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Nero on the Disappearing Tigris

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Michael Dewar
Michael Dewar
Affiliation:
The University of Calgary
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Extract

This is the only undisputed fragment of Nero's poetry which is longer than a single line. It is preserved for us by the scholiast on Lucan 3.261, who gives us the additional piece of information that it belongs to Nero's ‘first book’. It is overwhelmingly likely that this refers to the first book of Nero‘s epic Troica, his most famous work and the only one, as far as we know, to have been comprised of several books.1 Since the fragment is the most significant surviving, but this attribution to the Troica cannot be quite certain, Morel and Büchner list it as fragment 1 with the simple heading ‘E libro primo’ and scrupulously keep it entirely separate from Servius’ two testimonia (frr. 9 and 10) on the content of the poem. This entirely sensible procedure, however, may trap the unwary reader into assuming that not a word of Nero's epic actually survives.

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 41 , Issue 1 , May 1991 , pp. 269 - 272
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1991

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References

1 Bardon, H., REL 14 (1936), 347Google Scholar ‘de tous les poémes neroniens, seuls les Troica furent assez importants pour comprendre plusieurs livres'. d'où, scol. “in primo libro”.’

2 Pers. 1.103f. ‘haec fierent si testiculi vena ulla paterni viveret in nobis?’.

3 Cf. Virg. A. 7.683, 715 ‘qui Tiberim Fabarimque bibunt’, 738, 801f., Stat. Theb. 4.116ff., 227.

4 Statius also uses the myth in his epithalamium for Stella and Violentilla: Silv. 1.2.203–8 nitidae sic transfuga Pisae amnis in externos longe flammatus amores flumina demerso trahit intemerata canali, donee Sicanios tandem prolatus anhelo ore bibat fontes; miratur dulcia Nais | oscula nee credit pelago venisse maritum.' The poet well-trained in rhetoric can, by giving it the suitable color, adapt the same material to quite different types of subject.

5 It should be stressed, however, that if Statius has any one particular model in mind it need not necessarily be an epic catalogue. Learned Hellenistic poetry seems to have had a taste for descriptions of such miraculous rivers, and references to them appear in various genres. Both Callimachus and Lycophron, for example, mention the Inopus, which rose and sank at the same time as the Nile and was therefore believed to be fed by the Egyptian river, which was supposed to pass untainted under the sea from Egypt to Delos. See Call. Hymn 3.171 γχθι πηγων Αἰγυπτον 'Ινωποῖο and Lyc. Alex. 575f. 'Ινωποῖο πλας | Αἰγύπτον Τρτωνος ἕλκοτες ποτν. Parthenius would appear to have alluded to a similar tradition concerning the river Aous in a poem written in elegiacs: see Supplementum Hellenisticum, ed. Lloyd-Jones, H. and Parsons, P. (Berlin and New York, 1983), no. 641 (p. 307)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. As for the myth of Arethusa and Alpheus it appears elsewhere in epic at Virg. A. 3.694–6 and Ov. Met. 5.572–641), but also in lyric at Pind. Nem. 1.1–4 and in pastoral at Virg. Ecl. 10.4–6. Nonetheless, it is most likely that Statius actually has in mind Lucan's Greco-Oriental catalogue: see De Bello Civili 3.176f. ‘Pisaeaeque manus populisque per aequora mittens | Sicaniis Alpheos aquas’. The self-same catalogue also mentions the Danube (3.201f.) and the geographical oddities of the Maeander (3.208), the Ganges (3.230–2 'toto qui solus in orbe | ostia nascenti contraria solvere Phoebo | audet et adversum fluctus inpellit in Eurum') and the Tanais (3.272–6 ‘vertice lapsus | Riphaeo Tanais diversi nomina mundi | inposuit ripis Asiaeque et terminus idem | Europae, mediae dirimens confinia terrae, | nunc hunc nunc ilium, qua flectitur, ampliat orbem’).

6 Perhaps ultimately inspired by Lucan's digression on the causes of tides in his Gaulish catalogue (1.409–18).

7 Fantham, E., Seneca's Troades (Princeton, 1982), ad loc. (p. 208).Google Scholar

8 Ibid.