Who was Laevius? What was he…?
These very good questions have as yet no correspondingly good answers. At some point between the death of Ennius in 169 BCE and the floruit of Catullus a century later, a poet of this name composed mythological narratives with an erotic spin (“Adonis,” Alcestis,” “Helena,” etc.) that he eventually gathered into six (or possibly more) books under the generic title Erotopaegnia (“Lovetrifles”). The poems were metrically diverse, culturally eclectic, and stylistically varied, a poetry free to imagine Fescennine verses at the wedding of Protesilaus and Laodamia (F 28) and to denounce its critics as carping eyebrow-raisers (subductisupercilicarptores, F 22). Only fifty or so lines survive, cited largely by grammarians and antiquarians for their linguistic oddities. Confusion over the author’s name, sometimes corrupted in the sources to Naevius, Aelius, Laelius, and Livius, and uncertainty over the fragments’ genre(s) hindered compilation of a corpus, which received only passing attention until early in the last century, when Henri de la Ville de Mirmont and Friedrich Leo both gave it extended treatments.[1] Anglophone readers are most likely to encounter Laevius, if at all, as a possible forerunner of the neoterics in the work of David Ross, who saw in the fragments only “haphazard experiments,” and through a short, uncompromisingly technical commentary by Edward Courtney emphasizing their “bizarre novelty.”[2] Dismissing Laevius nevertheless risks obscuring an important chapter in the history of Latin verse. He was almost certainly the first Latin love poet, and while it may be true, as still often claimed, that Latin poetry took decisive shape only after Parthenius in the 70s showed Romans how to read Callimachus, it is no less true, as Stephen Hinds points out, that “the poetry of Laevius will have helped to determine, to construct, how a Parthenius was viewed and read upon arrival.”[3] Laevius thus merits serious attention both as an interesting poet in his own right and for what his fragments preserve of an important but poorly documented period of literary development. Advances on both fronts have been hindered, though, by lack of a detailed critical edition and full commentary, so this new study by Erik Pulz is both timely and welcome.
The volume follows a familiar pattern: introductory essays contextualizing the poet and his work (pp. 3–61), followed by text (pp. 65–78), commentary (pp. 81–286), bibliography and indices. Fragments are reprinted (along with scansions and German translation) as the commentary requires, which saves considerable page-flipping and makes the often complex, multi-pronged discussions much easier to follow. Pulz adopts what is rapidly becoming standard practice in such editions, distinguishing between testimonia (T) and fragments (F) and providing generous quotation of the preserving contexts. These are printed in smaller type following each fragment, not a significant methodological issue for Laevius, since the verse quotations are for the most part clearly indicated in the sources; Pulz prints continuously the one extended passage of Gellius that embeds phrases and individual words in a single discussion (NA 19.7.4–12 ∼ F 3–18). A welcome addition, reflecting the emerging interest in the process of reception by which works come to be fragmented and quoted, is specific attention to the individual sources and their manner of citation (pp. 55–56) and to the history of scholarship (pp. 57–61). The table of sources, which makes clear, for example, how much Laevius’ survival owes to the grammatical tradition, is particularly useful (pp.52–54).[4]
The Introduction occasionally leans toward the formulaic and the jejune. Given the degree of experimentation in the second century, when aesthetic goals and stylistic devices were in constant flux, to debate whether Laevius was a praeneoterischer Dichter or an altlateinischer Dichter (Pulz opts emphatically for the latter) imputes more value to these labels than they probably deserve, and the search for echoes of Laevius in later authors can seem rather perfunctory. Pulz does, however, make two significant contributions that readers coming to the fragments from Courtney need to know.
