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Hipponax and his Enemies in Ovid's Ibis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Ralph M. Rosen
Ralph M. Rosen
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
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Extract

Among the many textual difficulties that beset Ovid's Ibis are two passages that allude, in an oblique fashion typical of the whole poem, to the iambographer Hipponax:

(1) et quae Pytheides fecit de fratre Medusae,

eveniant capiti vota sinistra tuo,

(447–8 La Penna)

(2) utque parum stabili qui carmine laesit Athenin,

invisus pereas deficiente cibo.

(523–4 La Penna)

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 38 , Issue 2 , December 1988 , pp. 291 - 296
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1988

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References

1 The following abbreviations are used: La Penna = Penna, A. La, Publi Ovidi Nasonis Ibis (Florence, 1957)Google Scholar; Degani = Degani, E., Hipponactis Testimonia et Fragmenta (Leipzig, 1983)Google Scholar; Degani, , Studi = E. Degani, Studi su Ipponatte (Bari, 1984)Google Scholar.

2 Note Ovid's programme in v. 55: ‘…historiis involvam carmina caecis’.

3 The scanty information we have about Callimachus' Ibis is collected in frr. 381–2 Pf.

4 postmodo, se perges, in te mihi liber iambus

tincta Lycambeo sanguine tela dabit.

nunc, quo Battiades immicum devovet Ibin,

hoc ego devoveo teque tuosque modo.

5 In addition to the strictly literary sources, Ovid also seems to have been inspired by the formulaic imprecations of the tabellae defixiones, on which see Zipfel, C., Quatenus Ovidius in Ibide Callimachum aliosque fontes imprimis defixiones secutus sit (Diss. Leipzig, 1910) and La Penna pp. xx–xxxiGoogle Scholar.

6 Cf. Owen, S. G., P. Ovidi Nasonis Tristium libri quinque; Ibis; ex Ponto libri quattuor; Halieutica fragmenta (Oxford, 1915)Google Scholar. Owen prints at 445 ( = 447 La Penna) ‘et quae Pitthides fecit fraterque Medusae’ and endorses the explanation of Salvagnius, (Leiden, 1660) in his apparatus ‘significatur Eurystheus, qui multa vota in Herculis exitium nuncupavit’. Housman calls this anGoogle Scholar‘impudent and comical fiction’ (JPh 35 [1920], 299–300Google Scholar = The Classical Papers of A. E. Housman [Cambridge, 1972], iii. 1027–8)Google Scholar, though his own explanation – that the couplet refers to Theseus' imprecations on Hippolytus (as frater patruelis of Medusa) – works only if one accepts, with Salvagnius, Pitthides; cf. La Penna, pp. 113–14, and below, note 8, on the text of this line.

At 520 ( = 523 La Penna) Owen prints, with many editors, Athenas. For attempts to explain this reading, cf. Degani, , Studi, pp. 61–2Google Scholar.

7 Degani, , Studi, pp. 59–63Google Scholar. La Penna, p. 113, refers to 447–8 as ‘forse il distico piú spinoso dell' Ibis’.

