Callimachus and His Critics (review)

Frederick T. Griffiths

American Journal of Philology, Volume 118, Number 2 (Whole Number470), Summer 1997, pp. 339-343 (Article)

Published by The Johns Hopkins University PressDOI: 10.1353/ajp.1997.0022

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of Xen. Hell. 3.3.3?” D. is quite right that Birds does not help to date the decreeagainst Diagoras (582) and that it is cited as one of the sorts of proclamation thatone might hear. Alexandros (591f.) will have appeared in the tragedy of thatname the previous year. On the πυρρÝøη (607) see Eup. 18 and Borthwick (Her-mes 98 [1970] 318–31). For Lykourgos (642) we shall have to explain the ibis–joke without Köhler’s thesis about the rites of Isis; see also Simms (CJ 84 [1989]216–21). D. calls Agathon in 411 a “thirty–year old” (659); he appears as a meira-kion at Plat. Prot. 315d—if this belongs to the 431–stratum (see Walsh CQ 34[1984] 101–6) he was born c. 447 and is thus thirty–six or so in 411, if it belongs tothe 420–stratum, about twenty–five (the latter is much more likely). On anabolai(669) see West (Greek Music 205, 307) for a different interpretation. Delion isunlikely as the occasion for Kleonymos’ shield (691); the joke begins with hisastrateia at Kn. 1369–72. If Peisandros (713) was known for coarse personalhabits, could the connexion with a camel denote a bad smell (cf. Hdt. 1.80.4)? Forthe date of Demoi (717) I prefer “traditionally dated in 412.” D. is correct tofavour an entry by chariot (751) at the end; might it recall the entry of Agamem-non and Kassandra in Aeschylus’ play? Not that I would want to extend the im-plications of that analogy.

These are just comments that occurred along the way. It is a delight to seethis book out at last, which in 1970 consisted of folders full of curling pagesbrought down as needed. Birds has been very well served by this new text andcommentary. One salutes D. on the production of what I must call her magnumopus; µÛγα âιâλÝïν would have all the wrong connotations.

IAN C. STOREY

TRENT UNIVERSITY

ALAN CAMERON. Callimachus and His Critics. Princeton: Princeton UniversityPress, 1995. xiv 1 534 pp. Cloth, $49.50, £37.50.

“Elegy was the great preoccupation of the age of Callimachus, and it wasnaturally the style appropriate for elegy rather than epic that Callimachus ad-dressed in the prologue to his own original and polemical new elegy” (437). Pro-fessor Cameron’s keenly anticipated argument (outlined in TAPA 122 [1992]305–12) does not disappoint, especially now that he includes among the “critics”not only such ancient “Telchines” as Asclepiades and Posidippus but also theRoman Callimacheans and “moderns with Hesiodic initiations on the brain”(415). To counter “the curious modern preoccupation with Hellenistic epic andepyllion” (ix), seen most starkly in interpretation of Catullus and the Augustans,Cameron interweaves two ambitious projects.

First, the organizing argument is a reconstruction and dating of the Aetiaso as to establish that the prologue (frag. 1 Pf.) introduced books 1 and 2 ca. 270

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B.C. amid debates about contemporary elegy. In place of the now generally dis-credited “feud” with Apollonius over monumental epic, Cameron posits a quar-rel with Asclepiades and Posidippus over the epicizing Antimachean mode of el-egy. The prologue is not a recusatio of grand epic (a Roman preoccupation);indeed, “. . . there is no mention of epic in the Aetia prologue” (457), and elegywould be a curious medium for dictating taste in hexameter. Nor does the pro-logue claim novelty for the Aetia as catalogue–style “Hesiodic elegy,” which hadbeen in fashion since the Lyde, and indeed so much so that “it was pseudo–Hesiodic rather than pseudo–Homeric writing that aroused Callimachus’s ire”(363). The “Telchines” are the admirers of the Lyde, a poem that Callimachus as-sails as an “epic pastiche” (483), a monotonous �εισµα διηνεκÛς, and the stylisticantithesis of the interesting subjectivity and personal voice demonstrated in hisown Cydippe (ca. 279–274). For having compromised the distance of elegy fromepic, Antimachus is left pointedly unnamed next to Mimnermus and Philitas(316) and further overshadowed by allusion to Aratus (in κατa λεπτÞν, frag.1.11) as the proponent and paragon of λεπτÞτης. In sum, the prologue’s polemiclies more completely within the moment and between the lines than has beensuspected, and entirely within elegy but outside of theory: “So Callimachus’s fa-mous literary theories do not really amount to much—as theories” (452).