- Pulz argues convincingly that the corrupt levius Melissus of Suetonius, DGR 3.5 disguises not a reference to our poet or to a second, otherwise unknown Laevius Melissus but to Maecenas’ freedman Gaius Melissus, who published a compilation of witticisms and amusing anecdotes originally entitled Ineptiae. This identification removes any basis for thinking our poet was of Greek origin or a freedman or for likening him to such grammarians as Livius Andronicus, Servius Nicanor, or Pompeius Lenaeus.[5]
- More difficult—and ultimately more significant—is the question of date. The evidence includes:
F 39:
meminens Varro corde volutat
Varro, remembering, mulls over…
F 42:
lex Licinia introducitur
lux liquida haedo redditurThe Licinian law is introduced
The light of day is restored to the kid
To these fragments are usually added the two lines patterned to evoke the wings of the phoenix (F 26, a Hellenistic device called a technopaegnium), read together with Pliny’s report that the first Roman to describe the phoenix was the learned senator Manilius in 97 BCE (NH 10.4–5), and a line of Lucilius, Laevius pauperem ait se ingentia munera fungi (“Laevius says that although poor he carries out prodigious duties,” 202M = T 4).
How should we understand this potentially contradictory evidence? The Varro of F 39 is widely identified with the great polymath (116–27 BCE), and by inferring from Pliny’s statement that the phoenix was unknown at Rome until 97, we get a floruit for Laevius of ca. 90 BCE. Pulz now takes quite a different view, pointing out that Manilius’ detailed description of the phoenix does not preclude either earlier knowledge of its existence or Laevius’ independent knowledge of what became Manilius’ source, while the present tenses of F 42 suggest something close to a contemporary reference to the lex Licinia. The Varro in question could then be anyone from the consul of 216, who regrouped the survivors of Cannae, to the senatorial ambassador of 146. That possibility suggests more weight be given to Lucilius’ line, derived from a book dated to ca. 118–116 BCE, since Lucilius also took aim at the lex Licinia (1200M, 1353M) and his eagerness to argue points of style with critics also finds parallels in Laevius.[6] Pairing the two poets lends further support to Pulz’ case for setting the compilation of the Erotopaegnia between ca. 130 and 110.
This matters. Placing Laevius back into the second century distances him from the neoteric bias that sees Latin poetry as heading inexorably in the direction of Catullus and judges earlier poets by their success or failure in approaching a first-century standard.[7] It encourages us instead to see his forays into lyric meters, which Porphyrio found non Graecorum lege (T 1), as aligning him with the innovators of Roman dramatic lyric and the minora of Ennius, and that while Παίγνια was a common title for Hellenistic verse collections, Erotopaegnia may reflect less the influence of learned Greek practice than the more general infiltration of Greek into educated speech that led Lucilius to call his work chartae (χάρται “jottings,” 1984M) and schedia (σχεδία improvisations,” 1279M).[8] Not that such associations necessarily make Laevius’ poetic aesthetic any easier to grasp. Those two iambic dimeters about the lex Licinia, for example, are quoted by Gellius in this form:
lēx Lĭcĭnĭa īntrōdūcĭtūr
lūx līquĭda haēdō rēddĭtūr
Courtney, following Leo, thought the heavy parallelism of the two lines should extend to their metrical shape, so he prints Leo’s restoration,
lēx Lĭcĭnĭa īntrōdūcĭtūr
lūx lĭquĭd<ŭl>a haēdō rēddĭtūr
Pulz, observing the frequent scansion līquidus in Lucretius, finds the emendation unnecessary (unnötigerweise) and returns to Gellius’ text. Rightly? It is a kind of choice we would like to resolve through recourse to parallels: with an author as fragmented (and unpredictable) as Laevius, it will remain largely a matter of taste and editorial temperament.
Tone and decorum can also be problematic, affecting both the text and how we understand it. Priscian illustrates the active form plecto plexi with lines that Pulz prints like this (F 40 = 4C).
te Andromacha perdudum manu
lasciuola ac tenellula
capiti meo, trepidans libens,
insolito plexit munere.You, a very long time ago, Andromache
with sensual and delicate hand,
restless, willing, braided for my head
as an unaccustomed gift.
The speaker is presumably Hector, widely taken to be addressing a wreath woven for him by Andromache, “unaccustomed” headgear for a hero distinguished in epic by his shining helmet (κορυθαίολος Ἓκτωρ).[9] Perhaps building on the epic recollection of Andromache’s courtship (Il. 22.466–72), Laevius, as might be expected in a collection called Erotopaegnia, turns his myth-telling toward the domestic and the romantic in characteristic Hellenistic fashion. But there is a “but.” Priscian’s text actually reads plexi, which has encouraged a range of editorial interventions, among them the suggestion that Hector is addressing not a wreath but Andromache directly and recalling not a gift but a sex act.[10] That would be a very different kind of poem, and Pulz is probably right to dismiss the idea as a scholarly curiosity (p. 238 n. 645). Certainty, though, is again impossible.
