi, Niklas Holzberg and Francesco Pelliccio for their very helpful comments on this essay.

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Regina Höschele, « “Harvesting from a New Page.” Philip of Thessalonike’s Editorial Undertaking »Aitia [En ligne], 7.1 | 2017, mis en ligne le 21 mars 2017, consulté le 29 mars 2024. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/aitia/1727 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/aitia.1727

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Regina Höschele

University of Toronto

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