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PAP. ANT. III. 115 And the Iambic Prologue in Late Greek Poetry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Alan Cameron
Alan Cameron
Affiliation:
Bedford College, London
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Extract

The latest volume of the Antinoopolis Papyri (iii [1967], no. 115) contains fragments of some 40 iambic lines in praise of a certain Archelas. The papyrus is dated by J. W. B. Barns, the editor of the piece, to the sixth century A.D., and the poem itself can be no older, since corrections and alterations show it to be an author's draft. According to Barns it is ‘an iambic encomium of a type not uncommon in late Greek occasional poetry from Egypt’ (p. 20). I would suggest rather that the surviving lines come in fact from an iambic preface to a hexameter encomium.

In the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries it was standard, if not universal, practice to preface a hexameter poem with an iambic prologue. Since details are not readily available, and are relevant to my argument, I tabulate them here. First the four examples that have come to us by manuscript tradition, as it happens the same manuscript (Palatinus 23), and all dating from the second half of the sixth century.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , May 1970 , pp. 119 - 129
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1970

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References

page 119 note 1 Cf. Friedlaender, P., Johannes von Gaza und Paulus Silentiarius (1912), 119 f.Google Scholar, and Mattsson, A., Untersuchungen zur Epigrammsammlung des Agathias (1942), 106 f.Google Scholar

page 119 note 2 Friedlaender, , op. cit. 110–12,Google Scholar and cf. my suggestion in JHS lxxxvii (1967), 131.Google Scholar

page 119 note 3 See JHS lxxxvi (1966), 6 f.Google Scholar

page 119 note 4 This was the suggestion of H. Gerstinger, who first published the papyrus, but it has not found much favour in recent years. I hope to discuss the matter elsewhere before long.

page 120 note 1 See the evidence I collected in Historia, xiv (1965), 470–509.Google Scholar

page 120 note 2 Historia, xiv (1965), 482–3Google Scholar (though I would no longer subscribe to what I there said about the role of the accent in post-Nonnan poetry).

page 120 note 3 The assertion of Christ-Schmid-Stählin, , Gesch. d. gr. Literatur ii. 26 (1924), 973Google Scholar, that the dux Maurice of whom Cyrus wrote was the future Emperor Maurice (582–602) is entirely arbitrary.

page 120 note 4 Photius, , Cod. 279Google Scholar, ad fin.: on these characters see (briefly) my remarks in Historia, xiv (1965), 487–9.Google Scholar

page 121 note 1 Suda, s.v. Marianos (on his identity, see Cameron, Averil, Byzantion, xxxvii [1967], 15, n. 6.)Google Scholar

page 121 note 2 Maas, P., ‘Der byzantinische Zwölfsilber’, Byz. Zeitschr. xii (1903), 278–323.Google Scholar

page 121 note 3 For example, no one (I imagine) would care to infer any decline in the popularity of the hexameter in late Latin poetry from the fact that a certain Avienus put ‘Vergilii fabulas’ into iambics (Servius on Aen. 10. 272): whether this Avienus is the fabulist Avianus (more properly Avienus) or Rufius Festus Avienus (more properly Avienius) is uncertain (CQ.N.S. xvii [1967], 394–5).Google Scholar

page 121 note 4 For the figures, see Gow, and Page, , The Garland of Philip, i (1968), xxxviii.Google Scholar

page 121 note 5 Franke, A., De Pallada epigrammatographo (Diss. Leipz. 1899), 97–8.Google Scholar

page 121 note 6 16. 381–7, which are in iambics, I would assign to the ninth or tenth century rather than the sixth, where editors and commentators have so far been happy to leave them.

page 121 note 7 See Wifstrand's, A. chapter ‘Ein Geschmackswandel in der Epigrammdichtung’ in Von Kallimachos zu Nonnos (1933), 155–77.Google Scholar

page 121 note 8 Pertusi, A., in his edition of George's poems (Studia Patristica et Byzantina, vii [1960], 43)Google Scholar claims that George is the first poet to use iambics for encomiastic epic. This ignores several pieces of evidence discussed above.