Second, to understand how the Aetia speaks for its age we must under-stand the age rightly. To provide “a prolegomena to the study of Hellenistic (andso also Roman) poetry” (ix) Cameron pauses frequently in his reconstruction ofthe Aetia to launch diatribes against the folly of reducing Hellenistic poetry tothe aestheticism and obscurantism of the “ivory tower,” or to genre inversion(contra Rossi), Buchpoesie (contra Bing), or, worst of all, some “contest of Ho-mer and Hesiod” about big and small epics. This rarefied “Alexandria” existedfirst in Rome and at a great remove from the continuities of Hellenic culture thatshaped Callimachus’ “real literary context, a world of cities as well as courts, aworld of private symposia and public festivals” (ix). Multibook epics were toorare (contra Ziegler) to require recusatio, while the popularity of short hexame-ter poems precluded controversies such as are implied by the term of “epyllion”(contra Gutzwiller) or imputed to Theocritus (Id. 7, 13, and 22) and Callimachus(H. Apollo and Hecale). “To judge from the debate about the Lyde, it was elegythat preoccupied the more reflective poets and critics of the age” (451).

Only a scholar with Cameron’s range, good ear, and courage could under-take a two–pronged offensive of this sort, which is not less “original and polemi-cal” than the elegy it celebrates. Recently published papyri, Byzantine misread-ers, and the shifty tribe of epigrammatists have all been marshaled with equalauthority for what is in part the elegiac pre–history to his distinguished TheGreek Anthology from Meleager to Planudes (Oxford 1993). By the nature of thefragmentary evidence, both the elegy–centered age and its important (if not de-finitive) Aetia can be reconstructed only at the level of hypothesis, and readerswill differ as to whether two mutually reinforcing hypotheses are more illuminat-

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ing than one, or just more hypothetical. Following the revisionism of Parsons,Henrichs, Hutchinson, and others, Cameron has significantly advanced currentdebates about how discontinuous Hellenistic culture is from what precedes,above all in bringing to the question an unrivaled depth of Roman and Byzan-tine evidence. His demonstrations of the modern undervaluing of elegy speak forthemselves, especially in the fresh light of the new Simonides (POxy 3965 5West IEG ii2 frags. 1–18) and the Lille Callimachus. Best of all, the Heliconiansisters have, under stern questioning, given Cameron an elegiac Aetia that re-wards close attention.

I shall begin with an abstract of Cameron’s Aetia and return at the end tothe larger controversies about third–century culture. At the outset he commitshimself to a score of conjectural dates (“Chronologia Callimachea,” xiii–xiv),many of them interdependent. Dismissing Pfeiffer’s suggestion of some late “col-lected works” (1928), Cameron extends Parsons’ view of a bipartite Aetia by dat-ing to ca. 270 B.C. the prologue, Somnium, books 1 and 2, and the epilogue (frag.112 Pf.), which (following Knox) announced the Iambi as Callimachus’ next proj-ect but was later moved to the end of Aetia 4 by a copyist. If the Iambi had sev-enteen poems (including frags. 226–29, Pfeiffer’s “µÛλη?”), the collection wouldhave appeared shortly after the death of Arsinoë in 268 and thereby confirm anearly date for Aetia 1 and 2. Positing an early date (ca. 320) for Callimachus’birth, Cameron argues that the poet could be posturing as an old man already in270. Asclepiades and Posidippus are located in Alexandria early in Philadelphus’reign by means of synchronizations that also draw in Apollonius Rhodius, Cal-limachus, Sotades, and Theocritus. Callimachus’ anti–Antimachean Cydippe (ca.279–274, and incorporating a riposte to Sotades) provoked a swipe from Ascle-piades (taking τ�ν δ’ �πe ΚÞδρïυ [AP 9.63] as referring to Cydippe), to whichthe prologue responds. As the Victoria Berenices (SH 254–69) now establishes,Callimachus added Aetia 3 and 4 ca. 245, perhaps after an interlude in Cyrene.The practice of other poets (e.g., Ovid’s Amores [114–18]) argues against revisionof Aetia 1 and 2 or addition of the prologue at that point.

The above summary does no justice to the subtlety and broad erudition ofProfessor Cameron’s arguments. Readers do well to keep his 1992 TAPA articlein hand, since Callimachus and his Critics launches in medias res and links sec-tions with as little as a “So . . . .” Scarcely any step along the way is beyond chal-lenge, given the nature of the available evidence: attributions of epigrams, judg-ments of who was borrowing from whom (e.g., Apollonius from Theocritus [253,426–30]), and political allegory (e.g., the “Didyme” of Asclep. AP 5.210 5 Bili-stiche [233–39]). When forced to speculative reconstruction, Cameron honorsthe form. For example, with Bilistiche[–Didyme]’s Olympian victory (best: theOlympiad of 268), the pieces fit together: “Sotades recited his poem [On Bili-stiche, mentioned in the Suda biography] at an Alexandrian symposium in latesummer 268, then beat a hasty retreat once he learned that Philadelphus was lesstolerant of insults to his mistress than his wife, little thinking that a Ptolemaic

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fleet would shortly be following the same route” (257). Were the Cydippe after267 it would have mentioned (at frag. 75.4f.) Sotades’ later outrage instead of hismarriage poem (frag. 16 Powell).

