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Melinno's Hymn to Rome1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

C. M. Bowra
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Extract

In his collection of passages περὶ ἀνδρείας Stobaeus (Ecl. 3, 7, 12) quotes a poem in five Sapphic stanzas by Melinno and, in introducing it with the words Μελινοῦς Λεσβίας ἰςε ῥώμην, blunders. The poem, as Grotius saw long ago, is addressed not ἰςε ῥώμην, to physical strength, but ἰςε ῥώμην, to Rome, and has in fact nothing to do with ἀνδρεία. Nor is there any good reason to think that the authoress came from Lesbos.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 47 , Issue 1-2 , November 1957 , pp. 21 - 28
Copyright
Copyright ©C. M. Bowra 1957. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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Footnotes

1

I hope that this article on a literary subject will not be out of place in a volume dedicated to a scholar who has always insisted on the close relation of literature and history. I am indebted to Mr. T. C. W. Stinton for some helpful criticisms.

References

2 Dict. Poet. 522, ‘putavit haud dubie Stobaeus Ῥώμην hic esse ἀνδρείαν’.

3 Anth. Lyr. Graec. II2, 315–6.

4 The latest discussion known to me is that by Schubart, W., Philologus XCVII (1948), 319–320Google Scholar.

5 ἀπ᾿ ἀνδρῶν is very difficult, not only because it is clumsy after ἄνδρας in 18, but because it yields a feeble sense, ‘as if from men you brought forth the rich crop of Demeter's fruit.’ It spoils the other-wise clear comparison between the progeny of Rome and the fruits of the earth.

6 Usener, H., Rh. Mus. LV (1900), 290Google Scholar; Birt, T., Ind. Lect. Marb. 1887, XIIGoogle Scholar, and Horaz' Lieder 145.

7 L. P. Wilkinson, Horace and his Lyric Poetry 11, says that Melinno and Catullus ‘both show as marked tendencies what Horace later established as rules’. This seems to be true (1) of the break after the fifth syllable, which Melinno uses nine times in a possible fifteen, and (2) of the preference for a long syllable in the fourth place in the line, which she shows in every place but two. In neither of these need we see Latin influence, but it is just conceivable that Horace, who went further in both directions, found precedent in Hellenistic Sapphics for these usages which suited the Latin language better than did the practice of Sappho and Alcaeus.

8 The same account is stated or implied at Diod. 2, 46, 5; Apollodor. Epit. 5, 1; Quint. Smyrn. 1, 55; Hyg., Fab. 112; Serv. Dan. 1, 491; Verg., Aen. 11, 661.

9 The lengthening of the third syllable of χρυσεομίτρα is paralleled by similar lengthenings in Pindar before λ, μ, ν, σ, cf. P. Maas, Griechische Metrik 29, and Responsionsfreiheiten II, 19; Wilamowitz, Pindaros 380.

10 J. U. Powell, Collectanea Alexandrina 173.

11 Housman ad loc. compares Rutil. Nam. 1, 48–50. Shackleton-Bailey, D. R., CQ n.s. VI (1956), 85Google Scholar, changes ipsa to ipsi.

12 J. B. Bury, The Ancient Greek Historians 202 ff.; Walbank, F. W., Commentary on Polybius I, 16–25Google Scholar.

13 Momigliano, A., ‘Terra Manque,’ JRS XXXII (1942), 53–64Google Scholar.

14 W. Oldfather, P-W IX, 168.

15 Melinno's association of αἰών with μοῖρα is clear enough. μοῖρα gives power, and αιών does not take it away. For the connection of the two cf. Eur. Heracl. 898–900:

16 Eur., IT 430, also refers to πλησιστίοισι πνοαῖς.

17 Wilamowitz, Timotheos: die Perser 91, punctuating after ἄνδρας and μεγάλους.

18 E. R. Dodds, ad loc., quotes Diod. 1, 12, 4; Sext. Emp., adv. math. 9, 189; Cic., ND 2, 67, as examples of the Greek belief that the name Demeter meant ‘Earth Mother’.

19 BMC Italy 365, nos. 15 ff.

(Anth. Pal. 6, 353.)

cf. Welcker Kleine Schriften 11, 163; L. Winniczuk, Twórczość Poetek Greckich 116.

21 o.c. 160 ff.

22 P-W IX, 168 ff.

23 Timotheos: die Perser 71; in Griechische Verskunst 128 he places it in ‘die Zeit der Senatsherr schaft … vermutlich nach 133, vor Sulla’. So too U. Lisi, Poetesse Greche 223.

24 Gesch. griech. Lit. 11, i, 326.

25 So too C. Pascal, Graecia Capta 165 ff.

26 W. W. Tarn and G. T. Griffith, Hellenistic Civilisation 55; M. Nilsson, Gesch. d. griech. Rel. 11, 167 ff.

27 Tarn-Griffith o.c., 114; P-W I, A, 1061 ff.