Review of S. Stephens, The Poets of Alexandria (original) (raw)
Related papers
Hellenistic Poetry Before Callimachus - Liverpool, 14-15 June 2016
You who walk past my tomb, know that I am son and father of Callimachus of Cyrene. You must know both: the one led his country’s forces once, the other sang beyond the reach of envy. Callimachus, Epigram 21 Pf., tr. F.J. Nisetich Callimachus’ epitaph for the tomb of his father is notorious for how perplexingly little it says about the deceased. We are told neither his name nor profession, whereas the name that resounds loud and clear is that of the author of the epigram. This is a measure of how Callimachus outshone his father. The Greeks may have found delight in being defeated by their children (cf. Pl. Mx. 247a), yet we are less impressed. Even for the sake of Callimachus himself, would it not be rewarding to know who his father was? The epigram illustrates the broader problem we have with the poet’s closest literary ancestors. If we do our counting carefully, we see clearly enough that there is a two-generation gap between the beginning of what Droysen labelled as the Hellenistic period (Geschichte der Hellenismus, 1836, 19 - although he himself was not very clear about the chronological boundaries of his ‘new’ word) and the advent of ‘Golden Age heroes’ Callimachus, Theocritus, and Apollonius of Rhodes. Whilst the latter were not treated altogether kindly by fate, the generations of their fathers and teachers have been almost completely obscured. Almost – because what we do know is enough to give us a taste of what we are missing. Our conference is an unprecedentedly ambitious attempt to sketch a picture of the lost generations of the poets active during the last two decades of the fourth century and the first two decades of the third. We undertake to approach Philitas, Simias, Phoenix, Crates, and Timon and the whole gamut of their obscure contemporaries, genre by genre. We aim to discuss a number of thorny issues, among which the chronology and circulation of early Hellenistic poetry; the role these two generations played as forerunners of Hellenistic poetry and intermediaries between the tradition(s) of late Classical poetry and the new voices of Hellenistic poetry; and the larger implications for our (brittle) attempts of periodization. This pioneering venture into the origins of ‘Hellenistic-ness’ will help illuminate the shadowy and mysterious realms of Hellenistic poetry before Callimachus.
Merging Paradigms: translating pharaonic ideology in Theocritus' Idyll 17
2010
"Theocritus’ Idyll 17 is the best example of a Hellenistic poem praising Ptolemy II Philadelphus, under whose rule Alexandria became the cultural capital of the world. The encomium can be seen as an important document for the literary representation of this ruler of both a Greek and an Egyptian population. In this paper I will show that Idyll 17 systematically engages in an "interpretatio Graeca" of Egyptian ideology. Sufficient archeological material is available to suggest that the Ptolemies were very interested in their Egyptian royal status, and recent findings from the harbour of Alexandria have emphasized this Ptolemaic interest. Although the reflection of Ptolemaic ideology in Alexandrian poetry has been the topic of several studies in the last decades (e.g. Merkelbach 1981, Bing 1988, Koenen 1993, Selden 1998), Idyll 17 has been rather neglected. Quite recently, Stephens 2003 and Hunter 2003 have discerned some pharaonic ideological elements in the poem, but a systematic treatment of pharaonic motifs in the poem, which could strengthen their case, is missing. Thus, Hunter, in his commentary on Idyll 17, mainly offers parallels from Egyptian pharaonic hymns for the last part of the poem, and claims that “the Egyptian color is painted with the broadest brush” (p. 53). I will argue, by contrast, that the Greek ideas about kingship in this poem, expressed through allusions to both Homer and Hesiod, are Egyptian at the same time. For that purpose I will study two central themes of the poem: Philadelphus’ association with both Zeus and the bronze race of heroes. Philadelphus is consistently connected with Zeus in Idyll 17. The ancient and familiar Greek idea, expressed, for instance, by Herodotus in his treatment of Egypt (2.42), that Zeus is the equivalent of the Egyptian god of the sun (Ammon-)Re, seems the basis for this association. The pharaoh was considered “(Ammon-)Re on earth” and was simultaneously regarded as “son of (Ammon-)Re”, as each pharaoh was the (ideological) son of the previous pharaoh. I will show that in Idyll 17, both these conceptions of the pharaoh are applied, although in traditional Hesiodic language, not only to Philadelphus, but also to his pharaonic dynasty. The poem suggests that this included his father and predecessor Ptolemy Soter, the previous pharaoh Alexander the Great and their mutual ancestor Hercules, who was also pharaoh of Egypt, according to Manetho. Furthermore, Philadelphus is associated with heroes of the divine bronze race, called "hemitheoi" by Hesiod. Most explicitly, he is compared to the Homeric heroes Diomedes and Achilles. I will argue that the comparison of Philadelphus with this race is meant to explain his pharaonic status, as both god and man, in Greek terms. I will show that these are two essential ways in which Idyll 17 merges both paradigms, the Greek and the Egyptian, so that this thoroughly Greek poem is also thoroughly Egyptian. References: Bing, P. (1988), The Well-Read Muse: Present and Past in Callimachus and the Hellenistic Poets, Göttingen. Hunter, R.L. (2003), Theocritus: Encomium of Prolemy Philadelphus, Berkeley. Koenen, L. (1993), ‘The Ptolemaic king as a religious figure’ in A.W. Bulloch, E.S. Gruen, A.A. Long, and A.F. Stewart (eds.), Images and Ideologies: Self-Definition in the Hellenistic World, Berkeley, 25-115. Merkelbach, R. (1981), ‘Das Königtum der Ptolemäer und die hellenistischen Dichter’ in N. Hinske (ed.), Alexandrien, Mainz, 27-35. Selden, D. (1998), ‘Alibis’, CA 17.2: 299-412. Stephens, S. (2003), Seeing Double: Intercultural Poetics in Ptolemaic Alexandria, Berkeley. ""
[Theocritus], Idyll 23: A Stony Aesthetic (Advance access publication)
Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies
The pseudo-Theocritean Idyll 23 is frequently criticized as a wretched and unattractive poem. In this article, I argue that such allegedly ‘unattractive’ qualities do not betray the shortcomings of its poet, but are rather part of a distinctive aesthetic strategy. The Idyll embraces the murky, the hard, and the stony to construct an alternative aesthetic mode opposed to the traditional ‘sweetness’ of Theocritean bucolic and to the slender ‘refinement’ of Callimachus and Posidippus. First, I explore the poem’s knowing engagement with epic, tragedy, and epigram to demonstrate its familiarity with the common aesthetic strategies of Hellenistic poetics, whose rules it can both follow and break. Second, I analyse its ‘stony aesthetic’: the poem is dominated by both the literal and figurative language of hardness through its stone-hearted eromenos and lithic landscape. I argue that this stony environment is pointedly set against the ‘sweetness’ of the Theocritean countryside. The poem’s urban landscape both reflects and embodies its distinctive aesthetic.
M. A. Harder, J. J. H. Klooster, R. F. Regtuit and G. C. Wakker (eds.) Hellenistic Poetry Beyond Alexandria. Hellenisitica Groningana. Leuven (Peeters)
Pseudo-Oppian’s aetion of Apamea-on-the-Orontes (Cyn. 2.100-158) has long been thought to reflect a Seleucid foundation narrative; it has even been linked back to the Seleucid poet Euphorion. In this paper, I reconsider the case for the story’s Seleucid connection and reflect further on its significance. First, I examine the hints in the narrative that point to a Seleucid background, exploring the narrative’s connections with Hellenistic literature in general, and with Seleucid geopolitics in particular. Second, I investigate what this narrative offers for our wider understanding of Seleucid literary tradition and ideology: the aetion appears to fashion an image of a grand Seleucid aesthetic at odds with the slender refinement of Callimachean leptotes. In addition, it seems to counter key Callimachean passages, valuing the Orontes over the Nile and promoting Heracles as a Greek foil to the Athos-slicing Xerxes of Callimachus’ Coma Berenices. Pseudo-Oppian’s account offers us a rare and tantalising window onto the aesthetic and political wranglings of one of the Ptolemies’ major rivals.