8 A brief summary of the cruces, however, is perhaps useful at this point. In passage (1) the MSS. offer, among others, variants such as penthides, pentides, pentelides, pithoides; in the second hemistich we find a vacillation between fraterque and de fratre. In passage (2) the MSS. offer Athenas. For the many, often ingenious, attempts to make sense of the received texts, see La Penna, pp. 113–15 (passage 1), 138–9 (passage 2) and Degani, pp. 59–63. La Penna's emendation Pytheides in the first instance, suggested early on by Micyllus, J. in his edition of 1550, and later approved by Sanctius (1598) and Rostagni, A., Ibis. Storia di un poemetto greco (Florence, 1920)Google Scholar, is based on the fact that all the ancient scholia explained the passage as an allusion to Hipponax. The scholia themselves were confused by the patronymic, and offered a variety of wild anecdotes; cf. Penna, La, Scholia in P. Ovidi Nasonis Ibin (Florence, 1959), pp. 116–17Google Scholar; Degani, , Studi, p. 107 n. 175Google Scholar; and Davies, M., ‘Archilochus and Hipponax in a Scholium on Ovid's Ibis’, Prometheus 7 (1981), 123–4Google Scholar. The Suda (t 588 Adl.), however, refers to Hipponax as υίὸς Πύθεω and it is probable that the wild scholiastic anecdotes result from an ancient marginal note, ‘Hipponax’, which successive scholiasts freely elaborated upon; cf. La Penna, p. 114. In the case of passage (2), it is surprising that the emendation Athenin, which goes back to sixteenth-century critics (cf. Degani, , Studi, p. 108 n. 181)Google Scholar, has, until La Penna, found endorsement only in Rostagni. The expression parum stabili…carmine, following immediately after a couplet about Archilochus, qua inventor of the iambus (utque repertori nocuit pugnacis iambi, 521), undoubtedly refers to Hipponax qua inventor of the choliambus (cf. La Penna, p. 138; Degani, , Studi, p. 62)Google Scholar. Athenis, on whom see below pp. 293–4, was the brother of Hipponax's well-known target Bupalus.

9 La Penna, p. 114; Degani, , Studi, p. 61Google Scholar.

10 For fragments attacking Bupalus by name, cf. frr. 17 Dg (= 1W), 18Dg (= 15 W), 19 Dg (= 95aW), 20Dg (= 12W), 86.18Dg (= 84W).

11 Some of the MSS. have fraterque Medusae, on which see La Penna's remarks, p. 114. The scholiasts, it is true, all seem to have used a text with this reading, since they call Hipponax the ‘brother of Medusa’ (cf. Hipponax Testim. 10–12aDg), but they offer no opinion as to why Hipponax may have been called that, and they otherwise contain such bizarre fictions that one wonders how attentive they were to Ovid's actual text. Degani, , Studi, p. 61Google Scholar, suggests that if we retain fraterque Medusae (though he thinks it the less probable reading), we might explain it as an allusion ‘alia terribile Musa ipponattea o alia presunta, ampiamente attestata foeditas fisica del poeta’.

12 Degani, , Studi, p. 61Google Scholar; he also calls attention to Ibis 553; saxificae… Medusae. Cf. fr. 144 Dg ( = 136W): ἀνδριάντα τὸν λίθινον ἓϕη Ἱππῶναξ Βούπαλον <τὸν> ὰγαλματοποιόν. (This fragment probably means ‘Hipponax called Bupalus the sculptor a “stony statue”’, though the exact sense is disputed; see Degani's, notes ad loc. p. 148Google Scholar.)

13 See Degani p. 128 for full bibliography. Masson, O. set out the arguments in ‘Sur un papyrus contenant des fragments d'Hipponax’, REG 62 (1949), 314–15Google Scholar as follows: fr. 126Dg (= 128W) is a clear homeric parody, and we are thus easily directed to Odyssey 7.54–9, where the Phaeacian queen Arete is said to have sprung from the king of the Giants, Eurymedon; Arete is the name given by Hipponax to the woman whom he and Bupalus pursue as rival lovers; therefore, calling Bupalus also a descendant of Eurymedon (Εὐρυμεδοντιάδης) implies that he is related to Arete, and as such commits incest in his pursuit of her. Masson suggested further that Arete was Bupalus' mother, on the ground that Hipponax calls Bupalus a μητροκοίτης at fr. 20.2Dg (= 12W; cf. also fr. 69.7Dg [= 70W]). Others have accepted this, though he himself has since withdrawn the idea in Les fragments du poète Hipponax (Paris, 1962), p. 169 n. 2Google Scholar. Koenen, L., in ‘ΘΕΟΙΣΙΝ ΕΧΘΡΟΣ: Ein einheimischer Gegenkönig in Ägypten’, CE 34 (1959), 112–13Google Scholar argues that Bupalus and Arete are related as brother and sister in Hipponax, just as Alcinoos and Arete were in the Odyssey passage. If one accepts this formulation, one could perhaps argue that Ovid's fratre Medusae refers to Bupalus in his capacity as brother of Arete, where Medusae refers to Arete, though it seems unlikely that Hipponax would call the woman whom he pursues erotically a ‘Medusa’!