And so it is throughout this corpus, as rich in possibilities as it is devoid of certainties. That is, of course, rather in the nature of fragmentary evidence, but the glimpses here of what Latin poetry could have been offer an especially fresh and intriguing perspective on what that poetry did in fact become. By providing us with this good text and reliable guide, Pulz has at last made it possible to give Laevius the attention he deserves.
Works Cited
Clausen, W. 1964. “Callimachus and Latin Poetry,” GRBS 5: 181–96.
Courtney, E. 1993. The Fragmentary Latin Poets. Oxford.
De la Ville de Mirmont, H. 1900. “Le poèt Laevius,” REA 2: 204–24; 304–28, REA 3 (1901) 11–40
Granarolo, J. 1971. D’Ennius à Catulle. Recherches sur les antécédents romains de la poésie nouvelle. Paris.
Hinds, S. 1998. Allusion and Intertext. Dynamics of Appropriation in Roman Poetry. Cambridge.
Kaster, R. A. 1992. Studies in the Text of Suetonius De Grammaticis et Rhetoribus. American Classical Studies 28. Atlanta.
Leo, F. 1914. “Die römische Poesie in der sullanischen Zeit,” Hermes 49 161–195
Lightfoot, J. L. 1999. Parthenius of Nicaea. Oxford.
Pöschl, V. 1995. “Ein Liebesspiel des Laevius,” RhM 138: 59–68.
Ross, D. O. 1969. Style and Tradition in Catullus. Cambridge, MA.
Notes
[1] De la Ville de Mirmont 1900, 1901; Leo 1914: 180–88. Confusion over the name Laevius was first addressed by J. J. Scaliger in the course of editing Festus (1576), Varro (1585), and Ausonius (1595). A first edition of the fragments only appeared in 1830.
[2] Ross 1969: 155–60, Courtney 1993: 118–43.
[3] Hinds 1993: 80. Parthenius’ importance, argued forcefully by Clausen 1964, has not gone unquestioned. See the measured discussion of Lightfoot 1999: 50–76.
[4] Among the more literary sources is Fronto, whose recollection of the rare word decipula (“snares”) in a letter to Marcus is one of the few places where the extent of an embedded quotation could be thought problematic. Fronto’s sentence (F 47) has also been punctuated “nulla,” ut ait Laevius, “decipula tam insidiosa,” an alternative Courtney calls “uncertain” and Pulz “kaum möglich” (266). Courtney and FPL number the fragment differently, their numbers printed here with the texts. A Concordance would nevertheless have been helpful..
[5] Pace Courtney 1993: 118. For Gaius as the corrupted praenomen in Suet. see, in addition to Pulz 5–8, Kaster 1992: 41–45. The passage is included among the dubia as F 50.
[6] Laevius’ stylistic interests are manifest in F 22, 27, 46. For Lucilius’ ridicule of sumptuary laws, see Gruen 1992: 304–306.
[7] The teleological bias is especially noticeable in Granarolo 1971 and distorts his largely sympathetic treatment of Laevius. It is also, of course, a factor in Ross’ dismissal of Laevius’ achievement.
[8] Some generations earlier, Plautus gave us Erotium, a meretrix in Menaechmi, and a slave named Paegnium (“Toy-Boy”) in Persa. Greek nouns and phrases readily provide titles for plays by Caecilius and Terence.
[9] The interpretation goes back to Scaliger. The codd. variant per ludum, printed by Courtney, does not affect the sense. Nor does Scaliger’s emendation insolita…munera, which Courtney also prints.
[10] Pöschl 1995, also suspecting not a fragment at all but a complete erotic epigram. The interpretation may make too much of lasciuola (“lasziver”). lascivus in early Latin most often means only “frisky” or “lively,” (cf. F 41 lasciviterque ludunt), and Laevius’ diminutive could further soften its connotations.