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Paulus Silentiarius, Ovid, and Propertius

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

J. C. Yardley
J. C. Yardley
Affiliation:
The University of Calgary
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Extract

In the late nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth thematic resemblances to the Roman elegists in Paulus Silentiarius (and other late epigrammatists) were explained as the result of the poets' reliance on a common Hellenistic source – usually this was identified as the so-called ‘subjective Alexandrian love elegy’ – and this represented a departure from the views of earlier scholars such as Hertzberg and Postgate, who had maintained that Paulus knew and imitated the elegists. In recent years the pendulum has swung back (partly, perhaps, because the whole notion of a ‘subjective Alexandrian love elegy’ has been abandoned), and the prevailing opinion seems to be that the Roman elegists were known to Paulus. This is the view of, for instance, Giovanni Viansino in his edition of Paulus, of Elmar Schulz-Vanheyden in his important work on Propertius' relationship to Greek epigram, and of Hermann Beckby in his edition of the Greek Anthology. Recently, too, Gordon Williams has put forward a very strong case for earlier epigrammatists like Antipater and Crinagoras imitating the Augustan poets.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 30 , Issue 1 , May 1980 , pp. 239 - 243
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1980

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References

* I wish to thank Professor W. J. Slater for his comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

1 See, e.g., Mallet, F., Quaestiones Propertianae (Diss. Göttingen, 1882), pp. 47 ff.;Google ScholarT. Gollnisch, , Quaestiones Elegiacae (Vratislava, 1905), pp. 50 ff.;Google ScholarHoelzer, V., De Poesi Amatoria e Comicis Atticis exculta ab Elegiacis imitatione expressa (Marburg, 1899),Google Scholarpassim. For further bibliography and a summary of the dispute, see K. F. Smith, , The Elegies of Albius Tibullus (repr. Darmstadt, 1964), p. 23 n. 1,Google Scholar and Archibald Day, A., The Origins of the Latin Love Elegy (Oxford, 1938), pp. 50 ff.Google Scholar

2 Hertzberg, G. A. B., Sex. Aureli Propertii Elegiarum Libri Quattuor (Halle, 1843-5), 1. 229–30;Google ScholarPostgate, J. P., Propertius: Select Elegies (London, 1881), cxlvi.Google Scholar

3 Viansino, G., Paolo Silenziario: Epi- grammi (Turin, 1963), pp. xii ff.;Google ScholarSchulz-Vanheyden, E., Properz und das griechiscbe Epigramm (Diss. Miinster, 1969), pp. 156 ff.Google Scholar (Schulz-Vanheyden is supported by Kenney, E. J. in his review in CR 86 (1972), 111);Google ScholarBeckby, H., Anthologia Graeca, 1 (Munich, 1957), p. 66.Google Scholar See also Keydell, R., Gnomon ll(1935), 605.Google Scholar

4 Change and Decline: Roman Literature in the Early Empire (Berkeley and Los Angeles, California, 1978), pp. 124 ff.Google Scholar

5 Cameron, Averil, Agathias (Oxford, 1970), p. 26.Google Scholar On the broader question of the general absorption of Hellenistic litera ture (especially rhetoric) by the Byzantines, see Romilly Jenkins, J. H., ‘The Hellenistic Origins of Byzantine Literature’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 17 (1963), 39–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Beckby (1. 682) claims that ‘Das Gedicht lehnt sich stofflich an Ovid am. 1.3 an’. I assume he means Am. 1.7.

7 Viansino, p. 98.

8 Cf. also A. P. 12.81.5 (Meleager), 12.169.3–4 (Dioscorides) and see Page on Rufinus VIII (A. P. 5.22) 1. In comedy, cf. Menander, fr. 2K. (3 Sandbach) and fr. 568. 1K.

9 Hermes, 104 (1976), 127.Google Scholar

10 See further Schadewaldt, W., Monolog und Selbstgespräch (Neue philologische Unrersuchungen 13, 1: Berlin, 1926), pp. 287 and 219 ff.Google Scholar

11 That Menander was admired by the erotic epistolographers is also clear from Philostratus, Ep. 47, where a female addressee is told that she cannot be Athenian or she would have been acquainted with , and (i.e. Menander is the representative of Athenian drama for Philostratus), and from Alciphron 4. 18 and 19, where the Periceiromene is referred to in allusive terms.

12 Another epigrammatist who appears to have been familiar with this play is Fronto: cf. A. P. 12.233.4.

13 Ovid uses the adjective sacrilegae of his hands (28), perhaps recalling Glycera's description of Polemo<n>'s action as (Periceir. 724). They are also ‘caedis scelerumque ministrae’, and one suspects that similar language was used by Menander: cf. Philostratus Ep. 16.4-5 .

14 On Menander's use of tragic diction, see Sandbach, F. H., ‘Menander's Manipulation of Language for Dramatic Purposes’, Ménandre (Entretiens sur I'antiquité classique: Fondation Hardt, Geneva, 1970), pp. 126 ff.Google Scholar

15 Viansino, p. 116, Schulz-Vanheyden, pp. 164 ff.

16 Schulz-Vanheyden, p. 164.

17 Schulz-Vanheyden, pp. 164–5.

18 ‘Two Unidentified komoi of Propertius’, Emerita 45 (1977), 325–53, especially pp. 328 ff. It must be noted, however, that 1.3 was not completely ‘unidentified’. Cf. Schulz-Vanheyden's comment (166): ‘Dazu passt gut dass Properz in V. 39-40 einen Gedanken aus dem Motivbereich des Paraklausithyrons Cynthia in den Mund legt. Damit deutet er an, dass hier gleichsam die Situation des Paraclausithyrons umgekehrt ist.’CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 Beckby, 1. 683. Here, indeed, the ‘direct influence’ advocates seem to have found less support. See now von Albrecht, Michael, Römische Poesie: Texte und Interpretationen (Heidelberg, 1977), pp. 124–5;Google ScholarPetersmann, G., ‘Properz 1.3’, Latomus, 37 (1978), 957 n. 21. Cf.Google Scholar also Curran, L. C., ‘Vision and Reality in Propertius 1.3’, YCS 19 (1966), 199 n. 15.Google Scholar