The Classical Quarterly, 2021
A treatise on rhetorical tropes is attributed in manuscripts to the first-century grammarian Trypho: this article considers for the first time a fifteenth-century manuscript of this work (Leiden, BPG 74G), which turns out to be the only complete witness of its hitherto unknown original version; this version (very fragmentarily transmitted by a fifth-century papyrus scrap) is also partly found in another fifteenth-century manuscript now kept in Olomouc (M 79). Four interesting poetic fragments are quoted in this newly discovered, fuller version of Ps.-Trypho'sDe Tropis: some lines from Callimachus’ fifth and fourthIambi(23–9 and 90–2 respectively: a radically new light is shed by this new witness on the parallel papyrus fragments carrying Callimachus’ text), an epigram dubiously attributed to Simonides (FGE44 Page, probably to be dated to the Hellenistic period: the text can be now restored to its complete form), and some enigmatic lines of “Hesiod”'sWedding of Keyx, which th...
Callimachus and the Poetics of the Diaspora
Oxford Scholarship Online
This chapter reads Callimachus as a poet of the Hellenistic diaspora. It argues not only that his poems reflect the experience of Greeks born outside Greece, for whom the cultural baggage of earlier centuries is a repository of myths and stories which can be manipulated and reshaped, but also that contemporary issues of patronage and Ptolemaic geopolitics influenced the poet’s treatment of older themes. Time and space are collapsed. Set against the tribulations of the Ptolemaic dynasty in the mid-third century, Callimachus’ Hymn to Artemis emerges not as a purely literary reworking of an earlier, Homeric genre, but as a pointed and deliberate commentary on contemporary politics. The personal, the political and the poetic intersect and reinforce each other.
2024
Since the days of Reinhold Merkelbach and Ludwig Koenen, a steadily growing circle of scholars has taught us to look out for Egyptian backgrounds in Ptolemaic court poetry, most notably Susan in her stunning book Seeing Double. While there may still be debate as to the actual pervasiveness of intercultural poetics, we should be on our guard even when reading Hellenistic poetry that seems, at first glance, indisputably Greek. In what follows, I present just one little case: Ξεῖνος Ἀταρνείτης τις ἀνείρετο Πιττακὸν οὕτω τὸν Μυτιληναῖον, παῖδα τὸν Ὑρράδιον· 'ἄττα γέρον, δοιός με καλεῖ γάμος· ἡ μία μὲν δή νύμφη καὶ πλούτῳ καὶ γενεῇ κατ' ἐμέ, 5 ἡ δ' ἑτέρη προβέβηκε. τί λώϊον; εἰ δ' ἄγε σύμ μοι βούλευσον, ποτέρην εἰς ὑμέναιον ἄγω.' εἶπεν· ὁ δὲ σκίπωνα γεροντικὸν ὅπλον ἀείρας· 'ἠνίδε κεῖνοί σοι πᾶν ἐρέουσιν ἔπος. ' οἱ δ' ἄρ' ὑπὸ πληγῇσι θοὰς βέμβικας ἔχοντες 10 ἔστρεφον εὐρείῃ παῖδες ἐνὶ τριόδῳ. 'κείνων ἔρχεο', φησί, 'μετ' ἴχνια.' χὠ μὲν ἐπέστη πλησίον· οἱ δ' ἔλεγον· 'τὴν κατὰ σαυτὸν ἔλα.' ταῦτ' ἀίων ὁ ξεῖνος ἐφείσατο μείζονος οἴκου δράξασθαι, παίδων κληδόνα συνθέμενος. 15 τὴν δ' ὀλίγην ὡς κεῖνος ἐς οἰκίον ἤγετο νύμφην, οὕτω καὶ σύ, Δίων, τὴν κατὰ σαυτὸν ἔλα.