page 121 note 9 Since it has not so far been mentioned in this connection, it is perhaps worth drawing attention here to Orosz's, L. publication of The London Manuscript of Nicephorus' ‘Breciarium’ (Budapest, 1948),Google Scholar which offers a fuller text for the early years of Heraclius than the (much later) Vatican manuscript used by de Boor for his (still standard) edition. At pp. 11–12 Orosz notes that there are ‘some complete and a larger number of incomplete iambic trimeters’ concealed in the text of the British Museum Manuscript, and suggests that Nicephorus drew on an epic in iambic metre—adding the further suggestion that it might have been a now lost epic by George of Pisidia, since ‘this verse form is an unusual one for historical narrative’. Not all these ‘fragments’ are convincing, but it must be admitted that there are more iambic runs than one might ordinarily have expected in a dry Breviarium. This postulated iambic epic must be considered a possibility, though it will not affect the point under discussion here, since it could only be a few years earlier than George's poems (if, indeed George did not write it, which is perfectly possible). It is a pity that Pertusi used only de Boor's Nicephorus for his edition of George, and did not touch on this matter.

page 122 note 1 Friedlaender, , Johannes von Gaza, 120 f.Google Scholar, and Schissel, O., Berl. Phil. Woch. xlix (1929), 1075–7.Google Scholar

page 122 note 2 See Friedlaender's commentaries on John and Paul, and, for Agathias, Waltz and Beckby ad loc. or, more fully Mattsson, , Untersuchungen (p. 119, n. 1), 106 f.Google Scholar and Viansino's, G. commentary (1967) ad loc.Google Scholar (defective in many ways, but useful for parallel passages).

page 123 note 1 See (e.g.) Nonnus, Keydell's, i (1959), p. 40* § 16.Google Scholar On the practice of the early imperial epigrammatists see Gow, and Page, , The Garland of Philip, i (1968), xxxviii–ix.Google Scholar

page 123 note 2 is an uncertain reading at Asclepiades, Apl 120. 2, retained with hesitation by Gow, and Page, , Hellenistic Epigrams, ii (1965), 147 (1101 n.).Google Scholar Beckby (ad loc.) might at least perhaps have mentioned Hermann's conjecture

page 125 note 1 Cf. (among countless passages) Julian, Or. I. 3–4, p. 14Google Scholar Bidez.

page 125 note 2 Not fourth century, as supposed by Weisshäupl, Peek, and Beckby: see Robert, L., Hellenica, viii (1950), 90.Google Scholar

page 125 note 3 On which poem see now, rather than the commentaries of Waltz, Beckby, or even Gow, and Page, , Garland of Philip, ii (1968), 412,Google ScholarRobert, L., Rev. dePhil. xli (1967), 21 ff., at p. 24.Google Scholar

page 126 note 1 Cf. too Ševčenko, I., Synthronon… A. Grabar (1968), 30 f.Google Scholar, and for the motif of the governor sharing his throne with Dike herself, Kantorowicz, E. H., AJA lvii (1953), 65 f.CrossRefGoogle Scholar (= Selected Studies [1965], 1f.Google Scholar). Foi a brilliant interpretation of a very fragmentary inscription from Corinth on the basis o: these motifs, Robert again, REG lxxix (1966), 760–1.Google Scholar

page 127 note 1 On the corruption and rapacity of provincial governors, see Alföldi, A., Conflict of Ideas in the Late Roman Empire (1952), ch. iii passim,Google Scholar and Jones, A. H. M., Later Roman Empire, i (1964), 399 f.,Google Scholar neither of whom makes use of the very revealing evidence of these honorific epigrams, so admirably analysed by Robert.

page 128 note 1 Stein, E., Histoire du Bos-Empire, ii (1949), 313, 319, 783.Google Scholar

page 128 note 2 Stein, , Bas-Empire, ii. 754.Google Scholar

page 128 note 3 Stein, , 476 f.Google Scholar; Jones, , Later Roman Empire, i. 281.Google Scholar

page 128 note 4 Hardy, E. R., Large Estates of Byzantine Egypt (1931), passim,Google Scholar and Stein, , 162 f.Google Scholar

page 129 note 1 On the iambic prologue in general, and for a few remarks about Pap. Ant. 115, see now Viljamaa, T., Studies in Greek Encomiastic Poetry of the Early Byzantine Period (Comm. Hum. Litt. Soc. Sci. Fenn. 42. 14), 1968.Google Scholar