Though no Callimachean has sleuthed more resourcefully than Cameron,the interlocking termini ante quos of Callimachus’ half–century career in thesame town (apparently) and same style rely on the point hardest to prove: thathe never, from queen to queen, revised or amended. The Lyde (“not an epic butepic in style and dimensions,” 302) brings the non–topic of epic into the prologueby the back door, as does the admired precedent of Simonides’ Plataea ode.Cameron has not ducked controversy in his broad reconstruction, which suc-ceeds in its larger purpose of driving a wedge against the habit of taking the Ae-tia as deflected epic. What emerges is a fresh and appealing reading of the poemas an elegy about elegy.

To turn now to Cameron’s second undertaking, space forbids even a cata-logue of the positions taken in the interspersed survey of Ptolemaic culture andhow it came to be misrepresented. Users who merely consult will find that chap-ters rarely announce or summarize their arguments and sometimes hide theirtreasures (e.g., chapter 8, “The Telchines,” on the Lives of Callimachus [220–25]). The lacunose index does not warn the reader how much further searchingmay be needed, e.g., beyond “unity” onward to “διηνεκÛς” and “carmen per-petuum,” but not to “Aristotle,” which turns out to refer only to the philosopher’spoetry and not to the important refutation of Pfeiffer on Callimachus’ supposedanti–Aristotelianism (343–46, 395).

Of particular interest for non–specialists is the central argument on epicand elegy (chapters 10–18). Chapter 10, “Hellenistic Epic,” surveys our evidencefor production (often contra Parsons and Lloyd–Jones), arguing that dynasticneeds were generally served by elegy, hexameter encomium, and various formsof paean. Subsequent chapters pillory the fallacies about monumentality andheroism once licensed by the “feud” with Apollonius. It is too early to sum uphow the field has moved on (e.g., in the shelf of current monographs on Apollo-nius and Theocritus). Despite Cameron’s unique mastery in using the epigram-matists to fill out our picture of elegy at the center of Alexandrian debates, hedoes not entirely skirt the danger that the disreputable Lyde, unnamed by theAetia and lost to us, may tell scholars what they want to hear even more thanonce did the endlessly convenient Argonautica. It must have been a remarkable�εισµα διηνεκÛς to combine the structural badness of Cyclic epic (343–54), He-siod’s Theogony, and the Catalogue of Women (368).

Callimachus and his Critics is admirably current on scholarship up to 1995,though the references show signs of haste, and there is slippage between thefootnotes and bibliography. On the relation of poetry to the Ptolemies, this bookoverlaps Gregor Weber’s Dichtung und höfische Gesellschaft (Stuttgart 1993),which on some issues (e.g., ruler cult, festival, the prosopography of courtiersand poets) provides much fuller documentation. The reader must usually consult

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both works. Weber’s schematic Kultursoziologie never goes so far out on a limbas Callimachus and his Critics, yet, in giving scarcely one page out of five hun-dred to elegy as a form, may make Cameron’s case for him about the limits of theconventional wisdom. In his challenge to central assumptions of Aetia interpreta-tion, Cameron’s combination of brilliance and daring will bore no one andshould open, if not on every point change, the minds of persistent readers.

FREDERICK T. GRIFFITHS

AMHERST COLLEGE

WERNER HUSS. Der makedonische König und die ägyptischen Priester: Studienzur Geschichte des ptolemaiischen Ägypten. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Ver-lag, 1994. 238 pp. Paper, DM 80. (Historia Einzelschriften, 85)

The aim of this monograph is to elucidate the interactions of “Staat” and“Kirche” (author’s quotes) in Egypt under the Ptolemaic rule. In placing theseterms always between quotation marks the author clearly seeks to create a littledistance between his usage and the standard modern connotations, which imme-diately poses the question of just how appropriate it is to attempt to understandand discuss the ancient institutions and structures of Ptolemaic Egypt in this way.The present reviewer is very willing to allow Huss the term “Staat,” and indeedso far as I am concerned the quotation marks around this term could be dis-pensed with. The situation, however, is rather different with respect to the term“Kirche.”

Even when used circumspectly with scholarly caveat regarding meaning(see the author’s Einführung, n. 5), the term “Kirche” seems to me to importwith it a set of institutional and theological suppositions that are entirely out ofplace when discussing the pre–Christian religion of Egypt. Simply as a way ofthinking and talking about Egyptian religion, the notion of “Kirche” inevitablyleads one to see this religion in a certain way—with a rather unified and uniforminstitutional framework and hierarchy, and a set of accepted beliefs and dog-mas—which I doubt is the right way to see it. One could argue, indeed, that oneshould speak rather of Egyptian religions, given the lack of theological or evenmythological coherence between the various cults of the great temples in differ-ent regions of Egypt. And one could further note that each of these great tem-ples had its own structure and hierarchy, and that they were related to each otherby no set and uniformly accepted hierarchy, but rather competed for prestigeand standing while each assiduously building its own power and wealth.

To be fair, Huss is not at all unaware of these facts, and despite the shakytheoretical ground on which he stands, his monograph does have much good tooffer. It is divided into two parts: Part I discusses the dealings of the state towardsthe “Kirche,” outlining the ways in which the Ptolemies attempted to win accep-

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