These are heady days for the Hellenistic epigram. While some at least of the world waits impatiently for the complete publication of the Milan papyrus of Poseidippos ( P.Mil.Vogl. 1295, cf. G. Bastianini and C. Gallazzi, Posidippo: Epigrammi [Milan 1993]), things are stirring also in more familiar parts of the forest: David Sider’s edition of the epigrams of Philodemos and Laura Rossi’s work on the epigrams of Theocritus (Ph.D. Rome, 1998) are just two among many signs that these fascinating texts are slowly coming into their own. It is not that the epigrams of, say, Anyte, Asclepiades and Callimachus have lacked admirers; indeed some of the finest recent scholarship on Hellenistic poetry consists of ‘readings’ of individual epigrams. Nevertheless, the very size of the corpus has inevitably deterred close examination of more than a relatively small selection (usually by the ‘big names’), and a synthetic account of just what is going on with these poems has long been a desideratum. If G.’s new book does not quite fit that particular bill, it nevertheless gives us more than enough to be going on with.
The emergence of the erotic epigram in the late classical and early Hellenistic periods remains a curiously provoking fact of literary history. There seem so many obvious explanations in terms of the formal and thematic trends of the time (move towards ‘short poems’, predominance of hexameters and elegiacs over lyrics, prominence of eros as a theme in many different branches of literature etc.) that the genuinely surprising nature of the phenomenon is often overlooked, and the pleasingly simple ‘grand theories’ of the past, most notably that of Richard Reitzenstein’s Epigramm und Skolion, perhaps explain too much too neatly (cf. Wilamowitz, Hellenistische Dichtung I 120). The very number of epigrams which evoke the preparations, conduct or aftermath of the symposium shows just how important traditions of sympotic poetry were (cf. now A. Cameron, Callimachus and his Critics 70-103), but the relationship constructed between these traditions and inscriptional forms remains very imperfectly understood. The subject is not G.’s principal concern, and there is in fact some unclarity about the view she takes of it: ‘short elegies or imitations of inscriptions’ (p.11) is a dichotomy precisely requiring examination. G. offers a picture in which the near-simultaneous collection and editing of sympotic elegy (and perhaps skolia) and the appearance of ‘Anyte’s author-edited collection and probably assemblages attributed to Simonides and Anacreon as well’ tended to erase the generic differences between elegy and epigram, ‘which had largely derived from the symposium setting for the one and the inscriptional setting for the other’. What happened next (Asclepiades etc.) was that this epigram/elegy mixture led to ‘a new type of epigram with erotic and sympotic, rather than dedicatory and sepulchral, themes … Its character was formed by adapting the language and themes of old elegy to the rhythm and structures of inscriptional verse’ (p.116-17). The emphasis here on formal considerations and the importance of collection within anthologies is a valuable leitmotif of much of G.’s recent work, but this book does not really clarify how erotic-sympotic epigram takes over ‘the rhythm and structures of inscriptional verse’; with notable exceptions (e.g. pp. 124-5 on Asclepiades
G. does have a socio-historical explanation for the epigrammatic big bang, but it is not necessarily easy to swallow: epigrams focus on individuals and could reflect the ‘shifting, local, and pragmatic’ bonds of Hellenistic society by ‘represent[ing] individuals as they now were—marginal, drifting, fragmentary and fractured selves’ (p.13), or, in other words, ‘rootless and decentered selves’ (p.53). I freely confess myself deeply sceptical about the following assertion: ‘In a world lacking a civic and political center, the poetic ego who speaks in erotic epigram illustrates, through his constantly frustrated search for reciprocated affection, the perpetual estrangement of Hellenistic man’ (p.120). This seems to me to misrepresent the political reality for some at least of the most important epigrammatists; as for Hellenistic estrangement, this is far more often asserted than demonstrated. So too, the jury is still out (to say the least) on whether ‘the flowering of the art of variation in the late second century B.C. was connected with anxiety about the endangered status of Greek culture in the face of increasing Roman hegemony’ (p.227). Fortunately, the success of G.’s book does not depend upon a view of such large-scale constructions.