14 E.g. Perseus in Ap. Rh. 4.1512; Poseidon (a lover of Medusa in Hesiod, , Th. 276–9Google Scholar) called Εὐρυμέδων in Pind. Ol. 8.31; Degani, , Studi, p. 107 n. 177Google Scholar. Degani also records Gruppe's, O. claim in Griechische Mythologie und Religionsgeschichte (Munich, 1906), p. 1141Google Scholar [wrongly cited in Degani], that the name ‘Medusa’ may have arisen as a shortened form of Εὐρυμέδονσα (i.e. a feminine form of Εὐρυμέδων, given to her in her capacity as a lover of Poseidon), though cf. Ziegler, K. s.v. ‘Gorgo’ in RE VII.2 (1912), col. 1632Google Scholar.

15 According to Pliny's version, both Bupalus and Athenis were involved in making a satirical portrait of Hipponax (cf. also the Suda's testimony, above). Others mention only Bupalus as the culpable party (cf. Degani Testim. 9a, 9b = Σ ad Hor. Epod. 6.14). (André, J., Ovide contre Ibis [Paris, 1963], p. 51Google Scholar reasons incorrectly when he states that Pliny ‘refutes the legend’ and then uses this to argue against reading Athenin. Pliny repudiates only the part of the ‘legend’ that has Hipponax's poems drive the brothers to their death, not the notion that they were attacked by the poet at all.)

16 Bergk, T. in his Poetae Lyrici Graeci (Leipzig, 1843), p. 513Google Scholar, had suggested <τε> κἂθηνις for κατέκτεινεν in fr. 17Dg (= 1 W: ὦ Κλαζομένιοι, Βούπαλος κατέκτεινεν), based on κάθηινε in MS. B of Iuba Artigr. ap. Mar. Plot. Sac. Ars Gramm. 3.4 [= GL 6.522.15–20 Keil], from which fr. 17 derives. Many scholars have accepted this (cf. Degani, p. 37), though Degani endorses West's repudiation of the reading on stemmatic grounds (West, M. L., Studies in Greek Elegy and Iambus [Berlin/New York, 1974], p. 140)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 It is true that, insofar as both brothers were sculptors, ‘Medusa’ could by itself refer to either brother; hence we cannot deny the possibility that ‘de fratre Medusae’ might refer to Bupalus qua ‘brother of Athenis’. But since there is little doubt, to judge from the testimonia and extant fragments, that Bupalus rather than Athenis was considered in antiquity to be Hipponax's primary target, it seems more likely that one would refer to ‘Bupalus and his brother Athenis’ (i.e. ‘“Medusa” and the “brother of Medusa’”) than vice versa. For the arguments for connecting ‘Medusa’ with Bupalus that are based on the fragments, cf. above pp. 292–3. In the end, of course, we can only speculate that Hipponax himself actually called Bupalus ‘Medusa’. It remains possible that Ovid invented the appellation, though his practice in the rest of Ibis seems to be to use attested, if obscure, circumlocutions, rather than to invent his own.

18 I accept Hipponactean authorship for fr. 194Dg ( = 115W), though the controversy remains unsettled; cf. Degani, ad loc., p. 168 for full bibliographyGoogle Scholar.

19 On Ovid's fascination here with such traditions, see La Penna, pp. lxvii–lxxi. Note that the allusion in the couplet immediately following, ‘utque lyrae vates fertur periise severae,/ causa sit exitii dextera laesa tui’ (525–6), still defies certain identification; cf. La Penna, p. 139.

20 Verbal attacks by the poet's enemy are implied in 13–14: ‘vulneraque inmitis requiem quaerentia vexat,/ iactat et in tota nomina nostra foro’, It seems likely, moreover, that Ovid's curse at 524, ‘invisus pereas deficiente cibo’, refers specifically to a similar curse that ‘Ibis’ had levelled against him, cf. 21–2: ‘nititur ut profugae desint alimenta senectae:/ heu quanto est nostris digmor ipse malis!’.

I owe thanks to my colleague Joseph Farrell for his helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.