The bulk of the book consists of two closely related kinds of material: ‘close readings’ of individual epigrams arranged (broadly) by author, and arguments about the arrangement of books of epigrams published by the leading figures of the genre. G. is already well known through her articles for some very perceptive epigram readings, and the current book does not disappoint. She is a subtle and alert reader who understands the particular kind of demands which epigrammatic silences impose. From an excellent paragraph (p.65) about Anyte’s poem on the death of a (?) cock ( AP 7.202) to some very instructive pages on Antipater’s poems on past poets (pp.259-65)—G.’s discussion of this poet is in fact a very timely ‘rehabilitation’—the book is full of insightful observations; it will never be a waste of time to look up the Index to see what G. has to say about a particular poem. As for the second subject, if we accept—as the Poseidippos papyrus makes it increasingly hard not to—the very high probability that, during the third century, some epigrammatists ‘published’ collections of their own (or their own and others) poems, then it makes obvious sense to try out readings of surviving poems as parts of a whole and, in particular, to look for poems which may have occupied ‘programmatic’ positions. It is the considerable achievement of G.’s book to have put this subject very firmly on the map; it will, I think, no longer be possible to read these poems without wondering about the issues which G. has raised. There is, of course, a price to be paid. In the nature of things, such arguments must remain highly speculative, and there is an understandable temptation, to which G. sometimes succumbs, to want surviving poems always to have been crucial texts. G. pushes the evidence of our surviving anthologies (papyrus evidence, alphabetization etc.) about as far as it will go—her reconstruction of Meleager’s Garland, in the wake of Wifstrand, Cameron etc., is something of a tour de force—but in the end it is literary arguments which must bear the bulk of the proof. Where these do not carry conviction, and I was unpersuaded in a fair number of cases, they will, I hope, stimulate thoughtful dissent. To take a fairly simple case, many may be reluctant to accept Anyte XVIII G-P as the ‘source’ of Theocr. 1.1-2, Asclepiades I G-P and Nossis I G-P and draw inferences from this about its programmatic position in her putative collection (G. pp.71-2); nevertheless, the verbal similarities among these poems do provoke thought, and a reading of the pastoral invitation of Anyte’s poem as an invitation to the reading of an epigram collection was certainly a speculation worth making, and one for which G. could have adduced the imagery of very many later discussions of the joys of literature. In short, it is hard to think of any other significant corpus of Greek poetry where so much basic interpretation remains to be done; G. has done major service by reminding us of this simple truth.
Some details. P.8 ‘… whether the reader of a book epigram knows the referents of the poem to be historical or fictive, or is uncertain of the choice, makes little difference in terms of the expected literary response’. This is surely too simple; the poet’s assumption of such knowledge can, for example, be a principal poetic strategy (the importance of names in creating a sense of the ‘meta-epigrammatic’ deserves more attention than it has so far received). P.77. G. ingeniously suggests that ‘even honey I spit from my mouth’ in Nossis I is a dismissive allusion to Erinna, the ‘nonerotic beelike poet’, who (p.87) had been lionised, and hence ‘neutralised’, by subsequent male epigrammatists. Pp.129-30. Following Daniel Garrison’s Mild Frenzy, G. not merely connects the priamel of Asclepiades I with the priamel inscribed at Delos (Arist. EE 1214a 5-6), but also sees here an allusion to and modification of Epicurean ideas of hedone (citing Lucr. 2.1-7 in support); it is a strength of G.’s method that she is always alive to the wider intellectual context in which Hellenistic poetry was written, even if non-explicit connections between poetry and philosophy are desperately hard to establish. For what it is worth, I remain sceptical about a supposed allusion to Asclepiades I in Poseidippos I, and hence of the evidential value of the latter poem for a ‘philosophical’ reading of the former (G. pp. 157-8). Pp. 148-9. G. has an interesting discussion of Asclepiades